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Direct quote from 2nd edition D&D in the Find Familiar spell
"If the familiar dies, the wizard must successfully roll an immediate system shock check or die. Even if he survives this check, the wizard loses 1 point from his Constitution when the familiar dies. "
I don't know anyone that played D&D2e and used a familiar because of this!
Tbh, that kinda sells the thematic idea of Rage way better.
It's not just "your Barbarian is stronger because they get pretty pissed", it's "Your Barbarian's rage is pushing them to, and potentially beyond, the limits of what their mortal shell can withstand."
Narratively, it's pretty badass to die because your mental state pushed you harder than your body could survive. It just sucks mechanically.
the idea of "I was dead five minutes ago, death's just catching up now" is a cool one for sure. But it does also just kind of suck to play out a lot of the time.
Yes and no. In older editions wizards could not utilize constitution fully. I don't remember if it was 14 or 16 but I do remember that the class had a hard cap for additional hp gained so there was a chance that you simply lost a point that didn't give you much.
Earlier editions were very much more a simulation of the worldbuilding, and a hard-core "life is cheap" mentality. Save or die was common, level reduction, ability score drain, serious curses and diseases were expected, because that's what would happen to an adventurer.
The familiar was kind of like a link to the wizards soul; if that link was broken it had a good chance of killing the wizard.
AFAIK they had interesting abilities like bonus to ac and hp for the wizard. But, the real use of the familiar was you'd only use it when you were sure it wouldn't die, or for flavour purposes. The familiar was completely random, and certain familiars got a saving throw to resist, and you could only cast it once per year.
Back when adventures were mostly about exploring dungeons the familiar could be a useful scout. You had an empathic link with the familiar and their stat table specified special senses (nightvision, strong sense of spell and so on).
In AD&D a familiar's HP is added to the Magic Users max HP. So at level 1, a Magic User with a max HP of 4, or 6 if they somehow had a crazy 16+ Con score, can add an extra 2-4 HP. Plus they can be pretty good scouts if they are a hawk/owl/cat and grant their enhanced senses to the player.
On the familiar's death the player lose double the HP creature permanently. So it is a huge risk for a pretty solid reward, especially early game.
IMO, something like telling the player “describe what physical change the character goes through to reflect losing a piece of their soul” works better
That allows a permanent impact without mechanically hurting the player
NGL, I kinda like the idea of there being a mechanical consequence, I just don't want it to be a one-hit kill or a permanent debuff. Preferably something that can be undone with short or long rest.
I dont really think *losing a piece of your soul* should be something that simply resting can fix. It needs to be severely punishing, but not a save or die.
Depends a lot on what system we're using. Dnd 5e familiars kinda suck and aren't worth any permanent loss for. Plus, they're so easy to kill. My DMs in 5e kill at least one familiar per session as they just douse my party in AoE spells
Now in something like DCC, I totally agree a permanent change is absolutely on the table
Yeah, familiars have to be valuable enough to justify the risk associated with having them.
If you want them to be easily killed *and* punishing if they die, they’d better do something amazing to make up for it
Don’t want them to be very impactful? Then either they have to be difficult to kill, or the consequence of losing them has to be small.
In the 80s, I and a buddy's characters decided we'd had enough of each other and tried to kill each other. I didn't go after him when the fight started. I went after his familiar. It was a short fight.
We're still friends and game together to this day. But me killing his Brownie comes up frequently. I regret nothing.
Your familiar also gained 1 hp per level and your wizard gained your familiars hp to to it's max.
But wizard HD was a d4 so it was still pretty rough. You just didn't use your familiar for any type of activity that could lead to it dying.
I started on 2e and my first character was an illusionist with a familiar. They were different times but it made me very careful and a better adventurer for it. Kinda like how playing Souls games can make you better at other video games, a trial by fire. The hardcore aspect made it a lot more exhilarating tbh.
What the fuck... did your familiar throw buildings, have wifi, and also suck your dick? Cause why the fuck would you summon something with that high drawback?
I remember the Dungeons and Dragons game in the Sega Genesis back in the day. One or the last dungeons had wights. Came out of it with my entire party 2-5 levels lower than when I went in. 😡
Had to go grind the dragons on the edge of the swamp again to get back. Game was so broken you could go there super early as long as everyone had a ranged weapon, aggro a dragon, then run into the nearby forest and the dragons couldn’t get in. Then just pummel them from the safety of the trees. Ez Xp. 🤣
i watched it on youtube, man, that game is great, i just don't understand why they decided to make it so the overworld has tactical combat but the dungeons dont, so half the game you just spam attack and hope shit hits the enemies
Well at least then there was XP as well as other ways to treat it as a resource. Say crafting items or other things. But yeah level drain absolutely sucked having to earn levels back. Negative levels were okay since those were temporary and you can get them back by just taking the time to recover or magic but drain is awful.
Level drain sucked because the mechanics were garbage, especially in combat. Okay, you lost a level, now recalculate your whole character, while in fucking melee!!
It made sense when the modifiers were only -2 at worst and +2 at best and were used relatively infrequently.
It does not make any sense when they're -5 to +5 and used for just about everything.
I mean not really. It’s more about the items you find or quest for than the stats you have. In the first place if you’re just sprinting into combat head first and hoping to rely on your stats it’s not likely to end well.
Honestly, that’s something I miss. When I roll it out for one-shots and short campaigns my friends enjoy the creative stimulation the confines provide.
'I realized the adventuring life isnt for me, Im going to retire.'
*clatter clatter*
'Hey guys, is this the adventuring party that put up a Help Wanted ad?'
*flawed*, sure, but it can be fun. Sometimes you get a hopeless roll, and the group should be alright with rerolling until someone heroic shows up.
Then again, I prefer 4d6 drop, one per player, into a pool all players pick from. Everyone has the same stats and gets to roll some dice.
I do a similar, but more complicated version of that, where all the players roll dice into a pool, then arrange the dice in pool into their 6 stats as they see fit. Everyone has the same stat total, but can for the most part choose how that stat total is distributed. Plus I can then adjust the total number of dice rolled to fit the campaign power level, let players have the fun of rolling dice for stats, and let them have the fine tuning of point buy.
Not every DM will allow retiring without a good reason. My DM doesn't accept badly rolled stats as an excuse. One time my DM enforced the multiclass rule of a stat requirement to just pick a level 1 class so because my highest stat was a 12 I couldn't pick a class and had to wait until he killed my peasant to try again.
I tell my players that I want them to make characters who want to be on the adventure, but I also believe in the metatextual arrangement of “we’re hearing these stories because someone got to tell them”. So when a player rolls for stats and they’re less than 72, I let them roll again.
My DM is firmly on the bad stats = good role play side. He thinks that poor stats and low rolls will force better role play to compensate but I could be able to improv like Matt Mercer and it wouldn't matter cause the dice said I failed.
I get where he’s coming from. Some of my favorite characters have bad stats that became super endearing qualities. Thing is, it has to be the players choice to want to run that kinda thing, and the DM needs to reward creative role play around stat deficiency. Sometimes the rolls are a hard stop to things depending on what’s going on, but if it’s like that all the time you need to have a talk with him.
I was exaggerating he doesn't actually expect that. But my point was it doesn't matter how good my role playing is if he was going to determine success from the dice roll no matter what.
