One of the topics that comes up (you know, not often or anything ...) on D&D threads is the so-called "LFQW," or as other people like to call it, "Wizard Supremacy." This debate has gotten a lot of attention, especially since the introduction of 3e ... to which I would say ... of course Wizards are favored. They named the class after the company, amirite?
Anyway, I was looking at the various confusingly titled threads about AD&D we have going (about why people would either want to play 1e, or WANT to play 1e) and I realized that many people didn't realize quite how awesome the AD&D Fighter was. So I thought I'd do a brief historical thread and detail the ways in which the 1e Fighter could more than hold their own against the other classes. In, um, a fight. It's kind of in the name.
So, my usual disclaimers:
Disclaimers: This is the stuff you ignore before getting your blood all angered up and arguing in the comments!
-I am discussing the 1e PHB Fighter.
-I am NOT discussing the OD&D Fighting Man.
-I am NOT discussing the 2e Fighter, optional rules in Dragon Magazine, or weapon specialization introduced in UA. Although weapon specialization did help fighters.
-As always, if you get five 1e players to tell you how they played the game, you will get seven different versions. I am sure that your table played with different rules, or discarded some of these rules, or maybe you might be thinking of the time you were playing Traveler. It's all good. This is discussing the primary PHB + DMG rules that were widely used; I will note in the essay that some of the advantages may not have been employed at all tables for rules that I know were not widely employed (specifically, the casting time issue).
-Finally, this is about fighters. Paladins and Rangers are subclasses of the Fighter, and I'm not going to specifically talk about them. They're fine, especially for that one guy who always rolled a 17 charisma when no one else was looking. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Brad.
A. Fighters were the toughest class, and that mattered.
Hit points ... I mean, they matter in 5e, but not that much. In 1e, they really mattered. And fighters got all the hit points. To start with, fighters got d10 hit points. They were the only class to get d10. Clerics? d8. Thieves? d6. Magic users and monks? d4.
In addition, hit points in 1e "topped out" at name level. At a certain level, you no longer acquired a dice for hit points- just a set amount. So at 10th level (and from that point on) a cleric would get 2hp per level. A MU would get 1hp per level from 11th level on. A thief would get 2hp per level from 11th level on.
Fighters? They received 3hp per level from level 10 on. But the advantages didn't stop there. See, 1e also provided for constitution bonuses to hit points. All classes could get +1 or +2 to hit points/level (for scores of 15 or 16 in Constitution). But only a fighter could take advantage of a 17 or 18 in constitution to increase that bonus to +3 or +4, respectively.
All of this meant that the fighter would always have the most hit points in general, and more importantly, have the ability to have by far the highest theoretical hit points. 1e had much more limited healing, so hit points mattered. A sixth level fighter that had an 18 Con had (5.5*6)+(4*6)= 57 hit points. A sixth level magic user had (2.5*6) = 15 hit points.
B. Fighters were the strongest class, and that mattered.
If you've never played 1e, you might still have heard people refer to a strength of 18/00. What did that mean? Well, if you happened to have an 18 strength, that was cool. But ... if you happened to have an 18 strength, and you were a fighter, you were allowed to roll percentiles to see how, um, eighteen-y your strength was. And this mattered a massive amount.
So a cleric who had an 18 strength was limited to +1/+2 (to hit, to damage) when it comes to melee. But if the same character was a fighter, they got to roll the percentile dice. The worst that would happen is that they would go to +1/+3. The best? They could go all the way to +3/+6. That's right .... +3/+6. Only available to fighters.
But while the melee bonuses were great, this also had a massive impact on your ability to carry stuff and open doors (and bend bars, but that's neither here nor there). Opening doors was a big thing, and fighters with 18 percentile strength could force open magic doors and locks. In addition, carrying stuff? You had to be able to carry treasure out of the dungeon in order to get credit for it as XP. So being able to carry a lot? Kind of a good feature.
