Char Ops in 1st Edition?

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:31 pm

Alright, I know your forte's 3rd Edition, but have any of you got access to 1st Edition AD&D?

I'd like to know about some stuff. It's got a lot less in terms of Optimization (due to heavier reliance on DM Fiat, random rolling over point buy, etc), but I bet there's superior and inferior options like the other editions.

Effective spells, ineffective spells. Certain options/equipment/etc. that's incredibly under-powered and over-powered, power loops and combos to be on the look out for.

Basically, if you had to make an ideal class (Cleric/Wizard/Thief/etc), what would you do?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 12:45 am

I don't have 1st on me any more, but from what I remember Chromatic Orb was balls awesome until you were level 5-6, and then it was still balls awesome against half the things you face.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 12:46 am

Remember what sourcebook it was in?

Was it a spell, item, or class feature?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:01 am

I'm sure you've already noted it but always keep in mind that experience costs just aren't the same across all classes. I recommend playing a cleric since they get the usual minor logistical & health maintenance spells and level quickly. Keeping your trapfinders faithful hirelings in good shape so you don't have to touch anything yourself is pretty much the first rule of surviving a Gygaxian hellscape.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:03 am

Multiclassing is really really good. You get lots of benefits now in exchange for possibly being slightly low level later, mostly after the stage where you care that much about levels anyway.
Multiclassing is especially good for Thieves, who pretty much suck at life otherwise. Thieves progress really fast and you'll hardly notice the difference in effectiveness.Don't be a human Thief.
Actually, just don't be a human. Nonhumans get to multiclass, and they also get giant piles of free shit including really powerful vision abilities. If you're not a Paladin you have no excuse being a Human.
Unless you're a Cavalier from UA. They're crazy awesome and you should definitely be one if you can.[Rate of Fire is a big fucking deal if you have good stats. A fighter with Gaunles of Ogre Power probably does more damage throwing 3 darts every round than swinging a sword. If you're playing with weapon specialization, specialize in a bow or in darts, or daggers if you must have a melee weapon.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:04 am

What's the rundown on Unearthed Arcana material?

I heard that it was controversial due to increasing the power level of the game quite a bit.

Other than Cavalier (which was mentioned), how'd you rate the classes and races and Weapon Specialization in that book?

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:25 am

Depending on who you talk to, there is more than one version of 1e. In some versions I believe Elves (the class) can cast spells while in armour, which is very good. Because of the way XP works, taking really powerful classes will slow you down a level or two, more than worth it for the right class.

In 1e direct damage spells work and are worth taking. Also attacking vs AC is actually viable past the early levels. Spellcasters may or may not be limited by the initiative system in play, check with your DM what type of initiative system you are using.

UA is considered by some to be pretty unbalanced or downright broken. The Barbarian are sometimes singled out earnestly as being overpowered which is astounding considered how they end up in 3e. I've also heard that UA is fine if the DM has actually read it before hand. If you can make a Bard character do it, it is supposedly the high water mark of old school cheese.

EDIT: In 1e I think party optimization carries more weight than character optimization. If you have a 4 person party you probably want 2 characters capable of healing, a thief and a wizard type and some frontline muscle. The way multiclassing works though is that you can mix and match, to much greater effect, ie a cleric/wizard works as a character concept. You may not want to multiclass a cleric or a thief because they can level faster single classed.

For optimizing characters there are a few options. Cleric/Fighters can fight about as good as regular fighters but have support magic. If I was going to make a wizard I would want to be a dual classed human and gain a few levels as a fighter first for the extra HP.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:32 am

I'm referring to 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, published 1977-1988.

If you have the 1st Edition Premium Reprints by WotC, this is the one I'm talking about.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:08 am

The AD&D rules are incomprehensible and contradictory. This means that being the "best" you can be really comes down to being the best you can be within the ruleset your group is using. This will be totally different from the ruleset other people are using, even if they are nominally using the same optional rules as you.

First, let's talk about optional rules. Wild Psionic talents allow you to roll dice to see if you can randomly disintegrate things at first level. There is no save listed for that, so apparently you can simply cough up a big chunk of psionic points each day to turn any opponent who fits (or mostly fits) into that power's ginormous AoE into dust. Your DM may decide that this is similar to Dragon Breath or Petrification and arbitrarily give it a saving throw of some type. If he does that, that power will be way less good. Second, being a Cavalier is balls awesome. Your DM may or may not be using the classes from Unearthed Arcana. If he is, being a Cavalier is totally good. Otherwise it is an option that doesn't fucking exist.

