D&D General Lethality, AD&D, and 5e: Looking Back at the Deadliest Edition

[Maxperson]

A buddy of mine had his car broken into last weekend. The thief took his iPad, his sunglasses, and his dicebag, which had dice he'd been using since he started gaming.

Last I checked, he wasn't so much saddened by the loss as he was blinded by rage.

I once had my car broken into and the only things stolen were my D&D books. I was simultaneously outraged and baffled by the fact that a thief could be a D&D nerd.

 

[Maxperson]

Much like the CR 4 (!!!) Banshee in 5E. Con save 13 or die.

Con save 13 or be dying and savable for at least 2 rounds. Not save or dead. I know because I nearly TPKd a group with one. Only the barbarian made his save and he was able to drive off the banshee and save 2 of the 3 PCs who missed their saves. Actually they stabilized themselves while he was fighting for his life. The third failed the death saves. Had it been literally any other PC who made the save, healing would have ensued and no one would have died.

 

[Voadam]

In Rules Cyclopedia for Basic D&D, the description of protection of evil states enchanted creatures include monsters that can only be damaged by magical weapons. So that would include wights and vampires. And enchanted creatures cannot attack a person affected by the spell in melee. So this may be a case of posters applying the Basic definition of enchanted creature to the spell in AD&D.

That is a bit of a change in the basic line.

In Moldvay B/X it says:

Protection from Evil Range: 0 (caster only)
Duration: 12 turns
This spell circles the cleric with a magic barrier. This barrier will move with the caster. The spell serves as some protection from "evil" attacks (attacks by monsters of some alignment other than the cleric's alignment) by adding 1 to the clerics' saving throws, and subtracting 1 from the "to hit" die roll of these opponents. The spell will also keep out hand-to-hand attacks from enchanted (summoned or created) monsters (such as living statues), but not missile fire attacks from these creatures (see COMBAT). The cleric may break this protection by attacking the monster in hand-to-hand combat, but still gains the bonus "to hit" and saves.

Which is different from the BECMI and RC enchanted creature definition. From RC:

"In addition, enchanted creatures cannot even touch the cleric! (An enchanted creature is one that normal weapons will not affect, one which only magical weapons can hit. A creature that can only be hit by a silver weapon—a werewolf, for example—is not an enchanted creature. Any creature that is magically summoned or controlled, such as a charmed character, is also considered to be an enchanted creature.)"

So in B/X animate dead created skeletons and zombies would be hedged out, but not wraiths or such while in BECMI and RC it was the reverse.

 

[Alzrius]

In Rules Cyclopedia for Basic D&D, the description of protection of evil states enchanted creatures include monsters that can only be damaged by magical weapons. So that would include wights and vampires. And enchanted creatures cannot attack a person affected by the spell in melee. So this may be a case of posters applying the Basic definition of enchanted creature to the spell in AD&D.

It helped that the monsters in the Rules Cyclopedia all had a listing (right after the stat block, before the descriptive text) for "Monster Type" that would say if they were enchanted or not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

"Force out of position"? What rules were those? Unless you mean there was some other monster teamed up with level draining undead - that wasn't itself undead or anything else hedged out by the Protection from Evil.

That was exactly what I meant. Specifically "Hi, I'm a liche with Telekinesis, and why don't you go over there while my specter or wraith friends eat your friends for lunch?"

Again, it's always down to play experience. For example those of us who came to AD&D from Moldvay Basic played with reroll Max HP at 1st level if you got a 1 or a 2 (which was a bigger benefit for wizards and thieves) because that's what Moldvay told us to do. We also kept the stat adjustment rules from Moldvay, so, every fighter always had an 18 strength. Between 4d6k1 and being able to trade 2:1 stats, you were guaranteed at least one 18.

Well, note I've always referenced OD&D for a reason; I'm not really qualified to talk about later editions until 3e.

(That said, I was used to 12 character parties and paladins weren't super rare. That just only helped so much until Holy Swords came along.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is very true. Gary's comments above about letting the dice fall where they may if the player made mistakes means, to my mind, if the party didn't make strong use of teamwork and good tactics to survive fights. Which is all fine to me, and still typical of OSR play. The problem is that many people simply didn't and don't want to do that, so the game changed to accommodate players who just want to kick ass without worrying about teamwork or tactics for survival. What that means, of course, is if you do make use of those things, the party punches above its weight. And thus we have what we have now. And that's fine too, even if I don't personally like it.

