Rebuild 1E...

[the Jester]

First and foremost, adopt 4E's approach of balancing combat by way of defining expectations for an encounter (number of rounds, et cetera), then calibrating the math to produce average results matching those expectations. Adjust damage, saving throws, et cetera to match this.

Ugh.

Personally, I think one of the best things about 1e is that high level parties can be threatened by low-level bad guys and vice versa. Too much number crunching, setting expectations as to how long a combat should last, etc. would annihilate a lot of the flavor that gives 1e its charm.

IMHO, anyway, and I LURVE 1e. It may just be my favorite edition overall, even given all of its warts.

 

[Dausuul]

Ugh.

Personally, I think one of the best things about 1e is that high level parties can be threatened by low-level bad guys and vice versa. Too much number crunching, setting expectations as to how long a combat should last, etc. would annihilate a lot of the flavor that gives 1e its charm.

IMHO, anyway, and I LURVE 1e. It may just be my favorite edition overall, even given all of its warts.

*shrug* I didn't say anything about how steep or shallow the slope of the power curve should be, nor about how much random factors should affect outcomes. I also like the idea of high-level parties being sometimes threatened by low-level bad guys; but that's an entirely separate issue from what I proposed.

(Unless you mean that a high-level party should be threatened by Type A low-level baddie but not by Type B low-level baddie. But in that case I contend that Type A is not really low-level at all; he's just mislabeled.)

Edit: To clarify, when I talk about "setting expectations," I mean strictly from a design perspective. In an actual game, combat takes as long as it takes, and if that means the whole fight is decided in one round, so be it. But for a game designer, trying to figure out how much damage a given weapon or spell should do, it's essential to have a baseline of how long a typical fight is expected to run.

 

[Wik]

Edit: To clarify, when I talk about "setting expectations," I mean strictly from a design perspective. In an actual game, combat takes as long as it takes, and if that means the whole fight is decided in one round, so be it. But for a game designer, trying to figure out how much damage a given weapon or spell should do, it's essential to have a baseline of how long a typical fight is expected to run.

No, it's not. In fact, a lot of games don't use that approach at all. Which is what we'd call a "gamist" approach - build the reality of the game world around what works for the game. A lot of games (I'd say most of them) instead go for a simulationist approach - what makes sense in the "real world" they're trying to portray (whether it be Medieval Fantasy or Shadowrunning Orks, or whatever else).

So, instead, the designer goes "This is a longsword. It'll do... um.... 1d8 damage. A dagger does less damage than a longsword, so we'll make it, um... 1d4. A mace? Um, it can hurt, but only if it hits you right, and your armour will deflect some of the blow, so, uh.... 1d6. And a claymore is like a super big longsword, so we'll say it does 1d12." And so on, and so forth.

"Round Length' seems like a very odd thing to design a combat around, unless you're playing 4e, in which it was a primary factor. (And I don't like it, personally - how many one round fights have YOU had in 4e? I haven't had even one, even if the PCs have all the advantages). To me, I'd say build rules that simulate your idea of what "reality" should be in the game world, and then start extrapolating from there:

"Okay, with these combat rules, the average combat is around six rounds long. I imagine fights in my game world would last around two or three minutes, like a good movie. We'll say two and a half minutes. Uh. I guess I can get away with saying a single round is thirty seconds long. Okay, cool!"

 

[the Jester]

Edit: To clarify, when I talk about "setting expectations," I mean strictly from a design perspective. In an actual game, combat takes as long as it takes, and if that means the whole fight is decided in one round, so be it. But for a game designer, trying to figure out how much damage a given weapon or spell should do, it's essential to have a baseline of how long a typical fight is expected to run.

I disagree completely. The damage a given weapon or spell should do ought to be based on a comparison to other weapons, spells and damaging effects, not on how long a fight is expected to last. I think the expected length of a combat is only an essential part of the design process if you're trying to have a system that pushes all combats towards the expected length, and while that is a laudable goal for some play styles, it doesn't match up with my preference for 1e (or really for FRPGs at all, but that's a different discussion completely).

