OSR What Do You prefer 1E vs 2E

[James Gasik]

Maybe this is true at lower levels, but I'm playing a high-level single-class Thief (in a higher-level party - she's the lowest) right now and she's been doing OK so far.

The one significant change we've made to Thieves in our system is to expand their weapons-allowable list a bit; otherwise they're still fairly close to the 1e-as-written version.

If one only focuses on combat, this would be true. But when playing a Thief, combat should be way down the list of what you want to do. Sneaking, scouting, spying, searching - that's what you're there for*. Any meaningful contributions to combat are just a bonus.

* - and looting, if you're that kind of Thief.

I found that at high levels, most Thieving abilities become...less stellar and expected. When Find Traps can actually, you know, Find Traps, most doors worth opening can either be muscled open or are magically locked, monsters can have any number of special senses to find you no matter how well hidden you are (and there are magic items that make you far better at stealth anyways, like Rings of Invisibility or Elvenkind items), the opportunities to shine become rarer.

Like, I started investing in Read Languages once I had all my other abilities where I wanted them, and then we tripped over a Helm of Comprehending Languages and Reading Magic, lol. All that having been said, there was one ability that was worth it's weight in gold, and that's Detect Noise...something a Bard gets.

 

[Celebrim]

Maybe this is true at lower levels, but I'm playing a high-level single-class Thief (in a higher-level party - she's the lowest) right now and she's been doing OK so far.

My first response to all of your anecdotes is always to note that you are using such a heavily house ruled system that any comparison to RAW 1e AD&D is suspect. I mean, I've learned tangentially almost nothing about your game is in any way close to the rules of 1e AD&D.

If one only focuses on combat, this would be true. But when playing a Thief, combat should be way down the list of what you want to do. Sneaking, scouting, spying, searching - that's what you're there for*. Any meaningful contributions to combat are just a bonus.

This is what I mean about the thief being a "tier 7" class. Because ostensibly based on character class design you'd think that this is what being a thief is about - sneaking, scouting, spying, searching, etc.

Except that you are never at any point in your career any good at any of those things. At lower levels you skills are so unreliable that it is a trap to ever try to use them. You have a less than 50% chance of success on things that you probably shouldn't attempt until you have a 75% or better chance of success. No matter what you try, it would be better if some other class were doing it, because at least if they failed they'd survive the failure. Where as you have terrible saves, terrible hit points, and no skills.

At higher levels when your skills start to become reliable enough to use, all you are doing is saving the party a single spell slot or wand activation. The number of spell slots you save per day as a high level thief is less than the number of spell slots available to an equivalent level M-U or Cleric, and as those classes also add other utility to the party and are good in situations where sneaking or scouting or spying or whatever isn't an option then the party would always be better off if you were playing a different class. Worse, those other classes are better at sneaking and so forth than you are. You'd be better off with Invisibility, Find Traps, Silence 15' Radius, Fly, Levitation, Clairvoyance, Augury, Find the Path, Spider Climb, and a wand of secret door and trap detection 100% of the time because spells are reliable in ways that your thief skills just aren't. The M-U or Cleric is a better spy or scout than you are.

Worse, you aren't really even the skill monkey, as if you are using 1e/2e's ad hoc skill system of "non-weapon proficiencies" you'll find you get the fewest additional skills of anyone in the party. And NWP's are relatively more reliable than thief skills at most levels of play.

Having a lot of experience playing a 1e thief, most of the time as a good thief player you are relying on your role-playing ability, ability to imagine and interact with the imagined setting, and ability to DM wheedle. That is you are relying on your skill as a player, and not on your skill as a character.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've been looking at the 2E thief class again. I kinda liked it its pants in 2 and B/X. I used the 2 xp per gp rule and the Rogue shot 3 r 4 levels a head of everyone else.

Context looking at Darksun 2E.

All rogues get 2 xp per 1 cp (gp non Darksun).

Traders (type of rogue) get 5 xp per cp via trade ability (stacks with Rogue xp so 7 xp per cp).

Thieves get 4xp per cp they retrieve for their patrons.

That seems to be xp explosion. 2-7xp per gp in normal game.

 

[James Gasik]

Given that Thieves get very little from levels, I wonder how much more xp they'd need to truly shine. Actually, given that Thieves have all of their class abilities unlocked by 13, it doesn't even seem particularly beneficial to gain levels beyond that point- you should have maximum ability in all Thieving abilities you'd care to use*, and from this point on, you're getting 2 hit points and glacial improvements in attack and save progression.

Thief 13 is 660,000 xp. At 500,000 you could be a 10th level Fighter with more attacks, a 3 point better Thac0, slightly better saves, and another 11.5 hit points on average, plus likely far better AC.

