Obtuse Old School Rules Updated / Converted to PFRPG

[Mirror, Mirror]

Chris Mortika wrote:

We can act like crusty old coots, and complain that in our day, identifying a magic item took a day, and Constitution damage, and (blah blah) uphill, both ways. But in point of fact, some designers somewhere along the line decided that these kinds of challenges -- level loss, or damage from familiars dying, or the aging from haste spells, randomly-rolled wandering monsters interrupting your sleep-- weren't the "fun" parts of the game, and wrote rules designed to focus on the parts of the game that 1st Edition players considered the highlights: monster combat and levelling up.

Yeah...but some of this may actually make half-way decent houserules. And many of the rules lent a certain flavor to the game. Not that the current game is not flavored, but it IS flavored differently.

[Seldriss]

Not to mention that we all know what happens when you remove some rules which don't fit the "Fun" idea...

[Morgen]

Spacelard wrote:

EDIT: And lets really scare people and have Ghosts age people 10-40 years!

Actually, more stuff that deals with the age of your character would be really nice to see. Rules about the passage of time for a good start and then effects that unnaturally age people. Haste would be nice to bring back, but the current effect probably isn't worth a year of life from everyone in a 30' radius. >.>;

Ghosts should age folks, definitely.

[Spacelard]

Chris Mortika wrote:

Spacelard wrote:

Death of your Familiar mean't a world of pain ... Ghosts age people ...pfft people got it easy now!

And that's the take-home note, Spacelard. Neither of those rules makes earlier editions harder to play, or more crunchy to adjudicate. It just makes 1st Edition less convenient and stream-lined.

We can act like crusty old coots, and complain that in our day, identifying a magic item took a day, and Constitution damage, and (blah blah) uphill, both ways. But in point of fact, some designers somewhere along the line decided that these kinds of challenges -- level loss, or damage from familiars dying, or the aging from haste spells, randomly-rolled wandering monsters interrupting your sleep-- weren't the "fun" parts of the game, and wrote rules designed to focus on the parts of the game that 1st Edition players considered the highlights: monster combat and levelling up.

Dunno but I think you may be missing my point (Darn you Interweb!) about what I'm trying to get across. I see some people wanting cake and eat it on various boards and whilst the designers have got rid of some head-aches (aging from Haste which made the spell a bit pointless) a lot of the rule changes have made it easier in my opinion.

Unless you have a TPK even a PC dying isn't much of a downer anymore. Death of a PC in 1ed really mean't something now its just a case of spending 5K on a Raise Dead and a few more to get rid of those pesky negative levels.
Years ago I house ruled that Undead didn't level drained but gave the todays equivalent of negative energy levels with -1 across THAC0, Saves and Level for spell casting.