How close to the RAW did/do you play AD&D1?

[ExploderWizard]

It sure gets the job done at least as much as WotC's scheme of "add bonuses and penalties to each and every freaking roll"!

The attack tables worked just fine without the weapon type adjustments. The whole AC plus bonuses division is the part that doesn't seem to work smoothly for me. AC is definitive as a value. Armor type (as you pointed out) does not map precisely with AC so trying to pre create a table with the armor factor included along with actual AC values is a bit too messy to be worth that much work.

The WOTC scheme is simple bonus bloat which makes the d20 roll an afterthought to the static bonus and is another bag of worms entirely.

 

[Celebrim]

As using the term "armor class" so loosely it ought to fall off! Clearly, what is meant is literally "row on the attack matrix". The significance lies in the presence of repeating 20s, a feature lost with the simplistic "THAC0" formula made standard in 2nd Edition.

Yeah, this is the sort of wierd confusing thing you have to try to explain when you have not only repeating 20's, but a natural 20 doesn't actually always hit.

But, yes, AC 0 with a +1 bonus should literally be read as, "Use the AC 0 row of the attack matrix but move up one", just as the 'AC vs weapon modifer' literally means, 'Move up/down on the attack matrix by n rows'. For most purposes, it doesn't matter whether you think of this as adjusting the throw of the dice or the position on the table but it does matter a great deal for the repeating 20 portion of the table.

For example, you might think that an orc with a +1 bonus to hit needs a 19 to hit an AC -2 (because 19+1 = 20), but in fact, the +1 bonus actually just adjusts the row you read off down 1 which means the poor orc still needs a 20 to hit. The +1 bonus however does matter a good deal if the orc is facing an AC -7, because without that +1 bonus it can't hit the target number of 21, but since we have moved out of the range of the repeating 20's simple arthimatic works again (it doesn't matter if we move down to the -6 row or adjust the dice up to 21 by addition). Of course, in point of fact, that AC -7 is probably actually an AC 2 with a +9 bonus (at least in the case of a PC), meaning you move up 9 rows on the table and read of the -7 line, then adjust back down for the orcs +1 to hit bonus, and so read off the -6 line.

 

[Ariosto]

THAC0 was used in AD&D1. It's even in the AD&D1 DMG.

The second sentence is trivial fact, to precisely and only the extent that there is a "To Hit A.C. 0" entry for each monster in Appendix E.

If by the first, however, you mean that there is no difference between the results of using the 1st edition attack matrices and using the simplistic THAC0 formula of second edition, then that is simply false. (It came up in a game about a week ago, actually.)

 

[Garmorn]

The one rule I notice that almost every one dropped was the movement rule that required you to actually measure the distance your figurine moved. (For you who don't remember: all of the movement rates where written in inches for table top/miniature combat.) It was an hold over from the Chainmail days and was not dropped until 2e where it was replaced by a simple number (the number of hex/squares) a creature could move.

 

[Ariosto]

As I recall, the core 2e books used the same basic 10-foot (or 10-yard) units. I don't remember ever seeing any radically altered move factors in modules. Maybe a variant in a late supplement imposed a "by the the book" tactical grid, but I would assume that -- for use with models and modules alike -- it had an actual scale referent (as in 3e's 5 feet per square).

The "whole 9 yards" in 1st ed. AD&D was:

(1) Official ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS models are in 1/72 scale, or 6 feet to the inch.

(2) Movement rates, ranges and areas of effect in the dungeons are at 10 feet to the "inch" unit in the rules (30 feet or 10 yards outdoors, except for areas of effect unless you're using 1:10 or 1:20 model:man miniature war-game rules with structures scaled to figures rather than to ground scale).

(3) "Figure bases are necessarily broad ... Squares of about 1 actual inch are suggested. Each ground scale inch can then be used to equal 3⅓ linear feet." (A standard 10' wide dungeon corridor gets modeled on the tabletop as 3 inches wide, accommodating three figures abreast.)

(4) That works fine for frontage (ballpark based on Roman accounts), but ground scale out of figure scale distorts things when you outflank a long, snaky monster -- unless you give it an appropriately deep base.

 

[Bullgrit]

Ariosto, are you having a bad week? Just about all the posts I've seen from you over the past couple of days (in all threads) have been rather . . . aggressive, to everyone you're in a discussion with.

Edit: This post is not in reply to any particular post of yours, here. It's a general observation over a couple days.

