Thoughts on the Gygax's AD&D (1E)

[DSMatticus]

Swordslinger - that trascension you refer to is a matter of scale of action. A level 1 wizard kills a handful of goblins at a time. A level 20 wizard flat out destroys armies at a time.

If you are in fact pointing out that 3.5 handles this transition poorly, you are correct. But 4e handles this transition by removing it - a level 30 character is a level 1 character with bigger numbers. And that's just weird (and boring), that the highest tier of achievement in 4e has not picked any truly new abilities or scopes of power in those 29 levels.

That said, if you go back to pre-3.0 editions, they had realm management rules. That worked, were fun, and people used them. So I literally don't know where you get the idea that it's impossible to have good realm management rules. Is it hard in 3.5? Yes. 3.5, much like 4e, went in a wrong direction. The only thing 3.5 genuinely got right was, "we really, really need to make these crazy ass rules simpler." 3.5 blew the chance to have a lot of good, meaningful management rules with bad high-level design. Older editions had less of those problems.

[RadiantPhoenix]

This page on the WotC website suggests that some playtesting for 3e was done at level 15: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/3E_Group_0100_M.asp

However I could find no other mention of high level things being tested.
It is also mentioned that the paladin and monk multiclassing restrictions were added because they thought the classes had too many abilities.

[tzor]

So, I read some of the AD&D rules and came across this:
[Steps of combat]...

3. Determine Initiative (d6, highest result is the winner, each
party acts in the segment indicated by the other party’s die
roll)

But it gets complicated; initative is only one layer in the ordering onion that is AD&D (1E)

The speed factor of a weapon also determines when the weapon strikes during the course of the round with respect to opponents who are engaged in activity other than striking blows. Thus, suppose side A, which has achieved initative (action) for the round, has a magic-user engaged in casting a spell. Compare the speed factor of the weapon with the number of segments which the spell will require to cast to determine if the spell of the weapon will be cast/strike first, subtracting the loosing die roll on the iniatitive roll from the weapon factor and treating negative results as positive. Example a sword with a factor of 5 (broad or long) is being used by an opponent of a magic-user attempting to cast a fireball spell (3 segment casting time). If the sword wielding attacker was represented by a losing initative roll of 1, the spell will be cast prior to the sword blow. A 2 will indicate that the spell and the blow are completed simultaneously. A 3-5 will indicate that the blow has a chance of striking (if a successful "to hit" roll is made) before the spell is cast, arriving either as the spell has begun or during the first segment of its casting.

This is one of those little hidden gems of 1E. Normally daggers, suck. In 1E, a dagger with a speed factor of 2 can really annoy a magic-user. The speed factor of a fist (monk) is 1. A successful hit interrupts a spell (DMG pg. 65).

[mean_liar]

...Realm Management is in fact a backstory activity and one that's trivial by the time you do it.

...

The game will just never turn into Kings and Castles, because both are defunct when you're high enough in level to afford them.

This is a failure of the 3e game. Pimping it as a feature is not a good way to address it's troubles.

[Blicero]

This page on the WotC website suggests that some playtesting for 3e was done at level 15: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/3E_Group_0100_M.asp

However I could find no other mention of high level things being tested.
It is also mentioned that the paladin and monk multiclassing restrictions were added because they thought the classes had too many abilities.

I've read articles on WotC's website that chronicled playtests of >10th level. However, the tactics used by all were extremely pathetic: Clerics as curebots, wizards using almost nothing but blasting spells, etc. The monsters were run in a similar manner, with dragons landing and meleeing exclusively, demons ignoring their spelllikes to melee, etc.

[RadiantPhoenix]

You know, that explains a lot. The 'harpy archer' problem seems to indicate they still haven't fixed that sort of shortsightedness, even though it's been over a decade.

[CCarter]

But it gets complicated; initative is only one layer in the ordering onion that is AD&D (1E)

Somewhere compiled and (tried to) explain the onion here...
http://members.cox.net/dmprata/ADDICT.pdf

To see it is to go mad. I think if anyone ever said anything good about 1E they'll repent it here, like I repented on GURPS after seeing GURPS Vehicles.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I wouldn't say they're awful; they seem approximately comparable to the 3.5 grappling rules in complexity; that document is a really in-depth, all inclusive, footnoted description, with examples. It would probably also be about half the size without footnotes, another halving without the long example, and another halving if you took out the step by step examples.

