D&D General TSR to WoTC shift--OR--the de-prioritization on Exploration spells/classes

James Gasik

Legend
Supporter
As I recall, the Thief in AD&D took the least amount of experience to level up precisely because they were the weakest class. Am I remembering wrong?
They did, but it wasn't fantastically less xp than the Cleric. It got even stranger with the 2e Bard...but here's the problem. The Thief gets the second worst attack bonus progression, and 6 sided hit dice. The way the xp tables were set up, you'll be about a level higher than a Fighter for awhile, then pull ahead when you hit 9th before they hit 8th. You'll probably hit 20th when the Fighter is 16th.

But here's what that gets you (going off of memory mostly)-

Level 16 Fighter, average hit points (w/o Con): 73.5
Level 20 Thief, average hit points (w/o Con): 55
Level 16 Fighter, hits AC 0 on a 5 (w/o bonuses).
Level 20 Thief, hits AC 0 on a 11 (w/o bonuses).

Add in the fact that Fighters get higher bonuses from Strength and Constitution (and Thieves want Dexterity high because of Thieving abilities and crummy armor), better weapons, better AC, and making 2 attacks per round as opposed to the one of the Thief, and you can see that there's a lot more going on here than one might suppose.

Sure, by this point, you have very high numbers in most Thieving Abilities (with I think Read Languages being terrible in 1e, though 2e let you adjust your scores), but even if you can successfully sneak up on an enemy, the restrictions for actually using your Backstab were atrocious (must successfully Move Silently, must attack from the rear, enemies cannot be aware of you, you must be able to reach a "vital area"). You do get +4 to hit for the rear attack, and multiply the base damage of your weapon by 5 (probably a d8 from a longsword) but then you better hope that kills the thing you attacked, because you're going to be a good distance away from your party!
 

log in or register to remove this ad

ECMO3

Hero
I understand how many folks played this way, but that's not actually how the rules in 1e worked. Anyone could find traps, pick locks, etc. The thief skill % was only there for those tasks that would have been impossible for other classes to attempt due to difficulty. I blame this on poorly written rules. I know most people just saw the % and applied it to every scenario (after all, that sounds reasonable), when it should only have been applied to exceptionally difficult scenarios that couldn't reasonably be resolved by any character.
Some things can be attempted by other classes and some can't. The PHB breaks the 1E Theif abilities are broken into primary and secondary abilities.

Most of the Primary Abilities are only doable by Thieves and Assasins the exception being finding (but not disarming) traps, which any class can do. The primary abilities are I believe Pick Pockets, Open Locks and Find/Remove Traps. In addition to Thieves, Monks could also open locks, but no other class could. Monks could also use the Thief tables to find (but not disarm) traps, instead of using 1 on a d6 like every character could.

The Secondary abilities can mostly be attempted by anyone. The secondary abilities are climb walls, detect noise, Hide in Shadows, Move Silently and Read Languages. Of note there were different types of walls including rough, smooth, slippery and non-slippery, all of which impacted the chance of failure. Some of these walls were only able to be attempted by Thieves.

There was another ability to read magic which was neither a primary or secondary ability.

That is from memory so some of it could be wrong, but it is pretty close to being correct.
 
Last edited:

ECMO3

Hero
Talking about XP, the stupid rule I remember most of all is Assasinate gave the Assasin xp if he successfully used it to kill an enemy, but none of the rest of the party got that and you did not get the normal XP for killing the monster, it was a special XP rule for enemies who were assasinated.
 

James Gasik

Legend
Supporter
Talking about XP, the stupid rule I remember most of all is Assasinate gave the Assasin xp if he successfully used it to kill an enemy, but none of the rest of the party got that and you did not get the normal XP for killing the monster, it was a special XP rule for enemies who were assasinated.
Yeah, but as I recall, you didn't just walk up and assassinate a guy, right? It was like a solo adventure where you planned it out, and success was determined by a % chance on a table. It always seemed to me to be more trouble than it was worth until you were higher level anyways.
 

Quickleaf

Legend
I'm talking about human behavior in general. I've been a manager/supervisor for decades, and one common phrase that's been around for a while is, "You get what you measure/reward." I.e., we're all sort like a rat who learned that if we do X, we get a reward for it. Often times without consciously thinking about it. If the reward is XP (leveling up and more power) and treasure (a motivator for nearly every would-be hero! Especially in TSR era where the dependency on magic items was much greater than modern editions), we as people are naturally going to gravitate to those rewards. We were also actively discouraged to go in guns blazing because the system was so unforgiving. This is an edition where a housecat could kill a level 1 PC, a lot of monsters had save or die abilities, and you recovered resources (HP and spells) much slower.
My philosophical response to this is: Along side the game of D&D there has been, and continues to be, an equally important emotional response which at times supersedes the rational risk/reward decision-making you ascribe to players as "universal human behavior."

