D&D General Lethality, AD&D, and 5e: Looking Back at the Deadliest Edition

[Maxperson]

I think the point I agree with @Snarf with the most is that it is INCREDIBLY dependent on the table. For example, he talks about adventures being full of deadly traps. Thing is, the modules generally actually weren't. Yup, there were a few. But, by and large, they really weren't.

Additionally, just as a point of order, I don't think anyone would argue that 5e is more lethal than 1e. Certainly not me. For my money, 3e was by far the deadliest edition. It was just so easy to kill PC's. When you have orcs that can quite possibly do 25-35 points of damage in a single hit (Greataxe was a x3 crit weapon, dealt d12 and orcs in 3e have an 18 Str - max damage of 36 points with a lucky hit - enough to straight up kill 3rd level PC's.

Which isn't possible in AD&D. Nothing deals that kind of damage. An ogre, from memory, dealt like a d8 points of damage per round. No strength bonus. No bonuses at all. Maybe a d12? As I said, I'm going from memory.

The point that I made was that AD&D COMBAT, not the edition as a whole, is not very lethal at all after about 3rd or 4th level. The baddies just didn't do enough damage, nor did they have any to-hit bonuses. Which meant they weren't hitting often and when they did, they didn't really do that much damage.

Add to that the impact of Unearthed Arcana - which absolutely did change how the game worked - as well as things like Dragonlance, which also played a pretty formative role in my gaming experience, and no, I don't think AD&D combat is all that lethal. Most of the lethality came from stuff that bypassed the combat rules like poisons and the like.

I agree. You're a hair low for ogres with them dealing d10 or by weapon type(+2 or +1/+4 for leaders) which were generally large versions. Owlbears were the beast, though. 3 attacks for 1d6/1d6/2-12 and an additional 2-16 if either of the 1d6 attacks hit with a roll of 18+.

 

[Maxperson]

I take a look into the 1ed DM guide.

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things passasthe playerswill kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player character when they have played well. When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!

The assumption of harsh and blind lethality of 1ed was not coming from Gygax.

After losing an eye and receiving penalties to hit or a limb and being unable to effectively attack/walk, we generally made our way to a nearby cliff or bridge. His generosity there was usually worse than losing the PC.

 

[Hussar]

Yes. Play experience creates a great deal of variety.

For example @Lanefan, you mention your number one pc death cause is other pc’s. That just didn’t happen at our tables. We always played, right from the get go, that player vs player was not allowed. And a player who accidentally killed another pc because of misplaced spells was encouraged to smarten up or find a different group.

And, because we almost exclusively played modules, enemy pc’s were largely unheard of.

I’ve always called Adnd schizophrenic because play experience from the books vs play experience from the modules was incredibly different. If you played modules, you never avoided encounters because you were pretty much guaranteed of good treasure in harder encounters. The bigger the risk, the more the reward.

Never minding that the equipment they carried could be sold and you got xp for that.

But a very good point was made upthread. The adnd character was expected to have buckets of magic items. That’s where the lethality shifts. Again, module play resulted in buckets of magic items. That 4th level fighter had +1 plate and +1 shield. And a magic weapon. And probably half a dozen consumables.

Whereas the book group probably didn’t.

 

[Krachek]

On the lethality of 1ed I remember some details.

We use the -10 hit points for death. I didn’t know it was a house rule at the time.
Our character have one score within 15,16,17,18 range, so it was a better method than roll 3d6 and place in order.

But what I remember most, it is that to survive you have to read the DM.
Everything was obviously describe as dangerous, but after a while we learn to read between the lines and guess better what was the real danger to avoid.

It was almost the same with the Smart play, play smart was all about understanding the personal view of the DM about the game, his setting, and produce idea according to that.

Treasures were depending on DM mood too. I remember a DM telling that we won’t ever find a fireball scroll into treasure.

So my memories of 1ed is that lethality was based on DM mood, rules at the time was not much important,

 

[CleverNickName]

I remember it going something like this:

In BECM, the object of the game was to survive the dungeon.
In AD&D, the object was to survive the dungeon master.
In 3.X Edition, the object of the game was to solve the equation correctly.

 

[Krachek]

I remember it going something like this:

In BECM, the object of the game was to survive the dungeon.
In AD&D, the object was to survive the dungeon master.
In 3.X Edition, the object of the game was to solve the equation correctly.

In 2023 the object is to please the million followers on your stream.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If AD&D is much more deadly then what people wanted, why was it written that way?

Isn't it a good thing the game reflects how people want to play it?

As early as AD&D1e was, what makes you think consulting what "people wanted" was a big part of its design decision? D&D had a lot of things baked into it that were just taken as givens, and it was going to pursue those things without much thought to how what its market wanted, and was a big enough dog that, just like now, a lot of people were going to go along anyway.

D&D isn't immune to the pull of its users desires, but its had more of an ability to respond slowly to them than any other RPG on the market for a very long time.

 

[MGibster]

@Snarf Zagyg had it in his post. Level drain was usually unrestorable as well, since you rarely got hit so close to town that you could get a spell in time, and even if you did, you still lost all the XP you had earned towards the next level. So you got screwed no matter what happened.

Yeah, but let's not tell Snarf that.

 

[MGibster]

After losing an eye and receiving penalties to hit or a limb and being unable to effectively attack/walk, we generally made our way to a nearby cliff or bridge. His generosity there was usually worse than losing the PC.

That's how I remember it. Death wasn't even the worst thing that could happen in AD&D. Most players preferred death to falling victim to level drains or rust monsters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's how I remember it. Death wasn't even the worst thing that could happen in AD&D. Most players preferred death to falling victim to level drains or rust monsters.

In many ways, it was less frustrating.