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Lethality, AD&D, and 5e: Looking Back at the Deadliest Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9070223" data-attributes="member: 6799660"><p>I think gotchas (the most prevalent of which in my experience were simple traps) were a routine cause of death. Or at least some of the most remembered because each time you fell to one you kicked yourself for not foreseeing it (or kvetched that the warning signs the DM thought were obvious were not). Simple damage took people out at a very variable rate. I think when we played Shieldwalls and Chokepoints (perhaps somewhat close to what Gary intended) -- with hirelings and retainers and the fighters rotating out of the front line as their hp approached 0 and retreating-when-necessary under a hail of dropped coin, food, and burning oil -- we did pretty well at surviving (if not always thriving) against opponents with hp-depleting effects. Monsters with SOD effects (or level drain), on the other hand, man! Those were often a <em>'learn there's an enemy down here with this ability by someone's character dying to it'</em> situation. I recall* hearing that saving throws were intended as the last line of defense and that the real first defense was supposed to be clues which let you avoid them in the first place. However, excepting rattlesnakes or hyper-realistic statues in a medusa lair, I don't remember a lot of that happening in our games. </p><p><span style="color: rgb(209, 213, 216)">*either from Peterson, one of Snarf's analysis of Peterson, or one of my convos with one of the there-in-person folks like Mornard or Chirine.</span></p><p></p><p></p><p>Agreed, D&D <s>went</s>has had the ability to go off the rails either from the jump or the jump plus one year (oD&D doesn't have all the worst spells, but also fewer of the counters, so it is something of a wash). Open-ended spells like Transmute Rock<-->Mud, Control Weather, Wish (with no downside but 2d4 days downtime); magic items like <em>Spheres of Annihilation</em> or <em>Deck of Many Things</em>; artifacts (okay, so there from the jump plus two years for <em>Eldritch Wizardry</em>) -- all had the ability to totally disrupt the game and have been there for approaching 50 years. </p><p></p><p>Or heck, to bring this back to the stuff Necrofumbler was primarily focusing on (early magic obviating large parts of the noncombat pillars): for all the talk about the early game being about careful weighing of food/water/torches encumbrance versus having encumbrance space to pull as much gp (=xp) out of the dungeon, bags of holding existed from the beginning and seemed to appear wildly more frequently than their actual chart likelihood would indicate. Necrofumbler is not wrong that D&D 5e does a good job of turning off modes of gameplay, but only that this is a new development. </p><p></p><p>Re: darts -- somewhere along the line, we heard that darts weren't pub darts, but some kind of war-darts. I think we interpreted that as short javelins, moreso than jarts/plumbata. I remember them existing more in 2e rate-of-fire specialist fighter theory-craft than on our AD&D magic users. I think mostly we realized that dagger = melee and ranged. Also that staying behind shield walls and lobbing oil and the like is really safe.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Willie the Duck, post: 9070223, member: 6799660"] I think gotchas (the most prevalent of which in my experience were simple traps) were a routine cause of death. Or at least some of the most remembered because each time you fell to one you kicked yourself for not foreseeing it (or kvetched that the warning signs the DM thought were obvious were not). Simple damage took people out at a very variable rate. I think when we played Shieldwalls and Chokepoints (perhaps somewhat close to what Gary intended) -- with hirelings and retainers and the fighters rotating out of the front line as their hp approached 0 and retreating-when-necessary under a hail of dropped coin, food, and burning oil -- we did pretty well at surviving (if not always thriving) against opponents with hp-depleting effects. Monsters with SOD effects (or level drain), on the other hand, man! Those were often a [I]'learn there's an enemy down here with this ability by someone's character dying to it'[/I] situation. I recall* hearing that saving throws were intended as the last line of defense and that the real first defense was supposed to be clues which let you avoid them in the first place. However, excepting rattlesnakes or hyper-realistic statues in a medusa lair, I don't remember a lot of that happening in our games. [COLOR=rgb(209, 213, 216)]*either from Peterson, one of Snarf's analysis of Peterson, or one of my convos with one of the there-in-person folks like Mornard or Chirine.[/COLOR] Agreed, D&D [S]went[/S]has had the ability to go off the rails either from the jump or the jump plus one year (oD&D doesn't have all the worst spells, but also fewer of the counters, so it is something of a wash). Open-ended spells like Transmute Rock<-->Mud, Control Weather, Wish (with no downside but 2d4 days downtime); magic items like [I]Spheres of Annihilation[/I] or [I]Deck of Many Things[/I]; artifacts (okay, so there from the jump plus two years for [I]Eldritch Wizardry[/I]) -- all had the ability to totally disrupt the game and have been there for approaching 50 years. Or heck, to bring this back to the stuff Necrofumbler was primarily focusing on (early magic obviating large parts of the noncombat pillars): for all the talk about the early game being about careful weighing of food/water/torches encumbrance versus having encumbrance space to pull as much gp (=xp) out of the dungeon, bags of holding existed from the beginning and seemed to appear wildly more frequently than their actual chart likelihood would indicate. Necrofumbler is not wrong that D&D 5e does a good job of turning off modes of gameplay, but only that this is a new development. Re: darts -- somewhere along the line, we heard that darts weren't pub darts, but some kind of war-darts. I think we interpreted that as short javelins, moreso than jarts/plumbata. I remember them existing more in 2e rate-of-fire specialist fighter theory-craft than on our AD&D magic users. I think mostly we realized that dagger = melee and ranged. Also that staying behind shield walls and lobbing oil and the like is really safe. [/QUOTE]
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