This comes up all the time regarding PF2e, because while PF2e won't probably kill you if you don't pay attention to tactics and teamwork (because its actually easier to lose a whole party than an individual character) it will thoroughly beat your behind, and there are a lot of people who fundamentally don't want that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Exactly. Start with 5E and make it harder and you’re a killer GM. Start with AD&D and make it easier and you’re a hero GM.

Or get called Monty Haul.

 

[Hussar]

I would add a third thing- losing your dice.

I think the thing a lot of people forget about AD&D is that there were some truly fearsome monsters. Some of the worst that people often forget about or overlooked include these five-

Banshee- What? What's so bad about a banshee? Well, the Banshee is outdoors. The Banshee is evil. And the Banshee can wail, and everyone within 30 yards must save vs. magic or DIE.

Ghost- Seriously, in addition to the whole Magic Jar thing, they touch you, and you age 10-40 years. Assuming you make your system shock check. No. Save.

Intellect Devourer- Not just because of the psionic attack (ugh, remember psionics in 1e?). Because they had 6+6 HD, and you needed +3 or higher weapons to damage them, and even then ... they did 1 point of damage on a hit. 1 point. Also, the only spells that would effect them (other than protection from evil to keep them at a distance) were fireball (no damage, would drive them away as bright light), lightning bolt (1 pt of damage per die), death spells (25% chance of success) and power word kill. A ninth level spell.

Morkoth- Make a save vs. spells at -4 after you enter the lair. Fail, and you are devoured at the leisure of the Morkoth.

Night Hag- In addition to all the other abilities, and they have a lot, they can fire three magic missiles a day for 2-16 damage. And turn ethereal at will. Which means that your party just your spellcaster.

But, I do believe you're more or less making my point for me. All these truly fearsome monsters are fearsome because they bypass the combat rules - all save or die, or just die.

I think that's what I was trying to say before - in combat, after about 4th level, it wasn't all that common to whack a PC. By stuff that did an end run around the combat rules? Oooh baby. Lots of dead PC's. OTOH, I look at 3e, where monsters, as a rule of thumb, do about 10xCR damage as a max per round. Sure, they aren't going to do it often - that is max damage after all. But, the problem isn't that they have to do it often, it's that if they do it once, a PC dies.

 

[Voadam]

Again, it's always down to play experience. For example those of us who came to AD&D from Moldvay Basic played with reroll Max HP at 1st level if you got a 1 or a 2 (which was a bigger benefit for wizards and thieves) because that's what Moldvay told us to do.

I had forgotten about that optional B/X rule.

"(First level characters may easily be killed in battle. As an option, the DM may allow a player character to roll again if the player has rolled a 1 or 2 for the number of hit points at first level only.)"

We also kept the stat adjustment rules from Moldvay, so, every fighter always had an 18 strength. Between 4d6k1 and being able to trade 2:1 stats, you were guaranteed at least one 18.

We didn't. The two stat generation systems (B/X 3d6 in order with adjustment and AD&D various options) seemed pretty different and distinct so we generally kept them distinct. Without the B/X adjustments an 18 was possible but generally not guaranteed, I even got a 17 strength fighter using the 1e UA human rolls method (9d6 take the best 3 for strength).

 

[overgeeked]

In Rules Cyclopedia for Basic D&D, the description of protection of evil states enchanted creatures include monsters that can only be damaged by magical weapons. So that would include wights and vampires. And enchanted creatures cannot attack a person affected by the spell in melee. So this may be a case of posters applying the Basic definition of enchanted creature to the spell in AD&D.

The B/X version is this:

Protection from Evil
Range: 0 (caster only)
Duration: 12 turns
This spell circles the cleric with a magic barrier. This barrier will move with the caster. The spell serves as some protection from "evil" attacks (attacks by monsters of some alignment other than the cleric's alignment) by adding 1 to the clerics' saving throws, and subtracting 1 from the "to hit" die roll of these opponents. The spell will also keep out hand-to-hand attacks from enchanted (summoned or created) monsters (such as living statues), but not missile fire attacks from these creatures (see COMBAT). The cleric may break this protection by attacking the monster in hand-to-hand combat, but still gains the bonus "to hit" and saves.