NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8042934" data-attributes="member: 87792">My argument is nothing needs salvaging. AD&D is a game. It succeeded as a game. It succeeded as a game in the face of more realistic games because it concentrated on the game and merely threw very faint nods towards realism. Any even vaguely realistic game has death spiral mechanics where the more injured you are the more hurt you are and the more that gets in the way of your ability to do things.AD&D does not - because it puts the game first and vague nods to reality only where they don't interfere with the game. It's more fun to not have the first blow make things inevitable. It's more fun when characters don't go down to a single hit, especially when you're dungeon crawling.1 in 5 characters at first level of the most popular class in the game is not an edge case as far as first level characters go. But far from not working perfectly the rules are working as intended for a game where you can literally level up to being a superhero. It's a fine game - just not one that bears any resemblance to reality.The only possible way this is an edge case is if first level is an edge case. In which case the edge case isn't that a person can tank the maximum damage an orc can throw out - it's that they can't at first level. That AD&D is intended to be a game intended to be about superheroes. And that first level is the exception.On the other hand we know exactly how much damage a hit to an unarmoured person does - the same amount as a hit to an armoured person. We know what the theoretical limit of damage is.And here we get into my big problem with AD&D 1e - that it is a shameless cash grab. AD&D's sole purpose as a game was to screw Arneson out of the royalties for Dungeons and Dragons. No this isn't an interesting contradiction - it is Gygax being honest. And adding sub-systems that require players to think ahead and mix things up can improve some games whether or not they are realistic.It's mysterious how your example of "reality based concerns" vanished.</blockquote>

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