D&D General Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Magic Missile: Why Gygax Still Matters to Me

[Bedrockgames]

Oh man, I once got a four pack of Hong Kong kung fu dvds. One of them was given different title on the box than on the surface of the disc, and its plot was basically nothing like the box claimed. It was dubbed and also had subtitles (which were always on, not like these days where you can turn them on and off at will); there was probably about a 50% alignment between the basic meaning of the two, and sometimes far less than that for a few scenes. It was, er, interesting.

I am pretty sure I have gotten ones that were meant for different movies

 

[MGibster]

Small shout out to Al Qadim which I thought had some fantastic adventures and supplements back in the 2e era - light years ahead of stuff like Maztica.

I bought the boxed set of Maztica for a friend of mine for his birthday. After looking through it, I apologized for getting him a crummy birthday present.

 

[MGibster]

I continue to feel as though we (as a whole) are still trying to reconcile our love for content and those who produced it from the past with our current modern beliefs. I think we're moving towards recognizing the problematic aspects, accepting they exist, and continuing to enjoy the content. It wasn't that long ago I felt we were drifting more in the direction of arguing it wasn't okay to enjoy that content at all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I continue to feel as though we (as a whole) are still trying to reconcile our love for content and those who produced it from the past with our current modern beliefs. I think we're moving towards recognizing the problematic aspects, accepting they exist, and continuing to enjoy the content.

That's been my position this whole time, but everyone has to make their own choice here. My hope is that they are measured when it comes to judging others for their choice. I like to believe most people are.

 

[Voadam]

A fair number of dnd monsters are drawn from non-Western sources, and a fair subset of them were around before e.g. Oriental Adventures or Kara-Tur were.

Before OA? From the core monster books I see . . .

Monster Manual:
Couatl
Djinni
Gold Dragon
Tiamat
Efreeti
Lammasu
Mummy
Ki-Rin
Naga
Japanese Ogre/Ogre Mage/Oni
Rakshasa
Roc
Shedu
Yeti

Fiend Folio:
Al-Miraj
Berbalang
Bunyip
Carbuncle
Oriental Dragons: Li Lung, Lung Wang, Pan Lung, Shen Lung, Tien Lung, Yu Lung
Penanggalan

And if you count the African monsters in Greek Mythology you get
Catoblepas
Lamia
Sphinx

But other than that what have the Romans ever done for us?

 

[Mannahnin]

I think elven fighter/mages and fighter/mage/thieves got worse in 2e. Spellcasting in armor was legitimately nuts.

I think it was legitimately good, but with lower HD, the HP division, and a d4 averaged in, those characters were still fragile despite their good AC. And if you triple-classed the problem was exacerbated because you were usually two levels behind the single classed characters instead of "just" one. Initially I thought the restriction in 2E made sense, and then through play realized how much it nerfed them and prevented the core concept from working at all unless and until you found magical elven chain mail.

However, I think every other multiclass option got much better because (a) the human-only specialty classes got nerfed (Ranger especially), (b) demihuman level limits went way up, and (c) the flexibility of Thief skills in 2e meant you could pick 2-3 and max them out fairly quickly. While I've often said that level limits are the kind of rule strictly enforced at session 1 and frequently ignored at session 30, the 2e AD&D rules increased the level limits so high that I genuinely don't think we ever encountered them anymore. Our campaigns ended before the PCs could reach them.

Here's the 1e AD&D level limits:

[image redacted]

These are severe level limits that you're almost certain to hit in any campaign of any length. Clerics in particular are effectively unavailable except for humans. You have Half-Elven (5) and Half-Orc (4). The exceptions are half-elven druid, the Assassin class (which IMX never saw play because poison and PVP), and (specifically) elven magic-users with very high Int. Most elven fighter/mages you'd actually roll are limited to fighter 5/mage 9.

Then you look at 2e:

[image redacted]

I mean, what? There's 15s and 16s all over that table even if we ignore that Thief is now capped. Like did you know half-elven ranger had a level limit? I don't know that I did until today. Ranger 16 is not really a "limit" in any real sense. Our elven fighter 5/mage 9 can suddenly be a fighter 12/mage 15. That's 13 more class levels you can earn. Are you ever playing the game to level 15? I can tell you that we did it once, and I think it only happened because we converted to 3e around level 10.

Also note that 2e buries this table in the DMG, where it also provides two optional rules to bypass the limit. If your prime requisite is a 14-15, you get +1 level. 16-17 is +2, 18 is +3, and 19 is +4. Or they offer slower advancement, requiring double, triple, or quadruple XP to advance. Sure, it would suck to have 1/4 XP progression past Thief 12 on top of already being triple-classed, but it's still progression. It's not the retirement black hole that 1e offered.

Ok, this makes sense. I don't factor in the increased level limits as much when thinking about 1E vs 2E because every table I played 1E at used Unearthed Arcana, and that already introduced higher level limits and some MUCH higher ones with extraordinary ability scores.

2e Thief could max a few abilities faster, making it better for focused and (especially) multiclass characters, but B/X Thief maxed out by level 14. It was just good enough by level 10.

