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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trainz" data-source="post: 1911908" data-attributes="member: 2122">I will. For 1st Ed AD&D at least.The classes were Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User (3rd ed's wizard), Illusionist, Thief (Rogue), Druid, Monk, Ranger, Paladin, Bard. Supplements (mainly the original Unearthed Arcana) introduced the Thief-Acrobat (IIRC), Barbarian, Cavalier.Things of note about 1st Ed. Most races were SWEET. It was interesting to pick almost all races. The only advantage humans had, was dualclassing (somewhat like 3rd ed's multiclassing), and non-human races had instead what was known then as multi-classing. When you created an elf, you decided right then and there if he would be single classed or have many classes, and couldn't change that during his career. You could thus have an elven fighter/M-U/thief. These were weak though. Their advancement was *slow*.Another interesting thing was the only two arcane classes, M-U and Illusionist. Illusionists had their own spell list, and some spells were available only to them. Some spells overlapped with the M-U of course.M-U's spells were *sweet*. There was no cap on damage. A 21st level M-U casting Magic-Missile would cast 11 missiles. A 35th level M-U's fireball did 35d6 damage.M-U's absolutely dominated the world, and that is probably why such important NPC's such as Mordenkainen, Blackstaff, and Elminster were M-U's (these NPC's were created a long time ago).Barbarians were atrocious fighting machines. They hated magic, and were quite restricted on their magic items use, but a barbarian's dexterity and constitution bonus was DOUBLED. A 5th level barbarian with 18 Con had 5d12+40 hp's.Cavaliers were quite simply a fascinating class to play. It had gradual bonuses to hit with lance, sword, and some other weapon. They were totally immune to fear. Their code of honor was quite precise. I had fun with mine, until his honor had him killed. It was a common joke that sooner or later a cavalier was doomed because he could simply not retreat.The Bard... now THAT was a weird class. You had to first get about 7 levels of fighters, after you took about 8 levels of thief, and then you switched to druid, but at that point you also gained bardic abilities. If you could do all that, well the bard was no push-over. He was quite strong. Quite indeed.And the ranger was quite strong too. Almost as strong as the fighter, plus he had M-U spells and of course tracking and a few woodland abilities.There was no such thing as epic levels. The system was built in to let you play until whatever level. Armor Class was reversed: AC 10 meant you were a lame duck, AC -20 meant nothing could touch you. Although you needed table to figure out how much you needed to hit, combat was extremely simple.Between you and me, 1st Ed was quite fun, 2nd Ed took the fun out of 1st Ed, and 3rd Ed brought it back, but in an absolutely different manner.I think it would be a good idea for WotC to peruse the 1st Ed books before doing 4th Ed. Merging the best of 3rd ed and 1st ed would be quite astonishing. Make combat simpler, keep feats and skills, reduce the potency of AoO (or get rid of them altogether), and bring back those awesome arcane spells, while adjusting metamagic feats accordingly.Yup.</blockquote>

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