D&D 2E 2e, the most lethal edition?

If you want to know how out of hand weapon specialization could get in 1e (not just limited to fighters), look up the (in)famous dart thrower build.

Sacrosanct said:

Yeah, I don’t think we do lol. I think 2e, RAW, is still more lethal than 1e. So specialization in 2e was core. Ok. Only for the fighter. No other class.

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Not a huge difference, it was pretty hard to be a non-fighter specialist, like a Paladin or Ranger, because they were just hard to get into, anyway. Specialization, at all, OTOH, was a huge deal, it seriously powered the fighter up.

Monster lethality was improved dramatically while PC power didn’t.

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I want to highlight this because it's still, by far, the strongest part of your case. All this hair-splitting and RaW invoking to paint a picture of 1e PCs maybe having a little something going on, and 2e PCs being ganked by technicalities... it really doesn't seem to add up to much, not compared to how much PCs varied w/in each edition, thanks to random generation and variants (I know, which you're not considering).

Default stat generation went from 4d6 drop lowest to 3d6 in order. Lower stats makes it more lethal in so many ways. XP for treasure was gone, which meant slower leveling, which means more opportunity to die. Automatic save or die from large damage? Only a 2e thing.

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Yeah, I know you're sticking to default rules, but it's almost seems like some 2e editor cherry picked 'em for you. Like, maybe they had a design or just a layout paradigm of presenting the least juicy stuff as default...

And if you do include expanded rules during the lifespan of each edition, nothing in the players options books came close to the power if using 1e unearthed arcana stuff.

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There was some whacktastic crazybroken stuff in later complete books, the final version of specialty clerics was nuts, and options books opened up all sorts of loopholes. UA was kinda awful that way, but can't compare to the sheer ocean of bloat that 2e drowned in.

If you're going all RAW!, excluding even wildly common optional rules in the main books, you might as well go core-only, too. It'll simplify the analysis, if nothing else.

PH PCs vs MC Monsters.

Multiple classes specializing, barbarian and cavalier classes with ability score improvements and an ability score generation method of rolling 9d6 for primary ability, 8d6 for second, etc.

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"Etc.." was, like the Thief Accrobat and new spells & magic items that mostly made it into 2e, anyway. The Barbarian's rolling method choked more than occasionally, IMX - said X was limited, though, by players refusing to use it, maybe it just got a bad rap among /my/ players. The Cavalier made the fighter sad, until it got itself killed, but really, that's just the fighter. The fighter was happier with specialization in 2e, but 2e monsters were better able to stand up to it. ::shrug::

No offense, but failure to notice on your part didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Look at my first posts in this thread. Not only did the 2e dragon’s breath do way more damage than in 1e, but the massive damage and die rule in combination made them exponentially more lethal than in 1e

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I know, technically, a terribly young dragon can be 'low level,' but more than one example wouldn't hurt...

IME, all the TSR editions had a High Lethality, but really only for the first couple levels where a bad roll (either damage or HP) could just doom you. After that, I think lethality was pretty much in the hands of the individual DM. Then again, I don't think I've ever been a part of any group running a TSR edition or OSR clone that actually played RAW, so...there's that.

I don't think any of the WOTC editions have been particularly deadly/hard RAW (IMO mostly by eliminating the possibility/commonality of 1 HP PCs), but the whole premise of play has changed, so that makes more sense.

GreyLord said:

DMG says it pretty plainly it is options.

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No it doesn't. It never once states that the rules inside are optional rules. The rules in the DMG are no more or less optional than the ones in the PHB.

I quoted it where it actually encourages the DM to cut rules from it and not use everything in it. This was something that Gary through his actions constantly did, though more so probably in homegames. ONLY someone reading it with modern reading as they would with 4e would make the conclusion it says something else. Others (arneson was famous for it) would flat out alter rules as they saw fit (rather than DMG, they saw EVERY rule as optional in D&D and AD&D).

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Yep! He constantly encouraged DMs to house rule their games to make it their own. He also constantly warned against tinkering with the rules. He was a bit bipolar that way. Encouragement to house rule the game does not constitute saying that the DMG was entirely optional rules. I quoted where he said that the DMG was not options. You have only made claims that you are trying to back up with statements he gave that encourage house rules, but not one shred that says that they were explicitly optional rules.

AS PER THE OFFICIAL RULINGS, the PHB, pg 105 WAS the actual official rule in most games held. Just because you decided to ignore it doesn't make your mistaken interpretation of a rule the one that was considered the official one used..