1e took a very different approach to game balance. The balance of pcs was weighed against other pcs over the course of their (potential) careers. Later editions (well, 3e and 4e) include a significant effort to balance pc attack values at each level against monster defense numbers at that level, etc. You won't see a 10th level 4e monster with an AC of 15. Yet you might have a 1e monster that was level VIII (remember, monster levels went I through X) with AC 5. 1e instead looked at monsters against monsters, rather than monsters against pcs.

A "level V" 1e monster might be level V because of its Hit Dice, but it might equally have less HD and better special abilities, more damage, a lower AC (read: better AC), etc. The methodology of balance is fundamentally different.

EDIT: Because of this difference in balancing monsters, some have a glass jaw- one or two hits will kill them, but if they stick around they'll do tons of damage very quickly- and others of equal level might last a lot longer but be less capable of dishing out damage.

 

[Ariosto]

Like many others, making just about every roll where higher is better. This would mean at least reversing saving throw numbers.

Oh. Hmm ... That was really confusing. There are at least two ways to parse it.

One is to subtract (e.g.) 16 from 21, so now you need to roll 5 or less. Are you going to do the same with combat? I think that's a fine way to go, with some potential advantages (as in a method I've used for decades). For instance, you can hit by rolling over an ascending defense factor but not over your attack factor. Roll an 8, and hit 7 or worse.

However, "roll high to hit or save" is pretty strongly associated with D&D.

Another interpretation is going the 3e/4e way:

Instead of indicating the "Difficulty Classes" with class-level bonuses already factored in, you want to break them out and add a step of arithmetic to each roll.

Hey, I can dig that if you've been playing a lot of WotC-D&D and not much else then that might make sense on the basis of "the way I'm used to doing it" -- like the American table custom of swapping knife and fork from hand to hand over and over.

If that's really your top priority, then groovy.

As a matter of speed and ease in play, though, I don't see how making it more complicated is an improvement.

 

[Ariosto]

Ah! I forgot to mention that I think a change is needed for the Thief Table. IMO, start them out a bit more capable, and slow down the progression from there. OSRIC actually does a good job of this, and I'm using that table, instead of the one from the PHB.

That is interesting. Most get +5% at 1st level. Climb Walls gets -5%, and remains behind (by a varying amount) thereafter -- peaking at just 99% at 15th (instead of hitting that at 10th and halving that chance of failure by 15th). Hear Noise starts the same, but improves by 3% per level rather than 5% per two levels (hitting 40% at 11th rather than 13th). Read languages starts at 1% and gradually builds up, only 15% (not 20%) at 4th -- but on par at 17th and then passing that former peak.

Also interesting is the nomenclature: Move Quietly (not Silently) and Find Traps (not Find/Remove) -- but I don't know whether those reflect changed rules.

 

[Aus_Snow]

3d6 in order. Strip it back to Cleric, Fighter and Magic User. Also just Dwarf, Elf, Halfling and Human. Remove demihuman level limits. Streamline the combat sections somewhat.

That would be a good start.

 

[ggroy]

3d6 in order. Strip it back to Cleric, Fighter and Magic User. Also just Dwarf, Elf, Halfling and Human. Remove demihuman level limits. Streamline the combat sections somewhat.

That would be a good start.

Or for that matter, remove the cleric entirely and reallocate the cleric's spellcasting and non-melee combat abilities (ie. turning, etc ...) to the magic user.

What we have left is two classes of: basic fighting man and mage, with very little to no overlap of abilities.

 

[Chainsaw]

Or for that matter, remove the cleric entirely and reallocate the cleric's spellcasting and non-melee combat abilities (ie. turning, etc ...) to the magic user.

What we have left is two classes of: basic fighting man and mage, with very little to no overlap of abilities.

Hardcore, I like it.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Or for that matter, remove the cleric entirely and reallocate the cleric's spellcasting and non-melee combat abilities (ie. turning, etc ...) to the magic user.

What we have left is two classes of: basic fighting man and mage, with very little to no overlap of abilities.

Sure. I mean, suspicions of rampant sarcasm aside (it can be hard to tell at times. . .) - if I was actually building a 'D&D' from scratch, it would probably only end up with two classes. A bit like that then, yes.

But with 1e, I think it would benefit from just a bit (subjectively) of stripping back. And streamlining. Whoops, said that already.