Bullgrit

 

[Holy Bovine]

The best way I found to handle this was to create 'to hit' tables specific to each character in the party. Instead of cross referencing a fighter table to figure out if 'Black Joe' hit AC 3 after adding up all the modifiers, you instead created a 'Black Joe' table which cross referenced his sword +3 vs. each AC. Then, all you needed to know was the dice throw and any temporary modifiers because his strength, magic sword, and the long sword vs. AC modifers were already calculated. Ditto for Black Joe's short bow +1, his backup dagger, and his unarmed attack.

It was a small headache to prepare the tables, but it saved an enormous amount of time in play and made using the 'weapon vs. ac' modifiers no harder than not using them. And once you had the tables, they were really cool, because suddenly the game started to make sense at a tactical level. Realism jumped up enormously. You could see that a whip or a unarmed attack were virtually useless against an armored foe (as you'd expect). A heavy weapon designed to penatrate armor was great - if the foe was armored - but suffered compared to a finesse weapon against a lighter unarmored foe. Your longsword, damage king though it was in most cases, could have real issues penetrating something as protective as plate so that there really was reasons to consider using other types of weapons. It wasn't obvious which weapon was best.

As for the AC of monsters, you didn't have to calculate them all in advance and you really didn't have to concern yourself too much with what AC the monsters hide had. Instead, you decided roughly what dexterity the monster had, and then the rest of the monster's AC translated as armor by necessity. This seems like its just as hard, but figuring out if the monster ought to qualify for non-armor AC seemed easier to me than figuring out what armor it had. So, if the monster had an AC 4, but didn't seem particularly agile, that was obviously all armor. Or, if the monster had an AC 2, but was a small lithe fairy, then perhaps that was all 'bonus' (size, dexterity, swiftness, magical enhancement), and its AC was 10 (with a AB of +8). Once you decided for one monster, you just made a note and then you 'knew' and could write it in a stat block (which was like 2 lines back then) when prepping for an evening. And you were really unlikely to introduce more then two or three new monsters in a session, and after a while it didn't much come up.

No, the real complexity - and one that I had just started to consider - was what weapon did the monsters attacks qualify as? Near the end of my 1e career I started making specific monster vs. AC attack tables to go with each monster entry.

Oh dear. I think I've had a stroke.

I find the fact you can say that that is not complex to be truly baffling. That is way, way [b[]way[/b] more detail than I would ever want in any RPG ever.

 

[Henry]

Back in the day, I BARELY played by the rules. It was this glorious mix of Basic, Expert, and AD&D, with me deciding whether saving throws and attacks worked by fiat because we didn't understand how the d20 worked.

These days, when I run it at cons and such, I generally stick straight to rules as written in the first three books (AD&D1 books) with a little help from (Seig?) over at Dragonsfoot on the combat chapter. Damn, but that was a contradictory read...

 

[Garmorn]

As I recall, the core 2e books used the same basic 10-foot (or 10-yard) units. I don't remember ever seeing any radically altered move factors in modules. Maybe a variant in a late supplement imposed a "by the the book" tactical grid, but I would assume that -- for use with models and modules alike -- it had an actual scale referent (as in 3e's 5 feet per square).

The "whole 9 yards" in 1st ed. AD&D was:

(1) Official ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS models are in 1/72 scale, or 6 feet to the inch.

(2) Movement rates, ranges and areas of effect in the dungeons are at 10 feet to the "inch" unit in the rules (30 feet outdoors, except for areas of effect unless you're using 1:10 or 1:20 model:man miniature war-game rules with structures scaled to figures rather than to ground scale).

(3) "Figure bases are necessarily broad ... Squares of about 1 actual inch are suggested. Each ground scale inch can then be used to equal 3⅓ linear feet."

Right all part of the old table top system where every thing was done by rulers or tape measure.

The grid system was 2nd edition.

 

[Celebrim]

Oh dear. I think I've had a stroke.

I find the fact you can say that that is not complex to be truly baffling. That is way, way way more detail than I would ever want in any RPG ever.

It's less complex than both 3e and 4e because it generally involves less momentary calculation. Third edition reaches a point where virtually all the characters abilities may be changing from round to round, or at the very least may change massively prior to going into a combat and then massively again when a debuffer goes off. Plus you have to keep track of overlapping named bonuses (my single biggest headache with 3e).

Fourth edition by all appearances has a large number of conditions which come and go quickly that can amount to the same thing.

Also keep in mind that alot of the work I'm describing of inventing dexterity scores for monsters, separating armor class into its constituents and so forth are tasks that do increase complexity, but notably they are things which are already done in 3e. The resulting monster entries are still simpler than the 'simplified' monster entries used in 4e.

As a start up cost, it's considerably less expensive than the character creation of a system like Champions, M&M, etc.

And it's massively less complex than GURPS when you really start pulling GURPS toward realism (see GULLIVER).