D&D 1E How about a little love for AD&D 1E

[fuindordm]

@ilgatto Hear hear!
Character design is fun, but for me as well the emergent personality of the character is more interesting and rewarding than the precise build.
Now I'm not a minimalist, and when I theorycraft AD&D I am often trying to add a little more customizability to the build, so that characters have some abilities and advantages in addition to those defined by their class.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Every time I read people saying that they miss 1E/2E I always wonder why on earth they did move on.

In many cases, it is because one was really coming back to D&D as a whole from one of the many other games that had come to the fore since AD&D had come out (GURPS, Shadowrun, WEG Star Wars, White Wolf, and so on). So it wasn't really moving on so much as decidedly not doing what you had just been doing and then deciding which thing to try next -- that thing you've already done many times before or trying something new with unknown potential (I'm sure the food/restaurant industry has lots of research on the ratios for that situation).

That said, and I'll try to keep this light based on this being a (not-quite-declared) + thread. There are reasons not to have issues with AD&D(1E or both), certainly enough to look into alternatives. Racial level limits, racial class exclusions, few weapons other than longswords being optimal unless using the WvsAC charts so many people didn't want to use, rulership being a key high-level class feature that likewise to which many had no use, low-level magic users contributing just a few spells (often win-button if they chose presciently) and otherwise hanging back and lobbing oil flasks but then high-level magic users disproportionately dominating, thieves being thematically flavorful but hamstrung in many ways, repeated cascades of good fortune being rewarded with further good fortune (good stat rolls leading to upgrade class options, etc.), admonitions not to run Monty Haul campaigns but little guidance on what a non-MH benchmark would be (such that starting at higher levels could consistently avoid this), many of the overall rules working best under the dungeon-crawl play assumptions (that for many people was a sometimes-treat kind of playstyle) and lurching into unintended consequences if the playstyle was different (all of which could be fixed with houserules, but that requires DM skill and at that point, what's holding you there instead of trying something else?). Also character customization which others have covered well.

So there were reasons. 3e (or the hype surrounding it) promised answers for a lot of the things one or another person had listed as a major issue they had with AD&D (or TSR-A/D&D in general). It had some, caused other issues, and sometimes gave people exactly what they asked for (which turned out not as satisfying as hoped). Some eventually came around to thinking they didn't want what 3e was selling (or the benefits were insufficient compared to the downstream consequences), and hence the OSR.

 

[James Gasik]

It would be nice if D&D was more open to "organic development". That you could easily just acquire a new ability because it makes sense to do so, as part of the story, and not hamstring yourself by doing so. Or that you didn't need to make decisions about your future when you lack a real life crystal ball.

A good example of this was when 3e changed multiclassing. So you could play a Fighter who starts to become curious about magic, and have long conversations with the party Wizard while taking watches. And even, under their tutelage, take a level of Wizard yourself!

But this doesn't appreciatively help you be a Fighter, and you're now a very poor Wizard, with no synergy between your roles, unless you planned for this levels in advance, and took the right Feats to become an Eldritch Knight or whatever.

OTOH, the AD&D approach isn't much better, where you also have to make the choice about whether or not to be a multiclassed character at level 1 (even with dual-classing, you need to make sure you have high numbers in certain ability scores to even attempt it!), and of course, you also need to be careful about your choice of race as well (unless you're playing in Lankhmar or something).

2e's Kits are much the same way; you are asked to adopt them at level 1. Even weapon specialization requires some level of foresight (knowing that one day, a +4 bastard sword might appear in the campaign) or just gaming the system by selecting a longsword (knowing full well that not only is a magical glaive-guisarme highly unlikely to appear save by DM fiat, but the magic item tables limit it to +3 anyways!).

And while it's not really a 1e concern, the rate at which you gain Non-Weapon Proficiencies in 2e is nearly criminal; your Fighter could spend an extended amount of time at sea at level 4, but have to wait until level 6 to have a chance to gain Seamanship!

1e's "everything is an ability check" approach (at least until the later books, like Oriental Adventures) was definitely better for this, but the level-based "stay in your lane" system does prevent some kinds of development.

For example, your Half-Elven Fighter/Thief can't suddenly, upon encountering an actual deity, suddenly decide to change their ways and devote themselves to becoming a Cleric; they missed that boat in character creation!

I'm not saying this is all bad; I generally prefer level-based systems over things like GURPS or OWOD, where you can accidentally overspecialize or build your character to be unable to participate in many adventures; it's nice to say "level x characters have this baseline of ability".

It's just something you have to accept in D&D; there are choices that are locked in for you at character creation that can affect you down the road, whether you see them or not. No version of the game is truly better or worse in this respect, IMO.

 

[Voadam]

But this doesn't appreciatively help you be a Fighter, and you're now a very poor Wizard, with no synergy between your roles, unless you planned for this levels in advance, and took the right Feats to become an Eldritch Knight or whatever.

One level gave you some notable synergies. A 3e Fighter X/Wizard 1 can use any wizard wand for example which can give you a number of decent buff and utility options, as well as some minor magical offense. A Fighter 1/wizard x gets six more starting hp than a straight wizard and a stronger fort save, a survivability bump at lower levels (and a bonus combat feat that might synergize with rays or such) that can be nice for the cost of one caster level.

It was generally doing more than a synergistic dip that hit really hard. A balanced warrior x/spellcaster x was about x behind the curve in both classes with not much more than the one level dip synergies to show for it. Every two wizard levels cost the warrior aspect a base attack bonus and hp every level. Every warrior level cost the spellcaster a casting level.

