D&D 1E How about a little love for AD&D 1E

[Micah Sweet]

I always wanted to try and make a 1e Bard, but realized it would take me forever, and none of my DM's ever figured out if Half-Elf Fighter/Thief would actually work for Bard entry or not.

We had a couple over about 25 years of playing 1e. Hard path, but worth it.

 

[rgard]

I always wanted to try and make a 1e Bard, but realized it would take me forever, and none of my DM's ever figured out if Half-Elf Fighter/Thief would actually work for Bard entry or not.

I did one, but not the way it was intended. In the first campaign I was in back in 1979, the DM allowed anybody to multi-class. Your character got experience by doing class related things. Magic Users got XPs for casting spells, thieves for stealing stuff, clerics for casting spells and everybody got XPs for hacking on things. I made a human Fighter, Magic User, Thief and was progressing in all 3 classes. The original DM graduated and we went to a different campaign that didn't allow human multi-classing. I worked with the DM and the character's levels and stats were good for enough for the 1e Bard so I went that route. The character only died once...on a spaceship shot by a stormtrooper using a FGMP-15.
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[rgard]

I did an actual dual class human. Did 10 levels of fighter, then changed classes to magic-user. The character was hard to kill.

 

[JohnSnow]

I'll also throw out that without my beloved "Fighting Wheel," I would have found 1e AD&D to be entirely unplayable. If only someone had made a "Saving Throw Wheel" that I could have gotten my hands on.

 

[fuindordm]

I know there are other fora where I can post this, but since we've got a conversation going here is another question:

Has anyone ever used the Thief-Acrobat? I just reread it, and the acrobatics skills just don't seem to justify the class unless the DM really makes an effort to build 3D dungeon or city maps. They seem to be playing a parkour subgame that no one else can participate in.

The only frequently useful ability is "evasion", which is ill-defined, and the tumbling attack bonus depends on the DMG unarmed combat subsystem which is rarely used.

Are there any abilities here that justify addition to an AD&D skill system?

 

[Celebrim]

I know there are other fora where I can post this, but since we've got a conversation going here is another question:

Has anyone ever used the Thief-Acrobat? I just reread it, and the acrobatics skills just don't seem to justify the class unless the DM really makes an effort to build 3D dungeon or city maps. They seem to be playing a parkour subgame that no one else can participate in.

The only frequently useful ability is "evasion", which is ill-defined, and the tumbling attack bonus depends on the DMG unarmed combat subsystem which is rarely used.

Are there any abilities here that justify addition to an AD&D skill system?

So, no, the Thief-Acrobat never justified itself as a class. That parkour subgame was never particularly a strong part of a thief's game and focusing on it didn't really help. The problem with "Climb Walls" is that only a certain number of times in an adventure would it even be useful (potentially zero if the GM didn't do anything with 3D terrain), and for those limited times spells like "Spider Climb", "Jump" and "Fly" fully outclassed it.

In fact, the Thief is such a weak class in 1e that all those could have been added as new abilities of the Thief from 1st level without even adding much utility to the class.

However, yes, the ability to jump, balance on things, tumble and so forth are justified as inclusions on the skill list. And in fact 3e did exactly that, condensing down the 1e Thief-Acrobat skills into the skill system as part of its general commitment to at least conceptual backwards compatibility with 1e AD&D.

 

[JohnSnow]

I know there are other fora where I can post this, but since we've got a conversation going here is another question:

Has anyone ever used the Thief-Acrobat? I just reread it, and the acrobatics skills just don't seem to justify the class unless the DM really makes an effort to build 3D dungeon or city maps. They seem to be playing a parkour subgame that no one else can participate in.

The only frequently useful ability is "evasion", which is ill-defined, and the tumbling attack bonus depends on the DMG unarmed combat subsystem which is rarely used.

Are there any abilities here that justify addition to an AD&D skill system?

It's also worth noting that the Thief-Acrobat came about after the D&D Cartoon aired in 1983.

In case you aren't aware, the 6 characters in that were Acrobat, Barbarian, Cavalier, Magician, Ranger and Thief - the first three of whom were introduced in Unearthed Arcana, which was published in 1985.
I'm not saying the class was shoehorned into the game to appease fans of the cartoon, but I'm also not not saying it.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I have so many good memories from playing AD&D in the 80ies. It's not a game I would play today though, even though it's fun to read the old tomes sometimes, for an exercise in High Gygaxian prose.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Same here. Dual-classing as written was awful; long ago DMed one (maybe two?) characters who did it, then scrapped it entirely and let Humans multi like everyone else.

I dual-classed once: 7th- or 8th-level Thief into Fighter. Boy, that sucked! Yay, I've gone up a level. Oh, right, no benefits. Again.

Dual classing requires strategy, and you did it wrong. Never start out in thief. Always start out with a fighter class and then dual class into something that doesn't require much XP like thief or cleric.

