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

[Mannahnin]

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)

Indeed. And part of the fun of Fireball in 1E is working out such calculations, and for DMs, occasionally making such encounter areas with low ceilings and narrow, winding corridors such that it's hard (or even impossible, due to limited information) for the M-U to predict exactly how far the Fireball will extend.

...But have any of you gotten into the math on the fact that this implies, since Fireball is spherical, that even casting it out in the open at ground level will expand the volume past 20' radius, since the ground is truncating part of the sphere?

Delta, being a math professor, of course went into the weeds on this and did both the easy math (Fireball targeted right at ground level), and the calculus / cubic math to figure out the actual radius if you target it at 5' off the ground, say right around the face/neck area of man-sized enemies you're fighting, as one might expect would be an intuitive targeting point.

The article is a fun read even if you're not a super math nerd, so I'll link it below and put the actual answers here in spoiler tags.

Answer: Targeted at ground level Fireball winds up with a radius of 25', and 23' if targeted 5' above the ground.

Fireball Missing Area

Math, history, and design of old-school D&D.

deltasdnd.blogspot.com

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

...But have any of you gotten into the math on the fact that this implies, since Fireball is spherical, that even casting it out in the open at ground level will expand the volume past 20' radius, since the ground is truncating part of the sphere?

Delta, being a math professor, of course went into the weeds on this and did both the easy math (Fireball targeted right at ground level), and the calculus / cubic math to figure out the actual radius if you target it at 5' off the ground, say right around the face/neck area of man-sized enemies you're fighting, as one might expect would be an intuitive targeting point.

 

[Riley]

...But have any of you gotten into the math on the fact that this implies, since Fireball is spherical, that even casting it out in the open at ground level will expand the volume past 20' radius, since the ground is truncating part of the sphere?



Answer: Targeted at ground level Fireball winds up with a radius of 25', and 23' if targeted 5' above the ground.

Fireball Missing Area

Math, history, and design of old-school D&D.

deltasdnd.blogspot.com

Yes, all that: our primary 1e DM was a math nerd/chemistry major.

The 1e DMG was also my introduction to the bell curve, and understanding probabilities. In junior high I wrote several Basic programs to analyze the DMG's various ability score generation methods. Each evening, I asked my little Texas Instruments TI-99/4a to ‘roll the dice’ a thousand times or so, then discovered in the morning how the results distributed. ‘Monte Carlo’ analysis, of a sort.

(Result: “Method III” - best-of-3d6 rolled six times for each ability score, in order - was by far the best... until Unearthed Arcana, of course. IIRC Method III had a median or mode around 13 or 14(!) and almost no risk of any bad scores.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To this day, I’m surprised our Wizard-playing math savant never tried pinpointing his fireballs by aiming high.

I guess when you’re into trig & calculus, geometry is BoRiNg.

 

[James Gasik]

To this day, I’m surprised our Wizard-playing math savant never tried pinpointing his fireballs by aiming high.

I guess when you’re into trig & calculus, geometry is BoRiNg.

D&D hates the third dimension with a passion.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

D&D hates the third dimension with a passion.

Amusingly, I used the 3rd dimension in 1st & 2nd edition with regularity as a DM. Besides urban attackers on rooftops, balconies, trees & whatnot, I had no qualms about launching attacks from any angle.

I had burrowing attackers come up from below, of course. And aquatic predators would appear out of the deep blue or diving from above, as they should.

But the pinnacle of my use of all dimensions came when I had a sorcerer on a blue dragon attacking a flying ship. Think of the climactic battle at the end of Dragonslayer.

After emerging from a thunderhead and depositing the sorcerer on the ship’s deck, the dragon dove back into the clouds. But it only did so to come back up and grab the airship from below. Shielded by the hull, it would briefly pop its head above the rails to bite or breathe; it swatted with a free claw; it occasionally swept the deck with its tail.

Unless they were in the right place at the right time, most of the party couldn’t get a good shot at the dragon, so they went harder after the sorcerer. The few fliers had to do the hard work of attacking the dragon.

They did defeat the sorcerer, but the dragon got away.

 

[James Gasik]

Amusingly, I used the 3rd dimension in 1st & 2nd edition with regularity as a DM. Besides urban attackers on rooftops, balconies, trees & whatnot, I had no qualms about launching attacks from any angle.

I had burrowing attackers come up from below, of course. And aquatic predators would appear out of the deep blue or diving from above, as they should.

But the pinnacle of my use of all dimensions came when I had a sorcerer on a blue dragon attacking a flying ship. Think of the climactic battle at the end of Dragonslayer.

After emerging from a thunderhead and depositing the sorcerer on the ship’s deck, the dragon dove back into the clouds. But it only did so to come back up and grab the airship from below. Shielded by the hull, it would briefly pop its head above the rails to bite or breathe; it swatted with a free claw; it occasionally swept the deck with its tail.

