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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KirayaTiDrekan" data-source="post: 6333844" data-attributes="member: 6755061">Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st Edition) Player's HandbookOriginally published June, 1978Version being read and reviewed: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-Players-Handbook/dp/0786962437/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=022NS73P7NG2SV493MNY" target="_blank">Player's Handbook 1st Edition Premium Reprint</a> (July, 2012)The full title of this book is...Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Special Reference Work: Player's Handbook - A COMPILED VOLUME OF INFORMATION FOR PLAYERS OF ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, INCLUDING: CHARACTER RACES, CLASSES, AND LEVEL ABILITIES; SPELL TABLES AND DESCRIPTIONS; EQUIPMENT COSTS; WEAPONS DATA; AND INFORMATION ON ADVENTURING.  By Gary Gygax.(Caps are theirs, not mine.)Mike Carr's foreword praises the diversity and intelligence of D&D players.  As you may have guessed if you've been reading these reviews, gender issues are near and dear to my heart so I tend to notice when a D&D book calls them out.  Here we have a note, "D&D players, happily, come in all shapes and sizes, and even a fair number of women are counted among those who regularly play the game."  For 1978, I suppose the fact that women played at all was rather remarkable.  At any rate, the foreword ends with a few suggestions for players to be even better players - Be organized, defer to the DM, cooperate with the other players, give advance notice when you're going to be absent, and get in the spirit of the game.  After the Table of Contents, Gary gives us a preface describing how daunting a task putting together this book and the Dungeon Master's Guide was.  Back on gender, a couple of paragraphs in, Gary says, "You will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma, "  Except that there are limits on female strength and no such limits on charisma.  One wonders what Gary's definition of "arbitrary" was.  Moving on, Gary also states his apparent dislike for spell point systems for magic, describing them as being for "monomaniacal statistics lovers."  The last paragraph goes into the usual thank yous, with a final thanks given to Judges Guild, which is rather interesting.After a brief introduction to RPGs (this book is structured to be a reference during play, I think, rather than an introduction to the game), we get into ability scores.  Slightly before that is an amusing explanation of the term level.  D&D has always used "level" for a variety of things - dungeon level, character level, spell level, monster level.  Gary notes that he wanted to revise the terms to "rank" (replacing character level), "power" (replacing spell level), and "order" (replacing monster level).  I think the the game may have evolved very differently with just that small change in terminology.  We shall never know.  One thing the PHB doesn't explain - how to determine your character's ability scores.  The various dice rolling methods are given in the DMG.  Given that the DMG wasn't available for more than a year after this book was published, I am left to wonder how folks created characters (or ran the game for that matter) if this book was their introduction to the game in 1978.  One thing I noticed about ability scores - Intelligence seems to be entirely useless for non-magic-users and Wisdom seems to be entirely useless for non-Clerics.  Every other score seems to have varying levels of utility for every character, including Charisma if one's campaign makes heavy use of henchmen (from what I gather from previous readings and anecdotes from older gamers, henchmen were a pretty common feature in many campaigns).  Charisma also has an annoying bit of bookkeeping, at least if you're playing a dwarf or half-orc, since their Charisma penalties and racial maximums don't apply when dealing with their own kind.  Races now include dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves, halflings, half-orcs, and humans.  Half-elves are pretty bad-ass due to their wide range of multiclassing options.  Those pesky level limits are a pain though (and really low for a lot of these guys).  Interestingly, dwarf, elf, and gnome clerics and halfling druids are all possible...as NPCs.  I have never been a fan of NPC only classes or options.  I may be a little weird though, because at my table I go by the mantra of, "If it exists in the world, you can play it...or try to, anyway."  Classes are the classic four, each of which has at least one subclass.  Clerics have the druid subclass, fighters have paladins and rangers, magic-users have illusionists, and thieves have assassins.  Unlike how more modern games define subclasses, these guys are more powerful versions of their core class and have ability score requirements in order to qualify for them (proto-prestige classes).  We also have the oddball that doesn't fit in with the others, the monk.  The "fight your way to the top" concept from OD&D is preserved here for the druid, the assassin, and the monk (though the assassin can just assassinate the next higher-up individual rather than face them head on).  Assassins really seem to be designed for duet style play (one DM, one player) given the somewhat complex rules for assassinations which seem to be a solo endeavor.  Dual-classing for humans is just odd.  You switch entirely to your new class and can't use your old class abilities until your new class level passes the old.  