D&D 1E Favorite Obscure Rules from TSR-era D&D

[Alzrius]

Another fun little rule from the mid-2E era: PHBR12 The Complete Paladin's Handbook not only had a Poetry non-weapon proficiency, but it gave rules for a paladin composing an epic poem in lieu of religious tithing.

"Greetings, little orphans! No, I'm afraid I won't be donating to your church's collection plate today, but fear not! I've brought something better than food: a five hundred-verse sonnet I composed about the giant rats I defeated when I was but a mere squire. Now, gather round..."

 

[Mannahnin]

nvm

 

[Undrave]

1. Assassins did not know about one of their primary high-level class abilities.
Assassins could use poison, but tucked in the DMG was a small section explaining that assassins, when they reach 9th level, could study how to make all sorts of different poisons with different effects! Except ... the DM was to never tell the player about this, or even suggest it is a possibility.

So is the Assassin supposed to just... imagine this possibility and ask the DM about it?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So is the Assassin supposed to just... imagine this possibility and ask the DM about it?

Pretty much, yep. And what's worse is that if they tried to do it before 9th level, it wouldn't work.

And, of course, the DMG itself was off-limits to players (and it said this) so the players would have absolutely no way of knowing about it.

The past is a foreign country.

 

[amethal]

5. Spell Aging!
Some people knew that casting a wish would age them (3 years). But did you know that casting resurrection aged you three years? Or receiving haste (1 year). Or ... GATE????? FIVE YEARS!!!!

ETA- here's an interesting rules question. If you cast wish to gate ... is it three years or five?

Since this is 1st edition AD&D, the answer is probably eight years.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Since this is 1st edition AD&D, the answer is probably eight years.

Well played, sir. No notes.

 

[Undrave]

Pretty much, yep. And what's worse is that if they tried to do it before 9th level, it wouldn't work.

And, of course, the DMG itself was off-limits to players (and it said this) so the players would have absolutely no way of knowing about it.

The past is a foreign country.

And it was only the assassin with that sort of hidden feature??

I guess they didn't anticipate people being both DM and players?

 

[Undrave]

Since this is 1st edition AD&D, the answer is probably eight years.

Not convoluted enough. There should be a long run-on Gygaxian sentence that concludes it's actually 7 years. But only in this specific combination, otherwise it works like you said.

 

[James Gasik]

The 5E writers could learn from this.

Having your heroes actually fear the darkness is a great thing, and there is no good reason to just do away with this, as 5E has done (for all practical purposes).

You know I've run into this sort of statement a lot. Every time I get a full darkvision party who doesn't think it's important to have light sources, it usually takes one ambush to learn 'em to keep a lit torch or a light spell. Just last Sunday that came up, the players entered a dark area and were poking around in dim light like blind fools, reducing their passive Perception by 5, and they got jumped by a pack of giant rats.

Although I quickly learned that a horde of CR 1/8 monsters with pack tactics was chore to run. So many die rolls...

There's another encounter coming up with CR 1/8 Fey (Jermlaine) who are invisible to darkvision. We'll see how that goes, lol.

 

[Mannahnin]

And it was only the assassin with that sort of hidden feature??

More or less. Although pages 41-47 of the DMG are full of expanded spell description information and notes for the referee for how to adjudicate quite a lot of the spells (including applications like using a Light spell to blind someone, using Dig to damage a Clay Golem, what kind of creatures are summoned by the various summon monster-type spells, etc). So to some extent all spellcasters were also subject to not knowing all the rules for their own class.