C. Fighters were the only class that could use any armor, shield, and weapon.
A lot of the armor and weapon restrictions in 1e might seem nonsensical today, but they dramatically affected the gameplay back then. The easiest one to understand is the armor restrictions- only the cleric and the fighter were allowed to wear any armor and carry and shield. Which immediately meant that the fighter would be able to wear any set of magical armor or use any magical shield that was found, and that the fighter would have an excellent AC.
More important was the weapon availability. The fighter (and the assassin) could use any type of weapon. Why does this matter so much? Because there were severe weapon restrictions. A cleric was restricted to clubs, flails, hammers, maces, and staffs. That's it. A thief? Club, dagger, dart, sling, and some sword (not two-handed or bastard). In addition, the fighter started with four weapon proficiencies and gained a new one every three levels. Why does all of this matter? Three reasons.
1. What do you notice that is missing from the other classes? That's right- missile weapons. Do you want to use a crossbow? A long bow? You need to be a fighter.
2. Clerics (who are the secondary melee character) .... don't get swords. Or most other common melee weapons. Which means that all of those magic swords you find? They are going to the fighter. And in 1e, you find a lot of magic swords. Moreover, the magic swords are (with the exception of the Holy Trinity) the most powerful magic weapons in the game.
3. Finally, there are so many magic weapons that aren't on the list for the other classes. So if you find a cool and unique weapon- say,Whelm Wave (a magic trident) - guess who gets to use it? That's right, the fighter.
1e was structured to promote magic swords, and to the extent that there were other cool magic weapons, many of them were also only useable by fighters.
D. Fighters were the only class with multiple attacks.
Okay, I've written before about the squirrely rules in AD&D for attacking with two weapons (yes, you can, it has to be in your off-hand, and it has to be a hand-axe or a dagger) but that's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down again. Instead, just focusing on the basic rules... fighters have two ways to get multiple attacks, the standard way and the special exception.
First, fighters get 3 melee attacks per two rounds (one attack in the first round, two attacks the second round, repeat) starting at level 7, and then two attacks a round starting at level 13. Which is good! But they also get a separate ability to get a number of attacks equal to their level when attacking monsters of less than one hit die and commoner (humans of 0 level). Think of it as either "Going town on the kobolds," or, um, "Going town on the, uh, town."
E. (Optional) A Sword is Faster than a Spell.
I don't want to oversell this last point, primarily because initiative and spellcasting was so variable in AD&D. But I do think it is inarguable that the use of magic in 1e in combat was much less common than it would become later, it was more spectacular (when it worked), but it was also more dangerous. Those three things are inarguable- the first is obvious- there were no combat cantrips. and spellcasting didn't "recharge" as easily. The second and third? Well, a well-placed fireball did wonders, but most 1e players will have a story of casting a fireball without fully thinking through the whole "what is the volume of a fireball in a small cave that we are in?" question.
But the most important issue is that most spells (with the exception of a few, such as magic missile and the power words) had casting times that made them difficult to cast in combat, as the caster would always go last. If a caster is hit during the casting, then the spell is ruined; this meant that (much like the war game roots), the caster might make good artillery, but the fighter was always the primary front-line combatant.
Conclusion.
1e differed greatly from a more modern conception of the game in many ways, but as you can see from the list, one of the ways that it differed was niche protection. The Magic User couldn't go "Full Gandalf" and use a magic sword. Or wear armor. Heck, other classes couldn't even take advantage of high strength and constitution scores like the Fighter could. Even things we might not remember today, such as the restriction on missile weapons, mattered a great deal. Do you want to have an archer? You need a fighter.
Is there a larger point to draw from this? Maybe ... maybe that the fighter's original versatility ... the fact that it could do all the things that were expressly prohibited to other classes ... was what made it so awesome and was its defining trait ... that this defining trait has been eroded away as express prohibitions have fallen away, making the fighter's core trait (its niche) no longer viable ... maybe that's a point? Maybe. That's for others to decide. All I know is that the 1e Fighter was a fearsome class. If you don't believe me, take it up with Robilar.
