D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Hussar]

Except I think the experience of playing Keep on the Borderlands under Basic rules or AD&D 1e/2e plays a lot differently than under 5e. The intent of KotB under earlier rules was that you had to sneak in, find allies, and treat the entire cave system as a stealth mission and do lots of hit and run because there was no way PCs at that level could take it on directly. 5e would take that same adventure and likely turn it into a heroic “storm the dungeon” adventure and perhaps a bit of a slog as a result. It will be interesting to see how the new adventure on KotB that they’re releasing modifies the original.

Heh. See, that's where play experience comes in. I've played KotB back in the day and much later as well, and not once was it ever done as a "sneak in, find allies stealth mission."

For one, AFAIR, there are no allies in the caves to speak of. And, one of the bigger changes in playstyle is party size. Basic/Expert or AD&D were both based around a group of 6-8 PC's plus NPC's. You weren't overwhelmed by enemies in KotB. Those were mostly on par encounters. Well presuming that you didn't go into the wrong cave of course.

But, it was easily possible that your AD&D group had 10-12 characters (between PC's, NPC's and various others) plus pets and whatnot. That's, to me, where the big change in playstyle has come in with WotC D&D. The presumption of a MUCH smaller group. A 5e group is generally 3-5 characters and that's what the game presumes.

And funnily enough, I think you have it exactly backwards. The Basic/Expert or AD&D group storms the dungeon. Why would they bother with stealth? Virtually none of the characters could actually be stealthy, since there were no rules for most characters trying to be sneaky. And, it was easy to have a 1st or 2nd level AD&D PC with a 1 or 2 AC, meaning that the baddies basically needed 19's and 20's to hit you and generally only did 2-4 points of damage on a hit anyway. Add in ranged weapons, where your bows got 2 attacks per round, and you could mow down the baddies.

5e is FAR more lethal than AD&D at those levels if you use AD&D numbers against 5e characters. 10 orcs will obliterate a 1st level 5e party. That wouldn't be a speedbump for and AD&D party.

 

[John Lloyd1]

Well presuming that you didn't go into the wrong cave of course.

We got lost and came in from the top. Our first encounter was the Minotaur.

 

[TiQuinn]

Heh. See, that's where play experience comes in. I've played KotB back in the day and much later as well, and not once was it ever done as a "sneak in, find allies stealth mission."

For one, AFAIR, there are no allies in the caves to speak of. And, one of the bigger changes in playstyle is party size. Basic/Expert or AD&D were both based around a group of 6-8 PC's plus NPC's. You weren't overwhelmed by enemies in KotB. Those were mostly on par encounters. Well presuming that you didn't go into the wrong cave of course.

But, it was easily possible that your AD&D group had 10-12 characters (between PC's, NPC's and various others) plus pets and whatnot. That's, to me, where the big change in playstyle has come in with WotC D&D. The presumption of a MUCH smaller group. A 5e group is generally 3-5 characters and that's what the game presumes.

And funnily enough, I think you have it exactly backwards. The Basic/Expert or AD&D group storms the dungeon. Why would they bother with stealth? Virtually none of the characters could actually be stealthy, since there were no rules for most characters trying to be sneaky. And, it was easy to have a 1st or 2nd level AD&D PC with a 1 or 2 AC, meaning that the baddies basically needed 19's and 20's to hit you and generally only did 2-4 points of damage on a hit anyway. Add in ranged weapons, where your bows got 2 attacks per round, and you could mow down the baddies.

5e is FAR more lethal than AD&D at those levels if you use AD&D numbers against 5e characters. 10 orcs will obliterate a 1st level 5e party. That wouldn't be a speedbump for and AD&D party.

Wow, we have totally different experiences of that adventure then. For one, while we had a decent size group (6 or 7 players), we seldom used henchmen/hirelings except on rare occasions. Second, there was less of an assumption that because the rules didn’t explicitly say you could be stealthy, that you couldn’t be stealthy, at least in our games. It was the thief who could move silently and hide in shadows in difficult situations but anyone could attempt to be stealthy if they could justify it, I.E. distractions and different armor - all those articles in places like Dragon about how armor wasn’t as noisy as people thought? That was because DMs used to often rule that chainmail clinked and clanged together so it was hard to be silent. Also, there were chances that the monsters heard you - it wasn’t automatic failure.

