D&D General 1e feel for 5E

[toucanbuzz]

Okay, then. I, on the other hand, can only speak to my experience of having actually played through 1e for years, because I am, sadly, old as dirt.

Oh, I'm probably not far behind. I started with an old red box, 1E briefly but then found there was this 2E thing, then 3E, then Pathfinder, then 5E, then moved states and met some folks, now friends, who'd never rolled a d20. They're okay with the idea "make the game your own" and my house-rule tinkering, which includes old-school defenses and powers for my monsters.

 

[Lanefan]

Tracking time in 1e is vitally important for spell durations, travel and exploration, and determining how often to check for wandering monsters.

It was all about bullseye lanterns, and we mostly hand-waved it, assuming that there was light unless there was a special stipulation.

And continual-light rocks.

I never used monsters with level drain because players hated it. Especially in a system where levelling is such a grind. Probably the most punishing and hated mechanic in the history of D&D.

The game does provide a way to recover those lost levels: the Restoration spell. Yes in 1e it's 7th-Cleric, but that's the same as Resurrection and it's not like that never got used.

As written it only gets you back one lost level per casting, which is IMO harsh, but it's still better than nothing.

Yeah, I think when we old timers wax nostalgic we tend to exaggerate - "uphill in the snow, BOTH WAYS," and so on. There were some significant differences (hirelings!) but 1e was nowhere near as brutal as some folks make it out to have been, and lots of players were house ruling the more obnoxious rules (for example, giving new characters maximum HP at level 1 was common practice back then - in fact, my first character, a ranger with constitution 18 (17+1 for age modifier) started at level 1 with 24 HP!).

The first time I ever saw max h.p. at 1st was 3e.

And... +1 modifier to Con for age? That doesn't sound like RAW.

 

[ezo]

And... +1 modifier to Con for age? That doesn't sound like RAW.

It was:

A human fighter, for instance, started at 15+1d4 years old, always putting them in the "young adult" group, giving them -1 WIS, +1 CON.

Anyway, FWIW, I never played in a single AD&D game (1st or 2nd) which granted max hp at level 1. At best, the rule was you couldn't start with less than half. So, if you were a fighter with a d10 and rolled a 2, you got 5 instead.

 

[Lanefan]

Traps. Traps were everywhere. Plus the 'trap' of unknown potion bottles and unknown magical treasures. There were a lot of cursed items that would just kill characters.

This is a big one. The only ways to determine an item's properties in 1e (outside of the very rare intelligent items that'd just tell you what they did) were hands-on field testing and-or the Identify spell. And this field-testing process carried, sometimes, significant risk in itself.

4e and 5e have almost eliminated this process, but it's one of the easier things to change back.

 

[Lanefan]

Uh-oh, "hurt a player's feelings." I think we all know where you are coming from now, but let's look at your statement for its veracity. Which spells, exactly, in 1e were dangerous to the caster?

Teleport could kill the caster (and any passengers) outright on an unlucky roll by having them appear in solid rock.

Fireball into a too-small space (most often due to casting into an unseen or unknown area) was kinda risky.

Misjudging your angles or distance on a rebounding lightning bolt often ended very badly.

Polymorphing someone else, though not dangerous to the caster, was a really bad idea for the someone else.

Those are the four big ones. There's various other spells that can, if unlucky, pose a risk to the caster and-or allies. Identify knocked the caster down by 8 Con points for a while. And some high-level spells cost the caster a permanent point of Con.

As for denying the player the "thrill of combat for more than a round or two," this can and still does happen in 5e; in fact, in my very last game at school (Thursday) two of the players had their characters possessed in the first round and lost control of them for virtually the entire battle, until their own party beat them unconscious. However, as a rule we probably don't want a lot of situations where players don't get to play their characters because games should be fun.

Did you let the players keep playing their characters whiole possessed? As in, you've been told to do this, now go ahead and do it? IME players often love these opportunities.

 

[fuindordm]

Add to those unsafe spells:

In AD&D when the fly spell ends you fall, it doesn't change into feather fall.
Haste is very powerful but can age the target and force a system shock roll.
Contact other plane can drive you insane.
Most spells are safe but enough of them aren't that magic feels like it has teeth.