While I'm a huge fan of using good metrics for optimization of schedule, performance, health, and so forth... I'm wary about assuming those trends will accurately map to a leisure activity, and especially one that defies other skill-based leisure activities / boardgames / card games like D&D does.

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I've seen as many or more instances of players acting from the "intrinsic reward" of play (complete with their hijinx, madcap ideas, taking actions that seem probably self-detrimental because it would be fun / in-character) as instances of players acting from the "reward of treasure/XP."

I guess my point is there's more chaos in the human system than you may be giving us credit for.
 

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
And of course, like any other AD&D-ism, if you fail your climbing check, you can never climb that wall.
Now, I’ve never played AD&D myself, but I’ve read a bit of it, and some retroclones, and my understanding was that failing a climbing check meant you made it half way up and then fell. To my knowledge, nothing prevented you from trying again (apart from the fear of falling again and taking even more damage in the process). Is this perhaps one of those things that depended on who was DMing?
 

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
One of my biggest pet peeves with "modern" DnD design (4E and later) was the move away from spells as general utility. Yeah both editions do have utility spells, but nowhere near the emphasis as earlier editions.
4e had utility spells out the wazoo, they were just called rituals and cost money (in the form of ritual components) instead of spell slots.
 

Zardnaar

Legend
In all the tables I played at, this wasn't the case because combat was so dangerous. Not worth that extra 10xp if it killed you, especially since you were getting 100 or more XP from the treasure.


Thieves also leveled faster than any other class (being 1-2 levels above at any given time), and didn't have the harsh level limits for demi-humans. Cash in those old modules was not a problem. 1e modules were rife with treasure.

We went to keep kill everything. BUT we played more 2E than 1E. And our B/X DM houseruled out XP for gp took us a year to hit lvl 4 1.5 hours a week after school.

Playing again nowdays it takes us around 20 hours to hit level 3-5 with GP=XP. Similar speed to leveling to 3.5.
 
Last edited:

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
IME, 1% is way too low to incentivize serious exploration. Sure, they'll still do a cursory inspection, but they're not going to spend significant table time if most of the time exploration results in nothing, traps, or a wandering monster.

To use the analogy of a lab rat, if a rat has to push a lever 100 times to get treats, and sometimes when the lever is pushed the other 99 times nothing happens, while other times the rat receives a shock, I doubt the rat will continue to push the lever. There's too much lack of positive reinforcement coupled with negative reinforcement. It would be challenging to have sufficient positive reinforcement to overcome that, IMO.

YMMV
You must not be familiar with the Skinner box. If the rat gets a treat every time it pushes a lever, it only pushes the lever once in a while, when it’s hungry. If the rat only sometimes gets a treat randomly when it pushes the lever and sometimes randomly gets nothing, it will push the lever as often as it possibly can, even enduring electric shocks for the opportunity to push it.
 

Fanaelialae

Legend
You must not be familiar with the Skinner box. If the rat gets a treat every time it pushes a lever, it only pushes the lever once in a while, when it’s hungry. If the rat only sometimes gets a treat randomly when it pushes the lever and sometimes randomly gets nothing, it will push the lever as often as it possibly can, even enduring electric shocks for the opportunity to push it.
Yes, I have read about the Skinner box. Where do you think I got the idea? I admit I'm no expert (I work with computers, though my sister has done extensive lab work with rats), but if there was only a 1 in a 100 chance of food (with the rest being nothing or shocks) do you still think the rat would do so? Let's assume that the rat does still have other opportunities for acquiring food, and this isn't a starvation scenario. After all, there are normally other options for acquiring good stuff in D&D than exploration, such as killing monsters and taking their stuff. Because I doubt it would.
 

Nikosandros

Golden Procrastinator
Now, I’ve never played AD&D myself, but I’ve read a bit of it, and some retroclones, and my understanding was that failing a climbing check meant you made it half way up and then fell. To my knowledge, nothing prevented you from trying again (apart from the fear of falling again and taking even more damage in the process). Is this perhaps one of those things that depended on who was DMing?
Yes, never heard of the prohibition on attempting again the climb. There is a limit on opening locks: if you fail, you can't attempt the same lock until you increase your level.
 

