Role-Playing Games | 

What's Wrong With AD&D?

(AD&D is a registered trademark of TSR/Wizards of the Coast, and no challenge to their trademark is intended - indeed, who'd WANT it?)

   This is a listing of the illogical rules, inconsistent setting flaws, and other reasons to not play AD&D.

   This page ONLY covers AD&D 1st and 2nd Editions, and Hackmaster to some extent. I don't want to waste the money and time on doing a similar page for D+D3. If you want to, that's fine, and I'll be happy to link to it.

   If you'd like to try some alternative games that are free, see the free games section.

   I used to ask about complaints, but I don't care what you think anymore. I've received hundreds of messages about this page, mostly 20-page diatribes in ALL UPPERCASE with incomprehensible grammar and spelling errors, written with all the good grace of a religious believer whose fucked-up cult has been criticized in public for the first time. Your complaints have already been laughed at and dismissed with the Top 10 Excuses list.

   If you'd like to contribute to it in a positive manner, send me email.

• Manifesto
• Metal and Magic and Multiclassing
• The Hits Keep Coming
• Yeah, But...
• You're Mean!
• Core problems with AD&D
• Lucky Constitution
• Abstract Saving Throws
• Working Within the Abstraction
• Son of Abstract Hit Points
• Wizards
• Evil Characters
• Experience Points for Treasure
• Why Palladium?
• Thieves
• The Nanomunchkin
• Abstract Hit Points (again)
• Abstract Hit Points
• Custom Classes
• Conan
• Alignments
• It Costs Too Much To Get A New Game
• The Top 10 AD&D Excuses For Bad Rules
• Unoriginal Settings
• Infidelity to the Genre
• Inconsistencies
• Contributions

Manifesto

By Mark Damon Hughes, 98Nov18

   So why do we do this? Why do we tell AD&D players about better games when they have a little fun playing their game? No, it's not because we're assholes [0], nor because we hate TSR (I, for one, have bought a *LOT* of TSR modules and sourcebooks, and will continue to do so). We do it because we don't like seeing other people use substandard systems, when better ones are available and often cost less or are even free. We do it because we'd like to have sourcebooks that describe things better than AD&D's system permits. We do it because we've seen the alternatives, and found that the alternatives are more fun. If AD&D was replaced with a modern game system tomorrow, we'd stop bitching about it. Until then, we stand up and try to make people's lives a little bit better.

Metal and Magic and Multiclassing

By Dr. Erin D. Smale, 2002Aug02

1. Why are multi-classed demi-human magic-users permitted to wear metal armour but human magic-users are not? Obviously for game balance, but that's a flaw in the system and not something that could ever be satisfactorily explained within the context of the game.

I've heard the excuse that metal interferes with magic. Fine. How does one enchant armour or weapons? How is possible, then, for offensive spells to damage targets "protected" by metal armour themselves? Why can't a magic-user wear leather armour?

I've heard that wearing armour restricts the spell-caster's ability to execute a spell's somatic components. Fine again--what about spells that do not require somatic components? Nevermind that--why are elves more adept at somatic components in armour than humans? Is it because they're more dextrous (as evidenced by their DEX modifier)? No, it can't be that, becuase non-elven multi-class magic-users who don't get a DEX bonus can cast magic spells in armour, too.

I've heard that demi-humans are more adept at the magical arts, so they have--as a race, mind you--somehow divined the secrets of overcoming the esoteric "restrictions" imposed by wearing armour. <Sigh> This is blatantly false, for if it were true, demi-human magic-users would be able to rise to a level equal to or greater than their human counterparts.

Which brings me to my second item:

2. Why are demi-humans restricted in level advancement? Again, the real answer is game balance, but it doesn't make any sense in the campaign world.

I don't have my books in front of me, but IIRC, most demi-human races are longer-lived than humans. Would it not follow that they have more time to hone their skills in their chosen career? As a race, is it not reasonable to assume that they have a more advanced storehouse of knowledge. If elves are as magical as tales (and the MM) say, why can't they get beyond 10th-level in the magic-user career?

If the level cap is 20, and a human's normal lifespan is 120, we can conservatively assume a maximum of one experience level per five years (given that the PC begins his adventuring career at the late age of 20). If a high elf's lifespan is 2000, and he is limited to 10th-level, then advancement creeps to the preposterous ratio of one level every 167 years (assuming that the elf begins his career at the age of 333--the same relative age as our human example).

Yet we "know" elves are better at magic, because they're allowed to cast spells in armour. Right?

But maybe not, because:

3. Why can multi-class demi-human magic-users wear armour but single-class demi-human magic-users can't? Game balance? I don't even think so, because the rule actually favours the munchkin in that the multi-class magic-user--with more class abilities--gets a better deal than the single-class magic-user. And both with the same magic-user level cap. This just doesn't make sense. Period.

And while we're on the subject:

4. How are other multi-class character abilities justified in contrast to their single-class restrictions? For example, a multi-class fighter/thief can perform thieving abilities in better-than-leather armour. A multi-class cleric/fighter can use All weapons. What of the cleric/fighter/magic-user "powerhouse"?

It can't be an issue of game balance because these multi-class combinations actually overpower their single-classed counterparts in terms of the game rules. In terms of a campaign's internal consistency, there's no reason *not* to be multi-classed. Why?

Well, according to those who whine when I bring up this issue, game balance *is* achieved by making multi-class characters divide their earned experience by the number of classes possessed. Now, if memory serves, a fighter needs 2,001 XP to advance from 1st- to 2nd-level; a magic-user needs 2,501 for same. So, for a fighter/magic-user, the character must acually earn 4,502 XP to reach 2nd level. Well, by that time, the single-class fighter is only 3rd-level, and the single-class magic-user is still 2nd-level. Game balance? How about lazy mechanics instead?