And yes, I know, the main advantage of the Thief isn't combat, but combat is something that's going to occur fairly often, and the Thief mostly has to think outside the box to be helpful in these situations; ie, relying on things other than their class abilities.

*this is talking about 2e, of course, 1e leaves you with things like Read Languages at a low percentage until high levels. 2e does let you continue to put points in abilities in order to offset penalties, like really good locks or trying to wear non-Thief armor, but there's likely a point of diminishing returns there as well.

It actually seems like the fast xp progression of the is best suited for dual-classing into a Thief later in a campaign- sure you could start as a Thief and then dual-class, but anything but Wizard would be a downgrade (and it would probably take you a very long time to be able to function as a Thief again).

Contrast the Bard, which also has a fast track in 2e, but continues to get spellcasting long after Thieves stop gaining anything relevant from levels.

There is of course a potential solution to this- introducing the alternate Thieving abilities from Dragon Kings.

 

[Zardnaar]

Given that Thieves get very little from levels, I wonder how much more xp they'd need to truly shine. Actually, given that Thieves have all of their class abilities unlocked by 13, it doesn't even seem particularly beneficial to gain levels beyond that point- you should have maximum ability in all Thieving abilities you'd care to use*, and from this point on, you're getting 2 hit points and glacial improvements in attack and save progression.

Thief 13 is 660,000 xp. At 500,000 you could be a 10th level Fighter with more attacks, a 3 point better Thac0, slightly better saves, and another 11.5 hit points on average, plus likely far better AC.

And yes, I know, the main advantage of the Thief isn't combat, but combat is something that's going to occur fairly often, and the Thief mostly has to think outside the box to be helpful in these situations; ie, relying on things other than their class abilities.

*this is talking about 2e, of course, 1e leaves you with things like Read Languages at a low percentage until high levels. 2e does let you continue to put points in abilities in order to offset penalties, like really good locks or trying to wear non-Thief armor, but there's likely a point of diminishing returns there as well.

It actually seems like the fast xp progression of the is best suited for dual-classing into a Thief later in a campaign- sure you could start as a Thief and then dual-class, but anything but Wizard would be a downgrade (and it would probably take you a very long time to be able to function as a Thief again).

Contrast the Bard, which also has a fast track in 2e, but continues to get spellcasting long after Thieves stop gaining anything relevant from levels.

There is of course a potential solution to this- introducing the alternate Thieving abilities from Dragon Kings.

High Level Campaign also has them. I think you can add them early if thief maxes their skills.

I remember bards at some levels were better than wizards at casting spells (more MAD though so likely lower intelligence), and we had a rogue hit level 9 once in a level 6 party so THAC0 was close to the fighter.

And they dual wield dex offset penalties. So similar THAC0, hp, etc to fighter.
. That was with 2xp=1gp rules. Setting up a guild early you can explode your xp even more.
By the time the rest hit level 9 you're probably level 11/12ish.

Level 10 Darksun rogues can get 4xp per cp, Traders 7xp.

 

[Weiley31]

I prefer the attack matrices of 1e to the THAC0 of 2e. I know that the math is the same, ultimately, but THAC0 is super unintuitive for me and I still bounce off of it pretty hard all of these years later.

I use online conversion guide so that way I can just make it attack bonuses and what not. Cuz I hear ya on that.

 

[Orius]

For me, it's 2e. It's what's most familiar to me. Honestly I think the differences between 1e and 2e are overstated, and the most important differences get overlooked in favor of more emotional reactions. But then I have an extensive 2e library and most of the stuff that wasn't in core 2e is somewhere in the library or I don't miss it.

Demons and devils? Planescape MC or even MC8 (though MC8's XP Values are massively inflated).

Illusionists? They were just a variant MU with a different spell list anyway. 2e does hose them a bit, but the specialists overall weren't a bad idea.

Monks? Scarlet Brotherhood if you want the traditional class instead of a kit or specialty priest, but the traditional monk has always sucked.

Assassin? They were a griefer class and even Gary was considering making them optional. Good riddance. Oh wait, they came right back as a Thief's Handbook kit. Also in Scarlet Brotherhood.

Cavalier? Unnecessary in the first place. Gary's ideas for new classes weren't great IMO, and cavalier was more than just a bit overpowered. Plus, there's nothing it can do that a fighter shouldn't be able to handle. They deserved to get demoted to kit.

Barbarian? Too many problems with this one, particularly their antipathy to magic.

Thief-acrobat? Too over specialized, and NWPs handled its abilities well enough. They were better served as a kit.

Half-orcs? I think they were collateral damage from the assassin, because that's all they were good at. They got a mention in MC1 IIRC, and later the MM. If you absolutely must have them as a PC race, then the Book of Humanoids or Skills and Powers are sufficient, but they're hosed by their level limits. They don't have a niche in 2e.

