The Gaming Den

One of my favorite 1st or 2nd edition characters is an elven female magic-user/cleric multi-class. If you're starting at first level, it's a bit painful, but if you get to start with X xp, it's a great way to get more spellcasting. You eventually have enough cantrips and stuff to do fun rp stuff, and more than enough real spells to be a force in combat.
Now, you still get arcane spell failure, so you can't actually wear plate or chain, if you want to cast magic-user spells.

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.

I never knew anyone who played a bard in 1E.

First of all, it required a whole bunch of high stats to qualify.

Leaving that aside, if you started your PC at level 1 you're essentially just playing a fighter for the foreseeable future; the odds that the PC or the campaign will survive to the bardic sweet spot were low, in my experience.

And if you started your PC at level 8, say, it's unclear what that means in terms of a bard or other dual-classed character. I don't think I was ever in a game where the DM said "make a PC with 250,001 xp" (in which case you could end up with wildly different PC levels, like a 12th level bard and an 8th level monk, as noted above).

In practice, we avoided bards altogether. Hell, they were tucked in the back of one of the rulebooks, like psionics and the pummeling rules; obviously they were segregated for a reason.

I'm a fan of the priest/thief as a Swiss Army Knife at all levels.

Make sure your DM isn't playing with the special "get fucked" rules before you decide to play an elf -- under RAW, elves are not allowed to be brought back from the dead with Raise Dead, only Resurrection, and no one you know will ever fucking have Resurrection, ever.

If you die in "oldschool" D&D, you might as well just re-roll anyway.

talozin wrote:Make sure your DM isn't playing with the special "get fucked" rules before you decide to play an elf -- under RAW, elves are not allowed to be brought back from the dead with Raise Dead, only Resurrection, and no one you know will ever fucking have Resurrection, ever.

I remember a couple of occasions where our party had a Rod of Resurrection with a few charges in it (good for an elf or two, or a bunch of humans, e.g.).

As I recall, old dnd also had quite a bit of shit you weren't coming back from anyway; so if you went human for the cheap rez, you were in for a disappointment.

Tumbling Down wrote:As I recall, old dnd also had quite a bit of shit you weren't coming back from anyway; so if you went human for the cheap rez, you were in for a disappointment.

That and the permanent Con loss in a game where:

1: Chance of a successful revive (as opposed to being forever dead) is Con based.
2: Only very high values grant bonuses, so you're going to stop getting bonus HP if you are very fast.

sabs wrote: Now, you still get arcane spell failure, so you can't actually wear plate or chain, if you want to cast magic-user spells.

You're thinking 2nd edition, not 1st. In 1st edition, elves and half-elves were explicitly allowed to cast magic-user spells in plate armor. Plenty of the pre-gen characters from modules did so.

Being a multiclassed elf MU was hella awesome, except for level limits.

It's been 20 years since I played 1st edition so
My mind is rusty. I remembered that Elf female magic user cleric was awesome. But I forgot the details.

I mainly remember the elf in 1e from games like Tower of Doom/Shadow Over Mystara, where I coveted her delicious pixelated sprite. And the Thief's. Mmm.

There are a fucking lot of spells you can cast, rest, rememorize before they run out. Most of these had there duration cut in third edition, so you're going to have to pour through the spell list to find them, hint invisibility lasts 24 hours.

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I mainly remember the elf in 1e from games like Tower of Doom/Shadow Over Mystara, where I coveted her delicious pixelated sprite. And the Thief's. Mmm.

Tower of Doom/Shadow over Mystara isn't 1e, it's Basic.

Basic is an extremely simplified ruleset supposedly meant for beginners. It's the one with demihuman racial classes and no multiclassing. It's also the one that's set in Mystara by default.

It's also the one that presumes that your characters will become gods after they hit level 20 and has an entire rulebook dedicated to playing as a deity.

