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

[Voadam]

LB is a really weird visual for 3rd parties when you stop to think about it...a MU gestures and incants far away from their target, and "something happens" to release the linear bolt close to the target.
Do they make a little storm cloud appear?
Does a portal open to the quasi-elemental plane of lightning?
Or did the MU just hurl a really shiny cannonball?

Coming from a comics and cartoons background the visuals seems intuitive as a zap even if it does not immediately start at the caster.

The weird part for me is the scale, this being one of the original chainmail spells where magic users were fantasy narrative reskins and stand ins for battlefield artillery in unit level combat gaming with cloudkill as mustard gas and fireball and lightning bolt as artillery and howtizer fire. Lightning bolt is a long fairly wide blast.

 

[James Gasik]

What do you mean, “might”?

I'm not sure if that was the intent, is all I'm saying.

 

[Kannik]

Lightning Bolt didn't start at the caster back then. You could start the bolt up to 40' away, plus another 10' per caster level.

Natch, not quite at your hand but as Lanefan noted you still need to line yourself up, which while perhaps not as automatically dangerous as needing to be adjacent to the start point it was still more difficult to achieve and potentially isolating (and still all reasons why the reflectivity made lightning bolt more worthwhile as an option vs fireball back then than it is right now I'd say).

 

[James Gasik]

All I can think of is the Lightning Bolt trap in Baldur's Gate I. Walk down a corridor, get hit by the bolt once, bounces off the wall, get hit again. TPK.

 

[Staffan]

All I can think of is the Lightning Bolt trap in Baldur's Gate I. Walk down a corridor, get hit by the bolt once, bounces off the wall, get hit again. TPK.

I'm pretty sure that's an incorrect version of how the spell is supposed to work. If you get "hit" twice by the bolt, you don't take double damage. Instead, you need to succeed on two saves to take half damage (basically, disadvantage).

 

[Milieu]

EXCEPT. A spell's area of effect would always be measured at 1" = 10'. This was often overlooked!

So a fireball cast by a 10th level magic user would have a different range if cast indoors or outdoors-
Inside- 200 feet.
Outside- 200 yards (600 feet).

But the area would be the same- it would be a 20 foot radius sphere. I ran across tables that did not know that rule and believed that when cast outside, the fireball would be a 20 yard radius sphere!

It's especially easy to confuse when the description of fireball seems to imply otherwise

the burst of the generally conform to the shape of the area in which it occurs, thus covering an area equal to it's normal spherical volume. [The area which is covered by the fireball is a total volume of roughly 33,000 cubic feet (or yards)].

But I guess that's for the exception when you're using a figure ratio?

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT OUTDOOR SCALE BE USED FOR RANGE ONLY, NEVER FOR SPELL AREA OF EFFECT (which is kept at 1" = 10') UNLESS A FIGURE RATIO OF 1:10 or 1:20 (1 casting equals 10 or 20 actual creatures or things in most cases) IS USED, AND CONSTRUCTIONS SUCH AS BUILDINGS, CASTLES, WALLS, ETC. ARE SCALED TO FIGURES RATHER THAN TO GROUND SCALE. Note that the foregoing assumes that a ground scale of 1" to 10 yards is used.

 

[fuindordm]

Coming from a comics and cartoons background the visuals seems intuitive as a zap even if it does not immediately start at the caster.

I guess what bothers me is that the gap in the line of effect is larger than the effect itself.
You can fit a whole squad between the MU's hands and the point where the LB starts doing damage! Does the squad at least feel a slight tingling?

 

[James Gasik]

I'm pretty sure that's an incorrect version of how the spell is supposed to work. If you get "hit" twice by the bolt, you don't take double damage. Instead, you need to succeed on two saves to take half damage (basically, disadvantage).

Yeah, by 2e rules, it wouldn't work. But I think by 1e rules it does.

Of course, by the same token, 2e even states that this only happens at the DM's option, so I think once you're in optional rules territory, anything goes, lol.

 

[overgeeked]

man those early D&D editions feel like a bunch of different board games stapled together that you're trying to play all at the same time.

Modern D&D still feels that way. Combat is a separate and distinct game from the rest of play.

 

[overgeeked]

During an old campaign I played in, at one point we did a mass battle and kinda made up the rules for it as we went along. Ended up being among the best two or three sessions ever.

This is the way.