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"Hot" take: Aesthetically-pleasing rules are highly overvalued
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8113130" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Frankly, you make many good points, and this is another of the reasons I'm not REALLY enamoured of 'hodge-podge' systems like AD&D. Just take a gander at this insanity if you really want to see what 1e's combat system consists of (see attached monstrosity). As you point out, MANY spells make absolutely no sense unless wizards and clerics can indeed engage in spell casting in close proximity to the enemy. What this tells me is that, while Gygax might have initially built up this system where that was impossible, it was quickly abandoned by convention EVEN BY HIM, and the 'common default' of D&D reigned. The common default was that each side rolled initiative (after declaring actions) and then one side did its stuff, and then the other side did its stuff, pure and simple. No counting segments and WSF and any of that fantasmagorical silliness (playing with all those rules would be practically speaking, impossible). If one guy declared to cast a spell, and a bad guy declared to attack him, then assuming the attack was feasible, it was carried out against nothing but basic AC (not much for a wizard unless they had bracers, etc.). If you went to cast some really high level spell that takes a LONG time (and there are some that take several rounds) then you were probably asking for trouble. A quick Sleep, or one of the 'combat spells' like Burning Hands, well, you took SOME risk, but if you were playing that sort of wizard, maybe you better have a high DEX (we did adjust everyone's init die by their DEX, so some people could go first even if their side generally lost). Exact details of what any given DM was likely to include, or not include, was of course hard to say, but the pea soup of AD&D combat, where it isn't even clear that melee combatants HAVE a location on the map, is not even really a rule system. I rarely want to say much about "how it works" because it is really not possible.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8113130, member: 82106"] Frankly, you make many good points, and this is another of the reasons I'm not REALLY enamoured of 'hodge-podge' systems like AD&D. Just take a gander at this insanity if you really want to see what 1e's combat system consists of (see attached monstrosity). As you point out, MANY spells make absolutely no sense unless wizards and clerics can indeed engage in spell casting in close proximity to the enemy. What this tells me is that, while Gygax might have initially built up this system where that was impossible, it was quickly abandoned by convention EVEN BY HIM, and the 'common default' of D&D reigned. The common default was that each side rolled initiative (after declaring actions) and then one side did its stuff, and then the other side did its stuff, pure and simple. No counting segments and WSF and any of that fantasmagorical silliness (playing with all those rules would be practically speaking, impossible). If one guy declared to cast a spell, and a bad guy declared to attack him, then assuming the attack was feasible, it was carried out against nothing but basic AC (not much for a wizard unless they had bracers, etc.). If you went to cast some really high level spell that takes a LONG time (and there are some that take several rounds) then you were probably asking for trouble. A quick Sleep, or one of the 'combat spells' like Burning Hands, well, you took SOME risk, but if you were playing that sort of wizard, maybe you better have a high DEX (we did adjust everyone's init die by their DEX, so some people could go first even if their side generally lost). Exact details of what any given DM was likely to include, or not include, was of course hard to say, but the pea soup of AD&D combat, where it isn't even clear that melee combatants HAVE a location on the map, is not even really a rule system. I rarely want to say much about "how it works" because it is really not possible. [/QUOTE]
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