AD&D weapon vs armor considerations

AD&D characters have 3 armor classes. Armor class of base armor, armor class with dexterity bonus, and armor class with shield and dexterity bonus. Different types of attacks hit different armor classes. Frontal attacks strike against the maximum AC provided by worn armor, shield and dexterity bonus. Flank attacks negate the shield. Rear attacks negate the shield and dexterity bonus. Only the official AD&D sheets have separate entries for the different armor types, all the online player created sheets I've seen ignore this completely.

The weapon vs armor tables are used against worn armor and shields only. This is due to an obfuscation of the Man-to-Man combat table from Chainmail, which explicitly gave certain weapons bonuses against certain armors. A shield's bonus is only applicable to armor class depending on its size. Small shields only provide a bonus against 1 attack a round, Large shields provide a bonus against 3 attacks per round.

The only reason to use the weapon vs. armor charts is to limit the power of swords. The base stats of swords do more damage and have more favorable reach and speed factors than all other weapons. However, swords only get a "to hit" bonus against the lightest types of armor, and do poorly against heavy armors (except the two handed sword). There are less than a handful of weapons that can harm the heavy armors - maces, morning stars, the heavy cavalry lance, flails, picks and halberds. Basically, clerics and paladins present the greatest danger to heavily armored foes.

The weapon vs armor table basically makes armors that were hard to hit, even harder to hit and armors that are easy to hit, even easier. Most monsters in AD&D do not carry the weapons required to hit heavily armored characters, so in order to provide a challenge the DM has to specifically equip monsters with the higher bonus providing weapons.

The Sword, Two-Handed is far and away the best weapon in any consideration. It has a bonus to hit every class and does the most damage of any weapon. It has a favorable length and space required to swing. It's only drawbacks are its high weapon speed factor, which means it will lose initiative against ties, and in the case of a tie the opponent may make multiple attacks against the two-hander, and it will basically be unable to interrupt a magic user from casting a spell. In my games, I allow players to walk through 10' corridors at a formation of 3 characters abreast, but restrict them to using only weapons that have less than 3' space required. The "standard" D&D grid uses 5' squares, and most player characters choose to march two abreast down a corridor. The two handed sword requires 6' space to use, so I'm going to have to come down hard on that requirement to restrict players from using a two-handed sword in situations where they would hit an ally.

Most polearms have long reaches and have small space required to use. This makes them really advantageous in tight formations and to fight over the space of another character. Attacking from the second rank is the greatest advantage of polearms and is the justification for their use. Once the polearm bearer is engaged directly, he should abandon his polearm for a more favorable personal weapon.

Frank Mentzer considers AD&D to be more of a wargame than the looser, more open OD&D strain. I agree, and prefer to lean heavier on the wargame aspects of AD&D than the magic. I try to treat the dungeon as a long field expedition.

All this was prompted by a game of AD&D in B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, in which I had two Paladin player characters, who started with average armor and then quickly bought plate armor and shields and became nigh invincible to monster attacks and weapon damage. The only way to harm those characters was to equip monsters specifically designed to harm them, and to play them to the hilt using ambush and flanking tactics. It really drove home to me that the real difference between AD&D and any other strain of D&D is the combat aspect of it, and if you're not using all of AD&D's combat rules then you might as well play any other edition.

Wilderness travel as outdoor survival

I don't like the traditional D&D hex crawl. I think my problem stems from the fact that I started with AD&D, and to this day I don't understand the point of AD&D's wilderness rules. D&D Vol III: Underworld and Wilderness Adventures has a simpler system, but makes a lot more sense. Dan from Delta's D&D has a great series of posts looking at Outdoor Survival, the game OD&D tells you to play instead when you're wilderness traveling: http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2016/09/rules-of-outdoor-survival-part-1.html

I'm experimenting with the idea to make Wilderness hex crawls more interesting by making them survival simulators. Instead of just wandering monsters, I could make chance of getting lost, diseased, or dying of starvation into possible factors. Starvation is a big point, players usually ask "What if I don't buy rations?" in D&D, and 5e solves this by adding an "exhaustion" mechanic, but I don't want to add even more rules to the game.

In previous games, I simply told players that nothing happens until they go 7 days without food or 3 days without water, and then their character dies. That seemed to be enough for players, and surprisingly they've all eaten every day instead of waiting for 6 days between meals. So far, nobody's abusing the system so I won't enforce a change, but in case someone decides to, I'll add an optional rule, that days without food increase your encumbrance value. I figure that mimics the "Life needs" system of Outdoor Survival close enough, without needing to hand out survival cards to every player.

The wilderness travel rules in AD&D and B/X/BECMI both abstract travel into periods of days. This is actually frustrating when playing B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, since it gives you a map divided into 100 yard squares. B2 gives movement rates in terms of squares per hour, and I'm not really sure that lines up with the daily movement rates or even the individual encumbrance movement rates. The "squares per hour" movement system also echoes back to Outdoor Survival's grid based play. Yet even for all that, I found B2's Adventures Outside the Keep to be pretty boring, taking place on a mostly empty map with only a handful of encounters, requiring the DM to invent material to keep it from being boring. And every time I've played B2, I've had to invent a ton of material to fill out the map.

That's the puzzle I'm trying to solve, and I think it will be an even bigger issue with a larger scale map. Maybe threatening players with starvation, disease, and unintended movement simply for journeying in the world might add an interesting minigame, or maybe it would bog them down in tedium.

