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

[Sacrosanct]

In AD&D it was very possible to die in one attack from monster, even at Max HP. At 1st level, even if you played with a homebrew rule of maxing out starting HP (but that was not an official rule), an attack by a goblin could kill you in one hit depending on your class. A 10th level magic user would have an average of 24 hit points. A thief would have 32. A cleric would have 42. At that level, you're fighting dragons, and even if you MADE your saving throw against a breath weapon, you're still dead instantly unless you were a fighter (and even then you're dead if you fail).

So while 5e PCs inflict more damage more often, I think the ratio of damage still goes to AD&D. AD&D was just more lethal, even if you remove save or die.

 

[Salamandyr]

Erm, yes they do, considerably more.

Take the Ogre example, almost every PC apart from a Fighter will start with a THAC0 of 20, and will have that until they reach roughly level 4. If they find a +1 weapon, they can drop that to 19.

Pre-UA, Fighters would typically have a THAC0 of 19 or 20 too until 3rd level, unless they got very lucky with their strength roll.

This means they hit an AC5 Ogre about 25% of the time. Less than half of PCs will have a damage bonus in melee typically, so that's a 1d6 from a cleric's mace, or a 1d12 from a fighter's longsword - maybe 1d12+1.

Now look at 5E, most PCs start with an attack bonus of +4 or +5. That same Ogre had an AC11, so PCs are now hitting about 66% of the time. They will usually have +2 or +3 to damage, so the average weapon damage dealt out will be higher. Wizards can now spam damaging cantrips, so they can cause reliable damage too. Rogues can usually get a sneak attack in most rounds for extra damage.

5E PCs do a lot more damage more quickly due to better changes to hit, and a higher prevalence of damage bonuses! It recently took a party of 8 characters of levels 3/4 about 6 rounds to take down a creature with AC0 and 30hp. How long would a creature with AC20 and 30hp last in 5 against the same number of similarly levelled characters? One round? Maybe 2? You also have to factor in Paladin smites, criticals doing double damage, more magic missiles, missile fire having +stat damage, Barbarian rages, Warlocks spamming Eldritch blast, Druids turning into Bears, etc.... none of these happened in 1E!

I didn't say the numbers weren't bigger, I said they weren't actually putting out more damage...because in all that damage they are doing, they are matching it against correspondingly larger numbers of hit points.

The disparity gets even larger as you go up in level, with mooks sporting 100 and more hit points eventually, and no way to burn through those points except through repetitive grinding.

Sure, 5e parties do their damage in more spectacular ways, lots of lasers flying around; people shapeshifting into animals, dropping the power of the gods on monsters heads, but all of those things don't do as much relative to the toughness of the monsters.

Bigger numbers, bigger damage pillows.

 

[schnee]

I'll miss racism being something that had to be house-ruled in rather than out.

 

[Zardnaar]

In AD&D it was very possible to die in one attack from monster, even at Max HP. At 1st level, even if you played with a homebrew rule of maxing out starting HP (but that was not an official rule), an attack by a goblin could kill you in one hit depending on your class. A 10th level magic user would have an average of 24 hit points. A thief would have 32. A cleric would have 42. At that level, you're fighting dragons, and even if you MADE your saving throw against a breath weapon, you're still dead instantly unless you were a fighter (and even then you're dead if you fail).

So while 5e PCs inflict more damage more often, I think the ratio of damage still goes to AD&D. AD&D was just more lethal, even if you remove save or die.

Those are extreme examples though. 5E suffers from damage inflation.

Kobold AD&D +0 to hit, 1d3 damage, 5E +4 to hit (with advantage with allies), 1d4+2 damage.
Ogre AD&D, 1d10 damage, 5E 2d8+4

5E monsters deal roughly double the damage. It does make the game a bit rocket tag like and grindy though with the 6-8 encounters things and overnight healing. I find AD&D/BECMI easier to pace once you get past level 1 and its better for things like hex crawls.

 

[Libramarian]

I'll miss racism being something that had to be house-ruled in rather than out.

What racism?

 

[schnee]

What racism?

Why are you participating in a thread about AD&D when you've never played the game?

 

[Azzy]

Almost everything.

 

[Zardnaar]

What racism?

Porbably racial restrictions and the racial attitude table.

 

[Herobizkit]

* one-die resolution of everything.
* AC goes up.
* everyone gets something useful every level.
* 2nd-level clerical healing
* non-Vancian spell-casting
* Warlocks and Sorcerers and Monks.
* simplified saving throws
* no alignment restrictions

I'm sure there's more. :3

 

[Tony Vargas]

What racism?

1e had a table of race-based reaction modifiers.