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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kitcik" data-source="post: 5654986" data-attributes="member: 98256">We found that there were a reasonable number of monsters that represented a challenge through level 18 or so, with demon and devil lords being challenges well beyond that. And we played with no nerfing and the almost stereotypical party (paladin, ranger, magic-user, cleric, thief) with level appropriate gear (although no magic purchasing - all "found" magic loot, but by that level we had found an awful lot). Keep in mind that a good DM is not going to have Orcus on the Prime Material plane waiting for a fully refreshed party. 1E was about conservation of resources, which the DM tried hard to force you to use in order to present challenges. Fighting Orcus on the Abyss, while his cohorts gated in virtually limitless demons, with every hit he got resulting in death with no possibility of coming back, was quite challenging, and was, in fact, a challenge we never succeeded in. (We did kill Demogorgon.) When spells have real casting times and real durations, and can easily be interrupted by multiple foes, casters are just not as strong.   Never happened with us. Note that some of the more popular modules were for levels up to 14 (Tomb of Horrors, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Temple of the Frog) and there were many others, both TSR and non. In fact, there were numerous official modules for levels up to 35 or so.   I grant a couple of points: -10 AC was not that hard to achieve & hitting monsters with melee attacks got pretty easy. Other than that, it's like we were playing different games. Stuff still hit me with a -10 AC. And with no evasion in AD&D, even with a save of 2, I took a lot of damage from spells and breath weapons. And cures were tough to cast in battle. Also, not sure how your fighters were doing massive melee damage in AD&D. Max of two attacks per round (plus maybe haste), no damage progression, just taking out giants was a slog.  Casting times, my man, didn't you play with them? Wizard starts casting "die" spell. Loses most AC bonuses. gets smacked in face. loses spell. maybe gets killed. next.  A lot of points here: - attributes did not progress in AD&D and it took 10 wishes to raise an attribute by 1 point. good luck loading up on attributes. - saves: yes, they all became 2 at super high levels - hit points: as you said "it's pretty essential" - yes, the list of monsters that were challenges got pretty short. Makes sense, otherwise they'd just kill everyone in the world. the ones that did exist (ancient dragons, liches, demon and devil lords, etc. - it's been 20 years) were darn tough though, in the hands of a capable DM. We never resorted to nerfs or solo play or "DM cheating." We just had a competent DM and appropriate challenges.</blockquote>[/QUOTE]

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