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

[Sacrosanct]

Except the adventures do.
It was bracers of defense AC 3 or 2 iirc, high dexterity, probably a shield and ring.

Except they don't. Here's a list of all protection rings, cloaks, and bracers from the more popular modules. I excluded items belonging to playable NPCs or NPCs where it was unlikely the PCs would ever get them unless they went full murder hobo and killed everyone in town. The +3 items don't show up until your at or past name level, and the only +4 item is the final module of facing Lloth in GDQ series.

The modules certainly don't have items to justify -7 AC for a level 7 or so PC. Not even for a level 15 PC. Again, assuming you went through all the right modules and found all the best magic items and one PC got them all. I was surprised to see just how few cloak of protections there were.

Item	Modue
ring +1	A1
cloak +1	A1
ring +2	A1
bracers AC 6	A1
bracers AC 6	A1
cloak +2	A2
bracers AC 4	A3
shield +1	B2
plate +1	B2
ring +1	B5
ring +1	B5
ring +1	B6
ring +1	B6
ring +1	C1
bracers AC 4	C2
ring +3	C2
ring +3	D1
ring +3	D2
ring +1	D3
bracers, DM fiat	D3
ring +3	D3
ring +3	D3
ring +3	D3
ring +1	D3
ring +1	D3
ring +3	G2
ring +3	G3
ring +1	I1
cloak +1	I1
bracers AC 4	I1
cloak +2	I12
bracers AC 6	I12
cloak +3	I2
cloak +2	I2
ring +3	I3
cloak +1	I4
ring +1	I5
ring +1	L1
bracers AC 9	L1
ring +2	L1
bracers AC 4	L2
bracers AC 8	L2
bracers AC 2	L2
ring +2	L2
ring +2	N1
ring +1	N1
ring +4	Q1
ring +1	Q1
ring +2	Q1
ring +2	Q1
ring +3	Q1
bracers AC 3	Q1
ring +1	S1
bracers AC 6	S1
ring +1	S2
ring +1	S3
ring +2	S4
ring +1	S4
bracers AC 5	S4
bracers AC 7	S4
ring +1	T1-4
cloak +1	T1-4
ring +1	T1-4
ring +1	T1-4
cloak +1	T1-4
cloak +2	T1-4
ring +2	T1-4
ring +2	T1-4
bracers AC 6	T1-4
bracers AC 3	T1-4
bracers AC 3	T1-4
ring +1	U1
ring +1	U2
ring +1	U3
ring +2	U3
bracers AC 4	U3
cloak +1	UK2
ring +1	X2
ring +1	X2
ring +1	X3
ring +2	X3
ring +1	X4
ring +1	X4
ring +1	X5
ring +1	X5
ring +1	X5
ring +1	X5

 

[Kurotowa]

On the topic of "How to make playing a healer fun and attractive", my first through is the other main RPG I play. Which the MMORPG Final Fantasy 14.

The way that FF14 builds its healers is that, in D&D terms, the majority of your spell slot heals are Bonus Actions. And then your Magic Action heals are, effectively, cantrips that cost fewer resources but eat up more of your action economy. Which leaves the healer free to devote the majority of their Actions to making attacks, if slightly weaker ones, while weaving Bonus Action heals as needed and only going full healbot in dire straights.

Now, this doesn't perfectly map to D&D, of course. FF14 has no attrition of health between encounters, so low-resource heals aren't an issue. But I think it does point at a core issue, which is that devoting the majority of your turn to just healing someone else isn't satisfying to a lot of players. And it suggests that a way to weave your healing in between doing the fun bit, attacking, might be a viable solution.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Also worthy of noting, the cleric was never meant to just be a heal bot. They are warrior priests, and undead hunters (Van Helsing). I know there is always pressure to turn them into healbots, but nothing says you have to play a cleric that way. As all of the NPC clerics in the modules reinforce, they are quite formidable when they go offense instead of healing.

 

[Lanefan]

Ok, so I went over Bone Hill. No Gauntlets of Ogre Power, but wow, is this adventure stacked with magic items! Granted, I don't think the players are supposed to get most of the NPC's items (but at least one item is hidden behind a secret door, so I have to assume that some of them are intended as treasure). There's some trap items (cursed or don't work as intended) to stymie people who don't use Identify as well.