And the progression just gets worse as levels increase. So my fighter/magic-user is one fighting level below your single-class fighter--I can cast spells. Can you? My AC is just as good as yours. My weapon proficiency/specialisation is just as good as yours. My saving throws are better. Because I'm a demi-human, I have ability score mods and special racial abilities--does your single-class human have those? No, it doesn't. And even if your PC is a single-classed demi-human of the same race, I can still cast spells. In armour. Remember?

Among the numerous problems with the AD&D system, the multi-class rules seem jarringly contrived. For what? Game balance? The above shows how even game balance suffers. Heavy-handed rules that exacerbate the "problems" they were designed to correct.

And that should be the slogan on every AD&D product rulebook.

The Hits Keep Coming

By Mark Damon Hughes, 2002May28

   The psycho emailed me again (but hypocritically demanded "DO NOT mail back to me, if you do I will delete the message," - so I'll mock the psycho in public instead) with a bunch of his usual hate-filled, defensive, incoherent, badly-spelled gibberish, which ended thus (his 3rd-grade spelling and misuse of "your" gave me a good laugh):

With that said, I leave you to continue wasting time out of your day on = a wab page with a hits list in the double didgits. If you stopped and = took a good look around you would discover that noone realy cares what = you have to say, and if they do it's because your wrong.

   Normally, I'd just delete it - it was HTML mail, so it got routed directly to my spam folder, but I found it when I was cleaning that out. However, it's interesting that he mentions my hits, because I was just checking my web usage for the month so far. Two things to note first: 1) the "users" stat is fairly bogus - it counts unique IP addresses, which means many dialups like AOL are counted just once - my guesstimate is 20000 real users, averaging 2 pages per visit. And 2) no, the totals below do not include hits from my IP address, even if I *was* insane enough to hit refresh that often, which I'm not.

May/2002: 15913 users made 50242 visits and received 50241 files.
3909 /~kamikaze/Hephaestus/hephaestus.zip
3012 /~kamikaze/rpg.html
2874 /~kamikaze/Hephaestus/
1977 /~kamikaze/science.html
1184 /~kamikaze/Hephaestus/index.html
 944 /~kamikaze/
 923 /~kamikaze/quotes.html
 891 /~kamikaze/bill_nye.html
 888 /~kamikaze/real_genius.html
 832 /~kamikaze/Delver/
 686 /~kamikaze/sanrio/
 653 /~kamikaze/documents/wrong_adnd.html
[remainder elided]

   This is the 12th most popular page I have. But frankly, I'm disappointed - it should be even MORE widespread! I want this page on banner ads! On bus sides! Shouted from soapboxes in the park! Get to it, people! Not that popularity would make it better, but I want even more people to read it and maybe even contribute.

Yeah, But...

(links to contrary pages that aren't just "You're Mean!" messages)

• Fixing AD&D by "My paranoia prevents me from giving you my real name", added 2002May20

You're Mean!

(or, Why I Hate All You Hairless Monkeys)

By Mark Damon Hughes, 2002Jan09

   On a regular basis for the last 3+ years since I started this page, I have received various complaints of "You're mean!", rants, death threats, and other kinds of nastiness from D+D fans. Not a one of them has proven wrong, explained, or fixed any of the problems on this page, they're all filled with excuses and venom. (As if I don't get enough of that in my sex life.)

   This page has two purposes. One is explained in the Manifesto. The other is that I got tired of reposting the same arguments - I wanted new arguments. For that, I had to have someplace to record what has gone before, so I can just say "Go here. Now that you've read that, ..."

   But no, the D+D fans don't see it that way. I'm apparently a threat to their way of life, sapping and impurifying their precious bodily fluids by having this web page. I'm not talking here about the more-or-less normal ones who just play it (either because that's all they want or because they don't know about better games); unfortunately, they don't send me email. I'm talking about the hardcore religious zealots.

   What amazes me is the number of D+D freaks who exist, and are amazed and astounded that anyone would not be exactly like them, and especially that we'd dare to express ourselves in public. It's like they're 1950s American middle-class white christians suddenly transported to the modern world, surrounded by atheists, pagans, cultists, and members of every religion in the world; people of every race miscegenating; gays, lesbians, transvestites, and drug users out in the open; confronted with genetic engineering, quantum physics, and cryptography. Their eyes glaze over, their brains seize up, and they start foaming at the mouth like revivals in Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan - they can't handle the fact that there might be more to the world than their trivial little game.

   As for threats, or praise for how amazingly brave and/or insanely suicidal I am, what of it? Do you think there are going to be gangs of sickly, undernourished/overnourished, greasy D+D players coming by to pelt me with dice for it? Fuck that. The day I knuckle under, join the herdthinkers, and refuse to speak my mind on a subject, I'll go into politics. Not to mention, you know, that my nickname is Kamikaze for a reason. If I can take my enemy out with me, I will do so.

   I am almost universally lambasted by them for not instantly converting to their position, but they never budge one smegging inch, never acknowledge a single point on the page with "Oh, that's a good point". That's standard operating procedure for kooks. With a different background, they'd be writing books on how the Templars come from the lost continent of Atlantis.

   One psycho has even put up a web page of an email argument I had with him (I was bored and he seemed sane at first, okay?). No logical argument, just ad hominem attacks. <sigh> In the immortal words of Spider Jerusalem, "If you loved me, you'd all kill yourselves today."

   Every single one of them repeats #2 and #3 from Top 10 Excuses by saying "But D+D is the most popular game! Everyone I know loves it! What's wrong with you?". One more time for the hard of thinking:

Popularity does not equal quality.

Popularity is based on marketing.

Successful marketing does not make something good.