Anyway, I was looking at the various confusingly titled threads about AD&D we have going (about why people would either want to play 1e, or WANT to play 1e) and I realized that many people didn't realize quite how awesome the AD&D Fighter was. So I thought I'd do a brief historical thread and detail the ways in which the 1e Fighter could more than hold their own against the other classes. In, um, a fight. It's kind of in the name.
So, my usual disclaimers:
Disclaimers: This is the stuff you ignore before getting your blood all angered up and arguing in the comments!
-I am discussing the 1e PHB Fighter.
-I am NOT discussing the OD&D Fighting Man.
-I am NOT discussing the 2e Fighter, optional rules in Dragon Magazine, or weapon specialization introduced in UA. Although weapon specialization did help fighters.
-As always, if you get five 1e players to tell you how they played the game, you will get seven different versions. I am sure that your table played with different rules, or discarded some of these rules, or maybe you might be thinking of the time you were playing Traveler. It's all good. This is discussing the primary PHB + DMG rules that were widely used; I will note in the essay that some of the advantages may not have been employed at all tables for rules that I know were not widely employed (specifically, the casting time issue).
-Finally, this is about fighters. Paladins and Rangers are subclasses of the Fighter, and I'm not going to specifically talk about them. They're fine, especially for that one guy who always rolled a 17 charisma when no one else was looking. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Brad.
A. Fighters were the toughest class, and that mattered.
Hit points ... I mean, they matter in 5e, but not that much. In 1e, they really mattered. And fighters got all the hit points. To start with, fighters got d10 hit points. They were the only class to get d10. Clerics? d8. Thieves? d6. Magic users and monks? d4.
In addition, hit points in 1e "topped out" at name level. At a certain level, you no longer acquired a dice for hit points- just a set amount. So at 10th level (and from that point on) a cleric would get 2hp per level. A MU would get 1hp per level from 11th level on. A thief would get 2hp per level from 11th level on.
Fighters? They received 3hp per level from level 10 on. But the advantages didn't stop there. See, 1e also provided for constitution bonuses to hit points. All classes could get +1 or +2 to hit points/level (for scores of 15 or 16 in Constitution). But only a fighter could take advantage of a 17 or 18 in constitution to increase that bonus to +3 or +4, respectively.
All of this meant that the fighter would always have the most hit points in general, and more importantly, have the ability to have by far the highest theoretical hit points. 1e had much more limited healing, so hit points mattered. A sixth level fighter that had an 18 Con had (5.5*6)+(4*6)= 57 hit points. A sixth level magic user had (2.5*6) = 15 hit points.
B. Fighters were the strongest class, and that mattered.
If you've never played 1e, you might still have heard people refer to a strength of 18/00. What did that mean? Well, if you happened to have an 18 strength, that was cool. But ... if you happened to have an 18 strength, and you were a fighter, you were allowed to roll percentiles to see how, um, eighteen-y your strength was. And this mattered a massive amount.
So a cleric who had an 18 strength was limited to +1/+2 (to hit, to damage) when it comes to melee. But if the same character was a fighter, they got to roll the percentile dice. The worst that would happen is that they would go to +1/+3. The best? They could go all the way to +3/+6. That's right .... +3/+6. Only available to fighters.
But while the melee bonuses were great, this also had a massive impact on your ability to carry stuff and open doors (and bend bars, but that's neither here nor there). Opening doors was a big thing, and fighters with 18 percentile strength could force open magic doors and locks. In addition, carrying stuff? You had to be able to carry treasure out of the dungeon in order to get credit for it as XP. So being able to carry a lot? Kind of a good feature.
