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It is a 15 to start as a Bard, but a 17 to dual class into thief, but in 1E you could lose points in your abilities, this most commonly happened from aging. So you needed a 17 to start as a Thief, but once you became a Thief it could drop to 15 and you could still become a Bard. After you...

Yes a lot more. Leveling worked differently so a F7/T9/B11 is not a 27th level character. They would have around 400,000xp which would be around an 10th level single classed character (9th level Fighter, 9th level Cleric, 11th level Magic-User, 11th level Thief). A 9th level fighter would...

Agree. Most of them were not stronger (until you found potions or a gauntlets of Ogre Power that I believe the Cleric could not use), but they did have better weapons and that mattered a lot. To start with the missile weapons as noted above, but aside from the fact that only the fighter could...

This is true, but I think it usually is either is because of one of the other things I mentioned, or it is to be combined with one or more of the other things. Even in the example you gave the party got a string of bad rolls in a row, first with the fighter failing the save and then following...

I don't know what you consider "very hard" but a "High Difficulty" encounter using the 2024 rules or a "Deadly" encounter using the 2014 rules will need a lot of that stuff to result in a TPK. In those encounters, the line is relatively thin for killing a PC. The line is not thin at all for...

Conquest and Fey Wanderer are respectively the only Paladin and Ranger worth playing. I could tell you why, but it might Frighten you. :p

But being able to ballpark it is fundamentally different than being able to do it expertly. I also disagree about it being razor thin. Poor dice, poor tactics (bonehead moves) and poor party composition for a specific monster can turn a moderate difficulty encounter into a TPK even with the...

See I prefer that swapped. I like 1E with some 2E add ons like the way they did Thief abilities and the magic-user spell system.

I've been playing D&D since 1981 and I love 5E. I played BEC and 1E extensively and loved those too, played 2E quite a bit and thought it was ok, not as good as 1E but still great. Played 3E some, it was ok but a definite downgrade. We tried 4E for one adventure and absolutely hated it and...

I gave it an 8. I would give the 2014 version an 8 too. The 2024 version is better some ways, worse in others. Either of these are much better than any of the earlier editions IMO.

So balanced but not equal ..... yeah fine, but then all this talk about balancing enemies kind of goes out the window. As long as you don't make it so wildly OP that it slaughters the PCs outright you should be fine and well within this window. When talking about these other definitions of...

Hence my original point, it is not that important that DMs don't know how to "balance" a monster.

I am in a Darksun campaign right now. I think these rules work, we have a couple different ones. FWIW here are some of ours: Sorcerers and Warlocks are NPC only No Paladins at all Most classes have limited subclasses available, including some homebrew subclasses Halflings in our game do not...

Balanced does not mean guaranteed to kill off the PCs. It means the enemies are equal to the PCs, so they should kill off the PCs half the time. That is not the same as being impossible. If you have a fight that is actually balanced against the PCs the PCs would have a 50% chance of winning...

I have no use for balance and generally think attempts to balance the game make it worse for the players. I have never seen extraneous rules improve playability.

Balance between players and monsters is not part of 5E or modern D&D. Even "High Difficulty" encounters are biased in favor of the PCs. From the DMG: "High Difficulty. A high-difficulty encounter could be lethal for one or more characters. To survive it, the characters will need smart...

I don't think 5E is intended to have NPCs with PC classes, at least not PHB PC classes.

Most monsters were not intended to assume NPC roles in 1E so it is not a dodge. The DMG gave advice on playing monsters as NPCs, but that was the exception and monsters were not intended to generally be NPCs. Even monsters that were humans such as Bandits and Buccaneers would normally be led...

This is not really true. 1E NPCs usually had classes. Monsters did not have classes, but NPCs who were not monsters definitely did. 1E classes were MUCH lighter than 5E classes though. A 1st level 5E fighter has more build choices to make than a 10th level 1E Fighter. If classes were as...

I think this is a great example of what I am talking about. You say you want NPC classes, yet you also say "don't have to go through the whole process" .... then why have those rules? What purpose are those rules serving if you are not even using them and have stated you don't have to use them?