Assess this chap's position (3.0 and older versions)

[Storm Raven]

Completely different is a bit misleading - both still involved making a 'To Hit' roll versus AC on a d20. The disparity between making an armed attack and an unarmed attack in AD&D 1e is no different than, say... making a grappling attack or executing a great cleave in 3x. In fact I'd say that they were less disparate.

Umm, no, the 1e unarmed combat rules involved a complicated comparative percentile chart that was impossible to actually use. You may have been playing under house rules for unarmed combat that were invented by someone in your group to avoid the "pummelling, grappling, and overbearing" rules in the 1e rulebooks.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Umm, no, the 1e unarmed combat rules involved a complicated comparative percentile chart that was impossible to actually use. You may have been playing under house rules for unarmed combat that were invented by someone in your group to avoid the "pummelling, grappling, and overbearing" rules in the 1e rulebooks.

Gods I hated those rules!

The Auld Grump - almost as much as psionics...

 

[Jupp]

my hat of edition zealots knows no limits


Open minds towards all editions is the only true way. All those edition wars are just a poor way to fill discussion boards.




Now lets all hug each other and have a nice, friendly day

 

[Umbran]

Now lets all hug each other and have a nice, friendly day

Now, Jupp, you style yourself as "The Screen Monkey". So, you should be well aware that hugging and having a nice, friendly day simply isn't standard primate behavior. Monkeys are not peaceful, quiet beasts. We screech, jump up and down waving our arms, and throw... stuff. The best that you can reasonably hope for is that we screech and throw stuff in a lucid, socially acceptable manner

 

[I'm A Banana]

I cannot read the title of this thread without mixing up the words with my mild dyslexia to consist of "Chapped Ass"

Therefore, I will simply say this:

 

[billd91]

Umm, no, the 1e unarmed combat rules involved a complicated comparative percentile chart that was impossible to actually use. You may have been playing under house rules for unarmed combat that were invented by someone in your group to avoid the "pummelling, grappling, and overbearing" rules in the 1e rulebooks.

They were a royal pain in the rear. So were 2nd edition's rules on this topic. I always used a Dragon article called "Finish Fights Faster", I believe, for my unarmed combat in 1st/2nd edition.
And 3E is a lot simpler still in that respect.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

The thing I find frustrating about 3.X is that because the rules are so detailed, everyone's a rules lawyer. Players can find about a million loopholes to screw the DM, whereas such loopholes didn't exist in the AD&D 1e/2e days.

I'll say it again: 3.X appeals to a different type of gamer than the older games. All you math, science, accounting, engineering types--you're in heaven with 3.X!

I'm surprised also that no one has mentioned the slow-moving, tactical, wargame flavor of combat in 3.X. In AD&D it was "I rush across the room and hit the orc with my sword!" In D&D 3.X, it goes more like this:

Player: I rush across the room and hit the orc with my sword!"

DM: Whoa, slow down there, shorty. Now how far is it to the orc? Count the squares.

Player: Oh, uh, okay. [Counts] Looks like 12 squares.

DM: At a scale of one square equals five feet, that's 60 feet. You can only move 30 feet and attack, unless you take a charge action. Do you wish to use a charge action?

Player: Uh, sure.

DM: Be advised, however, that if you use a charge action you will suffer an Armor Class penalty until the end of the next melee round.

Player: Okay, fine. (Sighs, tries to get back into the spirit of the game) I charge!

DM: You enter a threatened square. Although the orc is ten feet away, he has a longspear with reach. Thus he can strike you with an attack of opportunity if you leave this threatened space. Do you wish to leave and continue your charge?

Player: (Sighs deeply) Sure, why not?

DM: (Rolls some dice) The orc strikes you with his longspear as you leave the threatened square. He has the Expertise feat, meaning at his discretion he can subtract his Base Attack Bonus from his attack roll and add it to his damage roll. You take (rolls) 8 points of damage.

Player: Okay, fair enough.

DM: Well?

Player: Well what?

DM: You continue your charge, right?

Player: Oh, was I still charging? I had forgotten. (Pauses, looks around at the group) Say guys, do any of you feel like playing Betrayal at House on the Hill?

