1E and 4E are similar? Really? (Forked from: 1E Resurgence?)

[Henry]

Forked from: 1E Resurgence?

Are you seriously trying to say that 1E and 4E are similar enough that 4E has revived 1E? Considering the vast differences the two systems have, I would say that it's more like people are fed up with the new edition, tons of splatbooks, lather, rinse, and repeat roller coaster than any similarities between the two editions. They aren't even the same game. I'm no expert on 1e, but I'm sure it didn't have healing surges, videogamey powers for all characters, tieflings, dragonborn, action points, defenses instead of saves, etc. etc. All they really have in common is the names of some classes, races, and a few spells, AC, hit ponts, and medieval weapondry and armor. Maybe you're refering to the emphasis on rudimentary dungeon crawls for both editions. Other than that, I don't see where you are coming from.

A while back, I posted a list of things from 4E that have reminded me of 1st edition, and earlier versions, of D&D.
Among the things that I listed were:

• Single-classing is DEFINITELY stressed over multiclassing. Some can't stand this part, seeing 3E multiclassing as having solved a very important part of 2E's limitations on visualizing a unique character. On the other hand, the cost of this has been loss of class archetypes, and loss of party role, as more prestige classes and base classes in 3E were introduced and allowed characters to minimize weaknesses by cherry-picking the best classes and abilities. You could have rogues that didn't know the first thing about stealth; fighters who were terrible at dealing damage; wizards who merely dabbled in wizardry -- those were a few examples I had seen.
  
• Monsters' XP rewards are listed on a solid scale (1e) instead of the floating CR scale. This is actually
  reminiscent of Basic D&D, and 2nd edition, and has returned to figuring out XP per character, as opposed to per party.
  
• Truncated Monster stat blocks a la AD&D and Basic D&D
  I won't deny that ease of DMing and DM prep on the mechanical side of things has been a major draw to me. In fact, back when I was playtesting 4E backin December to January of 2007, I actually HATED the game - or at least intensely disliked it. Once I got to see the full game, and I realized that they had changed some of the things from the playtest that I disliked (which I'm not at liberty to discuss in detail), it did win me over a lot quicker than I anticipated. The monster design rules and encoutner design rules are a big part of this, in the same way that I used to design encounters back when I DMed in 2nd edition.
  
• Most combats will have a 5-minute rest period associated with them, analogous to the 1 turn rest after combat in 1E.
  Back in 1E, there was a "1 turn rest" built in that all combats were assumed to take place in, as PCs bound wounds, checked bodies, updated maps, etc. There was a definitely sense of "slowdown" versus the frenetic pace I often saw in our 3.5E games. When some spell durations are in minutes, there's an urge to go faster and faster before the larger-powered buffing spells ran out; in 1E and Basic D&D, there were so few buffing spells, and most of them only lasted for the one battle (they had durations or 10 rounds or less, usually).
  
• Saving throw "duration roll" targets are static numbers again, instead of variable DCs.
  This isn't groundbreaking or anything, but putting saving throws into the range of a single d20 roll definitely reminds me of 1st edition Saving throws, especially in things like Dwarves getting a FREAKING HUGE bonus to poison saves...
  
• Magic items are more tightly controlled by DMs; players discouraged from selling magic, DMs encouraged to tailor it more to the players.
  In 1E you adventured for the goal of finding amazing loot; you really didn't "buy it in town," you found the Holy Avenger in the Tomb of Eternal Death after liberating it from a dragon's hoard. Not to say you couldn't in later editions, but the focus of the written rules in the DMG seemed to be on magic item shops and magic item creation commissions, after finding and trading in a lot of other magic and loot you didn't want. 4E, as 1E's DM stresses DM's putting the loot in the dungeon, for players to pry out and use.
  
• Weird weapons like Gyrspikes, Two-bladed swords, Orc double-axes, etc. are relegated to later books. In fact, with recent articles in Dragon, their new plan seems to be to use multiclassing to control really weird and exotic weapons, to control the level and depth one wishes to use such an exotic weapon to its fullest potential.
  
• Coup de graces similar to "helpless damage" in 1E
  A lot of people don't realize it, but striking helpless opponents in 1E was not an auto-kill, but just did double max damage. One thing I don't agree with in 4E though is the inability to "auto-kill" when not in combat; I wish that had returned to D&D.
  