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I was around in the 1e days and not one out of the several DMs that I played with(including myself) ever used the die at 0 rule for 1e. We used it for Basic, but not 1e. For 1e we used the updated hit point rule found in the DMG.

Obviously, you disagree about 1e or 3e being able to be more lethal, and it being more of a DM's view. We will just disagree.

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No we won't disagree. I've said more than once that 1e was the most lethal edition. Followed by 2e, and then 3e. I lost about 10x more characters playing 1e than 2e, and I can count on one hand(maybe part of the second hand) the number of 3e characters I lost. And I played with many different DMs for each of those editions, including some DMs that I played with for all 3. So it's not a matter of the DM being kinder in one edition than another.

Tony Vargas said:

For instance, in the area and years I played 1e (SF bay area, 80-89), the 0HP rule was virtually always used, and often in a more generous form than the DMG version

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I don't understand that statement. How do you use the PHB 0 hit point rule which says 0 is always death in a way that is more generous than the DMG rule, which says 0 is never death?

Maxperson said:

I don't understand that statement. How do you use the PHB 0 hit point rule which says 0 is always death in a way that is more generous than the DMG rule, which says 0 is never death?

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Not /that/ 0 hps rule. The DMG 0 hp rule says you fall unconscious if you are reduced to /exactly/ 0, then start bleeding - if you're reduced to -1 or less, either at one go, or by being hit again while unconscious, you're dead. I know you read it differently, and I guess a lotta DMs in my area did, too, because it alsways seemed to be played that 0 down to -10, regardless of how you got there, was unconscious and dying (bleeding 1 per round). Which may not seem generous compared to death at -(max hp) or three death saves, but was more so than the "RAW" offered by either the 1e PH or DMG.

Tony Vargas said:

Not /that/ 0 hps rule. The DMG 0 hp rule says you fall unconscious if you are reduced to /exactly/ 0, then start bleeding - if you're reduced to -1 or less, either at one go, or by being hit again while unconscious, you're dead. I know you read it differently, and I guess a lotta DMs in my area did, too, because it alsways seemed to be played that 0 down to -10, regardless of how you got there, was unconscious and dying (bleeding 1 per round). Which may not seem generous compared to death at -(max hp) or three death saves, but was more so than the "RAW" offered by either the 1e PH or DMG.

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Okay. That makes much more sense. And yeah, every table I played with used -10 as the bottom and it didn't matter how you got there. If you had 2 hit points and took 8, you were at -6. A few tables allowed you to save someone at -10, provided someone got to him that round. Most just had you die the instant you hit -10.

Maxperson said:

Okay. That makes much more sense. And yeah, every table I played with used -10 as the bottom and it didn't matter how you got there. If you had 2 hit points and took 8, you were at -6. A few tables allowed you to save someone at -10, provided someone got to him that round. Most just had you die the instant you hit -10.

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I mean, seriously, that makes sense and is intuitive to apply, right?

Freakishly, it's not what the DMG actually says ..

...but, then, so many 1e Gygaxisns are freakish, that way... part of the charm, I guess, just downright baroque.

Sacrosanct said:

If you want to know how out of hand weapon specialization could get in 1e (not just limited to fighters), look up the (in)famous dart thrower build.

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2E Grand Master tops it.

cbwjm said:

This thread has me rereading the 2e DMG which is in turn giving me ideas for 5e.

How did 1e give out experience points? Was it just monsters defeated and treasure earned? I ask because I'm reading the 2e DMG on the subject and it reads like the DM should be giving out additional experience over and above the XP gained from monsters killed based on three constants: Fun, Character Survival, and Improvement (i.e., the player gets better and plays more intelligently). This is also followed by the Story Goal which is defined later in the chapter as no more than the maximum experience that could be gained from defeated monsters that might be encountered in the adventure. So if the adventure has 1000XP worth of monsters, the story reward could be up to an extra 1000XP. You might not even get all of the monster XP since you might miss some of the monsters but this would have no bearing on the story XP. It does also say that the story award should be no more than 1/10th the XP needed to level which considering the difference in XP tables, that might be difficult to judge.

Also, in regard to weapon specialisation and player's option in 2e every single class could gain specialisation if they wanted to, though I'm assuming that 1e UA allowed for multiple classes to gain specialisation without having to give up other powers to do so.

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1E only gives xp in the dmg for gold and monsters.

2E added story do and various optional rules by class.

Non fighters specialisation was splat book in 2E. Combat and Tactics allowed it but then fighters got the Grand Master chain.