What did we do before feats, skills, and prestige classes?

[Henry]

What did we do? We invented rules for the unique character, such as "Drizzt's cuts are so wicked that he has an X % chance of killing his foe outright", or "Treat Fafhrd as having levels of bard, Fighter, and Cleric even if he doesn't meet the prerequisites to Dual Class."

Nowadays, it's more like "pick the puzzle pieces that fit what this character is described as doing."

 

[JoeGKushner]

Some combos, like swashbucklers or unarmed combatants, sucked. DMs would either have to make up new rules or dredge through 2e kits until they found something cool, similar to the PC's concept and hopefully with a modicum of balance. One of my DMs did manage to come up with a decent "unarmed fighter kit" but I never did see a decent swashbuckler in 2e.

Or an Elf Archmage that the DM didn't hand wave. (level limits!)

Or a dwarf wizard. (class limits!)

Or rogues who had % strength. (stupid rules!)

Or turning tables that had to be revised evertyime a new undead came out.

etc... etc... etc...

 

[The_Gneech]

i disagree. imagine all the people living life in peace. you could say i'm a dreamer. but i'm not the only one. i hope some day you will join me. and ENWurld will ...

Just out of curiosity, are you a gnome, by any chance?

-The Gneech

 

[Sepulchrave II]

What did we do to make our archtypes, specific novel/movie characters, and new and usual characters before having feats, skills, and prestige classes?

There were weapon proficiencies (Fighters got 4) and secondary skills (later, nonweapon proficiencies). We trawled through magazines and used as many ideas from Dragon and White Dwarf as we could get our hands on.

We had lots of pole-arms.

We made lots of arbitrary, inconsistent decisions. We had pages of hand-written house rules.

Je ne regrette rien.

 

[SWBaxter]

In 1E, lots of people simply made up new classes for different concepts. Check out back issues of Dragon or White Dwarf, both had tons. Of course, many of these were wildly unbalanced, but then again so was the "official" stuff.

Otherwise, differences between two PCs of the same class tended to be a matter of personality rather than capability. In my groups, we generally came to an agreement that players would generally avoid playing the exact same class as one another. When we wanted to play a game where the PCs were tightly focused around similar concepts (such as all wizards or all thieves or whatever), we just played something else.

2E was a big improvement in customization - even without kits or the option books, you had thieves with different rankings in each of the skills, clerics with different capabilities, specialist wizards, non-weapon proficiencies, etc. Lots more room to distinguish two PCs of the same class. 3E of course is driven by customizable abilities.

 

[Whisper72]

What did we do? We invented rules for the unique character, such as "Drizzt's cuts are so wicked that he has an X % chance of killing his foe outright", or "Treat Fafhrd as having levels of bard, Fighter, and Cleric even if he doesn't meet the prerequisites to Dual Class."

Nowadays, it's more like "pick the puzzle pieces that fit what this character is described as doing."

Eggsacktly... and to me (opinions may vary, as may your mileage) this method where you have to be inventive yourself somehow instills more sense of wonder (there we go again!) than just picking over puzzle pieces to put together some 'frankenstein' character looted from the ideas of others....

This method of 'making the game yours' makes the DM and the players somehow co-creaters of the game's ruleset, and instills a lot more loyalty to the game system than a hoard of rules written by another, which, if fancy suits me, I can just as easily replace with GURPS, WoD, d6, Ars Magica etc. Again, all IMHO...

 

[EricNoah]

Kits were one way, in 2E, and a pretty good way at that (not always the best balance, but good flavor). Asking the DM to let you customize a class was another way. It really was all about "class features" for the most part.

I like the customizability of PCs and NPCs in 3E -- yes, it adds some complexity but if you want simplicity there are a lot of "easy" feats to apply to NPCs that help them out without making them too complex to create and/or run. Multiclassing is another good way to get some fun customization.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Eggsacktly... and to me (opinions may vary, as may your mileage) this method where you have to be inventive yourself somehow instills more sense of wonder (there we go again!) than just picking over puzzle pieces to put together some 'frankenstein' character looted from the ideas of others....

So despite the fact that the PHB itself mentions changing core classes to suit your needs and makes a few recommendations about dropping feats, etc..., and the DMG has the Witch Class and other bits, we'ves lost the sense of wonder because we can buy stuff that other people do? :\

This method of 'making the game yours' makes the DM and the players somehow co-creaters of the game's ruleset, and instills a lot more loyalty to the game system than a hoard of rules written by another, which, if fancy suits me, I can just as easily replace with GURPS, WoD, d6, Ars Magica etc. Again, all IMHO...

Not disagreeing with you but there is nothing inherent about D&D or any game system that forces people to use only 'official' material especially when the core books themselves suggest ways on making the game yours.

 

[BryonD]

I used my imagination.
Then I discovered that AD&D (1e/2e) was not up to the standards of my imagination and went to other systems that were better capable of keeping up.

 

[delericho]

Eggsacktly... and to me (opinions may vary, as may your mileage) this method where you have to be inventive yourself somehow instills more sense of wonder (there we go again!)

That's twice recently that I've seen someone comment about sense of wonder with relation to PC abilities (the other being in a thread about limiting high level magic that was lost in the crash).

I must say I find it odd that people want to instill a sense of wonder into abilities that the players should know inside and out. Isn't sense of wonder to do with the things those PCs do, the places they go, essentially in the adventures that they have?