Now there's rules that technically aren't optional rules that nobody plays with. Like level limits. Orion just told you to never be a human, but if you're playing by the book, demihumans can't advance to high level at all. Not such a big deal as an Elven Magic User (you probably weren't going to get to 12th level anyway), but as a Halfling you're seriously limited to like 6th fucking level. Those rules are so fucked that even SKR can correctly identify them as fucked. So it's probably not something you have to worry about, but if you do you need to rethink being a Dwarf.

And so on. Now there is some easy minmaxing to do. Sleep doesn't have a fucking save. You just roll some d4s and that many hit dice worth of enemies are fucked. In a world that got flipped out by "save or dies" in 3e, 1st edition was completely full of "Death No Save" effects - and not a small number of them were on the player side. Unfortunately, it doesn't make you win D&D as a magic user for several levels, because you don't get bonus spells for a high Int and you don't get bonus spells for being a specialist. So you get up at first level with the ability to memorize 1 spell a day. That spell is going to be Sleep, and you can murderate 2d4 Orcs in one encounter a day (probably about what the Fighting Man is going to accomplish all day with his sword), but you still seriously need the rest of the party to fight things the rest of the time.

If you have a high Dex and a high Strength, you want to invest heavily in thrown weapons, especially darts. Because thrown weapons have a completely arbitrary (and high) rate of fire and add your dex and strength bonuses. Shit gets crazy.

-Username17

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:25 am

Since Sleep was mentioned:

Let's talk spells; so many they roughly fill up half the PHB!

If we've got less spell slots than in 3rd (and no bonus slots), we can't afford to be laissez-faire in choosing them.

Cleric spells: which are good, bad, average?

Magic-User spells: same here.

Illusionist spells: and here.

Druid spells: and here.

And thx for all the advice so far.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:41 am

FrankTrollman wrote:The AD&D rules are incomprehensible and contradictory. This means that being the "best" you can be really comes down to being the best you can be within the ruleset your group is using. This will be totally different from the ruleset other people are using, even if they are nominally using the same optional rules as you.

First, let's talk about optional rules. Wild Psionic talents allow you to roll dice to see if you can randomly disintegrate things at first level. There is no save listed for that, so apparently you can simply cough up a big chunk of psionic points each day to turn any opponent who fits (or mostly fits) into that power's ginormous AoE into dust. Your DM may decide that this is similar to Dragon Breath or Petrification and arbitrarily give it a saving throw of some type. If he does that, that power will be way less good. Second, being a Cavalier is balls awesome. Your DM may or may not be using the classes from Unearthed Arcana. If he is, being a Cavalier is totally good. Otherwise it is an option that doesn't fucking exist.

Now there's rules that technically aren't optional rules that nobody plays with. Like level limits. Orion just told you to never be a human, but if you're playing by the book, demihumans can't advance to high level at all. Not such a big deal as an Elven Magic User (you probably weren't going to get to 12th level anyway), but as a Halfling you're seriously limited to like 6th fucking level. Those rules are so fucked that even SKR can correctly identify them as fucked. So it's probably not something you have to worry about, but if you do you need to rethink being a Dwarf.

And so on. Now there is some easy minmaxing to do. Sleep doesn't have a fucking save. You just roll some d4s and that many hit dice worth of enemies are fucked. In a world that got flipped out by "save or dies" in 3e, 1st edition was completely full of "Death No Save" effects - and not a small number of them were on the player side. Unfortunately, it doesn't make you win D&D as a magic user for several levels, because you don't get bonus spells for a high Int and you don't get bonus spells for being a specialist. So you get up at first level with the ability to memorize 1 spell a day. That spell is going to be Sleep, and you can murderate 2d4 Orcs in one encounter a day (probably about what the Fighting Man is going to accomplish all day with his sword), but you still seriously need the rest of the party to fight things the rest of the time.

If you have a high Dex and a high Strength, you want to invest heavily in thrown weapons, especially darts. Because thrown weapons have a completely arbitrary (and high) rate of fire and add your dex and strength bonuses. Shit gets crazy.