 

[Sebastian Francis]

Player: I rush across the room and hit the orc with my sword!"
DM: Whoa, slow down there, shorty. Now how far is it to the orc? Count the squares.
Player: Oh, uh, okay. [Counts] Looks like 12 squares.
DM: At a scale of one square equals five feet, that's 60 feet. You can only move 30 feet and attack, unless you take a charge action. Do you wish to use a charge action?
Player: Uh, sure.
DM: Be advised, however, that if you use a charge action you will suffer an Armor Class penalty until the end of the next melee round.
Player: Okay, fine. (Sighs, tries to get back into the spirit of the game) I charge!
DM: You enter a threatened square. Although the orc is ten feet away, he has a longspear with reach. Thus he can strike you with an attack of opportunity if you leave this threatened space. Do you wish to leave and continue your charge?
Player: (Sighs deeply) Sure, why not?
DM: (Rolls some dice) The orc strikes you with his longspear as you leave the threatened square. He has the Expertise feat, meaning at his discretion he can subtract his Base Attack Bonus from his attack roll and add it to his damage roll. You take (rolls) 8 points of damage.
Player: Okay, fair enough.
DM: Well?
Player: Well what?
DM: You continue your charge, right?
Player: Oh, was I still charging? I had forgotten. (Pauses, looks around at the group) Say guys, do any of you feel like playing Betrayal at House on the Hill?

It'd be funny if it wasn't so true.

I stopped playing 3.X altogether because every time we entered a combat the game ground to a halt, the miniatures and map came out, and people starting counting squares, planning strategy, and using rulers to measure line of sight and other nonsense. It was like playing f**king Axis and Allies or something. Halfway through I forgot we were fighting orcs.

 

[jdrakeh]

Umm, no, the 1e unarmed combat rules involved a complicated comparative percentile chart that was impossible to actually use. You may have been playing under house rules for unarmed combat that were invented by someone in your group to avoid the "pummelling, grappling, and overbearing" rules in the 1e rulebooks.

No, I recall those rules... but again, they weren't really any more difficult than many of the situation-specific, feat-based, attacks in D&D 3x (IMHO). Like I said earlier, though - it's all in how people process information and what works for them. Those rules in AD&D 1e worked (and still do) for a lot of people. So they don't work for you? Well, bully for you! That said, your assertion that said rules are 'impossible to actually use' just doesn't stand up.

 

[painandgreed]

I could easily say most of what he says is correct but half of that which he considers reasons for the old system I would consider against it.

Multiclassing was very restricted but it was well worth the trade offs. Since you were on a separate XP chart, you essentially lost one level if your core class for an equal level in another. Havign DMed a party of all elven 8th level something/magic-users, I can tell you that they were way more powerful than a party of characters at 9th level in one class. A human that switched classes from fighter to magic user at 8th level would be a full fighter/magic-user and able to use all his fighter stuff by time the other fighters and magic-users in the party were 9th. He'd be way more powerful than them and since magic-users were the damage dealers at higher levels would always be more powerful than either of them.

The XP and magic item stuff he mentions depended totally on the DM. Most campaigns I was in allowed you to buy magic items and I don't think they are any more available now than then. It was turn that you hard a hard time making them yourself until higher levels but even back in the day this was seen as a flaw in the 1E/2E rules and many DMs made up their own rules for doing such. How much XP came from treasure and monsters was also up to the DM. I remember it was usually about 50/50 with occational swings one way or the other.

I do think that 3E is over balanced with every encounter being carefully judged to be a particular challenge to a party with a certain amount of assumed treasure. You could still judge the general threat of an encounter you wished to throw at a party by XP for that creature but now it is just formulaic.

I do not think the mechanics were simpler in the old systems. They were in that there was not that many feats etc. to keep track of. Building a fighter was a matter of deciding his level and giving him equipment. However, the system of THACO, to hit tables, saving throws, XP charts, etc was a mess. 1E had no real skill system and it's absence was noticed in many cases. 1E had so many holes that every DM I knew had a 3 ring binder of house rules and it became custom to ask what they were whenver you played with a new group. It made it easier to DM is you didn't pay attention to all the holes in the rules, but if you did, then it just became a mess of house rules that differed greatly from group to group. 2E plugged most of these holes, or at least codified their fixes, and while not always better than the sytems that earlier DMs had come up with, at least made for a uniform standard between groups.