Revisionism

[Obryn]

1e. I'm going to guess that my brother (the DM) wasn't giving us XP for treasure, which as you note was removed in 2e anyway (aside from individual thief XP awards).

EDIT: And, having looked at the thread, I see that 3e levelling is, indeed, faster overall.

Yeah, but it's not as slow as "In my day, I played the same character for three years and was thrilled when I made it to 5th level, uphill in the snow. He died when he was bitten by a snake and failed his save."



-O

 

[AllisterH]

And death spiral mechanics tend to be overly harsh for melee classes when compared to ranged/magic using classes IME.

 

[Spatula]

Well, as also noted later in the thread, just about no one played 1e 100% by the RAW. Everyone had their own subset of the written rules to which they added little modifications, and considered the result to be AD&D. So that scenario happened to someone I'm sure, they just did not realize that their game was customized. And when everyone's game was customized, comparisons become difficult. One of the nice aspects of 3e's rules standardization is that we actually have a common baseline to talk about the game, now.

 

[Raven Crowking]

And death spiral mechanics tend to be overly harsh for melee classes when compared to ranged/magic using classes IME.

One of the things I like about WP/VP is that I can set up psychics who use their VP to fuel powers. Any thoughts about replacing that mechanic?

 

[Ranes]

Yeah, but it's not as slow as "In my day, I played the same character for three years and was thrilled when I made it to 5th level, uphill in the snow. He died when he was bitten by a snake and failed his save."



-O

Quite so (and your smiley is noted). And of course, had that happened in my circle, on a regular basis, those espousing such views would have been laughed out of the room.

In fact, I remember the first time I encountered a 'we don't use dice' mentality (aka 'we roleplay...') in 1987, nearly ten years after I started playing. This was a revelation, to me. I didn't just like, I respected, the individual who dropped this bombshell. Didn't stop me from thinking, "What a t**t."

OT, best thread I've come across on ENW for over a year. Please, y'all, keep giving. Thanks.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

One of the things I like about WP/VP is that I can set up psychics who use their VP to fuel powers. Any thoughts about replacing that mechanic?

I remember that Torg has a Backlash mechanic, but despite my habit of posting about it a lot here, I haven't played it much to use it in practice. But basically, you took damage if you rolled to low on your casting roll (and the DC for casting a spell was often lower then the DC for avoid backlash). You don't need vitality points for this, especially because you probably want to eventually invoke the feel of the possibility to kill yourself when overextending yourself.

One of the things you need to be aware of when you use Drain/Backlash:
Your hit points / vitality points suddenly become way more important. Give up the idea of spellcasters having less hit points then non-spellcasters. If you don't like that, you need to give them a kind of extra pool of points that they can use for that very purpose - and stacks reasonable well with the rest of the system.
Alternatively, you could allow spending "willpower" points or something like that. They would work identical to wound points, but are based on a different statistics. Still, more hit points remain important. You either end up with a spell point system, or all characters having the same hit points and toughness in combat situations. (But spellcasters lose their hit points at a faster rate,since they have two sources to take damage from - enemy attacks and their own attacks.)

If you use vitality points that recover fast, you also change the balance of powerful utility spells - vitality point cos basically is meaningless, unless it kills you.

Torgs backlash damage works a little different still - you roll your skill total, and the degree of difference to the backlash determines damage. A low toughnes spellcaster still tends to drop unconscious faster, but the way damage is accrued depends stronger on his mental statistics and skill, as one would want from such a system. Shock points are important, but the attrbiute or ability that sets the damage result value is still way more important. The moment the attribute to determine the amount of shock you can take is decoupled from the attribute to determine how much damage you take in the first place, the latter is more important.

But translating that elegantly to D&D/d20 systems is not so easy. You might want multiple success levels on a task like casting a spell or using a psychic power...

 

[billd91]

Was this 1e or 2e?

IIRC, the big slow-down happened when DMs stopped giving XP for treasure. Many - perhaps most - 1e DMs (my much younger self included) did so under 1e, and it was formally removed from the system in 2e.

In 1e, if you give XP for GP on a 1-for-1 basis and award XP for magic items, you get a much more rapid rate of advancement in 1e.

-O

It's not just that, but Quas's numbers assumed, I believe, a pretty thorough looting of the wealth. While it's generally easier to successfully seek and defeat all of the creatures (at least enough to gain XPs for the encounter), complete looting is a bit harder.
I know there was debating in the original thread about how bit a factor that is... but having DMed most of them, missed wealth really does become a factor.
It was my experience, DMing 1e modules in 3e, that leveling was much faster if I didn't deliberately slow it down. We did the Keep on the Borderlands (return to... version) and the Slavelord series. It was my experience that humanoids (and the A series is quite humanoid heavy) are worth substantially more XPs without a huge amount of treasure in 1e to match 3e's XP awards.

 

[Spatula]

One of the things I like about WP/VP is that I can set up psychics who use their VP to fuel powers. Any thoughts about replacing that mechanic?

Use the SW Saga condition track, and power abilities via condition "damage."

 

[Hussar]

It's not just that, but Quas's numbers assumed, I believe, a pretty thorough looting of the wealth. While it's generally easier to successfully seek and defeat all of the creatures (at least enough to gain XPs for the encounter), complete looting is a bit harder.
I know there was debating in the original thread about how bit a factor that is... but having DMed most of them, missed wealth really does become a factor.
It was my experience, DMing 1e modules in 3e, that leveling was much faster if I didn't deliberately slow it down. We did the Keep on the Borderlands (return to... version) and the Slavelord series. It was my experience that humanoids (and the A series is quite humanoid heavy) are worth substantially more XPs without a huge amount of treasure in 1e to match 3e's XP awards.

Perhaps we should fork this discussion.

Apologies RC, I didn't mean to derail.

The biggest thing that mitigates what you say bill91 is the fact that in Quasqueton's breakdowns, he never sold any magic items. He only gave xp for keeping them. If you sold even a fraction of those magic items, you'd more than make up for anything you missed since the gp values compared to the xp values are several times higher.

 

[RFisher]

In effect, I am working on my "perfect game".

Sounds very interesting.