-Username17

I almost wish you had stayed in the conversation at therpgsite long enough to drop this bombshell when they were walling themselves behind their "No optimization in older editions ever!"garbage.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 7:27 am

MGuy wrote:I almost wish you had stayed in the conversation at therpgsite long enough to drop this bombshell when they were walling themselves behind their "No optimization in older editions ever!"garbage.

Well, I dropped a few on second edition where I pointed out that you could indeed make a character who was better with a sword or bow than a Fighter was by just being a Cleric who happened to specialize in sticking pointy things into other people. The reaction was typical of AD&D neckbeards: to throw a temper tantrum and claim that if anyone did that in an "actual game", they would crank the internet toughguy up to 11 and start a physical fight IRL. This is, sadly, extremely typical.

AD&D utilizes "moving target game balance". That is: every single thing is arguable. The rules aren't clear and have multiple meanings, often times there are straight up multiple rules presented for the same operation (or no rules at all), and it is up to the DM to pick something and go with it. They are even encouraged to straight up not tell the players what the fuck they are doing when they come to these decision points.

In the knuckle dragging culture that is AD&D throwbacks, it is essentially an acknowledged fact that DM is confronted with numerous decision points all the time and that they can rule in ways that boost or fuck over players at any time. Further, it is culturally accepted, even encouraged, for DMs to explicitly make their decision in favor or against the player on the basis of whether the player is being "clever" or "uppity". Note that this is a completely subjective value call, where clever play and uppity play are divided entirely by whether the DM likes your face.

Let's look at a hard example: Lightning Bolt in AD&D bounces off of fucking walls, and if it goes through your character more than once it hits you for damage more than once. Now, there are two ways for that to work: it either bounces in an "angle of incidence equals angle of refraction" way or it bounces straight back. The rules don't say, and you could go either way. Let's say you're in a hallway and there is a bad dude in front of you. You're 5th level and have Lightning Bolt, but you don't think 5d6 save-for-half is going to cut it. So you cast it at a shallow angle into the wall. If it bounces like a billiard ball, it then dutifully spirals down the hallway like a slinky and hits the guy in front of you like 12 times - doing 60 dice of damage (save for half). If, on the other hand, the DM decides that it bounces straight back and physics be damned, then it's going right the fuck back into the caster and then hitting the floor behind him and returning and so on and hitting the caster like fifty times for an ultra kill that you don't even need to roll. And the DM is encouraged by AD&D grognards to make the decision about whether the caster or the villain turns into a charred husk on explicitly tribal grounds.

That is to say that in Benoist's game, if he used the shallow angle lightning bolt he would totally win because he was being "clever". But if I used the shallow angle lightning bolt I would have my character sheet torn up because I was being "cheesy".

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 7:30 am

I thought the key to optimisation in 1E was "claim you totally rolled those 18s legit, it's like, lucky dice or something!"

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 7:39 am

Libertad wrote:Since Sleep was mentioned:

Let's talk spells; so many they roughly fill up half the PHB!

If we've got less spell slots than in 3rd (and no bonus slots), we can't afford to be laissez-faire in choosing them.

Cleric spells: which are good, bad, average?

Command. No save unless in 13+ or HD 6+
Protection From Evil. Situational. Prevents psysical contact from a host of extraplanar creatures, regardless of their actual alignment.

Speak with Animals. Situational. Possible to extract a service from an animal, no save.
Silence. No save caster shutdown (illusionists have a few non verbal spells though).

Animate Dead.
Continual Light. No save blindness in a pinch.

Just a few no-save cleric spells. I might touch on other classes, but really, you don't need me to tell you that sleep, phantasmal force, colour spray and animal friendship are good.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:17 pm

At low levels, the druid was great. Second level spells at level 2!

At high levels, it's hard to beat the bard. He ends up getting way, way more hit points than any other class, provided he has a high enough Constitution. Plus fighter abilities, thief abilities and druid spellcasting.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:03 pm

Whipstitch wrote: I recommend playing a cleric since they get the usual minor logistical & health maintenance spells and level quickly.

Orion wrote:Multiclassing is really really good. You get lots of benefits now in exchange for possibly being slightly low level later, mostly after the stage where you care that much about levels anyway.

An important thing to realise is that there are all sorts of crazy break points when it comes to experience points, so the best class will vary wildly depending on when you think the campaign will end.