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I mainly remember the elf in 1e from games like Tower of Doom/Shadow Over Mystara, where I coveted her delicious pixelated sprite. And the Thief's. Mmm.

This is my kind of player, so lets talk about char op with Lucia (that elf's name): Most people know that she autofires five arrows in quick succession if you mash the use item button, but not many people know her special attack (attack + jump buttons, that we used to call "summon lettuce") is seriously OP versus enemies that don't suffer knockback, like the the Goblin War Machine, the Red Dragon, That Goddamn Ghost (you remember it) or Synn. You can seriously ruin their shit with the elf if you wait for them to lunge at you and use Summon Lettuce at the right time. If done right, you'll be immune to their attack while they'll take like twenty hits, as the deadly elven lettuce cuts through their structure/ectoplasm/scales. It's like half a bar worth of life you can deal with that attack.

Sounds like in some ways it's almost balanced by accident. Certainly the difference between Fightan Man and Wizarrrd seems less dramatic than in other editions.

So, if I was to run 1e, what adventures are good? I have most of them. Keep on the borderlands seems okay, and the g series is classic, but whats in between?

I hear White Plume Mountain is good :3c

Ted the Flayer wrote:So, if I was to run 1e, what adventures are good? I have most of them. Keep on the borderlands seems okay, and the g series is classic, but whats in between?

The Slave Lords series (A1-A4) was pretty decent; the 4th one is a railroad intro, no lie.

I1, Dwellers of the Forbidden City is also good.

I'm a big fan of S3, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but it may not be to everyone's taste (also, the ship should have LOT less empty rooms so your players don't get bored as fuck).

X1, the Isle of Dread, is also pretty good, if you like sandboxes.

I'd suggest looking at early issues of Dungeon magazine; while a lot of them were crap, there are some gems in there.

Collection of responses:

Libertad wrote:Remember what sourcebook it was in?

Chromatic Orb was in Unearthed Arcana; it was a 1st level illusionist spell.
It was actually fairly shitty at first, but rapidly got better as your caster level went up. You had to roll to hit with it, and in 1E there was no such thing as "touch AC". But if you hit, it did some damage, and gave a special effect. At 4th level, it did 1d10 and blinded the target. At 5th level it did 1d12 and created a small Stinking Cloud. At 6th it did 2d8 and magnetized all metal on the target (essentially making anybody in plate mail helpless). At 12th, it automatically paralyzed and you had to save or die. From a 1st level spell.

Libertad wrote: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?

UA material was some fairly early power creep, and gets a lot of flak from grognards because of this. IMO, it's no big deal, with the exception of a few spells I don't feel should exist.

I love weapon specialization, personally, and feel it was an important power-up to fighters...I do feel bow specialization was a little crazy; at point blank range (30' or less), you got +2 to attack/damage and dealt double damage (including the +2 bonus)...so instead of gettin 2 arrows per round for 1d6, you started getting 2 arrows per round for 2d6+4, which is a fairly huge leap.

As aforementioned, dart specialization was pretty crazy too, since btb you could add your str bonus (up to +6) and +2 spec bonus to each damage roll, and you got 4 attacks per round. So yeah.

Other UA stuff...

Races: the drow, svirneblin, and duergar were all pretty much overpowered compared to the core races, unless the DM really hosed them with the light sensitivity. Svirneblin in particular are pretty crazy...able to summon earth elementals 1/day starting at 6th level (when casters can't do it until around 9th-12th).

Classes: the cavalier does get a lot of awesome sauce, but also has a lot of RP restrictions (read: the DM may require you to play your character like a moron). Specifically, you may need to charge headfirst into melee combat with something that can kick your ass, and not retreat (death before dishonor, etc), and ignore good tactics. The barbarian also gets lots of good stuff, but advances pretty slowly, and has more RP restrictions (hates magic and spellcasters, limits on magic item use, etc). The thief-acrobat I haven't really seen in play, so can't speak to.

Frank wrote: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.