James Gasik

Legend
Supporter
Now, I’ve never played AD&D myself, but I’ve read a bit of it, and some retroclones, and my understanding was that failing a climbing check meant you made it half way up and then fell. To my knowledge, nothing prevented you from trying again (apart from the fear of falling again and taking even more damage in the process). Is this perhaps one of those things that depended on who was DMing?
Oh no, it actually says this in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide-

DSG.jpg
 

Nikosandros

Golden Procrastinator
I had forgotten that passage from the DSG, which is book I haven't used in a while. Still, I'm not sure that this was the "standard" procedure in AD&D. I wonder if the question was ever discussed on Sage Advice on Dragon.
 


James Gasik

Legend
Supporter
I had forgotten that passage from the DSG, which is book I haven't used in a while. Still, I'm not sure that this was the "standard" procedure in AD&D. I wonder if the question was ever discussed on Sage Advice on Dragon.
I really couldn't say; I scoured the PHB and the DMG trying to find rules for how non-Thief characters could climb anything, and if it's there, I didn't find it. The DSG is the only place I could find rules for it.

What I imagined happened is that DM's just made their own house rules (likely using ability checks of some sort) and by the time the DSG came out, they weren't especially concerned with using the rules in it- if they even had access to the book at all!
 

Alzrius

The EN World kitten
I had forgotten that passage from the DSG, which is book I haven't used in a while. Still, I'm not sure that this was the "standard" procedure in AD&D. I wonder if the question was ever discussed on Sage Advice on Dragon.
It's not really helpful, but the closest I could find was in the "Sage Advice" column for Dragon #64, which is from August of 1982:

What is the chance for climbing walls, etc., for non-thieves?

The same chance thieves have of knowing spells or possessing 18/00 strength: none. (I can hear all the fighters saying, “But I can hide in the shadows: Watch this!” Even though the thief abilities have rather unimpressive, mundane names, they are indeed special abilities and can be successfully performed only by someone who has had, and continues to take, training in the thief profession.

In a standard AD&D campaign, there can be no deviation from this rule — and it is a fact of “life” as much as it is a rule of the game. Only thieves can employ abilities described as unique to that class, just as clerics can do only what clerics are described as being capable of. This is obvious, necessary (from a playability standpoint), and logical as well; it takes a great deal of introductory training — specialized training — for a character to attain adventurer status (first level), and continuous review and training in the chosen class(es) if one is to rise in levels. The practice of an adventuring profession is a serious matter, often even a vital one, and each profession demands of its adherents all the interest, energy, and effort they can muster. Any DM who settles for less than this attitude from player characters and still allows them to rise in experience levels as if nothing was amiss is doing the playing group and the game a disservice.

In extraordinary circumstances or for the sake of experimentation, non-thief characters with exceptionally high dexterity might be allowed a chance of successfully performing certain thief-like abilities. This mutates the adventure or campaign, and this fact should be understood by the DM and all the players: what they’re playing isn’t an AD&D game any longer. But it might be interesting if, for instance, any non-thief with a dexterity of at least 16 (and any monsters with the same trait) was given a small chance to use that dexterity similar to the way the ability benefits a thief. In this hypothetical system, the “dexterity benefit” would only apply to those thief abilities that allow bonuses for high dexterity: picking pockets, opening locks, locating/removing traps, moving silently, and hiding in shadows. The percentage chance of success for a non-thief to perform a certain function would be a constant, related only to the character’s dexterity and not to his or her level of experience. The percentage chance for success is the same as the number given as a bonus on Dexterity Table II (Players Handbook, page 12), and success is only possible when a number is given. Thus, a non-thief with 16 dexterity would have a 5% chance of using the opening locks ability, but no other thief-like abilities, and a non-thief would need 18 dexterity to have any chance of locating/removing traps.

In no case could it be justified for non-thieves to have the ability to climb walls using this same reasoning, however. First of all, the ability has no direct relationship to dexterity, or else it would be listed in Dexterity Table II. Second of all, climbing walls is a thief’s bread and butter, his claim to fame, the one thing even a first-level thief can do with a decent chance of success. It stands to reason that a large portion of the thief’s training goes into acquiring this ability in the first place; it isn’t something a fighter-type can pick up over a weekend of rigorous wall-clutching. Climbing walls is like riding a unicycle: It takes forever to learn how, and once you learn the basics you don’t ever get a whole lot better at it than you were when you started. Most people (except for thieves and diehard unicycle riders) will give up after taking a few spills, when it becomes apparent that the bumps aren’t worth the benefits.

