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

[Helldritch]

What's the alcohol budget for this party?

The Romans knew how to level up!

That made me laugh...Then it dawned on me. That explains a lot of their conquest. I knew Gygax was right about gold for exp.

 

[Helldritch]

Haste was good, but so was lightning bolt. It just required a glass rod and a bit of rabbit fur instead of aging a year.

But against the equivalent of solo monsters, haste was way better. A lot of fiends were immune or highly resistant to lightning. And at high level (11+) it was these kind of monsters that you would encounter.

Polymorph was useful as a save or suck attack spell even if not thrown on your fellow PCs.

Yep, but it only took care of one monster. It might suffice or not. It was highly dependant. On your friend, it could mean quite an improvement on his/her combat abilities.

I remember thinking through an evil villain work around for permanency 1e con loss risk, magic jar into someone else and use their constitution to power the permanent magic.

Yep, without consent, it was an "evil" thing to do. Meaning that character was automatically an NPC. That method was used by good casters but they were paying a hefty price for the right to do it and always under careful approbation by the local church/lord or whatever.

Mostly my magic user was fine starting with magic missiles, getting knock, lightning bolt, and charm monster and wall of ice. Many standard spells you see in modules' NPC's spell book are useful and without significant side effects.

And that traveling spell book might be destroyed in combat with a failed save... It was not an autofind. The book might not even be on the foe, it might have been hidden somewhere else. Most spells were either bought or found in scrolls.

A 1e magic user who started off with push as their only random offensive spell was pretty out of luck for a while, but usually they had something at least decent.

That really sucked. I was offering the choice between Burning Hand, Sleep, Charm Person and Magic Missile.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

More or less, yes. I believe it's RAW that if you're at the max you can destroy a spell from your book (or hit it with an Erase spell) in order to free up a spot for a replacement. This became somewhat relevant later on in 1e once UA released a whole whack of new spells into the game.

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...

I think we're more lenient on what we allow a travelling book to hold, but even then it's possible for a higher-level wizard with high Int and running at max spells known each level to end up with 4 or 5 travelling spellbooks in her pack.

We put page counts on each spell, to allow easier tracking of how much space is left in one's book(s).

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...

That they do.

 

[Lanefan]

Right, the whole "rate the player's performance and punish them" mechanic was, to put it bluntly, absurd.

Agreed.

I have seen a few sporadic and failed attempts to use training costs with the '1.0' factor. We really didn't play a lot of modules, so my suspicion is we weren't as rolling in gold as one would expect if all you did was go from B2 and on through to the A, G, and D series like many people did. Later modules were especially treasure-heavy though from what I recall (late meaning things like White Plume Mountain, lol). As GM I never had all that much trouble finding ways to pry gold pieces out of the PC's hands anyway. Henchmen and bases always really sucked money.

I run a mix of canned modules and my own, but I kinda go by what the canned modules give out as a vague guideline as to how much treasure to put into my homebrew adventures.

That said, I can usually expect them to miss a fair bit of it. Once - hoping for a Bilbo-finds-the-One-Ring moment - I put a Ring of Three Wishes just lying on the floor of a rough hidden passage, undefended by any guards or monsters or traps or anything - other than a secret door at each end of this little passage.

End result: they never even looked for secret doors and their Elves were oblivious...that ring's still a-sittin' there.

Nasty bastard! I mean, they can still copy them, as they camp in the middle of the undead infested dungeon burning up light and etc.

What they did was seal up the room with intent to return later, then never went back (it's still on someone's to-do list I think).

Yes, that is true, but I started playing long before the DMG existed! (well, it seemed 'long' back then...) We had a PHB which describes min and max spells/level and a "chance to know each listed spell". Those are explained, but the resulting system isn't really workable, and without any DMG rule in the beginning things were fairly murky at best. D&D itself didn't explain anything about spell acquisition, nor Holmes. I'm not sure about B/X, that came later.

