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Seriously contemplating an attempt at a retro AD&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 9323537" data-attributes="member: 32740"><p>Casting arcane magic in armor is a HUGE benefit and ultimately rather unbalanced. It's especially hard to take in light of the fact that being a multi-class thief or rogue has VERY solid armor restrictions for any of the thief-rogue class activities whereas weirdly, casting arcane spells DIDN'T. It might make some kind of story-logical sense, but from a game mechanical view it's not great game design.</p><p></p><p>Level limits at 20? The game has already begun to mechanically lose cohesion as much as 10 levels prior to that. Despite the fact that 1E had charts and tables for some classes extending quite far above 20th (and Basic even went wildly further) there's a reason that some classes were given absolute maximum levels even lower than 20th in 1E - it wasn't particularly expected that players would WANT to, much less be ABLE to advance characters that far. Many/most 1E classes were being given name/title level benefits because it was anticipated that players would be retiring or at least semi-retiring those PC's and looking for new characters to play. NEW class special ability gains were fast drying up at that point and advancement meant little more to non-casters than a FEW hit points, plus to-hit/save improvements. Casters still gained more spells and higher spell levels but again it was still largely thought by GYGAX in 1E that PC's would be getting retired by players voluntarily, not that they'd keep playing them until they literally couldn't be resurrected anymore.</p><p></p><p>By the time it gets to 20th level AD&D has become a hugely different game from where it begins at 1st level and is not holding together well. Anybody wanting to take it beyond that point is still perfectly free to do so - it just really isn't worth lending a lot of <em>official</em> support to that kind of game. Don't know if that's actually the reason, but it's always been my personal perspective. While SOME people still embrace very high level play, surveys have always repeatedly shown that the majority of play (whether by deliberate choice or circumstance) is concentrated below double-digit levels or falling off when reaching that point. That almost certainly wasn't definitively known at the time 2E was done, it was still not hard to sense that. In the Strategic Review Gygax had noted that AT THAT TIME the campaigns for Greyhawk and Blackmoor were both about 4-5 years old and yet no PC had advanced yet above 14th, and it was strange to him that even playing 50-75 games in a year that anybody would have a PC higher than 9th-11th level. AD&D was really not designed nor anticipated to have such high-level games, even if SOME charts and tables extended that high (and really would be more likely applicable to select NPC's, rather than seeing a lot (any?) use for PC's.</p><p></p><p>You have to look at 1E and 2E from the perspective of THEIR OWN time, not from a MODERN perspective. Even at the time that 1E and 2E were being currently published and played the WAY the game was being played was changing all the time. It wasn't that 2E was seeing any kind of NEED to cap advancement at 20 levels - it was more likely seen as being unnecessary to accommodate it because it just wasn't happening anyway except in VERY unusual, individual games.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Man in the Funny Hat, post: 9323537, member: 32740"] Casting arcane magic in armor is a HUGE benefit and ultimately rather unbalanced. It's especially hard to take in light of the fact that being a multi-class thief or rogue has VERY solid armor restrictions for any of the thief-rogue class activities whereas weirdly, casting arcane spells DIDN'T. It might make some kind of story-logical sense, but from a game mechanical view it's not great game design. Level limits at 20? The game has already begun to mechanically lose cohesion as much as 10 levels prior to that. Despite the fact that 1E had charts and tables for some classes extending quite far above 20th (and Basic even went wildly further) there's a reason that some classes were given absolute maximum levels even lower than 20th in 1E - it wasn't particularly expected that players would WANT to, much less be ABLE to advance characters that far. Many/most 1E classes were being given name/title level benefits because it was anticipated that players would be retiring or at least semi-retiring those PC's and looking for new characters to play. NEW class special ability gains were fast drying up at that point and advancement meant little more to non-casters than a FEW hit points, plus to-hit/save improvements. Casters still gained more spells and higher spell levels but again it was still largely thought by GYGAX in 1E that PC's would be getting retired by players voluntarily, not that they'd keep playing them until they literally couldn't be resurrected anymore. By the time it gets to 20th level AD&D has become a hugely different game from where it begins at 1st level and is not holding together well. Anybody wanting to take it beyond that point is still perfectly free to do so - it just really isn't worth lending a lot of [I]official[/I] support to that kind of game. Don't know if that's actually the reason, but it's always been my personal perspective. While SOME people still embrace very high level play, surveys have always repeatedly shown that the majority of play (whether by deliberate choice or circumstance) is concentrated below double-digit levels or falling off when reaching that point. That almost certainly wasn't definitively known at the time 2E was done, it was still not hard to sense that. In the Strategic Review Gygax had noted that AT THAT TIME the campaigns for Greyhawk and Blackmoor were both about 4-5 years old and yet no PC had advanced yet above 14th, and it was strange to him that even playing 50-75 games in a year that anybody would have a PC higher than 9th-11th level. AD&D was really not designed nor anticipated to have such high-level games, even if SOME charts and tables extended that high (and really would be more likely applicable to select NPC's, rather than seeing a lot (any?) use for PC's. You have to look at 1E and 2E from the perspective of THEIR OWN time, not from a MODERN perspective. Even at the time that 1E and 2E were being currently published and played the WAY the game was being played was changing all the time. It wasn't that 2E was seeing any kind of NEED to cap advancement at 20 levels - it was more likely seen as being unnecessary to accommodate it because it just wasn't happening anyway except in VERY unusual, individual games. [/QUOTE]
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