D&D 2E Did The Complete Fighter's Handbook kill "Zero to Hero"?

[Willie the Duck]

I agree with virtually all of that, but minor pickpick- Secondary Skills date back to the 1E DMG. Though they do say that this is relatively minor knowledge, not a whole prior career.

Thanks for the catch. Naturally, when I did a cursory scan to see if it was in 1e, I checked the PHB. I did point out the Survival Guides, so I was acknowledging that this was all starting to be fleshed out pre-2E. It is minor knowledge, but the point remains -- what you did before becoming an adventurer was acknowledged.

The main thing I think of when I look at the 2e stuff is how it fits into the overall transformation of D&D over time. From the LBBs with their three classes onto today. My impression is that 5E is in a better place then something like AD&D even, at least once Unearthed Arcana gets into the mix, and certainly a mechanical improvement over the 3E era. As you point out it's all over the place, which is especially interesting at a time when adventure design is firmly set into the Hickman mold of using open table mechanics for constrained scene based design. In retrospect it strikes me as a rough time for D&D all around.

I don't know if I would call it rough, so much as growing pains. People had been using the game for more than it was initially designed since day one, 2e is just where it started to get acknowledged and the first fledgling (and sometimes ham-handed) attempts to write to that reality were occurring.

 

[Greg K]

The Complete Fighter, Thief, etc. might have officially introduced builds. However, there were already 1e (or was it B/X?) third party products (e.g. the Compleat Adventurer and Compleat Spellcaster) that introduced new classes along with NPC classes in Dragon Magazine that allowed players to choose more focused archetype variants/specialist of existing classes.

 

[Mannahnin]

Preemptive disclaimer: As always, unless otherwise stated, all of this is 'In my opinion'/'It is my position that...'
Like most things about the olden days, exactly what the zero-to-hero concept really means is not entirely consistent. I think the overall premise, at its core, stems from PCs starting out as fragile entities that can drop from 1-2 successful hits from the creatures they will be facing -- and gradually become wildly more powerful in terms of staying power, action options available, and opponents regularly taken-on. All the rest is negotiable/people had wildly different takes on.
*which the monster manual telegraphs to be 'generic enemy soldier'.

Some people always envisioned their characters as (say) farm kids tying to escape a life of monotony to make it rich or die trying. That conception might have the first dungeon being the first time the fighter character strapped on their armor. Others thought of their characters as semi-seasoned soldiers, thieves, etc. who just decided to adventure instead. There's certainly enough evidence in the pre-2E books to support either position -- be that level title of veteran or an oD&D fighting man being effectively a base soldier unit to AD&D's 0th level fighters being potentially most (even seasoned/non-green) soldiers to the starting age roll to whatever else considered important. Everyone envisioned their characters differently, and could find something in the text to support it.

Getting back to this for a second, I think this gets at the point of what do people mean by "zero to hero"?

If we mean going from the absolute lowest possible spot on the power scale to the highest, generally speaking D&D has never assumed that. Even a first level fighter in 1974 OD&D was a "veteran", and started with 1+1 HD instead of 1HD like your generic soldier or orc, goblin or skeleton.

The 1E/2E crossover Greyhawk Adventures supplement included optional zero level rules for playing adventurers weaker than 1st level 1E starting characters, and earning your way to 1st level.

OTOH a metaphoric "zero to hero" is certainly a thing D&D has always done if by that we mean "start weak, get absurdly strong".

I agree with Willie that D&D has generally supported both the concept of first level adventurers being complete rookies with talent or veterans with at least some experience, but who are still not much tougher than an orc or goblin.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Honestly, I can't remember anyone even using that term until 3e. Therefore, I'm pretty sure it was a term only used to show the contrast between early D&D and 3rd edition going forward. Not that in AD&D players really wanted to start out as zeroes, but instead, fans of old school preferred PCs to not be heroes right of the gate like 3x+ does (after all, you don't get to be a hero until 4th level in AD&D

 

[James Gasik]

Getting back to this for a second, I think this gets at the point of what do people mean by "zero to hero"?

If we mean going from the absolute lowest possible spot on the power scale to the highest, generally speaking D&D has never assumed that. Even a first level fighter in 1974 OD&D was a "veteran", and started with 1+1 HD instead of 1HD like your generic soldier or orc, goblin or skeleton.

The 1E/2E crossover Greyhawk Adventures supplement included optional zero level rules for playing adventurers weaker than 1st level 1E starting characters, and earning your way to 1st level.

OTOH a metaphoric "zero to hero" is certainly a thing D&D has always done if by that we mean "start weak, get absurdly strong".

I agree with Willie that D&D has generally supported both the concept of first level adventurers being complete rookies with talent or veterans with at least some experience, but who are still not much tougher than an orc or goblin.

Well, the comment that sparked this thread was someone saying that they miss the narrative of players starting off as inexperienced farmhands and whatnot. I want to point out that when I was playing early D&D and AD&D, nowhere did I ever see any indication that this was what was expected, but there's a lot of self-identified "old skoolers" who claim that's how the game was.

And that's what made me remember the picture of the old warrior in the CFH next to the Myrmidon Kit (the same picture is on the cover of Fighter's Challenge) and I wondered if this was the first time the game came out and said "no, actually, you're not Cowhand #5". I'd forgotten about the old class titles, and "Veteran" is fairly telling.