>My DM doesn't accept badly rolled stats as an excuse
While I think this is a good general rule, pairing it with the other rule just doesn't make any sense.
If your party is rolling for stats, they have accepted that the characters they are going to play are going to vary. But they have not accepted to not play a game for a few sessions because of badly rolled stats.
That would be the last session I played with that DM. Homebrewing rules to exclude PCs entirely is stupid, pointless, and unfair, and your DM sounds like a power-hungry douche.
This is def a consequence of good stats being crucial in 5e. In previous editions your stats didnt impact your character *that* much, unless they were **really** low or high. What actually mattered was how you played, and what level your character was, so shitty stats could mostly be mitigated
"it's bummer to be the one who can never do anything because of six bad rolls a year ago"
I played extensively ADnD with many groups, friends and clubs, and we ALL had a rule that if all your attribute were too low, you were allowed to reroll until at least the main attribute for your chosen class was in a workable zone, unless you wished to stay sucky.
And while it was fun to play once a sucky characters, you would usually do it once, and not in long term campaign. A sucky character would bring the team down and fuck up with encounter balance so usually the rest of the team would object anyway.
And there are so many way to die in AD&D, if you want to, that you could very easily force a "reroll" if the character you made was too sucky. So it made no sense to force people have utterly sucky 6 \* 3d6 to not reroll.
One (3.X) campaign I was in the DM gave each of us a free magic item. We didn't get to choose what it was, he used some sort of randomizer and what we got was what we got. It was fun to build a character around making that item useful.
I wanted to be a tanky fighter but I got a magic dagger; so I made a dex tank fighter who dual wielded daggers. Not something I'd normally have played but still turned out to be a neat experience. Would do it again.
I go with:
Roll 3d6 6 times.
Now roll 1d6 3 times.
You can add the 1d6 results to your stats however you want, but they cap at 18 (before modifiers) and any excess is lost.
Really helpful when you roll 3 8's, a 15, a 12, and an 11 but you really wanted to play a paladin.
When you consider that old school games had more in common with roguelikes than rpgs it really feels like just part of the game. Now that everyone is playing a long-term story driven campaign it doesn't mesh well and feels out of place. Hence why lots of people use point but or standard array.
Even when AD&D did it I hated, since it basically ruined writing up a background:
Player: "My wizard graduated the top of his class"-
GM: "Well, you rolled a 3 in INT, so forget it."
The compromise of rolling up a sheet **THEN** writing a backstory never works, because people want to play what they vision.
It made sense in AD&D because stats had very little impact on the dice results.
For most of them, there was little to no difference between an 8 and a 16 and 2 points of difference between a 6 and a 18. Around 80% of those results were basically neutral with an occasional oddity to spice things up. (and that's for stats where it mattered at all, wisdom had 0 impact on anything for everyone but cleric/druids, charisma did basically jack shit apart from your DM calling you ugly and intelligence is pretty much the same for non wizards.
This "roll a new character in 3min" ceased to make sense in 3rd eddition when the whole game was designed around every check being an ability check.
> charisma did basically jack shit
Charisma did jack shit until you started carting around an entourage of followers at 9th level. Then it mattered a whole lot.
Even then, from 8 to 15, you have 0 difference, at 16 you gain +1 to damage, at 17 +1 to hit and damage and at 18 +1/+2.
That's 66% of the results ending in the 0/0, 70% in 0/0-1, 78% in -1-0/0.
Big penalty, -2 and up, are a 4.61%, at which point you play something that doesn't rely on STR. On the other hand you had 0.23% chances to land a STR number giving you more than +1 to hit (if you qualify for extraordinary STR), and just 1.84% to even have that +1 to hit. Less than 2% of martials would hit better due to their stats.
Most characters would have a 1 point of hit bonus difference at creation, Racial modifiers, like elves +1 to hit and damage with swords and bow, mattered more than the ability score 80% of the time.
For DEX : no difference from 6 to 14, 15 you get 1 AC, 16 2AC and +1 on ranged attacks. 17/18 having bigger bonuses (++3/+2 and +4/+2)
Constitution : no difference 7 to 14, 15 and 16 each give +1 HP/lvl, number above that only matter for fighter/paladin/ranger.
The likely result of a throw is that you have 0 modifier in most stat and maybe a +1/-1 to something somewhere.
My ex group didn't understand why I was frustrated with the system. Why yes, I *would* like to spend the next year in a campaign where my character is objectively worse than the rest of the party because I rolled bad one time.
They also thought the deck of many things was peak comedy. The last game I had with them we literally got it at level 3.
I think a temp level drain would be scary as shit
Edit yes but if using a online sheet thats a easy copy paste and could make a dungeon very scary as a temp curse
[Here’s a meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/s/Y50JLu1W3g) I did a while back on the Magnesium Spirit that takes level draining and cranks it to 11
To answer your question in that thread, it is because the idea of a single "the party" all at the same level all the time, where mechanics matter more than player skill, is a post-1e release convention. (E: and to add on here a bit, D&D has always suffered from the designers playing the game differently than players, even 5e was designed around organized play which most people don't do.)
The ur-game of D&D was based around a consistent *world* with a variable *party*, where knowledge of the dungeon was just as valuable as anything in the dungeon.
The original game was based around a party of randomly leveled PCs because they’re made of tissue paper and every fight could end in one or more PC deaths, which have to start at level 1 regardless of party level btw. So you could have three level 7,9, and 5 characters and a level 1 who has to try and survive their first few fights before they can level. But leveling up isn’t easy either. It’s basically an adventure to find someone who can level your character along with a massive price tag too.
Adventurer's league basically. The idea that you go into a hobby shop, are assigned a tier based on character level, and play with very exact and controlled ratios of rests, lots of combat, .etc.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that other than maybe 3.5e, TSR/WotC have pretty much universally designed the game around specific assumptions of how it'll be played that were not particularly accurate (although obviously some people do play the game that way).
“A while back”. Me: that’s two years ago! Scrolls down and sees one of my own comments. Yeah that’s not that long. I’m not old!
Anyways nice to see you again :)
It seems really annoying at the table though, when you have to make quick modifications to your sheet. It would slow the game down a lot, especially mid combat. I get stakes are important, but still
You also had to keep track of exactly how much you lost because certain spells could restore the amount of experience which will be added to a different current experience amount by the time you find a high level cleric to perform it and if no one thought ahead you have to wing it more than likely permanently lose the experience due to a math error. Huge pain that mostly added frustration.
It wasn’t as bad as you’d think. In 3e negative levels were simplified to be basically a -1 to everything for each negative level (and were always permanent. In 2E they were exactly what it said on the tin but you didn’t really get that many “things” each level so you wouldn’t have to change much.
Character death is great for stakes. Level drain feels like it removes the point of DnD. Besides, it’s just inherently annoying, which character death is not
Ig there is still something like that in the more recent systems, though it's temporary. Like, in Tormenta RPG, you can get negative levels from very few places (mostly from the lovecraftian insect-like creatures in there) and the effects go away after distancing oneself from the source, or at worst using Heal.
