AD&D 1E Three Things that can't be Fixed in 1e AD&D

[Celebrim]

I keep thinking that I'm done with my exploration of the rules of my youth. There are three things in 1e AD&D that I don't think can be fixed. The first two I knew about. The third one is coming as a bit of a surprise to me, even though I always knew it to be awkward and clunky. If all the things I knew about needing a fix, this one wouldn't have been the one that I thought was the breaking point, but the more I theory craft, the more it looks like the problem.

First, the two obvious problems:

1) Surprise: The woes of AD&D surprise when generalized are well known. But 2e AD&D fixed the problem just by gutting the system out and replacing it and I think with some tweaks to the 2e system I would be happy.

2) Initiative: Again, AD&D initiative when generalized was nuts, and this is well known. But again, 2e AD&D fixed the problem just by gutting the system out and replacing it and I think with some tweaks to the 2e system I would be happy.

But the third problem is bit more difficult and pervasive:

3) Ability Scores: Unlike 3e's streamlined cleaned up regularized ability scores, the ability scores of 1e AD&D are a mess of unique mechanics that behave in non-linear fashions. Since the value of high ability scores increases exponentially at 15 and up, the game heavily pressures players to play characters with multiple high ability scores. In particular, 18's are typically necessary to unlock all of a class's potential, and without at least one 18 you are notably weaker than a class that has an 18. The most obvious example of this is the Fighter with its massive bonuses for getting 18 Strength. Essentially if you can get 18 strength as a fighter, you unlock a secondary table that lets you unlock 5 new tiers of strength - potentially tripling your strength bonus. Imagine if you had an 18 strength fighter (and only a fighter of 18 strength) in 3e or 5e, there was a special rule that said - "Roll a d10 and add that number to your strength. This is your starting strength." Obviously, every other sort of fighter would look pretty pathetic and overmatched by comparison.

These tiers are nested between 18 and 19 strength and none of the other ability score tables have this nested scale. If we uncompress the table, we end up with Strengths ranging 3 to 30, while every other ability score goes from 3 to 25. If we try to do this uncompressing, it has impacts all over the entire game. For example, a Hill Giant "only" has a 19 Strength, yet this is actually 6 tiers higher than an 18 strength. This is most easily seen by the fact that 18 Strength gives you a bonus weight allowance of 75 lbs, but a 19 strength gives you a bonus weight allowance of 450 lbs - a six fold increase.

While strength is the obvious culprit, the problem extends throughout the system. A character with 18 CON has about twice as many hit points as a character with 14 CON. A 14 Charisma gives you basically a +1 bonus on checks. An 18 charisma gives you basically a +8 bonus on checks. A 14 Dexterity gives you basically nothing, while an 18 Dexterity gives you a +4 bonus and a whole levels worth of improvement to your thief skills. A 14 wisdom gives you basically, nothing, while a 17 wisdom is basically required to unlock the upper levels of cleric just as high intelligence is required to usefully function as a M-U. Indeed, while the hard prerequisites to base classes are quite low - usually 9 - as a practical matter you usually can't function as the class without a 13 or higher. Cleric spells randomly fail, M-U's aren't able to learn spells, thieves have penalties on all their skills, and fighters lack the strength to wear the armor and weapons they need to function. And on top all of this, desirable classes like Cavalier, Paladin, and Bard all have requirements of multiple 15s. And it's not terribly hard to qualify as a Ranger (a "mere" 13, 14, 14, 6, 14, 6 is needed), but to really take advantage of being one you need at minimum something like 16, 16, 16, 6, 17, 6. and there is hardly a point to playing a Barbarian if you don't have 16 or better in Strength, Dexterity and Constitution.

These ability score problems put huge pressure on players to cheat in some fashion in order to unlock characters of the best sort, while putting huge burdens on designers to come up with some sort of character generation system that would actually work. There was endless discussion of character generation methods back in the day, and until now that never really twinged in my head as a sign of just how bad the problem was. The Unearthed Arcana went so far as to create a system where at worst you got the minimum necessary to qualify for the class you desired, which of course broke the game wide open as there was then no reason not choose the most desirable classes with the greatest advantages.

The more I look at this part of the system, the more it is obvious that I can't just tweak it. It has to get gutted and replaced. I looked at fixing it with generous chargen methods like Method III (probably my favorite) and 6d6 take the best 3, and none of it really works because the narrow range of rewards in system makes random generation bad while making point buy silly (since you aren't really punished for dump stating and massively rewarded for spending everything on one or two good ability scores). In 3e, and in especially my 3e homebrew a full slate of six 14's is really good, because every ability matters to you even if they don't matter entirely equally to every character, and a +2 to what you do is good. In 1e, a full slate of six 14's is arguably unplayable in a party where anyone else has multiple 16's because the system just stacks benefit upon benefit only for having scores of the highest tiers - access to more powerful characters, exponentially increased bonuses, increased speed of leveling, etc.