3e initiative is definitely simpler to understand, being capable of being summarized in a sentence or two compared to a page or two, but it almost completely removes the spellcaster's vulnerability to having their spells disrupted, and removes most of the benefit of better initiative in later rounds.

[Doom]

But it gets complicated; initative is only one layer in the ordering onion that is AD&D (1E)

Somewhere compiled and (tried to) explain the onion here...
http://members.cox.net/dmprata/ADDICT.pdf

To see it is to go mad. I think if anyone ever said anything good about 1E they'll repent it here, like I repented on GURPS after seeing GURPS Vehicles.

That's an amazing example of the rules, but I don't think to see it is to go mad.

It's a good demonstration of how even a 'simple' rules set can still lead to quite a bit of calculation. The 4e designers should have taken it to heart as a maximum amount of combat rules there should be.

[Swordslinger]

This is a failure of the 3e game. Pimping it as a feature is not a good way to address it's troubles.

Because it is a feature if you like that sort of thing. When you're playing superhero games, it is a feature that Superman, the Hulk and Iron Man are beyond mortal armies.

People want to go throw down and take down mortal armies. But it also means that Superman is never going to be a general or a king, because the common people are meaningless to him.

If you want armies to matter, then numbers have to be able to kill heroes. You can no longer play superhero style and have to make heroes a lot more mortal. And that removing the feature of heroes blowing up entire armies.

If you're fighting against the Juggernaut and Magneto nobody wants to the be the army general commanding the damn tanks, everyone wants to be Wolverine or Gambit or someone who isn't just a trivial speed bump.

That said, if you go back to pre-3.0 editions, they had realm management rules. That worked, were fun, and people used them. So I literally don't know where you get the idea that it's impossible to have good realm management rules. Is it hard in 3.5? Yes. 3.5, much like 4e, went in a wrong direction. The only thing 3.5 genuinely got right was, "we really, really need to make these crazy ass rules simpler." 3.5 blew the chance to have a lot of good, meaningful management rules with bad high-level design. Older editions had less of those problems.

They had them, but at the same time they were also pointless. In pre-3E it was sort of acceptable since gold was useless, and it amounted to just pimping out your kingdom. It still didn't make armies particularly useful or really offers a system that you care about.

Mostly because the kingdom minigame inherently is going to be underdeveloped. The DM probably doens't know how many soldiers each kingdom has on reserve or may not have mapped every mid level wizard in a given city. It's really not known opposition you'll face when you launch an army assault, and in the end it ends up being just DM fiat.

I just really don't see the point. At the point you move to a true strategic level where armies matter, you're playing civilization not D&D.

[icyshadowlord]

This reminded me of that god-awful Pathfinder Adventure Path, Kingmaker. The kingdom management rules were not only confusing, but also TOTAL BULLSHIT. In the end, we just tossed the rules out the window and just said "Fuck that shit, you just own a kingdom but you're still gonna adventure around." And that led to a new problem: "Why can't I just send the army to deal with this shit?"

So, yeah. Nothing new in that story of mine.

[Ravengm]

This page on the WotC website suggests that some playtesting for 3e was done at level 15: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/3E_Group_0100_M.asp

However I could find no other mention of high level things being tested.
It is also mentioned that the paladin and monk multiclassing restrictions were added because they thought the classes had too many abilities.

I've read articles on WotC's website that chronicled playtests of >10th level. However, the tactics used by all were extremely pathetic: Clerics as curebots, wizards using almost nothing but blasting spells, etc. The monsters were run in a similar manner, with dragons landing and meleeing exclusively, demons ignoring their spelllikes to melee, etc.

If you read the bios on that link, it seems most/all of the testers were predisposed to thinking that way. They basically consisted of people that DMed a lot (no PC documentation) or players that "[specialise] in playing dwarfs and fighters with subnormal intelligence though superb fighting skills."

So it sounds like a bunch of Dwarven Fighters and the occasional healbot, without much depth into the spellcasting lists. Which explains why there's a lot that went unnoticed, really.

[Swordslinger]

This reminded me of that god-awful Pathfinder Adventure Path, Kingmaker. The kingdom management rules were not only confusing, but also TOTAL BULLSHIT. In the end, we just tossed the rules out the window and just said "Fuck that shit, you just own a kingdom but you're still gonna adventure around." And that led to a new problem: "Why can't I just send the army to deal with this shit?"

