AD&D survey questions

We played AD&D a very very short while, before getting into 2e AD&D. We were much younger, less experienced and there was no internet.

1) Yes we used them. Both, but since I have to choose, I'd have to say it was for the balancing factor.

2) No one played the class at our table, but yes the Barbarian would have been allowed as written. We were younger, I'd have to relook at it the class now to make a judgement call.

3) Into the teens (highest was 13th-14th) as long as the campaign (group of players) could last.

4) No we did not. We would now as we are doing something similar in a current RPG.

5) We did not use henchmen (sadly).

6) Funny enough balance was not a concern at our table and most preferred to play fighters.

7) No issue with XP costs.

8) No they did not.

9) Yes we did.

10) No

11) We stopped AD&D a long time ago, but if we were playing it now, I'd imagine we would port over many ideas/mechanics.

12) We must have had, I was always tinkering away, but surprisingly nothing important/striking comes to mind.

EDIT: I remember there were those unofficial handbooks which we used on and off and Comeliness - if I recall correctly that came from UA.

Re: max HP - kind of like all of our "lucky" 18/00 fighters and "wow, another guy with psionics?" it was not as much a house rule as it was institutionalized cheating.

Not going to lie, we had plenty of 18/00 fighters in our AD&D campaigns, and I’m sure I was one of them. There’s no world where any of us actually rolled that, either, I can guarantee that. Looking at the stats on the old character sheets I still have, none of them look like what you actually get when you roll your stats. But hey, we were just kids back then..

As much as I love honestly rolled stats in all their mediocrity, I think 5e’s Standard Array is my favorite these days. Even as adults, too often there will be someone that shows up with stats that they either fudged or just rolled repeatedly until they got the number they liked.

Joshua Randall said:

Re: max HP - kind of like all of our "lucky" 18/00 fighters and "wow, another guy with psionics?" it was not as much a house rule as it was institutionalized cheating.

Click to expand...

Ralif Redhammer said:

Not going to lie, we had plenty of 18/00 fighters in our AD&D campaigns, and I’m sure I was one of them. There’s no world where any of us actually rolled that, either, I can guarantee that. Looking at the stats on the old character sheets I still have, none of them look like what you actually get when you roll your stats. But hey, we were just kids back then..

As much as I love honestly rolled stats in all their mediocrity, I think 5e’s Standard Array is my favorite these days. Even as adults, too often there will be someone that shows up with stats that they either fudged or just rolled repeatedly until they got the number they liked.

Click to expand...

This is why all rolling is done on the table in front of other people.

Show up with a pre-rolled character? Fine. Put that away and haul out yer dice, 'cause you're gonna need 'em.

That said, I've seen 18.00 strength honestly rolled in my current campaign, along with some ridiculous psionic scores* in previous campaigns which led me to drop psionics completely asd a PC thing for this one.

* - the way I did psionics was you rolled your normal chance a la the 1e PH, and if you came up as psionic you then rolled d-1000 to see how (relatively) powerful you were and what abilities you had in my homebrew system - to this day I still haven't figured out how RAW 1e psionics are supposed to work. A 990, a 995 and a 997 - all honestly rolled in front of me - and the resulting headaches were enough to convince me psionics had to go. Never mind that the 990 and 997 were in characters of...well let's say dubious-at-best...ethics and morals.

If you play the game long enough you'll see crazy stuff.

In a 4e game, at a convention, a table of us saw the Ranger use Twin Strike, roll two 20s (auto-crits in 4e), Action Point, Twin Strike, and then roll two 20s again. We all yelled in excitement. Needless to say the monster being attacked exploded into chunks, which saved the party from a likely TPK.

That’s certainly one way to do it. Another is to just play with people you can trust to roll their ability scores (As the years go on, I find myself less and less tolerant of cheaters). But at my open table, I just don’t have the time to watch people roll their characters up. Standard Array is super-easy to spot check.

As for Psionics, we pretty much ignored them back in the old days. If you wanted mystical power, you just played a spellcaster. I think I had a few NPCs with psionics, but as a DM I didn’t like mucking around with them either!

Lanefan said:

This is why all rolling is done on the table in front of other people.

Show up with a pre-rolled character? Fine. Put that away and haul out yer dice, 'cause you're gonna need 'em.

That said, I've seen 18.00 strength honestly rolled in my current campaign, along with some ridiculous psionic scores* in previous campaigns which led me to drop psionics completely asd a PC thing for this one.

Click to expand...

Bill Edmunds said:

I'm doing a bit of research on the way people play AD&D, toward the aim of creating a 'zine for Kickstarter's February 'zine initiative, and wondered if you good folks could answer some questions:

NOTE: If you are not currently playing AD&D, substitute "did" for "do."

Click to expand...

1) Did not
2) Did not
3) 5-10
4) Did not
5) Did not
6) We did not have this experience
7) We ignored XP by level requirements
8) The did not
9) We did not
10) Yes, we did
11) We did, usually from D&D and to a lesser extent CoC
11) We made armor reduce damage