   Another stock response is that I have no idea what I'm talking about. Bollocks. I've read D+D, played it for years. Studied it and done mathematical analysis. And it's nonsense. It's an accumulation of random rules thrown together, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

   And the final one repeated over and over is that it's a role-playing game (I guess the implication is that the rules and what's in the books therefore doesn't matter, but I can't be sure, as none of them ever explain what their point is).

   D+D, all editions, are all about combat. That's what you get 99% of your experience for. That's what all the classes are about. That's what all the monsters (the name itself is a dead giveaway) are for - they even stripped out the ecology and cultural notes on the monsters in D+D3, and put in more damned combat notes. There's almost nothing in any edition of D+D that's about anything but combat. Worst of all, there are no personality or background systems - new characters are these formless blobs who crawl out of chargen with 6 stats, a race, class, and alignment.

   D+D is just an upgraded version of Chainmail, AD&D was a further upgraded version, and D+D3 is pure hack-and-slash, and nothing but.

   But if you don't want to try better systems, if you're happy just doing hack-and-slash, well, fine. But stop mailing me these 500-line messages saying "You're mean!", or I'll shoot you with a bowel disrupter set to "Prolapse" and then sell your little brother to Dahmer's Restaurant.

Core problems with AD&D

By Björn Paulsen, 2000Jul31

   Q: Despite these superficial faults (that can be rectified by adding to the engine, btw), there isn't really anything wrong with the basics, is there?

   A: Yes there is. AD&D is battle-oriented. It revolves around combat, melee, the casting of fireballs and the killing of orcs who are Chaotic Nasty beings. Players starting the game with a group of Level 1 monks (without weapons) who all specialize in diplomacy will soon find out that there really is no way to improve their skills. Quite simply you *have* to kill other creatures to learn anything at all.

   Q: Why is this a bad thing?

   A: Because it doesn't reflect reality OR heroic fantasy. One doesn't become a hero by slaughtering hundreds of opponents. A hero is someone who puts himself between the innocent and danger, without intentions of profit. Take a weapons' school, for example. Train under a weapons master in most systems and you get better at swordplay. The same situation in AD&D will either give you nothing at all, or it will cause all of your abilities to improve. Quite simply, it is a silly system that should best be buried.

Lucky Constitution

By Kevin Mowery, 2000Apr30

   Since hit points represent not only the ability to sustain physical damage but also the ability to avoid damage, luck, and the grace of the gods, the Constitution bonus table provides a problem. Fighters get better bonuses to hit points for their constitution than any other class, in addition to an already higher hit die. A fighter with an 18 Con is lucker and more agile than a thief with 18 Con, and has better divine favor than a cleric with 18 Con.

   The flip side to this is that a high Dex grants an Armor Class bonus. All classes get the same bonus, so there is nothing to balance the benefit fighters get over everyone else for a high Con. Also, since a "miss" actually means that no hits landed that caused damage, not that the attacker was beating the air for a full minute, a high Dex could (should?) be interpreted as giving characters a better ability to shrug off damage!

   The to-hit bonus for a high Strength only supports this idea: the nimbleness and dexterity of a person doesn't affect their ability to handle a sword. Only strength matters; the problem isn't being able to hit but being able to hit hard enough to cause damage. The assumption, then, is that an attacker always hits, just maybe not hard enough to cause damage.

Abstract Saving Throws

By Mark Green, 2000Feb16

   Believe it or not, this came from the rec.games.frp.dnd newsgroup - quite sad that the best fodder against the game comes from its own players.

   What exactly does a saving throw represent? A magical failure? Whim of the gods? In practice, it's hard to have it represent anything without running into problems.

   The rulebook explicitly states that a save against a fireball results in the PC falling prone or somehow dodging to minimise damage. The questions then immediately arise:

   - Since at least some of their hit points represented their potential for dodging also, what's the difference between dodging because of your saving throw and dodging because of your hit points?

   - Is there a modifier to saving throw based on the terrain you're in, and how easy it'll be to find cover? Why should a wizard, normally a weak class at combat and similar tactics, be able to do this better than others? Can he decide "I'm going to act like I'm making a save against a fireball" in order to dodge incoming arrows, flaming oil, or similar? Or does he have to (cue *ridiculous* moment) fireball himself and hope to save in order to gain this miraculous power to efficiently dodge?

   - If you're lying prone ANYWAY, do you automatically save? Some people responded that the wizard casting the fireball would aim at your prone form and counter the effect, yet if that were the case, fireballs usually have radius to spare - why don't all wizards target their fireballs to centre on the floor? Does it then become impossible to save by falling prone?

   And this only applies to a save against a fireball spell. Yet that "Save vs. spell" category seems to encompass much more, including (for example) mental willpower. Why should mental willpower and dodging ability be measured on the same statistic?

Working Within the Abstraction

By Mark Green, 2000Feb16

   Many recent RP games base themselves very strongly on what the characters can or cannot *do*, as opposed to AD&D, which bases it very strongly on what the characters will or will not have happen to them (saves = whether things will affect you; to-hit = whether you will be successful in combat, etc.) The theory behind this is that the AD&D systems tell you what the final consequence was, and you can then fill in the details however you like to role-play your character, and that's the reason why the systems are abstract.

   So, in the fireball save, perhaps your character did dodge. Perhaps they were just so rock-hard they stood there and took the fireball without taking major damage. Perhaps they just stood there and seemed to be less affected than others and who knows why.. wizards are mysterious that way.

   Now, this could have quite a lot of potential. It almost touches on the extremely neat rule in Feng Shui which states that you can do as many fancy tricks and things as you like in pursuit of a consequence, and if there was an easier (but duller) way you could have gotten it, the hard fancy way will be no harder on the dice roll than the easy dull way.

   The problem is that AD&D leaves too much open, and then has to break its own rules of abstraction. See my other example about harmful-touch creatures and abstract hit points, for example. You can't fill in the details any more; the game has forced a circumstance on you which says you were physically struck, in a way that later fails to make sense within the abstraction.

