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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3282699" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't know how typical I am, but I tended to simultaneously adhere closer to the rules AND to have more and more house rules as my 1st edition games went on.  This was because I'd get disatisfied with the way some action was resolving, I'd go ahead and dig through the DMG and finally pay attention to it, but then I'd not really like the rule exactly as written and would try to adapt it.So I guess I've never played 1 ed. AD&D either.  Every DM I knew had various house rules.  Almost everyone but me ignored the 'weapon vs. AC' table.I initially started out playing something like Basic D&D with AD&D feel.  But then I noticed a couple things that annoyed me.  One was that swords - longswords and two-handed swords in particular - were the 'best' weapons in the game used to the exclusion of all others and for good reason.  That didn't fit with what I knew from my increasing knowledge of medieval combat.  Then I really noticed that confusing 'weapon vs. AC' table for the first time.  Suddenly it made sense.  Spears, picks, and maces were actually really good weapons.  They didn't do as much damage, but against the tough foes they were more likely to hit.  This created a problem though.  I realized that not all AC was created equal.  A character with no armor and a +2 leather armor didn't have AC 2.  He had AC 8 with a +6 bonus!  I divided AC into two categories, AC (armor class) and AB (armor bonus).  Figuring out the appropriate AC in the case of an NPC was easy.  But figuring it out for monsters was harder.  To do it, I had to figure out which part of the AC was from DEX, size, and 'magic bonus' and which part was from 'armor' and 'hide'.  Then I had an AC and AB.  Still, I only had to do this once when the monster was first used, and then I could just make a note of it.  Most everything worked great, except I didn't like the 'weapon vs. AC' bonuses for axes, so I house ruled those to a level between picks and swords, and I also ruled that certain well made weapons could use the best of two or even three lists (in the case of some pole arms) depending on how you wielded them.  Once I figured out to prepare to hit tables for each PC with thier various commonly used weapons ahead of time, the system even worked smoothly.  I had lingering unease with the fact that there was no 'claw', 'talon', 'bite', 'gore', 'horn', 'trample, and 'fang' category on the weapon to hit ac chart (a clear oversight) but I never ended up dealing with that.  Sometime in the middle of this I discovered the weapon speed factors and other issues relating to the initiative system.  Some of it seemed like a good idea, but some of it seemed just wrong from my own melee combat experience.  Sure, a dagger was a handier weapon, but in practice the spear would always get the first attack and would tend to keep the initiative right up to the 'killing' blow.  So I assumed Gygax had the right idea but just got it wrong.  The problem was I couldn't figure out how to make it right.  That's when I hit on the idea of the 'parry'.  If your weapon was significantly longer than your opponent's weapon, when he made an attack roll, you got to try to beat it.  If you did, he got the option of either taking damage as from an attack or losing his own attack.  You could do this as many times per round as your attacks per round.  That slowed things down a bit, but it made combats more interesting and 'cinematic' and it solved the problem of long weapons losing the initiative but could still get the 'first' attack.  And it made spears and pole arms even more powerful, which was inline with my readings of martial history.  What I discovered was this 'parry' concept had wide application.  It further answered questions like, "Why do Saughin use weapons when thier natural attacks do so much more damage?", "Why is being large such a drawback with no real advantage?", and in general, "Why isn't it a good idea to box with a guy who is wielding a sword?".   I quickly decided that an age old problem I'd always had with a person doing something silly like reading a book or quaffing a potion or firing a bow or whatever didn't involve protecting himself from melee attack could be resolved by saying that the action drew an 'automatic parry'.I used the grappling system from the DMG, but not the unarmed attacks because it wasn't necessary given the other rules previously mentioned.  Grappling proved to be really powerful, but it did draw an 'auto parry' against an armed foe.  Many a time was my players swarmed by grappling zombies to be cut down by the horde.I had alot of rules and they changed about every month or two.  I was working on rules for 'clinching'.  I had developed a proto-DR system, but had never hit upon the great idea of fixing 'need +1 or better' to hit (even though it annoyed the heck out of me).  Eventually, I grew tired of the house rules, the persisting problems with action resolution, the lack of balance between classes, the fact that most ability scores didn't matter (mainly because it encouraged cheating during character creation), the lack of a skill system and all sorts of things.  So, I switched to GURPS.When 3rd edition came out, I initially wasn't interested.  Then a friend showed me the PH and I realized that this was the game system I was always trying and failing to make out of 1st edition.I still miss the weapon vs. AC modifiers.  They added alot to the game in my opinion, and though I probably wouldn't do them exactly like 1st edition I'm still tempted to bring them back.  I would bring them back if 3rd edition combat wasn't already so potentially slow and drowning in modifiers.</blockquote>

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