Kannik
Legend
FWIW, the 1e Gold Box games (Pool of Radiance, etc) did the full reflection/double damage method of reflection for lightning bolt.
D&D 1E Favorite Obscure Rules from TSR-era D&D
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
In 1e tabletop AD&D, we tried to get double damage off a lightning bolt by bouncing it off the wall behind the enemy, when we could.
The DM allowed it.
The first time I lit a fireball in a "by the books" campaign, though, I guessed poorly and caught most of the party in the (expanded by small passages and low ceilings) blast zone.
The text on the 1e fireball was brutal: "The fireball fills an area equal to its normal spherical volume (roughly 33,000 cubic feet--thirty-three 10' x 10' x 10' cubes)" (pulled from enworld, I don't have the book handy)
After that first mishap, the general protocol for fireball was:
1) be invisible,
2) have fire resistance (maybe from a ring? an oil? I don't recall.)
3) sneak in front of the party to launch the fireball
4) then run away quickly and hope that shield and/or armor spells protected me from any survivors.
Or better yet: choose a different spell.
The DM allowed it.
The first time I lit a fireball in a "by the books" campaign, though, I guessed poorly and caught most of the party in the (expanded by small passages and low ceilings) blast zone.
The text on the 1e fireball was brutal: "The fireball fills an area equal to its normal spherical volume (roughly 33,000 cubic feet--thirty-three 10' x 10' x 10' cubes)" (pulled from enworld, I don't have the book handy)
After that first mishap, the general protocol for fireball was:
1) be invisible,
2) have fire resistance (maybe from a ring? an oil? I don't recall.)
3) sneak in front of the party to launch the fireball
4) then run away quickly and hope that shield and/or armor spells protected me from any survivors.
Or better yet: choose a different spell.
Orius
Unrepentant DM Supremacist
Oh yes, encumbrance is quite the mess.
First thing to remember is that prior to 2e, encumbrance was measured in terms of coins, with coins being roughly equivalent to 1/10 of a pound. However, this wasn't just measuring weight, it was measuring bulk and the relative difficulty of carrying the item, so it was an abstraction.
However, the real issue behind encumbrance is that it has the players constantly recalculating things every time their PCs gain or lose an item, even a single coin. While it's necessary for balance in a system where the treasure is the biggest source of your XP, it's a pain in the ass to constantly be adjusting it on your character sheet.
0e and later Classic had flat rates for encumbrance, but Greyhawk first started adjusting encumbrance for Strength. 1e tweaked Greyhawk's numbers a bit I think, and it was based on categories of 35/70/105 lbs, with Strength adding a bonus or penalty. In typical fashion though, Gary wouldn't leave a simple system alone and so complicated matters by having heavier armor automatically applying a more severe category of encumbrance no matter how much was carried and by splitting the rules between the PHB and DMG again in different sections of the books while obfuscating things further by throwing in some vague exceptions. It's no wonder that between the constant recalculations and the scattered and confusing rules that encumbrance got often ignored in 1e.
Then 2e put its own mark on the system. It attempted to simplify things by dumping the concept of coins and converting everything to pounds. Coins was never the problem though, but at least 2e was more straightforward by putting all the rules together in one place in the PHB and explaining things clearly. But 2e did things in its typical fashion by having multiple systems for the DM to choose from and then making the whole thing optional. It also had the most break points for encumbrance which made the system even more fiddly. The worst was the completely optional system where it broke down your movement rate by every step possible, so a human with a base move of 12 had break points for 11, 10, 9 and so on all the way down to 1. OTOH, 2e made XP for GP optional too, so the balance issues weren't as important.
3e further simplified things by going back to fewer categories, and later the game just switched the numbers to Strength x5/10/15 which eliminated another table. That's a good approach but, there's still the issue of constantly adjusting the numbers. So I've been looking into a slot-based system instead which seems to be a popular approach these days for the simplicity. While working on it, I looked into the history of encumbrance in the game, so I got to see just how complicated it got in the AD&D years.
This BTW ties into the discussion on spellbooks from about a week ago. As @Mannahnin posted a few pages back, according to the UA rules, a standard spellbook weighs 150 gp and has an encumbrance of 450 gp (once again, Gary couldn’t make up his mind). Traveling spellbooks however weigh 30 gp with an encumbrance of 60 gp. In addition a backpack or large sack can hold a single standard spellbook, but a backpack can hold 5 traveling spellbooks and a sack 10 books. So here the advantage of the traveling spellbook is increased portability at the cost of worse durability and less space, but the idea seems to be that the wizard leaves the big heavy spellbook behind and uses the traveling spellbooks as a convenience. Of course, this detail is left out in the core 2e books because Zeb thought it more important to tell us there’s no such thing as a standard spellbook, that spellbooks vary not just between cultures but individual wizards, and then waxes poetic about exotic inks and aromatic paper. Interestingly enough, modern D&D has all spellbooks weigh the same as an UA traveling spellbook.
First thing to remember is that prior to 2e, encumbrance was measured in terms of coins, with coins being roughly equivalent to 1/10 of a pound. However, this wasn't just measuring weight, it was measuring bulk and the relative difficulty of carrying the item, so it was an abstraction.