   The counting-coup example was another, where your ability to work within the abstraction would have to be denied. The abstraction is far *too* liberal to work.

   Furthermore, it's the kind of abstraction in which you can only fill in the details *AFTER* the final consequence is established. Suppose that in the fireball example above, the wizard's player announces "Well, I stand there; my ambient magical power may save me." Then the wizard had *failed* his save. Fair enough, he was wrong.. but this is a wizard, who has devoted his life to researching magic. Wouldn't a wizard in that situation want to learn to improve his ambient power? Practice using it to shield himself? Or perhaps learn if there's something special about this fireball that it failed this time whereas others have succeeded (which OOC happened due to a lucky run on the dice on previous fireballs)? In order to explain why your wizard wouldn't do these things, none of which the system can deal with (because they were all based on an explanation of an abstract result), you have to reach out and use the OOC knowledge that it was only because he failed a save that it didn't work and therefore he presumably just forgets it (recall that this is a person who has devoted his life to attaining mastery of magic). Either that or wait until AFTER the dice are rolled and THEN announce what the wizard would have tried to do that failed.

   This could well be a cause of the classic AD&D munchkinism problem - the players feel that what their characters actually do doesn't make a difference, because 90% of it tends to boil down to retroactively explaining the results of dice rolls, so the only goal is to make the die rolls as easy to make as possible. If it doesn't boil down to this, then the pre-roll explanations have to be as generic as possible, because it'll be impossible to make an explanation in advance that doesn't risk generating huge extra volumes of nonsystem stuff or things that don't work inside the system (as with the wizard above). Forcing people to make generic explanations is guaranteed 100% to kill roleplaying stone dead.

Son of Abstract Hit Points

By Mark Green, 2000Jan29

   Although it is accepted that some of the hit points represent dodging or luck, a character is required to save against the effect of poison or suffer level draining whenever a monster with poison or drain capability lowers the character's hit points!

   Why is this the case? Both injecting poison and administering a draining touch require physical contact; how does the system know that the hit points deducted weren't ones representing dodging?

   It becomes even more comic when you consider the implications. A warrior against one of these creatures would be explicitly trying to dodge, and (presumably) would therefore want to ensure that hit points expended would be dodging ones rather than physical ones. However, since the touches evidently do work, all hit points are physical ones, meaning the ones left afterwards must be mostly dodging ones: witness the fighter who walks over to the creature with a dangerous touch, lets it beat on him, defeats it, and then (battered and bruised from all the physical damage) continues to dodge at maximum potential versus the next safe creature..

Wizards

By Mark Green, 2000Jan29

   One thing about AD&D is that it tends to be very limited in allowing for character backgrounds that make any sort of sense whatsoever. Wizards are especially bad for this. We are supposedly asked to assume that wizards are admitted to teaching colleges, where they spend years being introduced to the rudiments of magic.. and then, having mastered a 1st level spell, are thrown out and told to learn magic by.. uhh.. hanging around a lot with people who are killing things, and obtaining scrolls by theft or grave robbery.

   So who are the instructors at this college? Other 1st level mages? Or do all these mages get taught at college, leave, go adventuring for years until they're high level, and then immediately come BACK to the college to be a teacher - with the restriction that they won't teach any higher than 1st level!?

Evil Characters

By Mark Green, 2000Jan29

   Evil characters tend to be high-level. The high-level evil wizard is a favourite villain for AD&D.

   Which begs the question: how did he/she *get* to be high-level? By fighting monsters and recovering treasure? That would imply they were *good* at some point, and only turned evil later on. By killing innocent people? Nope, you get no experience for that. By studying and plotting? Nope, no points for that either. By doing evil deeds and defeating those who came to punish them for doing so? Try even so much as robbing a shop and a 20th+ level fighter will be after you from nowhere - are you telling me that the evil character actually *defeated* one while he was 1st level?

Experience Points for Treasure

By Mark Green, 2000Jan29

   In at least one game I played, it was ruled that you recieved experience points equal to the GP value of any treasure you obtained - but that the GP value was only established when you sold the item (since, after all, the value is nothing more than what you got on the market). This meant that a more charismatic seller would lead to a higher value - and therefore meant you learnt more in the process of acquiring the treasure.

   This lead to the plot to conspire with a merchant: obtain a pebble from a dungeon, have the merchant buy it for 10 Million gold (it is now *obviously* treasure, since it was found in a dungeon and was worth 10 Million gold), and then buy it back from the merchant for the same 10 Million. Neither person loses any money, but both of you have sold treasure for 10M, meaning that you both gain 10M experience points - you're now a considerably better warrior or mage, and the merchant.. well, he's a level 11+ merchant, which can presumably mean he'll get better deals from his suppliers..

Why Palladium?

By Mark Damon Hughes, 99Oct04

   In response to my mention that I like and play Palladium Fantasy 2nd Ed, "Steve" (no email address given) asks: "Mark, why are you being so hard on the AD&D rule system when Palladium Fantasy is all so similiar."

   The differences between AD&D and Palladium are vast. The similarities are all superficial.

   "Hitpoints in AD&D~SDC in palladium" Palladium's "hit points" actually represent physical damage to the character, and when you take HP damage you roll to see what the actual effect of the damage is. SDC represents the "flesh wounds" of highly heroic genres, without doing the abstract "luck/grace of the gods/fighting ability/etc." that AD&D's HP do. AD&D HP are completely useless for determining the actual effect of a wound. Palladium also has critical hits, after-effects of damage, and being knocked into a coma is life-threatening even if you recover.

