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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7479267" data-attributes="member: 4937">Thank you.Well, I don't think we can make any blanket statements about AD&D campaigns.  The standards, rituals of play, and indeed rules varied so widely between tables that you simply can't say, "AD&D was like this..."  At best you can say, "AD&D as we played it was like this..."  Certainly there were groups that were freer with magic than others, though personally I never encountered any that went so far as to introduce +20 swords.  In the dozen or so that I was aware of, I can only think of one that had even a single +6 sword.   More typically, even a +5 sword was considered a uber-item.   But breaking the game doesn't require anything more than typical treasure available on the tables in the DMG and UA (or published modules) and typical spells available in the PH and UA.  Any sort of slightly generous char-gen routine, or simply sifting through large numbers of PCs until those with above average stats rise to the top produces parties which can easily overpower pretty much anything published in the MM1 and MM2.  The problem is that monsters generally do not receive bonuses to hit points, damage, attack dice and the like, while PC's with a few 16's or 18's certainly do.  Moreover, it's not even so much treasure that breaks the game, but system mastery.  Even if the DM is trying to keep the level of treasure on the low side of fair, by 10th level parties will just overwhelm most foes through action economy and action efficiency.  You don't need to have +20 magic swords.  You just need to stack together a series of more reasonable bonuses from some combination of buffs, above average attributes, weapon specialization, your +3 or +4 weapon, and so forth.  It's not that hard in even a low magic campaign to come up with +6 or +10 bonus to hit and/or damage, and rare that a monster has even an inherent +1 bonus to hit or damage.Certainly that was one approach to the problem.  Adventures like 'Queen of the Demonweb Pits' and 'Isle of the Ape' tried to fix the problem in part by putting the characters in situations where the normal rules of the game didn't apply.  I call this approach "Giving the players powers that you don't intend on letting them use."  For example, giving them +5 swords that in practice only have +3 bonuses because "on another plane" or giving them 6th level spell slots that they can't use because "on another plane" when the real reason underlying reason is that the game broke somewhere around 10th or 12th level, and you are nerfing the PC powers to keep the playing field somewhat level.  A very little of this goes a long way, and I think in play is mostly annoying rather than creative.  It's fine to use it occasionally, but an excessive use of it is simply combative DMing.Gods are a special subject, but the real problem is that fighting a God given the stats given to a God isn't really interesting.  As with almost all the monsters D&D, the Gods tend to be glass cannons and (relative to the presumed power level) something of one trick ponies without really interesting interactive dynamics.  Fixes to this issue largely don't focus on making the fight interesting, but simply on discouraging it from happening.Well, so did 1e AD&D artifacts.Exactly of what value is something that is unbeatable?  Creating something that is unbeatable is a trivial exercise of DMing fiat.  As a DM, I don't need to do anything to 'put PCs in there place'.  I've got no interest in proving that as the DM that I'm in charge and that as the DM my pet NPCs are simply just cooler than the PCs with fiat absolute powers that render interacting with them pointless.  This article was not an exercise in gotcha DMing.  It's intention was never to get players under control and show them who was the boss.  It certainly was not intended to encourage DMs to swagger around showing off to other DMs just how big the numbers are in their game.Consider your immortal.  Is the intention of those rules to make an immortal fun to interact with in a hypothetical combat challenge, by hard coding into the rules that all your cool powers that they've been granted (or earned) simply don't work, or is the intention of those rules to discourage any such hypothetical combat challenge, because any such combat will be as inherently grinding as it is unfair, and thereby 'force' players to consider interacting with immortals in ways other than they are simply tougher monsters?</blockquote>

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