Grognards will try to defend this

Yeah, the huge amount of table referencing in OSR games are perhaps their biggest flaw. If AD&D replaced its tables with coherent core mechanics, but kept everything else the same, it would EASILY beat out 4e and 5e as the best D&D edition of all time. Even 3.5 would not be as good. AD&D understood exactly when the rules were needed and made rules for those instances. But now we have 5e where you are encouraged to play a tranny, and you can seduce the guard captain as long as you roll a natural 20 on your persuasion check.

In other words, I agree with OP, but he is cherrypicking the worst part of the best edition of the game.

There are a lot of faggots trying to play ttrpgs.

>AD&D understood exactly when the rules were needed and made rules for those instances.

you mean a dagger is quicker to swing than a 2hd maul?

why would that offend anyone?

All else aside...
>Fist or Open Hand
>... +2 0 +4
What the fuck.

I'm not sure you'd call me a grognard, as I've never particularly been a traditionalist, but I do hang around the /osr/ thread a good deal, and I hate the old-school saving throw categories.

Yeah, AD&D is full of bullshit clutter. Basic is a much cleaner game--especially if we're talking B/X--but it is somewhat limited in terms of options. The best way to do old school is to play Basic but selectively import shit from AD&D (something that's really easy since they have the same core rules).

>rod, staff and wand are separate from spell
>breath weapon is its own category
>petrification and polymorph is its own category despite being fairly niche
wot

It's to hit an unarmored guy, to hit a guy with a shield, and to hit a guy in leather armor. I mean, the whole thing is planetary levels of stupid, but it's obviously thinking a shield is much more effective at blocking a fist than armor you can circumvent by punching somebody in the face. Why this doesn't apply to other weapons too, I don't know.

The names are a bit on the misnomer side, but someone casting from a wand is easier to read than someone casting a proper spell. Think of it as "Save vs Handgun" as opposed to "Save vs Mortar"

i think it has something to do with the ottoman slap, which is why they address open hand.
fucked as to why it doesn't apply to other weaponed

You are making up a loooooooot of bullshit.

Because monks were actually an effective thing in AD&D.

>rod, staff and wand are separate from spell
The thinking is that they're easier to save against because they're either inherently inferior or because you get to see somebody wave them around. I don't think it warrants a whole separate category, but the thinking isn't necessarily stupid.

>breath weapon is its own category
Yeah. I could see doing a category for area-effects, but since shit like fireballs use save-vs-spells, I don't see why you'd need one for breath weapons alone. Also, saves vs. breath weapons are typically difficult, which seems weird, given that breath weapons are usually pretty deadly and saving only reduces damage to half in any case. There's no need to add a category just to make things deadlier.

>petrification and polymorph is its own category despite being fairly niche
Basic D&D actually lumps paralysis in with petrification, which makes more sense. Death rays and poison is the category for shit that kills you outright, and paralysis and turn to stone is the category for shit that disables you (though honestly, petrification is serious enough that I think it could go in with death rays and such).

No it isnt. The standard is you roll.

A whole heap of people prefer point buy, but that doesn't make it the standard.

It is standard to start at level 1, but a lot of people prefer to start at a higher level. See the difference?

It could've simply said "Save vs Spell at +1 unless another save is called for"

>the standard is you roll
Nigga I've been playing for over seven years and I've never, ever rolled stats except for in 40kRPG. And it's bullshit there too.

This chart is why casdters were not OP.

The faster weapons could attack before the spellcaster could get his spell off, because the spells added +1/spell level to the speed factor. In other words, a 5th level spell, which could be fatal, would give a warrior with the same initiative and dex as a caster a chance to hit said caster before he could get the spell off if he was using a short sword.and if he hit said caster, said caster would lose his spell. A fighter could also hit him more times, without issue, because fighters had multiple attacks and didn't have to stand in one place to use all of them.

And the flying invisible caster could be located much more easily and hit with many more darts.

Breath weapons were invariably used by incredibly powerful monsters.

Right.
The standard is rolling, but not even the PHB example uses it and goes for array.

Is it true that dragon's breath weapons did damage based on their HP?

Petrification and polymorphs had their own special issues - you had to make a system shock roll to survive the transformation, which made them inherently more deadly to people who had lower constitutions or were not tough people. Hence why they were separate.

