Again, Confounded Rules! Exploring More Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Rules
Oct 24, 2023
1 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Another in-depth look at some troublesome rules in First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
By R. Nelson Bailey
Contents
Cavalier Hit Dice | Poison |
Dragon Issues | Save vs. Rod, Staff, or Wand |
Encumbrance | Shamans & Witch Doctors |
Gaining Experience Points | Subduing Player Characters |
Find the Path | Surprise |
Gaze Attacks | Turning Undead |
Missile Weapon Targeting | Upkeep Costs |
Opening Doors |
|
⚜ ═══════════════ ✦ ⚜ ✦ ═══════════════ ⚜
“Death most strongly felt that, if only for artistry’s sake, heroes should be made to make their exits from the stage of life in the highest melodramatic style, with only one in fifty score let to die of old age and in the bed of sleep for the object of irony.”
—Fritz Leiber, “The Sadness of the Executioner”
In this statement: "Party: Because they carry light, must open a door, and face a relatively silent hydra, their chance to be surprised increases to 1–5 on a d6." Carrying a light and opening a door doesn't increase the party's chance of surprise. They just decrease the chance of something else to be surprised. "Relatively silent" also doesn't apply to a hydra typically. Move Silently, the Silence spell, sure, but the hydra's chance to surprise should still be 2 in 6. The party's chance to surprise the hydra is probably 0.
Upkeep costs see ' Flashing Blades ' 1975 (3 Muskeeteers ) and ' En Guard ' ( Duels & Gambling , Military )
Absolutely the best post I’ve seen on 1E rules. You laid out every single minutiae on why I hate the AD&D ruleset so much.
I think that you've done a great service with these articles, but you did misread a few things. Here, I'll just discuss Surprise in detail, which you've gotten mostly right, but your example is very wrong, and then a quick note on Turning Undead. The thing to remember with Surprise is that the person rolling for Surprise should be rolling to see if *they* are Surprised. So, when the players roll, the roll of 1 or 2 (usually) indicates how many segments the *players* are Surprised, and so how many Surprise Rounds their opponents get to use (see page 61: "Each 1 of surprise equals 1 segment (6 seconds) of time lost"). If their opponents also roll and are Surprised…
The encumbrance of coins makes even *less* sense when considering encumbrance as a combination of weight and bulk, though. Coins being made of precious metals, they are very dense, and thus, *less bulky* than most other items of the same weight would be! So, if anything, encumbrance combining in bulk creates an even stronger argument that coins should have a lower encumbrance value than they do!