Jon Peterson posts Mordenkainen in 1974

Von Ether said:

Huh. In a weird way, that makes Savage Worlds use of NPC allies very old school. You are even guided to split the NPC per player, not PC in a fight so every one has something to do if a PC is down.

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As I recall, SW was very much rooted in war-games.

By the bye, I played in a long-running 2E game where there were many henchmen and hirelings. The main PCs were higher level (around 10th - 12th) mostly wizards, but there was a rotating cast of somewhat lower, say 5th - 7th, level NPCs. They were often a lot of fun to play, too. Some were characters that wouldn't necessarily be suitable for an entire game but were fun to explore for a while. The other fun thing was that if your main PC was out for some reason the game continued. This worked because the number of players was small (2-3, with a DM). In retrospect this is what the old Lake Geneva crowd did but we didn't know that at the time.

Yardiff said:

I loved Brian's Han Solo trilogy and had hoped that would have been used for the movie, sadly not. Also loved the Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh books.

Dont remember if I've read A Tapestry of Magic, I'll have to hunt up a copy.

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There was an interesting article on The Ringer last month about Daley and the Han Solo books.
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/5/24/17389734/han-solo-novels-prequels-brian-daley

Thanks that was a good article

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a huge reveal because Mordenkainen's stats have been privvy to a select few and never completely released by anyone until now, right? I mean, besides all the post-TSR releases that had stats for him where they were more or less made up like in the Epic Level Handbook.

It is kind of funny though. A Staff of Power with 192 charges means that the character has, effectively, unlimited spells. IIRC, you could "charge" a Staff of Power by absorbing spells cast into it (or am I getting that confused with a rod of absoption?).

But, when people talk about how hard old school gaming was, it's fun to remember that even the creators of the game were full scale munchkins.

He misspelled Mordenkainen lol

Sacrosanct said:

Sounds like you have more of an immature player issue, rather than a game design one. I've played AD&D as my preferred edition from 1981 to 2012 when 5e came out. Almost never saw those problems you describe, and the only times they did happen, was when the player was immature and selfish.

Simple answer: don't play with immature and selfish players.

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...a little circular there.

I mean, I'm glad you've never seen those problems. I'm not sure I've ever played AD&D with a party that I believe was legitimately rolled, and its always...always...the guy who says he loves AD&D above all other editions who ends up with 18/% "naturally" rolled. And the lunacy of rolling methods...yeesh.

Sacrosanct said:

And yes, I will argue that AD&D is less stat dependent. For one, WotC editions are literally designed with the assumption that players will have X amount of bonuses to their key stats. It's built into the game design itself. AD&D doesn't have that.

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AD&D doesn't have that explicitly, but its clear to me that the designers expected that either (A) You'd be cheating to get high stats anyway or (B) You'd be "weeding out" characters with low stats at high levels.

Sacrosanct said:

Just from that alone, later editions are more stat dependent because it's literally a factor into the game design itself.

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There are, to my knowledge, exactly zero editions of this game that don't factor your stats into the game design. Even if it adjusts your XP and nothing else...that's a factor into the game design itself. (I mean, otherwise, why bother having stats?)

Sacrosanct said:

Secondly, it is entirely possible and plausible to have an effective PC in AD&D with lower stats and harder in later editions. Most of you bonuses like ability to hit your enemy were more heavily influenced by level and not stat.

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erm...okay....gonna have to disagree with you there.

Sacrosanct said:

For example, a 1e fighter gained roughly a +1 to hit every level gained, and the difference between a 17 strength and a 9 strength is only a +1 difference to hit.

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And the difference between a 9 STR and a 18/00 STR is +4/+6. So, yeah like 4 levels or more worth of offensive power for the Fighter. Seems to me like that influences your ability to hit your enemy quite a bit. Its just all bunched up into the end of the scale. That gives fighter players a super-clear incentive to lie, cheat, and steal to get that 18 and roll the %.

Sacrosanct said:

So a 10th level fighter could have the stat bonus only be 10% of the total bonus to hit. Compare that to say, 5e, where your level might give you a +3 bonus to hit at that level, but the difference between a 17 and a 9 is 4 points--more than 50% of your hit bonus is based on stat, not level.