I did an actual dual class human. Did 10 levels of fighter, then changed classes to magic-user. The character was hard to kill.

Came to say the same thing as rgard. Fighter into magic user was a solid option. In particular, it let you 'skip' (well, delay until gets trivial) the low-level phase where being a magic user kinda sucks (you might have a 1/day often-auto-win with sleep, but otherwise you're a highly vulnerable lamp-oil-lobber). You will be working your way through them at a point (when the party as a whole is levels 4 or higher) where you might level up each gaming session until you are just a level or two behind the main group.

Let's say you start as a fighter and your buddy starts as a MU, but after 18,000 xp you dual-class into MU as well. Assuming you both survive (not guaranteed) and get the same xp (same), you will have hit 5th level in MU yourself (xp18,000+22,500) just barely after they hit 6th (at 40,000) and from then on out you will hit their MU level each time before they leave it (with the 18,000 xp deficit becoming increasingly marginal as you level). More importantly, you will be doing your level one when the party has 5th level fighters and/or the people who would adventure with such, and thus you may well 'earn*' 2500 gp/xp in a single session. You also will have 5 levels of fighter hp** to help you survive those low-MU levels.
*although the rest of the party might not feel that way when IronGuts Killblade stops swinging their sword to start casting burning hands for a few adventures
**and maybe saves, we never figured out the RAW on that.

I remember us coming up with an optimal strategy with stats (if you were using a method that allows assignment) -- if you rolled well enough to dual class, but didn't get an 18, you should start as fighter and DC to MU (since you would be busting down doors looking for gauntlets of ogre power anyways). If you rolled an well enough to dual class, but rolled an 18, then probably stick with single classing (that 15+ alongside an 18 Int would be a nice Con or Dex for a MU, and who doesn't want to try for 18/00 on a 1st-level fighter?). The thing that most stopped us was that in 1E, elven mutliclass fighter-MUs could cast in armor, but dual-classed** F-MU could not, making them a better option overall**.
**not called thusly at that point, but same concept
**although base 1e level limits actually looked like you might make it high enough, so there were arguments for all situations, I guess.

 

[Willie the Duck]

So, no, the Thief-Acrobat never justified itself as a class. That parkour subgame was never particularly a strong part of a thief's game and focusing on it didn't really help. The problem with "Climb Walls" is that only a certain number of times in an adventure would it even be useful (potentially zero if the GM didn't do anything with 3D terrain), and for those limited times spells like "Spider Climb", "Jump" and "Fly" fully outclassed it.

In fact, the Thief is such a weak class in 1e that all those could have been added as new abilities of the Thief from 1st level without even adding much utility to the class.

However, yes, the ability to jump, balance on things, tumble and so forth are justified as inclusions on the skill list. And in fact 3e did exactly that, condensing down the 1e Thief-Acrobat skills into the skill system as part of its general commitment to at least conceptual backwards compatibility with 1e AD&D.

I think the Thief-Acrobat was when I realized that maybe the devs played a different game than I. It made me look back at the core rulebook and how much admonition there was towards not letting a player 'get away with' things, and that every time they introduced a new player option, it was usually by taking away something I'd thought all PCs should be able to do (minus some caveats like not tightrope walking in armor) just to give it back as a special option you could take. When the Dungeoneer and Wilderness Survival Guides came out in '86 and included skill proficiencies letting PCs do what I'd always thought they could do anyways, I was unsurprised.

It's also worth noting that the Thief-Acrobat came about after the D&D Cartoon aired in 1983.

In case you aren't aware, the 6 characters in that were Acrobat, Barbarian, Cavalier, Magician, Ranger and Thief - the first three of whom were introduced in Unearthed Arcana, which was published in 1985.
I'm not saying the class was shoehorned into the game to appease fans of the cartoon, but I'm also not not saying it.

I suspect the order is reversed. Barbarian first showed up in Dragon #63 (1982 ), cavalier in Dragon #72 (1983), and thief-acrobat in Dragon #69 (1983), so there was likely a notion that these were up-and-coming classes for the game. Thus it would be a good idea to include them in the upcoming show, promoting new products instead of old (always find new ways to sell more of the core books having not yet become a primary market strategy).

Given what we know about the financial state of TSR at the time, I doubt there was a real plan. Cash was tight and there was existing writing that fit semi-naturally into the book, so they did so and shoved it out the door to keep the lights on.

That said, as a pre-teen when the cartoon came out, I certainly felt like the 1E devs were shifting tone to start talking to me -- the core books being from back in the 70s and having harlot tables and admonitions not to let players get away with anything and paladins (whatever those were) and assassins was giving way to lots of options for making He-man barbarians, cavaliers (a more obvious knight-in-shining-armor), leaping acrobats and other things that fit alongside me and my friends still running around the playground pretending we were Superfriends or whatever.