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

[Warpiglet-7]

The UA multi-classing options were actually presented in Dragon #103, in the "UNEARTHED ARCANA additions and corrections" article (one of two such articles in that issue).

View attachment 366415

There it is…

 

[Mannahnin]

We do - we have Aragorn's people, the Rangers of the North like Halbarad, who come to help him and ride with him through the Paths of the Dead. And they're all largely like him in outlook. But that's their calling. A ranger isn't just a guy living in the wilds. They're defenders of civilizations from threats coming out of the wilds (particularly wild beasts, giants, trolls, orcs, etc). In Aragorn's stomping grounds, that means the Shire, Bree, and any other town where Arnor used to hold sway.

And for the Rangers of Ithilien, they defend Gondor from Sauron's forces and his allies.

Exactly. Basically every ability and restriction the Ranger has in 1E is emulating this Tolkien-specific archetype. The alignment restrictions, the tracking, the damage bonus against "giant-class"* monsters, the armor and weapons, the traveling light and not keeping a lot of wealth, the class restrictions on not having too many able to gang up together, (etc.) are based on the Rangers of the North, all descendents of the line of Kings of Numenor, the Men of the West (as Gandalf explains to Frodo when the latter wakes up in Rivendell). Of whom there are few left, and who need to spread out and protect a wide area. And the high level abilities (use of magic and of scrying devices) are directly based on Aragorn.

(The "Rangers" of Ithilian of course are knockoffs)

*Bringing us back to an obscure rule, I had no clue why the heck orcs and kobolds were defined as "giant class", and why that was the name for the category of monsters Rangers got +1 dmg/level against in melee. The full list is given, thankfully, so we didn't need to guess what monsters counted. Bugbears, ettins, giants, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, ogres, ogre magi, orcs, and trolls. And I never knew why until I finally read OD&D and realized this was another place where Gary was just assuming everyone had already read OD&D and had the missing context.

In OD&D the wilderness encounter lists were d12 tables grouped into broad types which were not always accurate to the monsters listed on them. For example the "Dragon Types" list includes not just 6 entries for all the extant colors of dragons at the time, but also basilisks, cockatrices, wyverns, balrogs, chimerae and hydrae. And, of course you can guess, one of the encounter tables was "Giant Types". Later they might have called it humanoids, say, but Giant Types was the title for the encounter table which had Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Gnolls, Ogres, Trolls, Giants, and amusingly, Gnomes, Dwarves, Elves and Ents as well! AD&D drops the latter four "monsters" from the "type" or "class" since they're goodly or neutral sorts and adds three more evil ones- Bugbears, Ettins, and Ogre Magi.

The original Strategic Review article introducing the Ranger class to OD&D doesn't list all the monsters, but leaves us to infer that they mean the ones from that encounter table, but only the first eight entries on the table, by phrasing the ability thus:

All Rangers gain a special advantage when fighting against monsters of the Giant Class (Kobolds - Giants). For each level they have gained they add +1 to their damage die against these creatures, so a 1st Level Ranger adds +1, a 2nd Level +2, and so on.

Of course, in reviewing this I note that Rangers got weakened in AD&D, because despite getting three more monsters added to their list, they lost the ability to do this extra damage with missile weapons.

 

[Willie the Duck]

In Greyhawk, Gygax changed this to roughly the XP values used for Basic D&D and 1e, which were much much stingier. (Also, you had to calculate these values yourself! Until the 1e DMG was released, anyway.) The rationale: that the original 100 x level amounts were much too generous. Only Gygax could look at a game as lethal as original-boxed-set 0e and think that...

I can at least see the rationale if your thought process is mostly focused on (say) a large party of maybe 3rd level level characters having figured out good formation tactics and mopping up upper dungeon levels full of hobgoblins and orcs. Once you got to the upper tiers and gold dragons would be worth 1200-1400 xp or so, then honestly the juice isn't worth the squeeze even with the original rules.

Also of note: XP in 0e (for both monsters and treasure) was multiplied by (higher of current dungeon level or monster level)/(character level). In the aforementioned example, a 8th-level magic-user on the 5th level of a dungeon earns 5/8 of the base XP (but would earn 7/8 for defeating a troll, which counts as level 7.)

Talking with Mornard/Gronan BitD, apparently this was one of the reasons why Gary and co. were caught so off-guard by people claiming to have level 40+ characters and the like*. Not only were high-level monsters supposed to be incredibly rare (per the charts), but the XP you earned from them prorated to your level to make them diminishing in returns (and low-level monsters effectively threat-with-no-reward).
*aside from the overall 'why would you keep playing with them when you could level up some new characters?'

 

[James Gasik]

I can at least see the rationale if your thought process is mostly focused on (say) a large party of maybe 3rd level level characters having figured out good formation tactics and mopping up upper dungeon levels full of hobgoblins and orcs. Once you got to the upper tiers and gold dragons would be worth 1200-1400 xp or so, then honestly the juice isn't worth the squeeze even with the original rules.

Talking with Mornard/Gronan BitD, apparently this was one of the reasons why Gary and co. were caught so off-guard by people claiming to have level 40+ characters and the like*. Not only were high-level monsters supposed to be incredibly rare (per the charts), but the XP you earned from them prorated to your level to make them diminishing in returns (and low-level monsters effectively threat-with-no-reward).
*aside from the overall 'why would you keep playing with them when you could level up some new characters?'

As the 100th-level character rules I mentioned upthread mention, levels become kind of insignificant after awhile. Saving throws cap. Attack matrices cap. Spell slots cap (at like level 29)*. So all you're really getting is a smidgen of hit points.

*Granted, those rules don't seem to take caster level into account, which means a 40th-level Wizard might have a 40d6 fireball...

 

[Willie the Duck]

As the 100th-level character rules I mentioned upthread mention, levels become kind of insignificant after awhile. Saving throws cap. Attack matrices cap. Spell slots cap (at like level 29)*. So all you're really getting is a smidgen of hit points.

*Granted, those rules don't seem to take caster level into account, which means a 40th-level Wizard might have a 40d6 fireball...

Yes, I think that's part of the 'why would you keep playing with them when you could level up some new characters?' part I mentioned. Not only did the xp reward system not make it particularly plausible to continue to level up at that point, there didn't seem to be a lot of incentive to do so, so why people keep reporting that it was happening (they wondered)?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yes, I think that's part of the 'why would you keep playing with them when you could level up some new characters?' part I mentioned. Not only did the xp reward system not make it particularly plausible to continue to level up at that point, there didn't seem to be a lot of incentive to do so, so why people keep reporting that it was happening (they wondered)?

Why?

Bruh. My 50th level fighter could totally destroy your 28th level thief. No big deal. Guys at my high school used to do it all the time.

 

[James Gasik]

Why?

Bruh. My 50th level fighter could totally destroy your 28th level thief. No big deal. Guys at my high school used to do it all the time.

To be fair, a 28th level Fighter could destroy a 50th level Thief with great ease, lol.

 

[Mannahnin]

To be fair, a 28th level Fighter could destroy a 50th level Thief with great ease, lol.

Well, depending on what kind of magic items and Wish effects and other power ups the Thief got in that extra 22 levels of play.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

40th-level Wizard might have a 40d6 fireball...

What do you mean, “might”?

 

[Undrave]

What do you mean, “might”?

they might not know Fireball.