Raven Crowking
First Post
FireLance said:
True. But previous editions didn't make assumptions about how encounters would scale with PCs in terms of the power level of individual opponents. In 1e, higher level adventures could often include more mooks, as well as some more powerful opponents. Also, as many have pointed out, regardless of how you or I played it, 1e was not focused on beating your enemies as much as it was on stealing their stuff.
Of course, there were monsters that required magic weapons to hit them, and they would be pretty difficult to deal with without gear. OTOH, not every tough monster in 1e required magic weapons to hit it. You could quite easily run a 1e game without ever using a monster with "DR". Nor did more powerful monsters necessarily need high (low) ACs. In 1e, you designed the monster as you thought it should be, then tallied up its abilities to determine its XP value, then used that XP value to determine its effective threat range.
MerricB's analysis of the combat threat posed by creatures in the 1e MM, while somewhat flawed, still points out that a high-level fighter with chain mail and a longsword could take out at least some of those threats. Obviously, more if there were a larger party (which, again 1e assumes more than 3e).
You can play 3e that way, of course, but you are "going against the grain" when you do so.
I guess another way of putting it is this: Until 3e, I never heard anyone claim that the rust monster was "broken" or "unfun" simply because it ate metal items.
RC