Well, I went back and re-read it. Its actually QUITE CLEAR, and I am 100% sure that I understood it back then, because I have a printout of a BASIC program that would let you fill out an entire AD&D character sheet "by the book" and it implements the full monty! What you do is maintain a list of ALL spells that exist in the entire campaign, whatsoever (there's the one hitch that technically this is an open list, oh well). When you roll up a PC you make a %chance to know against ALL OF THEM (really you can wait until you run into a spell, but conceptually this is an inborn trait of your PC). All spells thus fall into one of two categories, ones you can understand, and ones you cannot. The min/max values feed into making those two categories. If you go through the whole list once and fail to reach the min, you can reroll some until you reach it. If you hit the max during your list traversal, you stop and thats it, you cannot learn more. Now for the fun kicker! If your INT changes "relatively permanently" you START OVER AND DO IT ALL AGAIN. All of this is repeated for each spell level. TECHNICALLY if your INT changes you could suddenly find that your entire spell book is now gibberish to you, and there is no defined game process by which you can reverse this! (I guess a Wish would obviously do the trick).

So, like I say, its not really a very workable system. I mean, I never ran into anyone that actually implemented it (aside from my Basic program written for some very early PC type computer).

I didn't even notice that system for ages, then saw it once while looking up something else and immediately realized it was simply more confusion than it was worth. Ignored.

IIRC we generally just used the DMG to establish what you started with (and it states you get a new spell EVERY LEVEL) and then if you found a spell or wanted to trade or whatever you could roll % to know and if you hit the number you were able to figure it out and copy it to your books. We didn't actually record which spells people had rolled against, instead we just let you roll each time you found a unique instance of a spell. I don't think we ever paid attention to the MIN number, but at least in theory we might have enforced the MAX number. I doubt too many people ran wizards that were both dumb enough to have a max that you were likely to run into AND survived enough levels to bump against it!

Fortunately I started after the DMG was out.

The bolded is how we do it also, and I think is RAW. We do note which spells a caster has blown learning, though. And after a while our casters do generally tend to hit the max, or get close enough they save their last slot or two for something they really want.

One other aspect here is that if you blow a spell you can (99% sure by RAW) try it again after gaining a level.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We used it but in practice we gamed around at the meta level based on the realization that it so horribly gimped M-U's of low intelligence that there was never really a point of playing a M-U of less than about 17 intelligence. That was the minimum intelligence where you be reasonably assured you could learn essential spells and would have max high enough that you'd be reasonable assured you could know enough spells.

Pretty much we got to a point where we had an informal flow chart on characters where if they didn't qualify as a Paladin, didn't have two 16+'s or one 18 that wasn't charisma, didn't qualify as a Cavalier, didn't qualify as a Ranger, and didn't qualify as an (eventual) Bard we knew that character wasn't going to make it or contribute enough to the party. A cleric without 18 Wisdom was too unreliable. A M-U without 18 intelligence wouldn't eventually become the demigod needed. A fighter without 18+ strength would be half as powerful as one that had it. A character that had two high prime requisites could multi or dual class well enough to be useful, but if you didn't have that you needed to qualify for a prestige class like ranger that was inherently powerful. So if you didn't have those things, you either begged the DM to let you roll up a character worth playing or you made a thief and suicided at the early point and tried begging again if your next character wasn't worth playing. In the long run this trended toward more and more generous methods of stat generation so that players would always have something they were happy playing.

Well, the conundrum of "I can always just fall on my sword if you make me play this" did exist of course. We were, however, a bit less picky. I mean, MOST PCs were not going to survive. Many could simply be stockpiled as low level adventurers that could take on warm-body status as-needed too. Even in 1e where you had decent benefits from high stats it is OK to play a PC with a prime of 15 in most cases. I mean, a 14 WIS cleric is fine, he gets 3 level 1 spells out of the gate, and 0% failure chance. 16+ is a LOT better once you hit 3rd level, but 17 or 18 will only really matter if you get to name level or above. Wizards, meh, even a 12 INT won't cripple you at lower levels! Fighters are a bit of an odd case as they are not worth much past level 7 or so compared with casters, and a 1e fighter with nothing but really mediocre STR, CON, DEX might as well be replaced with a cleric even at first level. Thieves bit rocks in hell at all levels, though playing a MC thief/caster is a fair choice, in which case a high DEX will matter. Frankly if you are playing UA type options for rolling up PCs, you might as well just make up a standard array for each class, pick the one you want to play, and go for it. lol. Even the most generous DMG one is not going to give you many rangers or paladins, though you will probably get one now and then. If you are killing yourself enough times to roll up a Paladin, you will probably be MANY levels behind the party! lol.

