5th level characters vs a purple worm

[Jester David]

Except that wasn't all I could see, even the initial post mentions more than that.

And I'm aware that water is wet. I wasn't interested in 'is water wet', rather something like 'I think this volume of water is too much to pour into this plant, is that a correct estimation?' It's weird that you have this intensely hostile response to me, when your position seems to actually be 'you're right that it's too hard as a straight combat, you should modify it like you were thinking'

I’m sorry, but my job here isn’t to agree with you.
You started a thread that argued a purple worm would be a TPK (true) and wasn’t as deadly in 1e (false). I just don’t think it’s a big deal. It wasn’t a big deal in 1e. And it isn’t now.

But you seem to have zero interest in actually having a discussion and just want someone to agree with you that purple worms are death machines and the conversion made a horrible mistake. But you’re unlikely to find that here.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

In 1e, your 5th level cleric has a base +2 to hit, thieves a +1, magic users a +0, and fighters a +4. All PCs in 5e have a +3 prof bonus. The purple worm in 1e has the equivalent of a +12, whereas in 5e it's +9.

You left off weapon specialization for the fighters entirely. If you're going to argue the numbers, you can't include perfect stat bonuses for the 5e characters and ignore major bonuses for the 1e characters.

Comparing HP straight across is equally flawed for the exact same reason. Oh, and I used 6th level because the level range of the module was 5-7. But sure, let's use your 5th level.

I asked about 5th level specifically in the thread title and the OP, hence why I was confused at your using a different level.

Additionally, even if you don't factor in the differences it was to hit, you're also glaring over a huge omission with HP. In 1e, the PW can do up to 24 points of damage. The average HP of a 5th level PC in 1e is:

I did my analysis using an average damage hit. Assuming 'always max damage' but 'average hit points' is just weird, and doesn't go anywhere good.

Yes it is, as explained by lowkey13. Not sure why you would ignore this when it very much is a factor.

No it's not, as explained by me and the 1e MM entry. It's not a factor because I'm looking at a RAW 1e encounter, not a house ruled or 2e encounter.

So yeah, that's why people are continuing to say 1e is more deadly.

I'm not arguing about whether '1e is more deadly', I'm looking specifically at one specific encounter. If you assume the worm always does max damage, assume the PCs are weaker than typical 1e tournament pregen PCs, house rule the worm to be able to use an ability it shouldn't RAW, and don't even look at the issue of whether the party can deal enough damage to kill the worm before dying, sure. But I don't think that's a good analysis.

Honestly, at this point I'm wondering if you really did play the game (for the record, I played 1e as my preferred edition from 1981 to 2012 when 5e came out, playing that instead of 3e or 4e), so it's not ancient history to me.

You didn't even include weapon specialization in your to hit analysis, and you're questioning whether I played the game? And did you really play 1E RAW from 1981 to 2012, because in my experience the vast majority of 1E games did not come close to being RAW, especially long-running ones. (I've never seen anyone use the whole compare weapon speed factors thing to see how many extra attacks you get, for example).

 

[Sacrosanct]

You left off weapon specialization for the fighters entirely. If you're going to argue the numbers, you can't include perfect stat bonuses for the 5e characters and ignore major bonuses for the 1e characters.



I asked about 5th level specifically in the thread title and the OP, hence why I was confused at your using a different level.



I did my analysis using an average damage hit. Assuming 'always max damage' but 'average hit points' is just weird, and doesn't go anywhere good.



No it's not, as explained by me and the 1e MM entry. It's not a factor because I'm looking at a RAW 1e encounter, not a house ruled or 2e encounter.



I'm not arguing about whether '1e is more deadly', I'm looking specifically at one specific encounter. If you assume the worm always does max damage, assume the PCs are weaker than typical 1e tournament pregen PCs, house rule the worm to be able to use an ability it shouldn't RAW, and don't even look at the issue of whether the party can deal enough damage to kill the worm before dying, sure. But I don't think that's a good analysis.



