D&D General I'm a Fighter, not a Lover: Why the 1e Fighter was so Awesome

[mixmastashizz]

Huh. I always thought hit point advancement stopped when you two-classed until your second class surpassed your first. Thus ehre the thief side would only provide 1d6+Con bonus, when the Thief side got to 8th level and surpassed the Fighter side.

This is correct

 

[Sacrosanct]

Huh. I always thought hit point advancement stopped when you two-classed until your second class surpassed your first. Thus ehre the thief side would only provide 1d6+Con bonus, when the Thief side got to 8th level and surpassed the Fighter side.

You are 100% right. So even if you don't count CON bonus at all, that changes my spreadsheet above to this:

 

[Sacrosanct]

This thread is turning into a "1e bards are even worse than you thought." lol

 

[ECMO3]

But the bard is not dual classing so the character does not have to meet the requirement for dual-classing.

That is what Changing their class to thief is.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean ... I will slightly defend the levelling up and training rules. But in context.

Maybe this is one of those things that would require a longer essay. But if you accept the following premise, then the level and training rules make complete sense:

Premise: In AD&D, rules were rules. They were often put in for reasons of purely "game" balance, even if they did not always make sense in some grand "society" sense, and players just accepted the rules.

Let me briefly explain with two example. First, the canonical "Druids don't wear metal armor." Why not? Because they didn't. That meant ... that they didn't. What happened if they did? I don't know*, because they didn't. That was the rule. In much the same way that a Magic User didn't use a sword. Did it make ... I dunno ... actual sense that no Magic User, ever, for any reason, couldn't, um, use a sword? If they touched one, did their hand fall off? If a monk saw a monster standing in a pool of oil, and tried to light it on fire, did the monk burst into flames instead? There weren't questions, because the rules said that this didn't happen. You were playing a game. These were the rules to the game. You accepted them.

Did it "make sense" that to level you always had to take off weeks and spend a serious amount of money? I mean ... not really? Sure, there was some random lore put in there so it would make a little more sense (Bards and colleges). But why do clerics and fighters and thieves all spend money and train in the same way? And paladins? Because it's the rule.

But once you accept that this is a rule, the rule actually works for the game. It provides a reason for accumulating gold (you need gold to level). It provides a break on fast levelling, and on trying to "level up" low-level characters in mixed parties. It serves as a final guard so that a serendipitous discovery won't zoom characters through several levels. Finally, it provides a tension between staying on an adventure and choosing to take a break- do you continue on, or do you take off several weeks (and who knows what might change in those weeks)?

You have to remember that AD&D wasn't a designed system. It was a system that was evolved over time- from OD&D, through play. This rule is a reaction to play. But it's also a great example of how AD&D has a lot of bespoke subsystems, all of which can make sense in isolation, but ... sometimes they don't play well together.

So this rule makes perfect sense. And then you can say, "Well, the rules for less XP for the thief makes perfect sense, so it can level a little more quickly." You can understand why the different classes have different XP amounts. But ... the different XP amount rule, in practice, doesn't play well with the level and advancement rule.

The answer to almost all of these issues is, IME, to decouple xp from treasure. This slows advancement down A LOT, and suddenly the different xp advancement tables work as intended because characters aren't trying to gain three levels at once from a lucky-strike dragon's hoard. It also means that if you bump during an adventure and your xp gain stops, it's not going to be as big a loss relative to those who are still gaining xp.

IME dropping xp for gp doesn't make the players (as characters) any the less greedy! Money can be used to buy or commission magic items, and magic items are still the secondary path to advancement and power.

The other nice thing about this system is it forces a tough choice on to parties sometimes: to keep adventuring even though one or more characters needs training, or to bail back to town so those characters can train up, become a bit better at what they do, and keep gaining xp going forward.

As for 1e Bards: as written, they're awful; but there's certainly design space in 1e for a Bard-like class that starts from 1st level like everyone else. I'm not at all sold on the mostly-caster route WotC went with them; for me Bards need their own almost completely bespoke system of quasi-magic built around the manipulation of sound and sonic effects, and to be almost completely a back-line support class (which alone will serve to make them unpopular to play as primary PCs but would make them popular as secondary characters or henches).

 

[ECMO3]

You are 100% right. So even if you don't count CON bonus at all, that changes my spreadsheet above to this:

View attachment 416143

It is true for your Thief levels, but it is not true for your Bard levels. Bard was not a dual class and your Bard hit dice are in addition to your Fighter and Thief Hit Dice

 

[Lanefan]

I think the bottom line is that 1e was much better balanced RAW than people give it credit. However, those rules were complex and very user-unfriendly, so most people didn't end up using them RAW, which let to perceived balance issues. Different issues at each table because we all house ruled differently.

It's possible to drop some of the more complex-for-complexity's-sake rules and still keep things vaguely balanced IMO and IME.

A good example is initiative. As written, it's a disaster. We went to a much simpler system ages ago and haven't seen it cause any balance issues, probably because it's an individual reroll-each-round setup.

It shouldn't be a big surprise than an insurance underwriter ensured there was balance, and also that it was complex and not easy for the layperson to understand

Ayup.

 

[ECMO3]

No, bards stop at level 10.

View attachment 416070

I haven't done the math, so does a 10th level bard (5d10 + 5 to 9d6 + 10d6) have more HP than 9d10 + 33, not counting potential better CON bonuses?

As shown in the table they stopped at level 11 (10 hit dice)

 

[Nikosandros]

That is what Changing their class to thief is.

IMO it is not. Changing to thief is a special thing that bards (and only bards) can do.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It is true for your Thief levels, but it is not true for your Bard levels. Bard was not a dual class and your Bard hit dice are in addition to your Fighter and Thief Hit Dice

Oh, you're right. Can't believe I missed that. Also, it pretty clearly reaffirms that you don't get extra thief HD until you surpass your fighter level in thief.

But the other point still stands. RAW, you don't just zip from level 1 bard to level 6. Anything past the initial level gain is wasted XP.