I do think Zero to Hero gets conflated a lot- there's the narrative aspect, which apparently was never proposed by the books, but just sort of manifested out of the aether (probably by DM's thinking of heroes who are assistant pig keepers, farmboys, or lowly squires who go off and have adventures), and the "start off super weak and get more powerful from there", which has changed over time. In AD&D a 1st level character might be challenged by a thrown knife or a housecat. In 4e, they have enough hit points to face an ogre, and while 5e has scaled back from that, characters are much more likely to survive. In fact, once they get to level 2 or 3, it becomes almost impossible to die outright, even from a critical hit!

Either way, if the game did change the way some say it did, 2e apparently wasn't the moment where it happened. Thanks for the replies, everyone!

 

[PHATsakk43]

Using the myrmidon kit example, I don’t think that really changes the way anyone should look at a starting adventurer.

When I was 22, I was a 2nd class petty officer and running a work center on a nuclear aircraft maintenance group and being a member of reactor watch team and being a lead for shoring team for battle stations. There was still plenty to learn however.

Again, we also can look at NCAA athletes being roughly in the same age range as a starting character. While they are light years ahead of their peers, they still have a lot of potential to develop to reach the pros.

The other thing that the Complete Fighter’s Handbook did, if nothing else, was make the most scalable martial class in any edition of the game. Single-class fighters using the mastery rules can seriously scale with level and continue to contribute to combat unlike any other edition.

 

[Mannahnin]

Using the myrmidon kit example, I don’t think that really changes the way anyone should look at a starting adventurer.

When I was 22, I was a 2nd class petty officer and running a work center on a nuclear aircraft maintenance group and being a member of reactor watch team and being a lead for shoring team for battle stations. There was still plenty to learn however.

Again, we also can look at NCAA athletes being roughly in the same age range as a starting character. While they are light years ahead of their peers, they still have a lot of potential to develop to reach the pros.

While true, "veteran" clearly implies someone with experience, not someone just starting out. And the stats for an OD&D Fighting Man or AD&D Fighter are deliberately superior to a 0 level normal soldier, indicating some experience or elite competency.

The other thing that the Complete Fighter’s Handbook did, if nothing else, was make the most scalable martial class in any edition of the game. Single-class fighters using the mastery rules can seriously scale with level and continue to contribute to combat unlike any other edition.

"Mastery"? Are you thinking of fighting styles and style specialization? I don't think I can agree, although continuing to sink proficiency slots into those did add a little more scaling than the anemic progression in number of attacks that AD&D had.

Weapon Mastery scaling with levels is a rules system from the BECMI Masters set. Single class Fighters using Weapon Mastery in BECMI do indeed scale up much better with level than they do without that sub-system. Of course 3E and later editions also made Fighters scale much better with levels than they did in AD&D or in OD&D or B/X, although they tended to get outshined by casters in 3.x because casters scaled EVEN MORE.

 

[Willie the Duck]

The other thing that the Complete Fighter’s Handbook did, if nothing else, was make the most scalable martial class in any edition of the game. Single-class fighters using the mastery rules can seriously scale with level and continue to contribute to combat unlike any other edition.

"Mastery"? Are you thinking of fighting styles and style specialization? I don't think I can agree, although continuing to sink proficiency slots into those did add a little more scaling than the anemic progression in number of attacks that AD&D had.

Complete Fighter's Martial arts was the one where each roll on d20 did a different 'move' with different base damage (ranging from 0 to 3), with each level of martial arts specialization allowing you to shift the effect up or down one, along with +1 hit/+1 dmg, and an extra attack (just one, regardless of levels of specialization).

Complete Ninja reprinted 1E's Oriental Adventure martial arts rules.

Player's Options: Combat and Tactics has a combat-skill system which uses the terms Non-Proficient, Familiar, Proficient, Expert, Specialized, and Master.; along with splitting Martial Arts (specifically) into style types A through D. I think this is the one PHATsakk43 means.

All 3 are complex, don't really address unarmored AC (or all the monster types you can't/shouldn't punch), and so on. However, the Skills & Powers one is definitely the one that actually makes martial arts usable as you level up (at least against other human-esque opponents).

 

[Mannahnin]

Complete Fighter's Martial arts was the one where each roll on d20 did a different 'move' with different base damage (ranging from 0 to 3), with each level of martial arts specialization allowing you to shift the effect up or down one, along with +1 hit/+1 dmg, and an extra attack (just one, regardless of levels of specialization).

Complete Ninja reprinted 1E's Oriental Adventure martial arts rules.

Skills and Powers: Combat and Tactics has a combat-skill system which uses the terms Non-Proficient, Familiar, Proficient, Expert, Specialized, and Master.; along with splitting Martial Arts (specifically) into style types A through D. I think this is the one PHATsakk43 means.

All 3 are complex, don't really address unarmored AC (or all the monster types you can't/shouldn't punch), and so on. However, the Skills & Powers one is definitely the one that actually makes martial arts usable as you level up (at least against other human-esque opponents).

We weren't talking about martial arts, though. We were talking about martial characters, as opposed to spell casters. And expanded rules for Fighter skills and combat abilities which allow them to scale better and "continue to contribute in combat" well at higher levels.

And I was trying to clarify what PHATsakk was talking about, because he referenced "mastery" rules in the Complete Fighter's Handbook, but it doesn't have a set of rules by that name.

Maybe PHATsakk was thinking of the combat skill system from S&P: Combat and Tactics?

 

[Willie the Duck]

We weren't talking about martial arts, though. We were talking about martial characters, ...
Maybe PHATsakk was thinking of the combat skill system from S&P: Combat and Tactics?

Whoops. A little distracted today.
Yes, I suspect that is what is being referenced. PO:C&T uses the Non-Proficient, Familiar, Proficient, Expert, Specialized, and Master terminology mentioned above for levels of proficiency for more than just martial arts.