I think that's true of many of the TSR-era modules: the assumption that the PCs will only find a percentage of the available treasure. My experiences with Bone Hill bear that out: there's loads of treasure in there but what's been brought out each time was highly variable. (in all the times I've hit this module I've only ever seen/run the ruins/dungeon part of it and ignored/bypassed the town)

A few head scratchers as well, like an NPC who is using a quarterstaff and shield combo (if I had a gold piece for every time I've seen this in an adventure, well, I'd have 2 gp, but that's still pretty wild) and a Druid using a magic hammer (I thought they couldn't use these, but I didn't check).

Not all module authors get it 100% right.

And all this for an adventure for characters of levels 2-4!

The sample PCs's magic is about in line with what I'm used to around that level.

I love reading these old modules whenever I think about the people who tell me AD&D was "low-magic", lol.

Not a claim I'll ever make unless specifically and only talking about 1st-2nd-level spellcasting.

 

[Lanefan]

I am not sure if it was here or on RPGnet, but I read a long forum thread in which somebody noted that in 1E RAW 75% of XP was supposed to come from treasure, both monetary and magic, and they were curious about how that system would work with published TSR modules.

It was probably here: a poster named Quasqueton ran those numbers for a bunch of TSR modules. Some of those threads might be in the "archives" section, I'm not sure.

 

[Zardnaar]

Except they don't. Here's a list of all protection rings, cloaks, and bracers from the more popular modules. I excluded items belonging to playable NPCs or NPCs where it was unlikely the PCs would ever get them unless they went full murder hobo and killed everyone in town. The +3 items don't show up until your at or past name level, and the only +4 item is the final module of facing Lloth in GDQ series.

The modules certainly don't have items to justify -7 AC for a level 7 or so PC. Not even for a level 15 PC. Again, assuming you went through all the right modules and found all the best magic items and one PC got them all. I was surprised to see just how few cloak of protections there were.

Item	Modue
ring +1	A1
cloak +1	A1
ring +2	A1
bracers AC 6	A1
bracers AC 6	A1
cloak +2	A2
bracers AC 4	A3
shield +1	B2
plate +1	B2
ring +1	B5
ring +1	B5
ring +1	B6
ring +1	B6
ring +1	C1
bracers AC 4	C2
ring +3	C2
ring +3	D1
ring +3	D2
ring +1	D3
bracers, DM fiat	D3
ring +3	D3
ring +3	D3
ring +3	D3
ring +1	D3
ring +1	D3
ring +3	G2
ring +3	G3
ring +1	I1
cloak +1	I1
bracers AC 4	I1
cloak +2	I12
bracers AC 6	I12
cloak +3	I2
cloak +2	I2
ring +3	I3
cloak +1	I4
ring +1	I5
ring +1	L1
bracers AC 9	L1
ring +2	L1
bracers AC 4	L2
bracers AC 8	L2
bracers AC 2	L2
ring +2	L2
ring +2	N1
ring +1	N1
ring +4	Q1
ring +1	Q1
ring +2	Q1
ring +2	Q1
ring +3	Q1
bracers AC 3	Q1
ring +1	S1
bracers AC 6	S1
ring +1	S2
ring +1	S3
ring +2	S4
ring +1	S4
bracers AC 5	S4
bracers AC 7	S4
ring +1	T1-4
cloak +1	T1-4
ring +1	T1-4
ring +1	T1-4
cloak +1	T1-4
cloak +2	T1-4
ring +2	T1-4
ring +2	T1-4
bracers AC 6	T1-4
bracers AC 3	T1-4
bracers AC 3	T1-4
ring +1	U1
ring +1	U2
ring +1	U3
ring +2	U3
bracers AC 4	U3
cloak +1	UK2
ring +1	X2
ring +1	X2
ring +1	X3
ring +2	X3
ring +1	X4
ring +1	X4
ring +1	X5
ring +1	X5
ring +1	X5
ring +1	X5

Except we played Dungeon adventures. None of those you listed.

We didn't own those adventures. Mates okder brother had some eg ToEE but he had some early Dungeon magazines.

This was 1996. We used what we had.

Also played one earlier. I can remember 3 of the adventures we did but I'll have to look up the name. It involves cultists of anthraxus iirc.

Last one was Dungeon 17 Out of the Ashes or something like that.

I made it to level 12 not 7. Funky xp tables.

 

[James Gasik]

Also worthy of noting, the cleric was never meant to just be a heal bot. They are warrior priests, and undead hunters (Van Helsing). I know there is always pressure to turn them into healbots, but nothing says you have to play a cleric that way. As all of the NPC clerics in the modules reinforce, they are quite formidable when they go offense instead of healing.