C. Fighters were the only class that could use any armor, shield, and weapon.
A lot of the armor and weapon restrictions in 1e might seem nonsensical today, but they dramatically affected the gameplay back then. The easiest one to understand is the armor restrictions- only the cleric and the fighter were allowed to wear any armor and carry and shield. Which immediately meant that the fighter would be able to wear any set of magical armor or use any magical shield that was found, and that the fighter would have an excellent AC.
More important was the weapon availability. The fighter (and the assassin) could use any type of weapon. Why does this matter so much? Because there were severe weapon restrictions. A cleric was restricted to clubs, flails, hammers, maces, and staffs. That's it. A thief? Club, dagger, dart, sling, and some sword (not two-handed or bastard). In addition, the fighter started with four weapon proficiencies and gained a new one every three levels. Why does all of this matter? Three reasons.
1. What do you notice that is missing from the other classes? That's right- missile weapons. Do you want to use a crossbow? A long bow? You need to be a fighter.
2. Clerics (who are the secondary melee character) .... don't get swords. Or most other common melee weapons. Which means that all of those magic swords you find? They are going to the fighter. And in 1e, you find a lot of magic swords. Moreover, the magic swords are (with the exception of the Holy Trinity) the most powerful magic weapons in the game.
3. Finally, there are so many magic weapons that aren't on the list for the other classes. So if you find a cool and unique weapon- say,
1e was structured to promote magic swords, and to the extent that there were other cool magic weapons, many of them were also only useable by fighters.
D. Fighters were the only class with multiple attacks.
Okay, I've written before about the squirrely rules in AD&D for attacking with two weapons (yes, you can, it has to be in your off-hand, and it has to be a hand-axe or a dagger) but that's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down again. Instead, just focusing on the basic rules... fighters have two ways to get multiple attacks, the standard way and the special exception.
First, fighters get 3 melee attacks per two rounds (one attack in the first round, two attacks the second round, repeat) starting at level 7, and then two attacks a round starting at level 13. Which is good! But they also get a separate ability to get a number of attacks equal to their level when attacking monsters of less than one hit die and commoner (humans of 0 level). Think of it as either "Going town on the kobolds," or, um, "Going town on the, uh, town."
E. (Optional) A Sword is Faster than a Spell.
I don't want to oversell this last point, primarily because initiative and spellcasting was so variable in AD&D. But I do think it is inarguable that the use of magic in 1e in combat was much less common than it would become later, it was more spectacular (when it worked), but it was also more dangerous. Those three things are inarguable- the first is obvious- there were no combat cantrips. and spellcasting didn't "recharge" as easily. The second and third? Well, a well-placed fireball did wonders, but most 1e players will have a story of casting a fireball without fully thinking through the whole "what is the volume of a fireball in a small cave that we are in?" question.
But the most important issue is that most spells (with the exception of a few, such as magic missile and the power words) had casting times that made them difficult to cast in combat, as the caster would always go last. If a caster is hit during the casting, then the spell is ruined; this meant that (much like the war game roots), the caster might make good artillery, but the fighter was always the primary front-line combatant.
Conclusion.
1e differed greatly from a more modern conception of the game in many ways, but as you can see from the list, one of the ways that it differed was niche protection. The Magic User couldn't go "Full Gandalf" and use a magic sword. Or wear armor. Heck, other classes couldn't even take advantage of high strength and constitution scores like the Fighter could. Even things we might not remember today, such as the restriction on missile weapons, mattered a great deal. Do you want to have an archer? You need a fighter.
Is there a larger point to draw from this? Maybe ... maybe that the fighter's original versatility ... the fact that it could do all the things that were expressly prohibited to other classes ... was what made it so awesome and was its defining trait ... that this defining trait has been eroded away as express prohibitions have fallen away, making the fighter's core trait (its niche) no longer viable ... maybe that's a point? Maybe. That's for others to decide. All I know is that the 1e Fighter was a fearsome class. If you don't believe me, take it up with Robilar.
Last edited:
