101 Old Edition Rules You'd Bring Back


Homebrew and House Rules

251 to 281 of 281 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Level limits generally were not a problem.

The 1E game was basically based around a level 10 paradigm. If you could function at level 10, you could function the whole game.

A level 7/11 f/m-u elf generally had no problems hanging with a f/15 or a wiz/15. His power and flexibility were more then enough to cover him, and the foes were never out of his combat reach.

I actually don't know many people who continued to play 'siphon xp' after hitting level caps. But with unearthed, it became almost no problem...stats pushing back level caps meant people rarely reached the level caps anyways, and the game didn't change that much.

As I said, it was a level 10 game. If you were level 10, you could fight 99% of the content in the game. Level 13, you could take on demon lords and even mess with demigods (who were generally around 15th level).

Indeed, by level 10 an NPC paladin had a 50% chance of owning a Holy Avenger, or some such thing. It was a very different game. Yes, you could run across level 10 content at level 2. You could run across level 2 content at level 15. Going through Vault of the Drow and hitting a Shrieker Random Encounter was good for laughs, even if Violet Fungi was around.

==Aelryinth


I am sick of multiple dump stats in the name of optimization.

When I was DM second edition.....stats were base 10 roll 2d4, assign in any order...


I also second sneak attack being a multiplier!

Sneak attack with a great axe!....a tradition since first edition!


KenderKin wrote:

I am sick of multiple dump stats in the name of optimization.

When I was DM second edition.....stats were base 10 roll 2d4, assign in any order...

That was a complete houserule, though.

The standard method of stat determination was 3d6, which means that the average outcome for any stat was 10.5, so an entirely-average character would be: Str 11 / Dex 10 / Con 11 / Int 10 / Wis 11 / Cha 10.


Yes a character would sometimes have a low stat, and even more rarely two low scores....but two scores intentionally dumped to 7 or 8...... It pains me so much!

Choose a stat array is better than point buy!

Scarab Sages

KenderKin wrote:

Choose a stat array is better than point buy!

I disagree. My preference would be for "controlled" random rolling. The "roll multiple sets of 6 that are glued together but you can choose the best set from when you're through" technique I've seen sometimes is a good move. I've also determined that the ideal answer to "what dice to roll" is actually 1d12+6, since that means every possible score from 7 to 18 is equally probable. Finally, you have some sort of last-ditch "safety net" in case someone gets inexcusably unlucky, which is where a fixed array or humble point-buy allowance can come in (I've also seen "only keep a suite if you've managed to roll at least one 16+," but I don't like that approach as much since it would rule out, for example, an array of 6 14s, which some classes can do just peachy with).


Aelryinth wrote:

No, you could dual class to as many as you qualified for...but that meant a bunch of nat 17+'s.

Bard was actually EASIER to dual-class into, then doing it the usual way. Aye, tells you something about the dual class rules.

I'd forgotten, or never noticed that. With a 15 Dex, you could dual-class from fighter to thief if you were planning on going to bard, but you couldn't otherwise without a 17. Weirdness.

Actually, it might not really be easier, since you needed a bunch of stats - 15 Str,15 Dex, 10 Con, 12 Int, 15 Wis, 15 Cha


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
KenderKin wrote:

Choose a stat array is better than point buy!

I disagree. My preference would be for "controlled" random rolling. The "roll multiple sets of 6 that are glued together but you can choose the best set from when you're through" technique I've seen sometimes is a good move. I've also determined that the ideal answer to "what dice to roll" is actually 1d12+6, since that means every possible score from 7 to 18 is equally probable. Finally, you have some sort of last-ditch "safety net" in case someone gets inexcusably unlucky, which is where a fixed array or humble point-buy allowance can come in (I've also seen "only keep a suite if you've managed to roll at least one 16+," but I don't like that approach as much since it would rule out, for example, an array of 6 14s, which some classes can do just peachy with).

My preference has become: Have everyone roll stats using some standard method, probably 4d6 drop one. Then everyone uses whichever set of stats they like. Somewhat higher that 4d6, but it gets rid of the outlying high and low stat characters. And it's adaptable. You could use 3d6 for a lower powered game or your d12+6 or whatever you wanted.

I like the randomness of the dice rolls in the sense of having to adapt somewhat to the rolls rather than fiddling with point values to get just right, but I don't like the disparity you usually get in power level.


KenderKin wrote:

Yes a character would sometimes have a low stat, and even more rarely two low scores....but two scores intentionally dumped to 7 or 8...... It pains me so much!

Choose a stat array is better than point buy!

Then um... roll stats?