>This chart is why casdters were not OP.
Except they were OP.
I don't know if you've ever actually played at higher levels, but trying to say a few largely insignificant mitigating factors somehow trump the power and versatility of casters, you're basically just hoping to use minor details to bullshit people.

>It could've simply said "Save vs Spell at +1 unless another save is called for"
Agreed. Or just said "fuck it" and let it stand at a straight "save vs. spells".

Personally, I don't see much a scheme behind which classes have better saves in different categories. I like single-category saves like Swords & Wizardry uses, though not necessarily the bonus categories it picks for the different classes. Also, I'd probably give a bonus vs. death / insta-kill shit, even if it's just a simple +2.

Yes. The more injury it sustained, the less damage it did.

On the other hand, a dragon was fuckign deadly in a large number of ways - it could move and then use every attack it had. they could almsot always see invisible creatures. They could use spells, but worse, their own spell resistance was usually really high and since it was a percentile roll and didn't have any 'caster level check' bullshit, a dragon was a fucking killing machine.

>Is it true that dragon's breath weapons did damage based on their HP?
Yes.

>Breath weapons were invariably used by incredibly powerful monsters.
Sure, but they typically do either massive damage, or half massive damage, which is still deadly.

Losing your spell because you got hit is not a minor thing.

Sure sure, casters were gods etc. Versatility >anything ever, and no one could possibly defeat wizards ever. Except that's all wrong.

Pick ten RPGs at random. I will be surprised if more than one or two even include rolling stats as an option.

Player driven character generation is the standard.

Your powerful 9th level death spell means diddly when a dragon hits you 8 times and removes your piddling 30 hitpoints before you get the first words out.

Any caster with half a brain had stoneskin going at all times. Remember how that went? You were immune to a number of hits.
Mirror image, too. And possibly outright Protection from Nonmagical AND Magical Weapons.

Martials could only threaten Casters if they let them.

Huh. I can kinda admire what they're doing there, honestly, if I'm reading it correctly. Some of it seems like excessive detail but I can see how this can be used to represent more niche, flavorful strengths and weaknesses of each class, and also keep things a bit easier for the DM (especially if they're the type who likes rolling behind a screen).

I could see myself liking this with a bit of cleaning up.

I actually really like Dragon Breath. It would be needlessly specific if the game were not about exploring dungeons and fighting dragons, but it is, so it's kind of a neat little highlight without a weird subsystem attached

I haven't played AD&D, so it might come off differently in that game compared to B/X though

Point buy is the standard. Don't let grognards on Veeky Forums confuse you.

My grognard mentor once told me of how his groups used to try to lower the dragon's HP as fast as posible at the start and then try to weather the storm.

>The thinking is that they're easier to save against because they're either inherently inferior or because you get to see somebody wave them around.
The thinking was that due to the LOW amount of spells per day, wizards needed them to work.
Rsw was secondary weapons. Thus easier to save against.

Explain how a single thing I said was bullshit.

No no.... wizards rule.

You'll trigger the snowflakes.

>you can seduce the guard captain as long as you roll a natural 20 on your persuasion check.

I mean, aside from you generally being wrong on everything else, you are explicitly wrong in this regard. Nat20's are not auto-successes on ability checks.

This reminds me of the finale of our last AD&D game... we tried to kill a Necromancer Lord that was riding on a huge black dragon, to no avail. Nothing got through. My final spell of any worth was Confusion, cast in desperation. The dragon shrugged it off, but the Necromancer failed his save.

Then the DM rolled the percentile dice: Attacks closest target.

The dragon.

He ruled that the attack occurs in the most effective way the victim knows, and that included spells. So the Necromancer pointed at the dragon's head in front of him and cast... Finger of Death. The dragon rolled his SR.

It got through.

The dragon rolled his save.

It got through.

The DM then rolled a d8 to determine the falling direction of the big, fat chunk of dead meat tumbling through the skies that the guy was sitting on. And thus it happened that the Necromancer was babbling incoherently as he crashed with pinpoint accuracy into the sky-piercing pillar of dark magic at the center of his ascension ritual, and thus we saved the day.

Doesn't take much cleaning, and works fine with none.

Best edition of d&d.

>Rod, Staff, Wand
Device based spells that are telegraphed by pointing the implement. They also tend to be charged based so might be considered weaker than casted spells.

