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

[Salamandyr]

Some things I wouldn't miss.

Hit Point bloat
Short Rests
Expected Encounters Per Day

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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.

5E has Athletics skill.
2nd edition has Athletics NWP.

5E has Deception skill.
2nd edition has Disguise proficiency, and maybe some others related to lying.

As far as I can see, the main skill differences between the two editions are that:

(1) 2nd edition is more granular. You have more skills, but they each cover a smaller area.
(2) 5E proficiency is expressed as a bonus (+Prof) but anyone can attempt a skill; in 2nd edition IIRC you weren't even allowed to attempt certain things unless you knew the skill
(3) 2nd edition doesn't have many skills for social interactions or perception/investigation--those are left to the players
(4) 5E's skills are more combat-centric. There is no skill for Engineering, for example, or Mathematics.

Overall the differences are pretty minor AFAICT.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Ability score modifiers being streamlined. Honestly, this is probably the biggest change between AD&D and 5th Edition. A 16 in 5E is always +3. +3 to what, you ask? To everything, no matter the ability. Whereas in AD&D, it might be a +2 to hit, +3 to damage, 35% chance to bend bars, +1 spell slot, +5 known spells, +10% to pick pockets, +15% to open locks, etc. It was all too much to remember.

After much consideration, I have decided that I'm neutral on the ability modifier change. I mean, on the one hand, it's great that everything is streamlined now. On the other hand, now we need to worry about maximizing our attack stat, and we have to deal with ridiculously inflated HP pools due to Con scaling, where previously we could play a perfectly decent character with straight tens. Over all, it's pretty much a wash.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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.

I like the variant where you do skills checks by rolling against 3d6 instead of d20.

 

[Quickleaf]

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?

For me, I like the 5E fighter and the number of combat options he has. Some of the 5E fighter actions like Disarm have analogues in AD&D (Complete Fighter's Handbook), but some of them don't. In particular, the way that grappling/shoving works in 5E is pretty beautiful for fighters--a 6th level fighter can turn a fight with an Earth Elemental from a deadly struggle into something approaching simplicity just by leveraging his Athletics training. I would want the game to have Prone as a disadvantageous condition, and a way for a fighter to reliably or semi-reliably exploit it, although I don't necessarily need it to be as trivially easy as it is in 5E. (E.g. Prone gives a -4 to hit and +4 to be hit, and attack rolls/saving throws take place on a 2d10 bell curve instead of d20. Ability contests are run by comparing margins of success on a 3d6 roll; for grappling it's a Strength contest, and weapon proficiency in wrestling gives you a +2 on wrestling contests. That replicates basically the same dynamics as 5E when it comes to tanky fighters wrestling enemies into submission.)

I would also miss the a beauty of Sharpshooter and fighters who do tons of damage with arrows; but I'm willing to give that up in the name of a more classic, harder game. D&D as GURPS (complete with lots of Rapid Shots and Vital Shots) is just too easy.

I would miss reaction spells like Shield and Absorb Elements; but not enough to want to import them. The AD&D wizard paradigm is "think ahead" (Stoneskin/Ironskin/Contingency), not "react on the fly" (Shield/Absorb Elements). I would sort of miss Counterspell though--it's a nice bit of fiction. I'm not sure how to accomodate Counterspell in the AD&D paradigm.

I might miss the saving throw system. I've always been kind of fuzzy on the reasons why rods/staves/wands get treated differently from spells, in the fiction. On the other hand, I'm often also fuzzy on why e.g. getting out of a Forcecage involves a Charisma save, or why exactly a Dexterity saving throw to protect you from Fireball does not cost movement or a reaction or leave you prone (i.e. apparently you're not doing any of the things you'd think you were doing to protect yourself from the Fireball). Both systems have their warts from a logical perspective so it might be a wash.

That's all I can really think of that I'd miss. There are things I like about 5E, but aside from fighters, Counterspell, and maybe ability-centric saving throws, I can't think of anything else that I like better in 5E than in AD&D. (I'm fine with THAC0, for example. In some ways it's easier to deal with than ascending AC, especially in large combats.)

