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[ggroy]

Originally Posted by Obryn

Well, the natural 20 = 25 is in there to strictly duplicate the AD&D tables. On those, 20 is reproduced 5 times before it goes up to 21, 22, 23, etc.

In practical gameplay it hardly ever makes a difference, but in 1e, 20 was not an auto-hit.

One thing that kind of struck me while playing 1e is the "whiff rate." Seriously, PCs often have less than a 1 in 4 chance of hitting against most foes - and regularly need an 18 or better. And this really doesn't get better for anyone except fighters for quite a few levels.

-O

Back in the day, we used the natural 20 = auto-hit rule from the basic and expert D&D sets. When we got around to playing 1st ed AD&D, we ended up exporting the natural 20 = auto-hit rule.

I only had the 1st ed AD&D player's handbook in those days, as well as the basic and expert D&D box sets. Without the DM guide, we largely improvised using the rules from the basic and expert D&D box sets.

To get around the problem of players being killed too easily, we just allocated the maximum hit points to each character allowed by a character class hit dice. We also had a rule of a player falling unconscious once they reach zero hit points, and dying when they reach their negative of their constitution score. Each round an unconscious character isn't tended to, they lose one hit point per round. Binding their wounds stops the hit point from falling further.

To get around the problem of monsters being too hard to hit, the DM typically went all "Monty Hall"-ish and liberally gave away a lot of magical stuff like weapons, armor, etc ... and sometimes dropped magic resistance on monsters.