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

[Micah Sweet]

I would argue that since abilities came before class back then, that any individual who rolled a 17 or 18 in constitution or rolled an 18 in strength and did not choose a Fighter* was making a very curious decision. The massive gain from that special class ability was huge.

In fact, I would argue that your question is kind of strange, simply because you wouldn't see a cleric with a strength of 18. If you had an 18 in strength, it would be really .... odd ... to not choose a fighter. I can't say it never happened, but ... I never saw it happen.


*Before you respond, read the disclaimer. This includes subclasses.

Yeah. I still roll stats before I choose a class or species (etc) in my current games. But then, I've played far more 1e than any other game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Out of those, I think the two biggest notes:

1) Only fighters had real ranged weapons. Now in a dungeon like setting that wasn't as important as today where adventures/campaigns involve more open world type fights. But that's a really powerful notion.

2) The wizard interrupt rule. Now its a clunky rule because it involves weapon speeds, and weapon speeds are just hard to do right. But...this was probably the single biggest reason that LFQW didn't exist in early editions, even as levels got higher. Spell disruption was baked into any fighting class, and the fighter especially. So yeah try and cast that awesome 7th level spell....I dare you.

Absolutely. 1e was better designed than folks give it credit for IMO, even if the organization left much to be desired.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Fighters also had the interesting choice of becoming nearly unhittable even at low levels by putting their second highest stat in dexterity instead of Con.
Plate + shield + 17 dex = AC -1, and you get effective two-weapon fighting as a bonus.

The great saving throws as you leveled really made a difference too.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i think people would cry bloody murder if the 5e fighter was redesigned to have half the innate advantages like 1e fighter did




...let's do it.

 

[Zardnaar]

i think people would cry bloody murder if the 5e fighter was redesigned to have half the innate advantages like 1e fighter did




...let's do it.

5.5 ones coming close imho.

Hit point inflation is biggest hurdle.

 

[fuindordm]

Let's give the full arcane spellcasters a d4 hit die again!

 

[Zardnaar]

Let's give the full arcane spellcasters a d4 hit die again!

Its more effective hit points than modern D&D with damage inflation as well.

 

[Thagdal]

How do you figure? A 1e bard had to take levels in thief, with their piddly hit die, so how would you end up with more HP compared to an equal level fighter?

Bard rolls fighter HP up to 7th level, so the same as a fighter until then.
Then the fighter stops rolling hit dice at level 9,and no longer gets con bonus for HP. Meanwhile the bard as thief is rolling 1d6 + con bonus for another 8 levels, when the fighter gets 3HP.
Then they get to roll again as bard, again with con bonus for another 11 levels. Thats about 18 levels of rolling dice with con bonus while the fighter gets just +3/level.
Equal level is not the best metric either, equal XP is a better one. The bard is likely to go up most of those thief levels real fast, it costs 250,000 xp for fighter to level from 8 to 9, which is more than the entire bard progression as a thief is 70,000k.

There is a 5.42% chance of getting one 18 by rolling 3d16 twelve times. So not very common.

Yup, typo, I meant to say getting an 18 was uncommon, though we never rolled d16's, that would have helped.

 

[Thagdal]

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?

But really, personally I think that's pretty moot, because you're talking about a 20th-24th level AD&D character, which was something that hardly ever happened unless you were playing Monty Haul or started that high.

Most of my campaigns went high, most often starting at 3rd level.
The monty haul play method is unrelated to high level, plenty of lowbie games had monty haul campaigns.
I disagree with your statement that high level play only happens under those conditions.

 

[Gus L]

One of the things that Snarf noted but seems slightly under-acknowledged in these responses (understandably for non-1e folks) is the degree to which early editions use magic items to increase PC power rather then stats (which of course can/are often be increased by items as well). Stats matter in 1E, but not as much as they do in later editions (saving throws for example aren't entirely stat based and there aren't usually stat based skills for example).

A second factor here is the degree that items (or their lack) increases the weaknesses of non-fighter classes. By mid level many monsters do quite large amounts of damage and hit normal ACs (7-4 say) rather often - meaning that only a fighter (or maybe a cleric) in magic armor with a lot of HP can really stand against monster attack for more then a round or two. The survivability of MU's likely goes down compared to threats as they level while Fighters may go up or at least stays the same (of course MUs become far more dangerous offensively) ... What this ultimately means is that party cooperation is encouraged in higher level play because PCs become more and more specialized.

Again - magic items emphasize these distinctions and are a core part of AD&D (especially AD&D) advancement. This itself becomes more interesting as items are one of the most frequently and easily added pieces of content for adventure designers and referees...