1E vs Forked Thread: Is 4E doing it for you?

[Hussar]

I have not found it so. For example, a Fighter can on average withstand one hit per level he has attained before being killed. So a 3rd level Fighter can only expect to survive 2-4 hits from goblins or orcs before expiring. Fairly common monsters such as ogres do large amounts of damage (1d6+2 in OD&D, where hp are 1d6 per level for Fighters, or 1d10 in Classic, where Fighter hp are 1d8). Healing is limited, resting can be problematic... it's not hard to get killed even at fairly high levels.

I've never played OD&D, so I cannot comment on it.

But, in Basic/Expert D&D, you have plate mail at first level (60 gp, pretty easy buy), meaning that you've likely got a 2 AC at first level, before any Dex bonus. That ogre is only hitting you about 30% of the time, and orcs and gobbo's are down to about 10%. Sure, you can only take a couple of hits, but, you don't take too many most of the time. And, beyond 3rd, you're pretty much God, because, you can take 1 hit/level, and the baddies hit you so rarely.

I know that IME, combat damage death was a FAR second place to Save or Die death. To the point where very, very few PC's died to hit point attrition, but, lots of PC's died to snake bites.

The Secondary Skills table is great.

Look at a 'modern' game that has the same sensibility: Over the Edge. In OTE, you can have stats like "Surgeon: 3 dice" or "Ex-Green Beret: 4 dice". What do those stats cover? Whatever a Surgeon or an Ex-Green Beret should be able to do.

The Secondary Skills table is the same way. You were a smith? OK, so you can shoe the horses and construct a forge. You were a tanner? Well, you know a lot about p***. And so on.

Though I don't actually need the table. Just write down your background. That's what you know how to do. Why do I need rules for that?

Funnily enough, this is what I've done with 3e Profession skills. If you can make a decent argument for why your Profession skill (whatever it may be) applies to the current situation, I'll allow you to use Profession in place of whatever skill might be called for. It works for my bunch.

 

[Ourph]

But, in Basic/Expert D&D, you have plate mail at first level (60 gp, pretty easy buy), meaning that you've likely got a 2 AC at first level, before any Dex bonus. That ogre is only hitting you about 30% of the time, and orcs and gobbo's are down to about 10%. Sure, you can only take a couple of hits, but, you don't take too many most of the time. And, beyond 3rd, you're pretty much God, because, you can take 1 hit/level, and the baddies hit you so rarely.

Combat in B/X D&D is very swingy until about 5th level. This is especially true because you're rolling for HP even at 1st level. A Fighter might very well have 1-2 hp at first level. That means that any combat where he actually gets hit, at all, he's almost certainly going down.

Your analysis is correct for a character who gets lucky with the dice at character creation (i.e. rolls good Con, high HP and lots of starting GP), but that doesn't happen all that often.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Combat in B/X D&D is very swingy until about 5th level. This is especially true because you're rolling for HP even at 1st level. A Fighter might very well have 1-2 hp at first level. That means that any combat where he actually gets hit, at all, he's almost certainly going down.

Your analysis is correct for a character who gets lucky with the dice at character creation (i.e. rolls good Con, high HP and lots of starting GP), but that doesn't happen all that often.

Yep. We always houseruled max HP at 1st level and even then death was common from wounds at low levels. The only real upside was that character creation only took a few minutes.

 

[Korgoth]

Yeah, why would you need rules to cover anything the characters try to do? Because when you decided what those background stories did, you'd have to houserule it?

And (looks around), some people want to play the game. They didn't come to the table to write a background. They came to kill some gobos! Not everyone's play style of course but not everyone wants to write background and (gasp!) not every GM wants to read it.

You totally misunderstood me.

What I meant was exactly this:
"Background: Blacksmith"

or this:

"Background: Fisherman"

 

[crash_beedo]

What's pretty entertaining in this thread is looking at 1E or Classic D&D and conflating the lack of defined options means 'everything is available' versus a modern design that outlines more options suddenly means 'only the defined options are available'. Yep yep, the infamous page 42 again...

We switched from a 1E game just this spring to 4E, and one of the biggest shift has been in arbitrary power (where the DM basically adjudicates all actions on the fly through fiat) versus having a framework for adjudicating actions.

I'm finding the players are loving the shift in 'power' towards them...

But me and a friend had a good laugh the other night remembering how hard it was keeping the party's M-U alive to level four (he died anyway in the Temple of Elemental Evil water temple - the big pool of evil water). Back in my day, wizards only had a single spell for the whole day, and we liked it. And we didn't call them wizards, because they weren't, until level nine. I used to wear an onion on my belt... which was the style at the time. You couldn't get those white ones because of the war... now where was I... oh yeah, and we didn't have healing surges either. If you rolled a "one" for your hit points, that's what you had, and you liked it.