Frank is also thinking of 2E; there was no psionic disintegration power in 1E.

Frank wrote:Sleep doesn't have a fucking save. You just roll some d4s and that many hit dice worth of enemies are fucked.

Minor caveat; sleep only worked on monsters with 4 or less HD (and failed half the time against 1 creature with 4+1 to 4+4). So it was awesome as fuck at orcs/goblins/etc., and worthless against trolls or owlbears or whatever. Still, this does not make it less than an awesome spell.

Catharz Godfoot wrote:I'm a fan of the priest/thief as a Swiss Army Knife at all levels.

In btb core 1st edition, only half-orcs can be cleric/thieves...and the level limit for half-orc cleric was 4th. Just sayin'.

Mr. GC wrote:That and the permanent Con loss in a game where:

1: Chance of a successful revive (as opposed to being forever dead) is Con based.
2: Only very high values grant bonuses, so you're going to stop getting bonus HP if you are very fast.

1.) Your chances were pretty good, as long as you had at least above-average Con; 10 was 75%, climbing to 100% at 18.
2.) If you didn't have bonus HP anyway (15+), the difference was pretty minor...from 75% rez survival at 10 to 92% at 14 isn't exactly huge stuff, and that's 4 deaths.

Koumei wrote:I hear White Plume Mountain is good

I see what you did thar.
Joking aside, while I wouldn't call White Plume Mountain "good", it wasn't as terrible as GC likes to pretend. Seriously, his review made him sound like a gigantic pussy. "Oh no, we have to fight a few bugbears that can surprise us? And we're 5th to 10th level? Holy shit, we are so hosed!"

PoliteNewb wrote:

Catharz Godfoot wrote:I'm a fan of the priest/thief as a Swiss Army Knife at all levels.

In btb core 1st edition, only half-orcs can be cleric/thieves...and the level limit for half-orc cleric was 4th. Just sayin'.

Yeah, if your DM keeps the level restrictions on half-orc cleric/assassins or doesn't let you play a half-elf druid/thief, you're SoL.

I find it odd that in 1e you have to be at least 50% human to be a cleric, and 100% human to not be a shit cleric.

EDIT: and that chaotic good alignment is specifically barred from thieves...

PoliteNewb wrote:

Mr. GC wrote:That and the permanent Con loss in a game where:

1: Chance of a successful revive (as opposed to being forever dead) is Con based.
2: Only very high values grant bonuses, so you're going to stop getting bonus HP if you are very fast.

1.) Your chances were pretty good, as long as you had at least above-average Con; 10 was 75%, climbing to 100% at 18.
2.) If you didn't have bonus HP anyway (15+), the difference was pretty minor...from 75% rez survival at 10 to 92% at 14 isn't exactly huge stuff, and that's 4 deaths.

Fail that and forever die, combined with you'll be having a nice death very often... it adds up. Take your 14 Con example and it's .92 * whatever 13 is * whatever 12 is * whatever 11 is... probably around half.

I see what you did thar.
Joking aside, while I wouldn't call White Plume Mountain "good", it wasn't as terrible as GC likes to pretend. Seriously, his review made him sound like a gigantic pussy. "Oh no, we have to fight a few bugbears that can surprise us? And we're 5th to 10th level? Holy shit, we are so hosed!"

You're 5th level because this is fuck you edition. And that means they all go in the surprise round, and all go smack the same person and most likely they just die before they can move.

Ted the Flayer wrote:I find it odd that in 1e you have to be at least 50% human to be a cleric, and 100% human to not be a shit cleric.

As noted, they loosened up the race restrictions a lot in Unearthed Arcana; I think every race was allowed to be a cleric at that point.

And usually in 1st ediition, the very first houserule is the "we ignore the level limits crap"

sabs wrote:And usually in 1st ediition, the very first houserule is the "we ignore the level limits crap"

Pretty much as the very first houserule we made in 3e was "lol, favored classes, lol".