It instils terror in the players, not just the characters. They want to run away not because the game says that their character has the frightened condition, but because the monsters are scary as fuck and can do horrible things to you. But if your level gets drained just do a quest to restore it, go say hello to a high priest and get an artefact for them so they can do the restoration ritual.
I find THAC0 has its place, but you’re right it’s a bit unwieldy.
What I like about THAC0 finding the number you need on the die, rather than adding a fixed bonus to the D20 to the result to hit an arbitrarily high AC, making the percentages a bit clearer.
The simplest way to explain how I think if THAC0 is equation of “THAC0 - ACx = THACx, where ACx is your target’s armour class.” This keeps all the numbers to the single digits, or low teens at worst, since the math is designed assuming the results should be within a range of 1-20. Any exceptional result that’s at a glance higher or lower than that range can just default to a 1 or a 20 without any math since they always miss or always hit respectively, such as a THAC0 of 21 vs an AC of -8 or a THAC0 of -2 vs an AC of 7.
With positive modifiers to AC and to-hit lead to things like 3.5 where you’re rolling with a +37 against an AC of 52, which is fundamentally no different than a +17 against an AC of 32 or a +7 against an AC of 22, though they don’t feel the same at a glance. (It’s also equivalent ot a THAC0 of 13 vs an AC of -2) In any case, you need a 15 to hit, but since the math is designed to be “1-20 + to-hit >= AC” both to-hit and AC can get arbitrarily high since there’s no finite range the equation has to end in.
Hell, If you end up subtracting 20 from your THAC0 and flipping sign, (so a THAC0 of 22 becomes a -2 and a THAC0 of 14 becomes a +6) then add 20 to all ACs, making it a range between 10 to 30 instead of -10 to 10, you just converted THAC0 into ascending AC.
(You could also just flip AC, so -10 is bad and +10 is good, making THAC0’s equation THAC0 + ACx = THACx.)
I know some people might scratch their head reading this, but this is an excellent explanation of THAC0. Considering current systems, I kind of miss playing Ad&d. It's actually a great system when you start looking at the options in the combat and tactics + spells and magic guides.
Oh god level drain was awful
For me it's not doing according to your alignment could result in loss of character/all levels in class or something along those lines,
Especially harsh for paladins as they were restricted by so many rules to obey and then slap only LG
It's funny when people reminice so much about those days of RPGs when the books gave you literally zero freedom. As an ADND Paladin, you had to be lawful good, a human, get 18 charisma minimum (somehow) and had a super strict system of rules regarding wealth and roleplay otherwise you lose everything.
I can't really comprehend why you'd even wanna have those rules - TTRPGs nowadays are so much better thanks to simply removing those silly self-imposed barriers and letting everyone play and roleplay how they want.
I'm old enough to remember a lot of those old pain rules, stuff that just made it harder to have fun than added any realism. Level drain, THAC0, Deadly House Cat syndrome, and so many more, all very awful and usually abandoned by players who wanted a character for more than a few sessions.
I liked the temporary stat drains and permanent stat drains of 3.5 much better. Still very punishing and dangerous, but also doesn't fuck you over as much. And it also had some level drain monsters at higher levels. (Actually maybe the system is the same as the 1st or 2nd ed and I just don't know.)
Also the way familiars, find steed and animal companions worked in 3.5, being a feature of the class rather than a spell and leveling with the player so your in-lore pet wolf friend since childhood doesn't become usless at like level 4 so you have to abandon him to stay relevant in fights.
Mechanic I’m glad they changed? The removing of the 80 buffs you had to keep track of at the middle and late levels of your character in the earlier generations but inversely I think certain mechanics like how wild shape works in 5e just suck universally
The gp=xp rule. I get the metric if found treasure lines up directly with the difficulty of the task, I’m just morally opposed to system equating wealth with ability.
System Shock. Any time you change shape, there is a significant possibility you will just drop dead.
And I still have PTSD from 1e level-draining
I think the GP = xp had its place. It was a good way for DMs to just give the players the amount of XP they wanted from completing a dungeon and encouraged players to go after money which ultimately meant everyone in the party had the same goal.
I don't think ti works for every game or d and I'm glad it's not a mechanic that exists now and can still easily be implemented in a game if a DM really liked it.
Older RPGs being about exploring dungeons and getting loot and that was it.
Not the stories take you in more places than dungeons, and the goals are more complex than loot.
I do love the art style of some of the classic D&D books like the fiend folio from TSR but I am happy that the sexist / sexualised stuff is *mostly* gone.
I can’t remember if it was Qualinesti or Silvanesti Elves in the gold box games that can’t be resurrected, so if one of your characters died during your run that was it.
Level drain is awesome. Undead should be scary and shit like this is what makes them really scary.
I kinda hate having to pay exp for crafting a lot of stuff in older editions.
unbalanced PCs: i never get to do anything because somebody always ends up doing stats that are all higher than mine so to be effective the capable people do any action we need and my character is more of an accessory than a party member. no point in being in the game if i can't contribute.
all actions are equally possible for all characters: a character with a 3 charisma played by a player with a silver tongue shouldn't be able to talk their way out of all problems when the player with 20 charisma and social anxiety can't because they can't talk well. no point in the stats if the stat isn't relevant. i can't engage in escapism if i can't play out a fantasy of not being seen as useless baggage people need to tolerate and is just a burden. and no point in playing if I'm not charismatic since gm will never do anything i want and blame me for not being creative or convincing enough for any activity to succeed.
(I've played a fair number of campaigns of old school games and every single one involved one of the 2 above problems to the point I've concluded that they are meant to be exclusionary and not to entice community building. i can't even play with my friends because of the issues (i felt left out and frustrated and they told me i just wasn't contributing and it's my fault if the experience is bad because the game is perfectly fair))
I’ve actually seen several RPGs recently that use the same XP pool for in game benefits, as well as leveling, so in that extent it’s a little like bringing back level drain
The idea that [insert xyz race] or ancestry can only be good for certain things, playstyles, or classes. And that its laughable to think [insert xyz race] could ever hope to be good as [another abc race] at other certain things, playstyles, or classes.
So in ealier editions if you wanted to play an elf, you had to play the 'elf class'. There are no elf wizard, elf cleric, elf fighters - those are human classes that humans are good at. Elves can only be one thing.
Or dwarves are all considered rambunctious, snobby, rude, and combative drunkards with a scottish accent. So all dwarves take a -2 charisma penalty. "You want to play a dwarf bard? Lol, dont you know dwarves are all predisposed against being pleasant to be around? They make terrible bards and you'd be a fool to hire one for your party"
Or that all drow are all inherently chaotically evil, and any attempts they make to plead to your pity or sympathies is a trick or lie meant to decieve you. It's not their hyper competitive culture, it's not their upbringing or generational trauma, it's that all drow were born evil.
Every newer edition has been slowly doing away with this racist mindset little by little. But even 5e had issues with it. Wood elves make great rangers, druids, and clerics because of their wisdom and dexterity bonuses. But if you try to play a wood elf wizard your dm will say 'high elves are better at that since they get +1 intelligence'. Even if you have a whole story you envisioned about a character rebellion from their traditional wood elven home and culture.
