D&D 2E 2e, the most lethal edition?

Sacrosanct said:

4e still remains as least lethal because I haven’t hardly played it so I’m relying on others’ feedback, which has been a lot of “you had to try hard to kill a PC in 4e”
Of course, I imagine opinions will vary

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Not much variance, on that count, I'd think. The EL guidelines of 4e were quite straightforward, relatively dependable, and an exact-at-level encounter was a resource-ablating 'speed bump' (same intent as a single CR=Level encounter in 3e), that'd break deadly only towards the end of an unusually long day (8+ encounters in all likelihood). Lower ELs below level -1 or 2 rapidly became trivial, above level +4 or 5, TPK territory. It was very easy to color inside the lines. If you /always/ stuck to exactly EL=level, though, and didn't have quite long days, you'd get encounters that may have remained tactically engaging, but would have eventually felt like foregone conclusions without much drama, precisely because the guidelines did deliver fairly consistently.

Conversely, you'd get more variation in difficulty (and more possibility of lethality) running exactly CR=level in 3e or as exactly as possible to the 5e 'budget' guidelines.

Sacrosanct said:

4e still remains as least lethal because I haven’t hardly played it so I’m relying on others’ feedback, which has been a lot of “you had to try hard to kill a PC in 4e”

Of course, I imagine opinions will vary

Click to expand...

Tony Vargas said:

Not much variance, on that count, I'd think. The EL guidelines of 4e were quite straightforward, relatively dependable, and an exact-at-level encounter was a resource-ablating 'speed bump' (same intent as a single CR=Level encounter in 3e), that'd break deadly only towards the end of an unusually long day (8+ encounters in all likelihood). Lower ELs below level -1 or 2 rapidly became trivial, above level +4 or 5, TPK territory. It was very easy to color inside the lines. If you /always/ stuck to exactly EL=level, though, and didn't have quite long days, you'd get encounters that may have remained tactically engaging, but would have eventually felt like foregone conclusions without much drama, precisely because the guidelines did deliver fairly consistently.

Conversely, you'd get more variation in difficulty (and more possibility of lethality) running exactly CR=level in 3e or as exactly as possible to the 5e 'budget' guidelines.

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I would express it as there was less random fluctuation and you are more aware of how how a given challenge will resolve... its not "trying hard" its predictably hard... less oops more planned on the verge of tpk because i designed the encounter that way.

DM choices ARE decisive and blaming the dice less a thing.

There were ways of Jinxing the EL guidelines even in 4e so its not completely predictable and as people leveled the party synergy getting stronger and maybe players optimizing more meant no +4 levels were no longer likely to be on the edge of deadly at level 24

GreyLord said:

There IS NO rule like that in 1e. The closest you get is the ZERO HIT POINT Rule. This defines that someone who is reduced to EXACTLY Zero HIT Points in 1e is unconscious. The DM has the OPTION To allow this to go down to -3 Hitpoints AS LONG as it was from the same blow that reduced them to zero hitpoints. (-10 is what they can run out of HP after that each round, but if they are reduced lower than -3 HP by any hit, they are dead as per the rules, and that's only if the DM takes that option, core rules without the option is if they are reduced lower than 0 Hitpoints by any blow or hit).

There is NO Death's Door option in 1e. Without the DM's option, it doesn't even go below 0. If you are at exactly 0 Hitpionts after a blow, you are unconscious, otherwise, without a DM's Option...YOU ARE DEAD.

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This is the 1e rule from page 82 of the 1e DMG.

"When any creature is brought to 0 hit poinis (optionally as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until -10 is reached and the creature dies."

Going to -10 wasn't an option. It was the 1e rule. The up to -3 option you mentioned was to allow the DM to simply make the PC unconscious at up to -3, which would then not require the loss of further hit points towards -10.

Garthanos said:

There were ways of Jinxing the EL guidelines even in 4e so its not completely predictable and as people leveled the party synergy getting stronger and maybe players optimizing more meant no +4 levels were no longer likely to be on the edge of deadly at level 24

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Oh, yeah. Especially some messed up monsters early on, and the off-kilter encounters in KotS and the like, could be deadlier than EL would indicate, and, until the MM3, if you weren't playing like 8-enounter days, EL=Level could seem a little too easy. It'd've made more sense, as a practical matter of how it seemed 4e got played 'in the wild' to peg monster math/EL to a 3-5 encounter day, and not discounting the idea of the single-encounter day.

