Rebuild 1E...

[Celebrim]

First - since we're talking about a REBUILD of 1E and not just a construction of a new edition that happens to use a few 1E ideas a designer needs to identify what elements of 1E are important and need to be recognized. At the same time it MUST change things in significant fashion to make the entire exercise meaningful. Keep what works, change what doesn't, yet remain FAITHFUL to the edition it is supposed to be based on.

I agree with this as a mission statement.

For starters 1E is SOLIDLY class-oriented. There are no kits, no prestige classes, no pages of feats for players to choose from. A characters abilities are clearly defined by his class.

And you clearly get it.

A better skill system is quite welcome - but like the skills of 1st Edition they should be very much independant of combat and not intertwined in it mucking things up. Skills in 1E are to fill in the blanks of character background and ongoing development but not dominate or interfere with other aspects of the game.

In particular, they should never get in the way of common player centric challenges. So 1e skills should strongly avoid modifying mental activities, strongly impacting social situations, replacing dungeoneering, or problem solving and instead reflect only unusual skills that the player cannot assert he ought to have. Skills essentially should be reserved for the sort of physical challenge resolution that the combat rules themself. "Can I accomplish this difficult physical or technically difficult feat?" Furthermore, they shouldn't completely overshadow attributes, because 1e basically assumes that someone with high dexterity is widely compotent at virtually everything related to gracefulness. So the modifiers applied by skills should be small when they impact things 'anyone can do' (jumping, dancing, swimming, etc.), or else they should open up abilities we normally associate only with great skill and training. Skills must remain minor benefits to help round out a character. They can't be the focus of a 1e style game.

1E does suffer from ability score charts being at odds with what ought to be a common method of random score determination. The myriad of random generation methods are created in an effort to OVERCOME the design limitations of the charts. Instead, with an eye towards the simple 3d6, or at most 4d6 bell curve bonuses should be seen with scores of 14 or even 13, not at 16. And penalties should be shifted down as well with scores of at most 6, if not 5, rather than scores of 7. The charts should make the generation method work rather than having the generation method struggling to make the charts work. The grail should be having 3d6 be an overwhelmingly acceptible method with perhaps 4d6 for some higher-powered games.

That is very well thought out, and I hereby fully endorse it.

Saving Throws and magic go hand-in-hand in 1E but this is the one area where I would choose to most radically diverge from the source material. The reason is that it is eminently clear that the too-arbitrary all-or-nothing outcome promulgated by saving throws is an unnecessary obstacle, a chronic monkey-wrench thrown into smooth gameplay.

I agree with the existance of the problem, but not with the proposed solution. One of the central strengths of 1e compared to 3e is that at high levels, just as 'save or suck' is becoming common and the loss of a character disasterous, the characters are also getting better and better at avoiding effects. I'm not convinced the solution you propose helps the real problem, and it potentially involves a lot of work that only makes the situation worse.

For example, spells should be kicked the hell off of turf that is supposed to be owned by the thief class. Bump their level or reduce their effects so that spells from a caster of a given level will not subvert the very reason-to-live of a thief of the same level. A spell like Invisibility should not be a 2nd level means of tacit immunity, genuine invisibility shouldn't be available until later, AFTER spells that simply improve stealth and limit detection have been exceeded.

Some amount of spell-rebalancing is probably in order. I think your proposed changes perhaps exceed what I'm comfortable with and sound again more like a solution informed by the problems of 3e than the problems of 1e. For example, you go off on fireball, but fireball is an intensely problimatic spell to both DMs and players. My characters almost never memorized it because when it rocked, it rocked, but there were a huge number of situations in which it was worse than useless. Cone of cold was much nicer than fireball simply because it was so much safer and less likely to backfire on you and kill half the party. Some rebalancing is in order, but I don't see a need to make that the focus of the effort.

Something like Magic Missile should be made a basic, reliably repeatable form of attack (requiring a spell attack roll nonetheless) that a wizard can make outside of his otherwise limited low-level selection of spells. Something that every wizard can do with a wand.

I'm assuming you don't mean a wand of magic missiles. I very much disagree. One of the central ideas of 1e is that your wizard has limited resources that you must horde up and carefully dispense at critical moments. I think that at low levels (below 7th) the wizard might have too few resources (at least until he gets several wands), but I don't agree with unlimited minor resources.

You seem to find balancing the wizard much much more important than I do. I never found the wizard to be particularly problimatic in play. The main problem with Invisibility was essentially that it was permenent. The secondary problem is that the rules regarding detecting and interacting with invisibility didn't take into account things like scent and relied to heavily on intelligence rather than perception. The big problem with fireball was really that invalidated the existance of things like armies, castles, and wooden ships. It wasn't that it was broken in terms of dungeoneering. In general, you seem to find spells more of a problem than I did and I think your efforts here are misplaced.