Rangers? Ok, you got a point there, though I'd argue that the 1e ranger was overpowered and every subsequent edition took turns beating them with the nerf bat. And 2e was one of the editions that got excessive with the beatings.

2e did leave out a lot of little things here and there that tend to be associated with old-school play. I've been examining dungeon crawling, how it worked in the old days and how to tweak 3e to bring it closer to that feel. There's a lot of little things 2e discarded there, and sometimes 3e wrongly gets the blame for it. When I'm done with that, I'm moving on to wilderness adventuring and then domain play. In spite of its flaws, 1e does have elements that are useful for filling in some of 2e's gaps.

Old school thieves were always weak. The biggest problem was the percentile rolls that governed their abilities and often started to low to be very successful. 2e at least allowed some customization. But they were always an example of a class with too narrow a focus that was also too weak.

For the original options, I'd probably normally almost always choose 1e over 2e for those two.

Interestingly enough, in response to some statements in the thread...the 1e versions of the Assassin and Monk were available in a slightly tweaked form in 2e via the Scarlet Brotherhood book.

Also the 1e Ranger was in the Complete Ranger and the 1e Druid in the Complete Druid.

I think the 1e barbarian may have been available in the Complete Barbarian (not positive, would have to go back and look at my copy).

The 1e Cavalier was not available ever as far as I know it from an official 2e source.

However, if you HAD the 1e books and used the grandfather clause, all your 1e stuff could be used in 2e...if you wanted it to be.

The one thing I missed in 2e was Wild Elves/Grugach. They may have made an appearance and I just forgot about it, but my memory kind of tells me they just used Wood Elves from then out instead and erased the Wild Elves from Memory.

Pity as I loved Wild Elves.

The Paladin's, Ranger's, Druid's and Bard's Handbooks all had an appendix that summed up the 1e rules for the classes.

The Barbarian's Handbook I think mostly updated the 1e class with some small differences. Some of the original class's survival abilities and the like though were covered by NWPs in 2e. I'll be honest, I passed up that book BitD because they mostly came off as fantasy Native Americans and I was looking for Conan.

Cavaliers were a kit in both the Fighter's Handbook and Skills and Powers. Like I said, I don't think they ever needed to be a separate class.

Grugach were in MC5. 2e seemed to have tied them in specifically to Greyhawk.

 

[cbwjm]

Cavaliers were a kit in both the Fighter's Handbook and Skills and Powers. Like I said, I don't think they ever needed to be a separate class.

Just a comment more than anything, Cavaliers were also a kit in the 2e dragonlance book, I think primarily because Knights of Solamnia were meant to be cavaliers, and were meant to get some of the cavalier abilities depending on which order they belonged to, though it wasn't until later that it was brought up in dragon's sage advice how they were actually meant to work.

I actually like them as a kit, they still had the ability requirements of the 1e class, but otherwise I like that it was a kit that could be applied to any warrior class if you wanted (it was available to paladin's and fighters from memory, probably not rangers with their outdoorsy focus).

 

[Lanefan]

Illusionists? They were just a variant MU with a different spell list anyway. 2e does hose them a bit, but the specialists overall weren't a bad idea.

There's design space for Illusionists and Necromancers as MU subclasses but that's about it; the rest all end up kinda looking the same.

Assassin? They were a griefer class and even Gary was considering making them optional. Good riddance.

Blasphemy, I say!

Dropping Assassins was the worst thing 2e did.

Cavalier? Unnecessary in the first place. Gary's ideas for new classes weren't great IMO, and cavalier was more than just a bit overpowered. Plus, there's nothing it can do that a fighter shouldn't be able to handle. They deserved to get demoted to kit.

Disagree. There's room for a Cavalier or Knight (sub)class in the game and always has been, though for sure the UA version needs some tweaking. It's Paladin that needs a long hard look as to whether it's worth keeping.

Barbarian? Too many problems with this one, particularly their antipathy to magic.

Another good idea fraught with poor design. The antipathy to magic makes them unusual...and they're on average far less problematic to have in a party than a Paladin.

Thief-acrobat? Too over specialized, and NWPs handled its abilities well enough. They were better served as a kit.

Yeah, this one was kinda pointless.

Half-orcs? I think they were collateral damage from the assassin, because that's all they were good at. They got a mention in MC1 IIRC, and later the MM. If you absolutely must have them as a PC race, then the Book of Humanoids or Skills and Powers are sufficient, but they're hosed by their level limits. They don't have a niche in 2e.

Yet one could argue they should have a niche. Dropping them was a mistake; proven by the proliferation of PC-playable monster species we've seen since.

Rangers? Ok, you got a point there, though I'd argue that the 1e ranger was overpowered and every subsequent edition took turns beating them with the nerf bat. And 2e was one of the editions that got excessive with the beatings.

2e outright ruined the Ranger. It still hasn't recovered.