Zardnaar
Legend
I may be missing something- where do these increased weapon dice come from?
Size modfiers vs large critters longswords deal 1d12, shortswords 1d8
I may be missing something- where do these increased weapon dice come from?
Ergo, the game of 1e, in practice, was more lethal. You just said it had higher kill rates. Done.
You effectively just said, "This analysis gives me result A. Therefore, I must do another analysis that gets me a different result." That's not solid reasoning.
Games are not cleanly separable from their playstyles. Trying to level set outside of the playstyle introduces a bias - because whatever method you introduce will implicitly represent a playstyle!
This was part of my original comment, actually - the only *really* fair way to see which game is more lethal is to see which one will kill more people when you drop it on them from out of a tree. Yes, this wasn't how the rules were intended to be used. But, you're analysis is also not about how each edition was to be used - why is your arbitrary choice better than mine?
That's an issue, because we have no guide as to which of the various deadly monsters in TSR eds parties were supposed to face at a given level. We have decades of experience giving us a really good idea, but that's still all subjective, and it would tend to shift the game towards whatever desired level of lethality we were working towards...I did not say that. I said we need to look at how the rules were built, RAW, without subjectivity. ... How people used those modules later is the subjective part, because not everyone did. I'm only evaluating the actual core rules themselves.
Tony addressed most of what my reply would have been, so I won't bother reiterating.
However, there are factors that you are not considering. For starters, 2e had a morale system (2e DMG pg 71 - the DMG with the Jeff Easley cover, not the later printing). You didn't have to kill every monster. A group might route from losing as little as 25% of their group. Offering them a chance to surrender would prompt a second check if they were successful on the first.
Additionally, critical hits were optional (DMG 61). Since randomness tends to favor the monsters, this also worked in the players' favor, as anyone crit by a greataxe or scythe in 3e could attest.
As one can see on DMG 73, most poisons had a lengthy delayed onset time and only dealt hit point damage, not instant death. The onset times also gave players time to treat or neutralize the poison.
While death at zero was the default, on DMG 75 you'll see a sidebar labeled "Hovering on Death's Door" that allows PCs to survive until their hp reach -10.
Additionally, DMG 104 has an entire chapter devoted to hirelings and henchmen. You didn't need a feat to find muscle to take risks for/with you! (3e did have a chapter on hirelings in the DMG2, but that was pretty late in the edition lifecycle, when compared with being right there from the beginning in 2e.)
If you disagree that's fine, but I'm still of the opinion that (based on both a reading of the rules as well as my personal experiences) 3e grew far deadlier than 2e as levels progressed.
I said method I in 1e was 4d6 drop lowest. I am in fact correct. Since you quoted the DMG, I’m sure you saw the very next sentence was how it labels method I as 4d6. Not method II or V, but the very first method. You also ignore the meat of that paragraph where it says not to use 3d6 if you want decent PCs or are serious about the game
(2e DMG, original printing, pg 75).When this rule is in use, a character can remain alive until his hitpoints reach -10. However, as soon as the character reaches 0 hit points, he falls to the ground unconscious.
Thereafter, he automatically loses one hit point each round. His survival from this point on depends on the quick thinking of his companions. If they reach the character before his hitpoints reach -10 and spenda t least one round tendint to hiswounds (staunching the flow of blood...etc) the character does not die immediately. If the only action is to bind his wounds, the injured character no longer loses one hit point each round, but neither does he gain any.
Any chance your formative play experience with 4e included Keep on the Shadowfell, Thunderspire Labyrinth, and/or Pyramid of Shadows?
(Because, while the middle one was actually mostly pretty good, each included at least one example of completely whacked encounter design.)
...or, y'know, alternately, maybe your DM just liked killing you...
Vs encounters run closely to guidelines, 4e characters were often dropped, sometimes very greatful for the next long rest, but rarely killed outright, let alone TPKd. You could make that happen pretty easily by just dialing it up - EL mostly delivered as advertised - but you could, with enough experience & artistry, make any ed as deadly or survivable as desired.
I have heard DMs say in 4th they can go full out.... also a level +4 encounter is an acceptable encounter in 4e. Th DM has so much control over how dangerous things are by RAW the comparisons fail
I may be missing something- where do these increased weapon dice come from?