D&D 1E Giving an AD&D feel to 5e

[Sacrosanct]

Heh.

I love the irony of being told that my experience doesn't count, while at the same time people are claiming that their experience was universal. Or, being told that every table was different back in the day ( a point I definitely agree with) while at the same time telling me that my table didn't really exist (didn't have experience with the game).

No one has told you that your experience doesn't count. What we're (at least me) telling you is that how you're describing AD&D play was not only not the norm, but actually the antithesis to how it was designed to be played. Not just by my opinion, but by the people who actually wrote the game. And some of the claims you've made make no sense to anyone who is familiar with how the rulebooks and modules were actually written.

Or that playing with Unearthed Arcana=Monty Haul gaming. ROTFLMAO. Hrmmm, judgmental much?

Not judgmental at all, but a fair statement. For a decade, AD&D was played largely with the same rules, and set of standards for how characters were created. Then, all of the sudden, UA came along and said "Hey! Let's add some powerful races to play. Then let's add some super powered classes as well. Hmm...that's not enough, let's make sure every PC has at least three 18s in their top three ability scores. And for a cherry on top, let's allow fighters to throw 6 darts every round for a ton of damage each!"

It would be like saying, "In 2e, there were 8 ability scores, and dwarven fighters could get an extra +1 to attack with axes, only suffered 1/2 damage from blunt attacks, got a d12 for hit points, got a 2% magic resistance per level, and had a +2 bonus to AC when not wearing armor." because Skills and Powers was an official 2e book.

Do you honestly think that 2e was generally played with those rules?

Apparently, according to some in this thread, you only ever got above 3rd level in AD&D by being a massive munchkin with a Monty Haul DM. Because, well, the game was SO lethal that it is inconceivable that you could possibly succeed at anything.

Who said this?

Look, I'll agree that AD&D was very lethal due to the plethora of save or die effects. Totally agree with that. But, the other stuff? Not so much.

Then again, AD&D is incredibly schizophrenic. If you played mostly modules in AD&D, you had a VERY different experience with the game than those who did mostly home-brew. The modules, by and large, did not support this "avoid encounters" style of play because, well, in most modules, most encounters weren't avoidable. The maps were too linear, for one thing, to avoid encounters. And the modules were set up that you couldn't avoid stuff.

Objectively not true. As has been mentioned many times, in a module like ToEE, you were actively encouraged to pit the factions against each other. Not fight them all. KotBL mentions something very similar. Same with the Saltmarsh series (Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger at Dunwater, and Final Enemy). Same with a ton of other published modules, like The Sentinel and the Gauntlet. Not only was the game mechanically designed to reward you for not taking the risk of combat, but it literally warns against players who fight only in the DMG. I don't know how much clearer that has to be. This has nothing to do with "your experience" or denying it. This is about looking at the actual rules and material from 1e at the time.

 

[Helldritch]

You keep saying things like this and yet how you express indicates you don’t have much experience with 1e in it’s time frame. UA was a broken mess and every DM I played with didn’t allow it beyond some hand picked spells. One let me be a thief-acrobat but it took some twisting. It wasn’t like it is today where players feel entitled to play and use everything published by WOTC. It was very DIY and heavy house rules. Weapon Mastery from BECMI was more commonly used in 1e than Weapon Specialization.

Things I used from the get go of UA and kept.
1) Weapon specialization
2) Ranger's modifications
3) New demi-humans' level cap
4) The spells
5) The magic items
6) The pantheons.

Things we tried with my groups but voted out.
1) Cavalier and the new paladin. We kept the paladin as a fighter subclass and gave it weapon specialization.
2) The stupid code of chivalry.
3) The Barbarian
4) Pretty much anything else.
5) Weapons vs Armor

Things we did not even tried as we laughed out our asses.
1) The rolling method... But I know of tables that used it and it led to soooo many abuses and those that used the whole of the UA led to what I called the Lawful Stupid Paladin. Paladins became sooo common and sooo powerful that DMs all around tried to restrict them with lawful stupidness and a chivalry code so restricting that playing a paladin was no longer fun and enjoyable. God, I saw a group of 4 with three paladins! I saw less than 10 paladins legally rolled in all my groups in 10 years of 1ed... It was very hard to roll one. That is what made the class so special and so powerful to begin with. The UA did a big disservice to my favourite class...

