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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Quixote" data-source="post: 5366096" data-attributes="member: 694">You know what drove me to the OSR back in 2007?  My 3.5 campaign reached 15th level.  And my brain exploded.After a few abortive attempts to convert to 2nd edition and Castles & Crusades, I finally settled on the Rules Cyclopedia, and I knew that something was different.  You know what's great about high level campaigns that use the Cyclopedia or the green box Companion Set and black box Masters Set?  They actually work.  Without a lot of constant tweaking and fixing, Mentzer's rules for high level gameplay hold up.  The monsters, items, and spells are pretty well balanced, and the dominion and war machine rules, while a bit clunky and in need of some streamlining, still do their job.  In short, there's plenty of room for the DM to wing it, but what rules there are still pull their weight and do the heavy lifting when it's called for.Now, granted, I couldn't entirely let go of all the sensibilities that were instilled in me from playing 2e and 3e.  I dislike most arbitrary restrictions -- so, for example, I tend to allow all classes to use all weapons and armor, because I don't mind clerics wielding edged weapons or mages wearing armor.  Likewise, I prefer a robust skill system, open to all character classes, which includes (rather than crudely overlaps with) thieving skills.  These two features essentially compensate for the lack of multiclassing in my Classic D&D campaign.  Want to be a fighting mage?  Play a mage, wear armor, carry a sword.  Want to be a thieving priest?  Play a cleric, take a few roguish skills.  Paladin, ranger, bard?  Fighter with Religious knowledge, fighter with Tracking skill, cleric or thief with Performing skill.On the other hand, race-as-class is awesome.  It means that elves are elves, dwarves -- you'd better believe it -- are bloody Gimli-type dwarves, halflings are hobbits, and humans are always special enough to be worth playing.  It's conducive to PC parties that feel like the cast of a fantasy novel, rather than the kitchen-sink, anything-goes nonsense of a more unrestricted landscape of options.  Much to the betterment of all the campaigns I've run since, I might add.P.S., THAC0 is still wacko.  A much better alternative is to create an Attack stat equal to (21 - THAC0).  So, for example, a 4th level fighter (THAC0 17) instead has a base Attack score of 4.  If this fighter were to attack an orc (AC 7), all you have to do is add the numbers to find that your chance of hitting is 11 in 20 or 55%.</blockquote>

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