D&D 1E Tell me about your AD&D 1E house rules

[Musing Mage]

Ooooh! Now you're talking my language! Must... resist... temptation to overdo... it... aaargh...

Despite 1st Ed being my system of choice, I freely admit that it does require some individual tinkering. That's a feature not a bug!

• No alignment languages available automatically, but can be learned. (in context they are the natural languages of extraplanar creatures from those respective realms)
• No gender based strength limits, but racial limits still in play.
• Non-human PCs may be clerics, with the printed level caps, but only Half-orcs and Half-elves may be multiclassed clerics.
• Half elves are capped at level 9 for Druid, but of course may multiclass.
• Monks are treated as having natural armour for weapon type adjustments, ergo they don't suffer modifiers from weapons. (as opposed to always being stuck at the super debilitating AC type 10)
• I haven't implemented it, but am toying with giving Monks the 'mook' rule like fighters.
• Crossbows are double base damage dice.
• Shapeshifted druids of 8th level or higher can affect creatures that require magic to affect them.
• Shields negate weapon type bonuses against your AC until they are breached. (ie: a small metal shield is good for two attacks per round before being breached and the bonus is lost; a small wooden shield is good for one etc)
• Surprise rounds are folded into the normal melee round. The segments are resolved first, and the Surprised side automatically loses initiative when determining the sequence for the rest of the round. (technically this isn't a house rule as it's justifiable based on text in the DMG, but I've never seen anyone else run it this way)
• I've also ported over miscellaneous rules like Parrying, Blocking, disarming etc from the 2nd Ed Combat and Tactics book.
• For miscellaneous challenges against attributes, I use a variable d6 system against attributes when a test or check isn't defined. 3d6 being the default which I increase or decrease as necessary. (eg: a character walking over a balance beam trying to keep their balance would roll 3d6 against their dexterity, falling or losing balance if they go over their stat. If the beam is slick, or conditions otherwise unfavourable, I might add 1d6 or 2d6 etc.)
• I do use some elements of UA, but only ones I specifically approve.
• Specialization from UA is allowed, but cannot be learned until level 4, and only if you've found a mentor who is already a specialist in that particular weapon.
• UA spells are available, but not automatically. They must be found or researched.

That gives a rough idea of how my games go.

Great... now I'm missing my campaign group... thanks a lot!

 

[Peter BOSCO'S]

My AD&D 1st ed house rules (from back in the day)

1) Never, ever, ever use the official AD&D rules for unarmed combat. Other characters just hit for damage (like Monks). IIRC I had them flip a coin, heads was 1 hp damage & tails was 0 hp damage, then add STR bonus.

2) You're not dead at O HP

3) Don't be a confrontational jerk DM like Gygax.

4) XP's gained could not take you up more than one level at a time, but you don't have to pay for training.

 

[Draegn]

A few things in brief.

Uniform experience progression.

Classes replaced with backgrounds (Talislanta inspired)

Additional attributes 10 to 13 depending upon player choice and chosen backgrounds.

Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, Humans, Elves, Faeries (custom race), Orcs, (Hobgoblins, Goblins, Bugbears (based more on myth)), Ogres, Trolls, Giants (GoT themed) are player races. Special rules for "half-races".

 

[jgsugden]

1.) We had alignment, but it was relative. It was defined by the God that granted the ability that interacted with alignment. You might consider your PC to be LG, but different Gods might disagree.
2.) Demi-human level limits were soft. Once you hit the level limit, the cost to advance was double what was listed in the book, but you could still advance. This was important as we often adventured to very high levels.
3.) Segmented combat. Rather than having one set of actions that you took on your turn during a round, everybody moved a bit every second.
It was a complex system, where everything had a speed cost. It gave fighters a chance to do a lot of attacks, in the space of one high level wizard spell. I miss it at times, as it created a more 'realistic' combat scenario, but it was incredibly fiddly and hard to balance.
4.) Insane amounts of homebrew materials. I have thousands of spells and monsters that were created for old campaigns. I dig through the bin often and update the materials into 5E. Homebrew monsters and spells keep players from always knowing what they're facing. When I play, my experience as a DM often leaves me with lot of information about monsters floating around in my head - and they hate it when I know how many HPs a monster has off the top of my head. I suggest to them that they either reskin the monsters so that they are not as easy to recognize, or use homebrew.
5.) Psionics. The PHB rules were broken, so we revised them. My favorite version was not something that the others liked so much, but it used physical props. You had a pyramid built with 7 spaces at the base (and one at the top) in front of you. The bottom square in each space had a color (which represented a discipline). When you engaged in psionic combat, your defenses would do a variety of things - add levels of defense (by 'coloring in' higher blocks in the pyramid, narrow your pyramid (removing blocks), etc... Psionic attacks would have a pattern that repeated until they hit obstructions, and then would do something based upon what the obstruction was (edge of the pyramid was different than hitting a colored block, different colored blocks had different effects, etc...) Rolls were involved. If your attack broke through the defense and had an impact beyond the bottom of the pyramid, the psionic abilities then acted like a spell with a saving throw, etc... Players could lay down multiple defenses and offensive powers at once, with the costs of doing so increasing for each additional power evoked. It was not perfectly balanced, but it was very evocative and better than the PHB rules.

 

[Lanefan]

5.) Psionics. The PHB rules were broken, so we revised them.

Heh. I tried rebuilding psionics from the ground up a few times back in the day and was never all that happy with the results; so for this campaign I just dropped them for PCs. Can't say I've missed them.

I did keep psionics for a few iconic monsters that rely on them e.g. mind flayers, demons, and the like; but these can't be played as PCs.

 

[Turgenev]

Here are some house rules that I've used in the past. A chunk of my house rules are from various Dragon articles so they aren't listed below.

• Greyhawk specialty clerics.
• Halflings get a +3 to hit bonus with slings.
• Druids can speak with animals as many times per day as their class level.
• Fighters have 'Armour Training' that allows them to operate at one step higher than their base movement (to racial maximum). So a fighter wearing chain mail would have a movement rate of 9" instead of 6". Standard encumbrance rules still apply.
• Thieves got an Appraisal skill (equal to their Open Locks skill).
• Thieves also got 'Criminal Expertise' that allows them to add their DEX score as bonus percentage points to their skills. This happens at 1st level and then again every four levels afterwards (1st, 5th, 9th, 13th, etc.).
• Magic-Users can cast Read Magic once per day per every five levels. For example, a 6th level MU can cast Read Magic 2/day.
• Large shields offer an additional +1 AC vs. missile fire.

Cheers,
Tim

 

[David Howery]

the only 1E house rules that I recall using off the top of my head are:
max HP at first level'
nixing the level/stat limits for gender/race
1 always misses, 20 always hits

that's about it...

 

[Jack Daniel]

Glad to see the Grand Auld Game still has some love.

I ran my group through the beginning of T1 the other night, as expected. The party met with some familiar faces—Elmo, Spugnoir, Terjon, Rufus & Burne, and others. (Brought back a lot of memories, that.)

Based on that experience, I do need to make a couple of addenda to the house-rules up in the OP, as it turns out. We had a fifth player join us, and he too rolled some darned impressive stats (that 4d6-drop-lowest-and-arrange schtick is just something I'm not used to after years of playing 0E). He decided on a monk, which was pretty cool. In the end, I felt the need to codify that AD&D monks should get the same chance to perform feats of acrobatics that they have in BECMI ([Dex × 3] + [level × 2] %), and to give the monk a bit of an extra AC boost in the form of allowing monks to add both their Dexterity defensive adjustment and their Wisdom magical defense adjustment to their starting AC.

I think how I'll run it is that monks use whichever AC value is better for them, the straight table unmodified (i.e. starts at AC 10 and gets 1 point better on every level not divisible by five) or AC 10 − Dex adjustment − Wisdom adjustment − 1 point per five levels gained − magical protections from rings and the like. So it would look something like this:

Monk Level	Base AC	Alternative AC
1	10	10 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
2	9	10 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
3	8	10 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
4	7	10 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
5	7	9 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
6	6	9 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
7	5	9 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
8	4	9 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
9	3	9 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
10	3	8 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
11	2	8 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
12	1	8 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
13	0	8 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
14	−1	8 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
15	−1	7 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
16	−2	7 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.
17	−3	7 − Dex adj. − Wis adj. − magical adj.

Basically, either 1st Edition style or 3rd Edition style, whichever grants them the better number. (A Grand Master of Flowers with Dex 18, Wis 18, and a ring of protection +3 would enjoy an AC of −4, so it's actually pretty close to the expected value… but it certainly starts the monk off with a decent boost at level one!)

 

[smetzger]

1e that was so long ago.... here is a few that I remember...
1) falling damage is d20 per 10 feet. Then roll 1d6 and divide the total of the d20s by the result of the d6. Still use this one.
2) XP.... If you single handedly kill a monster you get all the XP for it.
3) XP... first time fighting or meeting a particular creature everyone gets the base amount of XP for the monster.
4) You could wear leather armor over your other armor. Yes, ridiculous - but very young at the time.
5) Everyone had henchmen and/or hirelings. We usually invaded a dungeon with a small army.
6) Had rules for pushing opponents back (like a bull rush). Mostly so the army could get in the door.
7) Tended to run very static dungeons. Monsters never moved out of their rooms. Sure the wandering monster tables were used. But perfectly fine to rest just outside the room of a monster.

Some amusing mis-reads when I started playing...
1) Every hit did 1 point of damage because they were 'hit points'
2) After casting a spell it was gone forever. No memorizing. You got new ones when you went up a level

 

[Maxperson]

We got rid of racial level limits and gender stat limitations. The DM had a race chart that you rolled on. I think you needed a 70% or higher to hit non-human races. He also had a special roll chart that you rolled on twice that had 100 different little heroic specials that you could get. And of course he had a few special races that he made up and/or got from books he had read.