Just as fighting one solo or a score of minions were meant to be in the range of valid challenges, very long and very short days could've been better designed for, in spite of AEDU classes being balanced to the point 'day-length' didn't matter for /class/ balance, encounter balance (design) could've benefited.

Tony Vargas said:

It'd've made more sense, as a practical matter of how it seemed 4e got played 'in the wild' to peg monster math/EL to a 3-5 encounter day, and not discounting the idea of the single-encounter day.

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Yes 3 to 5 is reasonable... though I have known many editions where the designers thought X was the target and players did 1 significant battle with only a few scrapes otherwise besides that so I it may just be people being people.

Tony Vargas said:

Just as fighting one solo or a score of minions were meant to be in the range of valid challenges, very long and very short days could've been better designed for, in spite of AEDU classes being balanced to the point 'day-length' didn't matter for /class/ balance, encounter balance (design) could've benefited.

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Sure that is the other end of the improvement how much tougher do you make it when you have X likely fights in a given span. 5e did seems to learn some from that.

Maxperson said:

This is the 1e rule from page 82 of the 1e DMG.

"When any creature is brought to 0 hit poinis (optionally as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until -10 is reached and the creature dies."

Going to -10 wasn't an option. It was the 1e rule. The up to -3 option you mentioned was to allow the DM to simply make the PC unconscious at up to -3, which would then not require the loss of further hit points towards -10.

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That is how we interpreted it. From zero to optionally negative 3 nobody had to worry about you if you managed to drop negative farther than that it was a dying process although easily stopped.

We still died horribad easy but that rule did make it less absolute than what I saw in the old Blue Book D&D

There was a player designed expansion for 4e I think it was designed to show how the rules were flexible enough that without change you can make 4e as deadly as you wanted I think it was called 4th core?

Garthanos said:

There was a player designed expansion for 4e I think it was designed to show how the rules were flexible enough that without change you can make 4e as deadly as you wanted I think it was called 4th core?

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I've heard about it but never checked it out. What did they do, just dial up encounters?

Maxperson said:

This is the 1e rule from page 82 of the 1e DMG.

"When any creature is brought to 0 hit poinis (optionally as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until -10 is reached and the creature dies."

Going to -10 wasn't an option. It was the 1e rule. The up to -3 option you mentioned was to allow the DM to simply make the PC unconscious at up to -3, which would then not require the loss of further hit points towards -10.

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Going to -10 was ONLY for those that the 0 Hit Point rule applied to. IT was NOT for anyone else.

The Zero Hit Point rule applied to those...(as you can plainly read above) when any creature is brought to 0 Hit points.

It CLARIFIES THAT AN OPTION could be that this could be as low as -3 Hitpoints if from the same blow.

If you don't use that option, any creature that falls below 0 hitpoints from a blow is dead.

That is why this is the ZERO HIT POINT rule.

NOT THE -10 HITPOINT RULE...NOT THE NEGATIVE HIT POINT RULE...but the ZERO HIT POINT RULE.

Anyways...frack it...going to rewrite the rest to a degree so it's not as aggressive. Basically, it's an optional rule that was pretty clear and clarified...but it was an optional RULE in the DMG 1e (whether you like it or not...the official rulings most times came from the PHB anyways...that said, it WAS sometimes used in the official events AS I HAVE described...not really as you think it worked).

SOOO...if you actually interpreted the rule as you say you did...did you ALSO not allow monsters to actually be dead until -10 HP.

That said, MOST people didn't even pay heed to the rule. They had characters and monsters die at 0 HP...and the DM would allow characters to be unconscious as they wanted or needed.

Gygax would be brutal in public games (similarly, people died in droves), but was FAR more lenient in home games (IMO, not necessarily everyone's opinion) where you could be hit and go down to -200 HP...but if his ideas warranted it, you'd simply be unconscious...and NOT dead. It was more of a DM's call than anything else.

And with that, a game can be as deadly or non-deadly as a DM wishes or understands the rules or runs their games.

Tony Vargas said:

I've heard about it but never checked it out. What did they do, just dial up encounters?

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honestly I only remember their premise ... they may have grabbed random encounter difficulties for all I know so a few bad rolls in a row on the dms side and your group is eaten by a series of nasties which if you planned would be really nasty. Though i think a chase scene with lower difficultes ie a skill challenge would be how the second level + 4 would go down if they survived the first is how it would go down where I come from (and isn't insert monty python high pitched runaway kind of the goal). They might have used that to introduce the concept of skill challenges shrug.