Unless they were in the right place at the right time, most of the party couldn’t get a good shot at the dragon, so they went harder after the sorcerer. The few fliers had to do the hard work of attacking the dragon.

They did defeat the sorcerer, but the dragon got away.

My comment mostly had to do with how absolutely batshit insane the flying rules are (probably a good contender for this thread in of itself) and how things got very strange when you start thinking three-dimensionally.

Like the time I had a flying Wizard aim a cone downwards and the DM kept muttering I had to be wrong about how that worked, lol.

 

[Quickleaf]

I've been reading 1e PHB, DMG, and Unearthed Arcana again to prep for a two-shot game of UK4: When a Star Falls for players mostly unfamiliar with 1e.

The pursuit & evasion rules are actually really cool.

I may be looking at the rules with rose-tinted glasses, but I think the perception as pre-1984/pre-Dragonlance D&D as being a war game / dungeon crawler is...it's mostly true in regards to the adventures...but I'm seeing more to the rules than that, with rules modules spanning a few areas of play:

• Ability checks & thief skills – When actions can’t just be resolved through freeform roleplaying, % thief skills and X-in-6 rolls are used, and AD&D adopted 1d20 "saves" (precursor to Basic's ability checks).
• Exploration – Wilderness travel and dungeon-delving are how AD&D manages pacing. They zoom in on scenes to build suspense or heighten tension by threatening resources. Discovering hidden treasures drives exploration.
• Parley with NPCs – NPC Reaction rolls often lead to “tipping point” situations (e.g. "Uncertain, but 55% chance of tipping...") where the players can defuse tense NPCs (or push them over the edge). Gaining allies like hirelings & henchmen is a cornerstone of AD&D; loyalty determines their response. Morale checks to determine commitment to a cause incorporate ideas like intimidation, deceit, or clever planning to avoid or end hostilities.
• Combat – Combat in AD&D is built around trying to gain surprise and assumes the party’s default is moving stealthily. Surprise also includes “outs” to combat through parley, fleeing, or trickery. Other ways to end combat (besides a race to 0 hit points) include forcing morale checks, unarmed combat (e.g. to knock unconscious, push past, or knock off cliffs), and running away.
• Escape & pursuit – Escaping dangerous enemies is a key part of AD&D with dedicated rules that could also cover chase or race situations. % rolls are used alongside creatively flexible modifiers (this idea appears in many rules modules in AD&D).
• Towns – Originally, towns weren’t the main adventure sites in AD&D, rather they were where you recovered, shopped, recruited hirelings, crafted magic items, and managed your castle or guild. Occasionally, you’d need to defend the town from siege (at least judging by the siege info in the DMG). Towns were also where you tallied XP and leveled up.

 

[Alzrius]

Fun little fact from AD&D 1E: the two female varieties of demons in the Monster Manual (i.e. the succubus and the "Type V" marilith), were the only kinds that could summon demons stronger than themselves.

Every other demon that's capable of gating in more of their Abyssal brethren are only capable of summoning their own kind or weaker, but not the aforementioned two; their conjuration magic brings all the boys to the yard!

For instance, the succubus (while outside of the normal Type I-VI ranking) only has 6 Hit Dice, but when she tries to summon (40% chance of success) another demon, there's a 70% chance it'll be a nalfeshnee (Type IV), which has 11 Hit Dice, a 25% chance it'll be a balor (Type VI) which rather oddly only has 8+8 Hit Dice (and so fewer hit points on average than a nalfeshnee), and a 5% chance of summoning a demon prince of the likes of Orcus, Juiblex, or Demogorgon himself. All from a 6 Hit Die succubus.

The marilith (having 7+7 HD herself) has more staggered odds (and only a 50% chance of performing a gate successfully), but the upper tiers of which offer similar options. On a success, she's 30% likely to summon a vrock (Type I), 25% likely to summon a hezrou (Type II), 15% likely to summon a glabrezu (Type III), 15% likely to bring forth an aforementioned nalfeshnee, 10% likely to summon a balor, and has the same 5% chance to summon a demon prince.

Imagine being on the bad end of one of those percentage rolls. "Remember that time we found out that the king's new concubine was actually a succubus? We managed to confront her, and next thing we knew we were facing off against Orcus!"

 

[Mannahnin]

To this day, I’m surprised our Wizard-playing math savant never tried pinpointing his fireballs by aiming high.

I guess when you’re into trig & calculus, geometry is BoRiNg.

Over the years we've used the "aim it high" trick a number of times with various area spells, including cones, to reduce the area at ground level and miss friends. This trick still has relevance and gets usage in 5E.