D&D 1E Common House Rules for AD&D?

[Musing Mage]

The most common house rule I've ever seen is something to boost 1st level hit points. Either just starting with Maximum, or some kind of double roll, or weird algorithm. I have only ever played one game where it was a straight roll and you kept what you got.

For my own part, I have a list of house rules, though I wouldn't say they are common aside from the aforementioned hit point boost. Mainly ports of other ideas from different games. Like character points from 2nd ed Options, as well as techniques from the 2nd Ed combat and tactics.

Or 'fleshing out' of existing rules like surprise and initiative. My method for running surprise can easily be called btb because I can trace the basics to text in the DMG, but at the same time I've added some bits.

Hmmm.. does it count as a House Rule if it's a BTB rule that literally no one else uses?

 

[overgeeked]

I’ve been eyeing my older stuff lately which prompted the question.

Looking at everything in the book and what I remember of how we played, I‘m pretty sure we did the same as most people and ignored more than we used.

I don’t remember segments, armor vs weapons, weapon speed, and a few other being a thing. B/X side-based initiative was what we used. I think we ignore encumbrance entirely, though I do like the simplicity of B/X encumbrance based on armor type.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

As others have said, for me a lot of the house rules of 1e were the things we ignored, rather than added. Weapon vs. armor, disease (okay, so I probably used this once on a lark and then decided it wasn't fun), and some of the more tucked away stuff in the DMG (less a house rule than "I didn't remember this being there.")

Since I came to 1e from BECMI, a lot of that knowledge transferred over to that, since it was easier to understand.

 

[the Jester]

We ignored as much as we added- weapon vs armor type modifiers, the complexities of initiative (favoring instead straight 1d6, high rolling side wins), xp for gp (I know, we didn't realize at the time what a big impact that had on play style), etc.

There were whole swaths of rules that only got used once in a while, such as encumbrance, morale, reaction rolls, henchmen, etc.

We added loads of homebrewed material, from races and classes to spells and magic items. Lots of "carded items" on index cards back in the day- largely unique stuff, but sometimes things that would reappear again and again (throwing hexes).

We did a lot of importing things from and crossing over with other game systems- Arduin Grimoire and Gamma World most notably, but even Marvel and Vampire: the Masquerade once or twice.

As for actual house rules, other than the aforementioned simple initiative, we used a bazillion over time, some of which fell into and out of favor. I don't remember a ton of the specifics, to be honest, and what we did in 1e and 2e mashes up in my memories a lot, especially because of how much we retained from 1e when playing 2e (I never used the 2e DMG after an initial read through except for maybe one or two things, always sticking with the 1e version, for instance). And of course, we added in tons of Dragon Magazine material, especially on the DM's side. We also used crit and fumble charts pretty zealously, usually the ones in Arduin Grimoire, but sometimes a modified version of the ones in the Armory's old d30 book.

 

[Nefermandias]

What I learned from this thread is that a lot of people back then house ruled things that would be later incorporated in the base rules of subsequent editions.

Fascinating.

 

[overgeeked]

What I learned from this thread is that a lot of people back then house ruled things that would be later incorporated in the base rules of subsequent editions.

Fascinating.

If you read the 2E PHB and DMG, the writers flat-out say a lot of the rules changes were taken from what players and DMs were doing already in their games.

 

[Jack Daniel]

When I was young, we definitely didn't Frankenstein together D&D and AD&D. We played D&D because we had the Classic D&D boxed set, until we got our hands on AD&D hardcovers, and then we played AD&D 2nd Edition.

I doubt that I could accurately recall all of the house rules we used as kids, but I do remember that we definitely had a written house rules document that I maintained until 3e came out.

 

[Greg K]

Off the top of my head, ours were

For AD&D 1e

1. Ability Scores
   1. Strength: sometimes we removed percentile strength
   2. Constitution: anyone could get Fighter's hp for high constitution if they had a high enough con score
2. Races
   1. Humans +2 to one ability score (human maximums still apply)
3. Multiclassing
   1. humans could multi-class
4. Combat
   1. Pummeling, Grappling, Overbearing: we ignored this
   2. Weapon vs Armor Type: we ignored this as well
   3. Death: We used death at -10 hit points
5. Spells
   1. removed several PHB spells
   2. added some new spells from UA
6. Dragon Magazine: several articles (e.g. Katerhine Kerr's articles) influenced our campaign. However, these were house rules:
   1. Perception: we added Perception as a stat using an article from Dragon Magazine
   2. Len Lakofka's Archer
   3. Bard from Dragon Magazine replaced the optional PHB bard
   4. Barbarian: David Howery's Dragon Magazine article, "Tracking Down the Barbarian", a rework of the 1e UA Barbarian
   5. Cavalier: David Howery's Dragon Magazine article, "The Corrected Cavalier", a rework of the 1e UA Cavalier
   6. Monk from Dragon Magazine replaced the PHB Monk if monk was being used
   7. Rules for Jumping from Stephen Inniss's article, "Short Hops and Big Drops"
   8. An article on new familiars.
7. Third Party Supplements
   1. Lizardmen (Mayfair Games)
   2. Witches (Mayfair Games): two or three were used
   3. Compleat Adventurer (Bard Games) was not used, but I would use much of it today if running AD&D 1e
   4. Compleat Alchemist (Bard Games) was not used, but I would use it today
   5. Complete Spellcaster (Bard Games) was not used, but I would use much of it today

AD&D 2e

1. Abilities
   1. Strength: sometimes we removed percentile strength
   2. Constitution: anyone could get Fighter's hp for high constitution if they had a high enough con scor
2. Races
   1. Humans +2 to one ability score (human maximums still apply)
3. Classes
   1. The optional PHB subclasses were used: Bard, Priest of Specific Mythoi, Druid, Paladin, and Ranger
4. Multiclassing
   1. humans could multi-class
5. Spells
   1. Several PHB spells were removed
   2. Some new spells were added from supplements and Dragon
6. Official Supplements:
   1. Complete Fighter's Handbook: several kits and much of the remaining material was used
   2. Complete Thief's Handbook: the kits and most of the other material was used
   3. Complete Priest's Handbook was used as a DM tool
   4. Complete Bard's Handbook: a few kits were used as was non-kit material
   5. Complete Druid's Handbook: much of the material was used
   6. PO: Combat & Tactics: Some of the options were used
   7. PO: Spells and Magic: Some of the options were used
7. Dragon Magazine
   1. David Howery's revised 1e Barbarian from Dragon was used or influenced the Complete Fighter's Handbook WIlderness Warrior Kit based on culture/environment
   2. David Howery's Completing the Complete Fighter article
   3. Completing the Complete Bard article was used
   4. Some of the Africa articles

 

[Lanefan]

The simplest way I can put it is that, starting with 1e as a base, over the years we've rewritten pretty much the entire game.

Some of the earliest changes were to drop weapon speed and weapon vs armour type; drop xp-for-gp; go to a universal d6 initiative system individually rolled each round; expand allowable multi-class options (and give them to Humans as well, two-classing went away very early); allow Elves to be revived from death while toning down some of their other abilities; add "body points" for all creatures as a way-ahead-of-its-time wound-vitality system; adopt death at -10 and add unconsciousness rules for 0 to -9,, and so forth.

Since then we've added a few new classes, re-done a few others from the ground up, tried about six different psionics systems, greatly expanded what creatures can be what classes while removing most level limits, and kitbashed just about everything else you can think of on both sides of the screen.

Yet at heart it still more or less plays like 1e.

 

[overgeeked]

The simplest way I can put it is that, starting with 1e as a base, over the years we've rewritten pretty much the entire game.

Some of the earliest changes were to drop weapon speed and weapon vs armour type; drop xp-for-gp; go to a universal d6 initiative system individually rolled each round; expand allowable multi-class options (and give them to Humans as well, two-classing went away very early); allow Elves to be revived from death while toning down some of their other abilities; add "body points" for all creatures as a way-ahead-of-its-time wound-vitality system; adopt death at -10 and add unconsciousness rules for 0 to -9,, and so forth.

Since then we've added a few new classes, re-done a few others from the ground up, tried about six different psionics systems, greatly expanded what creatures can be what classes while removing most level limits, and kitbashed just about everything else you can think of on both sides of the screen.

Yet at heart it still more or less plays like 1e.

Two things. One related to the thread and another semi-unrelated.

1. You wouldn't happen to have run one continuous game for 30+ years and made the news a few times in recent years, would you?

2. In other threads about old-school gaming you've mentioned not liking player skill as a thing. So how do you handle things that games like AD&D would put under player skill? Ability checks? Non-weapon proficiencies? Something else?