However, the real issue behind encumbrance is that it has the players constantly recalculating things every time their PCs gain or lose an item, even a single coin. While it's necessary for balance in a system where the treasure is the biggest source of your XP, it's a pain in the ass to constantly be adjusting it on your character sheet.
0e and later Classic had flat rates for encumbrance, but Greyhawk first started adjusting encumbrance for Strength. 1e tweaked Greyhawk's numbers a bit I think, and it was based on categories of 35/70/105 lbs, with Strength adding a bonus or penalty. In typical fashion though, Gary wouldn't leave a simple system alone and so complicated matters by having heavier armor automatically applying a more severe category of encumbrance no matter how much was carried and by splitting the rules between the PHB and DMG again in different sections of the books while obfuscating things further by throwing in some vague exceptions. It's no wonder that between the constant recalculations and the scattered and confusing rules that encumbrance got often ignored in 1e.
Then 2e put its own mark on the system. It attempted to simplify things by dumping the concept of coins and converting everything to pounds. Coins was never the problem though, but at least 2e was more straightforward by putting all the rules together in one place in the PHB and explaining things clearly. But 2e did things in its typical fashion by having multiple systems for the DM to choose from and then making the whole thing optional. It also had the most break points for encumbrance which made the system even more fiddly. The worst was the completely optional system where it broke down your movement rate by every step possible, so a human with a base move of 12 had break points for 11, 10, 9 and so on all the way down to 1. OTOH, 2e made XP for GP optional too, so the balance issues weren't as important.
3e further simplified things by going back to fewer categories, and later the game just switched the numbers to Strength x5/10/15 which eliminated another table. That's a good approach but, there's still the issue of constantly adjusting the numbers. So I've been looking into a slot-based system instead which seems to be a popular approach these days for the simplicity. While working on it, I looked into the history of encumbrance in the game, so I got to see just how complicated it got in the AD&D years.
This BTW ties into the discussion on spellbooks from about a week ago. As @Mannahnin posted a few pages back, according to the UA rules, a standard spellbook weighs 150 gp and has an encumbrance of 450 gp (once again, Gary couldn’t make up his mind). Traveling spellbooks however weigh 30 gp with an encumbrance of 60 gp. In addition a backpack or large sack can hold a single standard spellbook, but a backpack can hold 5 traveling spellbooks and a sack 10 books. So here the advantage of the traveling spellbook is increased portability at the cost of worse durability and less space, but the idea seems to be that the wizard leaves the big heavy spellbook behind and uses the traveling spellbooks as a convenience. Of course, this detail is left out in the core 2e books because Zeb thought it more important to tell us there’s no such thing as a standard spellbook, that spellbooks vary not just between cultures but individual wizards, and then waxes poetic about exotic inks and aromatic paper. Interestingly enough, modern D&D has all spellbooks weigh the same as an UA traveling spellbook.
Last edited:
I'm pretty sure I've been at at least one table when a player argued for XP for a friendly fire kill.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
Same. And of course they also loot the body. “Oops, sorry the AoE got you. Total accident.”
Our (eventually very house-ruled) “by the books” campaign became very, very interested in wills and inheritance.
The DM eventually introduced a Judges’ Guild* which took great interest in enforcing them.
(*: A great name, known only to us from mysterious ads in Dragon.)
Last edited:
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
I say it regularly, but here goes again. I love that about D&D. The DIY aspect of just house ruling the thing to fit your table.
We went the other way and had to make a “no pvp” rule. And a “the PC who murders another PC gets none of the dead PC’s loot” rule when the first was “accidentally” broken a few too many times.
Our PVP problem was solved when one player’s mother forbade him playing our satanic game, and the other problem player - Mr. Conan “I come to rape and pillage your village.” T. Barbarian - got a driver’s license and went off in search of real-world girls. (Most of us were Boy Scout nerds a couple years younger than Those Guys.)
The guy who played THE archmage in our group once targeted an enemy the party was in melee with using Lightning Bolt. He definitely injured his intended target, but because that foe was standing in waist-high water, he ALSO damaged the metal clad & wielding allies who had been whaling on it*.
From personal experience, one thing you DON’T do: let the non-caster hold onto that ring of spell storing with the high-level Delayed Blast Fireball.
Long story short: party was going through Expedition to the Barrier Peaks an encountered yet another group of police bots- fortunately, they were far away. So my character used that DBF to smack them, targeting one particular bot and setting the delay at max, so the party could get away.
UNfortunately, all of our previous encounters with the bots were at close range, so we didn’t know how fast they were. In fact, they were SO fast, they closed on the party in a single round and engaged in melee combat with us until the DBF went off, destroying them.
…and incinerating 2 party members while seriously wounding all but the party’s Cleric, who had been subjected to THE archmage’s friendly fire(balls) before** and had a ring protecting him from fire/heat damage.
* As well as cooking more seafood than we could eat…
** as well as accidental exposure to volcanic activity and the Elemental Plane of Fire
Last edited:
