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2. Award half slow xp
As I said before, advancement at the lower levels was quite fast. One or two nites to make 2nd level.
Mind you, it got progressively more difficult after that.
A good rule of thumb is to take the target level and square it. That is the total number of adventures necessary from a first level start to be complete with that level.
First level lasts a session. To finish up 5th level and just touch 6th will take about 25 sessions. To finish 10th level and just touch 11th will take 100.
And yes, absolutely, NO MAGIC MART. NONE. If the PCs have too much gold on their hands, make life expensive. Thieves. Taxes. Or... luxuries. It's why building castles and maintaining estates was what a high-level adventurer did back then. A 15th level murderhobo was considered a failure.
No early editions of D&D used anything like armor as DR, and my early Pc's were so wealthy that they made Midas cry himself to sleep.
True but reigning in the massive damage of the higher levels has to happen somehow and this definitely makes the toughs tougher while the squishies still have to stay quick.
Reworking the whole hp system and damage system to closer reflect 2e is way too much of a pain.
1. Slow XP progress.
2. No magic mart.
3. Roll for stats.
4. Save or Die for poisons.
5. Nothing but Core.
EDIT:
6. WBL thrown out.
7. The odd encounter above APL.
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When I wrote "no magic mart", I didn't mean magic items are never for sale. There's no catalog though; more like there's an occasional item that pops up in an auction when someone dies with no heirs, or a weird shop with exotic trinkets, one of which is clearly special, or maybe the thieves' guild has a list of which nobles own what...
It's getting away from the "open, transparent market that has everything" that you need to do. That said, there's nothing wrong with potion/scroll shops. Even wands. Consumable items should be more available than others.
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Battle mats and miniatures were how this game started. It evolved out of miniature combat after all. That's why movement rates were measured in inches in the old books.
And yet the combat grid hasn't been anywhere near as firmly embeded in the system since Arneson and Gygax introduced the "alternate" combat system (that quickly became practically everyone's default, to the point where all the supplements and future editions used it with no further references to Chainmail). Until 3.0, that is.
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When I wrote "no magic mart", I didn't mean magic items are never for sale. There's no catalog though; more like there's an occasional item that pops up in an auction when someone dies with no heirs, or a weird shop with exotic trinkets, one of which is clearly special, or maybe the thieves' guild has a list of which nobles own what...
It's getting away from the "open, transparent market that has everything" that you need to do. That said, there's nothing wrong with potion/scroll shops. Even wands. Consumable items should be more available than others.
Total agreement. The big thing about "no magic mart" is that the players cannot assume that any given piece of equipment will be available. This has lots of effects: adventure planning on the player side requires more thought as to what specific activities you undertake, not just firing up your nova. Also, planning your character's progression changes when you can't be sure you'll have any particular piece of equipment when you want it by WBL. You might never see a metamagic rod, for example. Spend the feat if you want the metamagic.
It's bits like this that make play at the table more crucial than designs and builds away from the table. As an added side effect, it lessens the impact of imbalance from, say, poorly rolled stats.
In the end, it's not the sheer mass of power wielded by your PC, it's what you do with it that matters.
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Also, planning your character's progression changes when you can't be sure you'll have any particular piece of equipment when you want it by WBL. You might never see a metamagic rod, for example. Spend the feat if you want the metamagic.
Maybe it's just my roots in pre-d20 editions showing, but that's how I ALWAYS plan a character's progression, even if I do it for these boards. I give them mundane equipment at best, and even then only stuff like a mundane version of the weapon the fighter has specialized in, etc. Because, to my mind, having been raised on Basic D&D and 2E D&D, magic items were something that you found or took from defeated enemies, not something you stood in line for at Ye Olde Magik Shoppe. If you have a vorpal sword, it's because you managed to kill the orc that was swinging it at you before he took your head, not because there was a blue-light special on them.
...Maybe it's just my roots in pre-d20 editions showing, but that's how I ALWAYS plan a character's progression, even if I do it for these boards...
I try to do the same, but I think that is your (and my) roots showing. Alot of the people especially the ones that have only played PF or 3.x make their plans based on specific equipment.
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@Kthulhu:
I've got a soft spot for "organic" build development, rather than pre-planned builds. In an organic build, you don't look ahead for three levels to see what you'll be needing then to qualify for things, but are focused on which feats/classes/skills/spells make sense to learn at the next level, based on what your character's going through right now.
