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

[Marc17]

Imagining that there is something that a character can do to earn 1 XP a day (and if you've read my 3e posts on NPC classes you'll see where this is going, but it works even better for 1e because of the exponential leveling), then a fighter levels up after 2000 days of training - about 7 years or so. He then levels up again after another 7 years, then again after another 14. He's now perhaps 45 to 50 years of age (persumably he's now also the veteran of several real combats as well) and a Captain and civic leader. He levels up again, but is now in his 70's and aged and his body failing him and he's not able to employ his vast experience as his Strength has fallen to a mere average level and his Dexterity and Constitution are mere 6's. His hit points are lower now than they were when he was lower leveled and youthful. This is very much my demographics in 1e or 3e (A)D&D.

That's similar to what we all did in 1E but we standardized on 1XP/level/day. Then come modifers for things like traveling, visiting new lands, and even training for the one game we used training where it was 10 times that. It was also seen as the solution for PCs on a way to nickel and dime XP if they needed that little bit to make it to the next level after an adventure (rather than desperately searching for something to kill and take their stuff). Non-adventuring NPCs were generally figured to be able to make 5th level through a boring life. We also had a commoner class in 1E that spread through all our ongoing campaigns.

 

[Celebrim]

The acquiring a spell per level is its own rule (DMG page 39) separate from the training rules (DMG page 86) which includes both training under a higher level character and self training.

The assumption that I'm making here is the mysteriously appearing spell is connected to training, in as much as there doesn't seem to be any other explanation for it.

My long-term AD&D wizard did not get any spells at level up that I remember, they were all in game acquisitions.

That was always how I did it, and the time I played a M-U as a player that was the way that table played.

 

[Celebrim]

That's similar to what we all did in 1E but we standardized on 1XP/level/day.

Generous.

Under my rules if you were under the supervision of a higher level character, you could get it up to a whopping 2 XP per day. IIRC, you could get it up to 3 XP per day if you were willing to pay for superior experience (of whatever that meant for your class) with an outlay of some number of g.p. per level you had attained. This was intended to explain why noble born children or nobles themselves tended to be of higher level. "Paul Atreides" logic was applied.

But all I was using it for was explaining world demographics. I was very much not attempting to get players to utilize the rules, though I suppose they could have if any of my campaigns ever reached the "dynastic play" stage.

We also had a commoner class in 1E that spread through all our ongoing campaigns.

Interesting. I'd not hit on the idea of a commoner class until 3e. I did have an idea of making NWPs purchasable with XPs, and that that is how the 0th level fighters that made up a large portion of the population "leveled up".

However, I was trending toward moving most 0th level fighters into quite a few NPC classes meant to explain world demographics. You can see hints of that in this old thread:

Thread 'Playing Like Celebrim - The Explorer Class'

Jan 24, 2011

The Explorer class has its origins in the Mariner class from Dragon #107. The Mariner class was a somewhat narrow class which in many ways has the same flaws as a modern PrC. It wasn't truly worthy of a PC class, but back before non-weapon proficiencies, skill systems, and feats, D&D didn't really have a way to generate a profession without creating a completely new class. However, the Mariner did, by virtue of having some useful skills that PC classes could get access to in no other way, like many other Dragon published classes of the time lend itself to being a 'henchmen class'. You...

• Celebrim
• Replies: 8
• Forum: *Pathfinder & Starfinder

And this one:

Thread 'Playing Like Celebrim - NPC Classes'

Mar 1, 2016

I never had much use for the 3.X default NPC classes. I understood where they were going with them, but I didn't see the point. Commoner gave 3.X backwards compatibility with 1e '0th level' fighters. Warrior and Adept gave 3.X backwards compatibility with 1e monstrous humanoids like goblins, lizardmen and orcs and their tribal shamans and witch doctors. Noble was basically an admission that they'd screwed up the design of fighters so much, that the class couldn't even cover its most basic medieval stereotype, despite having ripped Mounted Combat from the 1e Cavalier, and Expert gave...

• Celebrim
• Replies: 6
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

Notice the "Ordinary Challenges" class ability that derived from my old 1e era thinking.

 

[Voadam]

The assumption that I'm making here is the mysteriously appearing spell is connected to training, in as much as there doesn't seem to be any other explanation for it.

For me the conjecture is downtime experimentation and research that comes up with something unexpected. Level up is when you get those epiphanies and breakthroughs.

 

[Celebrim]

For me the conjecture is downtime experimentation and research that comes up with something unexpected. Level up is when you get those epiphanies and breakthroughs.

View attachment 433283

Maybe, but in that case I would expect the mechanic to be "Invent a new signature spell of the appropriate level" and not "Discover the exact same spell everyone else uses."

We can't all be Bigby.

 

[Lanefan]

Rather than "assume", you have to invent it. The DMG and PH do lay out some magic item creation procedures, and for the most part (at least for powerful items) they're so onerous and expensive that generally no PC is going to bother doing them.

No PC is doing it, and yet somebody has to be doing it because otherwise where do all the magic items come from and how (and from whom) can the PCs commission new items to be made, or get broken ones repaired and re-enchanted?

So, a DM can either invent and codify what happens and who does it, or can just assume there's Artificers or smiths or whoever out there in the setting that make, or can make, magic items.

