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

[Lanefan]

Yeah, but then every support class that heals has to be highly mobile to get close enough to heal and tanky enough to survive inevitably becoming the target of incoming monster damage, becoming some sort of inverse defender*, since abilities to protect your healer aren't built-in to any class and you have to go out of your way to get them (and even when you have them, they're mediocre at best).

*Or otherwise disincentivize attacking the support guy, but then again, that line of thinking is probably what led to the creation of Spirit Guardians...

This was what the Sanctuary spell in 1e was for.

 

[Zardnaar]

No protection? They can wear the best armor in the game. I'd posit a single cleric wrecked havoc on PCs across the decades and countries---Lareth the Beautiful He's responsible for at least 1 TPK in games that've I've run over the years. They are pretty good at being up front.

Gareth gas AC -1/21. Think its his equipment lol.

 

[ECMO3]

One of my favorite changes in 2E was letting thieves allocate skill points so they could specialize and have at least two decent skills at 1st level. The party could have two specialized thieves, maybe a dwarf fighter/thief or gnome illusionist/thief for safecracking and a stealthy wall-climbing elf mage/thief. Of course halflings were great thieves too - I should have played one of those.

Me too on the 2E changes. It is one of few 2E rules we incorporated into our 1E games after 4E came out and we decided to go back.

The problem with Dwarves and Halflings is they tended to be weak in combat, even when multiclassed with fighter. In the end most thieves in our games were Elves, Half-Elves or Gnome magic-users/Illusionists multiclassed with Thief. We had a fair number of Human Fighters who dual classed to Thief after Fighter level 9 too. Because of the way xp worked they would hit level 10 in Thief before others in the party hit level 10 in one class and were pretty quickly into a regime where they were "good" at thieving.

Half-Orc Fighter-Thieves (mostly assassins) were pretty good as well, not as good as Dwarves or Halflings in terms of thief abilities, but much better in combat.

Once Unearthed Arcana came out we had some Wild Elf Fighter-Thieves. Like Half-Orcs, they worked because they got a great strength bonus.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Gareth gas AC -1/21. Think its his equipment lol.

That's the point I was trying to make. No protection? Clerics have plenty of protection.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's the point I was trying to make. No protection? Clerics have plenty of protection.

Alot was magic items though.

PCs may or may jot get them. A mage can have similar AC for example with bracers/cloaks/rings which are common.

My 1E druid had 27 AC (-7).

 

[Sacrosanct]

Alot was magic items though.

PCs may or may jot get them. A mage can have similar AC for example with bracers/cloaks/rings which are common.

No, they aren't really common. Just look at rings. You've only got a 4% chance of getting a ring, then a 15% chance of having it a protection ring, then a 15% chance of getting anything better than a +2*. The chances are extremely small. Bracers aren't any better (2%, then 19% of that 2%, then 20% of that to get anything decent). And then you have to convince the rest of the party that you should get all of these.

Meanwhile, the cleric is rocking plate and shield quickly that doesn't need to be magical at all.

* out of 1000 random magic items, 40 are rings. 6 are protection rings. Only 1 is +3 or better. 1 out of 1000 isn't exactly what I'd call common.

 

[Zardnaar]

No, they aren't really common. Just look at rings. You've only got a 4% chance of getting a ring, then a 15% chance of having it a protection ring, then a 15% chance of getting anything better than a +2*. The chances are extremely small. Bracers aren't any better (2%, then 19% of that 2%, then 20% of that to get anything decent). And then you have to convince the rest of the party that you should get all of these.

Meanwhile, the cleric is rocking plate and shield quickly that doesn't need to be magical at all.

* out of 1000 random magic items, 40 are rings. 6 are protection rings. Only 1 is +3 or better. 1 out of 1000 isn't exactly what I'd call common.

Gareth isn't generated randomly though.

His AC is really high for his level by PC standards.

Your assumption assumes two things.
1. You're not playing a published adventure.
2. DMs do there items randomly.

Lareth is from a published adventure.

PCs could kill him I suppose and put his gear on 1 PC. Im betting everyone wants a taste of his loot.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Gareth isn't generated randomly though.

His AC is really high for his level by PC standards.

Your assumption assumes two things.
1. You're not playing a published adventure.
2. DMs do there items randomly.

Lareth is from a published adventure.

PCs could kill him I suppose and put his gear on 1 PC. Im betting everyone wants a taste of his loot.

Lareth was just an example. My point was that it was claimed the cleric as no protection and that's not true. So again, I'll point out how they can wear any armor and shield. Not dependent on magic items. And you usually got plate and shield by level 3. That's a lot of protection right there.

 

[TheHand]

This thread has really taken me back in time to my younger years. I played AD&D and Basic with a lot of different groups and in my experience, the cliche of no two groups doing it quite the same was true. Even my own games, I had lots of house rules in notebooks and photocopied Dragon articles to tweak things to my taste. I had a Bard class that was heavily influenced by the Bard’s Tale crpgs, but I think no one actually played it, ha!

I tried to incorporate weapon speeds and casting times, inspired when I saw how it worked in the computer game “Pool of Radiance”, but all my players hated it so it got scrapped.

Somebody up thread asked how we rolled attributes, and with every group I gamed with it was pretty much the broken UA system, where you rolled like 9d6 for your primary ability and went down the chain. If you didn’t have at least one 18 you were considered cannon fodder.

And though not my favorite rule set, 2nd edition AD&D had all my favorite settings books. I still use them in modern games for lore and ideas.

 

[TheHand]

I think I’ll add that all the cheating and UA cheesiness that went on with rolling for attributes in my formative years soured me to the whole experience, so now I greatly prefer point buy systems, even if they do tend to produce “too samey” results. But that’s getting pretty far off the topic of fighters!