BECMI took the 14th level Thief and retroactively smeared it over 36 levels, while the AD&D Thief kept similar progression, and then it introduced the real bane of the 2e class: armor penalties. That's why thief/mage was so good. You didn't have armor penalties and you got the skill points meant to compensate for that. Meanwhile, attack routines for martial characters were worse in B/X, spell selection was much worse, hit points were lower for everyone across the board, and nobody else had any thieving abilities.

It's not that Thief didn't suck. It always sucked in 20th century D&D. It just wasn't so far behind or out-classed in B/X.

Yes, the retroactive punch in the gut to Thieves that the BECMI Companion Set administered was really uncalled for, and as I recall the Rules Cyclopedia sadly incorporates it, maintaining the TSR tradition of boning Thieves at every opportunity.

I get what you're saying about B/X Thieves. The difference is relative because everyone else is less powerful. So, for example, them having a d4 HD in B/X isn't that much weaker than having a d6 HD in AD&D, because Fighters and Dwarves only have a d8. And yeah, no Assassins and one could multiclass with Thief, so their skills were exclusive. The fact that Thieves can use any weapon and get their rear attack bonuses with any weapon in B/X are also better than their restrictions in AD&D.

I still make Thieves tougher and more skilled in my usual B/X house rules.

 

[Voadam]

I think it was legitimately good, but with lower HD, the HP division, and a d4 averaged in, those characters were still fragile despite their good AC. And if you triple-classed the problem was exacerbated because you were usually two levels behind the single classed characters instead of "just" one. Initially I thought the restriction in 2E made sense, and then through play realized how much it nerfed them and prevented the core concept from working at all unless and until you found magical elven chain mail.


Ok, this makes sense. I don't factor in the increased level limits as much when thinking about 1E vs 2E because every table I played 1E at used Unearthed Arcana, and that already introduced higher level limits and some MUCH higher ones with extraordinary ability scores.


Yes, the retroactive punch in the gut to Thieves that the BECMI Companion Set administered was really uncalled for, and as I recall the Rules Cyclopedia sadly incorporates it, maintaining the TSR tradition of boning Thieves at every opportunity.

I get what you're saying about B/X Thieves. The difference is relative because everyone else is less powerful. So, for example, them having a d4 HD in B/X isn't that much weaker than having a d6 HD in AD&D, because Fighters and Dwarves only have a d8. And yeah, no Assassins and one could multiclass with Thief, so their skills were exclusive. The fact that Thieves can use any weapon and get their rear attack bonuses with any weapon in B/X are also better than their restrictions in AD&D.

I still make Thieves tougher and more skilled in my usual B/X house rules.

If I were running an OSR game I would strongly consider rewriting thieves to be based off the fighter chassis instead of the MU one and just trading armor and shields for the thief stuff. The Gray Mouser as a master fencer or Errol Flynn Robin Hood as the narrative template. Fighter AC is still a big comparative advantage, particularly if you want their role to be awesome tank, but thieves as good light skirmish combat guys with some specials is a nice role that complements fighter/cleric/MU well.

 

[Mannahnin]

If I were running an OSR game I would strongly consider rewriting thieves to be based off the fighter chassis instead of the MU one and just trading armor and shields for the thief stuff. The Gray Mouser as a master fencer or Errol Flynn Robin Hood as the narrative template. Fighter AC is still a big comparative advantage, particularly if you want their role to be awesome tank, but thieves as good light skirmish combat guys with some specials is a nice role that complements fighter/cleric/MU well.

100%.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

If I were running an OSR game I would strongly consider rewriting thieves to be based off the fighter chassis instead of the MU one and just trading armor and shields for the thief stuff. The Gray Mouser as a master fencer or Errol Flynn Robin Hood as the narrative template. Fighter AC is still a big comparative advantage, particularly if you want their role to be awesome tank, but thieves as good light skirmish combat guys with some specials is a nice role that complements fighter/cleric/MU well.

Again, the original thief was McDuck, who was not a thief class, but was a thief because McDuck did thief-like things.

For me, the biggest issue with the TSR-era thief (other than the fact that TSR always ignored the thief, except to beat it down mercilessly) was how bad it was at being a thief. The original thief from Aero games that Gary stole borrowed did not use percentiles, but was based off a MU chassis and had never-fail abilities instead of spells.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Again, the original thief was McDuck, who was not a thief class, but was a thief because McDuck did thief-like things.

For me, the biggest issue with the TSR-era thief (other than the fact that TSR always ignored the thief, except to beat it down mercilessly) was how bad it was at being a thief. The original thief from Aero games that Gary stole borrowed did not use percentiles, but was based off a MU chassis and had never-fail abilities instead of spells.

In fairness, in AD&D at least, you could level pretty quickly in the thief. I don't know I enjoyed playing thieves in 2E. I quite liked how the thief skill percentages were handled. But I also did tend to favor in their insanely low XP thresholds in my evaluation of them. By the time the mage was 2nd level I was already level 3!