I think a lot of people here do this WITH EVERY SYSTEM.
Was AD&D1 designed for game balance?
- Thread starter Bullgrit
- Start date
I think a lot of people here do this WITH EVERY SYSTEM.
ExploderWizard
Hero
A list of random things and no explanation of why they are rubbish is in fact a pile of rubbish.
18/00- The wonderful gateway drug to bonus bloat. A beginning perhaps, to the insane notion that because it existed, every fighter had to have it or they might as well reroll. What is rubbish isn't the score itself, but the mentality that it helped inspire.
Psionics- Very quirky and more likely to get you killed than provide any benefit.
Assassination table- assassins kill people, get over it.
Magic Missile vs Sleep- you don't believe that every spell of the same level has to be equally valuable against every situation do you? If so then it would be stupid of you to play any system with more than one spell in a given power range.
Cure Light Wounds vs any other 1st level cleric spell- Command-Disrobe, Next!
The thief- A self justiying class IMHO but at least he had his own niche instead of fighting better than the fighting man.
Weapon vs Armor class table- Not my cup of tea really but for those that liked it I can see the benefit of using it. Some weapons are better than others and that is that.
The Fighter/Magic User/Cleric- Why is this any different than any other multi-classed character? Progression is very slow, which is a big price to pay for such versatility. Remember that this guy has 3 class trainers to pay to attain levels so unless he gets big cash donations from other party members to offset those costs he will be adventuring a bit without gaining xp which slows down advancement even further. Overpowered? not at all.
Leveling by ritual combat- Only 2 classes had this and it added to the flavor of those classes.
Save vs Rod, Staff, or Wand- more detail of what the problem is would be helpful here.
Why on earth does Armor class count down from 10?-Look into why the combat tables feature repeating 20's and you might find your answer.
Raven Crowking
First Post
How so? What quotes, exactly, make you think that?
I could say, rather, that you are demonizing 1e. I could example quotes like
One might wonder why you cannot simply state that you dislike something without trying to prove it to be objectively bad. One might also wonder why the things on your list are supposed to be "crazy nonsensical rubbish".
A bit too onetruewayish for me, I guess. Perhaps you wil explain more clearly?
I am seriously contending that your evidence that 4e had more playtesting does not constitute evidence that 4e had more playtesting. Which is what I said. I thought I was clear.
Ad Hominem
Something that, by the evidenciary standards you asked us to accept re: 4e and 1e, I coud easily claim to be playtested more than both of them put together. But I would not, because (1) such a claim would be false, and (2) the means by which I would thereby be making such a claim would not constitute evidence. It is used merely as an example of how easy it is to mislead on the basis of such a list, either intentionally or not.
Glad you found something you like!
But liking 4e doesn't (rationally) imply that 1e was not designed for balance.
RC
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
The Temple of Elemental Evil was a crashing bore that, after the Village of Hommlet and the moat house needed a desperate chopping by a competent editor. And I love most 1e modules. ToEE as written, not so much.
But what we're looking at here, in part, is a question of taste. You think that the weapon vs armor table was nonsensical. It was complex and cumbersome, but nonsensical is far from what I would call it. Simply put, there were certain types of historical weapons more capable of injuring someone in armor than others and the table reflects that. The question is whether or not the game benefits from including that additional complexity. Most would say no, but I think it's unfortunate that there's no differentiation between weapons designed to hammer armored targets and ones not.
pawsplay
Hero
Only if you accept a modern definition of game balance that describes nothing in the real world. Fact: Every game has suboptimal choices. Fact: Any "balanced" character can be felled by bad rolling. This statement is only true if you take balance to mean:
- Scene by scene balance
- Balance as consisting partly of consistency
- Balance as according all PCs some piece of the action in virtually all scenarios
- Fear is not an option
In fact, I think these are all impossible and undesirable goals.
- Scene by scene balance is boring because it is predictable, on one gets much of a moment in the spotlight, and it limits the character concepts that can be permitted. It also restricts all PCs to having similar resource use, when we know that in other games, different resource use is often a fun play element and in fiction, characters often have different resource use.
