D&D 1E Favorite Obscure Rules from TSR-era D&D

[Mannahnin]

Yeah, it's a weird thing that crops up in games I'm in and I don't know why- if I'm a cleric, other characters seem bound and determined to run as far as they can away from me so I can't cast cure wounds- if I'm a Paladin, they don't want my bonus because then "the DM will hit us with fireballs!"

But even just affecting the Paladin, +Cha to saves is stupidly awesome in a game where you're meant to have 4 terrible saving throws.

Yeah, we definitely have pessimistic jokes about bunching up, but pretty much everyone I game with knows better in practice.

I mean, who really used natural healing anyways? I mean, sure, you rest, you get some hit points back, we all do it, but we never relied on it. The idea of taking weeks to heal up was never a thing in any game I ran, and the abundance of healing potions in published adventures just reinforced this.

I really felt you were meant to have magical healing, and the existence of long recovery times was nothing more than the game saying "yeah, make sure you have a Cleric".

Well, mostly yes. But Clerics don't actually get any healing spells in Basic D&D until 2nd level, and then only one a day (no bonus spells like in AD&D), so you definitely need natural healing at low levels.

 

[Alzrius]

One rule (or rather, set of interrelated rules) that I loved from the Rules Cyclopedia (though I'm sure it originated in one of the BECMI boxed sets) were those for undead lieges and pawns. Apparently, any undead (except skeletons or zombies) could try to force its will on another undead, making it their slave. There were rules for how this was resolved, how far away a liege could exert control over a pawn, turning pawns (fun fact: clerics made their checks as if trying to turn the liege), how long control lasted, etc.

That last one struck me as quite notable, since any pawn was freed at moonrise on the night of the next full moon. So the lich lord could assemble a vast army (since lieges can order pawns to act as lieges themselves over other undead), but he'd need to attack with it in the next month, or the entire thing would fall apart.

 

[Alzrius]

To everyone mentioning how onerous it was that paladins couldn't interact with large swaths of the population:

Paladins had it easy.

If you wanted a real restriction on behavior, take a look at what clerics of the Babylonian mythos in the AD&D 1E Deities & Demigods had to deal with!

Yeah, you read that right: "communicating with intelligent creatures or demi-humans [...] other than humans," is a major transgression for which you'll lose all your spells and be excommunicated, unless you go on an epic quest to make up for it. Never say "good morning" to an elf or it's your ass, heretic!

 

[R_J_K75]

I mean, who really used natural healing anyways? I mean, sure, you rest, you get some hit points back, we all do it, but we never relied on it. The idea of taking weeks to heal up was never a thing in any game I ran, and the abundance of healing potions in published adventures just reinforced this.

I really felt you were meant to have magical healing, and the existence of long recovery times was nothing more than the game saying "yeah, make sure you have a Cleric".

I remember in one campaign I played in where the DM was a stickler for natural healing and gave out very few healing potions, and clerics at temples weren't too keen on handing out healing spells, resurrections, or other cure spells without it being very expensive. Our fall back was to let a PC die, cut off their finger and put it in a bag of holding in hopes that we could get them raised later. When we used natural healing it just ate up a lot of in game time, that could make or break a quest. I don't really recall any of us playing clerics in that campaign so I think we died often. Now all you have to do in 5E is take a 5 minute smoke break and youre good to go.

 

[Willie the Duck]

One fun fact about the BECMI/RC rules that I'd overlooked until recently was that neither the five boxed sets nor the Rules Cyclopedia have rules for natural healing in them. If you wanted those, you'd have to look in the "1070" black boxed set. (Special thanks to @Jack Daniel for mentioning that in the other thread.)

I mean, who really used natural healing anyways? I mean, sure, you rest, you get some hit points back, we all do it, but we never relied on it. The idea of taking weeks to heal up was never a thing in any game I ran, and the abundance of healing potions in published adventures just reinforced this.

I really felt you were meant to have magical healing, and the existence of long recovery times was nothing more than the game saying "yeah, make sure you have a Cleric".

Well, mostly yes. But Clerics don't actually get any healing spells in Basic D&D until 2nd level, and then only one a day (no bonus spells like in AD&D), so you definitely need natural healing at low levels.