When I did my AD&D human switch class going from Fighter to Wizard I had to give up all fighter stuff until I matched the fighter level in wizard levels. The extra hps of a 3rd level fighter were a comfort when I became a 1st level wizard, but that was still more than a bit behind the curve of the other PCs for a while.

 

[Lanefan]

One of the changes that 3E brought that I liked most, besides standardisation (and multiclassing, to a lesser degree), was that it got rid of the randomness and finality of restrictions. No more "only this class can do this", "this race can't do that". If you were willing to take the appropriate feat or pay the skill point cost, you could do pretty much anything.

And those benefits, such as they are, are counterbalanced by the steep erosion in class niche protection. Better, I think, was to more freely allow multiclassing (2e got this right, IMO) and dispense with that awkward two-class system Humans had to use in 1e as written.

My take has always been that if there's something specific you want your character to be able to do in the game and that ability is only available to a subest of species and-or classes, then play a member of that species or class.

 

[Lanefan]

On the DM end Pathfinder also has fantastic bestiaries, extensive online srds, and adventures that are really useful for a DM.

Golarion is a pretty cool setting too. A lot of it can easily be used in other systems, but there is a number of d20 specific material for it as well.

Creatures and settings are easily convertible from one edition to another. Adventures too, though my experience with converting PF adventures has been less than thrilling: I just want the standalone adventure, not the whole path, and stripping out all the fluff related to the adventure path quickly becomes more trouble than it's worth.

 

[Voadam]

Creatures and settings are easily convertible from one edition to another. Adventures too, though my experience with converting PF adventures has been less than thrilling: I just want the standalone adventure, not the whole path, and stripping out all the fluff related to the adventure path quickly becomes more trouble than it's worth.

Paizo put out both 1 adventure path module a month and one stand alone module a month. There are plenty of good stand alone Pathfinder modules if that is what you are looking for.

Also the AP connections could at times be very weak, a lot of them could be stand alones fairly easily.

 

[Lanefan]

It would be nice if D&D was more open to "organic development". That you could easily just acquire a new ability because it makes sense to do so, as part of the story, and not hamstring yourself by doing so. Or that you didn't need to make decisions about your future when you lack a real life crystal ball.

A good example of this was when 3e changed multiclassing. So you could play a Fighter who starts to become curious about magic, and have long conversations with the party Wizard while taking watches. And even, under their tutelage, take a level of Wizard yourself!

But this doesn't appreciatively help you be a Fighter, and you're now a very poor Wizard, with no synergy between your roles, unless you planned for this levels in advance, and took the right Feats to become an Eldritch Knight or whatever.

3e's additive multiclassing (and 4e's and 5e's, for all that) is one of its worst elements. 2e, where a character's classes could and did advance independent of each other, is far more flexible and ends up with non-borked characters.

OTOH, the AD&D approach isn't much better, where you also have to make the choice about whether or not to be a multiclassed character at level 1 (even with dual-classing, you need to make sure you have high numbers in certain ability scores to even attempt it!), and of course, you also need to be careful about your choice of race as well (unless you're playing in Lankhmar or something).

I don't know if they're our own invention or whether they were inspired by a Dragon article or somehting, but for ages we've had rules and procedures in place for if-when a character wants to (and is otherwise able to) pick up a second class; meanign the decision can be made during the character's played career.

1e's "everything is an ability check" approach (at least until the later books, like Oriental Adventures) was definitely better for this, but the level-based "stay in your lane" system does prevent some kinds of development.

For example, your Half-Elven Fighter/Thief can't suddenly, upon encountering an actual deity, suddenly decide to change their ways and devote themselves to becoming a Cleric; they missed that boat in character creation!

Good point, bad example: a deity could bestow the Cleric class on that character on the spot if it wanted to!

But even then, partly by 1e RAW and partly by fiat covering rules that simply don't exist, it's doable without divine intervention.

The part that doesn't exist in the RAW anywhere (and as far as I know, in any edition!) is ways and means of dropping or renouncing a class or classes other than losing all your levels to a level-drainer - and somehow surviving this process! - and then declining restoration. So the DM would have to handwave this part somehow; for my own game I invented a high-level Clerical spell Renouncement, for just this purpose.

But after that, RAW comes to the rescue. In the PH, when determining a character's age there's a modifier - you add a number of years based on the character's class: 3 years for Cleric, 8 years for MU, etc. Thus, we now know how long it takes to train in order to become a raw 0-xp 1st-level in said class; which means that in this case, three in-game years from now you could be a brand new 1st-level Cleric. The only sticky one is Fighter which adds 0 years to rolled age, but as all classes get some combat training anyway I'm cool with it only taking a few months for any adventurer to become a raw-1st Fighter.

 

[Lanefan]

Paizo put out both 1 adventure path module a month and one stand alone module a month. There are plenty of good stand alone Pathfinder modules if that is what you are looking for.

That may be their production schedule now; I kinda gave up on their adventures about 8 years ago, having bought a fair number and got little if any use out of them. Nowadays I probably write (or, now and then, dream up on the fly!) 3/4 of what I run, with the other 1/4 mostly being old or obscure modules that people otherwise won't have encountered.

Also the AP connections could at times be very weak, a lot of them could be stand alones fairly easily.

Maybe I just got unlucky?

 

[Voadam]

That may be their production schedule now; I kinda gave up on their adventures about 8 years ago, having bought a fair number and got little if any use out of them.

Maybe I am misremembering.

I know I picked up a pile of their 3.5 ones in their sales and there were a bunch in Pathfinder 1e. But looking at the numbers it looks like only about 84 standalone modules total (3.5, Pathfinder 1e, and Free RPG day ones) compared to about 146 AP ones (24 APs six each).

Maybe it was every two months for the stand alones?