What is the essence of D&D

[Lanefan]

I could use 4E to clone AD&D, of course you would rewrite the classes and dump it's powers.

More than that: you'd close-to-have to rewrite the entire game from the ground up. Have fun!

Feats don't fit in 1e, nor do tiers, nor does the 3e-4e skill system (though the skill system could at least be made to work, sort of). Something would have to fill the gap in 4e between commoner and 1st level PC - a gap that 1e largely doesn't have - so you'd need to design several sub-levels. I don't think 1e can handle PCs going to 30th level on a consistent basis. 3e-4e style 'additive' multiclassing won't fit in 1e. And so on.

When 4e came out I actually gave this all a fair amount of thought: I was ready to start a new campaign anyway (which is the best time to overhaul the system!) and looked at whether I could kitbash 4e into something I'd want to run. On getting halfway through the list above I abandoned the idea and stuck with refreshing our existing system.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, not so much.

Darn, have to pull down that box again...

The quickest of glances at Giant hit points tells you there's no way they got any Con bonuses, even though a typical Giant has the constitution of a dump truck.

How do you know a dump truck isn't CON 9?

More to the point, why does it matter that a giant does 25 damage to you because he was rolling 7d6 vs 2d12+12?
By the same token, what difference does it make that his are from rolling 15 HD vs rolling 10 HD +20?

I'll posit that's because many 0-1-2e tables (like ours) took steps in-house in this direction - though nowhere near as far as 3e took it - and thus 3e at least looked somewhat familiar, if dialled to 11.

I did hear a few folks comment that 3e was a lot like their house rules.
Wasn't much like mine.
(Oddly, 5e's a bit like my old house rules here & there.)

But, then, you wouldn't expect D&D enthusiasts to house-rule D&D to be NOT-D&D, anyway, right?

More than that: you'd close-to-have to rewrite the entire game from the ground up. Have fun!

I mean, that's prettymuch what we all did with 1e, anyway.... ;P

 

[Lanefan]

1e was good at being fantasy vietnam.... not much good at anything else. See what that sounds like?

"Fantasy Vietnam" - a term I've heard many times but still don't know what it's supposed to mean. Definition, anyone?

 

[Zardnaar]

More than that: you'd close-to-have to rewrite the entire game from the ground up. Have fun!

Feats don't fit in 1e, nor do tiers, nor does the 3e-4e skill system (though the skill system could at least be made to work, sort of). Something would have to fill the gap in 4e between commoner and 1st level PC - a gap that 1e largely doesn't have - so you'd need to design several sub-levels. I don't think 1e can handle PCs going to 30th level on a consistent basis. 3e-4e style 'additive' multiclassing won't fit in 1e. And so on.

When 4e came out I actually gave this all a fair amount of thought: I was ready to start a new campaign anyway (which is the best time to overhaul the system!) and looked at whether I could kitbash 4e into something I'd want to run. On getting halfway through the list above I abandoned the idea and stuck with refreshing our existing system.

You could use the 4E engine to clone anything. You could hack out parts you don't like.

Same with 3Eor 5E really.

 

[Zardnaar]

"Fantasy Vietnam" - a term I've heard many times but still don't know what it's supposed to mean. Definition, anyone?

It's a term generally used to take pot shots at 1E or BECMI pushing the narrative that it's a waste of time naming your character to level 5.

Tomb of Horrors might be the poster child for it.

You can play like that if course but it's not really supported by the actual adventures. They do exist but there's not many if them.

My fighter made it from level 1 to 4 in BECMI.

If you had a hard assed DM death at 0 hp I'm going to screw you over sure it may be a thing.

Death at 0 would be a houserules, B/X I think it was RAW.

How people actually played the game (death at -10, max hp level 1, not an asshat DM) is different.

 

[Lanefan]

Ever see a Wizard with armor better than the fighter and immune to arrow fire whenever it counted oh I did in 1e it was out of the box magic items too.

Yep, seen it. DMed it, for that matter: High Dex (18), Bracers AC 2, Ring of Protection +5 so net AC -7*; and that's before any defensive spells e.g. Protection from Normal Missiles such as you allude to.

Still couldn't beat the inherent wizardly squishiness, though. Fireballs got her every time.

* - this was on a long-serving Illusionist PC who'd had about 20 adventures to build up that kind of wealth; and no she didn't have access to PfNM.

 

[Lanefan]

More to the point, why does it matter that a giant does 25 damage to you because he was rolling 7d6 vs 2d12+12?
By the same token, what difference does it make that his are from rolling 15 HD vs rolling 10 HD +20?

In 1e RAW a Hill Giant does 2d8 melee damage. Given that it in theory should be +7 damage due to strength, and to avoid negative damage amounts, that means its actual damage die is d9. (or 2d5-1 if you want to keep a bell curve in there). That's about the same as a bastard sword and less than a 2-hander against S-M size creatures - which, for a Giant, is pathetic.

What you say might hold water for some of the bigger Giant variants.

I did hear a few folks comment that 3e was a lot like their house rules.
Wasn't much like mine.
(Oddly, 5e's a bit like my old house rules here & there.)

First 2e and then 3e in different ways kind of followed in directions our houserules had already gone. 4e and 5e, however, largely did not.

 

[Lanefan]

It's a term generally used to take pot shots at 1E or BECMI pushing the narrative that it's a waste of time naming your character to level 5.

Tomb of Horrors might be the poster child for it.

You can play like that if course but it's not really supported by the actual adventures. They do exist but there's not many if them.

Heh - tell that to the players I had when I ran Keep on the Borderlands ten years ago. Each of 'em churned through at least 5 characters in that thing (though some of that was self-inflicted through internal fights and bickering getting deadly); and the stories are told and retold to much merriment to this day.

If you had a hard assed DM death at 0 hp I'm going to screw you over sure it may be a thing.

Death at 0 would be a houserules, B/X I think it was RAW.

How people actually played the game (death at -10, max hp level 1, not an asshat DM) is different.

Death at 0 is RAW in 1e; death at -10 is optional (though an option nigh-universally chosen).

I'd never heard of the concept of max h.p. at 1st level until playing 3e, but we'd added 'body points' to our 1e system which made 1st-level types a bit more resilient, so it ended up much the same.

But yes, character survival at low level is as much by luck as by management unless the DM is going really easy on you.

 

[Zardnaar]

Heh - tell that to the players I had when I ran Keep on the Borderlands ten years ago. Each of 'em churned through at least 5 characters in that thing (though some of that was self-inflicted through internal fights and bickering getting deadly); and the stories are told and retold to much merriment to this day.

Death at 0 is RAW in 1e; death at -10 is optional (though an option nigh-universally chosen).

I'd never heard of the concept of max h.p. at 1st level until playing 3e, but we'd added 'body points' to our 1e system which made 1st-level types a bit more resilient, so it ended up much the same.

But yes, character survival at low level is as much by luck as by management unless the DM is going really easy on you.

RAW death in 1E is -3 or -4.

 

[Campbell]

So there are some pretty big differences between Moldvay and AD&D in terms of how you were instructed to run the game. Gygax advocate some fairly adversarial techniques, although not nearly as extreme as the worst horror stories would indicate, while Moldvay insisted on you functioning as a referee. Make mine Moldvay on this count.