Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3282860" data-attributes="member: 4937">For the most part, you don't want to go back.  Third edition rules are the 1st edition rules I wished I had back when I was playing first edition.  Most of the things you might obviously change are improvements to the game that deal with serious issues in earlier versions.One big problem with saying, "I want a more 1st edition feel." is that everyone played 1st edition by house rules and had different standards so one persons 1st edition feel may not mean anything to someone else.  But, here is my list.1) Third edition monsters are more powerful than first edition monsters.  Use the 3.0 monster manual rather than 3.5 and do your best to keep the power level of monsters down.  Use the Tome of Horrors in preference to later official WotC monster manuals as it sticks more closely to the original 1st edition monsters.  Anything non-unique over about CR 12 is either a traditional NPC or it doesn't exist.  Monsters of higher CR will need thier constitutions and strength dropped by 4-8 points and other nerfs applied.  Unique monsters should cap out at about CR 20, with CR 12-15 being more typical even for fiend lords.2) Especially at higher levels, advancement is much faster in 3rd edition.  Slow things down by giving out only half as much treasure and XP for encounters.  Do not allow magic items to be purchased.  They should be either found or manufactured by the PC's and err on the side of being stingy - remember there won't be any monsters over about CR 12.  The excess treasure - being not convertable to magic items - should be used to build strongholds and acquire lands.3) Leadership cannot be taken as a feat.  Instead, all PC's get it as a bonus feat upon first obtaining nine levels in a single class.4) Reintroduce some version of the armor vs. weapon type modifiers.5) Add weapon speed modifiers to weapons based on thier size.6) Play games with much greater expectation of long periods of travel through the wilderness.  Create and use wandering encounter tables.7) Allow non-humans to use gestalt classes.  Elimenate multiclassing.  Cap non-human level advancement except as rogues.  Drop all PrC's and limit players to the core classes.8) Insist that players earn their search, bluff, and diplomacy skill checks by describing in detail what they are doing.  Give liberal modifiers to the circumstantial chance of success based on the detail and appropriateness of thier actions.9) Run converted 1st edition modules.Part of the first edition feel is very difficult to recapture.  Part of first edition feel was the newness and strangeness of the experience.  Players should feel as if they aren't in full control, as if anything wonderful or terrible could happen and probably will, that the world is dangerous and death is sudden, and there should be a certain sense of moving through the dark unsure of exactly what something is.  Make sure you don't just tell players, "You see a X."  Describe monsters, preferably in a non-standard not straight out of the monster manual way so that they don't know what they are facing necessarily.  Make them map the dungeons.  Don't correct thier mistakes.  Don't put minitures on the table until you are absolutely sure you need them, and run fights without them if the area is tactically simple.  Keep the map in your head and determine AoO's by fiat or just ignore them as not relevant to the situation.  Make magic items as hard to identify and as strange as something from Call of Cthullu.  Don't put labels on potions or scrolls.  Don't give any 'tells' on other items.  Scatter cursed items liberally amongst the treasure.</blockquote>

Verification