I think it was just a consequence of the game's design. Scenario 1: your 7th level Fighter with 50 hit points goes on an adventure, after a couple fights, he's looking at hoping he doesn't run into a random encounter so he can make it back to town and relax in the Inn for a couple of weeks.

Scenario 2: his buddy the 6th level Cleric is like "hey, uh, as long as I can take a nap, I could fill up all my 1st-level spell slots with Cure Light Wounds and probably get you back to full power in like, two days."

Individually, Cure Spells are horrible, but give the Cleric a day of downtime, and the results are literally game changing. So naturally once people figured that out, they naturally wanted someone to keep their hit points topped off, slash recovery times, and save people who are bleeding out from having to make new characters. This massively sped up the adventuring process and reduced the margin for error. Once you've experienced that, do you really want your Cleric puttering around with casting Bless for a crummy +1 bonus or trying to kill an Orc with Inflict Light Wounds?

Of course, few people want to play a hit point battery. What I didn't figure out until much later, was that this pressure doesn't need to be put on one player. A Cleric multiclass isn't really a big deal. Gnomes can be Cleric/Thieves, Half-Elves can be Cleric/M-U's. You could have a whole party where everyone has healing magic and tear through adventures at lightning speed, all at the cost of maybe being down a level from a single-classed character.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I'm not arguing that there were a ton of magical items, I'm saying that having an AC around -7 is a dubious claim unless you were playing Monty Haul or your DM was just handing out powerful items like candy.

A non-warrior getting to -7 is unusual. For warrior types, though, -7 is very reachable: plate +3, shield* +3, 16 Dex - boom, there's -7 for ya.

* - we beat the designers to the punch by years by making shields give two points of AC bonus rather than one.

The actual items in the actual published adventures doesn't support ACs like that.

If the setting supports (i.e. if the DM allows) commissioning and construction of magic items, though, then at considerable monetary cost over time a character could build this up.

The other variable is the setting's magic-item economy. If there's trade in items then not everything will come from adventures

And again, that all assumes that your PC would get all of that instead of another PC, that you found all those items already, and you'd be very high level by the time you got them (which is a tier of play hardly anyone played at).

If one doesn't use xp-for-gp then levelling takes far longer, meaning the item collection has more time to accumulate.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think it was just a consequence of the game's design. Scenario 1: your 7th level Fighter with 50 hit points goes on an adventure, after a couple fights, he's looking at hoping he doesn't run into a random encounter so he can make it back to town and relax in the Inn for a couple of weeks.

Scenario 2: his buddy the 6th level Cleric is like "hey, uh, as long as I can take a nap, I could fill up all my 1st-level spell slots with Cure Light Wounds and probably get you back to full power in like, two days."

Individually, Cure Spells are horrible, but give the Cleric a day of downtime, and the results are literally game changing. So naturally once people figured that out, they naturally wanted someone to keep their hit points topped off, slash recovery times, and save people who are bleeding out from having to make new characters. This massively sped up the adventuring process and reduced the margin for error. Once you've experienced that, do you really want your Cleric puttering around with casting Bless for a crummy +1 bonus or trying to kill an Orc with Inflict Light Wounds?

Of course, few people want to play a hit point battery. What I didn't figure out until much later, was that this pressure doesn't need to be put on one player. A Cleric multiclass isn't really a big deal. Gnomes can be Cleric/Thieves, Half-Elves can be Cleric/M-U's. You could have a whole party where everyone has healing magic and tear through adventures at lightning speed, all at the cost of maybe being down a level from a single-classed character.

Say what you will about 4e, and I've said a lot, but it seems they really did try to address this issue with how they handled non-magical healing.

A non-warrior getting to -7 is unusual. For warrior types, though, -7 is very reachable: plate +3, shield* +3, 16 Dex - boom, there's -7 for ya.

Armor was sure plentiful, but having a fighter with a high dex was very unlikely. You put your scores into STR or CON.

 

[Zardnaar]

OK had to do some googling.

These are the adventures I remember. Theres some others but I'm not sure I played them with the Druid or different game.

The Dark Conventicle
Ruins of Noel Daer
Out of the Ashes.

I remeber we went into the ToEE and played Tallows Deep but not sure what characters.

The adventure I DMed earlier this year was The Deadly Sea (in Castles and Crusades).