Pathfinder has rules for that yanno. That's certainly not an "old edition rule". Point buy is one option listed, as is an array, as is rolling dice. Point buy tends to be prominent on the boards because PFS uses it (out of necessity; a great many people would cheat if they got to roll at home and everybody had to take their word for it). But personally? I roll my stats. The only time I look at point-buy is when putting together a build skeleton to make a point on the boards (which means I haven't done it since like... two-thirds of the way through the Occult Adventures playtest)

thejeff wrote:

My preference has become: Have everyone roll stats using some standard method, probably 4d6 drop one. Then everyone uses whichever set of stats they like. Somewhat higher that 4d6, but it gets rid of the outlying high and low stat characters. And it's adaptable. You could use 3d6 for a lower powered game or your d12+6 or whatever you wanted.

I like the randomness of the dice rolls in the sense of having to adapt somewhat to the rolls rather than fiddling with point values to get just right, but I don't like the disparity you usually get in power level.

This is close to what I do.

2D6+6 seven times, drop the lowest set, assign as desired. Anybody can use the array of anyone else at the table.

Did create some minor problems when we had a new guy join the table and roll well, so the rest of the group had to tweak their characters a bit, but no big deal. They did that while the new guy was building his character.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

thejeff wrote:
Aelryinth wrote:

No, you could dual class to as many as you qualified for...but that meant a bunch of nat 17+'s.

Bard was actually EASIER to dual-class into, then doing it the usual way. Aye, tells you something about the dual class rules.

I'd forgotten, or never noticed that. With a 15 Dex, you could dual-class from fighter to thief if you were planning on going to bard, but you couldn't otherwise without a 17. Weirdness.

Actually, it might not really be easier, since you needed a bunch of stats - 15 Str,15 Dex, 10 Con, 12 Int, 15 Wis, 15 Cha

Some guy on the Enworlds boards did a statistical analysis of qualifying for classes, and found that your chances of rolling 3d6 6 times and qualifying for Bard were in the neighborhood of 1/10,000.

The paladin and monk were the next worse, I believe, and that was about 1% as I recall.

Technically speaking, the 15 Dex req was for multiclassing half-elves. If you dual class, you have to obey the dual class paradigm, so I'm pretty sure you still needed a 17 Dex to dual class to thief.

==Aelryinth


Aelryinth wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Aelryinth wrote:

No, you could dual class to as many as you qualified for...but that meant a bunch of nat 17+'s.

Bard was actually EASIER to dual-class into, then doing it the usual way. Aye, tells you something about the dual class rules.

I'd forgotten, or never noticed that. With a 15 Dex, you could dual-class from fighter to thief if you were planning on going to bard, but you couldn't otherwise without a 17. Weirdness.

Actually, it might not really be easier, since you needed a bunch of stats - 15 Str,15 Dex, 10 Con, 12 Int, 15 Wis, 15 Cha

Some guy on the Enworlds boards did a statistical analysis of qualifying for classes, and found that your chances of rolling 3d6 6 times and qualifying for Bard were in the neighborhood of 1/10,000.

The paladin and monk were the next worse, I believe, and that was about 1% as I recall.

Technically speaking, the 15 Dex req was for multiclassing half-elves. If you dual class, you have to obey the dual class paradigm, so I'm pretty sure you still needed a 17 Dex to dual class to thief.

Except the bard requirement specifically says 15 Dex. I suppose that could be just to cover the chance your dex had been lowered since you qualified to dual-class to thief, but it's not how I took it.

More likely, the bard rules were written up without really considering how they fit with the rest of the rules. I suspect the half-elf bit is the same, since the entire class description requires you to dual class to get to bard and there isn't any hint that multiclassing qualifies, except that half-elves are allowed and half-elves can't dual class.

The requirements don't say "Must be between 5th level and 8th level fighter and 5th and 9th level thief", but "Bards begin play as fighters and they must remain exclusively fighters until they have achieved at least the 5th level of experience. <snip> they must change their class to that of thieves." Half-elves can't do that.

It's a hack job on an earlier version, probably someone's houserules, that never quite got refitted to work with the actual rules.


thejeff wrote:
The requirements don't say "Must be between 5th level and 8th level fighter and 5th and 9th level thief", but "Bards begin play as fighters and they must remain exclusively fighters until they have achieved at least the 5th level of experience. <snip> they must change their class to that of thieves." Half-elves can't do that.

I always took it to mean, "Half-elves must be on the bard path to temporarily dual class in thief."


Aelryinth wrote:

Level limits generally were not a problem.

