I've introduced my 5th ed group to AD&D 2E

[Bacon Bits]

By the rules, backstab was very hard. By the DM...it ranged from "oh yeah, sure go ahead" all the way to "if you can perform a triple backflip while on fire, and can reach the vital nerve area on the dragon's body 8' above you, there's a 23% chance you can backstab. Then the dragon will eat you. I think that's a fair ruling."

Yeah, my experience was that the victim had to be unaware of you. You had to move silently, hide in shadows, or be invisible. Which is ironic because it means the best backstabber is now the thief/magic-user with improved invisibility, and as an added bonus you get lightning bolt, mage armor, charm person, silence, knock, detect magic, alter self, etc.

Your description also seems to apply to how racial level limits worked in actual play. In my experience, every table 100% enforces racial level limits... at level 1. However, when you actually have PCs hitting the limits, the DM magically forgets that they exist. Or, sometimes, applies a penalty. 10% to 20% XP penalty seemed to be standard in my area. Because stopping progression was obviously dumb. It meant you should just retire, and neither the player, nor the rest of the party, nor the DM were ever interested in that.

 

[James Gasik]

It was mostly because of the trip combo where a player could soft lock opponents or abuse of the 5' step to stay permanently out of range of opponents that lacked reach.

The one time I played a spiked chain character, I was often facing multiple foes, so I was more worried about keeping them attacking me instead of anyone else, so the 5 foot step thing was never a tactic I employed- I wanted the enemy stuck to me like glue.

And by 5th level, I was facing enemies that were darned near impossible to trip, due to being big and strong. My first fight with a centaur, I just gave up trying, lol.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, my experience was that the victim had to be unaware of you. You had to move silently, hide in shadows, or be invisible. Which is ironic because it means the best backstabber is now the thief/magic-user with improved invisibility, and as an added bonus you get lightning bolt, mage armor, charm person, silence, knock, detect magic, alter self, etc.

Your description also seems to apply to how racial level limits worked in actual play. In my experience, every table 100% enforces racial level limits... at level 1. However, when you actually have PCs hitting the limits, the DM magically forgets that they exist. Or, sometimes, applies a penalty. 10% to 20% XP penalty seemed to be standard in my area. Because stopping progression was obviously dumb. It meant you should just retire, and neither the player, nor the rest of the party, nor the DM were ever interested in that.

What I saw done a lot was requiring double xp to advance beyond the level cap. Not that I ever saw a lot of characters actually reach said level cap!

 

[Bacon Bits]

What I saw done a lot was requiring double xp to advance beyond the level cap. Not that I ever saw a lot of characters actually reach said level cap!

Oh, yeah it was very rare for us as well. I literally remember one character of mine hitting the limit before, and I think it was in 1e when they were much lower. And the DM still let me progress.

I do remember playing a one-shot 1e game where the multiclass thief/magic-user was level 11/10, and the party's human paladin was only level 9. Once I saw that I don't think I ever played a single class character ever again. Though my experience is a bit odd because I played 2e before I ever played 1e... I went BECMI or B/X --> 2e --> 1e --> 2e --> 3e.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, my experience was that the victim had to be unaware of you. You had to move silently, hide in shadows, or be invisible. Which is ironic because it means the best backstabber is now the thief/magic-user with improved invisibility, and as an added bonus you get lightning bolt, mage armor, charm person, silence, knock, detect magic, alter self, etc.

Not just unaware, surprised by the thief - if you were a stickler for the conditions. And that meant that even if you successfully moved silently and hid in shadows (or were invisible), there was a flat out 30% chance they weren't even surprised in 2e and completely negated the possibility of backstab.

Most of the time we were not sticklers on all that.

So, no wonder people initially kind of freaked out that a rogue in 3e got sneak attack so much easier and often. If they played anything close to AD&D's restrictiveness on it, 3e was a huge leap forward in rogue combat effectiveness.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah but then 3e got you with all the monsters who were just plain immune to sneak attack for various reasons, lol.

 

[overgeeked]

That's not a 2E thing, it's a D&D thing, regardless of edition.

I told a story a while back about how I was trying to talk a guy I knew, who loved comic books, into giving D&D (5E, which isn't my edition of choice, but which seemed like the easiest access point for a newcomer) a chance. He asked if he could make a character who was just like The Flash. I hesitated, then started to describe how there were certain builds (which I was reasonably certain were out there) which could get him up to more than twice the movement speed of most characters, along with one or two extra attacks per round. He just shook his head and said "That's not even close to what The Flash can do."

And he was right. If you've got a particular inspiration from some other media, including most comics, video games, or anime/manga, then most of the time D&D isn't going to let you play what you want, particularly at 1st level. Heck, just look at the differences between Vancian magic and how magic works in most other media; that one's been a sticking point for decades.

The game is what it is, and there's always going to be a gulf between that and what people want it to be, at least in terms of when they start playing their first character.

Yeah. That’s the biggest weakness of class- and archetype-based games. They limit what you can do to the point of constraining your imagination. A free-form approach lets people imagine more broadly and create what they want to play, but you run the risk of not fitting the premise of the game. High fantasy vs superheroes. As much as 5E tries to be fantasy superheroes, it’s really bad at actually doing fantasy superheroes.

 

[billd91]

Yeah but then 3e got you with all the monsters who were just plain immune to sneak attack for various reasons, lol.

Same with 2e, really, because there they had to be generally humanoid (so the same oozes and elementals immune in 3e were immune in 2e too) and you may have needed the ability to reach the vitals, so no backstabbing giants unless you were up off floor level (or the giant was sitting down...). The nature and specific rules behind the restrictions may have changed, but the restrictions weren't exactly new.

 

[billd91]

Yeah. That’s the biggest weakness of class- and archetype-based games. They limit what you can do to the point of constraining your imagination. A free-form approach lets people imagine more broadly and create what they want to play, but you run the risk of not fitting the premise of the game. High fantasy vs superheroes. As much as 5E tries to be fantasy superheroes, it’s really bad at actually doing fantasy superheroes.

And, honestly, this is perfectly reasonable. Some genres may overlap a little, but an RPG that goes fully into the comic superhero genre is going to do it better with a speedster concept than one that doesn't. And the Flash is a poor fitting concept for fantasy heroes, even if they do overlap a little with the superheroic genre.

 

[MadArkitekt]

Subtract AC from this number to find what you need to roll to hit. (If you don't mind giving out AC)
THAC0 subtracts attack roll to determine what AC is hit. (If you don't)

It's not exactly rocket science.

Huh, I say a buddy down and played Baldur‘ s Gate 2 and you would have though the game was written in Sanscrit and I was speaking Aramaic