>Breath
Area Effects that have a singular point of origin, ie the mouth of a dragon. They tend to be difficult to avoid and powerful.

>Petrification or Polymorph
Any effect that causes massive changes to the target's body. As the body as a whole tends to be pretty stable easier to save against than general magic. It would also include stuff that forces a person into an ethereal state or gaseous form.

1. Warhammer roleplay (I am being generous, and only using it once despite having multitudes of quite different systems)
2. Dungeons and dragons, from 1st to 5th.
3. Hackmaster
4. Deadlands

You've been taken in by Veeky Forums memes.

>But now we have 5e where you are encouraged to play a tranny,
Nothing encourages the player to play a transvestite, transexual, or transwhatever. It's mentioned as an option available, in one paragraph. Acknowledging a possibility is not encouraging it, unless you're going to claim that using a dwarf fighter as an example in the character-building section means that the system is encouraging everyone to play dwarf fighters.

>and you can seduce the guard captain as long as you roll a natural 20 on your persuasion check
Critical successes on skill checks aren't a thing. And, since there's no set DC on things like Persuasion, it's fully possible for your negotiations to fail on a roll of 20 if what you're asking for seems ridiculously unreasonable.

>everybody knows stoneskin
First, you have to find the spell somewhere (and the DM may never have that happen), then you have to successfully learn it. Also, what is this "stoneskin" you speak of? Because that shit ain't in my book.

How does listing RPGs with rolled generation in any way answer my point?

I can "randomly" pic RPGs too.

GURPS (all editions)
Legend of the Five Rings (all editions)
Storyteller (all editions)
Shadowrun (all editions)

It sounds like you're sorta trying to exaggerate the importance of largely insignificant details to try to bolster an empty argument.

>Common Spell
>Core

>"My houserules trump both of these, so the system isn't flawed at all."

>It sounds like you're sorta trying to exaggerate the importance of largely insignificant details
The spell not existing is a minor detail?

That's kind like saying "Darts are not OP if you don't let your players have darts."

Also, are you kind of retarded? Level with me. I

>talks memery
>gets schooled
>runs for the hills
It not existing because YOU, in your setting, says it doesn't means little in the grand scheme of things.
user, even Gygax, at the end, remarked how casters were more powerful than other classes, even with the roadblocks he put in their way because they just had that much potential power. 3e then took those roadblocks away, and what was an eventual problem in 1e/2e became an immediate problem in 3e.

>The spell not existing
You dumbass.

>That's kind like saying "Darts are not OP if you don't let your players have darts."
No it's like saying that lasers cannons aren't a problem in D&D because there aren't any.

>"My houserules trump both of these, so the system isn't flawed at all."
Here's the list of magic-user spells. Find stoneskin for me, please.

Oh my.

Wrong edition, dude.

From the 2e PHB:
>Learning and casting spells require long study, patience, and research. Once his adventuring life begins, a wizard is largely responsible for his own education; he no longer has a teacher looking over his shoulder and telling him which spell to learn next. This freedom is not without its price, however. It means that the wizard must find his own source for magical knowledge: libraries, guilds, or captured books and scrolls.

RAW the only for a wizard to learn stoneskin is to find a scroll or spellbook of it. 2e wizards aren't getting spells automatically like 3e wizards.

You could argue that any spell a wizard learns in any edition is subject to DM approval.

1st edition has similar rules.

Methinks it is thine edition that is the wrong one, knave.

Idiosyncratic! That's the word I wanted.

>You could argue that any spell a wizard learns in any edition is subject to DM approval.
This is true. but there's a difference between "you can pick whatever you want, as long as the DM doesn't object" and "the only spells you can learn are ones the DM specifically puts out there for you to find".

Which is the correct way.

Also, look what it took to make a +1 dagger, or a item of feather fall.....

Or scrolls.

Wizards couldn't just whip up a batch of scrolls on a Sunday afternoon, for 1 gold each.

A wise man, your mentor, because old school dragons' breath weapons dealt damage according to the dragons remaining hit points at a 1:1 ratio. It changed somewhere along the line to damage dealt according to Hit Dice.

If the argument is "Wizards are not OP if the DM avoids giving them common spells", I think that can be put into the bin of "Strained Arguments".

>Methinks it is thine edition that is the wrong one, knave.
Remember that this back-and-forth all started off with saying that the table in is the reason why casters weren't overpowered. That table is from the 1st edition AD&D Player's Handbook.