The 1E game was basically based around a level 10 paradigm. If you could function at level 10, you could function the whole game.
{. . .}

Problem with this is that the class tables all went WAY beyond 10 -- even Assassin and Druid went into the teens (in Unearthed Arcana, Druid got patched with the weird Heirophant sort-of-prestige-class that restarted the level numbers), and Cleric, Illusionist, and Magic-User went into the high 20s, while spells were also fleshed out (for these classes) to levels requiring caster levels far beyond 10.


UnArcaneElection wrote:
Aelryinth wrote:

Level limits generally were not a problem.

The 1E game was basically based around a level 10 paradigm. If you could function at level 10, you could function the whole game.
{. . .}

Problem with this is that the class tables all went WAY beyond 10 -- even Assassin and Druid went into the teens (in Unearthed Arcana, Druid got patched with the weird Heirophant sort-of-prestige-class that restarted the level numbers), and Cleric, Illusionist, and Magic-User went into the high 20s, while spells were also fleshed out (for these classes) to levels requiring caster levels far beyond 10.

They also didn't end at 10 or even level-whatever. It's theoretically possible to level indefinitely, which is what you saw with most of the Gods listed in Deities & Demigods in 1st Edition.


^Well, that's what I mean, except for Assassin, Bard, Druid, and Monk having their own class-specific hard level limits (although the one for 1st Edition Bard was all the way up at 24). Except that most of the deities in Deities & Demigods had class levels ranging from only mildly epic on down to well within reach of Humans (and sometimes even down into within the level limits of Demi-Humans).

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

You missed the point. I'm well aware that levels went waaaay up.

But the game itself was based around level 10. You could go adventuring with a level 15-20 party as a 7/11 elf, and still contribute solidly. The monsters weren't scaled up like they are in PF. At high levels, your most dangerous enemies tended to be other PC's.

It wasn't until 2E that they really started buffing monsters, and you had to have high levels to fight some of them. OF course, they simply raised the level limits then.

==Aelryinth


kestral287 wrote:
KenderKin wrote:

Yes a character would sometimes have a low stat, and even more rarely two low scores....but two scores intentionally dumped to 7 or 8...... It pains me so much!

Choose a stat array is better than point buy!

(snip)

This is close to what I do.

2D6+6 seven times, drop the lowest set, assign as desired. Anybody can use the array of anyone else at the table.

Did create some minor problems when we had a new guy join the table and roll well, so the rest of the group had to tweak their characters a bit, but no big deal. They did that while the new guy was building his character.

A few times I used the Holy Roller method. The luckiest die roller rolls stats for everyone. You could roll your own, but no one did.

Scarab Sages

Goth Guru wrote:


A few times I used the Holy Roller method. The luckiest die roller rolls stats for everyone. You could roll your own, but no one did.

Interesting. That does require a serious belief in the existence of "luck." Granted, I know someone whose dice rolls are usually SO crappy that it sorely tests my skepticism. For those of you familiar with the boardgame Twilight Imperium, this guy once invaded a neutral planet with what I'm pretty sure was 2 mechanized units and faced off against 1 native ground troop. He LOST.


^I haven't played Twilight Imperium, but that otherwise sounds like me. :-(

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Goth Guru wrote:


A few times I used the Holy Roller method. The luckiest die roller rolls stats for everyone. You could roll your own, but no one did.
Interesting. That does require a serious belief in the existence of "luck." Granted, I know someone whose dice rolls are usually SO crappy that it sorely tests my skepticism.

We had a special house rule, just for me, when it was 'roll 3d6 and suck it up.' If I didn't have a 9 Str, 9 Dex, 9 Int *or* 9 Wis, and therefore couldn't qualify for *any class in the game,* (since Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User and Thief all required a 9 in their 'primary' stat) I was allowed to reroll.

This happened. Twice.


Luck definitely exists; back when my group primarily rolled for stats I'd average around a 12, most people around a 14. One guy in our group rolled 4 18s on 3 separate occasions (4d6k3) during character creation. I'd have called hax, but he rolled them in front of everybody. Even on MY dice (notorious for rolling 1s)...


A long time ago (early 1980s) I developed a technique for spin-stabilizing dice (but still rolling them out of the palm of my hand) to get good rolls in front of everybody. Worked on d6, d8, arguably d12, and definitely not d20 or d4. If I DIDN'T do this, I got bad rolls (also in front of everybody), to the point that 1 DM actually considered letting me use the spin-stabilization trick (which I had just explained and demonstrated to him) for ability score generation rolls.

Dark Archive

chbgraphicarts wrote:
The standard method of stat determination was 3d6, which means that the average outcome for any stat was 10.5, so an entirely-average character would be: Str 11 / Dex 10 / Con 11 / Int 10 / Wis 11 / Cha 10.

Still significantly better then Set's PCs or Cosmo's real life stats.

