D&D General What Constitutes "Old School" D&D

[John R Davis]

There are definitely folks who would agree with that assessment.

I think you know what I meant!!

What are your thoughts on thief abilities? I know there are some, Mornard for example who played all the back with Gary, who have stuck to pre-Greyhawk (or gone back to it) D&D as being purists in the "there must only be player depiction of action at all levels and in all things" school. Kind of an extreme definition of old school there to me, though I get their point.

This thread is all about your own view really so everyone is correct!!

For me Thief skills are ok, as they are the unique thing for that class. The % chance are so poor anyway that players would verbally describe how the chicken on a 10ft pole sets off the trap, etc.

The dice should be reserved for the really critical actions ( did the orc hit me, did I resist the polymorph and such).

 

[Lanefan]

Ho, a magicianmart type campaign you had. A lot of things it explains.
Scrolls, you had to pen them. Meaning you had to pay for the spell costs while creating them. If you went to buy one, the cost of actually casting the spell was in addition to the cost of the scroll. Having a henchmen doing for you was not free. If anything, you had to pay him even more to keep this hence happy and loyal.

Druid might not be available for hire, especially for dungeon delving. NPC druids would not approach a dungeon, but a cave network I could agree. Only PCs ever went into dungeons. But I tight be doable. A caster would charge a pretty steep salary. That NPC might even requires a share in addition to his salary!

So you'd simply recruit one in as a full party member. End result: you have an adventuring-NPC Druid in the party.

As for magical items. Low level ones were expected to be found easily, but if you were playing with henchmen, it was expected that some the additional magical items would be donated to your henchmen. So selling these was not usually a thing that would often occur (unless you found zounds of them, them.their prices would go down asagic would not be that rare...)

Donated? No. Part of their pay, or a bonus? Sure. But a lot of it still got sold.

For money. Did you trained? Did you pay for your henchmen training? Money in a standard AD&D was not that plentiful.

Have you run any of the classic modules stock? Most of those things are loaded with treasure, to the point where even if the party only finds 2/3 of it they'll be stinkin' rich afterwards.

A wizard was notoriously money broke forest of his career until named level was reached. Then the building of a tower, paying for new spells (as transcribing from scrolls was not always a success) were also a money drain that was quite effective.

This is true - wizards spent the money on spells that other classes spent on magic items.

As for paying for hench training, that depends on whatever contract or terms said hench was hired on; which of course varies almost character by character.

Even spells were hard to find for an arcane caster as they had to either be found (random), bought (more money drain) or researched (even more money drain). I have seen groups putting their money into a pool so that their wizard(s) could have a spell for his new level. There were no cast at a higher level and if you had found no way to have a third level spells, then that cool new 5th level wizard would not cast any third level spells even if he was able. 1ed was a lot harder on casters.

The DM here would be in error: as a built-in part of training into 5th the wizard should receive one 3rd level spell at random.

It also seems the DM here might not have been giving out all the treasure the modules presented - either that, or the PCs were really bad at finding it.

 

[Lanefan]

I've seen about zilch games where training costs were really enforced, at least in the 1e way.

You've seen one now,: I've had trainign costs forever, though we don't do the cost variance based on "how well the character was played"; the costs are the same for everyone.

In our games magic users regularly traded and maintained pools of basic core spells. Additionally ANY NPC caster that fell under the axe was DEFINITELY going to yield up some sort of books we could copy (the most valuable of all treasure really).

Yes, finding and scooping the enemy's spell books is vital! (I thought my players were going to kill me once when they found the spellcasting Vampire they'd just beaten had carved his spells into the inside of his stone coffin, in effect making his coffin into his spellbook...)

As for the rules on starting spells and what you might or might not get at level advance in any of these versions of D&D, there wasn't any consistent rule. AD&D indicates there is a MINIMUM of spells known, but exactly what that refers to is not obvious (perhaps it indicates that if you've checked comprehension of every possible spell and not met that number you can reroll some?) Nobody really knows!

In one place the DMG is crystal clear as to what spells a raw 1st-level character knows to begin with: Read Magic plus one at random from each of three short lists - Offensive, Defensive, and Other. At the DM's option a 5th spell, random from the three lists combined, may be given. That's how I've done it since forever.

But in another place (either PH or DMG, forget which now) there's that very confusing bit about minimum spells known and rolling through until you get the minimum. I've always ignored this.

As I recall, our normal practice was that your mentor handed you a spell of whatever new spell level you acquired access to, random generation.

That is correct as per the book I think. It's how we too have done it all along.

 

[Helldritch]

In my experience, most groups would find from half to two third of the magical items in an adventure. Half of these would be "sold" to pay for training and unless a DM hand waved a lot of the costs for spells, training, stronghold and such, gold was still relatively hard to come by.

Of course, experiences may vary but it was usually not easy on arcane casters. And no, training did not assured a spell with it. Ar least from the original rule. And if Gygax did not used his own rules, who cares? The rule was there. Some ised it, some did not.

Some classes could become filthy rich, such as rogues that would take a "risk tax" on unshared treasure also known as stealing in chest... but generally, gold was not easy to keep. Especially if the group paid for raising the dead, regeneration of limbs, age restoration or level restoration. These spells were costly to get access to. Even cloning was a possibility albeit a costly one as the clone had to be put in temporal stasis to avoid its descend into madness. At higher level, finding a powerful enough priest to cast true resurrection was even harder and costlier.

