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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Corathon" data-source="post: 4506444" data-attributes="member: 22238">Not all of your points above are accurate (I doubt that most campaigns use or used straight 3d6 in order to determine stats in 1E, that's typically an OD&D thing; stat mins and maxes can disqualify you from certain races or classes, but you'd need truly awful stats to be limited to one choice of class; the "two systems" of spell generation aren't actually contradictory, etc) but you're right that there is no guarantee in 1E that you could play whatever you wanted or that your PC was just as potent as somebody else's. You might be a fighter with low HP, or poor armor, or a magic user with poor spells. If you were smart enough and lucky enough to survive, that would change.  In practice, the game is as random as the DM wants it to be. Most of the game isn't random IME. The DM creates the adventure locales (usually dungeons) and chooses what creatures dwell there. While it is certainly possible to do that using random tables (provided in the DMG) that is mainly intended for solo gaming. How do you figure? The monsters have 8-sided hit dice and no constitution bonus, so the fighters (10-sided HD+CON bonus) have more hit points than  monsters of equal level. Often many more. The monster attack table is better than the fighter table up to about 10th level/10HD, but monsters get no hit bonus from Strength while fighters do. Add in things like weapon specialization and the much greater likelihood that a PC fighter has a magic weapon or armor, and PC fighters hit better, do more damage, and have more hit points than the monsters that they were fighting. As for powers, even a mid-level spell caster has a lot more versatility than most monsters in 1E. Most creatures don't have any magical powers at all. Only Really Bad Things (demons, devils, beholders, liches, a few others) have a huge number of magical abilities. I'm definitely an old school gamer, but I'm not "offended" by the 4E powers system. I don't have a very strong opinion about is as I've never played the game.  Actually, that's wrong. In 1E Sleep doesn't allow a saving throw. However, your point is still valid. There are plenty of things (polymorph other, hold person, stone to flesh) in which a saving throw completely negates the effect of a spell.  I think it's wrong to suppose that 1E is "squarely in the DM's corner" and against the players, as the players and the DM are not enemies. The 1E DM (I presume this is true for all the other editions as well) wants to see the players triumph - but he doesn't want to give them their triumph on a silver platter. An earned victory is much more to be savored than an easy victory. As for 4E's way of doing things, it seems like it might make all the classes seem more similar to each other, but (as I said before) I have never played the game.</blockquote>

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