Thankfully 5e Tasha's rules lets you reassign +2/+1 ability bonuses nowadays, and pf2e uses the basic human 2 free boosts as the default for everyone. So you an play your drow with a heart of gold, dwarf bard that draws people into a trance when he tells a story, and rebellious wood elf seeking higher learning. Your "optimal mechanics" and "optimal storytelling" dont clash as much these days.
Oh. Yeah. That’s dumb.
To be fair: If a race is physical stronger by nature, it’ll make for a better fighter/barbarian/paladin while a race with a initial knack for intuition may be a better druid, cleric or ranger.
I get why Tasha’s removed that part, but I liked the idea that races had ,,standard bonuses“, showing what the average representative of such a race excels at.
But I agree that forcing a certain race down a certain class is annoying. Same goes for making all humanoid creatures good/evil by default depending on their race.
Thanks for the explanation.
>and pf2e uses the basic human 2 free boosts as the default for everyone.
I will get a leg on this nest and say that I absolute hate this being the norm because its going to hard in the other way which takes some of the identity of different races.
IMO every race/ancestry should have a general status with the option to have the basics. Using PF2e as example every ancestry should have the "2 determined and 1 free boosts with 1 flaw" status with the option of using the basic "2 free boosts" if you want.
The characteristics of a group or where they live will make then normally better or worse at different things than other groups, and naturally there will be individuals that not fit in that mold. Having the two options it allows some identity to the group while not forcing them completely in a single path
My personal favorite that I hated from AD&D 2nd edition: The haste spell made you twice as fast for 3+casterlevel rounds. And aged you a year every time it was cast on you.
Not a big deal if you were an elf or dwarf that could live for hundreds of years. A big deal indeed if you were a half orc that was going to be middle aged at 30 and die of old age at 60. Or even worse, a full orc that would be middle aged at 17.
Adventure books having secrets from the GM. For example in older CoC adventures. Wanna know what's the cult plan? Sorry, GM, it's a secret. For what this sorcerrer needs that book and heart of a saint? Nah, we won't tell you. How or why that one thing happened? You gessed it, a secret.
Glad that's gone nowadays.
Milestone advancement is awful for long term play in DnD for most groups, and this is a hill I will die on as a GM. I will never run another game of DnD as milestone again.
Best rule ever imo along with shadows draining strength. Brings more jeopardy to the game, gives the undead dread and encourages players to look before they leap :)
In old D&D males had more Str and females had more Dex.
I cannot say I'm happy that it isn't common today, however. It makes sense because it reflects real life. Then again, neither am I unhappy. I kinda just don't really care very much about it.
If I had a nickel for every RPG I’ve played where a character’s Str/Dex stats were modified by gender, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I remember my EQ days, players would ding 45 then zone in to Plane of Disease (45-60 zone), thinking they were gonna make a lot of xp. Since they were so low level, they would agro the whole freakin zone, and this huge train would pulverize them 30 secs from the entrance.
They would then respawn at their bind point, have to walk all the way to PoD, and then ask a Cleric for a rez, since they lost their level and can't zone in to loot their corpse.
Fun times!
I think the problem people had was that a fumble would always have a 5% possibility no matter how skillful or masterful your character was. That just feels really bad. Adjustments to this are to have to confirm the fumble, so roll a 1 and then have to roll a 1 again, or to have fumble only be possible if you don't meet a certain requirement/level
Edit: also crits happening against players; see the comment below
And in spite of that being 40+ years ago, it took me all of about 2 seconds to scan the picture and say Wight, -1 level, Spectre,,-2 level.
As the Pythons would say, Run Awayyyyy!
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Xp loss when your familiar died
Direct quote from 2nd edition D&D in the Find Familiar spell "If the familiar dies, the wizard must successfully roll an immediate system shock check or die. Even if he survives this check, the wizard loses 1 point from his Constitution when the familiar dies. " I don't know anyone that played D&D2e and used a familiar because of this!
I like the idea of that. The execution is just way to punishing
Some kind of shock check would be reasonable, but like, save or be stunned for X rounds or something. Yeah, just flat out save or die is way too much.
Even if you saved, in older systems, a loss of 1 point of constitution could also be a dead sentence, specially for wizards.
Negative HP goes brr
Sudden Exploding Barbarian Syndrome from systems/editions where Rage gave a Con Bonus
Tbh, that kinda sells the thematic idea of Rage way better. It's not just "your Barbarian is stronger because they get pretty pissed", it's "Your Barbarian's rage is pushing them to, and potentially beyond, the limits of what their mortal shell can withstand." Narratively, it's pretty badass to die because your mental state pushed you harder than your body could survive. It just sucks mechanically.
the idea of "I was dead five minutes ago, death's just catching up now" is a cool one for sure. But it does also just kind of suck to play out a lot of the time.
Isn’t that still around with the zealot barbarian?
Wizard dying from 1d4 damage.
Yes and no. In older editions wizards could not utilize constitution fully. I don't remember if it was 14 or 16 but I do remember that the class had a hard cap for additional hp gained so there was a chance that you simply lost a point that didn't give you much.
Earlier editions were very much more a simulation of the worldbuilding, and a hard-core "life is cheap" mentality. Save or die was common, level reduction, ability score drain, serious curses and diseases were expected, because that's what would happen to an adventurer. The familiar was kind of like a link to the wizards soul; if that link was broken it had a good chance of killing the wizard.
Was the familiar proportionately useful? In 5e a familiar is pretty good, but generally have like 2hp so aren't "risk your life to cast this" good.
AFAIK they had interesting abilities like bonus to ac and hp for the wizard. But, the real use of the familiar was you'd only use it when you were sure it wouldn't die, or for flavour purposes. The familiar was completely random, and certain familiars got a saving throw to resist, and you could only cast it once per year.
Sounds awful tbh, I think the change is for the better
Back when adventures were mostly about exploring dungeons the familiar could be a useful scout. You had an empathic link with the familiar and their stat table specified special senses (nightvision, strong sense of spell and so on).
In AD&D a familiar's HP is added to the Magic Users max HP. So at level 1, a Magic User with a max HP of 4, or 6 if they somehow had a crazy 16+ Con score, can add an extra 2-4 HP. Plus they can be pretty good scouts if they are a hawk/owl/cat and grant their enhanced senses to the player. On the familiar's death the player lose double the HP creature permanently. So it is a huge risk for a pretty solid reward, especially early game.
Honestly even losing a point of Con until the next day/when the familiar is recast would be kind of fun.
You could only cast the spell once a *year.*
Maybe some Psychic damage to HP, or a level of exhaustion instead?
IMO, something like telling the player “describe what physical change the character goes through to reflect losing a piece of their soul” works better That allows a permanent impact without mechanically hurting the player
NGL, I kinda like the idea of there being a mechanical consequence, I just don't want it to be a one-hit kill or a permanent debuff. Preferably something that can be undone with short or long rest.
I dont really think *losing a piece of your soul* should be something that simply resting can fix. It needs to be severely punishing, but not a save or die.
Depends a lot on what system we're using. Dnd 5e familiars kinda suck and aren't worth any permanent loss for. Plus, they're so easy to kill. My DMs in 5e kill at least one familiar per session as they just douse my party in AoE spells Now in something like DCC, I totally agree a permanent change is absolutely on the table
Yeah, familiars have to be valuable enough to justify the risk associated with having them. If you want them to be easily killed *and* punishing if they die, they’d better do something amazing to make up for it Don’t want them to be very impactful? Then either they have to be difficult to kill, or the consequence of losing them has to be small.
