What is the essence of D&D

[Tony Vargas]

We'll miss you, Hussar.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Core books, 2E had the high level campaigns.

1E depended on the class it was all over the place. No adventure released was beyond level 12-14.

Adventures aren't core books. By the 1e PH, most classes coukd reach - and exceed - 20th.

 

[Zardnaar]

Adventures aren't core books. By the 1e PH, most classes coukd reach - and exceed - 20th.

The tables didn't to that high and it varies by class. The monsters didn't really scale well for high level play.

I never claimed you couldn't get to level 20, UA was required for some classes, BECMI could go to 36 but 2E was the 1st to do it across the board.

3Ecand Pathfinder and 5E kind of reinforce that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The tables didn't to that high and it varies by class.

Some classes had hard caps, but the rest were open-ended. The 1e PH MU spells/day table went past 20.

2e's change was implying a limit of 20 across the board, not opening up advancement /to/ 20.

While D&D's always had levels, what they meant and who/what got how many of them have been all over the map.

 

[Zardnaar]

Some classes had hard caps, but the rest were open-ended. The 1e PH MU spells/day table went past 20.

2e's change was implying a limit of 20 across the board, not opening up advancement /to/ 20.

While D&D's always had levels, what they meant and who/what got how many of them have been all over the map.

I know my original statemeny was 2E made it lvl 1-20 first.

 

[Lanefan]

They didnt have forums when they changed simultaneous resolution to turn taking

File this one under the heading "Changes that should never have been made".[/QUOTE]

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly, I'm not sure how.

A 7th level 3e party should have about 16k worth of goodies/PC. That's about a +1 weapon, +1 suit of armor, a +2 stat boost item, and a couple of odds and sods. A 7th level AD&D PC, IME, was carrying at least twice, if not three times that.

However, you're in some ways comparing apples and oranges here; as 7th level in 1e does not really correlate with 7th level in 3e and even less so if the 1e game doesn't use xp-for-gp (which was and still is a common houserule).

7th level in 1e is starting to get up there. The game's not likely to go past 9th or 10th, so conservatively you're 2/3 of the way through your career.

7th level in 3e is nicely underway, but the game goes to 20th meaning you're a tidge over 1/3 of the way through.

So, a 7th in 1e compares to more like a 13th in 3e.

I look at the Dragonlance Pregens. 5th level PC's with +3 weapons. :wow: Now, that's certainly an outlier. But, given the mountain of magical loot in AD&D modules, I find it hard to see how you could have similar numbers. Unless your 3e characters were massively over wealth.

I'm not looking at wealth per level as a comparison, for a few reasons: one is noted above (a level in 1e is worth more than a level in 3e), and another is advancement speed (our 3e DM slowed the advance rate down to about 1e speed and in so doing essentially chucked the wealth-by-level guidelines out the window - this was intentional).

What I'm looking at, and finding a pretty close 1e-3e comparison, is wealth per adventure. I ran Forge of Fury in my current game and played it in our 3e game and in both cases found its wealth pretty much on a par with a typical 1e module.

The difference with 3e is the rules allow (and even encourage) players to much more finely tailor that wealth into what best suits the PC.

 

[Lanefan]

What no clearing two orcs out of a room like the oh so heroic 1e?

Think of it this way: you yourself - the real-world Garthanos - and a few halfway-skilled but not-street-wise buddies (the party) walk into a room and interrupt a couple of badass bikers (the orcs). There's no-one else around for miles; you're on your own thus your options are to fight, flee or parlay. Parlay ain't gonna get anywhere with these guys, and if you flee chances are they'll come after you and fight you anyway.

So you collectively fight them, and barely win.

Yeah, you and your crew are probably gonna feel pretty good about yourselves after that - maybe even a bit like heroes.

 

[Lanefan]

So being a war game with asymmetric information and Fantasy Vietnam have different associations to me. To me Fantasy Vietnam implies that game is stacked against you in an unfair way and a referee who is not acting in a neutral manner.

Perhaps, though in all fairness FV can also imply the players just keep choosing the wrong adventures to take on e.g. in a sandbox campaign; or are consistently unlucky in their rolls/saves/etc.; or are playing for fun-and-chaos first and success second (this would be my crew!).

Put another way, the players can turn any game into FV. The DM doesn't have to do a thing.

 

[Lanefan]

Adventures aren't core books. By the 1e PH, most classes coukd reach - and exceed - 20th.

That they could by no means says they did in normal play.

Assassins cap out at 15th, Monks at 17th, Bards at 23rd (if memory serves). All other classes are open-ended provided your PC is either Human or happens to slot into one of a few select race-class combinations for non-Humans. But for most non-Humans in most classes the level limits are pretty harsh; and I suspect this had a lot to do with play usually only going to the 9th-11th range: players liked playing non-Human PCs.