AD&D 1E What was so bad about unearthed arcana 1e?

[fuindordm]

AD&D is a statistically interesting case.

The odds of rolling 15 or better on 3d6 are about 10% (19/216). In Gary's world we can infer that to get tangible bonuses from ability scores your PC should be in the 90th percentile.

A few months ago I asked myself: how many NPCs in Hommelet have at least one exceptional score?

A little futzing with combinatorics on 3d6 and the binomial formula gives the answer: about 40% have at least one 15. And about 10% of NPCs will have 2. So feel free to give that guard captain a 16 strength or the mayor a 15 charisma. You're not inconsistent with verisimilitude.

So requiring viable PCs to have 2 exceptional scores is not that high a bar. Of course, NPCs are just as likely to have penalizing low scores as high ones. The 4d6 method gives you a much higher chance of getting those two 15+ scores, while vastly mitigating the risk of a very low score.

And in my current campaign I also used the "fairness doctrine" that a player can make their PC using any other player's array.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I have seen suggestions that the UA barbarian and cavalier might have worked for one-on-one play, in which the DM does not have to worry about whether things are fair for the other players because there aren’t any. In the spirit of 80’s sword and sorcery movies, the solo PC barbarian could pick up some NPC henchmen or sidekicks like in the Schwarzenegger flick, or get your Marc Singer on and go beastmaster with a pet eagle or tiger or war mammoth . The cavalier could have a squire and a cleric chaplain.

None of the cavaliers I saw in long-term play made it very long. Even if they didn't get themselves permanently killed sticking to their code, I think a lot of players also got tired of being a shining knight on horseback continually ending up in dungeons.

My old AD&D groups never really settled on a consistent method. I think we sometimes used Method I (4d6, drop lowest, arrange as needed) or even a variant using 5d6, but I don’t think we even knew about the other three official PHB methods or the overpowered UA Method V. In retrospect we did not actually know the rules as well as we thought we did. My groups included older kids who had learned how to play from yet older kids who had graduated or moved away, so we used lots of B/X rules and house rules of unknown origin. I liked to just peruse the books for fun when I got bored, and almost always discovered something strange and surprising. Even though we often overruled the books when we disliked stuff like level limits or the RAW initiative system, we still could have solved lots of gaming questions if we had just RTFM .

At the time I compared the B/X rules with the PHB and noticed that the AD&D ability score system was much stingier with bonuses and much less consistent in general. B/X and BECMI had that nice smooth bell curve seemingly designed for 3d6 rolls, easily memorized once you got used to it. The pluses and minuses were consistent across the six abilities and you could get a +1 bonus from a mere 13, so characters did not really need super high scores. In fact a B/X character with all 13’s could probably be pretty successful (can’t remember if you needed higher scores to qualify for classes).

Whereas in AD&D even a 15 barely got you anything much, and the massive advantages for the highest scores and serious drawbacks for low or even medium scores created a perverse incentive to fudge or cheat. For warrior classes percentile strength and +3 or +4 hit points for 17-18 CON were too tantalizing to give up. Spellcasters needed very high INT or WIS if they wanted to get bonus spells, learn the highest level spells, or avoid getting locked out of good lower level spells by a failed attempt to learn. Thieves really needed that high DEX boost for their mediocre chances to use their abilities. And of course you had the “win more” XP bonus for high scores in prime requisites.

I think that retaining the 1E ability score tables was one of the biggest problems with the 2E PHB, no doubt done in the name of backwards compatibility. They then compounded the error by listing 3d6 down the line as the first of several methods. The 2E PHB had a sample fighter character called Rath with a 14 STR and no other high scores, and we mocked that character and the accompanying instructional text as unrealistic given the demands of the game. If I ever decide to run an “old school” D&D game again, I would probably use 2E with B/X ability scores and Method I.

We likewise went with method I back in the day...though being kids, we probably didn't stick as assiduously to the rolled results as we should have!

 

[Willie the Duck]

AD&D is a statistically interesting case.

One thing the remember is that this is all predicated on the pre-supposition that NPCs roll for their stats and/or that the character creation method is representative of the overall population demographics. I don't recall that ever being stated and IIRC no few modules seem to absolutely violate the notion (certainly if the people listed with stats are representative).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was the only person in my 1E group who ever played an illusionist. My gnome illusionist / thief became one of my favorite characters. I had originally envisioned him as a sort of harlequin jester who would mix sleight of hand (thieving skills) with sensory wonders (illusion spells) to pull off various trickster shenanigans, but the adventures (including an adapted X2 Castle Amber) did not offer many opportunities for that. But I did pretty well fighting with short sword and dagger, shooting a short bow, and blasting bad guys with Chromatic Orb and Color Spray, so in effect he played more like the classic elf fighter / mage. I tried to look for opportunities to trick opponents with illusions, but TSR dungeon crawl modules did not always make that easy. One of his best exploits happened when evil monks tried to throw poisoned daggers at us and missed. He picked them up and threw them back, hitting one monk who failed his save and died!

Yeah, in dungeon crawl adventures, particularly against creatures highly resistant to illusion (including all of the genius spellcasters in Castle Amber), they can be challenged.

Illusionists are practically a cheat code in urban adventures, on the other hand.

 

[mixmastashizz]

One thing the remember is that this is all predicated on the pre-supposition that NPCs roll for their stats and/or that the character creation method is representative of the overall population demographics. I don't recall that ever being stated and IIRC no few modules seem to absolutely violate the notion (certainly if the people listed with stats are representative).

For that you'd have to refer to the DMG in several places: the generation of ability scores for NPCs, the rules for general inhabitants, the Henchmen hiring section.

Overall, it seems to imply that most people fall under general characters, who roll 3d6 for each ability but are averaged out (1s and 6s normalized to 3 or 4) with combat ability and HP determined by their place in the world (mercenaries, sedentary, etc.)

Demographics play into how many people in general are of higher level capability (henchmen demographics) and then further in the hireling tables and MM tables for the number of higher level humans.

So there is an implicit assumption of general simulation expected of NPCs, but in the spirit of the game you'd only generate stats for characters where it actually matters.

 

[pawsplay]

It was actually good. Comeliness was a mistake. I don't think I ever met anyone who cared about Social Class.

The only real negative I can think of was making paladins a sub-class of cavalier, making entry into the class the province of dice-cheats, and also constraining their behavior in so many ways now, it interfered with free will and normal play.

Everyone I know liked and, when available, used the book.

 

[Professor Murder]

The binding. Mine disintegrated into just a bunch of loose pages in like a year.