J. Tweet's comments on Swords & Wizardry

[I'm A Banana]

By and large, I agree. I might quibble over some specific "bad things" (the wizard and the fighter should feel different in play, even if all spells are not dailies; ditching minis is not a repudiation of simulation, just of combat simulation, etc), but there are plenty of wonky rules that I have been happy to see fall by the wayside in 3e. Less so in 4e, but they still managed to improve a good chunk.

 

[stuart]

Getting that "second HD" faster for the Thief might have been great but it's a bad thing that he NEEDED it because he was worse than the other classes.

Mage gets sleep, Fighter gets the best HD and attack bonus, Cleric gets healing and turn undead and the thief gets a 15% chance to disarm traps.

Or in other words, he had an 85% chance to NOT disarm a trap, and thereby put himself in extreme danger for the party.

Disarm traps at 15% was such bad odds you'd be crazy to try using it. Moving about quietly, climbing stuff and shooting at monsters with a bow were much better ways for a Thief to make it to 2nd level.

I think there's A LOT worth changing and house-ruling in older editions, and a lot of ideas added in more recent editions that I just plain like better... but I think most of it comes down to our personal preferences and approaches to the game.

 

[ggroy]

Back in the 1E AD&D days, I houseruled the magic-user to be somewhat less boring. One was allowing the magic-user to have unlimited use of the magic missile, but requiring a roll to hit. For a hit, it required a d20 roll of less than or equal to the magic-user's intelligence score.

How the encounters were structure was that combat spells were cast at the beginning of the round and the effects were realized at the end of the round. If the spellcaster was distracted or hit by a badguy, the spell could fail.

 

[stuart]

Back in the 1E AD&D days, I houseruled the magic-user to be somewhat less boring. One was allowing the magic-user to have unlimited use of the magic missile, but requiring a roll to hit. For a hit, it required a d20 roll of less than or equal to the magic-user's intelligence score.

How the encounters were structure was that combat spells were cast at the beginning of the round and the effects were realized at the end of the round. If the spellcaster was distracted or hit by a badguy, the spell could fail.

I recently ran a B/X D&D game and I added "at will" Zap, Glow, Spark and similar minor magic spells. Zap was much like you describe it.

 

[DaveMage]

Tweet touched on the one thing that I truly believe that OD&D, 1E and 2E do much better than 3.x or 4E and that's speed.

No minis = great speed of play.

I don't have a problem with the class balance issues of the older editions - although some of that was supposed to be mitigated by the varying XP charts. 7th level Wizard was not supposed to be equal with a 7th level Fighter.

 

[Ariosto]

"Game balance" in old D&D is in a very different (one might say broader) context than in WOTC-D&D. It's like comparing cricket and baseball.

The eight "descending" ACs are practically no great change from eight "ascending" ones (with leather alone and shield alone transposed) in Chainmail, given the assumption in both games of a tabular presentation; they could as well have been labeled L through S.

For those who prefer to do arithmetic, though, descending ACs can be used much as "BAB" is in later games. When in the first column of the OD&D table, the base sum needed to hit is 19+ from (d20+AC).

In terms of convenience in play, we're talking "half a dozen of one, six of another", or "I say to-MAY-to, and you say to-MAH-to".

Retaining the terminology that was "lingua franca" for a quarter century offers another convenience -- as does flipping AC around to WOTC-D&D style.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Heh, does this mean we're doubly moderated.

Double-secret moderated.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think the idea that he saw nothing wrong with stacking bonuses is a fairly large assumption.

Agreed. This is entirely possible.

On the other hand, what "different play experience" did the Cavalier add? He was just a fighter who got more bonuses in return for a watered down Paladin code and a slight increase in the XP needed to gain a level.

And some of the classes weren't missing a "precise" power balance. Thief was next to useless at low levels, which is why they tried to make getting through those levels a breeze.

The mage was explicitly "paying his dues" at low level for the glory days of high level.

And don't get me started on the Monk. .

The cavalier was a product of Unearthed Bloat and added nothing but power creep.

IMHO The thief began as next to useless and stayed that way. Only because supplement 1 said hey make room for this guy in the party because you suddenly need him to do all the stuff that you have been doing already.

The mage did need to survive to earn his power. The dues were well worth paying though.

The monk never felt right as the only Eastern example of a character class to me.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Mage gets sleep, Fighter gets the best HD and attack bonus, Cleric gets healing and turn undead and the thief gets a 15% chance to disarm traps.

Or in other words, he had an 85% chance to NOT disarm a trap, and thereby put himself in extreme danger for the party.

Thief has a 15% chance to automatically disarm a trap. Disarming a trap is always available by descriptive action . . . by the player of any class.

 

[Cadfan]

I think that basically sums up my problems with old school forms of D&D, and with new old school clones. There are a lot of good things about an old school style of game, but not quite so many good things about the mechanics. And unfortunately that style of gameplay has been ceded to, or taken over by, people who are far, far too attached to old school D&D mechanics. It would be genuinely surprising if the first major published RPG just happened to get everything essentially right, with no room for mechanical improvement.