(edit - typo)

 

[Lanefan]

What's worse about them, and what really infuriated me at the time, is that they are incoherent. They are so punishing that no M-U should ever be manufacturing magic items for fighters, since the sacrifice of doing so is enormous. If we are to take the RAW as the explanation for where magic items come from, the vast majority of magic items in existence should be those that are most useful and only employable by M-U's since logically that's what M-U would make given the rules. But, in fact the treasure tables make the vast majority of magical treasure to be the sort only employable by fighters, so we must imagine I suppose a world where high level M-Us are perpetually enslaved to fighters and forced to labor on their behalf... which I'm pretty sure isn't the world Gygax meant for us to imagine or himself ran.

There's two in-setting reasons why lots of magic weapons and armour might be made:

--- adventurers and-or nobility pay MUs or Artificers really well to make martial items to commission (this is where the high-end stuff comes from), or
--- nobility pay, or hire, or enslave, MUs or Artificers to mass-produce martial items to equip their guards, army officers, elite soldiers, and maybe even some of the line troops (this is where all the basic stuff comes from).

 

[Lanefan]

Well, that's just RAW per Gygax's explanation of why training gave no XP in the DMG, and why levelling up through adventuring was largely unrealistic and yet supported by the rules. My point though is that he deliberately gave no mechanics for players doing any of that.

As for "a level every few years of constant work" it would have to be much slower than that, otherwise you end up in a Forgotten Realms situation where every merchant and barkeep is over 10th level and you have incoherence about what meaning 1st level characters would have in such a world (to say nothing of normal orcs) - season up a few years and come back at 7th level sort of thing.

Everybody kind of has a limit as to how good they can get at any given profession - the old (and quite true) saying that people rise to their level of imcompetence holds sway here.

But sure, someone who has been a merchant for many years and has an aptitude for it might well be an expert. And an Orc that's spent many summers raiding and fighting (which, after all, is just adventuring in a different way anyway) could very easily have become equivalent to a mid-level Fighter in terms of martial prowess.

Imagining that there is something that a character can do to earn 1 XP a day (and if you've read my 3e posts on NPC classes you'll see where this is going, but it works even better for 1e because of the exponential leveling), then a fighter levels up after 2000 days of training - about 7 years or so. He then levels up again after another 7 years, then again after another 14. He's now perhaps 45 to 50 years of age (persumably he's now also the veteran of several real combats as well) and a Captain and civic leader.

Sure, that's what I'm getting at; only some of 'em will earn on average more than 1 xp per day and some will earn less. Same goes for street Thieves, temple Clerics, lab Mages, travelling minstrels, and so forth. And there too, competence limits can apply - the 2nd-level village Cleric might have gone as far as he can in such things given his situation and surroundings, but is content there, happy with his life, and could be a 2nd-level Cleric until he dies of old age.

He levels up again, but is now in his 70's and aged and his body failing him and he's not able to employ his vast experience as his Strength has fallen to a mere average level and his Dexterity and Constitution are mere 6's. His hit points are lower now than they were when he was lower leveled and youthful. This is very much my demographics in 1e or 3e (A)D&D.

If this guy retires from soldiering at age 50 and doesn't keep his hand in by training others* or just staying fit, I have it that his Fighter skills will decay over time; and wrote up a system for this (filling what I see as another huge hole in the rules: what happens to someone's class skills after retirement).

Worth noting that the other game precept violated by these stay-at-homes is formal training rules. That village Cleric probably trained himself, very slowly, over the years (assuming no unusual divine intervention). Ditto a lab Mage: instead of formal fast-track adventurer-style training that takes a week or two, she probably trains herself into a new level over a year or two.

* in Game of Thrones, every single member of the Night's Watch that lasts more than a few months is or becomes (the equivalent of) a levelled Fighter or Ranger; and most of them slowly advance in levels the longer they remain there and don't die.

 

[Lanefan]

In my longterm 1e campaign I ran in the 80s I rolled randomly on the UA chart when the MU leveled up and that was what he got. I remember him being disappointed in rolling Sepia Snake Sigil and then later Secret Page and not Fireball (he eventually got fireball and fly from a captured spellbook).

That's how I do it too, and the person receiving this spell doesn't have to roll to learn it as it's assumed to be built in to the training.

At 1st level, I don't go through all that rolling for each spell stuff. Instead, I just roll what they start with (usually Read Magic plus one from each list plus a random one, so five spells to start that they automatically know) and they're on their own after that. When a new spell is encountered, say on a scroll or a looted spellbook, and the MU tries to learn it, that's when the roll comes in; and if you blow it you can't try that spell again until either your level or Int score increases.

 

[Mannahnin]

No PC is doing it, and yet somebody has to be doing it because otherwise where do all the magic items come from and how (and from whom) can the PCs commission new items to be made, or get broken ones repaired and re-enchanted?

So, a DM can either invent and codify what happens and who does it, or can just assume there's Artificers or smiths or whoever out there in the setting that make, or can make, magic items.

(edit - typo)

I mean, mostly they CAN'T. Gygax stacked the deck to make it impractically onerous to make or commission new items, which as Celebrim pointed out, incentivizes PCs to go adventure and find items instead. Which per D&D's implicit setting are generally from some fallen Golden Age of Magic, or more than one ancient empire which had arch-mages and demigods all over the place making items and artifacts, the likes of which present-day wizards are but a shadow.

I totally get the impulse to house rule and change that (making the procedures easier/less expensive, inventing an artificer class who's better at it, etc.). That's the approach 3E took. As in so many other things, rationalizing and regularizing and cleaning up AD&D to make things make more sense and be more playable and user-friendly.