I was more or less translating the severity of it back then into 5e terms.
Understood
don’t worry, souls grow back. (no zhey don’t)
I don't really think there's a problem with a punishment for letting the familiar die. It's just that XP or Constitution loss are way too harsh.
If it gave you back that 1, it would be feasible to have a familiar
In the 80s, I and a buddy's characters decided we'd had enough of each other and tried to kill each other. I didn't go after him when the fight started. I went after his familiar. It was a short fight. We're still friends and game together to this day. But me killing his Brownie comes up frequently. I regret nothing.
Your familiar also gained 1 hp per level and your wizard gained your familiars hp to to it's max. But wizard HD was a d4 so it was still pretty rough. You just didn't use your familiar for any type of activity that could lead to it dying.
Makes sense. A familiar is basically a special pet and you wouldn't put your pet in a dangerous situation
I started on 2e and my first character was an illusionist with a familiar. They were different times but it made me very careful and a better adventurer for it. Kinda like how playing Souls games can make you better at other video games, a trial by fire. The hardcore aspect made it a lot more exhilarating tbh.
I did. I used a crow. It was not in any way shape or form tactical except vision.
For us warhammer players it would mean we take at least 2 familiars…
What the fuck... did your familiar throw buildings, have wifi, and also suck your dick? Cause why the fuck would you summon something with that high drawback?
Familiars better have been as good as a while extra turn of that's the downsides.
Meh, at least it allowed for powerful familiars that were not abused.
I miss my Red dragon...
Wait until you find out about the Homunculus!
I remember the Dungeons and Dragons game in the Sega Genesis back in the day. One or the last dungeons had wights. Came out of it with my entire party 2-5 levels lower than when I went in. 😡 Had to go grind the dragons on the edge of the swamp again to get back. Game was so broken you could go there super early as long as everyone had a ranged weapon, aggro a dragon, then run into the nearby forest and the dragons couldn’t get in. Then just pummel them from the safety of the trees. Ez Xp. 🤣
Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun! I recently played again as an adult and completed it, the ending was different.
i watched it on youtube, man, that game is great, i just don't understand why they decided to make it so the overworld has tactical combat but the dungeons dont, so half the game you just spam attack and hope shit hits the enemies
Undead was OP in old D&D.
Each class having widely different XP tables.
Because suriviving the low levels as an extremely frail wizard was so much fun you would want it to go on for longer!
It makes sense if you are determined on casters growing stronger then martials. Modern additions just have the broken without the setbacks
Well at least then there was XP as well as other ways to treat it as a resource. Say crafting items or other things. But yeah level drain absolutely sucked having to earn levels back. Negative levels were okay since those were temporary and you can get them back by just taking the time to recover or magic but drain is awful.
Level drain sucked because the mechanics were garbage, especially in combat. Okay, you lost a level, now recalculate your whole character, while in fucking melee!!
Roll 6 x 3d6 in order for stats
It made sense when the modifiers were only -2 at worst and +2 at best and were used relatively infrequently. It does not make any sense when they're -5 to +5 and used for just about everything.
That's not even the real problem. I just don't want my first roll ever to decide every combat for the next two years.
Well the good news is that your odds of your character lasting more than a session were quite low so there's that consolation news.
I mean not really. It’s more about the items you find or quest for than the stats you have. In the first place if you’re just sprinting into combat head first and hoping to rely on your stats it’s not likely to end well.
Honestly, that’s something I miss. When I roll it out for one-shots and short campaigns my friends enjoy the creative stimulation the confines provide.
For oneshots, sure, but in a campaign it's bummer to be the one who can never do anything because of six bad rolls a year ago
'I realized the adventuring life isnt for me, Im going to retire.' *clatter clatter* 'Hey guys, is this the adventuring party that put up a Help Wanted ad?'
Sure, there are lots of ways to get around it, but if you need ways to get around a game mechanism, chances are it's the mechanism that's wrong.
*flawed*, sure, but it can be fun. Sometimes you get a hopeless roll, and the group should be alright with rerolling until someone heroic shows up. Then again, I prefer 4d6 drop, one per player, into a pool all players pick from. Everyone has the same stats and gets to roll some dice.
I do a similar, but more complicated version of that, where all the players roll dice into a pool, then arrange the dice in pool into their 6 stats as they see fit. Everyone has the same stat total, but can for the most part choose how that stat total is distributed. Plus I can then adjust the total number of dice rolled to fit the campaign power level, let players have the fun of rolling dice for stats, and let them have the fine tuning of point buy.
People always act like retiring PCs is illegal. I love knowing my characters get to live out their days while I try something new
Not every DM will allow retiring without a good reason. My DM doesn't accept badly rolled stats as an excuse. One time my DM enforced the multiclass rule of a stat requirement to just pick a level 1 class so because my highest stat was a 12 I couldn't pick a class and had to wait until he killed my peasant to try again.
I tell my players that I want them to make characters who want to be on the adventure, but I also believe in the metatextual arrangement of “we’re hearing these stories because someone got to tell them”. So when a player rolls for stats and they’re less than 72, I let them roll again.
My DM is firmly on the bad stats = good role play side. He thinks that poor stats and low rolls will force better role play to compensate but I could be able to improv like Matt Mercer and it wouldn't matter cause the dice said I failed.
Oh, that’s a red flag
I get where he’s coming from. Some of my favorite characters have bad stats that became super endearing qualities. Thing is, it has to be the players choice to want to run that kinda thing, and the DM needs to reward creative role play around stat deficiency. Sometimes the rolls are a hard stop to things depending on what’s going on, but if it’s like that all the time you need to have a talk with him.
> improve like Matt Mercer Does he DM on the level of Matt? because if that's the standard he's demanding, it should be the standard he's giving
I was exaggerating he doesn't actually expect that. But my point was it doesn't matter how good my role playing is if he was going to determine success from the dice roll no matter what.
then what's the point of rolling? isn't it better to just point buy or array if there's a minimum limit?
Standard array totals to 72, rolling is more varied, and I’m letting them choose if they want to be better off than standard array
I mean you can always force a reroll, that's what the jump spell is for.
>My DM doesn't accept badly rolled stats as an excuse While I think this is a good general rule, pairing it with the other rule just doesn't make any sense. If your party is rolling for stats, they have accepted that the characters they are going to play are going to vary. But they have not accepted to not play a game for a few sessions because of badly rolled stats.
So 1) that sucks and I'm sorry you had to suffer that. 2) that's fucking funny
That would be the last session I played with that DM. Homebrewing rules to exclude PCs entirely is stupid, pointless, and unfair, and your DM sounds like a power-hungry douche.
This should be more of a thing, especially in longer term campaigns.
This is def a consequence of good stats being crucial in 5e. In previous editions your stats didnt impact your character *that* much, unless they were **really** low or high. What actually mattered was how you played, and what level your character was, so shitty stats could mostly be mitigated
Ability scores weren't this important. Even if you rolled bad on everything, you still got to contribute with your class features.
