In my experience, most 1e DM's - then and now - have an enormous body of house rules that they keep in their head under the lose heading of 'the way I do things'.
Maybe most 1e DM's but I'm not one of them.
Then you don't have 3 pages of house rules. You have 3 pages of things you've considered important enough to write down because you've felt the need to communicate them, and who knows how many pages of stuff you've not considered important enough to write down. But make no mistake, these consitute a huge rule book of things you've memorized and relied on in play.
No, I DO have 3 pages of house rules. Why do you want to continue arguing this with me? You haven't seen my house rules or how I run a game. The 3 pages I have are all additions to the rules. None are changes to existing rules, clarifications or expansions. And half of the first page covers how I handle character creation (rolling stats, etc.). I have no need for any more than that. If I were to write down everything I do that is slightly different than the rules as written, or that I consider clarifications of existing rules, I can see my document hitting five or six pages. That's it. There is no way I can even imagine anything more than that. And I do know how many pages of stuff I've not considered important enough to write down. That maybe equals another page or three at most. I run 1e very rules light. You might need to make 100 page house rule documents, but I certainly don't. I believe you said upthread that you also had a pretty extensive house rules document for 3e as well. I can't even fathom that. There are already so many rules for nearly every situation in 3e. Having pages of house rules is impossible for me to imagine.
I will only say that what you've described is a far more complicated system than you think it is.
I don't see the complication. I might say "You enter a 20x20 room. The floor is bare. No decorations adorn the walls save for a steel shield on the north wall. In the center of the room is a desk with a single chair behind it. Other than the way you came in, there are no other apparent exits." My players may then say "Krennan will search the desk, being careful not to open any drawers just yet. Endo will walk the perimeter of the room looking at the walls and for secret doors. Rodric will examine the shield on the wall, using his dagger to pry it away from the wall to see if anything is behind it."
That's it. Then I'd tell them that the drawers on the desk are all battered and standing slightly open. Nothing of interest is found in them. There is nothing else remarkable about the desk. No secret doors are found. The shield easily comes away from the wall. Behind it is a carved niche with a small pouch inside.
This all happens smoothly and seamlessly in actual play. No rolling of dice was required. And it takes a minute or two of real time. No rules were referenced in a book. At worst, if a die roll was called for, I would have made a call and asked for it without referencing a skill description to see what the constraints of a specific skill are. Quick and easy.
Sure, but that's not a valid measurement. You've fallen into a logical fallacy, and are starting to make me feel as if I'm the Conneticutt Yankee in King Author's Court.
...snip long discussion of comparing 3e and 1e PCs...
I already stated in my previous reply that comparing 1e and 3e PCs and the relative challenges they face in their own rules editions is an argument for another day. I acknowledge that it isn't necessarily cut and dried but there is some basis for the argument both ways.
I'll grant that to a certain extent. Except that grabbing feats is one of least time consuming jobs in creating an NPC. In both 1e and 3e you'll still need to note equipment, and assign spells. The extra burden of assigning feats is a small extra burden. By far the most time consuming thing in 3e is assigning skill points, but there you can often simply leave the task undone until you need it - much as you would in 1e.
Assigning feats is time consuming. Maybe not for you but for me it is time consuming and tedious. And skills are an even bigger offender. And I'm not sure what you mean by leaving the task undone much as in 1e. I don't assign skills in 1e. So that is a task I don't have to worry about when creating a 1e NPC.
Thanks for the example. It will be very useful for making my point.
First of all, you didn't compare like to like. You'd need to compare ogres to ogres to make a good comparison. The ogre picks up an extra line by virtue of needing possessions.
An ogre stat block in 1e is going to be the same size as the worker ant and list the same sorts of info.
Temple of Elemental Evil example:
Ogres (2): AC 4, MV 9", HD 4+1, hp 22, 20, #AT 1, D 5-10 (stone-set club, 1d6+4); XP 200, 190
That is your ogre comparison. Far shorter block and the same as the worker ant.
Secondly, I agree that in general the 3e stat block is 1-2 lines longer than the equivalent 1e stat block, but there is a kicker. The 3e stat block is complete. The 1e stat block is not. The first edition stat block simply tells you what tables to reference, and includes only the most commonly used information about the monster.