   Palladium has skills, and has had for 20 years, in which you continue to improve your old skills throughout your life and slowly learn new ones. AD&D has a badly-tacked-on "non-weapon" proficiency system, ~10 years old, that depends far too much on the stat, and makes skill improvement a waste of NWP slots (+5% to one skill every 3-4 levels is just ridiculous).

   Palladium does have "occupational character classes" (OCCs), but they don't restrict skills greatly, and it's trivial to change OCCs in mid-game if you want to change your professional focus. Go ahead, try teaching your AD&D Fighter character how to move silently (guess they never heard of human special forces in AD&D-land).

   Yes, "Both systems use a roll to hit and a roll to damage"... But so does almost every game in the world. EVERY GAME IS AD&D by your definition. Palladium also uses opposed strike/parry/dodge rolls, so the defender has some say in his own life, and more accurately simulating real combat.

   "AD&D has random character generation as opposed to a point system and so does Palladium." Yep. But so do many other games - Basic Role-Play (Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, etc.) is the most common one. And Palladium is a lot more like BRP than AD&D - both Palladium and BRP have 3d6-based stats that can go much higher, both have percentile skills, most strains of BRP have equivalents to the OCC, with starting packages of skills, and both use hit points.

   Palladium also has levels and experience (shared by, for instance, Rolemaster), but it doesn't reward combat in a never-ending point escalation; instead, you get minimal rewards for defeating enemies, equal awards for AVOIDING VIOLENCE, and relatively huge awards for good ideas and role-playing. Even if you never plan to play it, go read the Palladium experience section. I can't justify levels for anyone if they don't like levels. I find that levels prevent characters from loading up on just one skill, which is a common munchkin approach in XP-distribution systems, but even if you don't like levels, they DO appear in other games, and are a valid solution to a real problem.

   Palladium also covers multiple genres, and does them accurately to the literature. AD&D does one genre (fantasy), and it looks NOTHING like any non-AD&D fantasy literature (except for the magic system stolen from Jack Vance's worst books), only its own perverse bastard universe.

   Note that the above comments have little or nothing to do with Rifts. Instead, I'm talking about Palladium's fantasy RPG and their other RPG lines, which are at worst partially compatible with Rifts (with a lot of effort), and at best completely incompatible due to the differing power levels and mechanics. All of Palladium's other lines are much lower-powered than Rifts and take mature approaches to their setting. Also, all of Palladium's lines, including Rifts, are tuned at least somewhat for each game's genre.

• Rifts is an introductory game for adolescent male powergamers, with all that implies; it has a combat-happy genre, Mega-Damage, Dragon and Demi-God PCs, and bigger guns and more powerful alien races (and little else) in each of the several dozen supplements it has now. I hear reports of people playing it in a moderate and mature manner, but I have trouble picturing it.
• Palladium Fantasy 2nd Ed. is mid-power heroic fantasy, around the level of power in Fritz Leiber's novels or most of the fantasy novels on the market, and it does that level of fantasy quite well. PF 1st Ed. was much lower-powered and grittier, but that really didn't accurately represent a large segment of the fantasy market. PF also has around 12 large, detailed, and serious world books currently.
• Nightbane is a high-powered but well-balanced horror game about playing something very much like Clive Barker's Nightbreed; "monsters" who are trying to defend themselves from a world of hostile humans, and at the same time protect that world from invading forces that are even more terrifying.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is based on the original graphic novels, not the kiddie TV show, and can range from cinematic martial-arts action to very serious philosophical material. With the After the Bomb supplements, it also becomes a non-magical post-holocaust game with a heavy emphasis on the subjects of racism and slavery. Much of the AtB material was absorbed into Rifts, but the originals are superior.
• Heroes Unlimited 2nd Ed. is a low-powered superhero system (as in Watchmen or early X-Men/New Mutants), and it makes a good base for a wide number of modern games.
• Ninjas & Superspies (and the Mystic China supplement) are modern-day martial arts, underworld, Chinese magic, and espionage games, in the tradition of James Bond and Hong Kong cinema.
• Beyond the Supernatural is a modern-day horror/ghostbuster game, including options from psychic investigators at the medium-power level down to "victim" characters in B-movie horror settings.
• Systems Failure is a campy action-adventure spoof of survivalists, millenialism, and the Y2K hysteria. Even if you never play it, it's side-splittingly funny.

   I'll stop shilling for Palladium Books now, as they are perhaps an acquired taste, and the Rifts fans generally are as obnoxious and retarded as they first appear (I'm on the Palladium Mailing List - I know what I speak of here), but don't judge everything by the Rifts crapola.

Thieves

By Mark Damon Hughes, 99Mar06

Chris Seamans wrote in message <7basui$joq@netaxs.com>...
>The guidelines are there. It took me a few seconds after I dragged the DMs
>Guide out. ....
>Quick reasoning would say that the chance for anybody to perform a thief
>skill is equal to the base score listed on PHB table 26.

   Ah, so now here's YET ANOTHER house-rule mechanism someone derived from the AD&D lack-of-mechanics. This is why task systems are defined in good games - so there's a standard resolution. AD&D doesn't have one, and doesn't use the closest thing to one it has (attribute rolls)...

   Another gamer says he'd use a Wisdom check on the defender's part (giving on average a 50% chance of success for non-thieves, which will often be significantly better than a Thief's own special ability), while you say they get the thief base chance (before adding points), which is, what, 10-20%?

   Compare for a moment to Rolemaster (a system 10 years older than AD&D2). Assume that only Thieves and Rangers are allowed to (nay, REQUIRED to) take the actual Stalk & Hide skill, just like AD&D. Everyone else could STILL make an AG/SD roll at -25 for default skill use...

   Meanwhile, over in the REAL Rolemaster where anyone can learn S&H at varying costs in development points, some people will pass on it and have to make AG/SD rolls at -25, while others will learn it and have the same odds as a Thief, if they have the same stats and number of ranks.