Thieves with low hit points and poor ability to hit should be replaced by thieves whose agility means they can avoid damage and whose cunning and dexterity means that they can make up for lack of raw damage with useful effects.

I believe I addressed this already.

Mages useless at low levels and overwhelming at higher levels should be replaced by characters whose potential spell effects start at useful ranges and simply remain there without becoming so imbalanced.

I believe that the rumors of 1e M-U's being overwhelming at higher levels is largely a myth. 1e M-U's were incredibly squishy. They had almost no hit points and never really reached the point that they weren't one bad round from trouble. They had relatively bad saving throws. They faced SR and anti-magic fields. Fighters were still essential to a successful high level party.

Characters should NOT gain xp for finding/earning money or magic.

I partly agree. The rule that XP for finding money should be scaled by the relative challenge in obtaining it should be strictly enforced. If a 1st level character takes 100 gp from kobolds, then 100 XP is in order. If a 20th level character takes 100 gp from kobolds, then by the rules this is only worth about 5 XP. I'm fine with 'treasure as a means of keeping score', though I would prefer to rebalance the ratio of monster XP to treasure XP so that you don't have to stuff a dungeon with excessive treasure in order to ensure proper rates of advancement. Not every 10th level character needs to be walking around with the wealth of a whole kingdom.

I'm in general agreement with you that magic should not be fungible with money, but on the other hand, that was never really a 1e problem. That's another 3e problem that we really don't have to worry about.

Speaking of which, characters ARE better than normal folk. The great bulk of the worlds inhabitants are ZERO-level.

I disagree. This never worked that well in practice and it wasn't in practice balanced even with itself. The great bulk of the worlds inhabitants are assumed to be very low level. That's all that really need be said. Everything else is campaign specific.

Significant NPC's are generally represented in terms of PC classes but the DM should NOT be expected to restrict himself to that. DM's can represent the skills and abilities of his NPC's in ANY WAY HE WANTS, although the PC class structure makes the most useful guide.

Sure. But again, you are ranting against a problem not really encountered in 1st edition. This is the game system that in a published module represented a group of warriors as 5HD monsters with 1d10 hitpoints each. Of course the DM can do anything he wants. You are ranting against problems introduced in 3e. We dont' really have to worry about those except to the extent that we want to avoid recreating all of them.

 

[Baron Opal]

[On eliminating demihuman class level limits] Why? I keep seeing lots of requests for this, but I don't see the need of it. First edition style games don't go to level 20 by default. It's a rather third edition mindset involved here I think.

Oh, no. Our game ditched those before 2e was a twinkle in anyone's eye.

It's not useful. If the campaign runs for 6 levels before the scenario plays out or there's a TPK, then the level limits are meaningless. If the campaign runs to 20th level then everyone plays humans or people switch out characters. I didn't see the utility in forcing someone to be inadequate in an 18th level party because they chose to play an elf instead of a human. Especially since at that level racial bonuses are irrelevant.

What was useful, for us, was limiting classes by race. This let us define some cultural proclivities and flavor the campaign. The only time we used level limits was for NPCs. There was an expectation that the gods of human priests were more involved in worldly affairs than dwarven ones, unless you were a dwarf.

 

[Baron Opal]

Instead of the complicated fix you propose (deleted here), why not go to a gradated save system?

that's something that I tinkered with but I couldn't come up with an elegant system for it. I definately wanted for the higher level spells something like:

Flesh to Stone
Success - No effect
Equivocal - Slowed
Failure - Petrified

Lower level spells would either have the simple two level effects and you would expect that higher level characters would just shrug them off.

 

[Remathilis]

Personally (and this may delve into Edition War territory) I think 2e would be a better jumping off point. It already contains enough symmetry and re-tooling needed for an overhaul, all it would need is some further refinement.

* Abilities: Retool Strength to remove % Str. (15 is +0/+1, 16 +1/+1, 17 +1/+2, 18 +2/+4, 19 +3/+6, and shift the weightload down some).

* Races Fine as is, though I'd re-install half-orc and maybe add half-ogre.

* Classes: Most of my fixes mentioned earlier apply: Give Fighters the ability to progress in weapons up to grand master, swap priest/rogue Thac0 and HD, fix druids to ignore combat and heirophant rule-weirdness, limit bards to 5-6 schools (no fireball) and re-add the Scarlet Brotherhood Monk and Assassin.

* NWP: Simplifying the Skill List and making the check a little more elegant than modified ability checks could go a long way here.

* Re-balance schools/spheres to better focus specialists and correct priest spell oddness.