Yeah, pretty much sounds like every game I've played.

It's actually why the superhero nature of the game can be good, in that you can rule a kingdom as a backstory without even caring much about the army because the army sucks.

[hyzmarca]

This reminded me of that god-awful Pathfinder Adventure Path, Kingmaker. The kingdom management rules were not only confusing, but also TOTAL BULLSHIT. In the end, we just tossed the rules out the window and just said "Fuck that shit, you just own a kingdom but you're still gonna adventure around." And that led to a new problem: "Why can't I just send the army to deal with this shit?"

So, yeah. Nothing new in that story of mine.

The answer to that question is that you are sending your army to deal with it; they're right behind you. There are plenty of historical and literary kings who led from the front.

It's perfectly reasonable for you to grab a few hundred soldiers and leave your kingdom for a couple of decades because the brother of a friend of a friend was cuckolded by an exiled prince with the help of a love goddess.

There is also the issue of logistics. Armies move on their stomachs, and they do so slowly. Controlling thousands of infantrymen on a march is like controlling a herd of elephants. It's tedious and time consuming and if you don't do it right you'll be crushed. Even without gear, an army will move more slowly than a small team. But they will have gear and that'll slow them down even more. And they will have a supply train that'll slow them down even more because they'll all die if they outrun it. And since this a faux-medieval iron-age-esque society they'll also have their wives and their children with them, who'll slow them down even more. And the cooks and the armorers, and the tailors, and the smiths, and all the men you need to keep an army working in the field. And whores, of course, lots and lots and lots of whores.


Between the army itself, their logistics train, and the camp followers civilian contractors necessary to run a functioning army, you'll move a lot faster just deploying a small commando team. In this case a small commando team means your party, since its hard to find people with your level of experience and training.

That doesn't mean you can't use your army. You certainly can. It just means that you're going to save them for the really big stuff like conquering nearby kingdoms.

[Swordslinger]

There is also the issue of logistics. Armies move on their stomachs, and they do so slowly. Controlling thousands of infantrymen on a march is like controlling a herd of elephants. It's tedious and time consuming and if you don't do it right you'll be crushed. Even without gear, an army will move more slowly than a small team.

This is exactly why armies suck in D&D. They're highly immobile and unlike in the real world the general can actually just totally kick the crap out of the army singlehandedly. He doesn't even need them.

If you have an army of fantastic creatures, like purple worms or dragons, then it starts to make sense why you'd even want an army.

[hyzmarca]

There is also the issue of logistics. Armies move on their stomachs, and they do so slowly. Controlling thousands of infantrymen on a march is like controlling a herd of elephants. It's tedious and time consuming and if you don't do it right you'll be crushed. Even without gear, an army will move more slowly than a small team.

This is exactly why armies suck in D&D. They're highly immobile and unlike in the real world the general can actually just totally kick the crap out of the army singlehandedly. He doesn't even need them.

Quantity has a quality of its own. If you have, say, a cavalry unit of 1000 men, you can expect to roll about 50 natural 20s per attack and can move rather quickly. You are limited in range as you can't get too far from your supply train and the main army, but its usually good enough. Assuming that they're all using light crossbows and have no other modifiers that's an average of 165 damage against any character. That'll kill level 20 Wizard (and then some).

The death of a thousand crossbow bolts is a very real problem even for high level characters. A sizable army can crush gods under the weight of their countless natural 20s. With wizards to provide logistical support, an army can be extremely effective. Fighting high level blasting wizards is a lot like the early ages of gunpowder warfare. You stand your ground and pretend like the guys beside you aren't dying horribly and shoot as fast as you can. Its brutal and messy, but it works. Small groups of high level wizards just don't have the rate of fire to take out that many bowmen (assuming that they don't bunch up) before being turned into pincushions.



Magical creatures have their places as well, of course, but they're specialized units. Anybody who is anybody is going to have an air force for obvious reasons. Air power is just that much better than ground power, and this would be quite obvious in any world where a nobleman can seriously provide his knights with griffins as mounts instead of horses.


Dragons are great because they can prodive recon. Dragons are great because they can kill other dragons, and dragons are great because they can drop rocks on the enemy (and those rocks can be enchanted to do nasty things) from ten thousand feet in the air. But any dragon young enough to seriously consider serving in your air force is still vulnerable to the death of a thousand arrows (and great wyrms would still be plastered by 10,000). But while getting in a melee with an entire army is probably stupid, he can strike from a distance with impunity, which is why you need interceptors.