   Even if you cripple a real game system with rigid classes, you can't produce a bogosity as nasty as AD&D!

   Or consider a fairer challenge: Palladium Fantasy, also 10 years older than AD&D2... Those who don't take Prowl have no chance of moving quietly. But I don't know of any OCC that forbids you to have Prowl, and even if one did, it's trivial to switch class over to Thief or Mercenary Fighter for a few levels (it only costs 2 levels of experience to learn a Man of Arms OCC - you can do that training in 4-8 sessions) and then switch back.

   So even against a fairly primitive system, which predates AD&D2 by a decade, during which time the entire rest of the industry has moved forward, AD&D can't even compete.

   Even SYNNIBARR permits all characters to learn stealth skills (and a few hundred other skills listed in 6-point font). Actually, I think it's on the standard skills list learned by all graduates of the Adventurer's Guild (along with basket-weaving). (No, I'm not joking about any of that. But even Synnibarr is better...)

   Ah, AD&D. Astounding. Simply astounding... That anyone would still be playing it.

The Nanomunchkin

Adam Benedict Canning, 99Mar06

   If I've got the DMG custom character class rules right the following is legal:

Experience cost per level: 0

   If you add find remove traps or remove cannot associate with psionicists XP table is

Abstract Hit Points (again)

Walker, Blake (CAP, CFS), 99Feb16

If HP represents luck, dodging, favor of the gods, actual toughness, damage resistance, etc., then why can all this be cured with a few simple Cure Light Wounds spells? Is the "favor of the gods" so easily bestowed by first level clerics? Can an uninjured gambler receive a few Cure Light Wounds before entering the casino to better his odds? If Cure Light Wounds really affects all of these things, rather than just restoring damaged flesh and bone, then why can't it be cast before the combat to bolster the combatant's luck, dodging, favor of the gods, actual toughness, damage resistance, etc.? If things like luck or favor of the gods are part of HP, then why are rogues and clerics penalized with respect to common ordinary warriors?

Abstract Hit Points

By Michael T. Richter, 99Jan12

Q: Why do abstract "to hit" rolls and hit points cause problems? I use them all the time and don't have problems.

A: It is an inadequate model. The only way not to have problems with them is to deliberately avoid the situations that cause trouble. This restricts your role-playing options for no good reason.

The actual problem is poor interaction between the halves. "To hit" in AD&D-speak means "to hit causing damage". It is assumed that you may have hit a dozen times in the combat round, but none of them were enough to cause damage. Thus having "missed" doesn't necessarily mean that you didn't connect. It just means you didn't connect sufficiently to cause damage.

On the other side of the equation, "Hitting" in AD&D-speak doesn't even necessarily mean "connected". Since hit points are abstractions which represent everything from actual bodily damage capacity, skill and experience at evading attack as well as luck, favour of the gods, etc. having actually "hit" something in AD&D-speak doesn't tell you whether you connected or not.

So, basically, missing your "to hit" roll doesn't mean you didn't hit. Making your "to hit" roll doesn't mean that you hit. This causes the problems.

What kinds of role-playing options does this problem eliminate? The historical "counting coup" method of warfare used by various native tribes would be a classic example. If you wanted to make a society which did warfare using counting coup, you could not do so with AD&D rules. In counting coup, after all, the elimination of an enemy is done solely by touching. Not "hitting to cause damage", but just plain, light physical contact. Since it is impossible to determine whether any given "to hit" roll actually resulted in physical contact, it is impossible to determine whether coup was successfully counted or not.

In the end, you're stuck with either not putting in this interesting society or with creating a large set of rules (which probably don't interact well with the existing ones) to introduce this society. In the first case your enjoyment is restricted for no good reason. In the second case you've spent money for AD&D that doesn't even give you basic guidance on simple issues like this -- unlike most games made since AD&D.

Custom Classes

By Carl Perkins, 98Nov20

[AD&D 2nd Ed has a class construction system in the DMG. This would in theory solve one of the main complaints, the rigid classes. Unfortunately, it suffers from some flaws... -Mark]

Cost penalty to make second level for a character class created with the class creation rules matching existing classes. It is expressed as the percentage increase in the cost compared to the original class.

Class    Cost penalty
-----    ------------
Fighter  20%
Paladin  51% (ouch)
Ranger   15%
Mage     12%
Cleric   60% (big ouch)
Thief    24%

Note that the class creation system is rather short, inexact, and incomplete - for example, there are two categories for getting priest spells, "all spheres" or "a single sphere". The problem with this is that there is no class that get all the spheres since even the cleric class doesn't get three of them. There is also no class that only gets one sphere - the paladin gets four. If you count four spheres as getting the "single sphere" option four times it turns out that you have just paid for all spheres since the single sphere is a +2 and all spheres is a +8. It says that the DM should use his judgement and it means it since without that it is impossible to use.

Likewise it says that it is impossible to duplicate the existing classes, and boy does it mean that too (as you can see above). Also note that I have left off the additional +1 cost modifier for "can use magic items for an existing class" since I was making the class itself. I also did not asses any added cost for proficiency slots which would make the difference even larger. I applied the "non-human limited to level [X]" modifiers as an approximation, using the one that was closest to the actual limits. I ignored the classes' gaining followers and such at high levels, figuring it was a generic "all classes get this" kind of thing although the Paladin doesn't. You might be able to reduce the multiplier for them for this, although I was somewhat fast and loose in counting the Paladin's special abilities anyway, so they are probably actually worse off than it indicates up above - they violate the class creation rules anyway since they have three abilities delayed until levels after first (undead turning, cleric spells, and their mount) and you are only allowed two.