There was DEFINITELY an ethos of playing the original game that said it was not cool to sandbag for good stats. Also, we were amused to play characters that had one or two gimpy stats, like fighters with horribly low INT and such. I mean, after you died the 20th time, it started to take a bit more to be amusing! lol.

 

[Lanefan]

Haste was good, but so was lightning bolt. It just required a glass rod and a bit of rabbit fur instead of aging a year.

Polymorph was useful as a save or suck attack spell even if not thrown on your fellow PCs.

Exactly - it was an attack spell.

All the nonsense around polymorphing your allies started when 3e took out the risks, thereby breaking the spell.

Mostly my magic user was fine starting with magic missiles, getting knock, lightning bolt, and charm monster and wall of ice. Many standard spells you see in modules' NPC's spell book are useful and without significant side effects.

I'll add one per spell level to that "essentials" list: sleep, invisibility, fly, and dimension door.

A 1e magic user who started off with push as their only random offensive spell was pretty out of luck for a while, but usually they had something at least decent.

Or friends, a weaker version of charm person that kinda fell out of the game later.

 

[Lanefan]

Then the fighter isn't trying hard enough. Start buying expensive rounds for the entire town and you're going to eat through 2000g in no time.

And it doesn't all have to be beer and carousing. It could be anything not directly mechanically beneficial to the character. Repair buildings, bribes, gifts, training, works...anything really.

I have to say I'm not a big fan of mechanics like this, in that they penalize a character (or even a whole party) who is trying to save up for something big later e.g. a castle-stronghold-base or some other large project such as a run for political office or the eventual purchase of a noble title.

 

[Lanefan]

There was DEFINITELY an ethos of playing the original game that said it was not cool to sandbag for good stats. Also, we were amused to play characters that had one or two gimpy stats, like fighters with horribly low INT and such. I mean, after you died the 20th time, it started to take a bit more to be amusing! lol.

A standing joke around here is that a character isn't playable unless it has a 7 somewhere in its stats.

With me, that 7 (if I get one) almost always goes into Wisdom unless the character is a Cleric.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Haste was good, but so was lightning bolt. It just required a glass rod and a bit of rabbit fur instead of aging a year.

Polymorph was useful as a save or suck attack spell even if not thrown on your fellow PCs.

I remember thinking through an evil villain work around for permanency 1e con loss risk, magic jar into someone else and use their constitution to power the permanent magic.

Mostly my magic user was fine starting with magic missiles, getting knock, lightning bolt, and charm monster and wall of ice. Many standard spells you see in modules' NPC's spell book are useful and without significant side effects.

A 1e magic user who started off with push as their only random offensive spell was pretty out of luck for a while, but usually they had something at least decent.

Unstable walls of stone that fell on your opponents as soon as you cast them (iron works too) were one of my favorites. You could use Rock to Mud obviously in a similar way, as well as several other similar spells. You bypass MR and saves with that kind of tactic, which is huge against high level opponents. Beyond that there are more 'operational' ways to deploy spells, like blocking up all the ways air can get into a cave and then starting a fire inside and sealing the exit with a wall, or maybe even just a Web spell. Even low level stuff can work, though it will have less impact (IE Dancing Lights to trick your enemy into going the wrong way, then ambush them or loot their lair while they're gone). Wizards are pretty useful in fights, but their utility MULTIPLIES outside of them. One thing we discovered is, if you can get some sort of moderately decent item that can make attacks, like wands of Magic Missile or whatever, then that frees up your memorization for the more potent non-combat stuff. Finally fill in with a few scrolls that have the super esoteric but situationally ultra-potent stuff, and you can really shine consistently. If you can combine that with some kind of ability to avoid the old "and gank the wizard first" ploy, like a Cloak of Displacement, Stoneskin, Invisibility, etc. (ideally more than one option if you can get them) then you are really living the high life! At that point AD&D gets kind of broken, lol.

 

[overgeeked]

I have to say I'm not a big fan of mechanics like this, in that they penalize a character (or even a whole party) who is trying to save up for something big later e.g. a castle-stronghold-base or some other large project such as a run for political office or the eventual purchase of a noble title.

The way I run it you can pay in installments for big things and that still counts for XP.