If you were me, what would YOU be missing?

I actually really like 5's Concentration rule. While it's not perfect, Concentration does a really good job of avoiding the layered/stacked spell effects that made AD&D and 3e spellcasters challenging to DM for (saying that diplomatically) at mid-to-high levels. It's so interesting how the word "concentration" or something to that effect crops up fairly often in AD&D's spell descriptions; 5e really feels like a natural refinement and synthesis in that regard.

When it comes to counterspell, I actually recall letting the mage PC in my old Planescape game reactively countering spells by creatively expending other spells he'd prepared. For example, casting magic missile to deflect a magic missile midair, or cone of cold to absorb/diminish a fireball. I've contemplated removing counterspell as an independent spell and making what I used to do in my AD&D game a house-rule for arcane classes in 5e (i.e. those classes that have counterspell on their spell lists – sorcerer, warlock, wizard).

 

[Tony Vargas]

Overall the differences are pretty minor AFAICT.

Not to talk up 5e skills (they're really pretty meh in a lot of ways, and utterly dependent upon DM judgement), but NWPs were terrible. There were a lot of them, of which you got very few, so they created a great deal of incompetence among PCs. The system, itself, was pretty poor (see Mercule's post, above), and it conflicted with established special abilities.

So, yeah, I'd miss the less-awful skill system of 5e quite keenly, the more so if NWPs were being used (hopefully not the case, as, if I'm paleo-gaming AD&D, I'd prefer it be 1e), because at least the total lack of any skill system left you room to snow the DM into letting you do something now and then. ;P

 

[JonnyP71]

The skill-less system of Core 1E lends itself to more freedom and more imagination.

DMing 5E I've noticed that when presented with a dilemma and asked 'What are you going to do?', most players look straight down at their sheet to find a relevant skill.

No so in 1E, the skills weren't there, which meant they had to *think* of something. This led to more interesting solutions, and also more interesting challenges being presented by the DMs.

 

[Schmoe]

A useful Thief/Rogue.

I've only played 5E a handful of times, but I'm pretty familiar with the mechanics. I still generally prefer 3.5E, but I'm starting to move toward more free-form systems, which I consider 1E to be. I actually just recently had to make the choice of what system to use, as I started a new campaign for my son and his friends. I almost chose 1E, but then I re-read the Thief mechanics and realized I'd have to completely re-work the class if I wanted it to be anything useful. So a useful Thief/Rogue is definitely what I would miss the most.

 

[Prakriti]

...NWPs were terrible.

Quoted for truth. NWP's felt completely tacked-on and unsupported by the rules. I never knew what to do with them. And the name... non-weapon proficiencies? Why are they defined by what they're not instead of what they are (i.e. skills)? How often do you list your "non-dancing skills" on a resume? Or describe D&D, Pathfinder, and World of Darkness as "non-Italian-Plumber games?"

The whole system felt like a last-minute and poorly-conceived addition to the game.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

The skill-less system of Core 1E lends itself to more freedom and more imagination.

DMing 5E I've noticed that when presented with a dilemma and asked 'What are you going to do?', most players look straight down at their sheet to find a relevant skill.

No so in 1E, the skills weren't there, which meant they had to *think* of something. This led to more interesting solutions, and also more interesting challenges being presented by the DMs.

I hadn't played 1e in a long time and we tried a off night game and I was stunned at how reliant on making a skill check players were, myself included. The idea of taking the description of the room I had just given them and using that to narrate how they were going to search had become alien. They didn't think to say "well we are going to pull the blankets off the bed and check for anything, then flip the mattress off to look underneath". They were just kind of at a loss once they didn't have a Search check to kind of do everything for them. And these are players from the early 80's. But now instead of visualizing the room from the description, asking for clarification if something was unclear, and then narrating their actions they were just stuck for awhile since they were so used to just saying "I search the 10x10 room with beds and furniture with a skill check" or two and no need to talk about how to do that. To me its more immersive to do it old school. Like me parallel parking a car now that I'm used to a camera on the back, I'm very rusty when I drive other vehicle.