Unfortunately, the game isn't all that supportive of that; long feat chains means that fighters need to plan out their development for example. Feats like Spell Perfection have so many prerequisites that you can't decide to go for it at the last moment.
Similar to that is the tendency to focus on narrowly specialized weapons. If you're really specialized in scimitars, finding a Holy Spear +5 of Flaming Sparkling Awesome is kinda disappointing. You've already invested Weapon Focus, Specialization and Improved Critical(Scimitars).
In my own game I allow people with Craft Magic Arms & Armor to reforge magic weapons into a different base weapon, while keeping all the old enchantments.
...Maybe it's just my roots in pre-d20 editions showing, but that's how I ALWAYS plan a character's progression, even if I do it for these boards...I try to do the same, but I think that is your (and my) roots showing. Alot of the people especially the ones that have only played PF or 3.x make their plans based on specific equipment.
...And then start threads about how Sunder is an under-handed tactic that only the worst sort of player-hating, gotcha DM would ever use. :P
In answer to the OP, if you really want and old school feel to your PF game, I'd do two things. First, download some of the the free version of OSR games, just to remind yourself what old school feel actually means. Second, considering that you've got the PF books, start at first level as written, and have an AAR with your players after each session about what would make it feel more "old school-ey".
Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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My colleagues have done a great job of giving advice on 2E. I think the big key to it is to remember that 2E's strength was always in the storytelling, not necessarily the die-rolling. The rules were somewhat cumbersome, so hand-waving was very common.
Pax Veritas gave some great advice early on that alludes to this - it's about being in the moment and keeping your players' interested in the story/adventure you are telling, and paying less attention to the gear/rules.
Some basic suggestions:
1. Magic is RARE. Magic shops are almost unheard of. Even healing potions are hard to come by. Most magic (85+%) is found, not bought. And NO ONE could make them. Players often had to adjust their tactics based on the gear they found while adventuring. Try to tailor the magic items placed in your adventures to your party's needs.
2. Combat is lethal. Sometimes, running away is the only strategy. Bring back Save or Die spells. Make some encounters more dangerous than others. Ignore CR/EL and create encounters that are interesting based on the PCs' abilities and/or the players' interests. Use unwinnable encounters to foreshadow future storylines.
3. Embrace dialogue! Have your encounters parlay with the PCs rather than simply attack on sight. NPCs should act based on PC actions, not a roll of the dice. Role play the encounters. Only use Diplomacy/Intimidate/Knowledge (Local)/Sense Motive/Bluff and other social skills as a last resort. Players should be encouraged to develop a personality for their characters. Recurring NPCs will become acquainted with each personality and respond to it appropriately.
4. Set the stage. Use your imagination to describe each encounter, each room, each environment so your players respond to it. The environment should feel vibrant to the players.
5. Improvise! If your players take you down a path you didn't anticipate, go with the flow. Use your quick wits to adapt to your players needs. Maybe that red herring is more fun than the encounter you had planned. Be ready to roll with it.
6. Elminate rules that slow down the game. Many rules in 2E were handwaved because they slowed things down. Weapon Speed, Encumbrance, and Spell Components were typically handwaved in the games I played (to some degree, they still are). Don't be afraid to resolve an issue with a single roll of the dice. If you get too bogged down with looking up rules, you may lose the interest of your players. Get a feel for your players' priorities, and do the same for your Pathfinder game.
Overall, if you want an "old school feel" to your game, just play the game. If you and your players focus on the fluff, the crunch will take care of itself.
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While all this talk of throwing out WBL and making magic items hard to acquire is well in keeping with the spirit of older editions, it may be necessary to introduce some more house rules to make it work. Specifically, there should be expensive things to spend your gold on besides magic items.
If you want to disallow Leadership, as I believe you (the OP) mentioned previously, you should probably make hirelings available at some point, and figure out how much they're going to charge based on their class and level. Likewise, PCs should have the opportunity to buy land and other property, and should be encouraged to eventually establish some sort of stronghold for themselves. That was a pretty big part of mid- to high-level play in older editions, and would open up all sorts of new adventure possibilities.
Wine and wenches are all well and good, but when you've just recovered the legendary ten-ton Diamond of Doom, or what have you, it's more fun if you can use it to fund some kind of extravagent vanity project. :P
... Wine and wenches are all well and good, but when you've just recovered the legendary ten-ton Diamond of Doom, or what have you, it's more fun if you can use it to fund some kind of extravagent vanity project. :P
Once had a fellow player spend huge amounts of money hiring several swimmers, caravans, workers, engineers, and builders to haul blocks of cut coral into the desert to build a coral tower hundreds of miles from any water.