After that, the best I can find is in Dragon #149 (September, 1989), for which the "Sage Advice" column is devoted to the recently-released AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook:

According to Table 65 (page 122), unskilled characters have a base climbing chance of 40%. The same table notes that a character who spends one slot for the mountaineering proficiency also has a 40% climbing chance. Is this an error, or do characters have to spend two slots before they are better climbers than unskilled characters?

Yes, there is an error. The base climbing chance improves 10% for each slot spent on mountaineering; thus, a character with one proficiency slot in this skill has a 50% base climbing chance.


According to Table 67 (page 123), it is impossible to climb a "dry" ice wall, but a character can climb a slippery ice wall at one-fourth the normal climbing rate. Is this an error?

This is not really an error. All ice walls qualify as slippery surfaces, there are no dry or slightly slippery ice walls.
 

payn

Legend
I'm talking about human behavior in general. I've been a manager/supervisor for decades, and one common phrase that's been around for a while is, "You get what you measure/reward." I.e., we're all sort like a rat who learned that if we do X, we get a reward for it. Often times without consciously thinking about it. If the reward is XP (leveling up and more power) and treasure (a motivator for nearly every would-be hero! Especially in TSR era where the dependency on magic items was much greater than modern editions), we as people are naturally going to gravitate to those rewards. We were also actively discouraged to go in guns blazing because the system was so unforgiving. This is an edition where a housecat could kill a level 1 PC, a lot of monsters had save or die abilities, and you recovered resources (HP and spells) much slower.
That sounds a lot like X theory management. Which is very interesting to this discussion. X theory supposes that folks are naturally lazy and don't really want to work. So, you have to carrot and stick them into doing the things you want from them. I see XP systems and the attitudes around them match up to this philosophy. However, a Y theory of management dispenses with the micromanagement and tangible directives. The Y theory supposes that given to their own devices, people will find their own way to the goal and do so more proficiently.

I find theory X to be very much a self-fulfilling prophecy. You build in all these rewards and punishments and then you get exactly what you expect. That may be very desirable in a game where the activities are very specific in intention. However, I find it to be very limiting both in a game terms and imagination. Which is why a prefer a much more Y theory leaning milestone XP system. I dont care how the players pursue the rewards, I just want them to engage the material and self actualize in play.

So, to bring it back to the design changes from TSR to WotC, I do agree somewhat with the OP. I do think old school promoted exploration more, and some nu skool design moved away from it towards leaning into combat. However, I see a sharp interest returning to exploration and social pillars with the prevalence of milestone XP. Both players and designers seem to be flirting with how to do this. I see future design offering much more in the way of exploration and social to bring us back again like a pendulum towards some of the original gameplay, albeit with a modern take. YMMV.
 

James Gasik

Legend
Supporter
It's not really helpful, but the closest I could find was in the "Sage Advice" column for Dragon #64, which is from August of 1982:



After that, the best I can find is in Dragon #149 (September, 1989), for which the "Sage Advice" column is devoted to the recently-released AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook:
That Sage Advice is really interesting. It flat out says nobody can do what the Thief does (even though the DSG reverses this somewhat), and that while you could allow it, that would "mutate the adventure or campaign" and make it such that what you are playing "isn't an AD&D game any longer."
 

Clint_L

Hero
I do think old school promoted exploration more, and some nu skool design moved away from it towards leaning into combat.
All evidence to the contrary?

This discussion is fascinating in that the OP has a theory that does not conform to the actual facts. Again, I really encourage people to go and actually look at early D&D modules if you think that the game was less about combat than it is today.

That's why we have another active thread on the so-called "Hickman" revolution of the 80s which was about making the game more story and less combat oriented. Today, WotC publishes whole adventure books where combat is secondary, and often entirely optional. That's why old school adventuring is also sometimes referred to as a "dungeon crawl." Combat was the linchpin of the game, and it is just not the case that D&D in general was about avoiding it. That's absurd.
 

payn

Legend
That's why we have another active thread on the so-called "Hickman" revolution of the 80s which was about making the game more story and less combat oriented. Today, WotC publishes whole adventure books where combat is secondary, and often entirely optional. That's why old school adventuring is also sometimes referred to as a "dungeon crawl." Combat was the linchpin of the game, and it is just not the case that D&D in general was about avoiding it. That's absurd.
Wow, I'm not listening to your facts anymore.
 

An Advertisement

Advertisement4

Top