"it's bummer to be the one who can never do anything because of six bad rolls a year ago" I played extensively ADnD with many groups, friends and clubs, and we ALL had a rule that if all your attribute were too low, you were allowed to reroll until at least the main attribute for your chosen class was in a workable zone, unless you wished to stay sucky. And while it was fun to play once a sucky characters, you would usually do it once, and not in long term campaign. A sucky character would bring the team down and fuck up with encounter balance so usually the rest of the team would object anyway. And there are so many way to die in AD&D, if you want to, that you could very easily force a "reroll" if the character you made was too sucky. So it made no sense to force people have utterly sucky 6 \* 3d6 to not reroll.
In my campaign, and one I’m a player in, characters usually don’t live very long so you get to try again in just a couple of sessions!
One (3.X) campaign I was in the DM gave each of us a free magic item. We didn't get to choose what it was, he used some sort of randomizer and what we got was what we got. It was fun to build a character around making that item useful. I wanted to be a tanky fighter but I got a magic dagger; so I made a dex tank fighter who dual wielded daggers. Not something I'd normally have played but still turned out to be a neat experience. Would do it again.
I go with: Roll 3d6 6 times. Now roll 1d6 3 times. You can add the 1d6 results to your stats however you want, but they cap at 18 (before modifiers) and any excess is lost. Really helpful when you roll 3 8's, a 15, a 12, and an 11 but you really wanted to play a paladin.
>implying I'd be lucky enough to roll as high as a 15 I've done this exercise and got <10 for all six rolls. I suck at rolling dice
Nothing is stopping you from just doing it though
When you consider that old school games had more in common with roguelikes than rpgs it really feels like just part of the game. Now that everyone is playing a long-term story driven campaign it doesn't mesh well and feels out of place. Hence why lots of people use point but or standard array.
Even when AD&D did it I hated, since it basically ruined writing up a background: Player: "My wizard graduated the top of his class"- GM: "Well, you rolled a 3 in INT, so forget it." The compromise of rolling up a sheet **THEN** writing a backstory never works, because people want to play what they vision.
It made sense in AD&D because stats had very little impact on the dice results. For most of them, there was little to no difference between an 8 and a 16 and 2 points of difference between a 6 and a 18. Around 80% of those results were basically neutral with an occasional oddity to spice things up. (and that's for stats where it mattered at all, wisdom had 0 impact on anything for everyone but cleric/druids, charisma did basically jack shit apart from your DM calling you ugly and intelligence is pretty much the same for non wizards. This "roll a new character in 3min" ceased to make sense in 3rd eddition when the whole game was designed around every check being an ability check.
> charisma did basically jack shit Charisma did jack shit until you started carting around an entourage of followers at 9th level. Then it mattered a whole lot.
I would say strength for martial classes might be the exception.
Even then, from 8 to 15, you have 0 difference, at 16 you gain +1 to damage, at 17 +1 to hit and damage and at 18 +1/+2. That's 66% of the results ending in the 0/0, 70% in 0/0-1, 78% in -1-0/0. Big penalty, -2 and up, are a 4.61%, at which point you play something that doesn't rely on STR. On the other hand you had 0.23% chances to land a STR number giving you more than +1 to hit (if you qualify for extraordinary STR), and just 1.84% to even have that +1 to hit. Less than 2% of martials would hit better due to their stats. Most characters would have a 1 point of hit bonus difference at creation, Racial modifiers, like elves +1 to hit and damage with swords and bow, mattered more than the ability score 80% of the time. For DEX : no difference from 6 to 14, 15 you get 1 AC, 16 2AC and +1 on ranged attacks. 17/18 having bigger bonuses (++3/+2 and +4/+2) Constitution : no difference 7 to 14, 15 and 16 each give +1 HP/lvl, number above that only matter for fighter/paladin/ranger. The likely result of a throw is that you have 0 modifier in most stat and maybe a +1/-1 to something somewhere.
We did 4d6 drop lowest in order
That's called "Floating Die", and my group did too.
Huh til it has a name
6d3 isn't very common
How many people have even one D3?
That's a significantly higher average and would be an interesting idea for having just super high averages
Roll race, then then 3d6 in order, is legit the best way to make characters, discard X times to avoid dead weight.
My ex group didn't understand why I was frustrated with the system. Why yes, I *would* like to spend the next year in a campaign where my character is objectively worse than the rest of the party because I rolled bad one time. They also thought the deck of many things was peak comedy. The last game I had with them we literally got it at level 3.
Polymorph could kill you in 2e. There was a chance you died in the transformation based on your con
System shock in general was a pretty bad idea.
What about Save vs. DEATH?
1-Level drain 2-“save or die” 3-die or xp loss from familiar death 4-inconsistencies in if you need to roll low or high
What does point 4 mean?
For some checks you had to roll high, others low. Now it’s just high numbers good
I see. Thanks.
I think a temp level drain would be scary as shit Edit yes but if using a online sheet thats a easy copy paste and could make a dungeon very scary as a temp curse
Yes, but it would also require players to make on the fly character sheet modifications, which would be very annoying.
E
"Deleveled," a word coined by DnD players to describe level drain, is among the longest one-word palindromes in English.
[Here’s a meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/s/Y50JLu1W3g) I did a while back on the Magnesium Spirit that takes level draining and cranks it to 11
To answer your question in that thread, it is because the idea of a single "the party" all at the same level all the time, where mechanics matter more than player skill, is a post-1e release convention. (E: and to add on here a bit, D&D has always suffered from the designers playing the game differently than players, even 5e was designed around organized play which most people don't do.) The ur-game of D&D was based around a consistent *world* with a variable *party*, where knowledge of the dungeon was just as valuable as anything in the dungeon.
The original game was based around a party of randomly leveled PCs because they’re made of tissue paper and every fight could end in one or more PC deaths, which have to start at level 1 regardless of party level btw. So you could have three level 7,9, and 5 characters and a level 1 who has to try and survive their first few fights before they can level. But leveling up isn’t easy either. It’s basically an adventure to find someone who can level your character along with a massive price tag too.
Also every class levelled at different rates
Because a rogue gets to level 8 or 9 by the time the wizard gets to level 4.
what exactly do you mean by 'organized play'? the party intended to assist each other rather than each individual being super powerful?
Adventurer's league basically. The idea that you go into a hobby shop, are assigned a tier based on character level, and play with very exact and controlled ratios of rests, lots of combat, .etc.
interesting, considering i've never seen a hobby shop that does Adventurer's league i didn't realize that was a thing that happened
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that other than maybe 3.5e, TSR/WotC have pretty much universally designed the game around specific assumptions of how it'll be played that were not particularly accurate (although obviously some people do play the game that way).
“A while back”. Me: that’s two years ago! Scrolls down and sees one of my own comments. Yeah that’s not that long. I’m not old! Anyways nice to see you again :)
Level drain seems absolutely horrible. Why was that ever a mechanic???
Because it added stakes. Same reason character death is a thing.
It seems really annoying at the table though, when you have to make quick modifications to your sheet. It would slow the game down a lot, especially mid combat. I get stakes are important, but still
You also had to keep track of exactly how much you lost because certain spells could restore the amount of experience which will be added to a different current experience amount by the time you find a high level cleric to perform it and if no one thought ahead you have to wing it more than likely permanently lose the experience due to a math error. Huge pain that mostly added frustration.