Another player hired a whole clan of dwarves to create a mountain keep. Not by building it but by cutting away everything that wasn't the keep. Think Mt Rushmore or Mt Crazy Horse in Nevada.
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Some additional thoughts on how I used to play compared to how I play now... Not sure if any of this is really "old school" vs "new school" or if it is just how my own style has evolved.
Back in the old days all of my higher level characters had some sort of keep or tower or something. In fact my wizard had a special campaign that my GM ran for the construction of his wizard's tower. He was an evil wizard and so the details of that construction are somewhat... unsettling, but it was one of the more enjoyable campaigns I ever ran him through. At the end of that campaign his wizard tower was built, protected, staffed and loaded with all his gear that he had collected but never used.
The closest I have done in Pathfinder to that sort of thing is to have my druid's home forest identified and a place for my druid to call "home". But it's mostly just hand-waved, I never actually built the druid's house, determined which animals would watch over it and all that stuff. I paid attention to every detail back in the old days, including traps, illusions, etc. Now, not so much.
Also, my old school characters rarely, if ever, sold anything. First of all there weren't many places that trafficked in magical doodads, but secondly, I played my characters much more like "real people." For example, I fish. When I upgrade my fishing poles, I don't sell off my old ones. Usually. Every now and then I'll decide I need to de-junk my garage and some old poles might go into a garage sale or be donated to local neighbor kids, but generally speaking upgrading my fly rod means I have a new fly rod, but still have the old ones. Same with my telescopes and other stuff. So most of my old-school characters still have all their stuff. So my wizard has his shiny new magic robe, but the old tattered robe is still hanging in the closet.
Those old school characters also used a lot of consumables compared to my modern characters, and I am the player most likely to use consumables even today. But back then potions, scrolls and one-shot magic items were regular parts of their tactics. In fact our group's characters usually had some cleverly designed dispensers for magic potions or wands. My brother once created a "beer hat" device for drinking potions so that he could have half a dozen potions arranged in a special "helmet" and by pressing a button a potion would drain through a straw into his mouth.
That's maybe one of the most obvious differences between "old school" and today. We went to great lengths and extreme effort to design ways to optimize our characters. Potion dispensers, spring-loaded wand dispensers, special harnesses for multiple weapon sheaths, specially designed backpacks for quick and easy access to items, necklaces with break-away fireball gems...
I have pages of diagrams in my old books of exactly how these devices were designed and worked.
Today you just take "quickdraw" or some other feat and hand-wave all the details.
So maybe that's really the difference between now and then.
The details.
Relying on found treasure can be crippling for a Small-sized PC when everything they take off enemies is sized for Medium creatures -- or can break the suspension of disbelief when they keep killing Medium creatures and finding Small-sized equipment in their armory. Older editions got around this by saying that a Medium shortsword functioned as a Small longsword and a Medium dagger was a Small shortsword. You could do the same thing with bows: Medium shortbow counts as Small longbow. It really only works for swords and bows, but as those were the weapons most often used in old-school games, it shouldn't be much of a problem. (Of course, if no one plays a halfling or gnome, it doesn't matter at all.)
I get a huge kick out of fantasy treasure hoards anyway.
All of the gold ever mined in the history of the human race would fit in a cube about 20 meters on a side.
Your typical fantasy dragon hoard has enough gold to equal a hundred times the actual total of all gold ever mined.
I get a huge kick out of fantasy treasure hoards anyway.
All of the gold ever mined in the history of the human race would fit in a cube about 20 meters on a side.
Your typical fantasy dragon hoard has enough gold to equal a hundred times the actual total of all gold ever mined.
Dwarves are better miners than humans. They've dug deeper and explored more of the underground than we have.
And there's nothing to say that any given fantasy world doesn't just have more gold to start with.
LOL, fantasy dwarves are better miners than humans with PICKS AND HAMMERS. Of course modern mining isn't done that way, and dwarves would be no match for modern mining techniques.
The deepest gold mine in the world is 2.5 miles deep and is so deep that you have to wear protective suits to work in it.
Now, of course fantasy worlds might have more gold. And if so it would be worth less accordingly. In an astonishingly relevant coincidence, there has been almost exactly ten times as much silver mined in human history as gold, so that would be a cube roughly 42m on a side. So if there were that much gold, it would be worth about as much as silver.
