D&D 1E On Variability, House Rules, Research, and the 1e/5e Difference

[abirdcall]

The entire concept of a character being "played fairly/legitimately" is strange to me.

That only makes sense in the context of that campaign or with the same group.

Let's use 5e for examples.

The obvious one is getting tons of powerful magic items. When people post about attunement slots being a limited resource I have trouble comprehending. I am used to a game where a player would consider themselves lucky to get a magic weapon in the level 6-10 range.

Then we have games where the party faces a sequence of 1 high XP encounter/long rest. They rack up a ton of XP as they are spending most of their time obliterating bags of HP.

Then there are games where milestones are used, and used liberally.

Difficulty in general is going to vary wildly from any number of factors. Most of the time DMs work to make encounters easier by having monsters spread out their attacks, avoid attacking weak PCs, leave themselves vulnerable, etc.

In all cases these are "legitimate" games. There is no common ground to be found between different groups. My experience playing a character from 1-10 is going to be different, sometimes not even relatable, than other tables' characters.

Being proud of a character is weird to me. Be happy with the time spent playing of course. Don't try to pass it off as some kind of victory over others.

 

[Hussar]

I wasn't making a normative judgment (I don't yuck on anyone's yum), but I am asserting that while that campaign sounds like *fun*, it was also definitely on the outer bounds of 1e/2e play- or, put another way, I had never heard of anything like that. It's clear that there were a number of houserules that raised the power level, and while I agree that there were a lot of magic items in modules, they weren't that powerful. Hence the whole, "Oh, goodie, another +1 long sword."*

IME, having a character with a -10 AC at any level is pretty crazy; having a -10 AC at level 6 ... well, I would just stop playing at that point. But that's not my style, and I certainly wouldn't say that it's bad for other people. I would say that this sounds like an atypical campaign, and that's before talking about non-standard PC races, like gold dragons.


*Of course, magic items were also the key differentiating factor between PCs in the OD&D/1e era. Character concepts and tactics often changed because of the discovery of a certain magic item.

I dunno. Negative AC's at fairly low levels wasn't all that hard to achieve. Plate, shield and a decent DEX got you to -1 or -2 and you could do that by 2nd or 3rd level pretty easily. +1 plate and +1 shields were pretty common magic items in many modules, so, that gets you to -3 or -4 pretty easily. Tap in some other goodies, like, say, Vault of the Drow or Queen of the Demonweb Pits for higher level play, and you get up to -10 without too much trouble.

Now, if we're going Unearthed Arcana, then we're starting with full plate and Shield, AC:1, before Dex or magic items. Drilling your AC into the lower negatives wasn't too much of a stretch. While sure, you certainly ran into that whole "Oh great another +1 sword", there was always some bigger bad guy that had a better one. Certainly +3 weapon, +3 Armor and +3 shield by, say, 9th or 10th level wasn't out of line IME. With an 18 Dex, that's a -8 AC right there.
[MENTION=3854]Quasqueton[/MENTION] used to do some excellent analyses of those old modules and just how chock a block with goodies they really were.

I honestly think the biggest split in gamer experiences is whether people played a lot of modules or not. I did. I played a ton of modules. Which meant that the parties had shopping carts full of magic items. And, since we've brought up paladins, I'd point out that 10 magic items was considered a low limit on how many magic items a PC should have.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Hussar]

Heh. Oh yeah, it does come down to different experiences.

I mean, for me, a fighter with an 18 Str and 16 Dex, say, was pretty much par for the course. Wouldn't even bat an eye at seeing that. So, again, that's AC:0 without magic and easily achievable by 2nd or 3rd level.

And, as far as modules go, it really depends. [MENTION=3854]Quasqueton[/MENTION] did a fantastic analysis of classic modules: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...B-ED-amp-D-and-D-amp-D3-updated-11-17-08-(Q1) where he outlined all the treasure in many modules. Cycling through, say, Temple of Elemental Evil, the 7th level party has +3 plate mail (potentially), +2 shield. So, again, not exactly out of line.

See, for me, the most telling thing about 1e and what counted as "Monty Haul" was the paladin. 10 magic items is the hard limit. It's a major part of the class. But, the implication of that is that everyone else would have more than 10 items, since, well, if everyone only has 6, then it's hardly a restriction is it? So, in a group of 6 PC's, there was an expectation that that group would have (eventually) more than 60 magic items between them. :shock:

Given that many, many monsters doled out multiple magic items, potentially, and the modules tend to support this, I'd say that people who think that AD&D is somehow lower in magic items than later editions is perhaps substituting how their DM did things for what the game actually says.

 

[jasper]

snorrrr. Jasper's nose starts whistling "Flight of the Bumblebee" then Hussar changes the station.
Hu, What. Back in the day [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], Just after I broke the shrink wrap on the module, I would line thru (today you younglings call it strikethrough) every third magic item. Then find out one of those were need to defeat the monster in the next room. But all modules back then thought the pcs had no magic item with them.
Before I updated my campaign notes. My city treasury had two and half pages of magical swords which were cast offs of my pcs or hand me downs.
SNORE!