You didn't even include weapon specialization in your to hit analysis, and you're questioning whether I played the game? And did you really play 1E RAW from 1981 to 2012, because in my experience the vast majority of 1E games did not come close to being RAW, especially long-running ones. (I've never seen anyone use the whole compare weapon speed factors thing to see how many extra attacks you get, for example).

Weapon specialization didn't come out until 1985 with Unearthed Arcana. Those adventures were written in 1982.

You keep swinging, and you keep missing. Stop accusing people of not being familiar with the rules when you keep making fundamental mistakes about them.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Satyrn]

It's good to have the occasional fight where the party has to spend ALL their resources just to survive, even if not win. Where the win condition is just escaping or distracting the opponent rather than beating it over the head. Where the party has to react and think creatively rather than just attacking. Or even turn to diplomacy.

"Hey Mr. Purple Worm, if you don't eat us, I'll talk to my friend - he's the Prince of Cormyr - about making you a Purple Dragon Knight."

 

[Quartz]

For example, you're comparing AC straight across when you're completely forgetting the difference in how hard it is to hit the same AC in each edition.

Apologies for the nitpick, but aren't you forgetting that in 1E PCs would typically have +1 or +2 weapons (and armour) at that point?

 

[Older Beholder]

I have a copy of the 1E Desert of Desolation, although I've never run it, I picked it up when I played 2E but was always more into picking ideas than running or converting full modules.

By comparison the 1E module is for levels 5-10

the first instance of a Purple Worm on a random table is about 25 pages in but
Despite rolling on a random table for encounter type, you are given a list of examples under the heading 'Desert life encounter' which lists various animals and monsters to choose from, there is no text box at all, just the Purple worm stats.

So unless you specifically choose it, you cannot have it randomly rolled.*
*unless it's somewhere else, I haven't looked through the whole thing, but not in the example I found.

As for the 5E conversion, and the question of is a purple worm a TPK if it attacks a level 5 party?Yep, most likely.
Is this a bad thing to leave in? Not really, lots of great ideas already on this thread about how to run it.

If you really want that TPK though, have it erupt from underneath their camp while their low on resources and trying to rest after a hard days adventuring.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Apologies for the nitpick, but aren't you forgetting that in 1E PCs would typically have +1 or +2 weapons (and armour) at that point?

Didn't forget. I omitted it for a couple reasons. My goal was to show how bonuses to hit from 1e to 5e were different, and the odds that a PC has a +1 item in 1e vs 5e isn't really different. You really can't assume either will have one, or you could say it's likely both had one. Either way, it would be pretty much the same and not much different, and I wanted to highlight the differences. If I was comparing 1e vs 3e I probably would have included it, since 3e really ramped up the magic item bonuses much faster than 1e. But I don't see much difference between 1e and 5e, so I stuck with those areas where there is a clear hard difference.

Basically, I wanted to illustrate how in 5e, it's much easier for a 5th level PC to hit AC X compared to a 5th level 1e PC to hit the same equivalent AC value. Which is pretty important if one is making the argument about how deadly encounters can be.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Weapon specialization didn't come out until 1985 with Unearthed Arcana. Those adventures were written in 1982.

You keep swinging, and you keep missing. Stop accusing people of not being familiar with the rules when you keep making fundamental mistakes about them.

I stated 1E rules, I didn't state 1982 1E rules. I'm not missing, people are attempting to set additional conditions then blame be for not fitting the additional conditions.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I have a copy of the 1E Desert of Desolation...
the first instance of a Purple Worm on a random table is about 25 pages in but
Despite rolling on a random table for encounter type, you are given a list of examples under the heading 'Desert life encounter' which lists various animals and monsters to choose from, there is no text box at all, just the Purple worm stats.

I'm looking at the single modules and their conversion, as that is what I had. The compilation module probably does have a different encounter table, but the text box I quoted is in the version I referenced.