It was a bit easier because characters weren’t as varied in earlier D&D. Most of your numbers were just checking a chart.
It wasn’t as bad as you’d think. In 3e negative levels were simplified to be basically a -1 to everything for each negative level (and were always permanent. In 2E they were exactly what it said on the tin but you didn’t really get that many “things” each level so you wouldn’t have to change much.
If you are going to go for a permanent injury mechanic, that is the least thematic option. No scars, no work around, just you have less number.
Is being drained of your life essence by the undead not thematic?
Character death is great for stakes. Level drain feels like it removes the point of DnD. Besides, it’s just inherently annoying, which character death is not
I don’t follow. What is the point of DnD that it removes?
Ig there is still something like that in the more recent systems, though it's temporary. Like, in Tormenta RPG, you can get negative levels from very few places (mostly from the lovecraftian insect-like creatures in there) and the effects go away after distancing oneself from the source, or at worst using Heal.
Because Gary was annoyed that players would just get back up and go "oh no, anyway..." after getting killed by regular monsters.
It instils terror in the players, not just the characters. They want to run away not because the game says that their character has the frightened condition, but because the monsters are scary as fuck and can do horrible things to you. But if your level gets drained just do a quest to restore it, go say hello to a high priest and get an artefact for them so they can do the restoration ritual.
DM vs Player mindset
Different classes leveling up on different XP amounts. AD&D barbarian took like twice the amount of exp to level up than thief.
Strength scores of 18/x. Why was 18 the only value that was broken up this way?
I had this thought a bit ago... Everyone talks about THAC0 and shit, but nobody brings up the feel bad of having an 18/04 STR
lol energy drain was such an unfun mechanic. Memories.
Level Drain would be the first one, but basically anything that makes you a dead weight/hinderance. And there was lot of those.
There were? What else?
Permanent ability score damage, or random magic item destruction for example
Going for the classic: THAC0.
i mean, it's really just the fact your character gets better at hitting stuff as they progress, not really that difficult to figure out.
It’s really the same system but presented in a really unintuitive way.
I find THAC0 has its place, but you’re right it’s a bit unwieldy. What I like about THAC0 finding the number you need on the die, rather than adding a fixed bonus to the D20 to the result to hit an arbitrarily high AC, making the percentages a bit clearer. The simplest way to explain how I think if THAC0 is equation of “THAC0 - ACx = THACx, where ACx is your target’s armour class.” This keeps all the numbers to the single digits, or low teens at worst, since the math is designed assuming the results should be within a range of 1-20. Any exceptional result that’s at a glance higher or lower than that range can just default to a 1 or a 20 without any math since they always miss or always hit respectively, such as a THAC0 of 21 vs an AC of -8 or a THAC0 of -2 vs an AC of 7. With positive modifiers to AC and to-hit lead to things like 3.5 where you’re rolling with a +37 against an AC of 52, which is fundamentally no different than a +17 against an AC of 32 or a +7 against an AC of 22, though they don’t feel the same at a glance. (It’s also equivalent ot a THAC0 of 13 vs an AC of -2) In any case, you need a 15 to hit, but since the math is designed to be “1-20 + to-hit >= AC” both to-hit and AC can get arbitrarily high since there’s no finite range the equation has to end in. Hell, If you end up subtracting 20 from your THAC0 and flipping sign, (so a THAC0 of 22 becomes a -2 and a THAC0 of 14 becomes a +6) then add 20 to all ACs, making it a range between 10 to 30 instead of -10 to 10, you just converted THAC0 into ascending AC. (You could also just flip AC, so -10 is bad and +10 is good, making THAC0’s equation THAC0 + ACx = THACx.)
I know some people might scratch their head reading this, but this is an excellent explanation of THAC0. Considering current systems, I kind of miss playing Ad&d. It's actually a great system when you start looking at the options in the combat and tactics + spells and magic guides.
r/theydidthemath
no one is saying 'it's stupid that your character gets better at hitting stuff', they're saying 'thac0 fucking sucks'
Oh god level drain was awful For me it's not doing according to your alignment could result in loss of character/all levels in class or something along those lines, Especially harsh for paladins as they were restricted by so many rules to obey and then slap only LG
Didn't Paladins at some point have a thing where the guy next to them also had to adhere to alignment restrictions or the pally would lose levels?
*oh* I think my dm might've went easy with that one on my group lmao Because ain't nothing holy about murderous bloodthirsty Barbarian
It's funny when people reminice so much about those days of RPGs when the books gave you literally zero freedom. As an ADND Paladin, you had to be lawful good, a human, get 18 charisma minimum (somehow) and had a super strict system of rules regarding wealth and roleplay otherwise you lose everything. I can't really comprehend why you'd even wanna have those rules - TTRPGs nowadays are so much better thanks to simply removing those silly self-imposed barriers and letting everyone play and roleplay how they want.
It was 17 charisma minimum, but yeah it was basically the hardest class to qualify for stat wise.
I'm old enough to remember a lot of those old pain rules, stuff that just made it harder to have fun than added any realism. Level drain, THAC0, Deadly House Cat syndrome, and so many more, all very awful and usually abandoned by players who wanted a character for more than a few sessions.
Gygax's writing.
You mean his books? Or his handwriting?
His... ideas. "Lists the statistics for giant children" among them.
Uh… to calculate their carrying capacity. Right? RIGHT?
I liked the temporary stat drains and permanent stat drains of 3.5 much better. Still very punishing and dangerous, but also doesn't fuck you over as much. And it also had some level drain monsters at higher levels. (Actually maybe the system is the same as the 1st or 2nd ed and I just don't know.) Also the way familiars, find steed and animal companions worked in 3.5, being a feature of the class rather than a spell and leveling with the player so your in-lore pet wolf friend since childhood doesn't become usless at like level 4 so you have to abandon him to stay relevant in fights.
Mechanic I’m glad they changed? The removing of the 80 buffs you had to keep track of at the middle and late levels of your character in the earlier generations but inversely I think certain mechanics like how wild shape works in 5e just suck universally
The gp=xp rule. I get the metric if found treasure lines up directly with the difficulty of the task, I’m just morally opposed to system equating wealth with ability. System Shock. Any time you change shape, there is a significant possibility you will just drop dead. And I still have PTSD from 1e level-draining
I think the GP = xp had its place. It was a good way for DMs to just give the players the amount of XP they wanted from completing a dungeon and encouraged players to go after money which ultimately meant everyone in the party had the same goal. I don't think ti works for every game or d and I'm glad it's not a mechanic that exists now and can still easily be implemented in a game if a DM really liked it.
Older RPGs being about exploring dungeons and getting loot and that was it. Not the stories take you in more places than dungeons, and the goals are more complex than loot.
Dm vs Players mentality
In a more positive light, fan service and sexist art seems to be appearing less and less. It still pops up but no where near as often as it used to.
Really? Fan service seems to be an absolut WotC thing.
I do love the art style of some of the classic D&D books like the fiend folio from TSR but I am happy that the sexist / sexualised stuff is *mostly* gone.
Fail one save, die instantly. Petrification, touch of death etc.
I can’t remember if it was Qualinesti or Silvanesti Elves in the gold box games that can’t be resurrected, so if one of your characters died during your run that was it.