 

[Helldritch]

Objectively not true. As has been mentioned many times, in a module like ToEE, you were actively encouraged to pit the factions against each other. Not fight them all. KotBL mentions something very similar. Not only was the game mechanically designed to reward you for not taking the risk of combat, but it literally warns against players who fight only in the DMG. I don't know how much clearer that has to be. This has nothing to do with "your experience" or denying it. This is about looking at the actual rules and material from 1e at the time.

I will not comment on the first part of your comment as I have seen such play style... and failed to convince those DMs that it was not supposed to be that way and failed...

But for the quoted part. Almost all my groups that have succeeded in ToEE have played factions against one another save one. It was a group of six players 5 of which were wizards or multiclassed wizards... The only non caster was a dwarven fighter (creatively named... Gimli... yeah, I know...) They literally stormed the ToEE killing and destroying just about everything in sight. One was a fighter that switched to wizard... That group played up to the demo web and succeeded. But yes, playing each factions against one another was a key strategy to succeed ToEE.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I will not comment on the first part of your comment as I have seen such play style... and failed to convince those DMs that it was not supposed to be that way and failed...

I'm not saying people didn't play with UA or S&P; of course there were people who did. The books sold after all. I'm only saying it was a pretty rare outlier who did, and it was only for a short period of that edition's lifespan, respectively. Therefore, making general comments about how 1e was played based on UA is pretty flawed comment to make, like saying how 2e was played based on S&P content.

 

[Helldritch]

I'm not saying people didn't play with UA or S&P; of course there were people who did. The books sold after all. I'm only saying it was a pretty rare outlier who did, and it was only for a short period of that edition's lifespan, respectively. Therefore, making general comments about how 1e was played based on UA is pretty flawed comment to make, like saying how 2e was played based on S&P content.

In that case, I fully agree. Not everyone were playing that way. But there was enough of those to leave a mark on the collective memory of 1ed players. And as oftentimes we have seen through history, only the last part of an era is remembered. Is it so surprising that this last part of the 1ed is more remembered than it's beginning?

I was really involved in tournament play, and in the last two tournaments, the most comment we got was that we should include UA stuff into our tournaments... For the good and the bad, UA left a mark on 1ed and that mark will stay forever.

 

[Greg K]

Overall, I was not a fan of Unearthed Arcana. I think we used weapon specialization, some of the new weapons, a handful of the spells, and some of the magic items. I wanted to like the Barbarian and Cavalier- especially, the former- but both had elements in their design that I disliked (Thankfully, David Howery later redeemed both in Dragon Magazine articles). Similarly, I liked the concept of the Thief-Acrobat, but I had similar issue with it as I did the 1e bard (not available at first level)

 

[Helldritch]

Overall, I was not a fan of Unearthed Arcana. I think we used weapon specialization, some of the new weapons, a handful of the spells, and some of the magic items. I wanted to like the Barbarian and Cavalier- especially, the former- but both had elements in their design that I disliked (Thankfully, David Howery later redeemed both in Dragon Magazine articles). Similarly, I liked the concept of the Thief-Acrobat, but I had similar issue with it as I did the 1e bard (not available at first level)

Which Dragon? I seem to have missed this or these articles.

 

[Greg K]

Which Dragon? I seem to have missed this or these articles.

Dragon 148. "Tracking Down the Barbarian" and "The Corrected Cavalier"

 

[Helldritch]

Dragon 148. "Tracking Down the Barbarian" and "The Corrected Cavalier"

Thanks. Got a pdf of that one I am sure. I don't remember these articles though.

Edit: Read the articles and it is normal that I do not remember these. By then I was fully into second edition so anything related to 1ed was discarded as inconsequential for my games. I wish this had been out when UA got out...

 

[S'mon]

As a child at the D&D shop buying D&D for the first time, the shopkeeper told me I really needed to get Unearthed Arcana... I think we used pretty much everything from it except the new chargen method with the 9d6-8d6-7d6 etc for human PCs. @Upper_Krust played a Cavalier who ended up the Lesser God of Swords. There was a Fighter-Assassin with weapon spec; I must have used the 2e PHB alongside it as I remember an evil wizard rendered invulnerable via 2e Stoneskin.