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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9365556" data-attributes="member: 6799660">See, again, I don't think this specific instance is a case of design improving*. Because, again, having characters be taken out of action isn't bad design (any more than having a chess piece locked in a 'I really can't move that' position) if the goal isn't to only have one piece to play at a given time. To me, early oD&D feels much more like a Gloomhaven or Munchkin or Mordheim, where the 'characters' are  much closer to playing pieces, and them being sidelined or taken out is part of the game (and the player still gets to act because they have multiple pieces).*it is instead a game system realigning their design to match the play patterns they recognized their audience was gravitating towards.You're really focusing this towards 2e and onwards, whereas I am discussing 2e at the very very latest. Within the timeframe -- when a bunch of the broad stroke mechanics of the game remained largely the same* -- a number of small changes or additions took place that appeared to recognize that people weren't playing the game as initially expected. Players were fielding fewer characters, and expecting them to last longer**. Likewise, that -- instead of avoiding all these flavorful not-death effects (until you inevitably failed and then would focus on another character) -- players would expect their characters to suffer these effects, but then (sometimes to often) live to tell the tale.*rules focus on dungeon crawling, save-or-die traps/spells/monster effects**or at least getting attached to them as if they would.Having started after the game introduced thieves (and their crap percentages) and ear seekers and admonitions against monty haul campaigns (where every party might be able to scrye through walls somehow) and so on, this made sense. It 'had to' be how the game was supposed to go. The Gygax notion I mentioned above about trying not to even be subject to effects (with the saving throw a last ditch effort) simply wasn't going to happen consistently. You were going to (eventually) open the door and a Medusa or pack of ghouls were going to be there within gaze/melee distance. And then characters would fall, and no one would ever make it to those high levels that must exist to justify the dozens of pages on castles and planes and artefacts and stuff with do-not-touch signs for low-level dweebs. So you got paralyzed and then your bodies hauled you off and got you fixed up.</blockquote>

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