Perhaps the most functional system for chargen in 1e AD&D I've yet considered is 1d6+12 across the board. Because really this is what the tables want of the character, that any ability score be in that narrow range of 13-18 where they actually matter and 18's are as common as 13s. Just straight up give the system what it wants.

And gutting it out is a massive mess because it impacts so much of everything else. How ability scores work is core to a system and relied on repeatedly in the rules discussion of any system.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't play AD&D 1e, but I don't see why this should be fixed. It's a non-linear system, so what? Why would a perfectly linear system be intrinsically better? It is easier to use, but that is not always the design goal. I get it that you don't like the system and probably because you also don't like its goal (and you're not alone: after all, it was dropped by the designers themselves in further editions), but that doesn't mean it is universally wrong.

 

[Lanefan]

First, the two obvious problems:

1) Surprise: The woes of AD&D surprise when generalized are well known. But 2e AD&D fixed the problem just by gutting the system out and replacing it and I think with some tweaks to the 2e system I would be happy.

Surprise is fixable, provided one is willing to accept that occasionally one or more PCs will die without ever knowing what hit them, as will their foes. The WotC editions haven't got it anywhere near right. I've never really looked into how 2e does it.

2) Initiative: Again, AD&D initiative when generalized was nuts, and this is well known. But again, 2e AD&D fixed the problem just by gutting the system out and replacing it and I think with some tweaks to the 2e system I would be happy.

Initiative is also fixable, if one is willing to rebuild it from the ground up.

But the third problem is bit more difficult and pervasive:

3) Ability Scores: Unlike 3e's streamlined cleaned up regularized ability scores, the ability scores of 1e AD&D are a mess of unique mechanics that behave in non-linear fashions. Since the value of high ability scores increases exponentially at 15 and up, the game heavily pressures players to play characters with multiple high ability scores. In particular, 18's are typically necessary to unlock all of a class's potential, and without at least one 18 you are notably weaker than a class that has an 18. The most obvious example of this is the Fighter with its massive bonuses for getting 18 Strength. Essentially if you can get 18 strength as a fighter, you unlock a secondary table that lets you unlock 5 new tiers of strength - potentially tripling your strength bonus. Imagine if you had an 18 strength fighter (and only a fighter of 18 strength) in 3e or 5e, there was a special rule that said - "Roll a d10 and add that number to your strength. This is your starting strength." Obviously, every other sort of fighter would look pretty pathetic and overmatched by comparison.

These tiers are nested between 18 and 19 strength and none of the other ability score tables have this nested scale. If we uncompress the table, we end up with Strengths ranging 3 to 30, while every other ability score goes from 3 to 25. If we try to do this uncompressing, it has impacts all over the entire game. For example, a Hill Giant "only" has a 19 Strength, yet this is actually 6 tiers higher than an 18 strength. This is most easily seen by the fact that 18 Strength gives you a bonus weight allowance of 75 lbs, but a 19 strength gives you a bonus weight allowance of 450 lbs - a six fold increase.

Uncompressing Strength such that 18.00 = 24 and Hill Giants are 25 is IMO the way to go.

While strength is the obvious culprit, the problem extends throughout the system. A character with 18 CON has about twice as many hit points as a character with 14 CON. A 14 Charisma gives you basically a +1 bonus on checks. An 18 charisma gives you basically a +8 bonus on checks. A 14 Dexterity gives you basically nothing, while an 18 Dexterity gives you a +4 bonus and a whole levels worth of improvement to your thief skills. A 14 wisdom gives you basically, nothing, while a 17 wisdom is basically required to unlock the upper levels of cleric just as high intelligence is required to usefully function as a M-U. Indeed, while the hard prerequisites to base classes are quite low - usually 9 - as a practical matter you usually can't function as the class without a 13 or higher. Cleric spells randomly fail, M-U's aren't able to learn spells, thieves have penalties on all their skills, and fighters lack the strength to wear the armor and weapons they need to function. And on top all of this, desirable classes like Cavalier, Paladin, and Bard all have requirements of multiple 15s. And it's not terribly hard to qualify as a Ranger (a "mere" 13, 14, 14, 6, 14, 6 is needed), but to really take advantage of being one you need at minimum something like 16, 16, 16, 6, 17, 6. and there is hardly a point to playing a Barbarian if you don't have 16 or better in Strength, Dexterity and Constitution.