More than 1-2 lines longer. Look at my 3e ogre and my 1e ogre blocks. The 3e block is 9 lines longer. That is a far cry from 1-2 lines longer. And the 1e block is complete enough for general use in play. I don't need to look up anything else about the 1e ogre to run that encounter. It has everything I need.
It doesn't for example address the question: Do worker ants have infravision? You'd have to look that up. Also, the typical 1e stat block doesn't note that 1e stirges have a bonus to initiative; you'd need to remember that or flip open a book while running the combat. You'd also need to look up its saves, THAC0, and so forth on a table. This isn't so bad in the case of the worker ant, but consider the case of the 1e ogre stat block. Quick, what is the to hit modifer of a club to hit a AC 4? What is its weapon speed factor? What is its bend bars check? (Ogres do have a strength score, it's just not listed in the stat block.) According to the DMG rules for grappling, what damage does an ogre do in a grapple and what is the chance that it will succesfully grapple a player?
I don't need to know if they have infravision. Stirges don't have an initiative bonus in 1e. Not sure where you came up with that. Looking up saves and thaco is something that takes no more time than looking in the 3e stat block for base attack bonus. I see the ogre is 4+1 hit dice, I compare that to the chart on my DM screen and roll. The chart tells me what AC I just hit. I can simplify this further with thaco if I so desire. Same with saves, ogres are equivalent to a 4th level fighter, thus use their saves which are also on my screen. I don't use weapon vs AC, and from all accounts I have read, neither did Gygax. It is a carry over from Chainmail and I know of very few who use or used it. Weapon speed only comes into play in cases of initiative ties. I look at the club on my trusty DM screen and see it has a weapon speed of 4. Or I handwave it and say the PC tied with the ogre for initiative swings first. This is the difference between us. I don't care to have the rules spell everything out for me. I am shooting for rules that are light and run quickly in play. I could care less what the ogre's bend bars check is. Why do I need that to run combat? In the unlikely event it comes up, I would look at the strength chart if I was really concerned with it. But that isn't going to come up often in combat. Neither is infravision or weapon speed.
Now, you might be saying, "That's not a fair comparison. I don't use to hit modifiers for weapons vs. AC. And I never have used the DMG rules for grappling in a game (and besides, they look broken anyway, we have our own house rules)." And all that may be true, but it doesn't mean my comparison is less fair. Rather I will say that the reason that you don't use 'to hit modifiers for weapons vs. AC' and that you don't use the grappling rules is that they aren't included in the stat block, so you never considered that they were important and by the time you figured out what they were you'd become acustomed to playing in one manner and ignoring them.
No, I never used to hit modifiers vs. AC because I don't like them and think they unnecessarily burden the game. As I said, they are a carryover from Chainmail and the creator supposedly didn't use them either. Grapple doesn't come up often enough to matter. When it does, it would slow down the game to look it up... or I would just make up rules on the fly, which might different in subsequent combats where it comes up much as Water Bob said earlier.
The weapon vs. AC rules are NOT important to me. They may be to you, but from all the 1e players and DMs I've talked to, a large portion don't use them. I always knew they were there but couldn't care less about them.
Meanwhile, for me, the 'heavier' looking 3e stat block is actually means less work and overhead for me than the 1e one because it means that - having the stat block - I don't really need to look at anything else. And, if I wanted a stripped down stat block that didn't list skills, base attack bonus, flat-footed AC, special qualities, etc. that din't necessarily come up in every fight or weren't relevant to the encounter, I could.
And I'll argue that I don't need to look anything up with regards to the 1e stat blocks. Everything I need for almost every combat can be found in the ogre stat block or the worker ant stat block.
You can only trim 3e stat blocks so far. Taking out flat footed would be a mistake because EVERYONE in 3e starts out combat flatfooted until their initiative comes up. Yes you can strip them down but because those elements in their stat blocks are so closely tied to the system, they are needed more than 1e needs to know whether a creature has infravision or what a creature's bend bars roll is. In 1e, monsters don't have stats listed anywhere. You can deduce that an ogre is 18/00 strength because of other elements in the game (Gauntlets of Ogre Power). But it does not list a strength score in the ogre description in the Monster Manual. If you need or want stats for your monster, you either assign them or roll them in 1e. Hand-wavy works here. In 3e, it is built into the system. Most people are going to look in the stat block and if they fail to find them there, most will look in the Monster Manual to see what their stats are. You can hand wave them in 3e too but they are already there for you. You just have to look them up.
