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

[nevin]

Yeah. That would suck. I have dice older than most of the people I game with.

/nod

 

[nevin]

Wights are affected by silver weapons.


That is a distinct change!



Eh. At 4th level an average M-U has 10 HP. A Fighter about 22. Even with a 15 Con and a DM giving you max HP at first level, the Fighter only has about 30, and most PCs will be in the teens or twenties for HP. A fight with a dozen orcs or a few ogres can still be a real threat of PC death at that level, at least if you don't have a Sleep spell or two lined up to cut down the odds.

Of course, if you're using max hp at 1st, AND AD&D more generous ability score generation COMBINED with point-swapping from Basic, PLUS you have large parties of PCs also using hirelings and henchmen and wardogs... yeah, all of those things will definitely reduce your danger! Unless you're in the wilderness and running into enormous warbands of orcs, and having your large numbers reduce your Evasion chances. Of course the other downside to huge groups is the xp split...

of course in 1e if you have no ranger your going to run into warbands. 1e is the only version that roles actually mean serious consequences if you don't have one and no one else can fill in for you unless DM is allowing an npc.

 

[jasper]

@Snarf Zagyg, you missed something that helped contribute to the lethality of AD&D. An ability so awful, many players would have preferred to skip it and go straight to death rather than live with the consequences: Level Drain. Some monsters, usually undead, had the ability to actually drain levels when they hit a PC. So you level 6 character might fail their Save versus Bull^%$# and suddenly find himself at level 4 with fewer abilities, spells, and hitpoints needed to survive the fight.

but but the succbus was so cute with her long hair and fangs. it was worth those levels. Besides the church raised so much money from the kissing booth.

 

[nevin]

That's actually pretty funny, because the wight's monster category is "enchanted", even though it shouldn't count as enchanted due to being vulnerable to silver. Lycanthropes are also listed as enchanted creatures, even though the spell description specifically mentions a werewolf as an example of a non-enchanted creature.

It's because the definition of enchanted has been mangled in 3 or 4 different directions since 1e. Enchanted used to mean someone actually cast magic to create the creature or that they were inherently magical like fey, or dryads. But every version and every new set of developers creates on what they want it to mean instead of allowing any sort of continuity.

 

[nevin]

but but the succbus was so cute with her long hair and fangs. it was worth those levels. Besides the church raised so much money from the kissing booth.

never played a game where the succubus only got one or two levels. They always got the poor sap alone and sucked them into death.

 

[jasper]

Yes. Play experience creates a great deal of variety.

For example @Lanefan, you mention your number one pc death cause is other pc’s. That just didn’t happen at our tables. We always played, right from the get go, that player vs player was not allowed. And a player who accidentally killed another pc because of misplaced spells was encouraged to smarten up or find a different group.

And, because we almost exclusively played modules, enemy pc’s were largely unheard of.

I’ve always called Adnd schizophrenic because play experience from the books vs play experience from the modules was incredibly different. If you played modules, you never avoided encounters because you were pretty much guaranteed of good treasure in harder encounters. The bigger the risk, the more the reward.

Never minding that the equipment they carried could be sold and you got xp for that.

But a very good point was made upthread. The adnd character was expected to have buckets of magic items. That’s where the lethality shifts. Again, module play resulted in buckets of magic items. That 4th level fighter had +1 plate and +1 shield. And a magic weapon. And probably half a dozen consumables.

Whereas the book group probably didn’t.

The man is correct. After I left high school, any module I bought I had a pencil out. To mark out 1/3 of the magic items.

 

[nevin]

Somewhere around here I posted the magic items from Keep on the borderlands. I don't know what drugs where involved with the idea that Gygax and company advocated a low magic game but just perusing a few of those old module's will end that silly thought with any functioning brain.

 

[jasper]

Okay I have always been put another quarter in the slot and get a raise dead type of DM from 1e on. I did my 440 Session of Adventure League and have 119 kills. Which means a dead PC 1 every 3 1/2 sessions. So, it still matches my legality from other editions. After being a member here for 20+ years, how deadly an edition was/is depends on the group.

 

[overgeeked]

Okay I have always been put another quarter in the slot and get a raise dead type of DM from 1e on. I did my 440 Session of Adventure League and have 119 kills. Which means a dead PC 1 every 3 1/2 sessions. So, it still matches my legality from other editions. After being a member here for 20+ years, how deadly an edition was/is depends on the group.

Haven’t you talked about this before? If I remember right, no guarantee, in your AL games didn’t most of those deaths come down to the players not working together, or something. So it isn’t that 5E as a system was deadly per se, it’s that your players refused to use teamwork.

 

[Oofta]

Haven’t you talked about this before? If I remember right, no guarantee, in your AL games didn’t most of those deaths come down to the players not working together, or something. So it isn’t that 5E as a system was deadly per se, it’s that your players refused to use teamwork.

How is that different from any other edition? It's not like people suddenly forgot how to cooperate.