D&D 1E Common House Rules for AD&D?

[overgeeked]

1e didn't have wealth-by-level guidelines, though. 3e did, which is why I was asking as to @haakon1 's experience with it.

Yes, I’m aware. But PCs swimming in gold isn’t a 3E thing. I was comparing my experiences to yours. Excessive gold. To solve that we used XP for gold spent.

I get the sentiment, but my issue with it is that it really hurts the PC who doesn't spend now because she's saving up for something big later e.g. a stronghold.

Layaway. You’ve got to start somewhere. Survey teams. Mercs to clear the site. Patrols to keep it clear. Hire architects to make plans. Masons and loggers. Etc. You don’t drop 100,000 gp and get a stronghold by morning.

I've never used xp-for-treasure anyway, but this variant doesn't exactly encourage me to want to start.

Fair.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, I’m aware. But PCs swimming in gold isn’t a 3E thing. I was comparing my experiences to yours. Excessive gold. To solve that we used XP for gold spent.

When I played 3e we were swimming in gold. Slowed-down level advancement and 1e modules = very wealthy characters.

Not that I-as-player minded. It gave the DM headaches, thoguh.

Layaway. You’ve got to start somewhere. Survey teams. Mercs to clear the site. Patrols to keep it clear. Hire architects to make plans. Masons and loggers. Etc. You don’t drop 100,000 gp and get a stronghold by morning.

Sure you do. Just pay someone that 100K to drop a Wish and then start hauling in the furniture.

More seriously, all of that sort of thing is what I'd want my PC to be doing after retirement from adventuring so he could oversee the process and be involved in it day-to-day. But I'd want to be saving up for it all the way along, such that when I do retire I've enough cash on hand to afford the clearing, construction, etc.

But if saving up for it means I'll never get enough xp to get to that level...it just doesn't make sense somehow.

 

[overgeeked]

When I played 3e we were swimming in gold. Slowed-down level advancement and 1e modules = very wealthy characters.

Not that I-as-player minded. It gave the DM headaches, thoguh.

Sure you do. Just pay someone that 100K to drop a Wish and then start hauling in the furniture.

More seriously, all of that sort of thing is what I'd want my PC to be doing after retirement from adventuring so he could oversee the process and be involved in it day-to-day. But I'd want to be saving up for it all the way along, such that when I do retire I've enough cash on hand to afford the clearing, construction, etc.

But if saving up for it means I'll never get enough xp to get to that level...it just doesn't make sense somehow.

Right. Which is why when we used that system we never "saved up for it." We spent as we went. Because it makes no sense to hoard gold when you get XP for spending it. So we constantly spent and wasted gold on whatever we could to get the XP, and suddenly we were broke and needed to go out adventuring again to get more gold to spend...just like all those swords & sorcery stories. Broke sellswords needing a few coins to rub together hiring themselves out to perform whatever petty larceny or spot of tomb robbing was needed. Worked like a charm for us. Perfect tone for our group. Still managed to get keeps and castles out of it, too.

 

[glass]

In my experience, "too much" gold makes a lot less difference then "too little".

I once played in a campaign where the GM accidentally gave us several million gp at 11th level - it was a very large dragon hoard, and he thought we would only be able to cart off a small proportion of it before word got around and other people jumped on the claim. Maybe we would have been able to defend it anyway (11th level, after all) but it was rather moot because we had recently acquired some rings gates and a castle. A couple of ours of scooping later and all the coinage had been transferred via the former to the latter. Anyway, the point is that it didn't break anything - although without it my wizard probably would not have bought a Cloak of Charisma!

