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Quite a few of the later 1e modules also give xp values right in the monster stats, and I also use those when they're given. I'll math it out if I have to but if someone else has done the work for me, I'm fine with that too. :)

For that, for the 100 regulars I'd just take a rough average of their hit points (let's say it's 8 each and they're 2 HD) and calculate their base xp 100 x (20 + 16) then if 40 of them had missile weapons I'd add 40 x the SA bonus. Quick and easy. The leaders, witch doctors, etc. probably have...

Harry Potter and various other Quidditch players would beg to disagree.

IME the immediate and obvious risk of having variable pricing on magic items is that the players, in character as their PCs, will see and exploit the opportunity to buy low here and sell high there; and when it comes to making a very good living, trading in magic items that way is far less...

I disagree. The point of a healer is to mete out those healing resources wisely. For healing purposes, you're going from Cleric player tracks: hit points, spells remaining Everyone else tracks: hit points Total things tracked = number of characters plus one To Cleric player tracks: hit...

Though you probably intend this as sarcasm, it's also quite true. Just make it... Encounter balance? Figure it out yourself. Here's some basic tips and pointers. Treasure distribution? Figure it out yourself. See our published adventures for examples if needed. World building? Figure it out...

Looks good. The only thing that seems really counterintuitive is that the base price doesn't apply to "standard", i.e. new out of a shop, but instead to "poor-worn", i.e. secondhand.

Conceptually, the idea seems sound though the numbers could use some tweaking. If the goal-length for an encounter is 3 rounds then most abilities should only be usable twice before temporary shutdown (also maybe only 2 or 3 rounds), so as to force those do-I-use-it-or-not decisions to occur...

You're conflating role-playing complexity with mechanical complexity. They are not the same. Forcing them to strategize - i.e. adding complexity to their role-playing - is great; as is pretty much anything else that encourages or forces more in-character interaction. Adding more bookkeeping...

I think it's not so much that they intrinsically want to play the game that way as they've been conditioned to play the game that way through a) marketing and b) lack of highly-visible well-marketed alternatives. Again, this is a result of conditioning. Had those players' first-and-foremost...

Trial and error is the answer, yes. Beyond that, all it needs a bit of perhaps-intentionally vague guidance suggesting the DM compare the total party levels vs the total HD of the foes they're facing with advisement that things might get messy if Foes HD > Party Level Total. And provided the...

It doesn't help that the lists of abilities that provide SA and EA bonuses are incomplete. Aging (as in what a Ghost does to you) isn't mentioned, nor are psyonics, nor a few other important monster abilities that clearly count as special or exceptional abilities, but those things often are...

Maybe the NPC Elf was adventuring at the time... :) Sometimes as DM I'll throw in seemingly-random items for parties to (maybe) find while adventuring, unrelated to the current adventure or mission, as potential seeds for later investigation or further adventures*. A long-thought-lost book of...

And, as it's lore, can thus always be changed to suit a more simulation-based rationale. I mean sure, there's concessions that have to be made in the name of playability and-or fun, no argument there. But when it's possible to change something to better simulate an actual world without...

I learned the hard way about 43 years ago (i.e. within weeks of first starting to play) not to expect much by way of consistency in 1e material. :) No doubt. Then again, there's a strong argument that says class-level limits for demihumans were purely small-g gamist; a mechanism to both...

That's what made The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings so unusual (and so good!) - they were adventuring parties, not just single heroes.

Healing surges (or hit dice-based healing, same idea) add a new thing that every player has to track along with hit points, no matter what character they're playing. That's outright more complex than just the healer's player having to track remaining spells, which he'd still have to do anyway...

Completely agree with 1. Don't care about 2. I'm not trying to emulate "fantasy heroes"; instead I'd rather have it that even the most minor of combats is at best going to whittle down some resources and at worst could have long-lasting impacts. Boss fights are very much not the only ones...

Better idea: throw out the whole notion of CR. There's just too many variables that the designers can't account for to allow any such system to work well enough to bother with: --- party size; not every table plays with 4 or 5 character parties at exactly one character per player; some have...

Fair enough, but these big-tent conventions do serve as a pretty good bellwether for how popular a game is likely to be or become; and - like it or not - popularity leads directly to a) sales and b) a larger player base. And sales then lead to the publisher a) surviving and b) being more keen...