There were many many ways to drain a group of its wealth and that is not counting theft and protection money from the thieves guild.

Nah... 1ed was much more harder than some people remember.

 

[Helldritch]

You've seen one now,: I've had trainign costs forever, though we don't do the cost variance based on "how well the character was played"; the costs are the same for everyone.

Yes, finding and scooping the enemy's spell books is vital! (I thought my players were going to kill me once when they found the spellcasting Vampire they'd just beaten had carved his spells into the inside of his stone coffin, in effect making his coffin into his spellbook...)

In one place the DMG is crystal clear as to what spells a raw 1st-level character knows to begin with: Read Magic plus one at random from each of three short lists - Offensive, Defensive, and Other. At the DM's option a 5th spell, random from the three lists combined, may be given. That's how I've done it since forever.

But in another place (either PH or DMG, forget which now) there's that very confusing bit about minimum spells known and rolling through until you get the minimum. I've always ignored this.

That is correct as per the book I think. It's how we too have done it all along.

The minimum and maximum spell known are for exactly that. A minimum and a maximum. As a wizard is exposed to spells, he will learn them but according to his/her intelligence, there will be a maximum of spells that he can learn from each spell levels. Once this maximum is reached ( a rare occurance) he can no longer learn spells of that level.

Finding the spell book of a caster was the greatest treasure possible. What people often forget is how big a spell book could grow into. Most wizard would create a traveling spell book. That book would usually contain the normal spells taken by the wizard and two or three more per level for versatility. While the main books might have 15 spells of each level, a traveling book might hold 4 or 5 of each one. Some spells the players might face might not even be on the traveling book, just as the traveling book might be trapped with explosive runes (effectively ruining it). Capturing a book was not a sure thing. And if the enemy wizard had failed a save vs fire, that book might get destroyed...

It was not that easy. I rember a group fighting a Lich, winning and noticing that the very library they came to plunder was on fire. Fire balls and delayed blast fire balls as well as lightning bolts have the very bad tendency to destroy stuff...

 

[Helldritch]

I gotta hard disagree with you on that one. 4e classes are less similar to each other than in any other edition, and the similarities to WoW are cosmetic at best.

Well, that criticism sprang on multiple boards on multiple languages and even from people that knew nothing of D&D forums. When one person makes such an analogy, it easy to dismiss and ignore. When dozens make that comment it is starting to hold some ground. When thousands reach the same conclusions you simply have to acknowledge that even if it is a perception, that perception will taint how the game will be seen. Be it for good or bad, true ir false this is how many will judge the edition. Even I, a fan of 4ed at the time, made the connection. I was an avid WoW player and the similarities were... too strong to ignore.

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

I suppose it’s the look of the products for me. If you showed a newbie mint copies of 3e and told them this was the latest version of the game they’d believe you. It looks like a modern production. 2e while a lot more modern looking than 1e is clearly not new. I guess it’s the art, the tables, “role-playing“ meaning your class and alignment rather than playing a personality. Dungeon crawling, black and white art, lots of tables, Judges Guild, dice where you had to colour in the numbers. All these are old school to me. Products like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms were a clear departure from that style. Ravenloft was too. A certain sense of the mystery was lost when things began to have a polished professional look

 

[jasper]

Old school is 18+ years before you started playing.

 

[jasper]

Yeah, the late 20th century was a different time, man.

Yea man. Don't judge us for we grew up and played in a different millennium.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This thread is all about your own view really so everyone is correct!!

No! We are all wrong!

For me Thief skills are ok, as they are the unique thing for that class. The % chance are so poor anyway that players would verbally describe how the chicken on a 10ft pole sets off the trap, etc.

The dice should be reserved for the really critical actions ( did the orc hit me, did I resist the polymorph and such).

Yeah, it seemed to me that the only place the "no dice" people were really serious about that was in terms of all character actions. Whenever it came to anything ELSE it was "roll d'em bones!" The principle existed AFAIK so that anything the DM might decide was randomized amongst some logically possible options so as to avoid the game being rigged. Everything else is player territory, dice stay away. That doesn't actually explain combat (or saves). I don't think there's actually an explanation there, unlike OSR folks, who seem to feel compelled to rationalize it. Due to wargame tradition, combat is fully randomized is all it is. Technically it would be possible to randomize only the DM's side of it and still get the same 'fair shake' type of game, but having the players shake too doesn't really undermine it, and leaves things like PvP in a much better place. Saves OTOH are actually just a concession to players, they were added as plot armor.

My contention was that thief abilities, if you go strictly by the letter of their book definitions, are almost like saves, a kind of special plot armor. So, even after you have done all you can do to make something possible, sometimes it STILL isn't possible, but a thief might be able to do it, if he gets lucky. So if they fighter says "nope, this wall is unclimbable." then the thief can come in and say "haha, I have an 85% chance of getting to the top anyway." and rolls the dice. F/RT was the one that was really pushing that concept, instead it was solving the problem "well, its a small mechanical trap, but I'm a DM, not a trapsmith, I cannot describe how it works, so we can't play through the process of disarming it." Of course, to many, it became the 'root of all evil', lol.