From what I can gather*, the logic was thus: If you wanted to recover mid-dungeon, you used clerical healing or potions. Once you were done with the dungeon, you hoofed it back to town, got your XP, and generally resolved the adventure. Since BECMI wasn't intended for the style where you might play character B while character A was slowly naturally healing 1 hp/day**, you just 'healed up between adventures' without need for specific rules on how quickly that took.
*I think this was from Mentzer talking on Dragonsfoot bitd, but I can't be sure.
**In-game and IRL, which were supposed to align.

It means you can't retreat from the dungeon to merely the wilderness to lick your wounds (enforcing the 'you go until you are out of resources, then head home' mentality) -- excepting that you can do so if you have a (living) level 2+ cleric in the party. So it doesn't really do a great job of incentivizing a play pattern. And once you get into the 'ECM' portion of BECMI, and the expected play pattern involves traipsing across the wilderness or the like, it just becomes this weird artefact.

Regardless, if any of this is the case , it would have been a really good thing to actually state somewhere in the rules and DM advice and such. Particularly the expectation that other creatures do heal naturally (even if they didn't want to include rules allowing PCs to do so easily). Otherwise you risk* some really weird worldbuilding effects.
*I say risk because I think almost everyone just saw it as a gap and homebrewed something.

 

[Voadam]

For a long time having started in 1e and B/X I could not figure out why scimitar was a druid's allowed weapon thematically. Arabic medieval curved swords did not really fit the ancient Celtic priest thematics. For a while I thought it might have just been meant to be sickles but was a typo in an old edition list of their weapons and stuck through precedent.

In 1e they have a neat obscure rule in the weapons chart on page 37, a scimitar "includes Cutlass, Sabre, Sickle-sword, Tulwar, etc." While 1e goes very specific in mechanically distinguishing between a staff and a bo stick, a long sword and a broad sword, the scimitar covers a broad range of curved slashing swords including the Sickle-Sword.

This ties into Oe Eldritch Wizardry where it specified for PC druids "Druids are able to employ the following sorts of weapons: daggers, sickle or crescent-shaped swords, spears, slings, and oil."

It allowed an interesting mechanical trade off of some potential magic sword possibility against use of metal armor to contrast with a cleric who has the reverse.

So now we have standard Bedouin scimitar forest druids as a default but we could also have naval cutlass druids, cavalry sabre druids, Indian subcontinent Tulwar druids, and even druids with a more sickle-like weapon.

 

[Mannahnin]

So now we have standard Bedouin scimitar forest druids as a default but we could also have naval cutlass druids, cavalry sabre druids, Indian subcontinent Tulwar druids, and even druids with a more sickle-like weapon.

It's just a shame that Gary somehow overlooked war scythes in his otherwise fairly comprehensive polearm listings! What a match made in 1E flavor heaven that could have been.

Sca Leather Armor - Medieval War Scythe

Polearms are relatively simple to make and were fairly easy for most people to use effectively. These medieval Polearms were often derived from hunting or agricultural tools. Our Medieval Scythe is an unusual type of medieval polearm with a forged curved axe blade and attached to a hardwood...

www.scaleatherarmor.com

War scythe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Voadam

D&D General - Druids and Path Dependency: Why the Scimitar Helps Illuminate D&D

In another thread, people are having a great discussion about what, exactly, a D&D (5e) scimitar really is. Like many D&Disms, the inclusion of scimitars is ... well, it's certainly a choice. But reading the thread, I saw a great comment by @Gradine ... They're swords that druids can use I...

www.enworld.org

 

[Jack Daniel]

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[Snarf Zagyg]

Anyway, while digging up another old thread, I realized that I had a thread about why 1e had all of these weird (to people now) rules. Might be interesting for some of you who didn't catch it the first time.

Or not!

D&D General - And the Druid Explodes: Understanding the AD&D Design Space's Legacy

A few brief words are necessary to insure that the reader has actually obtained a game form which he or she desires. Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school and the other as the game school. AD&D is assuredly an adherent of the latter...

www.enworld.org