 

[Corathon]

I've never played OD&D, so I cannot comment on it.

But, in Basic/Expert D&D, you have plate mail at first level (60 gp, pretty easy buy), meaning that you've likely got a 2 AC at first level, before any Dex bonus. That ogre is only hitting you about 30% of the time, and orcs and gobbo's are down to about 10%. Sure, you can only take a couple of hits, but, you don't take too many most of the time. And, beyond 3rd, you're pretty much God, because, you can take 1 hit/level, and the baddies hit you so rarely.

I know that IME, combat damage death was a FAR second place to Save or Die death. To the point where very, very few PC's died to hit point attrition, but, lots of PC's died to snake bites.



Funnily enough, this is what I've done with 3e Profession skills. If you can make a decent argument for why your Profession skill (whatever it may be) applies to the current situation, I'll allow you to use Profession in place of whatever skill might be called for. It works for my bunch.

My experience is with AD&D 1E rather than with Basic D&D or OD&D, but, IME, in that game death due to loss of HP was more common than death due to failing a saving throw vs. an "instant kill" effect. A beginning AD&D PC can't afford plate mail, and even a fighter might fall to one hit. At higher levels one faces monsters that do more damage, or monsters in large numbers. Attrition is a serious threat.

If a PC died to poison after 3rd level, its because of unusual circumstances, or because the party cleric or druid screwed up. Slow poison (a 2nd level spell) could save someone who had been poisoned - even if seemingly dead - if applied within 1 turn per level of the caster of the poisoning.

If your remove poison-using monsters from the list, there aren't too many "save or die" creatures left. Even things like petrification could be reversed (admittedly, not without risk).

 

[Scribble]

There's no 'I' in 'everyone'.

"As Mr. Sloan always says, there is no I in team, but there is an I in pie. And there's an i in meat pie. Meat is the anagram of team... I don't know what he's talking about. "

 

[ExploderWizard]

What's pretty entertaining in this thread is looking at 1E or Classic D&D and conflating the lack of defined options means 'everything is available' versus a modern design that outlines more options suddenly means 'only the defined options are available'. Yep yep, the infamous page 42 again...

Everything is available in all editions of course. In more modern editions , it simply means ignoring more of that huge oversized rulebook you paid for. And there was nothing in Basic/AD&D that said the DM had to come up with rulings without player input either.

Back in my day, wizards only had a single spell for the whole day, and we liked it. And we didn't call them wizards, because they weren't, until level nine. I used to wear an onion on my belt... which was the style at the time. You couldn't get those white ones because of the war... now where was I... oh yeah, and we didn't have healing surges either. If you rolled a "one" for your hit points, that's what you had, and you liked it.

well.....................we did

 

[Remathilis]

I kind of go in the middle. I'll certainly not hesitate to zap a PC with a trap if the player wasn't paying attention or was careless. That's the sort of table behavior that carries over to the dungeon well. When exploring the old ruins, one should be cautious.

But I don't really care about lots of method acting and the like. You want to active role-play fine, I'll even use it to drive the campaign along. But I'm not going to enforce it, and I'm not going to penalize a player who runs his character more mechanically with dice rolls because you prefer something else.

Well, I was actually arguing something close, but related.

My character is a Don Juan. He's smooth, calm, calculated, and a social charmer. I'm really not all that smooth, so I play up what I can and let the dice take it from there (typically role-playing a bit, followed by a skill check). Neither alone is bad, but the end result is similar: a smooth talker who occasionally gets into trouble and has to talk his way out of it.

Contrast with Korgoth's example: My "Don Juan" isn't all that smooth because I myself is not all that smooth. Thus, his maiden-wooing and glib retorts are purely based on what I can come up with. If what I say works, perhaps it does in game. If what I think of is stupid, the maiden laughs her bonnet off and Don Juan returns home alone. That's "avatar" play. My PCs 24 charisma does nothing to influence the situation (mechanically, perhaps a forgiving DM might cut me some slack for having such a ridiculously high score).

I'd much rather pretend to be amazingly smart, incredibly wise, or remarkably smooth (or amazingly stupid, incredibly foolish, or remarkably dour) and use my PCs mental scores to augment it mechanically than have those numbers be meaningless.

 

[JoeGKushner]

You totally misunderstood me.

What I meant was exactly this:
"Background: Blacksmith"

or this:

"Background: Fisherman"

Cursed internet!

I never had players NOT want to roll on the secondary skill thing because they were always trying to game tye system. Even though everyone latter maxed out the old NWPs, they were still better than that table to me.

And in terms of background... I have no problem with it as long as the gamers don't try to game the background. "Well, because I'm the half-son of ELric, I get a demon sword right?"