If your enemy has bombers and you don't have interceptors there is little that you can do but hope he doesn't have enough bombers to destroy you before you overrun him (which is a very real possibility). But every dragon you have serving as an interceptor is one that isn't blowing up the enemy. So its a catch 22 and air power between relatively even foes is a wash.

You need air power to survive once you hit the big leagues but air power alone is not nearly enough. Of course, once you hit the level that you need an airforce you'll probably have a cadre of wizard/engineers building airships for you. Those make superior strategic bombers compared to dragons.

[Wrathzog]

I'm so glad I get to have all these arguments we just had in the other thread.

Assuming that they're all using light crossbows and have no other modifiers that's an average of 165 damage against any character. That'll kill level 20 Wizard (and then some).

I hate to play devil's advocate about this, but Wind Wall should be something that an Army Killer Wizard is packing and it simply negates stuff like this. You just need to pack enough scrolls to let you drop your load on the enemy army and then you fly away.
The other killer for Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts is simple Damage Reduction. Once you hit that threshold of "You can never hurt me ever ever never," things start getting very trivial...

But none of this matters because the real importance of having a LOT OF DUDES is to simply have A LOT OF DUDES. While the enemy War Wizard is running around roasting a thousand dudes a day, the other 49,000 are running past him to pillage your country's undefended resources. While he's wasting time trying to chase down and kill scattered Cavalry units, you have brigades of Infantry torching the Capital.
Wizards bring a lot of power to the battlefield, no one will argue that, but they can only bring that power to one point. That is their biggest weakness and it's one that is exploitable as far as winning a war is concerned.

The other problem with having Wizards and Dragons and what-have-you is that they're fucking expensive to hire and maintain. Feeding Wizards takes Gold, Magic Crystals, and occasionally Virgins. Dragons require literal tons of treasure.
They're also capricious, so if you do not have a reliable system to maintain control of your high-power assets, they are useless at best and a threat to national security at worst. I hope you have enough Gold, Gems, and Magical Items to keep the Dragon happy, because he's liable to start burninating the countryside/peasants if he don't get paid.
That is bad.

[Swordslinger]

Quantity has a quality of its own. If you have, say, a cavalry unit of 1000 men, you can expect to roll about 50 natural 20s per attack and can move rather quickly. You are limited in range as you can't get too far from your supply train and the main army, but its usually good enough. Assuming that they're all using light crossbows and have no other modifiers that's an average of 165 damage against any character. That'll kill level 20 Wizard (and then some).

This assumes that your wizard is an idiot and chooses to engage the army on an open field and without invisibility, fog cloud or protection from arrows.

Besides, you don't fight an army on their terms, you fight them with guerrilla warfare, going into their camps at night, murdering people with fireballs then teleporting away before they can rally into sufficient numbers to hurt you. Armies natural sluggishness at moving makes them perfect targets for this sort of thing, and even if they do manage to get to your wizards tower, you can still teleport with all your valuables in a bag of holding and not lose a heck of a lot besides the tower. Meanwhile the army knows you can teleport back constantly and keep harassing them until they're all dead.

High level heroes are great because they don't suffer any attrition or maintenance costs. Feeding an army is expensive, as they die, your army gets weaker. With heroes you won't actually lose any in your guerrilla raids, and they get their spells back the next day and return at full strength, while the strength of the army is constantly falling. Every day of the army's advance, they're taking losses, losses, losses.

And that assumes an open plain in ideal conditions. Put the battle anywhere else, like an underground fortress or a forest, and the army becomes even weaker, even if you do attack them as a whole.

Against magical beasts, armies generally can't do anything if the monster have DR 10 or better. I don't care how many thousand archers there are, bring out one stone golem, and they're all dead. They can't even scratch the thing unless they happened to have adamantine arrows (yeah, right).

[DSMatticus]

Dragons don't care about arrows, because big dragons have DR. Spellcasters don't care about arrows, because they can make themself magically immune to arrows or give themselves DR. And neither cares about arrows because they can fly and bombard from beyond the range of an arrow fired straight up.

There is no army of people with crossbows that can pose a threat to high-level wizards, and very few to dragons.

[hyzmarca]

Except that DR doesn't exist in 1st edition. Weak-ass characters can always get golden bbs.