You could have a decent AC but I don’t know about a 1 or 2. That’s a pretty generous DM to be giving you the money for the field plate or whatever it was that got you that low at 1st or 2nd level.

Finally, our approach was definitely to sneak into the caves. Same as Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. There were enough orcs and goblins and the like that you were outmatched otherwise. That’s crazy how radically different our games were!

 

[Hussar]

Ac 2 was pretty easy. Banded plus shield is ac 3. Affordable at 1st level. 15 or better Dex and ac 2 or 1 was easily within reach. No field plate until Unearthed Arcana.

Note in Basic DnD, plate and shield were easily affordable at 1st level. So ac 2 was easy to get at 1st.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I dunno, I thought it was funny.

If you can't laugh at yourself you have no right to laugh at anyone else.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes Thaco the clown was everything wrong with the attitude of the current D&D Stewards. You don't have to understand D&D Conservatives. Planescape, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer are worst than the previous iterations. You just (Apparently) weren't around for the better version. You don't need to understand. You just have to deal with the consumer feedback the same how we have to deal with what we consider an awful art direction.

I was around for the earlier version of Ravenloft. And it was TERRIBLE. Boring, repetitive parodies of classic horror; hard railroad so-called adventures; the stupid "core" with trade between realms that completely undermined the nightmarish character of gothic fiction. VGR was a massive improvement.

The original Spelljammer was pretty poor too, but in this case WotC failed to improve it.

Never owned any version of Planescape. The computer game was good though.

 

[mamba]

, it was easily possible that your AD&D group had 10-12 characters (between PC's, NPC's and various others) plus pets and whatnot. That's, to me, where the big change in playstyle has come in with WotC D&D. The presumption of a MUCH smaller group. A 5e group is generally 3-5 characters and that's what the game presumes.

my group size has not really changed from AD&D to 5e, it’s always been the 3-6 range

 

[Zardnaar]

my group size has not really changed from AD&D to 5e, it’s always been the 3-6 range

Sane. I'll occasionally do 1-2 and have been in 7-9 but that's to many.

 

[James Gasik]

Outside of "name level" or drawing the Knight card (if you know, you know), my AD&D group didn't really have NPC followers. Nothing prevents players from hiring a small army of NPC's (as Rob Kuntz infamously did), but obviously, doing so can dramatically alter the course of play.

By the same token, our DM's fully believed that, without being a Thief, Ranger, or owning Cloaks + Boots of Elvenkind, no character, regardless of Dexterity, could be "stealthy". Characters were incentivized to wear as much armor as they could, and yes, "clanky" armor was assumed (no matter that I can apply my full defensive adjustment from Dexterity to full plate armor). So we didn't really stealth, enemies knew we were coming, and victory was earned by luck or overwhelming force- I had the worst of this because I was still mistakenly under the belief that D&D allowed me to play any kind of character I wanted, lol, while the min/maxed and basically optimized characters tended to survive longer.

It just goes to show that there was no "assumed" style of play. Some groups made efficient characters and functioned like well oiled machines with military precision. Some DM's would let you use certain tactics, others would not. Most groups I played in were a collection of oddballs and weirdos who were just as likely to betray each other as fight common foes. Thieves were always looking to backstab and rob the party and could not be trusted ("I'm roleplaying my character, I'm a Thief!"), Clerics were rarely played (and difficult to rely on, because you know, most people want to do something more than be a Cure Light Wounds dispenser- which got worse in the 2e era, because you could play a mythos priest whose god doesn't even grant the Healing Sphere!) Somehow, I ended up with a couple of high-level characters, but only on the backs of many, many, lower level ones who met ill fates.

 

[dave2008]

That’s crazy how radically different our games were!

That has been my experience since about 2008 when I started frequenting this and WotC's old forum. It opened my eyes to how vastly different the game can be, and is, played by different groups. Across time and all editions.