The Fighter class would be closer but their weapon specialization ability falls under the dreaded "other" modifier type - it is dreaded because it is a +3, which is higher than any other abilities other than the two unrestricted spell use abilities for clerical and wizard spells. If that were reduced to a +2 then they would only have a 10% penalty, and if it were counted as a +1 (which is probably too low, considering that it gives you a +1 to hit, +2 damage, and an extra attack every second round when using your specialized weapon type) they would have no penalty. Were you to calculate the costs yourself, you might well come up with figures different from mine - they could easily end up with the penalty being several percent higher, particularly for the Paladin.

Conan

By Michael T. Richter, 98Nov18

Q: What's so hard about making a Conan-like fighter who can fight, hide in shadows and move quietly? Just use the Player's Option: Skills & Powers book! That gives rules for fighters with the ability to move silently, among other things.

A: It is this kind of foolishness that really drives me up the wall!

I once had an argument with a UNIX weenie back when OS/2 was first introduced. I was a big fan of this new "lightweight threading" concept. The UNIX weenie said "why would you ever want to do that?" I explained why and got every excuse in the book as to why it was bad.

As time went by, threading libraries became commonplace (though, of course, by no means standardized!) in UNIX-land. At this point this same UNIX weenie was suddenly singing the praises of lightweight threading and how all you had to do was download this library, tinker with its configuration until you got it working on your particular brand of UNIX, and then you had all these magical benefits of lightweight threading (the very same benefits that he dismissed only a few months before as dangerous).

My answer to this UNIX weenie back then was "why would I want to go through the time and trouble of mucking around with poorly documented, poorly conceived and poorly executed add-on libraries when OS/2 has very good threading and synchronization primitives built right in?"

My answer to this AD&D question and its variants is: Why would I want to go through the time and expense of mucking around with a poorly conceived and poorly executed AD&D add-on when almost every other game available supports the options this add-on supports and *more* (usually, if not always, in a superior fashion!) as part of the core rules?

Alignments

By Michael T. Richter, 98Sep23

Q: What is a better way to depict character personalities than alignment?

A: Social structures. Don't slay orcs because they're chaotic evil and you're lawful good. Slay orcs because (among dozens of potential reasons):

a) The religious order to which you belong has declared them enemies of your gods.

b) Those damned orcs are killing peasants in the outlying areas of your lord's fief and you've been tasked to stop them.

The beauty of these over "kill them because they're chaotic evil" is that you can find all sorts of wonderful role-playing opportunities. For example, here are some possibilities (again among dozens of them):

a) It turns out that orcs are no more evil and godsless (sic) than your religious fighting order is. In fact, when you get captured because of a botched attack the orcs treat you quite humanely -- and significantly better than orcs get treated by your fellows when captured. You witness the orcs worshipping the same deities you do; they are by no means without guidance from the gods. You begin to question whether the declaration of enmity was made for reasons of truth or reasons of politics.

b) The orcs would like nothing better than to stay away from civilized lands. They can't stand the sight of humans and don't really feel like dying. The problem is that Some Other Problem is driving them away from their proper hunting grounds.

   Because you don't have intractable "they're evil so we kill them" issues without alignments, you have many more role-playing possibilities without them.

Q: Planescape was built around alignments and is really cool. What's the problem?

A: The problem is that Planescape was built around the game mechanism, not the other way around. EVERYBODY *has* to have alignments in their gaming universes when playing AD&D. Alignments weren't added as a setting-specific game mechanism because it made for a cool gaming universe. Alignments were there for no good reason and somebody came up with a setting that used them. There's a big difference between these.

   In short, Planescape may be a cool setting, but this isn't a good reason to have alignments in the core rules.

Q: Alignment penalties aren't game setting penalties. They're representations of the nervous breakdowns and traumas of having done something against one's nature. What's wrong with this?

A: The penalty penalizes good role-playing. How many brilliant works of drama can you think of that were based upon somebody recognizing the error of their ways and turning to the One True Way? (Or, alternatively, how many can you think of where somebody essentially good becomes vicious and mean because of a great tragedy?) In either case, the AD&D rules penalize the good drama.

   Fall and redemption are two themes, often combined, which show up all over the place, subtly or not so subtly, in dramatic literature. Yet AD&D's mechanics discourage players from doing any such drama because they'll get penalized for it.

It Costs Too Much To Get A New Game

by Mark Damon Hughes, 98Sep03

   Actually, there are many games that are better than AD&D, and are FREE. Yes, that's right, *FREE*. Just download and play!

   I especially recommend the following:

FUDGE, by Steffan O'Sullivan

   FUDGE is one of the best game systems ever made. It's low-detail, but very elegant, astoundingly easy to learn, and even easier to play.

   There's a HUGE amount of support material for FUDGE on the 'Net; some that I particularly liked is linked from my RPG page's FUDGE section.

   The best part for former AD&D players is that it's easy to convert any campaign, characters, spells, and items into FUDGE, so you can continue to use all the AD&D stuff you've already bought!

Fuzion, by Hero Games and R.Talsorian Games

   Fuzion is a hybrid of the world-famous HERO system and R.Tal's Interlock sytem, and the core rules are totally free.

   You may also be interested in:

• Brandon Blackmoor's Fuzion Jazz, a simplified version of the core Fuzion rules with a power/spell/gadget constructon system that's more like HERO's.
• Dungeon Hero, an AD&D-like set of rules, spells, and creatures for the HERO system (Fuzion has conversion rules from HERO).
• The Lodoss War RPG, a Fuzion game based on the AD&D-inspired anime series. It's well-researched, it has a good background, and a spiffy magic system. Down side? No bestiary yet; you have to build your own.

NUELOW, by Steve Miller

   Parody RPGs with a very simple and pleasant system. Despite being parodies, they're quite usable as serious games. Both "Fairies!" (based on medieval faerie folk and knights) and "Ice Queens and Ugly Ducklings!" (based on the stories of Hans Christian Anderson) are fantasy (though maybe a different kind of fantasy than some of you are used to |+)). Plus, you can use elements of the other games to expand your campaign. I like 'em a lot.

