TSR Why would anyone want to play 1e?

[Sacrosanct]

I recall reading somewhere that 2e was meant to have ascending AC and attack bonuses but that was shot down for backwards compatibility.

True story. There's a quote from Skip Williams from years ago: "Of course we thought about ascending AC, but we wanted players to be able to keep playing all their 1e stuff."

 

[Lanefan]

Some of these kinda match how we do it, others don't:

I know in my group we had the following rules that sort of manifested out of the ether (includes 2e stuff):

*4d6 drop 1, re-roll all 1's somehow became the standard for rolling characters.

We've used 5d6drop2 forever and it works out OK.

At some point, scores below 6 became obnoxious to both DM and player alike (we had a player who decided the only way to roleplay low Int/Wis was by being completely obnoxious).

Fine with me. Those characters tend not to last all that long anyway.

*Comeliness was an ability score. The stated benefits of said ability score, as far as I could determine, were never used. It was just shorthand for how hot you were. Naturally, this led to (many) NPC's with ridiculous high Comeliness. The idea that negative Comeliness was attractive to evil people and vice versa was flatly ignored.

*Comeliness could be lost when "it made sense". One guy took some fire damage rescuing an NPC out of a burning building. Despite not actually taking a lot of damage, they gained "horrible burns" that cost them 6 points of Comeliness. I felt this was mean spirited, but everyone else in the group seemed to think it was perfectly fine.

The only game I ever played in that used Comeliness saw it become a complete dump stat for every PC except mine, who due to her species (Dryad) got a huge boost to it. I think she started with 19s in both Cha and Com, which when added to her innate Dryad charming ability made her - let's be honest - kinda broken.

*Magic armor granting bonuses to saving throws was generally ignored. If a player brought it up, the DM would allow it, but only grudgingly. I guess this isn't really a houserule, and more of a "yes, it's in the book, but rather than ban it, we just glare at people who use it".

Depends on the save; if it makes sense armour will help, then it helps.

*One that might be familiar to a lot of players: magical auras that blind/stun people who dare to cast Detect Magic because of how "awesome" they were. Similar things could happen with really Good/Evil individuals. Paladins would find themselves having to make Con checks to not throw up around really Evil people.

This happens here if you cast Detect Magic and look at something stupendous. Similar to glancing at what you expect to be a normal light and instead get a 1000-watt halogen in your eyes.

*Rangers could be Evil.

We have this also. Their alignment restriction never made sense.

*Fighting large foes always resulted in a chance for the enemy to fall on you for damage. I've even seen characters die from this!

We have this also, and to the same result. Again, it just makes sense. Usually a double save if the big thing is falling in your direction, the first is to avoid it (and associated damage) and if you fail that, the second is to see if you're pinned under it or not.

*Demihuman level limits: this was a strange one. We recognized that they existed but rather than abolish them, we went through strange gyrations to try and ignore them. Using the expanded limits in the DMG (having high stats let you rise to a higher level), requiring double xp to level up beyond your limit, single-classed characters had their cap raised by 2 (this might be in the DMG, I can't recall).

One day, we just stopped caring.

Pretty much same here - it got more and more relaxed over time until eventually dropped. Some species still can't be some classes at all, however, e.g. no Dwarven arcane casters allowed.

*Starting age. This turned into a minor war when I made a Wizard in his 20's. "Wizards have to be old! You should roll for your age like the book says!" (despite nobody ever doing that). I was forced to produce multiple pictures in D&D books of not old Wizards (including a bevy of young supermodel Wizardesses, lol) and even a few NPC's, like a 10 year old 1st level Wizard in one of the adventures in Wildspace (The Sacred Firefall, as I recall).

We have starting age tables that are mandatory, with adjusts to age based on class to reflect how long your pre-adventuring training took.

 

[Lanefan]

I missed this comment and while I agree it was the best Ranger, the 1e Barbarian was an even better Ranger than the Ranger

I've always said Barbarian makes a far better species than it does a class.

 

[James Gasik]

Pretty much same here - it got more and more relaxed over time until eventually dropped. Some species still can't be some classes at all, however, e.g. no Dwarven arcane casters allowed.

Oh, this is one I missed- we allowed Dwarven Diviner Wizards (based on a misprint in one version of the 2e PHB), which eventually was expanded to "anyone can be a Diviner Wizard". Rarely invoked, however.

 

[cbwjm]

Even from back in my early days of playing I never understood the arcane restriction on dwarves. I've always felt that they should be able to be arcane casters as that helps them with their crafting of magical items, cursing rings, and turning into dragons.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Even from back in my early days of playing I never understood the arcane restriction on dwarves. I've always felt that they should be able to be arcane casters as that helps them with their crafting of magical items, cursing rings, and turning into dragons.

It was for two reasons:

1. In order to keep a human-centric world, demi-humans had to be restricted and limited (also to make up for their racial abilities).
2. Every class and race was built around a very specific version of fantasy--European Tolkienism. Archetypes outside of that vision were very rare.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Even from back in my early days of playing I never understood the arcane restriction on dwarves. I've always felt that they should be able to be arcane casters as that helps them with their crafting of magical items, cursing rings, and turning into dragons.

All fantasy RPGs need to include an explicit dwarf-to-dragon pipeline.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It was for two reasons:

1. In order to keep a human-centric world, demi-humans had to be restricted and limited (also to make up for their racial abilities).
2. Every class and race was built around a very specific version of fantasy--European Tolkienism. Archetypes outside of that vision were very rare.

3. 1E was a collection of a bunch of OD&D house rules, even contradictory ones or ones that simply didn't work well together
4. Cocaine

 

[Voadam]

2. Every class and race was built around a very specific version of fantasy--European Tolkienism. Archetypes outside of that vision were very rare.

The races from OD&D and the 1e PH were Tolkien but the classes branched out from the beginning with the cleric (van Helsing/bishop Odo/bible miracles), and then paladin (Anderson), assassin (Lieber), monk (Remo Williams), druid, bard, and illusionist coming from different inspirations.

 

[Theory of Games]

It was for two reasons:

1. In order to keep a human-centric world, demi-humans had to be restricted and limited (also to make up for their racial abilities).
2. Every class and race was built around a very specific version of fantasy--European Tolkienism. Archetypes outside of that vision were very rare.

Yeah but Tolkien's Dwarves could cast spells