Skipping ahead a bit, weapons are, in a word, complicated.  First we have the Arms table in the equipment lists which has their prices.  Then have the "Weight and Damage by Weapon Type" table.  Each weapon does different damage based on the size of the opponent.  Then we have the infamous weapon vs armor table, more accurately known as the "Weapon Types, General Data, and To Hit Adustments" table.  And, if I'm reading this right, this big old table of adjustments vs various ACs only applies against opponents wearing actual armor.  Eyes crossing, moving on.Spells are even more tedious to read through than bestiaries, so we'll be jumping through the spell section a bit.  Its interesting that Illusionists have their own spell list, separate from the standard magic-user and really, really odd, that they can take a handful of 1st level magic-user spells as one of their 7th spells.  Didn't the Dungeon Bastard make fun of that little gem recently?  Another thing that makes me a little weird compared to most gamers I know - I love spell components.  I love the concept of material components and all the nifty and odd little things that end up in a magic-user's (and cleric's to a lesser extent) equipment list because of them.  When DMing 1st-3.5, I always made a point of including spell components in the treasure hauls from enemy spellcasters.  Remember the Brownie from the Monster Manual and how I mentioned that the little critter didn't really make it past this edition.  Well, apparently a Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good magic-user could end up with one as a familiar thanks to the Find Familiar spell and a lucky d20 roll (a roll of 15, to be precise).  Oh, and 100 g.p. worth of material components.  Some spells suffered the same fate as the brownie, at least by my recollection.  The 1st level spells Friends and Push are things I haven't seen outside of this book, except I do recall one of those Endless Quest books featuring an apprentice mage trying to cast Friends on an owlbear and dying - "Your adventure is over, start again on Page 1."  Anyone know which book that was, out of idle curiosity?  Another spell that faded into obscurity - Cacodemon, a 7th level spell that summons a Type IV, V, or VI demon.  I wonder if this was a specific victim of the Satanism scare of the 80s?  It certainly has one of the longest spell descriptions, going into a bit of detail about the ritual involved and how to control the demon once you've summoned it.  The next section is mostly advice about how to succeed at various adventures, with specific attention paid to Traps, Tricks, and Encounters.  As with ability score generation, specific combat rules are not presented here, instead appearing in the DMG, unlike later editions.  I'm not entirely sure what the rationale behind that was.  There seems to be a genuine vibe of DM elitism at times, like the Dungeon Master was the keeper of arcane and inscrutable secrets.  The section on poison is a little off-putting as well, admonishing players for considering its use and warning about game balance concerns.  It seems all poison was deadly back then, so I guess that's understandable.  I think my favorite parts of this book are the Appendices.Appendix I presents psionics.  Unlike OD&D psionics, I actually managed to wrap my head around how this system is supposed to work, I think.  Having psionic ability is entirely random, but I wonder how many Players begged for a reroll until they finally got a 00 (or 90 something, depending on one's Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) on the percentile dice.  The pseudo-scientific and para-psychological terminology used in this section really gives it a very different feel from the rest of the book.  For some reason, the Sword & Sandals vibe comes across here more than anywhere else in the book.  Maybe Dark Sun is influencing how I think about psionics, but I get a huge Conan or John Carter vibe when I read this section (side note - my only exposure to those two heroes is via movies so take that last sentence with a grain of salt).Appendix II: Bards.  The first prestige class.  I wonder if anyone managed to qualify and actually play this class.  I'd love to hear how that played out.  The ability score requirements are rather prohibitive by themselves and you have to play for a minimum of 13 levels in fighter and thief before you can finally become a bard.  One of my goals in life as a gamer is to someday play a 1st edition Bard, just to see if I can.  By its very nature, unless the DM starts the campaign at high level, the presence of a bard indicates that the campaign is a long running one.Appendix III is a weird little alignment graphic.  I'm not sure what the purpose of this is.Appendix IV touches on the planes of existence, briefly.  The Great Wheel is a rectangle here.  Appendix V offers some suggestions on how to divide treasure.  This has rarely been a problem with my groups as they tend to give magic items to whichever character will get the most use out of them (thus benefitting the group as a whole).  Closing Thoughts: I started with the Mentzer Basic Set "Red Box" and moved directly in to 2nd Edition, bypassing 1st Edition entirely.  I first tried DMing 1E about a year ago and had mixed results.  The players enjoyed it, but I found the rules to be cumbersome and awkward.  That said, I'd love the chance to play this version, either as a wizard or an aspiring bard.  Ah, the painful longings of a perpetual DM.  Next up: S1: Tomb of Horrors</blockquote>

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