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

[Snarf Zagyg]

The amount of magical items that were typically given out in an AD&D published adventure was definitely more than you'll see in a typical 5e adventure, at least from my experience. The thing is AD&D placed more of an emphasis on those items for increasing a player's power. 5e puts a lot of focus on the build for determining your power level and magic items are often not really needed to be effective in combat.

That can be either good or bad, depending on your preferences.

Bingo. It's a completely different approach.

In 5e, you build the character by choice. The primary power of characters is through abilities; this is why, for example, people can "map out" characters and character builds far in advance.

AD&D wasn't like that. There was an element of serendipity- a lot of your "power" and "ability" came from magic items you acquired. So a lot of your core identity, even including weapon choice, would be changed by those items that you found.

This began to change, first with the advent of weapon specialization. Begins tugging at beard and drinking mead ... and it was all downhill from there!

 

[DarkCrisis]

never played a game where the succubus only got one or two levels. They always got the poor sap alone and sucked them into death.

Yeah, she did

 

[Scott Christian]

I have commonly seen new DMs in OSR circles asking how to make the module work for their players and not turn into a TPK-fest.

I have seen this quite a bit too. I am always curious as to how these DMs think when they are reading an adventure or creating their own scene, event, or encounter.

I mean, with absolutely minimal thought, one could come up with splitting the encounter up, or having a second wave arrive a few minutes later. That is a two second correction, without having to rewrite everything. The other option is to always take average damage (it's actually listed there for you). Or reduce the number of opponents.

I don't know, but it seems incredibly weird to me that people who have played 5e for several years can't do the math in their head or on the fly. It makes me think they don't know the rules very well, or that they don't actually reflect on past encounters.

 

[Maxperson]

never played a game where the succubus only got one or two levels. They always got the poor sap alone and sucked them into death.

Sure, but at least it was a happy ending.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay I have always been put another quarter in the slot and get a raise dead type of DM from 1e on. I did my 440 Session of Adventure League and have 119 kills. Which means a dead PC 1 every 3 1/2 sessions. So, it still matches my legality from other editions. After being a member here for 20+ years, how deadly an edition was/is depends on the group.

Sure. You can kill 1 a session in every edition if you want. How much effort it takes to achieve that death varies considerably, though, and it takes much more effort in 5e than it did in 1e.

 

[Maxperson]

How is that different from any other edition? It's not like people suddenly forgot learned how to cooperate.

Fixed that for you.

 

[Maxperson]

You're assuming different behavior with no reason. If coordination was an issue in the past, it's an issue now.

Yes it was, but uncoordinated players in 5e survive much better than uncoordinated players in 1e.

 

[Maxperson]

Wish I had thought of that. Back in Living City (public game) we had to split up treasure at the end of the session. After a while my fighter had a cartload of +1 weapons. Need a polearm? Halberd, Glaive, Guisarme, Ranseur or Fauchard? Swords? Falchion, Shortsword, Cutlass, Saber, Katana? Those are all the ones on top of the pile. I'm sure there's a half dozen others in there somewhere. We've got you covered.

What? A magical item that's not a weapon? Sorry, I'm a fighter I just get all of the weapons. On the other hand we've got a bucket of flails somewhere... Hey! Where are to going? I haven't even gotten around to the dagger and knife list!

That's why back during 3e I started making magic items rare. Instead of finding a +1 sword, a bracer that let you fly 2x day and a wand of gust of wind 1x day, the group would find Windbreaker the +1 longsword that could cast fly 2x day and gust of wind 1x day. Suddenly magic items were much less common and much cooler to find. The excitement level of the players went way up when finding items.

 

[Maxperson]

The amount of magical items that were typically given out in an AD&D published adventure was definitely more than you'll see in a typical 5e adventure, at least from my experience. The thing is AD&D placed more of an emphasis on those items for increasing a player's power. 5e puts a lot of focus on the build for determining your power level and magic items are often not really needed to be effective in combat.

That can be either good or bad, depending on your preferences.

They were also much more temporary in 1e. Thieves stole stuff. Fireballs melted stuff. And so on. You needed to find more, because you lost more.

 

[nevin]

Fixed that for you.

for the most part parties never cooperate like the DM expects.

I have seen this quite a bit too. I am always curious as to how these DMs think when they are reading an adventure or creating their own scene, event, or encounter.

I mean, with absolutely minimal thought, one could come up with splitting the encounter up, or having a second wave arrive a few minutes later. That is a two second correction, without having to rewrite everything. The other option is to always take average damage (it's actually listed there for you). Or reduce the number of opponents.

I don't know, but it seems incredibly weird to me that people who have played 5e for several years can't do the math in their head or on the fly. It makes me think they don't know the rules very well, or that they don't actually reflect on past encounters.

not everyone can do math on the fly. I realize once upon a time it was the game of geeks and nerds and we were all expected to do that but the more mainstream it becomes the more people who can't, won't and just don't care about doing it on the fly will play, Id argue at this point they are the majority and we are the minority. Mostly because a lot more people just play every now and then casually and they don't have all the rule memorized or know the game well enough to just adjust them while in progress.