These ability score problems put huge pressure on players to cheat in some fashion in order to unlock characters of the best sort, while putting huge burdens on designers to come up with some sort of character generation system that would actually work. There was endless discussion of character generation methods back in the day, and until now that never really twinged in my head as a sign of just how bad the problem was. The Unearthed Arcana went so far as to create a system where at worst you got the minimum necessary to qualify for the class you desired, which of course broke the game wide open as there was then no reason not choose the most desirable classes with the greatest advantages.

The more I look at this part of the system, the more it is obvious that I can't just tweak it. It has to get gutted and replaced. I looked at fixing it with generous chargen methods like Method III (probably my favorite) and 6d6 take the best 3, and none of it really works because the narrow range of rewards in system makes random generation bad while making point buy silly (since you aren't really punished for dump stating and massively rewarded for spending everything on one or two good ability scores). In 3e, and in especially my 3e homebrew a full slate of six 14's is really good, because every ability matters to you even if they don't matter entirely equally to every character, and a +2 to what you do is good. In 1e, a full slate of six 14's is arguably unplayable in a party where anyone else has multiple 16's because the system just stacks benefit upon benefit only for having scores of the highest tiers - access to more powerful characters, exponentially increased bonuses, increased speed of leveling, etc.

Perhaps the most functional system for chargen in 1e AD&D I've yet considered is 1d6+12 across the board. Because really this is what the tables want of the character, that any ability score be in that narrow range of 13-18 where they actually matter and 18's are as common as 13s. Just straight up give the system what it wants.

And gutting it out is a massive mess because it impacts so much of everything else. How ability scores work is core to a system and relied on repeatedly in the rules discussion of any system.

The point of the 1e (and, to a lesser extent, 0e and BX) bonus system is to intentionally produce a J-curve in bonuses out toward the edges of the 3-18 bell-curve range while keeping the wide mushy middle at +0. In this it succeeds, and is IMO far better than the WotC-editions that try to apply linear bonuses to bell-curve stats.

 

[Milieu]

Surprise is fixable, provided one is willing to accept that occasionally one or more PCs will die without ever knowing what hit them, as will their foes. The WotC editions haven't got it anywhere near right. I've never really looked into how 2e does it.

In 2e: Roll a d10 for each side. 1, 2, or 3 means they're surprised. (If both are surprised, it cancels out.)
The unsurprised side gets one round of attacks with melee, missile, or magic items, but can't cast spells. Surprised characters lose any AC bonus from Dex and attacks against them are at an additional +1.

Surprise is also separate from ambushes. If one side sets an ambush, and the DM determines the ambush is not detected, the ambushers get a full round (including spell casting), and THEN the other side has to roll for surprise.

 

[cbwjm]

If I was to run 2e again, I'd simply remove exceptional strength from being coupled with an 18 and allow warriors to roll it no matter their strength score. Half the time, exceptional strength only gives a +1 damage bonus anyway so I don't see this as a big deal and you can play around with it a little so that single classed fighters gain a bonus to the percentile roll to give them a small bonus. Even without doing this though, I don't think 18s are really all that needed, desired sure, but not needed. With the increase in thac0 that warriors get they end up being quite capable at striking their enemies and once you start getting magical weapons or adding in specialisation bonuses I think they quickly start being able to take care of themselves. While I do think that stat bonuses could have been gained a point or two lower, I've never found them necessary to have fun playing the game.

As an aside, don't 1e rangers get to add their level to damage against giants which ended up being almost any monstrous humanoid in 1e? I'd have thought that they'd quickly start dealing a decent amount of damage fairly quickly after just a few levels, though admittedly less useful against things like undead, they'd excel in their element.

 

[SableWyvern]

I'm not sure what the obvious issue with surprise is, so I'm not convinced it's that obvious. Perhaps that it happens too often? If so, this can be mitigated in various ways through play, or with relatively straightforward mechanical changes.

I found initiative pretty straightforward for the most part. The interaction with spellcasting was ridiculously complex, but I came up with my own fix for that. Plenty of others have their own fixes for elements of initiative they didn't like. This being the case, I don't understand the claim that it can't be fixed.

I'd agree that the extreme ability score mods in AD&D are excessive -- these days, I think B/X does it much better. I don't think it's that big a deal though -- it can make a pretty big difference at first level, but the benefits become less important over time. An 18/XX strength is in no way essential to play an effective fighter, and I completely disagree that PCs with lower stats aren't useful.

People are welcome to not like whatever elements of the game they don't like, but these are not "obvious problems" nor are they unfixable if you feel they need fixing.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure what the obvious issue with surprise is, so I'm not convinced it's that obvious.

It has to do with the fact that the way bonuses to surprise are defined, they are defined not as modifiers but as dice rolls. Typically, you see very stealthy and alert things defined by the dice that they use or impose on others. And that works fine if but one side is imposing a dice, but if both sides define a variant dice, it is far from obvious how to make the adjustments. My rules say I use one dice, but your rules say I use some other dice while my rules also say you should use some dice while your rules say you should use a different dice. There are ways to make it work out, but try reading a modern document on how to run surprise and initiative in 1e AD&D in the general case.