• As Mouseferatu noted, measurements are back in inches, pretty much. Characters in 1E moved at a speed of 12 inches in a full round -- sounds familiar to me.
  
• One thing I did not come to appreciate until I both gamed Original D&D with Gary Gygax and Diaglo, and after I had really gotten a good several play sessions under my belt for 4th edition. One similarity with 1E and 4E was the staying power of monsters over 1st level. In Original D&D, monsters had d6 hit dice; characters had d6 hit dice; weapons all did d6 hit dice. Monsters AND Characters had armor classes within range of a single d20 roll - even for the Magic-users until the higher levels.
  What this translates to is that monsters, over the course of several rounds, had some staying power. While the numbers were a little bland, the math worked pretty well! In all the example combats I fought, it took about 5 to 10 rounds of combat to finish an encounter. The magic users used their dailies to mop up the occasional combat MUCH faster (I love you, AD&D Sleep spell and Hold Monster!), but when they conserved and didn't, you did your due diligence, had a combat of around 5 to 10 rounds, and won or lost.
  4E follows a lot of that mathematical model. ACs between monsters and PCs are back in the range of a d20 roll, even for the wizards; the daily powers of each character are capable for turning the tide of a single battle, at the enxpense of having to slog through later battles if you use them too capriciously; And both Monsters and PCs possess enough hit points to have some staying power for the average combat. This is something I really didn't appreciate until I got to really compare the two side by side.

All these add up to a feel - not apples to apples of course (as some people say, the powers system itself is a radical departure from old D&D mechanically speaking); however, as far as how it plays at the table (length of combats, resource use, dice ranges for success, class roles) it does play similarly to 1st edition and OD&D from my experience with it. It won't for some people, I certainly get that, but there consistently comes the question of "how on earth is this similar to 1E?" And I thought I'd give a few of my thoughts on it.

 

[Grimstaff]

From a rules standpoint, no. From a "feel" standpoint, definitely.

Things I like about 1E that I also like about 4E:

1. Easy prep time - grab a module and play
2. Easy creation of monsters/npcs
3. Easy "on-the-fly" DMing
4. The above 3 help with: More emphasis on immersion
5. Points-of-Light
6. Hordes of humaoids
7. Potentially short life span for PCs - feeling of danger
8. Magic items feel fresh and unique and somewhat rare
9. More gradual PC power curve with levelling
10. Less emphasis on skills
11. Long "adventuring" days

I'm sure there are more, but those spring to mind.

 

[Grimstaff]

Forked from: 1E Resurgence?



A while back, I posted a list of things from 4E that have reminded me of 1st edition, and earlier versions, of D&D.

Among the things that I listed were:

• Single-classing is DEFINITELY stressed over multiclassing. Some can't stand this part, seeing 3E multiclassing as having solved a very important part of 2E's limitations on visualizing a unique character. On the other hand, the cost of this has been loss of class archetypes, and loss of party role, as more prestige classes and base classes in 3E were introduced and allowed characters to minimize weaknesses by cherry-picking the best classes and abilities. You could have rogues that didn't know the first thing about stealth; fighters who were terrible at dealing damage; wizards who merely dabbled in wizardry -- those were a few examples I had seen.
  
• Monsters' XP rewards are listed on a solid scale (1e) instead of the floating CR scale. This is actually
  reminiscent of Basic D&D, and 2nd edition, and has returned to figuring out XP per character, as opposed to per party.
  
• Truncated Monster stat blocks a la AD&D and Basic D&D
  I won't deny that ease of DMing and DM prep on the mechanical side of things has been a major draw to me. In fact, back when I was playtesting 4E backin December to January of 2007, I actually HATED the game - or at least intensely disliked it. Once I got to see the full game, and I realized that they had changed some of the things from the playtest that I disliked (which I'm not at liberty to discuss in detail), it did win me over a lot quicker than I anticipated. The monster design rules and encoutner design rules are a big part of this, in the same way that I used to design encounters back when I DMed in 2nd edition.
  
• Most combats will have a 5-minute rest period associated with them, analogous to the 1 turn rest after combat in 1E.
  Back in 1E, there was a "1 turn rest" built in that all combats were assumed to take place in, as PCs bound wounds, checked bodies, updated maps, etc. There was a definitely sense of "slowdown" versus the frenetic pace I often saw in our 3.5E games. When some spell durations are in minutes, there's an urge to go faster and faster before the larger-powered buffing spells ran out; in 1E and Basic D&D, there were so few buffing spells, and most of them only lasted for the one battle (they had durations or 10 rounds or less, usually).
  
• Saving throw "duration roll" targets are static numbers again, instead of variable DCs.
  This isn't groundbreaking or anything, but putting saving throws into the range of a single d20 roll definitely reminds me of 1st edition Saving throws, especially in things like Dwarves getting a FREAKING HUGE bonus to poison saves...
  
• Magic items are more tightly controlled by DMs; players discouraged from selling magic, DMs encouraged to tailor it more to the players.
  In 1E you adventured for the goal of finding amazing loot; you really didn't "buy it in town," you found the Holy Avenger in the Tomb of Eternal Death after liberating it from a dragon's hoard. Not to say you couldn't in later editions, but the focus of the written rules in the DMG seemed to be on magic item shops and magic item creation commissions, after finding and trading in a lot of other magic and loot you didn't want. 4E, as 1E's DM stresses DM's putting the loot in the dungeon, for players to pry out and use.
  
• Weird weapons like Gyrspikes, Two-bladed swords, Orc double-axes, etc. are relegated to later books. In fact, with recent articles in Dragon, their new plan seems to be to use multiclassing to control really weird and exotic weapons, to control the level and depth one wishes to use such an exotic weapon to its fullest potential.
  
• Coup de graces similar to "helpless damage" in 1E
  A lot of people don't realize it, but striking helpless opponents in 1E was not an auto-kill, but just did double max damage. One thing I don't agree with in 4E though is the inability to "auto-kill" when not in combat; I wish that had returned to D&D.
  
• As Mouseferatu noted, measurements are back in inches, pretty much. Characters in 1E moved at a speed of 12 inches in a full round -- sounds familiar to me.
  
• One thing I did not come to appreciate until I both gamed Original D&D with Gary Gygax and Diaglo, and after I had really gotten a good several play sessions under my belt for 4th edition. One similarity with 1E and 4E was the staying power of monsters over 1st level. In Original D&D, monsters had d6 hit dice; characters had d6 hit dice; weapons all did d6 hit dice. Monsters AND Characters had armor classes within range of a single d20 roll - even for the Magic-users until the higher levels.
  What this translates to is that monsters, over the course of several rounds, had some staying power. While the numbers were a little bland, the math worked pretty well! In all the example combats I fought, it took about 5 to 10 rounds of combat to finish an encounter. The magic users used their dailies to mop up the occasional combat MUCH faster (I love you, AD&D Sleep spell and Hold Monster!), but when they conserved and didn't, you did your due diligence, had a combat of around 5 to 10 rounds, and won or lost.
  4E follows a lot of that mathematical model. ACs between monsters and PCs are back in the range of a d20 roll, even for the wizards; the daily powers of each character are capable for turning the tide of a single battle, at the enxpense of having to slog through later battles if you use them too capriciously; And both Monsters and PCs possess enough hit points to have some staying power for the average combat. This is something I really didn't appreciate until I got to really compare the two side by side.

All these add up to a feel - not apples to apples of course (as some people say, the powers system itself is a radical departure from old D&D mechanically speaking); however, as far as how it plays at the table (length of combats, resource use, dice ranges for success, class roles) it does play similarly to 1st edition and OD&D from my experience with it. It won't for some people, I certainly get that, but there consistently comes the question of "how on earth is this similar to 1E?" And I thought I'd give a few of my thoughts on it.

These are excellent observations, Henry!

The old-school feel in 4E is often so ephemeral to me, its nice to see some things clearly defined, and I agree with all of them.

I hope we get some more posts here, its certainly a useful subject - knowing these areas can let 4E DMs emphasize them to potentially increase the old-school feel of their games even further.

 

[Engilbrand]

One of my players like to talk about the fact that the characters can do a lot of nifty things, including the ability to wade into enemies. He likes how open it all is and how I can easily make up something that makes sense.
He has actually said that 4e is the best version of D&D that he's played and he loves the 1st edition feel. I assume that means that the feel of 1st was great, but the rules sucked. 4e apparently does, for this player, what 1st edition tried to do.

 

[vagabundo]

I agree with all the points above...

Also I wonder, what people think that could be added to 4e in future spats to provide more of a 1e feel?

For me, maybe a simpler class like the old 1e fighter. I don't believe any 4e class is hard to run - the ranger is probably the easiest - but to complete grok a class can take a little while, due to the tactical nature of the game. I'd like something that a newbie can pick up, it would just use the basic attacks, but can scale with the rest of the group. Maybe called an Adventurer - not very traditional as far as classes go, but would fit the bill.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

Agreed. Nicely put Henry/Grim.

4E has a much closer 1E feel than 3E.

That doesn't make it objectively better, or worse.*

And if you don't feel that way, it doesn't mean that those who do are wrong.*

I for one am happy to see the resurgence of 1E discussions stemming from these similarities.


WP

*Simple statements, I know, but lord knows it seem like they're needed.

 

[Umbran]

Your observations, of course, are all accurate. However, I find them to be superficial, such that they do not make the game play feel like 1e in the slightest. I just don't see how movement in inches, or exactly which book a weapon comes from, is meaningful in terms of game feel.

The at-will/encounter/daily powers mechanics, the detailed reliance on positioning and movement, the balance of classes - all of these steer the game far, far away from having a 1e feel for me and my group.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Psion]

Single-classing is DEFINITELY stressed over multiclassing. Some can't stand this part, seeing 3E multiclassing as having solved a very important part of 2E's limitations on visualizing a unique character.

To me, that's not a move to being 1e like. It might have matched its intent, but not actual play.

1e and 2e multiclassing and dual-classing were very beneficial. You split XPs between classes, which meant that you had the abilities of 2 or 3 classes at a slightly lower level, but had all the abilities of each of those classes.

Really, 3e's mechanic wherein levels were the root resource instead of classes, made single class characters more common from my perspective.

Saving throw "duration roll" targets are static numbers again, instead of variable DCs.

In the face of the fact that the entire structure of saving throws has changed to an entirely new "target DC to cause the effect"/"make save to remove" paradigm, I think the net result is much less 1e.

Weird weapons like Gyrspikes, Two-bladed swords, Orc double-axes, etc. are relegated to later books.

And yet, the 1e PHB gives me lovely little oddities like spetums and ranseurs, and bohemian ear-spoons.

As Mouseferatu noted, measurements are back in inches, pretty much. Characters in 1E moved at a speed of 12 inches in a full round -- sounds familiar to me.

The mere mention of squares says to me that 4e is much more 3e than 1e. The "5 feet means 1 square thing" came into core rules in 3e. (It might have been in combat & tactics in 2e, but that's not core nor really "old school"... yet.) In 1e there's a reason you used the term inches: because you used a ruler to determine how far you moved or the radius of your spell effect on a surface that was not necessarily gridded.

Other things that seem pretty blatantly "not 1e" to me in 4e. And admittedly, some of these it inherited from 3e:

• Obsessive balance of options: 4e strives obsessively for the goal of making every race and class equivalent. Things didn't work that way in 1e. Some classes were managed/limited by "brass ring" mechanics (e.g., to be a paladin or ranger, you had to have rolled well enough in your stats), roleplaying restrictions, racial class restrictions or level caps, and limiting combinations of powerful classes with likewise powerful races or multiclassing.
• Point buy stats the default: is there much else to say? That's old school champions or GURPS, maybe.
• Spheres/circular areas of effect are round: This relates to the inches thing I was speaking about above.
• Healing surges: We're not contrasting with 3e anymore; wands of cure light wands were not in 1e. After a knock-down drag-out fight, you pretty much could expect to rest the night. Unless you were brave enough to press on.
• Majorly different class and race collection: There were no dragonborn, no tieflings (that's SO 2e), no warlords in 1e. There were gnomes in 1e. And eladrin would be called grey elves, and you'd be lucky if your DM let you play one (but you would want to.)
• Way too consistent: Okay, a lot of these points hinge against 3e, but the fact that 4e inherits so much from 3e is a major part of my point here. To wit, for things like surprise, noticing secret doors, checking for traps, you didn't have a nice, unified skill system to hinge off of. You had a variety of little subsystems that uses a variety of different dice in 1e.
• Different reality: Finally, the creatures and cosmology saw a major shift from 1e. Deities were redefined and mashed together, the great wheel nowhere to be seen, and succubi on the devils' payroll.
• Save. Or. Die. Any lock could have a poison in it, any potion you sampled could kill you.
• An attack is an attack. (Well, at least until OA it was.) There was no menu of different attack options.
• Vancian magic. Not only is an attack an attack, it's not a spell daily.
• (Tangible) Alignment and Paladins: In 4e, "unaligned" is an alignment, some of the original alignments have gone missing, and most alignment based magic is gone. This is in stark contrast to 1e, wherein a paladin lost their powers by behavior slips and deviating from you alignment meant paying a few XP to the piper.