How to use D&D Adventure Board Games to play solo or cooperative D&D

Using a random dungeon generator to create a dungeon on the fly for solo play has existed as a tradition since the earliest days of the hobby, when E. Gary Gygax introduced it in the first issue of The Strategic Review. This initial random generator was intended for Original D&D with its 6 tiers of dungeon levels, and was later adapted and expanded into AD&D in the Dungeon Masters Guide. The solo recommendation from AD&D takes its cues from the wargaming hobby, since that too has a venerable tradition of solitaire play.

I tried using the AD&D random dungeon generator for solo play, but didn't much like the experience. It felt more like an exercise in accounting than in actually playing a game, in which I would roll some dice, look up a table, mark a room on my graph paper, roll some more dice to stock it, then roll some more dice to see if any of my characters take damage or not. I thought it was a great tool for creating and stocking a dungeon ahead of time for an actual game session, and it would lead to some unique and interesting layouts with some surprisingly devious monster and trap placements, but not one for creating a dungeon on the fly.  I think the real problem is that you have to switch "modes", between creating the dungeon and playing through it, and its much more fun to stick to just one operation.

The D&D Adventure system board games, on the other hand, are much more fun. They generate the dungeon by giving you a series of interlocking tiles, and each tile has icons representing the number of monsters, traps or treasure that appear on them. The tiles are shuffled in random order then placed face down, and as each player gets to the edge of the map, the next tile is placed on the unexplored edge to continue the dungeon. The tile itself will display how many monsters or traps to put on it, and the actual type is determined by drawing from a deck of monster cards or trap tokens.  It creates a sense of immediacy and doesn't interrupt the flow of the game by bogging it down in dice rolls and table lookups. Even though I realize its a more limited version of what was going on in those tables anyway, it makes for a much more enjoyable experience in which I can spend more time actually playing as a character.

Even though the system is limited, it provides all the necessary materials to expand the system into a full featured dungeon crawl, simply by injecting a few rules.  I like this chart from the D&D Basic Set for stocking a room's contents:

It's a lot simpler than the AD&D tables, and you don't need AD&D's room layout tables anyway. Simply roll on this chart for every new tile, and couple it with the wandering monster charts. It creates a simple, efficient dungeon crawl that doesn't require a gamemaster, and so can be played solo or cooperatively.

The D&D Adventure system board games use a stripped down version of D&D 4th edition rules, with PC powers and abilities being represented on cards. To play this using any other system, simply replace the characters with your own, and roll up your own character sheets and equipment, using the rules of your favorite RPG.

Ranting against “A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming”

    I do not like this PDF (I’m not going to link it because you require an account or some junk to download it, and I don’t recommend it anyway). It intends to show the difference in gameplay styles between old D&D and modern, but it does so terribly, by creating a straw man DM as an example of modern gaming versus an example of a “true” old school DM. And in the end, the old school DM and the modern DM end up doing the exact same thing.

    In one of his examples, the PCs come to a room trap. The modern DM has them roll an ability skill check, while the old school DM has them talk out the solution (“roleplaying”). This is the crux of the difference, according to the Primer - player skill over character skill, rulings over rules. But nothing, literally nothing is stopping the modern example PCs from just talking out the solution, and their DM going with it. This is a bad example, and unfortunately every example is like this.

    And in the end, the result is the same, a minor trap, which players overcome with some natural ability.  The modern DM actually has more options in that example than the old school DM, as he could encourage role play and sprinkle in some skill checks as desired.

    Full disclosure, I do not use skill checks in my games, but I’m consciously reacting away from modern D&D design which is heavily reliant on them.

    While I like the sound of “Player skill over character skill”, I think that example misses the point. Instead, what I would highlight is that players cannot use die rolls and skill checks circumvent or get out of difficult situations in the game! A natural 20 means nothing in old school D&D and that’s something I generally have to train modern players out of expecting. Old school D&D is meant to be a simulation of a living world, not a balanced set of mechanics. When players encounter a hazard, or trap, or unknowable situation, they must engage with the simulation and attempt to deconstruct it and overcome it. That’s what the Primer narrowly defines as “player skill”.  Instead of “Player skill over character skill”, I would substitute “Simulation over mechanics”.

    The second issue I have with this PDF is the notion of “Rulings over rules”. Because the original D&D rules were very sparse, and more like a collection of Dave Arneson’s and Gary Gygax’s notes, all other groups had to invent circumstantial rules in actual play. The PDF codifies this style of off-the-cuff rulings as a hallmark of old school gaming. I disagree. One only has to look to AD&D to see that codifying the rules of the game was a very early impulse, once the folks at TSR saw how the game began to be played “out in the wild”.

    In fact, I believe that in either OD&D or AD&D, it is specifically mentioned that the referee should keep a notebook of all such off the cuff rulings made during the game session, and refer back to them for consistency. In effect, every GM would be codifying his or her own rules. Players like consistency, and a GM who makes two different rulings on similar situations would quickly be called out on it.  Instead of “Rulings over rules”, I would once again substitute “Simulation over rules”.

    And that’s actually what I like about old school D&D, in that it is about crafting a consistent, logical, and believable world that the players have to engage with directly and use their imagination to navigate, rather than with their character sheet and using dice to “win”.

    And the real difference I believe between old school and modern D&D is this: In early D&D, the DM was the driving force behind the game, who set up the verisimilitude of the world and arbitrated the player’s actions within it. In modern D&D, the players are the drivers of the game, using their ability scores and dice rolls to overcome numerical challenges that the DM can only set the difficulty threshold to.  From 3e onward, limiting the DM’s influence over the players was a stated design goal. And that, more than anything, changed the nature of the game.