>strawman too hard and it can cause cancer

Speed factors still exist in 2nd Ed.

No-sell spells still exist in 1st Ed.

>The material components of the spell are granite and diamond dust sprinkled on the recipient's skin.
Any GM worth his salt will require you to pickle yourself in expensive diamond dust.

Mages could be bad ass. But holy fuck they had to work at it.

>Find a diamond
>Crush it to powder
>store the powder until needed

I remember having to get a silver bell made by a tinker, for a spell.

Components are a good thing. And shouldn't be bought at the general goods store, for 10 copper for 10X's casts of (x)

>If the argument is "Wizards are not OP if the DM avoids giving them common spells", I think that can be put into the bin of "Strained Arguments".
I think the argument is more that A) the spell we're talking about isn't even core in 1st edition, and B) even if we look at 2nd edition, it's just 1 out of 42 fourth-level spells, which not everybody is going to end up finding and then successfully learn. So the whole idea that every magic-user of high enough level is going to have stoneskin up all the time is silly.

Did anyone figure out how a round of RAW 1e combat is exactly supposed to play out? I know there's A.D.D.I.C.T. but apparently it's just one widely agreed upon interpretation, correct?

Fucking eyelashes coated in gum arabic, man.

>I think the argument is more that A) the spell we're talking about isn't even core in 1st edition, and B) even if we look at 2nd edition, it's just 1 out of 42 fourth-level spells, which not everybody is going to end up finding and then successfully learn. So the whole idea that every magic-user of high enough level is going to have stoneskin up all the time is silly.

^^This guy's played before

Remember blowing your % to learn fireball? and How sickening that was?

A treasure map from an undead?

lol......good times.

Even without getting caught up about stoneskin, there's plenty of other spells that make them the strongest characters at higher levels. This was even intentionally designed, with them being weak at first, but strong in the end.

It also didn't help that every major designer's Mary Sue was a magic-user.

>It also didn't help that every major designer's Mary Sue was a magic-user.

>Ed who?

Better, every spell/tactic/feat that has a name on it was created by a player-cum-designer: Bigby, Melf, Robilar, Mordenkainen, etc.

>not rolling stats
>playing what you want to play
Millenials are at it again.

What's wrong with it?

Wait! Maybe Stoneskin is in the Illusionist's spell list! I'm sure of it!

>3d6, once, in order
>here's your complimentary razorblade
>bathroom is that way, don't make too much of a mess

The thing is, stats weren't so important that you couldn't play what you wanted. Most classes only required their prime requisite stat to be at least a 9, and even at a 9, you could function, because most of your abilities scale on level, not stats.

Also, there's a difference in mindset. Some people come to the table with a concept they want to play (The potential downside being that some players will bring a 50 page backstory mary sue that no one else cares about), other people come to the table and make a character that fits what they roll up (The potential downside being that some players will make a non-character who might as well be a mute NPC).

I agree that magic-users can get a bit out of hand at higher levels, though honestly the game gets to be kind of bullshit at a certain point too. I should point out, however, that Gygax was a big fan of fighters, and not wizards.

As far as spell lists go, based mostly on length, 2e's core list is more abusable than 1e's and 1e's is more abusable than Basic's.

...

Naga please, I've probably been playing as long as a significant portion of Veeky Forums's user base has been alive. And once I found my first point buy system, Champions in my case, I pretty much said fuck it to rolling stats.

Pic related, it is what I still have from my first dice I got in the Basic and Expert boxes back in 1985 when I was nine years old.

>I should point out, however, that Gygax was a big fan of fighters, and not wizards.

Mordenkainen is gonna have a fit when he hears this.

>The thing is, stats weren't so important that you couldn't play what you wanted.
You literally had to meet stat prerequisites to play certain classes. You still have to do that to this day to play those classes well.

His nerd friends had to convince him of unleashing wizards. youtube.com/watch?v=7UjXi1HKjms

This is one area in which Basic is superior to AD&D. At most you needed a 9 in your prime requisite in order to be a class, and that only applied to demihumans.

It's weird though, because out of all the characters he made, Gary preferred playing a wizard.

>Wait! Maybe Stoneskin is in the Illusionist's spell list! I'm sure of it!
Please, dude. It's obviously a Thief spell.