These are specific instances of 1e AD&D not having a unified system and instead defining the system in place without reference to how anywhere else defines the rules.

I found initiative pretty straightforward for the most part.

And again, try reading the collected rules on initiative when all the various point definitions of how the exception based system is modified are incorporated together.

 

[SableWyvern]

It has to do with the fact that the way bonuses to surprise are defined, they are defined not as modifiers but as dice rolls. Typically, you see very stealthy and alert things defined by the dice that they use or impose on others. And that works fine if but one side is imposing a dice, but if both sides define a variant dice, it is far from obvious how to make the adjustments. My rules say I use one dice, but your rules say I use some other dice while my rules also say you should use some dice while your rules say you should use a different dice. There are ways to make it work out, but try reading a modern document on how to run surprise and initiative in 1e AD&D in the general case.

Fair enough. I'll agree it's not all that clear, but I strongly disagree that it's hard to resolve once you identify the questions that need answering -- and the main one, as you point out, is what to do when both sides A & B are effecting the chance that A is surprised. Come up with an answer to that, and surprise works fine (although some people feel it has too much impact on outcomes).

And again, try reading the collected rules on initiative when all the various point definitions of how the exception based system is modified are incorporated together.

Sure, there is no way to incorporate everything that is written on initiative and have it all just work together. But again, the basic process is pretty straightforward and coming up with a working solution isn't that hard. The most complex parts of initiative were dealing with ties and dealing with weapons vs spell casting. I came up with solutions for those and the rest mostly just worked.

To be fair, by the time I was seriously looking at these things myself, I had access to forums where people with plenty of experience were discussing them, which made it much easier for me to form an opinion and arrive at a solution. But the underlying point remains that it's not at all unfixable, and I found it quite easy to fix.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't play AD&D 1e, but I don't see why this should be fixed. It's a non-linear system, so what? Why would a perfectly linear system be intrinsically better? It is easier to use, but that is not always the design goal. I get it that you don't like the system and probably because you also don't like its goal (and you're not alone: after all, it was dropped by the designers themselves in further editions), but that doesn't mean it is universally wrong.

Having played in that era and having read the endless Dragon magazine arguments about how character generation should function, and all the endless arguments between players (in the broad sense of those that played the game) about what the best chargen system to use would be, I can assure you that the vast majority of people who defended the system also at the same time hated the system and that the system was most honored in its breach by various kludges and cheats to work around it.

Fundamentally, several of the major goals of a character generation system are violated by the way the game handles ability scores. In general, you want a system that more often than not produces a character that every participant wants to play. AD&D absolutely violates this, creating a system were more often than not most participants have a character they are disappointed or dissatisfied in.

Really enforce that randomness and watch what happens over time.

At the time I was intensely uncomfortable with Method V, though a lot of the tables around me adopted it. The problem with Method V is it totally turns the system on its head. For the most part, the system was designed around subclasses being rare rewards for being lucky. Method V totally turns that around and lets you make any character the system can generate (just about) by fiat alone. But the problem with that is that just as the classes aren't remotely balanced, neither then is the character generation system. You will pretty much always end up with higher ability scores just by choosing to play a class that requires higher ability scores. And because ability scores matter strongly (in the sense they either give nothing or double the power of your character) this tends to create nonsense.

Think of the system as a challenge. Come up with a random number generation system for it that produces more often than not interesting characters that are within a fairly small range of ability with respect to each other so that spotlight is reasonably shared, and which are "playable" for some arbitrary definition of playable. That a look at for example method 0 (3d6 straight up) and methods I through V, and look at them all as attempts to engage with the system, and create like 36 different characters with each methodology. Ask yourself, which system is working the best and why do we have six different official systems all generating widely different answers? And then consider that even Gygax is suggesting something like, "Allow the player to reroll if they don't have at least 2 15's.", to which I might amend, "Gygax, your own system generally gives no real advantages to a 15, a character with two 16's is generally like 20% more capable than one with two 15's."

Functionally the system comes down to one of two procedures of play - either cheating or else high player death to winnow out the sort of characters the system creates that couldn't cut it. In the long run you create a system that is about chasing fun, more akin to breaking open packs of collectible playing cards hoping to find a chase mythic rare than pretty much any chargen system written since 1990. And that should tell you something.

 

[sevenbastard]

The whole percentile strength system is charming as heck. It makes no sense but come on its fun! And adds authenticity to a game that was grown not engineered.

Hey lets build a subsystem is what makes AD&D POP!