- Consistency is poo. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter if I have an 18/00 strength and get wacked by a stray arrow or a 9 Strength and roll maximum damage against a 3rd level NPC magic-user. Wild fortune is part of the fun of playing a game. Some consistency is useful, but ultimately, what people want is predictability. Characters in Call of Cthulhu are largely doomed, but it's not a big deal to veterans of the game because you know that going in. It's hard to argue that two players in AD&D, one with a fighter, one with a M-U, are saddled with a choice they felt was unfavorable to their goals.
- Balance by keeping everyone busy all the time sucks. Not everyone likes combat equally, or negoations. Just about everyone wants to use their special super power in their Spotlight Episode, or better, everyone gets a chance to in the Teamwork Episode. Sometimes it's time to get a Mountain Dew. Sometimes one player is less skilled than others and feels frustrated by being asked to be a full contributor to battle tactics. Some characters are deliberately designed around incompetence, whether it's Grunt Thog the fighter or Tuperculosus the Sorcerer or Lil Weasel the thief.
- Fear is important. Frankly, I think getting too attached to a PC is the symptom of an immature mentality. In some genres, PC death is common, in others rare. Either way, you knew the risks when you picked up the dice. 1st level M-Us wembling about whether to use up their spell, or whether to draw their dagger and join a fray once they are out of them, is actually a potentially interesting and therefore fun choice. One of the underestimated strenghs of AD&D is that 1st level and 10th level are not so far apart; anyone could be petrified, anyone could fall into a spiked pit, anyone could have his weapon turned to rust. You can put 2nd level and 6th level characters in the same adventure, and indeed, part of the fun becomes shephreding the lowbies up to the next level. If this stuff weren't fun, clickie-tactical-CRPGs would not exist... Freedom Force would have bombed. This is why critical hits were one of the most frequent house rules in AD&D, because they increased terror and nail-biting.
bardolph
First Post
Fair enough.A list of random things and no explanation of why they are rubbish is in fact a pile of rubbish.
This.
Agreed. Also, it's yet-another-subsystem that only sees play when an extroardinarily improbable conjunction of dice rolls occur during character creation. Or when the players cheat.
No, rather my complaint is that immediately after the chart is the suggestion that, rather than rolling on the table, maybe the encounter should be role-played instead, which calls into question the whole point of the chart in the first place.
Magic Missile had almost no valid uses. 1d4+1 damage just wasn't enough to justify a spell slot.
OK, that's two useful spells in the entire list. However, note that a cleric who regularly marches into battle armed with "Command-Disrobe" is a pretty silly notion in itself. Not from a usefulness standpoint, but rather from a why-does-every-encounter-turn-into-sketch-comedy standpoint.
Problem is that his "niche" was to roll against a chart that was insanely stacked against him, usually leading to an early death.
And why was "studded-leather-plus-shield" considered equivalent to "scale mail" from an armor-piercing standpoint?
It's not that it's overpowered, it's just cumbersome, as was all multiclassing. It was just weird that, when the cleric-part-of-my-personality advanced a level, I had to roll 1d8/3 for my hit points, for example.
I agree. However, flavor was all it ever was, since it's doubtful the author ever intended that real PCs would ever progress that far.
The monk was even more useless than the thief, as far as I'm concerned. A melee combat focused character who was not allowed to wear armor? This class is pretty much designed to be dead on arrival.
The entire saving throw chart was arbitrary and weird, and the fact that the column names kept changing from edition to edition only reinforced its weirdness. Poison, Petrification, and Death Magic? An entire column dedicated to Dragon Breath? Really? I guess the name of the game is Dungeons & Dragons, but...
Nope, I still don't get it.
Raven Crowking
First Post
That much is obvious. There are all kinds of things that I don't get, but that doesn't mean that they aren't valid. I don't get why one would want the balance 4e is designed for, but I certainly accept that it was designed for a kind of balance, and that some folks like it.
RC
bardolph
First Post
I thought that was the whole point of having a discussion thread in the first place.
Done. See above.
Clear, but a specious argument nonetheless. A printed list of playtesters is evidence. That's why I mentioned it in the first place.
Also note that you have declined to produce any evidence to support the opposing side of the argument.
...okay. You throw out an undefined acronym in an attempt to shut down an argument, then when directly asked to define the acronym, you go into this meandering piece of sophistry, while still refusing to define your own term.
If this isn't trolling, I don't know what is.