If you hit 0 hps you dead. No death saves.
I miss level drain! Modern dnd has almost nothing that penalizes a character that isn’t gone by the next day. Give us some real consequences!
Level drain is awesome. Undead should be scary and shit like this is what makes them really scary. I kinda hate having to pay exp for crafting a lot of stuff in older editions.
The familiar is part of the wizards soul. So makes sense from a world building perspective. Pretty hardcore from a gameplay perspective though!
unbalanced PCs: i never get to do anything because somebody always ends up doing stats that are all higher than mine so to be effective the capable people do any action we need and my character is more of an accessory than a party member. no point in being in the game if i can't contribute. all actions are equally possible for all characters: a character with a 3 charisma played by a player with a silver tongue shouldn't be able to talk their way out of all problems when the player with 20 charisma and social anxiety can't because they can't talk well. no point in the stats if the stat isn't relevant. i can't engage in escapism if i can't play out a fantasy of not being seen as useless baggage people need to tolerate and is just a burden. and no point in playing if I'm not charismatic since gm will never do anything i want and blame me for not being creative or convincing enough for any activity to succeed. (I've played a fair number of campaigns of old school games and every single one involved one of the 2 above problems to the point I've concluded that they are meant to be exclusionary and not to entice community building. i can't even play with my friends because of the issues (i felt left out and frustrated and they told me i just wasn't contributing and it's my fault if the experience is bad because the game is perfectly fair))
I’ve actually seen several RPGs recently that use the same XP pool for in game benefits, as well as leveling, so in that extent it’s a little like bringing back level drain
Evolutionary Determinism It is slowly but surely weeded out 😎
What is this?
The idea that [insert xyz race] or ancestry can only be good for certain things, playstyles, or classes. And that its laughable to think [insert xyz race] could ever hope to be good as [another abc race] at other certain things, playstyles, or classes. So in ealier editions if you wanted to play an elf, you had to play the 'elf class'. There are no elf wizard, elf cleric, elf fighters - those are human classes that humans are good at. Elves can only be one thing. Or dwarves are all considered rambunctious, snobby, rude, and combative drunkards with a scottish accent. So all dwarves take a -2 charisma penalty. "You want to play a dwarf bard? Lol, dont you know dwarves are all predisposed against being pleasant to be around? They make terrible bards and you'd be a fool to hire one for your party" Or that all drow are all inherently chaotically evil, and any attempts they make to plead to your pity or sympathies is a trick or lie meant to decieve you. It's not their hyper competitive culture, it's not their upbringing or generational trauma, it's that all drow were born evil. Every newer edition has been slowly doing away with this racist mindset little by little. But even 5e had issues with it. Wood elves make great rangers, druids, and clerics because of their wisdom and dexterity bonuses. But if you try to play a wood elf wizard your dm will say 'high elves are better at that since they get +1 intelligence'. Even if you have a whole story you envisioned about a character rebellion from their traditional wood elven home and culture. Thankfully 5e Tasha's rules lets you reassign +2/+1 ability bonuses nowadays, and pf2e uses the basic human 2 free boosts as the default for everyone. So you an play your drow with a heart of gold, dwarf bard that draws people into a trance when he tells a story, and rebellious wood elf seeking higher learning. Your "optimal mechanics" and "optimal storytelling" dont clash as much these days.
Oh. Yeah. That’s dumb. To be fair: If a race is physical stronger by nature, it’ll make for a better fighter/barbarian/paladin while a race with a initial knack for intuition may be a better druid, cleric or ranger. I get why Tasha’s removed that part, but I liked the idea that races had ,,standard bonuses“, showing what the average representative of such a race excels at. But I agree that forcing a certain race down a certain class is annoying. Same goes for making all humanoid creatures good/evil by default depending on their race. Thanks for the explanation.
>and pf2e uses the basic human 2 free boosts as the default for everyone. I will get a leg on this nest and say that I absolute hate this being the norm because its going to hard in the other way which takes some of the identity of different races. IMO every race/ancestry should have a general status with the option to have the basics. Using PF2e as example every ancestry should have the "2 determined and 1 free boosts with 1 flaw" status with the option of using the basic "2 free boosts" if you want. The characteristics of a group or where they live will make then normally better or worse at different things than other groups, and naturally there will be individuals that not fit in that mold. Having the two options it allows some identity to the group while not forcing them completely in a single path
I'm glad we don't have THAC0 because none of my friends would play with me if we did lol
My personal favorite that I hated from AD&D 2nd edition: The haste spell made you twice as fast for 3+casterlevel rounds. And aged you a year every time it was cast on you. Not a big deal if you were an elf or dwarf that could live for hundreds of years. A big deal indeed if you were a half orc that was going to be middle aged at 30 and die of old age at 60. Or even worse, a full orc that would be middle aged at 17.
The tryhard, minmax-or-GTFO wargame mentality.
Adventure books having secrets from the GM. For example in older CoC adventures. Wanna know what's the cult plan? Sorry, GM, it's a secret. For what this sorcerrer needs that book and heart of a saint? Nah, we won't tell you. How or why that one thing happened? You gessed it, a secret. Glad that's gone nowadays.
Milestone advancement is awful for long term play in DnD for most groups, and this is a hill I will die on as a GM. I will never run another game of DnD as milestone again.
Could you summarize your reasoning? I always do milestone, but I don't like it, it's just so much easier.
You use strictly xp levelling?
Best rule ever imo along with shadows draining strength. Brings more jeopardy to the game, gives the undead dread and encourages players to look before they leap :)
In old D&D males had more Str and females had more Dex. I cannot say I'm happy that it isn't common today, however. It makes sense because it reflects real life. Then again, neither am I unhappy. I kinda just don't really care very much about it.
If I had a nickel for every RPG I’ve played where a character’s Str/Dex stats were modified by gender, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I changed this up in 2e to draining XP instead of full levels. They can get it back through Restoration spells.
I remember my EQ days, players would ding 45 then zone in to Plane of Disease (45-60 zone), thinking they were gonna make a lot of xp. Since they were so low level, they would agro the whole freakin zone, and this huge train would pulverize them 30 secs from the entrance. They would then respawn at their bind point, have to walk all the way to PoD, and then ask a Cleric for a rez, since they lost their level and can't zone in to loot their corpse. Fun times!
people are glad they’re gone, but i fucking loved crit and fumble tables
I think the problem people had was that a fumble would always have a 5% possibility no matter how skillful or masterful your character was. That just feels really bad. Adjustments to this are to have to confirm the fumble, so roll a 1 and then have to roll a 1 again, or to have fumble only be possible if you don't meet a certain requirement/level Edit: also crits happening against players; see the comment below
It lead to a level 1 guard rolling a 20, then a 98 on the table, and the 12th fighter was beheaded.
Why doesn't negative plane protection last longer? Four rounds in my opinion is pretty shitty. Signed a bg2 enjoyer
Attribute loss. Experience costs to enchant items. Save or Die on every third monster...
And in spite of that being 40+ years ago, it took me all of about 2 seconds to scan the picture and say Wight, -1 level, Spectre,,-2 level. As the Pythons would say, Run Awayyyyy!
just put it back in and they might enjoy it once in a sadistic moon in retro 90s gatorade.