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Message: <blockquote data-quote="painandgreed" data-source="post: 2736909" data-attributes="member: 24969">I could easily say most of what he says is correct but half of that which he considers reasons for the old system I would consider against it.Multiclassing was very restricted but it was well worth the trade offs. Since you were on a separate XP chart, you essentially lost one level if your core class for an equal level in another. Havign DMed a party of all elven 8th level something/magic-users, I can tell you that they were way more powerful than a party of characters at 9th level in one class. A human that switched classes from fighter to magic user at 8th level would be a full fighter/magic-user and able to use all his fighter stuff by time the other fighters and magic-users in the party were 9th. He'd be way more powerful than them and since magic-users were the damage dealers at higher levels would always be more powerful than either of them.The XP and magic item stuff he mentions depended totally on the DM. Most campaigns I was in allowed you to buy magic items and I don't think they are any more available now than then. It was turn that you hard a hard time making them yourself until higher levels but even back in the day this was seen as a flaw in the 1E/2E rules and many DMs made up their own rules for doing such. How much XP came from treasure and monsters was also up to the DM. I remember it was usually about 50/50 with occational swings one way or the other. I do think that 3E is over balanced with every encounter being carefully judged to be a particular challenge to a party with a certain amount of assumed treasure. You could still judge the general threat of an encounter you wished to throw at a party by XP for that creature but now it is just formulaic.I do not think the mechanics were simpler in the old systems. They were in that there was not that many feats etc. to keep track of. Building a fighter was a matter of deciding his level and giving him equipment. However, the system of THACO, to hit tables, saving throws, XP charts, etc was a mess. 1E had no real skill system and it's absence was noticed in many cases. 1E had so many holes that every DM I knew had a 3 ring binder of house rules and it became custom to ask what they were whenver you played with a new group. It made it easier to DM is you didn't pay attention to all the holes in the rules, but if you did, then it just became a mess of house rules that differed greatly from group to group. 2E plugged most of these holes, or at least codified their fixes, and while not always better than the sytems that earlier DMs had come up with, at least made for a uniform standard between groups.</blockquote>

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