Dark Archive

UnArcaneElection wrote:
A long time ago (early 1980s) I developed a technique for spin-stabilizing dice (but still rolling them out of the palm of my hand) to get good rolls in front of everybody. Worked on d6

Would you like to take an all expenses trip to Las Vegas with me Rainman, er UnArcane?


Casino dice are cunningly weighted by making the numbers out of something denser than the rest of the plastic dice. Their D6s roll snake eyes more often. The dice in the early box sets, on the other hand, had large as a six numeral ones.


I seem to recall teleport was WAY more dangerous back in the day. While a mishap now is merely 1d10 damage, it used to be a % chance to die.

A spell this game altering should carry some element of risk.


Set wrote:
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Goth Guru wrote:


A few times I used the Holy Roller method. The luckiest die roller rolls stats for everyone. You could roll your own, but no one did.
Interesting. That does require a serious belief in the existence of "luck." Granted, I know someone whose dice rolls are usually SO crappy that it sorely tests my skepticism.

We had a special house rule, just for me, when it was 'roll 3d6 and suck it up.' If I didn't have a 9 Str, 9 Dex, 9 Int *or* 9 Wis, and therefore couldn't qualify for *any class in the game,* (since Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User and Thief all required a 9 in their 'primary' stat) I was allowed to reroll.

This happened. Twice.

Then there's the hypothetical extremes.

1. Str 18, Dex 15, Con 5, Int 18, Wis 18, Cha 18. This is the highest roll possible for a character in 1e, wherein the character is unplayable because its stats are too low.

Specifically, 5 Con was "here or lower you may only be an Illusionist" which required 16 Dex. Thus, despite four 18s, it does not qualify for any classes whatsoever.

2. Str 6, Dex 3, Con 6, Int 6, Wis 9, Cha 6. This is the worst roll possible, for a character to be playable; it was a cleric, though Wisdom under 13 resulted in divine spell failure chances that could not be mitigated. At 9, this was 20%.

So enjoy being AC 14 (because you don't have the strength to carry armour,) plus having a 1/5 chance of botching all your cleric spells. But hey, it's statistically playable. :P

(By changing the position of the 3 and 9, you could get the other core classes; 9 Str / 3 Int = fighter; 9 Dex / 3 Wis = thief; 9 Int / 3 Str = mage; but the cleric out-sillies them all.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

What i miss from the old game.

Red box set = Map Ledger = Everyone who bought the red box set, had the same map ledger. What i notice most when i dug out and re-read the box set. That was a ready nice map ledger.

AD&D = Black and white art work. Was simple, but nice.

2nd ed AD&D = Cleric Sphere. Yes this was destroyed in Forgotten Realms, when they came out with Mystira priest having access to ALL sphere. But, before that God made a difference in what you could really cast, like in Dragonlance.

The other thing i like about 2nd AD&D was the skill Proficiency system, it really made rogue stand out, based on what skill you like, or did not.

Lastly = i miss the Monster manual ecology write up on creatures. It just made them more memorable somehow, more real.


Virtually none. Rules were often vague, poorly written, confusing or just plain stupid- In nearly 30 yrs of RP'ing, I have yet to sit at a table that played strictly RAW/RAI with 1/2nd ed.
-magic items were far more imbalanced AND necessary in those editions than now- items as simple as gauntlets of ogre str could make or break a fighter and if you lacked protect vs posion a botched role made u dead dead....yay
-nothing limited variety like a rule saying I couldn't play a halfling paladin, a dwarf mage or a friggin elven druid
- after a while most classes tended to look the same, ie Joe the fighter wasn't much different than Sam the fighter other than one might use a longsword and the other an axe- there was little else to differentiate the two- at least 3.X and PF have archetypes, feats and traits to further flesh out your guy
-I could prob keep going but this isn't a complaint thread about old school so I'll digress-
Don't misunderstand me- I have a lot of great memories of the old game and had a lot of fun but 3.X and PF are strictly better games and are MUCH improved over the old versions

If I had to pick something it would probably be the "benefit vs risk" of some popular spells like haste and teleport- ie make them less auto picks and more "This will help now but hurt later."

Oh and I would bring back the "Avenger" title from BECMI- anti-paladin sounds so damn stupid to me

Shadow Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Moto Muck wrote:
Rules were often vague, poorly written, confusing or just plain stupid

Not much has changed, then.

Quote:
-magic items were far more imbalanced AND necessary in those editions than now

No.

Quote:
but 3.X and PF are strictly better games and are MUCH improved over the old versions

No.

And this is my 10K post, apparently.


The monk's. D4 open hand damage progression.

I miss those wonderful d4's

251 to 281 of 281 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / 101 Old Edition Rules You'd Bring Back All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules