What do you dislike about 1E?

[Glyfair]

--One spell at first level for Magic-users - sure, it's supposed to be a balancing factor, but I think it's bit too harsh.

Easily my number one issue with AD&D was this design philosophy. AD&D was balanced around the idea that if something was powerful at 1st level, it should be weak or useless at high levels (character class limits). If it was powerful at high levels, it should be weak at 1st level (magic-user class).

That doesn't make a balanced game. It does shift the focus of the game. However, only games that went through the levels. Even then, it wasn't satisfying at all.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Unarmed combat.
Weapon Speed.
Psionics.
18.xx Strength
Sleep spells. (No save, just *poof!* down they go...)
Monks.
Bards.
Crappy index in the DMG.
Tables in the DMG that I never used.
Different classes leveling at different rates.
The lack of a single coherent system.
Armor Class that went down.
Fighters who's BAB (not called that) went up 2 every other level rather than 1 every level.
Level limits.
Charm person spells that lasted days.
Invisibility that lasted till you attacked... I would stay invisible for days on end.

The Auld Grump

 

[S'mon]

I didn't like the endless tables - the saving throw tables were particularly annoying, at least THACO eliminated the to-hit tables. I didn't think level-limits for demi-humans balanced all the powers they got; this got much worse with Unearthed Arcana where you could play a Drow female Cleric with no level limit! OTOH it was a great game, the books were much more fun to read & far quicker to run than 3e; and IME its "you're the boss" attitude heavily cut down on rules-lawyering. Plus unlike 3e it had tons of encounter tables in the core books - again making GMing on-the-fly far easier.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Everything TheAuldGrump mentioned, in addition to:

Endless chart referencing
Inconsistant dice mechanics (sometimes it's good to roll high, sometimes it's good to roll low)
Awkward multiclassing rules
Class restrictions based on race

 

[tetsujin28]

The only things I miss about 1e are the kick-butt rangers and bards. And the modules were cooler, and we got art by Trampier, Dee, and Willingham. Other than that? I disliked nearly everything.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

My problem is I don't think I ever actualyl played 1st edition. I started around the time 2nd edition came out and at that point the group I joined played a weird blend of whatever rules they liked from 1st and 2nd Edition. And each of our DMs (we had 4 of them) liked different rules from different editions.

My problems with 1st edition tend to be the same as that of 2nd edition:

--Complete imbalance in the classes making some classes never played except out of necessity.
--Rules that were inconsistant and therefore hard to remember (what level does a fighter stop gaining hit dice? What about a wizard? What is the racial level limit for halflings for bard?)
--A complete lack of rules in the book, meaning that DMs had to make up rules for a good 60% of situations that were even slightly odd.
--The above lack of rules meaning that you had no idea what to expect if you tried something odd. One time it can be the best idea you've ever had and the next a DM decides that it should be impossible and gets you killed.
--No way to determine if an enemy is a worth challenge, causing encounters where players die when the DM thought it would be easy or to mow through your BBEG when he turns out to be too easy
--No way to scale encounters to the level of the players. Players 16th level? No way to have an adventure involving orcs without it being too easy.

This along with everything everyone else has said

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Still, with 1E, all you really needed was the 3 core books and we certainly had tons of hours of game play based on those rules and those rules alone.

And that isn't true of 2E/3E/3.5E because?

 

[DarrenGMiller]

Well, since this thread is not about what 3.x does better than 1E, but about what I disliked about 1E, I will have to say:

Armor Class - I always wanted AC to be like it is now
No Skills - I started to add NWP's from the survival guides
Level Limits on Non-humans - Just seemed wrong
Bards - yuck
Psionics - worse than Bards... never used them and still don't
Weapon Restrictions by Class - Yes, I know it was there for balance
Fire and Forget Spells - Still hate this one in 3.x

I didn't mind the charts and had almost all of them memorized. I could calculate XP on the fly or whatever, because I looked at the chart so often at first. Now, I look at some rules so infrequently that I forget and have to re-read the core books. Of course, then I played almost every day, now I play almost every week.


The adventures were amazing and still are. Most of the players I know who never even played 1E or that were not even born yet hold them in reverence if they have played them. Very few "new" adventures hold up to that standard. The best adventures for 3.x (IMO) are by Necromancer, some of the WOTC adventure path adventures (though some of those were real stinkers, so it balanced) and the contents of the last 8-10 or so Dungeon Adventures magazines (for the most part).

DM

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I like 1e alot. However, it was poorly organized, needlessly complicated in some areas and did not have a very workable index. However, I disagree with those who say the rules were poorly written. Sections of the books were written rather well but some sections were not as great. But I certainly would not say that 'on the whole' it was poorly written.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Rangers "Giant Enmity" ability--it's really "Evil Pseudo-humanoid enmity."