Most important, in 1e I would have had to hand write this down in my prep (in practice I probably didn't write stat blocks, just '8 orcs'). In 3e, I can cut and paste a stat block from a file that lists all the monsters stat blocks. The extra length doesn't burden me in preperation at all, and in play it actually makes things go faster.
For me, stat block writing for 1e is faster, cut and paste aside. Obviously you are the opposite. Also, I got tired of scanning stat blocks for 3e looking for the pertinent information. All stat blocks in 3e are not uniform. I am referring to published adventures. There are multiple ways to format a stat block. And because of that, I often ended up hunting around in the block looking for what I needed. In 1e, the blocks are sparse enough that finding what I need is faster. Writing your own stat blocks for your own adventures will of course remedy this if you use a uniform stat block. But not with published adventures, unless you plan to rewrite them before play.
I suppose I don't either, but as an ancedote, everyone in this thread who is upset with my characterization of 1e appears to be playing a minimized cut down version of the game and trumpeting this minimalist quality as the reason that they prefer the system.
I don't see it. Because I don't use weapon vs. AC doesn't mean I am playing a cut down version of 1e. If another rule or two gets ignored, I still don't believe it is a cut down version. The 1e rules exist as guidelines and are made to be used as is, modified, or ignored as individual DMs see fit. This is mentioned in the books in multiple places. Almost every rule in 1e is a subsystem of some sort, and entirely modular. Removing a rule, like weapon vs. AC, doesn't break the game. You are told in the text of the 1e books over and over that the game is your own and you should use or discard what you want. With 3e, the rules are less modular and are not subsystems. They are tied to the base of the system and much harder to ignore.
I don't think the minimalist quality is the reason, I think the modular quality is the reason. You can play the game in a minimalist style or with all the rules added in for a more complex style. That is the beauty of it.
I mean that you've played a lot of D&D but it seems to have been a pretty uniform experience. That is, you asserted that '1e is grittier than 3e' and all you can really assert is, "The 1e games I played in were grittier than the 3e ones I played in", and I'm not at all convinced you've seen a broad range of 1e or 3e games depite your years of experience.
I've seen a broad range of games. I find the argument that 3e is grittier to be amusing at best.
I've seen ~12th level 1e characters that could generate upwards of 100 pts of damage on average per round. By comparison the 3e Ranger you are citing is a total tosser.
100 pts. of damage in a round? I'd love to see the math on this. Without some sort of devastating magic, this is not possible. Even a 12th magic user casting fireball does 12d6, which on average will be 36-48 points of damage. Without concrete examples, I'll stick with 100 pts of damage in a round being the very rare exception and not the rule.
1) Did you play with the Unearthed Arcana?
2) How many issues of Dragon did you own?
I have used Unearthed Arcana and I own the Dragon Magazine Archive CD. Not sure what bearing that has. We are not using rules from Dragon. If you want to do that, feel free.
As just an obvious example, an 11th level ranger in 1e is going to have starting out a +10 bonus to hit relative to a 0th level fighter that is hidden within his better THAC0. Sure, it's not described as a bonus to hit, but that's what it is. So that 11th level ranger could have an 18 DEX, be specialized in the longbow, own a +5 longbow, and fire +5 arrows. That would be right there without even stretching be a +26 to hit. I wouldn't be surprised if he could kill every monster in the 1e DMG - including the unique ones - just by winning surprise, and could otherwise dispatch ancient dragons by himself in a single round. Granted, a good DM would probably not have granted the best possible weapons by 11th level, but I'm just trying to show that even without getting deep in to Dragon and other optional rules how easy it is to get 3e like numbers.