Of course that's all assuming some sort of rational economy. You can always say "Heh, dragons! Therefore any amount of gold can be possible with no economic impact!"
I just thought it was something that people might like to know since treasure hoards with mountains of gold and silver coins are so common.
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I get a huge kick out of fantasy treasure hoards anyway.
All of the gold ever mined in the history of the human race would fit in a cube about 20 meters on a side.
Your typical fantasy dragon hoard has enough gold to equal a hundred times the actual total of all gold ever mined.
Interesting, I'd never heard that. Then again, a dragon's hoard typically contains a lot of silver and copper as well, and the gold is in the form of manufactured items, so a big part of the pile is probably empty space in between oddly shaped items heaped together.
No party I've ever heard of has had to transport 171,000 tonnes of gold (the approximate weight of the 20x20 meter cube you mention)... heck, figuring out what to do with one tonne (about 2,200 lbs) of treasure would be an adventure (or more) in and of itself. Taking a quick look at the SRD, you'd need a heavy wagon to get it in one trip... loading it would take some time, especially if the horde is deep in some dungeon. Those things tend to be way out in the middle of nowhere, too, so you'd probably need a skilled driver to negotiate the terrain.
Then, of course, you need to figure out a place to store it. In Golarion, you could probably trust a major temple of Abadar to look after it for you, but in the absence of banks run by Lawful clerics, it'd be hard to find a safe place to hide that much wealth (more than 110,000 gp, and that's assuming there's nothing in the horde besides gold coins). You could spin that into a whole series of adventures, inspired by the likes of Treasure Island or Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
I get a huge kick out of fantasy treasure hoards anyway.
All of the gold ever mined in the history of the human race would fit in a cube about 20 meters on a side.
Your typical fantasy dragon hoard has enough gold to equal a hundred times the actual total of all gold ever mined.
Also:
And really? The typical fantasy dragon hoard is 100 20meter cubes?
That's really, really big. Many football fields stacked 20 meters high.
I generally picture them as big enough for the dragon to sleep on, probably with a good deal of silver mixed in. Which is going to be less than 1 20 meter cube.
LOL, here's a fairly typical dragon hoard illustration (this is from a "The Hobbit" illustration).
I just watched "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" and the hoard in that movie was much, much larger than this one. Large enough that Smaug (a gargantuan creature in PF terms) was sleeping UNDER just one small portion of the hoard.
Not seeing a lot of silver in the mountain of gold that is larger than a gargantuan creature...
But still, judging by the size of Bilbo, less than 20 meters high at the peak and probably not much more than 20 meters wide or long. I'd guess less than 1 20m cube. Certainly not a 100 of them.
In the illustration Bilbo must be closer and therefore appears larger because Smaug was a dragon so large that when he fell he destroyed the ENTIRE TOWN of Esgaroth.
So that pile of gold is hundreds of meters wide and well over 20 meters high, unless that's a much smaller dragon than Smaug is described to be.
Anyway, that's just one dragon hoard out of many hoards. Presumably that's not even a significant fraction of the gold in Middle Earth...
Dragons were clearly introduced to create artificial gold scarcity.
LOL, Iluvatar must have been a Keynesian economist...
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Dragons were clearly introduced to create artificial gold scarcity.LOL, Iluvatar must have been a Keynesian economist...
Actually, Morgoth created the dragons. Iluvatar's kinda "behind the scenes" so I doubt he as providence intended them to exist; most of his "adjustments" are small scale but critical, along the lines of hobbits existing.
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And really? The typical fantasy dragon hoard is 100 20meter cubes?
That's really, really big. Many football fields stacked 20 meters high.
I generally picture them as big enough for the dragon to sleep on, probably with a good deal of silver mixed in. Which is going to be less than 1 20 meter cube.LOL, here's a fairly typical dragon hoard illustration (this is from a "The Hobbit" illustration).
Well, if that's a Hobbit bowing down in front of the pile, I'd guess the pile of gold is about eight meters across and four meters high, in a roughly pyramidal shape. That works out to maybe 67 cubic meters. You'd need more than 100 piles like this to fill a 20-meter cube. LOL indeed.
And his hoard was exceptional. It was the wealth of an entire rich dwarven kingdom.
Moreover, that dwarven kingdom was the site of one of the seven rings of power given to the dwarves, and the last one known to be intact/not in the clutch of Sauron. Their rings increased their wealth in some unspecified way. Spawn gold from more gold? Enable them to extract wealth from ore in a more effective way? Unknown, but it was a doubly-exceptional hoard for that reason.
