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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9866961" data-attributes="member: 4937">Anyone still with me? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Monster Manual 1 is a work in progress.  Reading it has forced me to assess it more critically that I ever had before.  I always knew it was a mess in bad need of an editor, but actually reading every word of it really drove home that point.  I'd also forgotten just how many instances there were of "treat this monsters attack as an X for the purposes of to hit", so it's clear that the writer really expected you to use the weapon vs. AC modifiers.One question that has really struck me now that I've gone all in on this is, "Would I actually use this and recommend using this?"  And in the case of creatures wielding weapons, I think so, though that's with some caveats.  In the case of natural weapons, where you don't have strength bonuses or magical pluses to offset the penalties, then probably not.  Before I think it would work out, you have to deal with the probably of the heavily armored knight as realistically a full-on tank that is almost impervious to most attacks.  And the full degree to which that is true is I think something that's only recently entering the popular understanding, but if you use the weapon vs. AC tables it will be brought home.Really dealing with that is going to require bringing really functional grappling and clinching rules into 1e AD&D and RAW it just does not remotely have that.  There are a ton of monsters that could deal with the fact that they can't hurt a guy in plate by grappling, tripping, and jamming things into the small openings or pulling off bits of armor, but without rules for that a lot of monsters are going to be unreasonably nerfed and balance is not going to be really what is optimal.As for say fights between PCs and hobgoblins, gnolls and bugbears, I do think the tables make things better, but I also feel that even with my tweaks there is too much of the table that double penalizes low AC and I think some of the lines should be toned down to smaller penalties or bonuses.  Exactly what should be tweaked I'm not sure quite yet, but most of is the impact of unearthed arcana armor which again just reinforces for me how much UA broke the game and the game's balance and how little I realized that at the time.  Specialization and full plate are both bad for the game and bad for the use of these tables in particular, both because of balance reasons and the reason I disliked specialization even back in the day, which was the mechanic discouraged you from utilizing found weapons or a diversity of weapons because your starting weapon was effective +3/+3 and gave bonus attacks (in the worst case).Which is as much to say that the more pieces of 1e A&D I look at, the more I want to change.  I suppose I knew that going in, because I left it because I wanted to change everything and that was before word processors and the like were ubiquitous.  But I find now I want to change more than I wanted to change then, or at least I'm clearer about what I'd want to change it to.  So much of Monster Manual 1 just needs a complete revision, similar to what I did for dragons.</blockquote>

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