For example, a PC with 250,001 xp could be...
[*]a 10th level magic-user
[*]a 9th level cleric
[*]a 9th level fighter
[*]an 11th level thief
[*]an 8th level monk (boo)
[*]a 11th level druid
[*]a 5th level fighter/6th level thief/12th level bard (so the fastest way to get 12th level druid spellcasting is to become a bard, not a druid!)
[*]a 7th level fighter/7th level cleric/7th level magic-user
etc.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 7:30 pm

Yeah, it doesn't take a psychic to figure out that my post came from a very risk averse place. Also, I must confess that as an AD&D playing kid I fancied myself a team player but in reality I was the worst sort of backseat driver; I'd mentally take partial credit for bugging the mage to use charm person more and also would feel sort of smug when his lousy hit die and lower level got him punked by some dude with a sling. In my defense, I was 14.

Anyway, yeah, starting experience is super important. If you don't have to claw your way to level 3 yourself then my vote for cleric loses some of its luster.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 7:51 pm

How exactly did the D&D bard get its memetic status of being laughably underpowered? I mean, the 1st edition bard looks clearly OP and the 2nd edition bard actually kicked a lot of ass depending on if you weren't going to get past the mid levels. Yet I recall that the meme of bards = weak is a bit older than 3rd Edition.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 8:10 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:How exactly did the D&D bard get its memetic status of being laughably underpowered? I mean, the 1st edition bard looks clearly OP and the 2nd edition bard actually kicked a lot of ass depending on if you weren't going to get past the mid levels. Yet I recall that the meme of bards = weak is a bit older than 3rd Edition.

A lot of people didn't understand the 2nd edition Bard. It looks weak because it objectively has less going on than a magic user. The power comes from having a favorable XP chart, meaning that at medium XP loads it actually hits harder with magic user spells than a real magic user (because it is higher level and casts with its full level). Switching to the unified XP chart for 3rd edition basically killed the class.

Of course, Bards in most non-D&D fantasy heartbreakers have tended to be terribad. I don't know why that is, but lots of people who have made some sort of fantasy heartbreaker have tried to bring the Bard away from "casting fireballs while wearing chainmail" (the AD&D Bard of 1st or 2nd edition) and toward a more "music oriented" character concept. And I have just straight up never seen anyone make a character class that was "music focused" that wasn't shit.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Sep 29, 2012 8:26 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:And I have just straight up never seen anyone make a character class that was "music focused" that wasn't shit.

Wizards would make pretty awesome musically focused characters. They wave their arms around conducting spells and singing mystic songs. You can basically just refluff them and their spellbooks are sheet music for songs... they even use wands! Boom.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Sep 30, 2012 7:09 am

Tales of the Abyss had all magic be music, pretty much. Or, at least, sound.

It was a fairly neat idea.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Sep 30, 2012 4:50 pm

As long as your level limits is at least 8 or something you're probably fine. Most classes don't actually get any significant benefits after that anyway. Level limits are another reason why multiclassing is the way to go--it makes it even less likely that the limits will come into play.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Sep 30, 2012 9:59 pm

Orion wrote:As long as your level limits is at least 8 or something you're probably fine. Most classes don't actually get any significant benefits after that anyway. Level limits are another reason why multiclassing is the way to go--it makes it even less likely that the limits will come into play.

Again, it really makes a huge difference what XP range you're playing with.

Note that in many cases, dual-classed humans are superior to multiclassed demihumans, if you have the stats for it and the patience to wait for the class switch.

ScottS · Post by **ScottS** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:21 am

Re: human hate/love. Humans were the only race with access to stat-gen method V from UA. Unlike everyone else, they could pick their class before they rolled dice, then use a tailored, very generous rolling scheme based on what they wanted to play (42d6 spread over 7 stats, typically 9d6 drop lowest 6 for their main stat). So early adopters of a point-buy-like system, essentially. (also made it easier to dual)

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:00 pm

From another thread: Play a female character. You're now immune to the charms of sirens, kelpies and whatever more "men-seducing" monsters are there, while enjoying a virtual absence of female seducing monsters. Lower stat maximums should only hurt if you were planning to play a fighter, but even then, a gauntlet of ogre power should fix whatever -4 Str silliness you have to endure for the first levels.