Regarding consequences...

My last post was short, expressing a subjective and personal feeling I have about how the game has changed.

I was not trying to say players don't have interesting choices about builds and tactics. The PC building subgame has grown progressively richer over the editions, and that's generally a good thing.

What is less good, and again this is just my personal feeling, is when the races and classes and feats converge into a blandly uniform competence. When species are differentiated by ribbons and all the magic-using classes can pick from each other's spell lists, and you have to squint hard to tell the difference between a cleric and a druid, and you have dex-optimized swashbucklers fighting alongside cha-optimized paladin-warlocks in the front line...

Well, I feel let down. As a player and as a DM, I don't like it when there are so many builds, the build hardly matters.

So getting back to the OP, my personal take on a AD&D-ish 5e would dial the character building game back a bit, remove subclasses and feats that let the core niches bleed into each other. Some customization is great but species and class (or multiclass) should be the two biggest picks.

 

[haakon1]

My pleasure! And my apologies if my response was blunt, but I hope you understand my reaction? When people post about moding 5E instead of playing another edition, they have their reasons. I've yet to see someone respond, "Huh? Wow, duh, your right, I'll just play 1E instead---I never thought of that!"

I understand now. I was starting to reply hot myself, but hopefully toned it down to “huh, explain”. Good to meet you, as it were.

Cool! Funny you should mention Star Wars... we have an addition for our 5E mod that brings in about a dozen races from SW.

Ron uses 5e 2014 RAW - I need to redo my character in 2024 rules - but adds Star Wars themed characters and gear. Last game, my Aasimar Warlock hot wired a mechanical wagon called the “aluminum oxen” to escape a dragon.

Where I am there is barely a market at all. My regular group is myself and three players. Last night a fourth player joined us and if our games move to every-other-Saturday, he'll probably join full time. I have two others that are interested, but couldn't make it last night.

I play less frequently. Ron’s game is 10 times a year. My two games (same campaign, split groups) in 3.5e Greyhawk is email, so all the time and never, but slow - going since 1998. My niece’s 3.5e homebrew setting game is for the family maybe 3-5 times a year. (She plays 5e at school.)

The main problem I see with editions isn’t people demanding one but being confused by rules.

Oh, they'd probably try it. And after this current 5E campaign I am going to pitch an AD&D game, but when I've done them in the past players have found them an interesting novelty as a break from 5E, but nothing they want to commit to long-term.

It is one reason why I am so hesitant to break far from 5E in my house-rules. It is what the players like for now, and I can tolerate 2014 rules well enough, so I just go with it.

Well, I hope you go for it and enjoy it. I last played 1e around 2001. Still what I think D&D is all about though.

 

[Clint_L]

And... +1 modifier to Con for age? That doesn't sound like RAW.

Yeah it’s in with other age modifiers near the start of the DMG.

 

[Clint_L]

This is a big one. The only ways to determine an item's properties in 1e (outside of the very rare intelligent items that'd just tell you what they did) were hands-on field testing and-or the Identify spell. And this field-testing process carried, sometimes, significant risk in itself.

4e and 5e have almost eliminated this process, but it's one of the easier things to change back.

No, you still need the identify spell. Maybe a super high arcana check depending on the DM, but a character with high arcana probably has the identify spell.

In our 1e games we just said identify was happening during the plentiful long rests while we waited on the cleric, which meant it was often hand waved. 5e is same same except short rests.

 

[Lanefan]

No, you still need the identify spell. Maybe a super high arcana check depending on the DM, but a character with high arcana probably has the identify spell.

Was it 4e, then, where you'd learn all the properties of a magic item just by having it in your possession for 24 (?) hours?

In our 1e games we just said identify was happening during the plentiful long rests while we waited on the cleric, which meant it was often hand waved. 5e is same same except short rests.

In 1e Identify requires a 100 g.p. pearl each time, which makes it a bit hard to just hand-wave.

Most of the time IME it's shortage of pearls that limits their ID casting.