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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3999668" data-attributes="member: 42582">Reynard, as always a pleasure to get a reply from you. As usual, unfortunately, I don't know that I can fully agree.I'll admit that "mid-level" is a bit ambiguous. But first I didn't intend that it's automatic for all fighters, only that it's possible for many. So here's my build (1st ed, not 2nd, because of greater familiary, but I hope that doesn't make too much difference).My fighter will have chain and shield like yours, and a STR of 17, CON of 16 and DEX of 15, and will be 7th level. This is not an uncommon stat spread for 1st ed PCs and NPCs.I will give the fighter specialisation for another +1 to hit and +2 to damage.The fighter's base THACO at that level is 14, meaning a 9 required to hit the tiger's AC 5 (going from memory here) plus 2 for stat and specialisation meaning a successful hit on 7 or better - that's 70% of the time.The fighter has 7d10 +14 hits - I'll be generous to my fighter and say 60 hits. Certainly not unheard of.I'm doing my big cat from memory, but I'm saying HD 5+5, damage 1-6/1-6/1-8 for an average of nearly 30 hit points and 11.5 points on a successful hit (I've dropped the raking damage, but I think I've also overestimated the claw damage, so I'll call that a wash). The 1st ed monster attack tables are funny but a 5+ HD monster is probably similar to our fighter, therefore needing an 11 to hit our fighter's AC of 3. The average damage to our fighter is thus about 6 hp per round, so the fighter can stand against the tiger for 10 rounds, needing to do 3 hp per round to win. With a 70% chance to hit, this requires an attack with average damage of 4.5. Bare hands will do this: 1d2 +3 for STR and specialisation.Hence my contention that a fairly typical mid-level fighter in 1st ed can beat a great cat in combat bare-handed. Maybe I'm overestimating big cats and underestimating the advantage that chain and a shield would grant, but this strikes me as a near-superhuman feat.I think the numbers would play out in a similar fashion for wild boars, bears and (at higher levels) dragons. Again, all this strikes me as superhuman.This is all true - but as I replied to Henry, it's really changing the parameters of the game. For example, is a game without levelling, or without reasonable amounts of treasure, really AD&D? That's certainly not the paradigm AD&D experience as the rulebooks promise it, where the emphasis is all about improving one's character by way of successful adventuring.I don't remember there being any rules for this in 1E. In 2E I think its part of what produces tensions in play - my Thief wants to go and steal, your Wizard wants to go off and make potions, where's the party play and how does this all relate to the mechanics of character improvement which put combat ability front and centre?I'm not equipped with market research data or anything of that sort. But I think the proliferation of both (frequently inconsistent) optional rules systems (Completes, Options etc) and settings (many of which themselves involved substantial changes to mechanics as well as flavour) are evidence that (or at least consistent with the proposition that) the game had trouble with its system. The game couldn't decide what it was trying to be or do, what sort of gaming experience it was intended to deliver.This is highly controversial, of course, but I regard it as further evidence for my view that one of the most striking features of 3E (which did resuscitate the game in a major way) was to be very definite (and increasingly so over time) about the relationship between system and gaming experience. I don't think its a coincidence that from the beginning the designers avoided what I am identifying above as one of the major problems with 2nd ed as a system.Fair enough. I think it's a realistic viewpoint. I've played a lot of D&D and have found it gives one sort of experience, but not another. For that other experience I play other fantasy RPGs which are configured to deliver it.Remember, I'm not arguing that D&D is no good (I have identified some incoherencies, but other major systems like RQ and RM suffer from these also - only in 2nd ed AD&D do I really feel that these make for a game that can be hard to have fun with). I'm just arguing that it has always provided a context and parameters to facilitate a particular sort of play, and therefore that 4e is no different in this respect (though it is doing it in a different, more up front and (IMO) better way).You may be better informed than me on the financial state of the industry, but to the extent that I have a view about RPGing in general it is a bit different. I agree that the social and recreational milieu has changed, but I think what will help to keep the hobby alive (and hopefully the industry also) is precisely that games are being produced which are better games, with greater appeal to a wider range of game players, than those that came before.</blockquote>

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