To me these are a few of the major elements that make 4e not even remotely 1e/"old school" in feel to me.

 

[Henry]

The at-will/encounter/daily powers mechanics, the detailed reliance on positioning and movement, the balance of classes - all of these steer the game far, far away from having a 1e feel for me and my group.

It's the last point, about monster staying power and the daily "shortcut" resources, where the similarities are for me. It wasn't until I was reminded, playing some 1E convention games for the NC gamedays, of this phenomenon, watching PCs smacking around wights, giants, gnolls, hellhounds, etc. In 1E, unless spells were involved, you just could not take down opponents over 1 or 2 hit dice in one shot. If you faced a roomful of hill giants, it was going to take anywhere from 4 to 8 hits (more likely around 8) to bring one down. This left time, over several rounds, for them to call reinforcements, to shift into corridors that only allowed facing them one at a time, to monologue, to do several things that were largely gone from all the 3E games we played. PCs had an upper max damage they could do, which the monster hit dice took into account. Even when PCs stopped gaining hit dice at 9th level, monsters still gained hit dice, and spells became even more crucial to bringing them down. In OD&D, it was even more pronounced, with the prevalence of d6's and very few bonuses.

In 3E, you have martial types able to do anywhere from 10 to 20 damage even at first level (for those big barbarians with the greataxes) to literally a hundred points of damage in a round, with their bonuses stacked high enough to ensure almost every attack was a hit. Spells could bypass spell resistance, rip off half a monster's hit points in a single attack, or in some cases just make the monster die in a single round, and caster's don't get a piddly amount of spells -- they get dozens to cast, and scribe scroll & equivalent feats make it relatively easy to add even to this total. Admittedly, as you rise in levels in 3e, the bottom levels of spells become less useful, but it still leaves quite a few spells to compensate.

However, the monster's hit points did not rise enough to compensate for a character being able to do its hit points in damage in any given round. 3E has a far looser cap on damage per level per round over time than 1E does in this regard. 4E has brought back that cap that was there, this time tighter than before. (I am not even sure the cap was intentional by Gary or not, and I say Gary rather than Dave Arneson here since it appears Gary was more the "mechanic" than Dave was, "Woz" to Dave Arneson's "Steve Jobs" so to speak.)

In regard to tactics in 1E, if one played by the rules in the DMG, actively tried to decipher them and put them to use, or looked at some of their precursors in Chainmail, there was a tactical element to them. You had to decide to charge or cautiously engage; weapon speed made a difference in ties; initiative order was by the whole party rather than by individual, so you did have to coordinate with your fellows to avoid screw ups (I once saw a thief wander into a magic-user's cone of cold because of the way inits were called in 1E and then acted on); weapon length was quite important, because someone who charges the guy with the longer weapon screwed up (something they actually took out of 3E, and only partially addressed it in 3E with reach). Beyond these, facing played a role; amount of opponents in a given space was important (so just like in 3E and 4E backing into a narrow hallway in the face of superior numbers was a good tactic). All these things played into the game as written to make a tactical difference. The old argument of "your old school vs. my old school" comes in here, because a lot of people jsut plain dumped these tactical elements because they were not clearly explained in the DMG. As a result, a lot of "boardless" combat went on under 1E and 2E, and gave some people a very different experience.

That's what really comes to mind for me when I compare the two. When I see similarities between them, they both play similarly under the 1E and 4E rules, as opposed to how 3E plays. It's almost as if they really looked under the hood of 1E and saw some of the things that made it play the way it did, and saw how they could get there with different mechanics, but I doubt that's the way it happened. Instead, it almost seems like the design of a game going full circle, because some things worked very well for it in the past, and in going away from it, natural process design kind of "pushed" it back in that direction subconsciously.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

1E is looking good to me as it is a dead system. Beyond fan support at sites like Dragonsfoot there are no new books to buy and the ones that were published may be picked up for cheap on ebay. To me the production schedule of 4E is what is going to drive me away from D&D. I just don't have enough spare cash to keep up given the schedule of release and the cost of each book. If the books were cheaper or the release schedule a little less ambitious I'd stay with it.