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What % of an AD&D's STR 18/00 Ftr10's offensive capacity vs a STR 9 FTR10's offensive capacity is based on Stats? Its at least 40%, just due to the "to hit" bonus. I'm not sure how to factor in the +6 damage/hit, but I'm confident that it would end up being 50% or more. That is, assuming the Ftr10 hasn't girdled up or something by then.

I would say that its true that most of the other stat-class interactions are not so strong in AD&D (with the possible exception of thieves and Dex), at least once play has started.

Sacrosanct said:

Then you've also got the shift from saving throw tables to saving throws based on stats. And then add in skills. So yeah, it seems pretty obvious to me that AD&D is much less stat dependent than WotC editions.

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I'll give you the saving throws, but see you adventures written with absolute requirements like "a total Strength of 25 between two characters is necessary to open the door." Skills, may depend on where you draw the lines, the way proficiency checks worked in 2e actually incentivized players even more. I mean, each point was a straight-up 5% increase in success chances.

Also, wanna play a paladin, or ranger? or an elf? or anything other than a human thief or cleric?....good luck doing that without the appropriate stats. Oh, shoot, even a human thief or cleric is only qualified for by characters meeting certain requirements. I don't even think its mathematically possible to quantify the stat-dependence between a 10th level character with high stats and one who didn't even qualify to play that class.

Oh, wait,...does that qualify as stats factoring into the game design?

https://muleabides.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/you-must-be-this-lucky-to-play/ said:

In other words: mediocre stats bum people out because they can’t play awesome characters with cool classes. Gygax then lists four methods of rolling stats, of which 4d6 drop lowest arranged to taste is Method I. Which kind of seems like an odd response to the problem identified above. If the problem is that people get lame stats and have to settle for a class, why not let folks play whatever they want? Any of the methods Gygax supplies could still give you some uninspiring stat arrays, and with Method I you still run a ~70% chance of failing to obtain Paladinhood. I get that sometimes the dice inspire you, and that there’s something to be said for prestige. But it strikes me as a weird thing.

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Again, the AD&D stat bonuses are just compressed at the end of the scales, not spread out. All that does is incentivize players to cheat them up. If your playgroups never caught on to that...well, cheers, I guess. I've played in multiple AD&D playgroups intermittently since the 80's and they all seem to exhibit the behaviors I've mentioned wrt to fighters, STR, and AD&D. I see much more diversity in primary stat values in later editions (some of which may be due to less class restrictions).

If you like AD&D, that's great, play it away. I just don't buy the "later editions are more stat-dependent" argument though, and you'd need at least a 19 Charisma to convince me otherwise.

All that being said, I'd be happy, and have even suggested that D&D drop stats (or random stats, anyway) entirely and wrap all of that into your other character choices and perhaps a quirks system.

Ratskinner said:

Personally, for these reasons, I'm always completely and utterly baffled when an old-schooler derides the later editions as stat-dependent. I

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I come to games from a 1e perspective. It's a 5e game set in a 2e world. We ran into a demon who could just devour you but masqueraded as an old man who hosted us weary travelers. Hanging over his mantle was a sword for no particular reason. When we were woken up by the screams of our dying NPC and knew we were in trouble we started to battle but it wasn't going well because we had no magic weapons.

I am playing and it dawns on me after my turn, and I say to the player playing our monk:

"It has to be the sword! Get the sword, it has to be magical or why would it be hanging over the mantle?!?" That's 1e, no reference to rules, no mention of arcana checks, nothing but me responding to the situation. The 5e reply came:


"I'm not proficient in martial weapons"


That's stat dependent, that's 5e. And as I understand it, this thinking has been going on at least since 3e.

You realize that an ad&d monk flat out could not use that sword right? Never mind proficiency issues, he can’t use a sword.

So how is this a “later edition” thing?

Hussar said:

You realize that an ad&d monk flat out could not use that sword right? Never mind proficiency issues, he can’t use a sword.

So how is this a “later edition” thing?

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A) he could have grabbed it and passed it to someone else

B) put the sheet down and don't worry about BS like if he will lose a proficiency bonus and just go with the story. It's an obsession with stats over roleplaying. That is where the Es differ.