D&D 5E What would you miss about 5E if you were playing AD&D?

[fuindordm]

Let's see... what aspects of 5e would I miss strongly enough to consider incorporating into an AD&D campaign (first edition)?

* I like hit dice as a healing pool that you can use on a short rest. I think that would port over well into AD&D, and extend the 'adventuring day' without changing the overall game balance.

* I like attunement of magic items

* advantage/disadvantage is a pretty strong modifier, and in some cases feels fairer than a straight bonus/penalty. I would probably use it occasionally.

I can't think of anything else. My favorite part of 5E is the way classes and subclasses are designed, to vastly increase the range of characters. But that's a difficult thing to port over, and increasing the variety too much would detract from that special AD&D flavor.

 

[Li Shenron]

Semi-idle thought experiment: if you were playing AD&D as a player (not a DM), what would you miss about 5E? What bits would you think worth keeping or importing?

There has been quite a lot of water under the bridge between the two... there are a lot of things I would miss from 5e, but if I had to pick one it would be the proficiency bonus which replaces all the separate tables and progressions by class and level. And which anyway would be probably impossible to keep or import back to AD&D without massive rebalancing.

 

[JonnyP71]

Useful Cantrips and backgrounds having a impact on the initial character, that's about it.

I've recently gone back to 1E AD&D and quite honestly I prefer it. 5E is great, but 1E is my home.

Things I prefer about 1E:
- defined class powers, making the differences in characters of the same class less about the mechanics, more about choice of personality and equipment
- greater differences between classes
- the fact that the 4 'core' classes are common, the others are rare, and difficult to achieve the required stats for. I prefer that - it means fewer Paladins which is always a good thing
- the lack of a codified skills system, AD&D has a feeling of *more* freedom, not less
- much wider range of monster abilities
- alignment as a mechanic - this also means fewer Paladins, plus some ex-Paladins who have seen the error of their ways, also a good thing
- racial class and stat limits and restrictions
- much better weapons tables!
- more interesting spells
- slower levelling after the 1st few levels - especially from level 6+
- the adventure modules
- the artwork
- the Gygaxian prose

And most importantly - slower healing! Hit points become precious once more.

 

[Mercule]

I would miss:
- AC counting up
- Less Vancian magic
- More competent Rogue
- Rogue with choice of focus
- Multiclassing (i.e. the new dual classing)
- Standardized XP progression -- I think
- Skills -- I think
- Death saves
- Feats (but I'd rather have AD&D's lack of feats than 3.5's all feats, all day)
- Ability scores to magic (save DC/to-hit)
- More coherent saves (not sure I love 5E, but I definitely didn't like 1E)
- Cantrips -- I think (though I did grant magic-users the cantrip spell as an at-will in 2E (or whenever that was published))
- Standard hit points by level (easy enough to house rule)

Things I'd welcome back:
- Name level (yup, that's actually at the top of my list)
- Dead levels
- Savoring each level: No level treadmill/expectations around advancement
- Side effects for certain spells (haste ages you)
- Weapon tables -- I think
- Gestalt (demi-human) multiclassing
- Psionic wild talents
- Treasure restrictions for Rangers and Paladins
- Alignment requirements for Paladins, Rangers, and Druids
- Fighter weapon specialization
- Separate spell list/class for Illusionists
- Extreme... creative leeway with spells
- Gygaxian prose
- The extreme difference in the amount of info in the DMG vs. the PHB
- A DMG that's actually useful
- All the wonderful "NPC" classes from Dragon
- Dragon Magazine
- Castle/keep rules
- Henchman rules
- The complete lack of an "action economy"
- Greyhawk (and the lack of Forgotten Realms) -- assuming we're time travelling

 

[Tony Vargas]

Care to elaborate?

Not much to say. 5e has skills, your character can do stuff beyond what his class says. AD&D lacked that - even the later NWPs didn't help much.

 

[Mercule]

Not much to say. 5e has skills, your character can do stuff beyond what his class says. AD&D lacked that - even the later NWPs didn't help much.

That's putting it mildly.

Pre-NWP, you had four rough ways of handling it:
1) Um... No rules for anything like that. Guess it ain't happening.
2) DMG p12, non-professional/secondary skills.
3) "Yeah, that sounds like something a Fighter should know about, go for it."
4) DM fiat, based on whatever back story you came up with. Almost never used, but it was there.

Once we had NWP, you had a practically non-functional subsystem that officially constrained you from using what actually did work, before.

I get that we probably needed to pass through the NWP rules to get to 5E skills, but it wasn't awesome.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Really just cantrips. I'd be glad to be done with skills really. In my AD&D days players has to pay more attention and describe what they were doing more in response to information the DM gave them instead of just making a search skill check for example. I think the players engaged with the gaming world more.

More competent low level thieves. I'd start the percentages higher.

 

[guachi]

I'd miss more coherent rules. I find that the 5e PHB (spells excepted) is better laid out than the 1e or 2e PHB. The 5e book is vastly lower build quality, but it's a better rule book from the standpoint of using it as a reference.

I'd miss advantage/disadvantage.
I'd miss what basically was the incorporation of the 2e kits books into the main rules in a more rigorous and streamlined manner - whether that be subclasses or backgrounds. Backgrounds are awesome and have a basic structure that's easily replicable for a player or DM to make his own.
I'd miss not needing to dole out magic items. ASIs, to some extent, have replaced ASIs in ensuring the PCs can still effect monsters by increasing hit/damage on a regular schedule.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I just saw the copy cat thread before I saw this one, so I'll post the same thing:


As someone who played AD&D as my edition of choice from 1981 to 2012 when 5e came out, I'd say I'd probably miss two things:

1. The cleanliness of the mechanics
2. The customization of character types (I'm a big fan of how backgrounds work in 5e--eliminates the need to muliclass in concepts where you'd have to in AD&D).

 

[Sacrosanct]

That's putting it mildly.

Pre-NWP, you had four rough ways of handling it:
1) Um... No rules for anything like that. Guess it ain't happening.
2) DMG p12, non-professional/secondary skills.
3) "Yeah, that sounds like something a Fighter should know about, go for it."
4) DM fiat, based on whatever back story you came up with. Almost never used, but it was there.

Once we had NWP, you had a practically non-functional subsystem that officially constrained you from using what actually did work, before.

I get that we probably needed to pass through the NWP rules to get to 5E skills, but it wasn't awesome.

This isn't entirely true. Way back in the 70s, Dragon magazine specifically talked about this, and in AD&D skills were handled via an ability check. So any time you wanted to do something, the DM just had you roll a d20 and if it was under your ability score, you succeeded. Very simple, widely used, and it made every point you had in a score matter.