Do you prefer D20 or To Hit and Save Tables

[Nifft]

In my (3.5E) Midwood campaign, we've had several players ask to not have to worry about the rules. It hasn't been a problem for them.

D&D is as complicated as the group wants it to be.

QFT.
Also, HA HA HA!!! Tables. Ha.

Cheers, -- N

EDIT: There are a few horrible tables remaining in D&D, like the Turn Undead table. These tables are on the run, they know we hate them and are hunting them down. One. By. One.

 

[Numion]

For instance, It takes me a few minutes to complete a battle between 5 PCs and 30 orc in 1E, in 3E it takes me much longer (and yes, thats due largely to the slowest players and how bogged down the DM is with monsters special abilities.

35 combatants and it takes but a few minutes? That's not the 1E I played.

A fight with 20 zombies once took an hour in 1E because it was just the usual "roll-miss-roll-miss" routine. Not very engaging, either.

It's faster than 3E, yes, but your exaggerations diminish your overall argument.

 

[tx7321]

I (and several others) said it back on the first page, and I'll say it again:

Using tables and keeping the mechanics out of players' hands are two totally seperate things. You can have either one without the other, quite easily....But stop talking as though they were the same thing. That is not something reasonable people can disagree on, it's just false.

I never said they were the same thing. :\ I said Gygax wanted to keep the rules (including combat determination) in the hands of the DM and out of the hands of the players. Why? repeating myself once again, so that the player could focus on immersion and role play.

This is actually reflected in the marketing of the books for both games. When I played 1E (back in the late 70 and early 80s) most players didn't own the DMG only the PH. With 3E both players and DMs had all the books. We never saw DMs get questioned about rules, yet in 3E this was frequent. I'm not saying 1E is better. What I am saying is that TABLES vs D20 have different results.

 

[DaveyJones]

35 combatants and it takes but a few minutes? That's not the 1E I played.

A fight with 20 zombies once took an hour in 1E because it was just the usual "roll-miss-roll-miss" routine. Not very engaging, either.

It's faster than 3E, yes, but your exaggerations diminish your overall argument.

did you ever roll multiple dice?
1ed had init for groups. so you could just roll a different colored die for each combatant if you had that many different dice.

dice pools are for ultimate power DMs.

 

[RFisher]

A fight with 20 zombies once took an hour in 1E because it was just the usual "roll-miss-roll-miss" routine. Not very engaging, either.

That's what you get if you leave home without a cleric or a bunch of flasks of oil. (^_^)

 

[RFisher]

When I played 1E (back in the late 70 and early 80s) most players didn't own the DMG only the PH. With 3E both players and DMs had all the books. We never saw DMs get questioned about rules, yet in 3E this was frequent. I'm not saying 1E is better. What I am saying is that TABLES vs D20 have different results.

My experience playing AD&D in the 1980s was quite different. Almost everyone who owned a PHB owned a DMG. DMs were often questioned about the rules. Heck, arguing about the rules was part of the fun for my group. It is not the tables that make the difference here.

 

[Quasqueton]

I’d like to point out that all player character sheets for AD&D had space/boxes for writing in your character’s to hit numbers and saving throw numbers. If these numbers were supposed to be hidden/secret from the Players, and known only by the DM, why was this info on character sheets? Why did EGG/TSR officially support Player knowledge of these numbers by way of official AD&D character sheets?

Quasqueton

 

[tx7321]

Fisher: "My experience playing AD&D in the 1980s was quite different. Almost everyone who owned a PHB owned a DMG. DMs were often questioned about the rules. Heck, arguing about the rules was part of the fun for my group. It is not the tables that make the difference here."


I think some place in the DMG Gygax mentions not to let the player read the DMG (and MM?). But, I'm not positive about that.

Once the role of DM job was passed around, players had to learn the rules (and be trained). That was the mid-80s for us (so maybe around the same time as you), though we rarely argued rules at the table (since the person who trained the DM was usually right there). Still, when we get a truely "new" player, everyone at the table (DMs at one point all) look with envy, remembering the first few games as the most "magical" and least game like.
As another poster mentioned, that "magic" of not knowing what the hell is going on only lasts a short while. After that its a matter of keeping as much as you can in the hands of the DM. After all, in 1E we could hand our players copies of the tables for their class to help the DM (I could print this out in seconds). Yet 1E gamers dont do this as it would change the feel of the game in a negative way.

 

[tx7321]

Num: "35 combatants and it takes but a few minutes? That's not the 1E I played.

A fight with 20 zombies once took an hour in 1E because it was just the usual "roll-miss-roll-miss" routine. Not very engaging, either.

It's faster than 3E, yes, but your exaggerations diminish your overall argument."
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What the heck are you talking about? Exaggeration ...hardly. Try typical. Every game. 5 PCs vs. 30 orcs is an average battle in 1E, ask anyone here playing 1E. This sized battle shouldn't take the average 1E DM more then 10 minutes to resolve this (a good DM and experianced players faster). Look, Num, your obviously cherry picking one bad experiance in 1E with a zombie battle (2 HD btw not 1 HD orc). . Try this: Run a battle with 5 NPCs vs. 20 kolbolds using 1E tables, and then with 3E D20 rules and you'll see what I'm talking about. Thats not even considering aspects of feats and skills the kolbolds might have, checking for attacks of opportunity,

 

[billd91]

What the heck are you talking about? Exaggeration ...hardly. Try typical. Every game. 5 PCs vs. 30 orcs is an average battle in 1E, ask anyone here playing 1E. This sized battle shouldn't take the average 1E DM more then 10 minutes to resolve this (a good DM and experianced players faster). Look, Num, your obviously cherry picking one bad experiance in 1E with a zombie battle (2 HD btw not 1 HD orc). . Try this: Run a battle with 5 NPCs vs. 20 kolbolds using 1E tables, and then with 3E D20 rules and you'll see what I'm talking about. Thats not even considering aspects of feats and skills the kolbolds might have, checking for attacks of opportunity,

I recently ran a combat between 18 goblins (including 2 adepts) and 6 PCs. Didn't take very long at all. The only reason 1e might have been faster would have been because goblins were sweepable in 1e, but aren't in 3e (at least not without great cleave).

A well-prepared DM in either edition can run fast combats, particularly with basic humanoids which are fast in either version of the game. It's mainly higher level characters and monsters with lots of special abilities that slow things down. The fights in my other game against a high level wizard/vampire take quite a bit longer, but then all of the characters have a lot more options to sort through.