* I'd like to see Upwards AC; ymmv.

* 2e already fixes initiative/surprise wonkiness (with a simpler d10 roll), streamlines some general class rules, and codifies Thac0. It also fixes/upgrades a number of monsters like Dragons and Giants.

* Obviously, ignore kits, the multitude of splats, and such and you got a seriously good OSR system, and with a lot less work than rebuilding 1e.

 

[Celebrim]

It's not useful...this let us define some cultural proclivities and flavor the campaign. The only time we used level limits was for NPCs.

I think that class by race and level limits are essentially the same thing, only class by race is an absolute limit of 0 rather than a squishy limit of 5 or 8 or 10.

In the unlikely event you have an 18th level party, the elf in the party is probably something like a F10/M12/T15 or an M13/T16 (not doing the exact math). With my proposed upward revision to ensure most allowed class/race combinations are playable through the sweet spot and beyond, you are talking about even more robust level caps that would allow playing a demihuman right up to 18th in all sorts of combinations. However, seriously, you are very unlikely to get a party to 18th level and if you do, the game is going to break down primarily in that you can throw your weight around vs. gods at that point. You are cosmic powers. Nothing in the Monster Manual is going to be remotely able to hang with the party. It's time to retire to legendary status and start new characters.

 

[Stoat]

I think that class by race and level limits are essentially the same thing, only class by race is an absolute limit of 0 rather than a squishy limit of 5 or 8 or 10.

In the unlikely event you have an 18th level party, the elf in the party is probably something like a F10/M12/T15 or an M13/T16 (not doing the exact math). With my proposed upward revision to ensure most allowed class/race combinations are playable through the sweet spot and beyond, you are talking about even more robust level caps that would allow playing a demihuman right up to 18th in all sorts of combinations. However, seriously, you are very unlikely to get a party to 18th level and if you do, the game is going to break down primarily in that you can throw your weight around vs. gods at that point. You are cosmic powers. Nothing in the Monster Manual is going to be remotely able to hang with the party. It's time to retire to legendary status and start new characters.

This raises the question: Is it necessary to have a 20 level game? Is it even a good idea to have a 20 level game?

 

[ggroy]

This raises the question: Is it necessary to have a 20 level game? Is it even a good idea to have a 20 level game?

Back in the day, my gaming groups rarely ever played starting from level 1 all the way to level 20. If we wanted to play high level stuff, we would just start a new game at a high level. Not surprisingly, a lot of the high level 1E AD&D games I played back in the day, had parties with several spellcasters and not many fighters.

 

[Baron Opal]

I think that class by race and level limits are essentially the same thing...

You have a point. The main difference is that a level limit is an expiration date. Only if the campaign ends a couple of levels after the level limit is it meaningful. Otherwise it's irrelevant.

In the unlikely event you have an 18th level party... the game is going to break down primarily in that you can throw your weight around vs. gods at that point. You are cosmic powers. Nothing in the Monster Manual is going to be remotely able to hang with the party. It's time to retire to legendary status and start new characters.

True. After the party took out Tiamat and her consorts in an epic 3-4 session adventure that's what happened.

 

[rogueattorney]

1. I'd try to act like nothing published after 1980 existed.

2. I like the idea behind weapons v. AC, but not the implementation. I'd make things simpler by assigning bonuses for certain classes of weapons versus certain type of armor. I'd also give shields bonuses against certain types of weapons.

3. I'd refine the surprise rules a tad, and try to run everyone off of one dice (probably a d6, maybe a d%) or at least explain better what happens when someone surprises on a x in d8, etc.

4. I'd simplify initiative a little by having casting time act as an individual penalty to spellcaster's initiative (the same way dex bonuses/penalties work for missile users). I'd eliminate the casting time v. weapon speed rule.

5. I'd make AC static. If AC is static, it can be named whatever you want (a through x, 1 through 20, alpha through epsilon, whatever). I'd then just deal in bonuses or penalties to hit rolls.

6. I'd basically keep saving throws as-is, but broaden the categories a tad.

7. There's a number of things I'd clarify and clean up (small and medium shields, encumbrance of magic armor, whether missile weapons with ROF > 1 = multiple attack routines, etc.) and some obvious typos/misstatements (halfling dex/con max's, henchmen/hireling confusion in assassin's section, etc.), but that would be more in the nature of editing than rebuilding.

Rather than rebuilding, I guess I'd more tighten things up. I wouldn't want it too tight though, because I find much of the charm of the system being making decisions on the margins of the rules.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This raises the question: Is it necessary to have a 20 level game? Is it even a good idea to have a 20 level game?

I would say No to both, which is why I limited my own ruleset to 15 levels.


RC