Guerrilla attacks are dangerous, especially aided by teleportation, but a well-designed combined arms force will expect such tactics and take measures to counter them. There is a big difference between rallying to attack someone is is in the middle of your camp and marching half way across the continent. The former can be done rather quickly. And it only takes one lucky hit to break the wizard's concentration for the first time, and then you've got a death spiral where he can't get off any spells because he's too busy being shot and stabbed.


The 1st edition Battlemaster rules do favor hit&run wizards up to a point, but they eventually get ground down. Logistical support is a far superior role for spellcasters.

And neither cares about arrows because they can fly and bombard from beyond the range of an arrow fired straight up.

Any competent combined arms force is going to have CAP. Without CAP they are vulnerbable to attacks from the air. They won't be that vulnerable, though. Very few offensive spells work at such ranges and those that do tend to be too high level to cast often.

[Lokathor]

You guys are talking about all this teleporting, but in 2e, and I assume 1e as well, there's a fair chance of teleporting high or low every time you use the spell, particularly if you're teleporting to places you're not completely familiar with. If you land above where you want you fall and take some dice of damage (big deal in 1e, cause you don't have many HP to spare as a wizard), and if you land below where you want then you die instantly.

The moderate to fair chance of terrible harm or instant death every time you teleport to any place except those that you're completely familiar with seems to put quite a crimp in these plans.

[Blasted]

teleporting into a forest is especially fun

[DSMatticus]

Ahh, yes, 1st/2nd are more favorable to chumps slaughtering legends en masse. I don't actually know early addition weapon ranges, but I think we can agree that volleying thousands of arrows/bolts straight up is a bad idea, and I'm pretty sure even medium level spells outrange them, should they engage in the suicidal tactic of volleying a target directly above them. And there were still spells that just flat-out stopped arrows. Flying things, especially wizards, are bombers. Infantry, even ones with bows, die to them. Quickly. And without any real risk to the flier.

[PoliteNewb]

I don't actually know early addition weapon ranges, but I think we can agree that volleying thousands of arrows/bolts straight up is a bad idea, and I'm pretty sure even medium level spells outrange them, should they engage in the suicidal tactic of volleying a target directly above them.

Longbows had a medium range of 14" and a long range of 21"...Fireball, by comparison, had a range of 10" + 1"/lvl...so you had to be 12th level to outrange an archer completely (though you were out of medium range at 5th when you picked it up).

Here's the thing, though...Fireball is actually one of the longest-ranged spells out there. Most SoD's, especially area effects, had a much shorter range, often fixed (no matter how high level you were, you were within killing range). Hold Person? 12" fixed. Cloudkill? 1" fixed. Hold Monster? 1/2" per lvl. Death Spell (which is a great army killer, in general...4-80 creatures under 2 HD just plain die, no save)? 1" per lvl.

tl;dr it was actually pretty hard for wizards to outrange archers, back in the day. Of course, this didn't always matter (see below).

And there were still spells that just flat-out stopped arrows. Flying things, especially wizards, are bombers. Infantry, even ones with bows, die to them. Quickly. And without any real risk to the flier.

This is largely true, if the wizard is high-level and had some decent protections. Just Protection from Normal Missiles (3rd lvl spell) shuts down normal archers (though you're still vulnerable to siege weapons, spells, magic devices, and magic arrows). If the enemy had any magical fire support though, you were probably making yourself a very tempting target for a lot of nasty shit.

It is probably worth noting that in 1E, Magic-users and Illusionists were separate classes with separate spell lists...and M-U's had the powerful area effects, while Illusionists had Improved Invisibility, but neither had both.

[Blasted]

Keep in mind that given costs supplied in the DMG, hiring a wizard will cost you 100g/level (as opposed to an archer which is 4g). Although there are 500 peasants per magic-user (depending on location, DM fellatio, etc.), It would be reasonable then to expect any army of note to include a plethora of magic users, clerics and TBH I'd totally expect friendly creatures as well. For instance, the gazateer series for BD&D had Thyracia with a knightly order tooled up with magic items on flying mounts. Its antagonist (starts with 'A', I can't be bother looking it up) had magical airships.

It's unrealistic to expect to see a D&D army without magic support, so I think scenarios along the lines of "Wizard shows up and *bam*" are more likely to end up with wizard pieces scattering the landscape.