pawsplay
Hero
So, I was paging through some AD&D 1e and 2e stuff today at the used bookstore. After a while, I begin to remember why AD&D made my head hurt and drove me to GURPS.
A few gems of nostalgia:
- Rogues have 1/2 and wizards 1/3 THAC0 increases? Ouch! I had forgotten that.
- Dual classing (or "characters with two or more classes") - funky human only option that required high ability scores, punished you for attempting it, then handed you the keys to the candy store if you succeeded. No going back, through!
- Multiclassing - for whatever reason, nonhumans multiclass, not dual class
- Monsters as PCs - aside from the bare bones approach, you are told "no special abilities" (including but not limited to magic resistance, spell like abilities, or flight, which would rule out 3.5 style drow and gnomes), and further, your maximum level is based purely on your prime requisite ability score. Thus, probably unintentionally, ogres can advance a level or so higher than hobgoblins in the normal course of things. Oh, and creatures with claws and bites? They simply lose those, without explanation, in the course of becoming PC races.
- Long-winded lectures about player greed, unbalanced items "destroying" the game, an entire page and a half on "Super Characters" who will "destroy" your game, etc.
- Even longer lectures on why players should be talked into enjoying the human fighter with all 9s for ability scores.... and 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange, is described as lending itself to "super characters" and destroys the "special" quality of druids, paladins, and other high entrance classes
- Oh, yes. Minimum ability scores. Given that the number of characters eligible for paladin using the standard rolling method is one out of hundreds, and the ranger even less (!), we can deduce that most paladins and rangers are played by unrepentent cheaters, or people who whine until the DM agrees to modify their ability scores.
- Armor versus weapon type - a system intended to balanced banded mail, ring mail, bronze chain, and other archaic armor types against other choices!
- The suggestion that clerics of love and beauty deities need at least a Cha 16 to qualify for that speciality priest class.
- In AD&D 1e, assassins are a class, and eligible to multiclass with fighter. In AD&D 2e we are informed that being an assassin really isn't a role and doesn't require any special abilities, just a "reprehensible outlook"
- That came from the build your own class section. Incidentally, +1 to hit orcs is worth a +1 multiplier, but going from thief to fighter THAC0 is only 0.5.
- The game seems to feel that high level characters will use wishes to do just about everything, from raising ability scores to exceeding racial level limits by 1 per wish, and so forth
- A normal human could expect to die about 1 time in 3 when polymorphed.
A few gems of nostalgia:
- Rogues have 1/2 and wizards 1/3 THAC0 increases? Ouch! I had forgotten that.
- Dual classing (or "characters with two or more classes") - funky human only option that required high ability scores, punished you for attempting it, then handed you the keys to the candy store if you succeeded. No going back, through!
- Multiclassing - for whatever reason, nonhumans multiclass, not dual class
- Monsters as PCs - aside from the bare bones approach, you are told "no special abilities" (including but not limited to magic resistance, spell like abilities, or flight, which would rule out 3.5 style drow and gnomes), and further, your maximum level is based purely on your prime requisite ability score. Thus, probably unintentionally, ogres can advance a level or so higher than hobgoblins in the normal course of things. Oh, and creatures with claws and bites? They simply lose those, without explanation, in the course of becoming PC races.
- Long-winded lectures about player greed, unbalanced items "destroying" the game, an entire page and a half on "Super Characters" who will "destroy" your game, etc.
- Even longer lectures on why players should be talked into enjoying the human fighter with all 9s for ability scores.... and 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange, is described as lending itself to "super characters" and destroys the "special" quality of druids, paladins, and other high entrance classes
- Oh, yes. Minimum ability scores. Given that the number of characters eligible for paladin using the standard rolling method is one out of hundreds, and the ranger even less (!), we can deduce that most paladins and rangers are played by unrepentent cheaters, or people who whine until the DM agrees to modify their ability scores.
- Armor versus weapon type - a system intended to balanced banded mail, ring mail, bronze chain, and other archaic armor types against other choices!
- The suggestion that clerics of love and beauty deities need at least a Cha 16 to qualify for that speciality priest class.
- In AD&D 1e, assassins are a class, and eligible to multiclass with fighter. In AD&D 2e we are informed that being an assassin really isn't a role and doesn't require any special abilities, just a "reprehensible outlook"
- That came from the build your own class section. Incidentally, +1 to hit orcs is worth a +1 multiplier, but going from thief to fighter THAC0 is only 0.5.
- The game seems to feel that high level characters will use wishes to do just about everything, from raising ability scores to exceeding racial level limits by 1 per wish, and so forth
- A normal human could expect to die about 1 time in 3 when polymorphed.