How did initiative rules make casters stronger in 3E?

[Majoru Oakheart]

As one who from his start in OD&D has favored the magic-user (although clerics rock in their own way, especially in 1E), I have little patience for claims that they are "too weak" in old D&D -- except by comparison with elves in Moldvay/Mentzer Basic (which are simply too strong).

Low level magic users had interchangeably moments of absolute power and absolute weakness.

You'd be attacked by 20 goblins and an ogre and your allies would be yelling, "Run! Run!" and you'd confidently roll up your sleeve and put them all to sleep. They'd all cheer because there's no way they could have defeated all of those enemies.

Then the Ogre who was hiding behind the rock out of the area of effect would come out of hiding and smack you...once...with a club and you'd die. And roll up a new character.

The same thing tended to happen if you fought more than one group of enemies a day.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Low level magic users had interchangeably moments of absolute power and absolute weakness.

You'd be attacked by 20 goblins and an ogre and your allies would be yelling, "Run! Run!" and you'd confidently roll up your sleeve and put them all to sleep. They'd all cheer because there's no way they could have defeated all of those enemies.

Then the Ogre who was hiding behind the rock out of the area of effect would come out of hiding and smack you...once...with a club and you'd die. And roll up a new character.

The same thing tended to happen if you fought more than one group of enemies a day.

Low level combat was very deadly. Dying is a part of the game. In a plot light exploration style game the players can make more decisions about the conditions under which they enter combat. Planning on more than one major engagement per day is very risky at level 1. As long as the frequency of death is balanced by the ease of character creation it's all good.

 

[Matthew_]

Oh - a quick note about 1e vs. 2e, here...

Generally, it's easier to interrupt spells in 1e. Although there are 10 segments in a round, each side starts their actions on segment 1-6. If you are in melee combat, you act on that segment, unless you have multiple attacks with your weapon, in which case you (IIRC) get to act first and last every round. Your weapon speed factor does not change your initiative in any way, but gets funny on ties. If you are using missile weapons out of melee, you also get to go faster, subtracting your Reaction/Missile Attack bonus from your initiative point. If you are casting spells, depending on how you read the rules, you either add your spell's casting time to your initiative point, or finish casting on whatever segment matches the spell's casting time. Either way, spellcasters would generally go quite late in a round, and they get progressively later as their spells get more powerful.

In 2e, initiative rolls are on a d10, and both weapon speed factors and casting times influenced when you would act. Under this system, a longsword is as cumbersome as your average 5th-level magic-user (or 3rd-level cleric) spell. Combined with the fact that the initiative die now spans the entire length of a round, rather than just the first 6 portions of it, it is much harder to interrupt even the longest spells.

The effect of the 2e initiative rules strongly depend on which options you are using. The default method is to roll 1d10 for each side, lowest goes first, end of story. You can add casting times as an option without adding weapon speeds (they are separate options), and you can use individual initiative or not. In general, AD&D/2e is a tool box game, so the way it is balanced can vary by huge swings depending on which rules the game master is using, initiative being just one example.

 

[Hussar]

Low level combat was very deadly. Dying is a part of the game. In a plot light exploration style game the players can make more decisions about the conditions under which they enter combat. Planning on more than one major engagement per day is very risky at level 1. As long as the frequency of death is balanced by the ease of character creation it's all good.

So, you're saying that 1e D&D was all about the 15 minute adventuring day? MU blows his load and then the party retreats to rest. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Wow, I thought that was a 3e thing that players were always trying to do this and it was never done in earlier editions.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

On a related note, in 4E the 15 minute adventuring day is considered so standardized an option the rules actually try to bribe parties to keep going with a bonus action point after every two encounters.

So long as you have daily resources at all, it has always been and will always be the case that if there's no real consequences to stopping after every single encounter and resting, people will be tempted to do so. Especially if they hate the idea of ever going into a fight at "less than 100%."

 

[Brother MacLaren]

So, you're saying that 1e D&D was all about the 15 minute adventuring day? MU blows his load and then the party retreats to rest. Wash, rinse, repeat.

No, he was saying that PCs would be careful about choosing when to enter combat. That didn't mean "Nova, rest, come back and nova again." It often meant "Be sneaky and think up other solutions to overcome the foes." Picking Clairvoyance over Fireball was often a very good choice -- it lasted a very long time and could let you avoid many pointless fights altogether.

[I'm talking B/X rather than 1E because I'm more familiar with the former, but I think they're quite similar.]

With the much smaller selection and impact of buffing spells in B/X, it wasn't even possible to nova the way you could in 3E. Not even close. 3E's love of buffing spells encouraged going nova (especially for clerics).

And a low-level MU's fallback option wasn't bad in B/X; the thrown dagger did 1 point less than the fighter's arrow, and the hit rolls were the same through level 3. Relative to 3E, he didn't lose as much by refraining from casting. Whether you like the dagger-throwing wizard or not, it was widely accepted (IME) that a low-level MU would cast spells only when necessary to win the fight. This also meant that the DM wouldn't make every battle so tough as to require the big guns. I never knew any 1st-level MUs to blow their spell at the first encounter of every day and then insist that the party rest; nor do I know any parties that would have consented.

Was it less fun the way the game was actually played, compared to going nova on the first fight of every day? I don't think so, but YMMV.

 

[ExploderWizard]

So, you're saying that 1e D&D was all about the 15 minute adventuring day? MU blows his load and then the party retreats to rest. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Wow, I thought that was a 3e thing that players were always trying to do this and it was never done in earlier editions.

I hope you noticed that I was speaking specifically about very low level parties. A smart party only engaged in combat when they had the upper hand and they didn't have to rely on jumping through the hoops of X number of encounters to get the XP needed to level. A 3E party will scour the countryside looking for something to beat up so that they can level.
An older edition character just looked for something of value that wasn't nailed down to fulfill the same purpose.