I'll grant you that the bonus to hit is comparable, although it isn't listed that way. And he is going to do 1d6+10 damage, unless he is specialized in which case he would do 1d6+12 but only within "point blank" range. The 3e equivalent is doing 1d8+11 within point blank with Point Blank Shot. With a strength bow and decent strength, that might be 1d8+13 or 1d8+15. And he gets 3 shots per round as opposed to 2 of the 1e ranger at 11th level. And he has feats like manyshot or rapid shot. Comparisons aside, because we've already established that more argument is called for there, I don't believe the 1e ranger is going to dispatch upper end monsters in one round. If he is outfitted as you said above, and hits twice, he does 2d6+24. The ancient dragon you mentioned has 88 hit points. So 36 points of damage doesn't kill him. Even with two rounds of free attacks and max damage, that would be 72 points of damage. Then the dragon breathes for 88 points of damage and that level 11 ranger is barely standing if he fails his save.
In point of fact, 3e didn't add anything. That 3e ranger being able to add his strength to his longbow damage if he's using a master work weapon, got that concept from a popular extension of the 1e rules. Likewise 3e critical hits also came from a popular 1e extension of the rules. I've seen 1e Rangers generate more than 100 hit points worth of damage in a single round. (In point of fact, I've seen more than 200 hit points worth of damage in a single round in 1e, but that's on the extreme 'non-gritty' superhero end of the scale.)
You don't need a masterwork weapon for this strength bonus in 3e. A simple composite long bow will do the trick. They can be made with strength in mind and thus access the strength bonus to damage. Yes they do cost more but that is all. Those rules are in the 3.5 PHB, a core 3e book. Unearthed Arcana is not a core 1e book and many people ignore it.
Critical Hits are nowhere to be found in 1e, unless you use rules from Dragon Magazine. They are not in the core of 1e (PHB, DMG, MM). They ARE in the core of 3e however.
I still want to see the math on how a ranger or any other class does 100 or more points of damage in a single round. Would love even more to see the math on how someone does 200 hit points of damage in one round.
This is the point at which if we were face to face I'd ask you to bet me a dollar (or a lunch) on that assertion just to give you some pause to your certainty. You're experience is your own and its real, but it's not the limit of what is out there by any stretch of the imagination.
And I never said it was the limit of what is out there. But the 100 or 200 points of damage in a round comments, and some other assertions you have made do seem to be stretching the limit of what is out there.
Sure. Your math is all good. The problem is that the 1e fighter with 18 Con and ~100 hit points now has more hit points than all but a handful of monsters in the game. A huge ancient red dragon has but 88 hit points (nasty breath, but a glass cannon). A pit fiend has but 60 or so. The 3e fighter ONLY has 110-120 hit points because there are plenty of ordinary monsters out there with 300-400 hit points, more than Zeus in 1e. The numbers are meaningless without a point of comparison.
And it takes the 1e fighter 1,250,000 experience points to reach level 12. We made it to level 11 in our 3.5 game in less than a year. I have never had a 1e game make it to level 11 in that short of a time. Even by the book experience awarding isn't going to get you to level 12 in less than a year in 1e. Yes gold, magic items, treasures that are turned into portable gold, and monsters give experience points. But monster experience awards are generally small, even for the bigger monsters. And 12,000 gp divided by a six person party only nets 2,000 experience points per PC. It takes awhile to reach 1.2 million experience points. In 3.5, the 12 level fighter doesn't need nearly that much. And the rules are written in a way that makes leveling quicker than 1e. Can you slow it down? Sure. Can you speed up 1e progression? Sure. But by the book in both has proven that advancement is quicker in 3e than in 1e. It was a design element in 3e to make it faster.
The 12th level 1e fighter is likely equivalent to a higher level 3e fighter. Of course this is conjecture on my part and would require more study and comparison.
At 12th level in 1e, PCs are getting ready to retire, run their castles and lands, etc. In 3e, play is encouraged to go to level 20 and beyond. There is an Epic Level Handbook. There are tons of published adventures for very high level 3e PCs. There are far fewer examples for high level 1e characters aside from the GDQ series and that only goes to about 14ish.
It is more difficult to challenge a level 12+ party in 1e but it can be done. But it takes longer to get there in 1e and thus more time is spent in the sweet spot which I think is between about 4th level and 9th level. YMMV as always.
