The D&Ds That Never Were

[5ekyu]

I had players who liked the Thief-Acrobat because they weren't that excited by picking pockets or doing locks and traps (thief stuff) but liked the second-story elements of the T-A. Obviously not an overpowered class, but jumping from building to building is about as cool, or maybe even cooler, than disarming poison needle traps!

This is true.

Still remember that day of my T-A pole vaulting over the front lines to land in the middle of the bad guy's formation (uhhh... alone...out of reach of friendly support) followed by a flurry of "whack-a-moron" by the bad guys and the (now) 4 hp left T-A leaping off the dam (we were fighting on a dam) and using feather fall and levitation to just "hang out" until the fight was over.

We still laugh about that one.

 

[pemerton]

Still remember that day of my T-A pole vaulting over the front lines to land in the middle of the bad guy's formation (uhhh... alone...out of reach of friendly support) followed by a flurry of "whack-a-moron" by the bad guys and the (now) 4 hp left T-A leaping off the dam (we were fighting on a dam) and using feather fall and levitation to just "hang out" until the fight was over.

We still laugh about that one.

I'm trying to remember stuff from decades ago, but I don't remember the T-A characters in my game using their abilities in melee very often. The stuff I can recall really was second-story hijinks in an urban campaign. We did have a T-A in a more dungeon-oriented campaign, but I can't remember how that character's abilities were used.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[reelo]

I, for one, would have loved to see a BX Companion book by Tom Moldvay. Apparently it was in the works when Memtzer's revision came along, and BX fans generally don't like it very much.
In BX, for example, thief skills maxed out around lvl 14, and thieves were supposed to get NEW stuff in Moldvay's Companion book. Mentzer simply just streched thief skills from level 1 to 36, making thieves suck for a looong time.

To me BXE (as opposed to BECMI) is the one version of D&D the non-existence of which I mourn the most.

 

[Gradine]

LG Paladins were awesome

Yeah I think this is where you lost him

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What if the actual 5ed have been release in place of the 4ed?
4ed produce a clash, but was it necessary to produce the 5ed?

Without 4E to contribute bad ideas, 5E might have come out even better. We wouldn't have to deal with Dexterity to damage, that lets an air elemental hit harder than a water elemental; and we wouldn't have to deal with PC rapid regeneration, which trivializes the cost of combat.

I'm not saying that 4E was all bad, but 5E took only the worst from it, and ignored most of the good parts. If 5E had come out back then, it may very well have included the progressive/balanced math and uniform/modular class structures which were lost in the transition from 4E.

 

[pemerton]

So, the thing is ... 1e had a lot of cool things that people ended up playing because they were cool, but not because they were good.

Two cases in point-

I loved (LOVED) the original illusionist class. But it was ... well, not great.

So should I mention that two of the T-As I saw in play were gnome multi-classed illusionists?

I agree that the T-A is not super-powerful (!), but I'm not sure it's terribly weaker than a thief - jumping/tightroping is not obviously weaker than picking pockets and dealing with locks and traps; and the tumbling ability works well with climb walls if you don't have a ring of feather falling.

The big issue is that thieves are mechanically under-powered.

 

[TarionzCousin]

So should I mention that two of the T-As I saw in play were gnome multi-classed illusionists?

Hmmmm... probably not.