 

[garyschuetz]

As with the original rules, if simply closing neither side gets melee attacks. It would be appropriate to have longer reach break initiative ties though. I may do that. Outside of that it really needs to fall back again to ABSTRACTION - which is what the system was SUPPOSEDLY based on given that the round was a minute long. Mine is a system that still tries to stick mostly to the results that btb 1E would have, just getting there in a much more sensible way. So, 1E's WSF aren't really a good REALISTIC model to be featuring since the values really are kinda backward from what they should be - longer weapons honestly SHOULD have more initiative priority to account for being able to fend off opponents, rather than being slower because they're typically heavier. Rather than redo all that (and more!) in an attempt at greater realism, I just want players to be able to handle something like the flawed 1E combat more easily. 1E (D&D in general!) is the wrong game entirely for genuine realism in combat.

I am going to run a 1E game (that borrows some from 2E, mostly spells) and, I think that your method of handling combat is the best I have seen for what I want to do! What you described begins with: "I cut WSF in half, and have them apply to the roll every round (rather than only 1 round in 6 when initiative is tied); spell casting time is then also directly applied to the initiative roll each round,"... etc.

If I may ask a couple more questions: How did you handle surprise? Also, since monsters (like in Monster Manual) don't list a Weapon Speed Factor, how did you assign a score for that for them? Thank you!

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I am going to run a 1E game (that borrows some from 2E, mostly spells) and, I think that your method of handling combat is the best I have seen for what I want to do! What you described begins with: "I cut WSF in half, and have them apply to the roll every round (rather than only 1 round in 6 when initiative is tied); spell casting time is then also directly applied to the initiative roll each round,"... etc.

If I may ask a couple more questions: How did you handle surprise? Also, since monsters (like in Monster Manual) don't list a Weapon Speed Factor, how did you assign a score for that for them? Thank you!

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Covers most of how I handle combat. Details change now and then because I keep tinkering with it for no particularly good reason. I think it mostly holds its own.

 

[garyschuetz]

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Covers most of how I handle combat. Details change now and then because I keep tinkering with it for no particularly good reason. I think it mostly holds its own.

This is fantastic! I was going crazy trying to figure out a system that takes everything into consideration, but is still streamlined enough to be fun and relatively easy. This seems like a decent balance of things, and it is a good framework for me to start to work with. I really appreciate your work here - Thank you very much!

 

[haakon1]

In my experience as a AD&D 1e* player & DM, Surprise was a d6 or DM fiat depending on the situation.

And Weapon Speed Factor was: “Huh, that’s a complicated table. Let’s ignore that.” Same for weapon length and weapon v. specific armor type.

*1e is really just AD&D to me, with the other thing being 2e, but ENworld has its own dialect.

 

[rgard]

We never attempted to do the weapon vs. armor type rules.

One DM made illusionists use the same rules as magic-users for writing spells into spell books. My illusionist got blown up ('dead splat' as we used to say) doing that. I complained about that in another thread.

Had one DM who awarded XP based on what your character did related to the character's class. Magic-users & clerics got XP for casting spells, fighters for doing damage with a weapon and thieves for stealing stuff. Same DM had fighters doing 3D6 damage with the weapon at 5th level. She also allowed human multi-classing using the XP rules so your character leveled up quicker in classes that you did most of your actions.

We always did XP for gp. One DM wouldn't let you add the XPs until you spent the gold.

We tried the weapons speed rules and tried to convince a different DM that since the dagger speed was half of the long sword (or half a round...I forget) our magic-users should be allowed to attack/stab twice in one round. Hey, had to stay productive after expending all spells.

If you tried to raise an attribute above an 18 with a wish, you only got a 0.1 added to the 18.

We used stuff from Arduin Grimoire, Paladium and Bard Games.

One homebrew rule mentioned up thread was ignoring the fact you couldn't raise an elf from the dead. Funny thing was that of the 5 or 6 different DMs we played with, all enforced that rule. One of our clerics researched a spell called 'Recall Spirt' that allowed the cleric to raise a dead elf.

 

[Rabulias]

If you tried to raise an attribute above an 18 with a wish, you only got a 0.1 added to the 18.

The standard AD&D rule applied this to ability scores of 16 and higher. (1e DMG p.11)