However "exceptional" the dwarven hoard at Erebor was, it was still a single dragon hoard in a world full of other hoards and other gold.
The point is that treasure hoards in fantasy are so ridiculously exaggerated that if they were real, gold would be cheaper than silver.
Well, except for the ubiquitous "but DRAGONS!" argument...
While all this talk of throwing out WBL and making magic items hard to acquire is well in keeping with the spirit of older editions, it may be necessary to introduce some more house rules to make it work.
Not “hard to acquire”, hard to BUY. Magic was anything but rare. But the Scimitar specializing fighter may have to use that +2 mace instead. However, about 75% of all magic found was potions, scrolls, weapons or armour. Magic daggers were quite common, and note that 50% of all armors found were +2 or greater. +5 swords or armor had a 5% chance.
And with our extra GPs, we bought strongholds.
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However "exceptional" the dwarven hoard at Erebor was, it was still a single dragon hoard in a world full of other hoards and other gold.
The point is that treasure hoards in fantasy are so ridiculously exaggerated that if they were real, gold would be cheaper than silver.
Well, except for the ubiquitous "but DRAGONS!" argument...
Any of those other dragons who'd plundered dwarven kingdoms may have had similar hoards. The ones who stayed back in the mountains didn't.
And that hoard is only completely ridiculous if you accept that Smaug is hundreds of meters long.
Yeah, if the Smaug in that picture is just the size of, say, a tyrannosaur, then it's only as much as all the gold ever mined in the world so far. Not ridiculous at all.
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Six bucks and you're there.
http://www.amazon.com/AD-D-Second-Book-List/lm/N20NEK292S9G
Castles & Crusades plays very much like 1st/2nd edition, except that it is updated with the benefits of 3rd edition/Pathfinder d20 rules (so higher numbers are favorable).
http://www.trolllord.com/cnc/80104.html
Also, you might pick up the Encyclopedia Magica. Those rocked! I got mine on ebay a few years ago (because I had loaned out copies and never got em back).
http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Magica-Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/1560 768428
The hard part about answering your question is that I do not see the point in trying to make Pathfinder RPG to be 2nd Edition. You can play AD&D or Pathfinder RPG or Castles & Crusades; what captures the "feel" is stuff like:
> Classic story motifs, tropes, names i.e. stop the Iron Ring thieves guild, kill the wizard/lich, and NPCs named Ragnor, Balderromp, or Lady Mystriel.
> Classic dungeoneering: altars that move revealing secret passages, magic mouths that chatter riddles, a mountain climb fighting goblins on ledges, pit traps and sliding shafts, caverns in the shape of a toothed maw, etc.
> Classic hamlets, towns with large distances between them filled with wild wilderness and "untamed hexes" to "clear out"
> Hordes of gold that are too heavy to take home
> Villans that recur over several different adventures
> Elves that insult dwarves; dwarves that insult elves
> Calling Wizards "magic users" or calling rogues "thiefs"
> Fast execution of story, setting, adventure... and always with a "denouement" i.e. the "scooby doo ending"
> An informant to dies mid-sentence "The location of the ancient citidel is in the forest of AAaaarrrgh." *arrow strike crit*
I guess this list can go on and on. You can do all of this with any system, and even Pathfinder RPG.
I would add that "ye olde magic shoppe" is straight out. It was faux pas to do such things. Find ways to rid the party of their wealth often, and reward them well with copper and silver!
Maybe even re-introduce the electrum piece!
Have fun!
(Sorry, this stuff may not be what you're looking for though.)
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One note about THACO:
> Using a chart on your character sheet, when a player rolled a number they knew immediately if they "hit".
For example,
-10 -9 -8 -7 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
20 20 20 20 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8
The point being.... every time you went to attack, the LAST thing you were thinking about was mathematics or tactical bonuses. This kept us focused on the story description.
I can recall looking the "DM" quare in the eye and speaking in character, "You will never get away with this, and you must pay for your crimes." *drops d20 on table*
The other players would see the result and begin cheering... there wasn't any delay in the excitement nor thrill. With one glance, for example, I instanty knew that if the number I glanced at was higher than 15 I had hit.
In todays game it sounds like this:
I'm going to use a move action to close with the monster, then use my xyz feat to abc the monster. *rolls d20*
*pause*
*wait*
GM: Did you hit?
Player: I don't know... one sec.
