<SNIP>
How? I can see this might be true with a mage or even a rogue. But anything that can wear heavier armour? Factoring out the effects of DEX, you have the following...
Plate mail by itself nets you an AC of 2. A shield nets you an AC of 1. Looking at the adventures Q posted, there's no reason why by the time you hit the Giants, your AC isn't at least -4. Before that, even at the very end of KotB, your AC is low enough that any of the monsters in the adventure will only hit you on a 16 or higher....
How the hell are you even getting hit?
Simple, rolls happen and they get bonuses too. I have the same recollections as RC about dying in a bloody pulp on several occasions. I actually started coming to sessions with a notebook of pre-rolled characters "just in case". I played the fighter/paladin types for years and had limited results in the longevity department. It wasn't until I rolled a 1/2 elf thief that I had my first "named" character that I can tell stories about, and he retired from adventuring. Ever since then I've been DMing so he is really my ONLY success story.
My views on 1st vs 2nd are less bold. I house ruled both, I rarely used the books at either session and ran more on situation versus lawyering (the Gary way). I actually LIKED the Complete Priest (It was my favorite because of the fluff) and looked on the 2E core books as technical manuals. 1E was a complete game. If you had the 3 core books, you never HAD to buy anything else. You could run crawls, arcs or epic story campaigns with relative ease. When 2E came out you could do the same thing, but it was BETTER if you bought the splats or the campaigns. They set up a framework that allowed you to make exactly the world you wanted to let your players kick around in.
By the time 3E came around the players were dictating what the world was and it was NECESSARY to buy most of the follow-on books to get the most bang for your buck. By 4E there is no real way to change the world around you without upsetting the balance of the game. (Not that its impossible, but it does take a lot of work (which I don't really have time for)).
Each successive step in the evolution had been one of business over polish (IMO). Not that there is anything wrong with that, WotC/TSR/Hasbro is just that, a business, and it is their goal to make as much as possible. As a hobbyist it does grate on my nerves a bit that my enjoyment isn't taken into account, but they are counting on a new generation of gamers so that I don't have to come to the party. I bought my Core 4E and MAY p/u the PHB2 just for the heck of it, but have yet to actually play 4E outside of tests and cons. My vision of worlds is far too broad to be shoe-boxed into that kind of corner. Likewise, I started getting irritated at the shear number of rules required by 3.x that I began to be disillusioned with it too. Likewise 2E and 1E just don't have what it takes for me anymore either. Will I still play D&D, you bet, but I'm shopping for a new system and am tinkering with my own. (Please don't give me suggestions, that's another thread and I started it a LONG time ago.)
Was there a difference between 1E and 2E (getting back to the OP), yes. Was it as mythical/mystical as we remember, probably not, nostalgia has a way of glossing over the details. Is there a way to catch lightning in a bottle a second time? I hope so, I really hope there is a final solution for all of our wants and wishes, an easy system that is not so completely tied in to a world that it can't be separated from it, that allows for real-world and completely fantastical versions to be played from the same rules, is concise yet complete and doesn't cost $150 to start... Maybe someday.
