AD&D 1E Revised and Rebalanced Cavalier for 1e AD&D

[Lanefan]

When a paladin or ranger loses their status in 2e, they remain the same level and simply lose any excess xp which would, presumably put them 1 xp off from levelling.

I'm not sure where I saw it or which edition it was from but I also recall systems setting their xp at the halfway point, this might have been from level drain and, if so, would also be a decent way of doing it.

Fairer, I think, to put them at the same point within the level. That way, if they're close to bumping in the original class they don't get hosed, while if they just bumped in the original class they don't get a boost.

The halfway-through thing is, I believe, one of a few ways of handling level drain; I've also seen somewhere the notion of level drain busting them all the way back to 1 point into the lower level. Halfway through is how I do it, in any case, and I'm pretty sure I got that from somewhere official.

 

[Lanefan]

That's a campaign specific thing. My dungeons frequently had "traps" in the form of "check for disease exposure" (there are fleas on the dead animal, for example) and I did do monthly checks for disease exposure. And I did enjoy Wererats as foes quite a lot, and that's not just lycanthropy but lots of diseased rats. And so forth.

Agreed it's campaign-specific. I can't remember the last time disease played any significant role in my game; though in the game I play in the current adventure is all about disease and fighting the agents of a disease deity, and immunity would be really handy!

I didn't really hate immunities until 3e when the game began to become all about immunities, but in general 3e's attempts to move things away from immunity and more to relative immunity where they had considered it - like DR replacing "a magic weapon is needed to hit" - were things I found really welcome. Complete immunity to disease from 1st level is a massive advantage, as would be complete immunity to fear (did I say I use the Ravenloft fear rules in normal campaigns?).

Immunity to fear (a.k.a. "fearless") hasn't made Cavaliers any more popular round here, and they have the worst survival rate of any class (caveat: they also have a small sample size).

I was never a big fan of DR as it just tended to make long combats longer. With "needs magic to hit", if you've got magic you affect the thing normally and if you don't there's no combat - you run away instead.

Not really. Because before weapon specialization, fighter wasn't all that great. Paladin was just fighter but better, and Ranger was fighter with a lot of extra powers and better starting hit points and more panache. Specialization made the fighter on par with the Cleric and M-U and dragged it to competitive or better with UA classes like Barbarian and Cavalier. If you take out specialization, then the game actually gets less balanced unless you just stick with the core four classes.

I'm not saying take specialization out entirely, I'm saying tone it down. Have the benefits accrue slowly, something like

Level --- to-hit --- damage --- attack rate

1st --- +1 --- +0 --- 1/1
2nd --- +1 --- +1 --- 1/1
3rd --- +1 --- +2 --- 1/1
4th --- +1 --- +2 --- 3/2
7th --- +1 --- +2 --- 2/1
10th --- +1 --- +2 --- 5/2

By 4th-5th level they've usually got or are getting weapons that give decent plusses as well, and by 7th-ish level things like gauntlets and girdles of strength start showing up, so having the plusses from spec. cap after 4th isn't a big problem because the extra attacks are far more relevant.

UPDATE: Going a bit further though, the problem with specialization isn't so much that it effects party balance. Thieves get even worse, but they were bad to begin with. The problem with specialization is that it heavily effects balance between the party and monsters. The solution I found was that when the party got powerful enough, to make the monsters more powerful to compensate. Monster leaders started showing up specialized themselves, for example. Monsters had explicit DEX and so did better in surprise and initiative contests. And so forth.

On this, I agree; and I know you're aware I somewhat beefed up the hit points on a lot of monsters to compensate. I also gave them their strength bonuses to hit and damage where appropriate, this is something that always bugged me about RAW 1e monster design that I fixed long before 3e also fixed it.

 

[Lanefan]

This is just my personal aesthetic sense, but I think you can fork AD&D pretty far and still maintain the “feel” as long as you maintain:

-The stat progression and their baked-in oddities.
-Gestalt multiclassing, with racial class and level limits.
-Uneven XP tables with geometric progression.
-Roll under save categories progressing by class.
-Roll under proficiencies.
-A mostly traditional list of available races and classes.

Specific class features and how they’re implemented, minimum stat requirements, exact XP values, even unclear combat systems; I think all of those factors have a lot of elasticity without risking losing essential “edition” feel.

I like this but feel compelled to correct the bolded: saves in 1e are roll-over, not roll-under.

 

[TwoSix]

I like this but feel compelled to correct the bolded: saves in 1e are roll-over, not roll-under.

Yep, totally right. I’ll go back and edit.

I also forgot descending AC.

 

[Celebrim]

I put up some initial thoughts on Revised Paladin. The main innovation is ensuring you can play something very close to the original Paladin or if you qualify for it play gestalt Paladin-Cavalier from UA. This way it's not an either/or situation, and both paladins and non-cavalier paladins existing together make sense from a world building perspective.

I have both buffed and nerfed the original Paladin but it's very close to the original. The major buff is that the class IMO no longer needs to be punished with excessive XP requirements in a post UA environment - save that for the Paladin-Cavalier. There is also a new "smite" attack to give it some damage boosts while you are hunting for the elusive Holy Avenger. The new nerfs all have to do with not front loading the class quite so much. Also I limited "Detect Evil" mostly for gameplay reasons, as give a player something that has no marginal cost and they will IME slow play to a crawl with it by just obsessively checking for evil. By mid-levels you'll be able to do it for 3 or 4 hours a day, so that should be more than sufficient. The most important nerf is the strict immunity to disease now becomes pretty good disease resistance. It's not a complete nerf though, as the examples expressly call out that you are partially resistant to lycanthropy, while in the original game the player was likely to be utterly shocked when his totally disease resistant character transformed into a werewolf (and then lost Paladin status) because he had hidden in the DMG zero resistance to lycanthropy and also hidden in the DMG this involuntary unwilling act was enough to render him impure. Both are untrue of the new write up. You can't lose your Paladin status by something you were magically compelled to do. Against most disease threats, you will be basically immune by mid-levels.

There were back in the day lots of confusion over what disease immunity applied to and all sorts of narrow rulings were made to limit it so that it didn't really apply to anything - not lycanthropy, not violet fungi, not green slime, etc. As I see it applies to any sort of infection, but not necessarily to any sort of acid attack. As written up though, you could rule it protects partially against a green slime attack, with the green slime requiring 50% longer to go into effect (so 2-6 rounds) and a X% chance of the slime making no progress each round. And of course, the Paladin can always cure disease to kill a green slime whether this slime is a disease itself or not. The point is that resistance is in some ways better not just for the game than immunity, but also for the player, in that there are fewer "gotchas" and more opportunity for the GM to make generous rulings without feeling like he's destroying game balance.

I still haven't worked out all the career options you have if you lose your class and how it will work in each case, but that's next.

There are still various things that could be improved probably. The main issue is, "Would you take Paladin as an option, even without the Cavalier abilities?"