Oroborus, from Ragnarok Press

   A fairly realistic multigenre system. Oroborus is a very slick little game.

Quest

   A very comprehensive, detailed, and exhaustive fantasy RPG (potentially multi-genre, as it has higher-tech skills and equipment, too). There's also a fair amount of software for character and equipment building.
Quest FAQ

The Guide To Adventure

   An easy and professional free game, for fantasy and SF. TGTA has complete skill, magic, miracle, psionics, rules, handles ancient, modern, and science fiction combat, has a good bestiary, and a unique system based on special cards (you print them out yourself onto cardstock - see his Frequently Asked Question).

GURPS Lite

   While I'm not a huge fan of GURPS, fantasy is the genre it was originally designed for, and that it sucks least in. It still wastes nine pages out of 32 on advantages and disads instead of having a more generic (and shorter) mechanic, while shorting you on skills and magic, has no psionics rules, and it suffers from the same balance problems as the full version of GURPS. That said, it is free, and it's better than AD&D.

   Many others can be found at The RPG Library.

   One last time:

Better alternatives are available for FREE!!!

The Top 10 AD&D Excuses For Bad Rules

by Joshua Macy

For any rule you're talking about, the rule isn't bad because:
10. Most characters wouldn't want to do/be X, so it makes sense that no characters can.
9. It's fantasy; it's not supposed to make sense.
8. It's just being true to some unspecified source material.
7. You can pretend it's more detailed than it is.
6. You can buy Player's Option book X, which fixes it.
5. The game designers didn't mean for you to apply it as written.
4. Every other system has bad rules, too.
3. The system sells better than any other system.
2. Lots of people have fun playing the game.

and the number one reason that the AD&D rule in question isn't bad:

1. You can change it if you don't like it.

Unoriginal Settings

by Mark Damon Hughes

   Almost all of the AD&D worlds have essentially identical settings: same races, same magic items, same magic system, same spells, same core monsters, just different names on the map and a few new critters. Even the least standard stuff (Ravenloft, Masque of the Red Death, and Dark Sun) is still very very similar to other AD&D settings, just presented as horror (though they're closer to monster movies than real horror in actual practice) or apocalyptic (but Dark Sun still has the same races and magic, with only a few spiky bits pasted onto things).

Infidelity to the Genre

by Mark Damon Hughes

   AD&D is not true to its genre. Here's what I mean by that:

   All games intend to simulate something - whether it's reality or a literary genre or a specific book or a described setting.

   Good games accomplish this by having mechanics that match the setting's reality level, and allow you to create accurate representations of the characters from the source material, and allow those characters to perform the actions they did in the source.

   AD&D is based on several sources - combat is meant to be reminiscent of Conan, magic of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, thieves and thieves' guilds from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, the races and many of the creatures are taken from Tolkien, and still more creatures are from Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, and the alignment system is meant to represent the forces of Law and Chaos from Michael Moorcock's Elric stories.

   One would then expect to be able to simulate some hybrid of these classic fantasy genres... But AD&D fails them miserably. It is impossible to produce Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or many other heroes in AD&D - because they have both fighting and thieving skills, and magic in the Mouser's case, and humans are forbidden to multiclass. Dual-classing isn't accurate, since they clearly used all of their skills evenly.

   Nor do the rules simulate fantasy literature combats - in all of the source literature, the characters are no less vulnerable to a sword than anyone else - they're just usually smart enough or fast enough to not get in front of a moving sword. AD&D conflates physical damage, dodging, and luck into "hit points", which worked fine in the original Chainmail wargame, but in an RPG you need to know if you actually hit or not (AD&D's "to hit" actually only determines if you've reduced the enemy's hit points, but all but the last few or one hit point represent dodging or luck), or whether your armor or weapon parry or dodging was responsible for saving your hide, or how severe a wound is. Even MUCH simpler systems than AD&D can do this, let alone complex, detailed systems.

   Worse, AD&D's combat is BORING. Roll to hit, roll damage, mark off a few more hit points, repeat. You have nothing but some numbers that could represent any combination of combat factors, and you have no way to decide which they are. AD&D is just a terrible simulation of heroic fantasy combat.

   As for the magic, not only was the memorization system used only in a few books which were far from being Vance's best work, the most powerful "mages" in them only had a handful of spells. It looks nothing at all like the magic of any other literature, and yet they continue to use exactly the same system in all of their game worlds.

Inconsistencies

Encumbrance of magic armor, by Paul Andrew King

   On p28 [of the DMG1] it says that magic armour is 50% of the weight of normal armour of the same type and allows movement at the next higher rate.
   On p164 it says that magical armour should be considered (effectively) weightless and does not reduce movement.

Contributions

• Canning, Adam <Dahak#Compuserve.com>
• Green, Mark <mark.green#reading.ac.uk>
• Hughes, Mark 'Kamikaze' <kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>.
• King, Paul Andrew
• Macy, Joshua <macyj#webamused.com>
• Mowery, Kevin <profbobo#io.com>
• Paulsen, Björn <fenix_burns#yahoo.com>
• Perkins, Carl <carl#gerg.tamu.edu>
• Richter, Michael T. <mtr#ottawa.com>
• Smale, Dr. Erin D. <esmale#welshpiper.com>
• Walker, Blake (CAP, CFS) <Blake.Walker#gecapital.com>

"Ah, now I understand the subtle malice here! I salute you."
-Thraka <thraka#xenocide.org>

[0] "As a side note, I disagree with your manifesto. I am an asshole. :-)" -Michael T. Richter

Last modified: 2002Aug02
Metal and Magic and Multiclassing