I started with Holmes Basic D&D around age 15 and misunderstood the attack tables. I somehow read "DIE ROLL FOR A MONSTER TO SCORE A HIT, BY DEFENDER'S ARMOR CLASS" to mean "the die roll you need to hit a monster, based on the monster's AC." So the players used the monster attack table to attack monsters, and the monsters used the character attack table to attack characters. The higher the monster's HD, the easier it was to hit it, which made sense to me since most of the high HD monsters were also larger sizes, like ogres, trolls, dragons, giants and purple worms. I figured they were easier to hit because they were bigger targets. Meanwhile the monsters had a tougher time hitting 1st-3rd level characters. I deduced that higher level characters would be easier to hit to maintain game balance since they would be more powerful. My mistake wasn't too much of a problem running B1 In Search of the Unknown because most of the monsters in it only had 1 HD so the players and monsters had roughly equal chances of hitting a given AC. Once we moved into my first homebrew dungeon my beginning players starting chopping down some tough monsters. I specifically remember throwing a hydra at them, and later a couple of manticores. A 2nd level PC would need a 10 to hit the AC 4 manticore, but the manticore would need a 15 to hit the 2nd level PC with the same AC! To make matters worse, those high HD monsters had you roll on the good treasure tables. All that gold meant the players leveled up past 3rd level and out of the Holmes rule set very quickly and they had some good magic items, too! Eventually I read the rules again I realized my mistake, but I let my players keep their xp and loot and soon we moved on to the AD&D rules.
Wait, is THAT how that works?!
In the 1E DMG and PHB, if I recall correctly, there are some tables of random things that have 24 items in the list. At the top of the column listing the numbers from 1 to 24, were the helpful instructions "d12, d6", implying that, in order to randomly generate one of the items in the table, one rolled a d12 and a d6. Needless to say, even when I was 11, I could see that the highest number it was possible to generate on those two dice was 18; so I was mystified how to randomly generate a number between 1 and 24 from those two dice.
It was only many, many years later that I overheard someone saying "roll a d12, and then roll a d6, and if the result of the d6 is 4, 5 or 6, add 12 to the d12 roll".
EUREKA!
Cheers, Al'Kelhar
It was only many, many years later that I overheard someone saying "roll a d12, and then roll a d6, and if the result of the d6 is 4, 5 or 6, add 12 to the d12 roll".
EUREKA!
Cheers, Al'Kelhar
Wednesday Boy
The Nerd WhoFell to Earth
I started with 2nd Ed. and a friend from school who played before helped me make my first character. I thought it would be cool to multiclass so he gave me the best of both classes (Thief and Illusionist) and whenever I got XP I applied it to both classes to figure out what abilities I had from both instead of splitting it between the classes. I guess it wasn’t too powerful because no one else (even me) bothered to make a multiclass character.
jgsugden
Legend
My biggest error was getting so old that I can't remember the mistakes I made when I started in the 70s.
As I recall, as a 6 year old, my biggest error was telling everyone else how the game was ACTUALLY played because I actually read the rulebook. I have no idea if I was right, but I sure told people I was. I imagine I was pretty wrong as my reading skills were ... well, I was 6.
As I recall, as a 6 year old, my biggest error was telling everyone else how the game was ACTUALLY played because I actually read the rulebook. I have no idea if I was right, but I sure told people I was. I imagine I was pretty wrong as my reading skills were ... well, I was 6.
mach1.9pants
Hero
Maybe it was harking back to old school and you had to roll under?
Me to, we played our first campaign, without a DM, of BECMI using a d6 re rolling 5 and 6s. Must be a kiwi thing.
So coming from Fighting Fantasy game books (including the paired books set you could co-op), and having the choose your own adventure style demo in the Basic Box Set, my mate and I didn't really figure out what a DM was for. So together we mashed up the DM role with random tables and general discussion. This was despite previously being introduced to the game by his older brother as DM as a demo - but we never listened to him. It was awesome and we were hooked! Well hooked after I got over aleena's death
Yeah it's all pretty fuzzy those first few games
I had a friend who would roll the d4 and then pick it to read it as the number NOT on the bottom was what was rolled.
TarionzCousin
Second Most Angelic Devil Ever
The original Monster Manual didn't have experience point values for monsters killed. That information was in Appendix E of the 1E DMG.
In the far-right column, under "XP Value" it gives the xp base and a variable for how many hitpoints the monster had.
Example: Orc 10+1/hp. So an orc with three hit points would be worth 13 xp.
However, we thought you somehow gained hit points by killing monsters. So whoever dealt the final blow to that orc would get one hit point. If he was wounded, he regained one hp. But if he was already at max hp, his maximum hit points would go up one.
Needless to say, it was like Hackmaster where everyone was jumping around to try to get the final blow on every monster.
In the far-right column, under "XP Value" it gives the xp base and a variable for how many hitpoints the monster had.
Example: Orc 10+1/hp. So an orc with three hit points would be worth 13 xp.
However, we thought you somehow gained hit points by killing monsters. So whoever dealt the final blow to that orc would get one hit point. If he was wounded, he regained one hp. But if he was already at max hp, his maximum hit points would go up one.
Needless to say, it was like Hackmaster where everyone was jumping around to try to get the final blow on every monster.
AD&D Armor Class and THACO explanation had to be read three to 61 times, in order to get it straight.
RedShirtNo5.1
Explorer
Treasure Type U "1 of each magic" means one roll of each category of magic item. Not one of each magic item listed in the DMG.
Mouseferatu
Hero
Wow. That would be a seriously item-heavy campaign right there.
Similar Threads
