D&D General The Renewing Charm of the Old School Play Experience

[Eyes of Nine]

It wouldn't be that many rounds if you are going old school. In AD&D a combat round was 1 minute.

I was trying to find it in the 1e PHB, but failed my check.

I believe a round is 6 seconds, and a turn is 10 rounds (ie, a minute).

 

[Lanefan]

I was trying to find it in the 1e PHB, but failed my check.

I believe a round is 6 seconds, and a turn is 10 rounds (ie, a minute).

Nope - by RAW a 1e round is a minute, while a turn is 10 minutes.

Many tables shortened them down a bit - we use 30 second rounds, for example - but rarely if ever made them as short as 3e-4e-5e has them.

 

[rczarnec]

I was trying to find it in the 1e PHB, but failed my check.

I believe a round is 6 seconds, and a turn is 10 rounds (ie, a minute).

It is in the DMG. The first sentence in the combat section is: "Combat is divided into 1 minute period melee rounds, or simply rounds, in order to have reasonably manageable combat."

(melee rounds and rounds are italicized in the source)

 

[atanakar]

One thing I really liked about older editions is that we used squares in the dungeon and hexes for wilderness. Also, range for spells and range attacks tripled, going from feet to yards IIRC.

I used hexes with 5e for wilderness. I have nice Battletech colour maps.

 

[nevin]

1e surprise checks also meant the winner got from 1 to 3 rounds of full combat attacks on the surprised party before they could act, depending on the roll.

Also look up ranges for infravision/ultravision. the 60' 90' was indoors.
outdoors was 100' to 300' infra or 100 yards to 300 yards ultra. And any light source blinded you and destroyed the vision. One light spell and everyone looking at it had the same vision as the human. And without Darkvision , infravision underground meant not seeing undead.

 

[Warpiglet]

This is it

Exactly. Take a look at almost every class feature the Fighter gets as they level. In the earliest version of the game... you'd only get those mechanical features through acquiring magic items, not from receiving them as part of leveling up.

This is why even 5E doesn't give you a true "old school" feel... because of the all mechanics you get at each level of the game. A +1 sword will never feel important because your attack and damage bonuses are already pretty high just based on the new modifier chart, Fighting Styles, raising your ASIs, your proficiency mod going up, extended crit ranges, bonus superiority dice etc. etc. etc. That extra +1 from the sword is barely anything in the large swimming pool of bonuses you already have.

To have a real OSR experience... you need a Fighter who has like a +1 to hit, a +2 to damage, and that's it. That's the extent of their combat mechanics until they start finding magic items that let them do all the other stuff.

In our old games variability was a defining feature. We rolled hit points. A legendary evil barbarian of mine rolled 6 consecutive 12s! For hit points...

A couple of unusual magic items changed a character’s ability profile greatly.

A rogue finds guantlets of ogre power?! Gonzo insanity! Helms of alignment change! Girdle of femininity?

many powers and abilities were related to what you owned. Items were character defining—not necessarily in terms of personality—but it could totally reroute their attack routines, approaches to combat etc.

now magic items are nice but abilities are plentiful just by advancing.

I play a lot of warlocks...they get new toys every other level...

 

[Andrew P]

To show one of my group's younger players what "old school" D&D was like, I dug up the old 1st edition Players Handbook, DMG, and Monster Manual and improvised a quick dungeon crawl. We were trying to give the young'un context with which to appreciate the advancement and improvements of the later editions but we had the opposite effect.
He loved it.
Admittedly, part of that came from one of the other player's continual in-character grumbling that "Kobolds is trash people" but he said that he specifically liked that you weren't bogged down by a zillion choices in character creation. He liked that he didn't have to choose a race -- because the stats he rolled only qualified him for human (and maybe half-orc or halflings that he wasn't interested in). He loved that there weren't a million modifiers to keep track of or skill points to spend.
And I have to admit that I liked that everyone had a character and was ready to go in under an hour. (People who have to read the complete text of every feat or spell before choosing one is a pet peeve of mine). I dare say a great time was had by all.
Mind you, I still wouldn't go back to 5th edition for a story-based adventure I wanted to run, but I'll admit that it has a lot more to recommend it than I thought.

 

[MerricB]

1e surprise checks also meant the winner got from 1 to 3 rounds of full combat attacks on the surprised party before they could act, depending on the roll

Potentially four segments if you were surprised by hell hounds!

Although exactly how those rules worked with relation to missile attacks I was never sure...

Cheers!

 

[Helldritch]

Potentially four segments if you were surprised by hell hounds!

Although exactly how those rules worked with relation to missile attacks I was never sure...

Cheers!

Nope, the maximum was 3 segments.
Surprise was really good for martial characters, including missile attacks. Rate of fire would apply to all segments as would all melee attacks. You could move a maximum of 10 feet during a segment making melee characters a wee bit on the weak side but that is why even high level fighters were carrying daggers. With a 3 segments (and enemies at 30 feet) in favor of the character a high level fighter could move 30 feet. Throw four daggers and make his normal allottement of attacks once. Within 10 feet a high level fighter would make his normal allotement of attacks 3 times and over 30 feet (i.e. 40 feet) he would only throw 6 daggers (or whatever rate of fire his secondary weapon would be).

A caster could cast a 1segment spell on each segment of surprise, one 2 segments spell and one 1 segment spell, or one 3 segment spell. Anything higher would not be cast (but would reduce the number of segment required to cast the spell in the first round of combat where initiative would be rolled).

Note however that missile attack into melee could very well hurt your own allies. Picking up a target was hard and a ratio of monster vs character in melee was made. Hitting your friend was a distinct possibility.

 

[MerricB]

Nope, the maximum was 3 segments.

I suggest you look at the rules again.

"Each 1 of surprise equals 1 segment (six seconds) of time lost to the surprised party, and during the lost time the surprising party can freely act to escape or attack or whatever."

The immediately following table (which only lists to 3 segments) is for if both parties surprise the other - a 4 and a 1, for instance, gives 3 segments of surprise.

A 3 Dex character (-3 reaction speed) surprised with a roll of a 4 by a hellhound is surprised for a full SEVEN segments! Poor fellow!

Cheers!