Player: 14...15.... +1 for bless, plus 1 for haste. Oh I get another atack too at my highest attack bonus.
GM: Did you hit?
Player: One sec. 12+1+1+14... I think so. I hit AC31. Did I hit?
GM: YOu swing your sword and..
Player: NO actually I used my xyz feat to abc and so I took a -2 penalty for the abc but got a bonus to the damage.
GM: Did you hit?
Player: AC 31. *pause*
GM: You miss.
Player: No wait! AC 32 I forgot the xyz song the bard sang.
Other Player: Actually that makes it 34.
Player 1: Oh really?
Player 3: Yes, here I'll look it up.
GM: 34 then. okay. You strike the foe mightily and...
Player 4: No that ended 2 rounds ago because the number of rounds is equal to...
Player 3: Here it is on page X. *Begins to read....*
GM: *Zzzzzzz (falls asleep, loses enthusiasm)
The execution of old style (and still relevant today is SPEED, and don't talk about or discuss rules, just keep the game moving, describe and have fun. Keep players thinking about the world, the NPCs, the texture of the dungeon walls, keep them curious, interested...)
When any one player hasn't spoken in a few minutes, suddenly make something up to get that character engaged in the game.
>Salitharus, you hear a scraping sound from behind the wall.
>Gothimir, suddenly a rock crashes down upon you. Make a reflex save!
>All of a sudden, you feel a cold chilling breeze come from the black throne... a green cloud appears to slowly creep toward you. What do you do?
The hoard of Smaug was supposed to be the biggest ever in Middle Earth, with the possible exception of Scatha.
And, not all was gold, and much of that gold was found/hoarded by the use of a Artifact.
The point being.... every time you went to attack, the LAST thing you were thinking about was mathematics or tactical bonuses. This kept us focused on the story description.
I can recall looking the "DM" quare in the eye and speaking in character, "You will never get away with this, and you must pay for your crimes." *drops d20 on table*
The other players would see the result and begin cheering... there wasn't any delay in the excitement nor thrill. With one glance, for example, I instanty knew that if the number I glanced at was higher than 15 I had hit.
In todays game it sounds like this:
I'm going to use a move action to close with the monster, then use my xyz feat to abc the monster. *rolls d20**pause*
*wait*
GM: Did you hit?
Player: I don't know... one sec.
Player: 14...15.... +1 for bless, plus 1 for haste. Oh I get another atack too at my highest attack bonus.
GM: Did you hit?
Player: One sec. 12+1+1+14... I think so. I hit AC31. Did I hit?
GM: YOu swing your sword and..
Player: NO actually I used my xyz feat to abc and so I took a -2 penalty for the abc but got a bonus to the damage.
GM: Did you hit?
Player: AC 31. *pause*
GM: You miss.
Player: No wait! AC 32 I forgot the xyz song the bard sang.
Other Player: Actually that makes it 34.
Player 1: Oh really?
Player 3: Yes, here I'll look it up.
GM: 34 then. okay. You strike the foe mightily and...
Player 4: No that ended 2 rounds ago because the number of rounds is equal to...
Player 3: Here it is on page X. *Begins to read....*
GM: *Zzzzzzz (falls asleep, loses enthusiasm)
Um... Yeah...
There may be more ways to get cumulative buffs now, but we has bards, bless, prayer, chant, higher ground advantages, armor classes that varied depending on the target's facing, and more back in 1e/2e. So I think it's possible to overstate this difference.
On this whole dragon hoard talk, I had an idea. What if the dragon's hoard was cursed/possessed with the spirit of a long dead dragon and it draws in adventurers to add their wealth to it and draws Dragons so that it may devour their soul...think of it kind of like a yellow musk creeper in concept.
The hoard of Smaug was supposed to be the biggest ever in Middle Earth, with the possible exception of Scatha.
And, not all was gold, and much of that gold was found/hoarded by the use of a Artifact.
Reading about the treasure of the Incas and Aztecs- the Spanish took out about 200 tonnes. That's just the Conquistadors. Note that when the Incas ransomed their Emperor, they filled a room 18' by 20' , 8' high with gold. That, when melted down, "only" weighed 11 tonnes.
So, since the worlds gold supply is 171,000 tonnes, that would fill much more than 10000 rooms that size with gold, way bigger than even a Godzilla sized dragon.
Sure, if melted down and compacted it is "only" a cube 75' on a side, but from the pictures, a lot was items, not all melted down into one glob.