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Palanan
2021-10-14, 12:30 PM
Are there any published sources—books, articles, interviews—that document the inspirations and influences for each of the player classes, and how they changed through each edition?

I suspect a lot of this is scattered in old Dragon articles and interviews on the WotC site, but it would be great if anyone can recommend a source that’s already compiled a narrative.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-15, 03:47 AM
Are there any published sources—books, articles, interviews—that document the inspirations and influences for each of the player classes, and how they changed through each edition?

I suspect a lot of this is scattered in old Dragon articles and interviews on the WotC site, but it would be great if anyone can recommend a source that’s already compiled a narrative.

Not sure, but Matt Colville has a great series on his YouTube channel where he makes a fighter in each edition of D&D. Obviously it’s focused on the fighter specifically but he goes into a lot of depth looking at how the game as a whole developed and how that influenced the fighter.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-15, 04:09 PM
It all started with Fighters, in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, underneath a castle looking for ... well, ask Greg Svenson. He emerged with a magic sword.

dafrca
2021-10-15, 06:41 PM
Are there any published sources—books, articles, interviews—that document the inspirations and influences for each of the player classes, and how they changed through each edition?

I would love to read such a book. I think it would be quite interesting. :smallsmile:



... but Matt Colville has a great series on his YouTube channel where he makes a fighter in each edition of D&D. Obviously it’s focused on the fighter specifically but he goes into a lot of depth looking at how the game as a whole developed and how that influenced the fighter.

I am going to have to go find this set of videos. :smallbiggrin:

Malphegor
2021-10-16, 02:37 AM
This would be interesting from an anthropology standpoint, as a lot of modern fantasy has been shaped by games, D&D and it’s influence on early video game RPGs in particular. And nobody really seems to talk much about where any of it comes from.

Where does the wizard even come from? I can point out any number of wizards in media and myth that come close, but apart from Odin and his questing to learn all the magics ever no matter the type or stigma of learning X magic, or Gandalf’s studiousness of old lore to learn what the current threat actually is, the ‘knows all the things’ wizard who wields unfathomable cosmic power through work and effort to learn it more than inborn gifts seems to have existed in pop culture, a lot of stuff alludes to wizards learning spells, but until rpgs codified rules for it I think wizards were just in the general ‘magic using person’ category, and they could be synonymous with witch or sorcerer or even magician, which all have very specific meanings nowadays.

I think we’re heading into a weird time right now (as in the past century and the next few centuries going forward) in fantasy writing where everything is getting hyper specific and having a very singular meaning, which is so rarely the case in their mythic roots. Mythology and legend typically plays by calvinball rules, every village and hamlet depicts a dragon or a wizard or a troll as a different kind of thing working off different rules. So something that examines the roots of the stuff we’re playing with would be super cool.

Thrudd
2021-10-17, 02:35 AM
This would be interesting from an anthropology standpoint, as a lot of modern fantasy has been shaped by games, D&D and it’s influence on early video game RPGs in particular. And nobody really seems to talk much about where any of it comes from.

Where does the wizard even come from? I can point out any number of wizards in media and myth that come close, but apart from Odin and his questing to learn all the magics ever no matter the type or stigma of learning X magic, or Gandalf’s studiousness of old lore to learn what the current threat actually is, the ‘knows all the things’ wizard who wields unfathomable cosmic power through work and effort to learn it more than inborn gifts seems to have existed in pop culture, a lot of stuff alludes to wizards learning spells, but until rpgs codified rules for it I think wizards were just in the general ‘magic using person’ category, and they could be synonymous with witch or sorcerer or even magician, which all have very specific meanings nowadays.

I think we’re heading into a weird time right now (as in the past century and the next few centuries going forward) in fantasy writing where everything is getting hyper specific and having a very singular meaning, which is so rarely the case in their mythic roots. Mythology and legend typically plays by calvinball rules, every village and hamlet depicts a dragon or a wizard or a troll as a different kind of thing working off different rules. So something that examines the roots of the stuff we’re playing with would be super cool.
The D&D wizard mechanics are inspired largely from the magic system in Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" stories. The magic user's original function, just prior to D&D, was being a fantasy version of artillery units (with fireballs and lightning) in tabletop war games. Lots of their D&d spells (and the spells of clerics) were inspired by powers from a variety of stories and mythology as well as just practical game utility for dungeon crawlers.
So mechanically, they are purely designed for the game. You were just expected to ignore the fact that this did not match up to almost any mythical or fantasy version of wizards or sorcerer, while still claiming that they represented an "archetype" of the wizards of fiction. They only could reasonably be "Dying Earth" wizards, and don't exactly match up to that, either.
I think the nearest reality is D&D, for Gygax, was originally conceived as a treasure hunt tabletop miniatures game with the classes designed to fill practical game roles. As the role-playing element expanded, it was mostly inspired by things like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Conan, and Dying Earth, with a paint-job of Lord of the Rings races and some mythical monsters tossed in.

Thrudd
2021-10-17, 06:44 PM
Also, I think a thing to remember is that D&D was not originally conceived as a way to emulate fantasy or mythology stories. The way classes were designed were not to fill a story role, but to fill a game role. It was largely a miniatures game, taking place in a generic "fantasy" setting, where players had the goal of collecting as much treasure/points as they could before their characters died, pitted against the mazes and monsters designed by the dungeon master. It was a grab bag of things inspired by any and all fantasy fiction and mythology the creators were familiar with, where what are basically game pieces were given names.

The basic mechanics remained largely stable, even as the idea of "role playing" entered the game and stories and characters became just as important as the tactical battles and collecting of points (for some). The creators and players started taking more time to imagine the fictional world the game was taking place in, and tried to blend fiction and mythology tropes with the mechanics, which mostly looks like using a warhammer mini as your monopoly pawn (the fiction rarely ever matches or is relevant to the actual game mechanics).

So, all of this is to say "where they got the idea for this character class" is almost irrelevant in the earliest iterations, since the fiction never had much to do with what was actually taking place in the game. Later on, classes were designed based on specific fictional characters or stories, but even then, they were mostly transformed to work in the game and not to emulate the role of those characters in stories.

Morty
2021-10-17, 07:00 PM
The purpose of D&D classes is to be D&D classes, because otherwise people will complain. They've been designed by accretion and things that felt like a good idea at the time, then became fixtures that no one dares remove. That's about the long and short of it.

Prime32
2021-10-17, 07:18 PM
Wikipedia has some info (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_class_(Dungeons_&_Dragons))

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-18, 09:03 AM
I think the nearest reality is D&D, for Gygax, was originally conceived as a treasure hunt tabletop miniatures game with the classes designed to fill practical game roles. As the role-playing element expanded, it was mostly inspired by things like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Conan, and Dying Earth, with a paint-job of Lord of the Rings races and some mythical monsters tossed in. Yep.

Also, I think a thing to remember is that D&D was not originally conceived as a way to emulate fantasy or mythology stories. The way classes were designed were not to fill a story role, but to fill a game role. Yes, the RPG grew in the playing.
From Men and Magic, pages 5 and 6

When this task is completed the participants can then be allowed to make their first descent into the dungeons beneath the "huge ruined pile, a vast castle built by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses". Before they begin, players must decide what role they will play in the campaign, human or otherwise, fighter, cleric, or magic-user. Thereafter they will work upwards — if they survive — as they gain "experience". First, however, it is necessary to describe fully the roles possible. This is before the term "role playing game" was found in any D&D book. (First place I found it was in a 1975 printing of Greyhawk, supplement 1).

CHARACTERS:

There are three (3) main classes of characters: This was a plain English use of the term class (A grouping of things; see also kingdom-phylum-order-class taxonomy for a similar usage)

Fighting-Men
Magic-Users
Clerics
Interestingly ... we may see the genesis of the LF - QW model in this description of the Magic User

Magic-Users: Top level magic-users are perhaps the most powerful characters in the game, but it is a long, hard road to the top, and to begin with they are weak, so survival is often the question, unless fighters protect the low-level magical types until they have worked up. The whole plethora of enchanted items lies at the magic-users beck and call, save the arms and armor of the fighters (see, however, Elves); Magic-Users may arm themselves with daggers only. Wizards and above may manufacture for their own use (or for sale) such items as potions, scrolls, and just about anything else magical. Costs are commensurate with the value of the item, as is the amount of game time required to enchant it.
Note, in this usage, Wizard was name level and was character level 11.

HouseRules
2021-10-18, 07:34 PM
From Chainmail Fantasy Wargaming

Fighters
level 1/4 = light foot
level 1/2 = heavy foot
level 3/4 = armored foot
level 1 = light horse
level 2 = medium horse
level 3 = heavy horse
level 4 = hero
level 5 = ranger = hero with +1 sword or +1 bow
level 8 = superhero

Wizards
level 1 = seer
level 2 = level 7 (because worn out die, the 2 looks like a 7)
level 3 = magician
level 4 = warlock
level 5 = sorcerer
level 6 = wizard 6
level 7 = wizard 7

For normal combat purposes, all Wizards attacks as 2 light horse and defends as 2 armored foot.

Pauly
2021-10-18, 08:32 PM
Paladin, Ranger and Barbarian started life as sub-classes of fighter. I believe first published in Dragon, then in source books. It was only after the playing public fully accepted them that they became their own distinct classes.

iirc the Barbarian class was only fully developed after “Conan the Barbarian” was released, and the class took on many of the tropes associated with that movie. The writing of Howard obviously contributed a lot, but the movie adaption was the bigger influence. Also mixed in were various historical types, with the Viking Raiders generally and the Bezerker in particular being the most prominent. The “history” was more soft history based on popular perceptions, not hard history based on known facts and sources. Think more Kirk Douglas’ “The Vikings” than any academic treatise.

The Paladin class is obviously a questing knight in the mode of Le Morte d’Arthur and the Song of Roland. There was no attempt to make Paladins true to history, even when ported over as proxies for Samurai, the basis was the mythical idealized version of the historical figure, not true history.

I’m not sure of the basis of Ranger apart from the name and wilderness warrior from LotR.

Edit to add.
D&D was never my main thing so I may not have this 100% right, but I blieve the last true new class added to D&D was the Rogue. As discussed above Dragon would publish optional character templates, which if they got traction got into a sourcebook and if they took off then became a new character class.
Druid was a spinoff of Cleric
Sorcerer and Warlock were spinoffs of Wizard
Bard was a spinoff of Rogue.

Part of the reason for doing this is marketing. It gives players an incentive to keep buying Dragon and new source books.

Frankly you can go back to absolute basics and use the 4 basic classes (Fighter wizard cleric rogue) and the 3 basic races (human elf dwarf) in current D&D and the game doesn’t suffer. Rogue is needed now because of traps and locks which are now a staple feature of the game.

HouseRules
2021-10-18, 09:14 PM
Cleric is a reaction to Vampires.

Thief stole the "Clerics' search for traps" and "Wizards' trap removal".

Psionic is last, but not many like Psionic stuff.

Psionicist is actually Psionicist/Fighter
Psionicist/Thief
Psionicist/Wizard is horrible
Psionicist/Cleric is horrible

Edit:
Original: Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, Human; Cleric, Fighter, Wizard
Supplement I Greyhawk: Half Elf; Paladin, Ranger, Thief
Supplement II Blackmoor: Assassin, Monk
Supplement III Eldritch Wizardry: Druid, Psionicist

dafrca
2021-10-18, 10:22 PM
... but I blieve the last true new class added to D&D was the Rogue ...

Wasn't Rogue just the renaming of Thief then later Thief added back as a subclass of Rogue?

The way my brain works I am unsure I am remembering things right. LOL

:smallsmile:

HouseRules
2021-10-18, 11:38 PM
Wasn't Rogue just the renaming of Thief then later Thief added back as a subclass of Rogue?

The way my brain works I am unsure I am remembering things right. LOL

:smallsmile:

The formal change is 3E, but many people use Rogue even if the formal name is Thief.

Kurald Galain
2021-10-19, 05:26 AM
Ainspirations and influences for each of the player classes, and how they changed through each edition?

Well I can share some things.

The fighter is ubiquitous in fiction. In 1E/2E they are an offensive melee character who eventually gets a castle and troops as a class feature, to a more defensive melee character in later editions. They used to have a class feature that would let them kill a number of mooks equal to his own level, each round.
The paladin is from Arthurian legend, specifically Sir Galahad. In early editions they were capital-r-Rare to the point where you had to be very lucky on your stat rolls to play one in the first place. Smite evil is a 3E concept.
The ranger is Aragorn in early editions, Drizz't in later editions.
The barbarian is Conan, obviously.
The rogue (formerly "thief") is Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as well as Bilbo Baggins. In 1E/2E they don't do a whole lot in combat but level really quickly (XP tables differed by class); them being an offensive melee character is mostly from 3E.
The wizard, you'd think he's based on Merlin, but mostly he's the artillery piece for settings that are too low-tech to have cannon. In early editions he is very squishy, effectively cannot cast when engage in melee, and is intentionally weak early, really powerful later. Later editions tone that down; however the notion that wizards are the uber-I-win-the-game class is largely from 3E.
The psion is from 1950s pulp books with psychic powers, but also fulfills the role of someone who didn't study magic but was born with "powers" that he don't fully understands. The sorcerer takes that role in 3E.
The druid used to have this weird thing where there Can Only Be One 12th-level druid in the region, so you can only level up if you find that druid and defeat him. Only one 13th-level in the country, only one 14th-level in the world. Again, find and defeat. 15th and up are retired from this political BS.
The bard used to have this weird thing where you became one by starting as fighter for some levels, then wizard for some more levels, then rogue for some more (I forget exactly how many), making it effectively the first Prestige Class in D&D. 2nd edition made it a regular class instead, and one that levels really quickly.

HTH!

Khedrac
2021-10-19, 06:42 AM
Another change in the later days of 1st Ed was the Cavalier - the specialist in mounted combat.

Iirc Cavalier was a sort-of variant of Fighter but it was made a separate main class with Paladin moved across to become a sub-class of Cavalier not Fighter.
I think they got to roll for percentile strength (along with fighters and variants).

It should be mentioned that in AD&D (1st) the bonus hit points per die for a high constitution were capped at +2 unless you were a fighter - so unless you somehow got 19+ in a statistic only fighters (and variants) for the full benefit of a 17 or 18 Con and to roll for percentile strength.

Earlier in the 1st Ed AD&D era the Thief Acrobat was published and Dragon (and Imagine) (and eventually Unearthed Arcana) - similar to Barbarians
This thief stopped raising a lot of their thief skills and got acrobatics skills instead - in some ways they were another attempt at a prestige class, though later than the bard.

it is also worth noting that TSR (and Gary) were not the only people producing expansions for AD&D - White Wolf magazine (before it became Games Workshop only) produced an alternative Barbarian class at about the same time. (They actually produced a number of possible classes such as the Houri, and a lot of them probably influenced later TSR material.
(Remember that White Dwarf was the origin of most monsters in the original Fiend Folio - mainly sent in by readers.)

Companion D&D introduced Paladins, Avengers and Druids as options mid-level fighters, fighters and clerics could take - another set of proto-prestige classes. Most people I think just put the druid in at level 1 instead.
One interesting thing about basic D&D clerics which I think goes back to "original D&D" is that they did not get spells at first level - they were weaker fighters (limited on weapons and fewer hit points) who could turn undead.

If you look carefully you will probably also find inspiration flowing to and from other gaming systems, for example Dragon printed a dwarf race for Traveller (1st ed - the Game Designers Workshop system). The AD&D DMG even included cross-over rules for Gamma World and Boot Hill!

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-19, 07:40 AM
From Chainmail Fantasy Wargaming
For normal combat purposes, all Wizards attacks as 2 light horse and defends as 2 armored foot. Nice.

Paladin, Ranger and Barbarian started life as sub-classes of fighter. I believe first published in Dragon, then in source books. Paladin in Greyhawk, Ranger in Strategic Review, Barbarian in Dragon.

It was only after the playing public fully accepted them that they became their own distinct classes. That's not right. They (Ranger/Paladin) became their own classes thanks to WoTC; they were sub classes of Warrior, as was Fighter, in AD&D 2e. Barbarians were sub classes of Fighting Man in 1e UA, paladins got moved over to Cavalier in 1e UA.

iirc the Barbarian class was only fully developed after “Conan the Barbarian” was released, and the class took on many of the tropes associated with that movie. It took a few years to get into print, 1985, AD&D 1e, UA, but I think there was a Dragon article a few years before that. Can't find it at the moment.


The Paladin class is obviously a questing knight in the mode of Le Morte d’Arthur and the Song of Roland. There was no attempt to make Paladins true to history, even when ported over as proxies for Samurai, the basis was the mythical idealized version of the historical figure, not true history.
Close enough.

I’m not sure of the basis of Ranger apart from the name and wilderness warrior from LotR.
Guessing Aragorn, from what it said in Strategic Review.
Edit to add.

D&D was never my main thing so I may not have this 100% right, but I blieve the last true new class added to D&D was the Rogue.
Hardly, I suspect Artificer was. (Rogue was a replacement and bowdlerization of the Thief Class from Greyhawk in AD&D 2e; Thief and Bard were the two sub classes of rogue). Just so you know, Bard was its own class in its original form, Strategic Review, and then it became this bizarre amalgamation (more or less the first ever Prestige Class) in AD&D 1e.


Frankly you can go back to absolute basics and use the 4 basic classes (Fighter wizard cleric rogue) and the 3 asic races (human elf dwarf) in current D&D and the game doesn’t suffer. True. We did that in our first 5e campaign:
a human cleric(Lief), a human rogue(Assassin), a dwarf Paladin(Vengeance), a half elf bard(Lore), a human barbarian(Totem), and an elf wizard(Transmutation). Worked fine. The game my brother runs has: human warlock, human barbarian, human bard, dwarf fighter, elf wizard, elf rogue/ranger, gnome Rogue(Arcane Trickster (could have been an elf): and we played without the rogue for long stretches of the campaign due to RL removing the player from us.

Supplement III Eldritch Wizardry: Druid, Psionicist
Not quite with "psionicist" there. Originally, psionics were tacked on to any class that was eligible (Not Monk, Not Druid) in Eldritch Wizardry based on a percentile die roll. (Yeah, we messed with it when it first came out, of course we did. It was, to be charitable, fiddly).
Not their own class at that point (Psionicist) as it later became.
AD&D 1e did the same: tacked psionics on to a class based on a roll (If the rule was used).

Eldan
2021-10-19, 10:43 AM
There is the famous appendix of books Gary Gygax recommended as inspiration:
https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Appendix_N

Other than the Matter of France, one should mention Three Hearts and Three Lions as the main inspiration for the Paladin.

hewhosaysfish
2021-10-20, 01:21 PM
Brandes Stoddard has a series of articles on Tribality about the history of DnD classes. Called "History of the Classes".
https://www.tribality.com/columns/history-of-the-classes/
It's focused mostly on how the classes changed from edition to edition, less so on the historical and/or pop-cultural inspirations (although it does touch on those).

dafrca
2021-10-20, 06:57 PM
Brandes Stoddard has a series of articles on Tribality about the history of DnD classes. Called "History of the Classes".
https://www.tribality.com/columns/history-of-the-classes/
It's focused mostly on how the classes changed from edition to edition, less so on the historical and/or pop-cultural inspirations (although it does touch on those).

Thanks for the Heads Up. I will need to check them out. :smallsmile:

Palanan
2021-10-21, 07:51 AM
Originally Posted by Eldan
There is the famous appendix of books Gary Gygax recommended as inspiration:

This is very helpful, thanks. A good starting point.


Originally Posted by hewhosaysfish
Brandes Stoddard has a series of articles on Tribality about the history of DnD classes.

…Interesting, thanks. But I’m not quite sure what to make of these—they seem more like a stream-of-consciousness ramble, rather than a thoughtful analysis. And there’s apparently no index to the posts, so it’s hit-or-miss as to what you find.

Khedrac
2021-10-21, 03:10 PM
A couple of other random thoughts that I think relate to this topic.

Vancian Spellcsting
Vancian spell-casting has come in for a lot of hate over the years, but what alternatives did Gary have to based D&D on?
He needed something that was quantifiable whihc virtually nother else published was back then. Pretty much all fantasy stories had casters able to cast whatever the author wanted them too whenever they needed to. So did Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels, but he included a descrition of a mechanism that limited what spells could be cast.
The main mana pool model appears to come from computer games which did not exist back then, the cloest I know of was Runequest's power-point based casting which was both smaller sacale (in terms of the limit) and pubished after D&D. I think Runequest's look at how else to do roleplaying was just as groundbreaking as D&D, but it did need D&D to come out first to inspire it (Greg Stafford invented Glorantha as a setting to write stories in).
Gary and co's invention of RPGs was a huge step forward and very innovative for the day - you cannot realisticly expect them to have invented brand new concepts to base their magic on in a brand new concept of a game, adapting someone else's concept to fit their needs was always going to be the first method tried.

Spellcasting - before and After the 2nd Ed / 3rd Ed transformation
Something a lot of new players don't realise is that the expectations of a spellcaster's player changed dramatically with 3rd Ed.
Pre-3rd Ed the higher levels the party the less likely the target will fail its save and at high levels a failed asave is a rare exception to the normal.
From 3rd Ed the system is designed to make all spells have a reasonable chance of success, though targets can be designed to be more resistant to spells and casters cane be designed to have spells that are much harder to resist.
One of the main tacics for casters in 3.X is the "save or lose" spell - one where unless the target makes the save (which is usually unlikely) they are out of the fight.
In 1st and 2nd Ed (and BECMI D&D) most of the time what is considered is what the spell does on a successful save - failure is likely only going to happen 5% or 10% of casts. This is why fireball used to be considered a good spell - it reliably did damage when spells like flesh to stone usually did nothing at all.
The increased number of spells 3rd Ed casters get has a much smaller impact on play.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-21, 03:40 PM
A couple of other random thoughts that I think relate to this topic.

Vancian Spellcsting
Vancian spell-casting has come in for a lot of hate over the years, but what alternatives did Gary have to based D&D on?
He needed something that was quantifiable whihc virtually nother else published was back then. Pretty much all fantasy stories had casters able to cast whatever the author wanted them too whenever they needed to. So did Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels, but he included a descrition of a mechanism that limited what spells could be cast.
From the horse's mouth, EGG explained the choice two years after the game was out.


The four cardinal types of magic are {formatting mine for ease of reading}

those systems which require long conjuration with much paraphernalia as an adjunct (as used by Shakespeare in MACBETH or as typically written about by Robert E. Howard in his “Conan” yarns),
the relatively short spoken spell (as in Finnish mythology or as found in the superb fantasy of Jack Vance),
ultra-powerful (if not always correct) magic (typical of deCamp & Pratt in their classic “Harold Shea” stories)
and the generally weak and relatively ineffectual magic (as found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work).
Now the use of magic in the game was one of the most appealing aspects, and given the game
system it was fairly obvious that its employment could not be on the complicated and time consuming plane, any more than it could be made as a rather weak and ineffectual adjunct to swordplay if magic-users were to become a class of player character. The basic assumption, then, was that D & D magic worked on a “Vancian” system and if used correctly would be a highly powerful and effective force.
There are also four basic parts to magic: {Formatting mine to aid in readability}

The verbal or uttered spell,
the somatic or physical movement required for the conjuration,
the psychic or mental attitude necessary to cast the spell,
and the material adjuncts by which the spell, can be completed (to cite an obvious example, water to raise a water elemental).
It was assumed that the D & D spell would be primarily verbal, although in some instances the spell would require some somatic component also (a fire ball being an outstanding example). The psychic per se would play little part in the basic magic system, but a corollary, mnemonics, would. The least part of magic would be the material aids required, and most of those considered stored or aided magic, so as to enable its more immediate employment, rather than serving to prolong spell casting time or encumber the player using these aids.

Khedrac
2021-10-22, 02:39 AM
From the horse's mouth, EGG explained the choice two years after the game was out.
Quote from Strategic Review (Volume 2, Issue 2, the last SR published, April 1976)

Thank-you for that, I had not read it before. Oddly it completely misses the point I was making. EGG exlains why the flavor of the magic system he wrote is what it was, but does nothing to address the mechanics of the system. If you look at the other three examples given there is nothing in the sources to show how to define limits for a game - and that was something EGG had to invent, and Jack Vance's novels do come with the beginnings of a definable system to limit magic in game that EGG built into the original D&D magic system.

oxybe
2021-10-22, 06:40 AM
a note on fireball:

Fireball's hayday was back when monsters used raw d8s as hp and didn't have any con buffs to it.

a 8hd monster only had 36hp on average. compare that to a 8th level fireball dealing 28 avg damage on a failed save, you're still knocking out 1/3 of the hp on a successful save.

compare that same 8hd 3.5 monster with 20 con, and the 28 avg damage on a failed save starts looking far less impressive vs 76hp and only removing 1/6th of their hp on a save.

the monster in question is an Aboleth.

this is why fireball was good. HP didn't scale in 1st/2nd like in the next edition.

Palanan
2021-10-22, 11:38 AM
Originally Posetd by Khedrac
EGG exlains why the flavor of the magic system he wrote is what it was, but does nothing to address the mechanics of the system.

This touches on what I’m looking for, which ideally would be a single well-researched source that traces the evolution of features like this, class by class and edition by edition.

There are several books on the development of RPGs, but I don’t know if any of them really focuses on the detailed development of classes per se.

HumanFighter
2021-10-22, 09:43 PM
I've watched some videos on this topic (ever heard of a YouTube channel called "DM It All"? It's pretty good)
Yeah, the Rogues (formerly known as Thieves) were so good at climbing it was ridiculous. It was kind of their thing.
In more modern D&D's, I rarely ever see climbing be much of a thing though, sadly.
A bit off-topic, but in Daggerfall, a really old Elder Scrolls game, you could actually climb up walls and I think there was a skill for it. Nowadays in Skyrim you have to "glitch" your way up the mountainside, preferably on a horse (seriously, mountain climbing is the only reason I buy or steal a horse in that game).
Also I heard monks in old editions were almost like secondary thievies, having the open lock skill and whatnot.
Monks were HORRIBLE in D&D 3.5 though, IMO. But in Pathfinder, they made 'em much better, having a Ki Pool and all that, which I think is spot-on and also pretty cool.

Kurald Galain
2021-10-26, 02:36 PM
Pre-3rd Ed the higher levels the party the less likely the target will fail its save and at high levels a failed asave is a rare exception to the normal.
From 3rd Ed the system is designed to make all spells have a reasonable chance of success, though targets can be designed to be more resistant to spells and casters cane be designed to have spells that are much harder to resist.

Speaking of evolution:
As you level up in 1E and 2E, all your saves gradually become something you'll almost always pass.
As you level up in 3E and PF, your "weak" save stays at more-or-less a 50% chance, and your "strong" save gradually becomes one you'll almost always pass (compared to level-appropiate enemies, and assuming standard wealth).
As you level up in 4E and 5E, your "strong" save stays at more-or-less a 50% chance, and your "weak" save gradually becomes one you'll almost always fail.

I'm not saying any of these are better or worse, but the math has a very different aim.


Aside from that,
The skill system in 3E and PF is specialist. Characters are clearly good at skills they've trained in, and bad at skills they haven't. Trained characters can routinely perform tasks that ordinary characters struggle with. It is good to have a diverse party, since other PCs are trained in different things, and the country needs adventurers because they markedly possess skill levels that the average people don't.

The skill system in 4E and 5E is generalist. Characters are more-or-less equally skilled at every skill, and the deciding factor is more the roll of the die than how much training the character had. On the one hand, everybody can contribute more-or-less equally to any skill-based situation. On the other hand, untrained characters frequently beat trained characters at opposed skills, and almost all checks can also be made by a group of commoners. I'm sure someone will now bring up an 20th-level rogue as the counterexample, but during most of your campaign the PCs won't be 20th-ish level rogues.

(1E/2E don't really have a skill system).

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-26, 03:18 PM
EGG exlains why the flavor of the magic system he wrote is what it was, but does nothing to address the mechanics of the system. I think that's in a different SR, but I don't remember seeing it fully addressed until AD&D 1e DMG in a D&D book. Lemme check.
*shuffle shuffle*
Here you go, from Strategic Review Issue number 2 (Summer, 1975), page 4:
Spells: A magic-user can use a given spell but once during any given day, even if he is carrying his books with him. This is not to say that he cannot equip himself with a multiplicity of the same spell so as to have its use more than a single time.
Therefore, a magic-user could, for example, equip himself with three sleep spells, each of which would be usable but once. He could also have a scroll of let us say two spells, both of which are also sleep spells. As the spells were read from the scrolls they would disappear, so in total that magic-user would have a maximum of five sleep spells to use that day.
If he had no books with him there would be no renewal of spells on the next day, as the game assumes that the magic-user gains spells by preparations such as memorizing incantations, and once the spell is spoken that particular memory pattern is gone completely.
ln a similar manner spells are inscribed on a scroll, and as the words are uttered they vanish from the scroll.
Sure would have been nice to have that in a book called Men and Magic, eh? :smallyuk: It wasn't. But finally, in the AD&D DMG (how many years later) that was covered. (I would need to dig through the PHB to see if he put it there also, probably did, but I am not recalling that and don't have it to hand).

That issue also introduced a perennial favorite monster, the Roper.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-26, 03:28 PM
(1E/2E don't really have a skill system). That is incorrect.

The system used for many years was: you roll a d20 and if you score your attribute or less, you succeed. (DM tells you add or subtract "x" if the situation warrants it). I can go back to the late 70's and recall using that, but I do not know where the DM got it from. Might have been in a Dragon article, might have been something that he had learned at a Con. Not sure.

The beauty of that approach was that it could be applied to nearly anything; you didn't need a table to administer it.

2e took that practice, which a lot of table had been using for years, and formalized that into the non weapons proficiency system.

2e's more narrowly codifying it was, IMO, a step back rather than a step forward, but I do admit that it fell into the old "We Have A Table For Everything!" approach that EGG had established in the AD&D 1e DMG.

Kurald Galain
2021-10-26, 04:14 PM
I can go back to the late 70's and recall using that, but I do not know where the DM got it from. Might have been in a Dragon article, might have been something that he had learned at a Con. Not sure.
So this "skill system" is not in the main rulebooks, and is essentially "roll something the DM made up". That's precisely what I mean by that 1E doesn't really have a skill system :smallbiggrin:

sktarq
2021-10-26, 04:24 PM
That is incorrect.

The system used for many years was: you roll a d20 and if you score your attribute or less, you succeed. (DM tells you add or subtract "x" if the situation warrants it). I can go back to the late 70's and recall using that, but I do not know where the DM got it from. Might have been in a Dragon article, might have been something that he had learned at a Con. Not sure.

The beauty of that approach was that it could be applied to nearly anything; you didn't need a table to administer it.

2e took that practice, which a lot of table had been using for years, and formalized that into the non weapons proficiency system.

2e's more narrowly codifying it was, IMO, a step back rather than a step forward, but I do admit that it fell into the old "We Have A Table For Everything!" approach that EGG had established in the AD&D 1e DMG.

Meh...even within 2e things weren't really stable.
And pre2e I never knew of any formal rules for non-thief skills. Sure Roll-below-relevant-attribute made some sense and was almost certainly a common reaction but I know I never found a FORMAL one.

and in 2e things basically started that way too. But both secondary skills and proficiency were optional rules found in later splat books (which IIRC were not supposed to be used together) and I think later runs of the core book. But I remember the excitement my group had with I think some of the blue splats that had it for what to us was the first time. But within only a couple of years and the rise of the kit system the skill system seem to become normalized and is the basis of even the modern version.
The dropped system was much more the if it matches your list in a general way (sailor, tailor, candlestick maker, etc) the DM would let you pull off basically anything in the logical realm but there were not many dice rolls involved.

EDIT: So I'd say 2e ended with a skill system but I wouldn't say it started with one. (also spelling)

Jay R
2021-10-26, 05:21 PM
Bard was a spinoff of Rogue.

No; the first Bard class appeared in The Strategic Review (precursor to The Dragon), which stated, "A Bard is a jack-of-all-trades in Dungeons and Dragons, he is both an amateur thief and magic user as well as a good fighter."



Edit:
Original: Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, Human; Cleric, Fighter, Wizard
Supplement I Greyhawk: Half Elf; Paladin, Ranger, Thief
Supplement II Blackmoor: Assassin, Monk
Supplement III Eldritch Wizardry: Druid, Psionicist

A couple of slight corrections:
Ranger was introduced in an article in The Strategic Review, but was not included in any original D&D book.
Psionics were introduced in Eldritch Wizardry, but not the separate class Psionicist. Fighting Men, Magic Users, Clerics, Paladins, Thieves, and Assassins could use psionics (with the right rolls), but monks and druids could not.


Wasn't Rogue just the renaming of Thief then later Thief added back as a subclass of Rogue?

The way my brain works I am unsure I am remembering things right. LOL

:smallsmile:

Basically, tes, but you're turning things around. In AD&D 2e, Rogue included both Thief and Bard. Rogue became the cleaned-up name for Thief in 3e.

Catullus64
2021-10-26, 05:24 PM
So this "skill system" is not in the main rulebooks, and is essentially "roll something the DM made up". That's precisely what I mean by that 1E doesn't really have a skill system :smallbiggrin:

It's there, you just have to dig for it a bit. In 2e AD&D it was under the heading of nonweapon proficiencies. It was an "optional rule"... in much the same way that feats and multiclassing today are "optional rules", in that I've never heard tell of a serious group running without them.

dafrca
2021-10-26, 06:10 PM
Basically, tes, but you're turning things around. In AD&D 2e, Rogue included both Thief and Bard. Rogue became the cleaned-up name for Thief in 3e.
Hum, I would swear I played a thief in the old White Box games and later they became a rogue but maybe not. After a while they all start to blend together in my mind. :smallbiggrin:

Mordar
2021-10-26, 06:15 PM
Note: My background was red box/blue box for a short while and then straight into the first issuance of the AD&D books. That certainly influences answers below.

In Red/blue box land the classes were Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, Thief, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling. As discussed, the first four were meant to emulate their progenitors on the miniature battlefield and the final three brought the elements of fantasy to the forefront...and gave us the first multi-class options (dang elves!).


Paladin, Ranger and Barbarian started life as sub-classes of fighter. I believe first published in Dragon, then in source books. It was only after the playing public fully accepted them that they became their own distinct classes.

iirc the Barbarian class was only fully developed after “Conan the Barbarian” was released, and the class took on many of the tropes associated with that movie. The writing of Howard obviously contributed a lot, but the movie adaption was the bigger influence. Also mixed in were various historical types, with the Viking Raiders generally and the Bezerker in particular being the most prominent. The “history” was more soft history based on popular perceptions, not hard history based on known facts and sources. Think more Kirk Douglas’ “The Vikings” than any academic treatise.

Frankly I think the Viking was the more impactful of the systemic influences, while Conan was much of the optics. The defining characteristic was definitely the Rage.

The Cavalier was the answer to "I want to play a knight but don't want all that holy stuff". Both came out in Unearthed Arcana...and both were considered OP before people used OP.



Edit to add.
D&D was never my main thing so I may not have this 100% right, but I blieve the last true new class added to D&D was the Rogue. As discussed above Dragon would publish optional character templates, which if they got traction got into a sourcebook and if they took off then became a new character class.
Druid was a spinoff of Cleric
Sorcerer and Warlock were spinoffs of Wizard
Bard was a spinoff of Rogue.

As has already been mentioned, bards were more than a jumped-up thief...the path to bardhood was a long and tortuous road. The first effectively 3-class character.

Illusionists were the first Magic-User subclass...likely created to give someone the ability to play the gnome.

We mustn't forget the Monk class from AD&D either, before it became a 3e joke. Obviously a mishmash of eastern and western monk ideals...looking mostly like Friar Tuck, fighting mostly like Kwai Chang Kane (yes, irony intended).

I do recall a stream of classes or class mods from Dragon, but I really only got on board with the magazine around issue 45 or so. Still, I worked towards backissues and the Best Ofs, so we got Illusionists, Rangers (reprinted from SR), Anti-Paladins, Samurai, Healers, Ninja (of course!) and the barbarian pregenitor Berserkers...all meant to fill a niche someone identified from stories, movies or myths and legends.

- M

Saint-Just
2021-10-26, 06:35 PM
Hum, I would swear I played a thief in the old White Box games and later they became a rogue but maybe not. After a while they all start to blend together in my mind. :smallbiggrin:

I am not from that generation but it goes like that AFAIK

OD&D, AD&D 1e: Thief is one of the classes
AD&D 2e: Groups are a concept which are more general than classes, you can compare it with 4e power sources, but with the focus on the resulting role instead of the origin. One of the four fundamental groups is called Rogue and includes Thief who is very similar to previous Thief. Also in that group are Bards and Assassins, Dark Sun Traders etc.
D&D 3e: The class which is closest to the previous Thief is called Rogue. The concept of groups is abolished.

Jay R
2021-10-26, 10:44 PM
Hum, I would swear I played a thief in the old White Box games and later they became a rogue but maybe not. After a while they all start to blend together in my mind. :smallbiggrin:

That's correct. The Thief class was introduced in the first supplement, Greyhawk. In AD&D 2e, Rogues included Thieves and Bards. Thief turned into Rogue in 3e.

Tanarii
2021-10-27, 12:06 AM
So this "skill system" is not in the main rulebooks, and is essentially "roll something the DM made up". That's precisely what I mean by that 1E doesn't really have a skill system :smallbiggrin:


It's there, you just have to dig for it a bit. In 2e AD&D it was under the heading of nonweapon proficiencies. It was an "optional rule"... in much the same way that feats and multiclassing today are "optional rules", in that I've never heard tell of a serious group running without them.
IIRc D&D's original skill system was introduced in 1e's Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneers Survival Guide (whichever game first in 1986) in the form of non-weapon proficiencies and BECMI's The Grand Duchy of Karameikos Gazetteer in the form of General Skills (1987). Both used the d20 roll under attribute + additional skill levels.

NWPs weren't called Skills, but that's what they were. And given the late date, it's entirely possible they'd been in a strategic review / dragon magazine long before that.

Kurald Galain
2021-10-27, 04:05 AM
Another fun bit of evolution. In 1E/2E, cleric spells only go up to level 7, although a later book introduced "quest spells" which were basically one-off spells of a higher power. In 3E, cleric spells go up to level 9, and several of those quest spells return as 8th- or 9th-level spells.

In 1E, wizards don't have a lot of spells per day. In 2E (and probably in some 1E dragon article or whatnot) you can become a specialist wizard which has an extra spell of each level. In 3E, you get more spells based on your intelligence (in 2E, clerics got extra spells for wisdom, but wizards did not). In 4E/5E/PF, you get certain spells at will. So the wizard evolves from saving his spells for the right moment, to someone who always casts a spell every round.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-27, 08:09 AM
So this "skill system" is not in the main rulebooks, and is essentially "roll something the DM made up". That's precisely what I mean by that 1E doesn't really have a skill system :smallbiggrin: *Face palm* (Thank you @Tanarii for the follow up). The play's the thing.

I know I never found a FORMAL one. You don't need a formal one to play the game and have a great deal of fun. RAW-limited-handicaps get special parking places at the 7-11, I guess. :smalltongue:
So I'd say 2e ended with a skill system but I wouldn't say it started with one. (also spelling) NWP were in the PHB that I have. Not sure where our disconnect is. Are you hung up on the word "optional" in that chapter? :smallconfused: vHuman is "optional" but (a) commonly used and (b) a standard if one plays AL games, in the current edition.

OD&D, AD&D 1e: Thief is one of the classes
AD&D 2e: Groups are a concept which are more general than classes, you can compare it with 4e power sources, but with the focus on the resulting role instead of the origin. One of the four fundamental groups is called Rogue and includes Thief who is very similar to previous Thief. Also in that group are Bards and Assassins, Dark Sun Traders etc.
D&D 3e: The class which is closest to the previous Thief is called Rogue. The concept of groups is abolished.
The group/class/sub class structure began with Ranger (Strategic Review) as sub class of Fighting Man; Illusionist (Strategic Review) as sub class of Magic User and Paladin (Greyhawk) as sub class of fighter, then Monk (Blackmoor) and Druid (Eldritch Wizardry) as sub classes of Cleric, and Assassin (Blackmoor)as sub class of thief.
(AD&D 1e formalized that).
Bard was its own proposed class from Strategic Review that got weirdly mashed up in PHB for AD&D 1e. Fighter/Thief/Bard.
What AD&D 2e did was take the above class/subclass and repackage them slightly: and they rolled in a lot of stuff that had been kicking around in supplements and the deluge of stuff in Dragon Magazine for about a decade.

I think it was also informed by seeing some of the things other games were doing and deciding "Hey, that's not a bad idea, let's do something like that!".

This made Thief and Bard a subclass of something, so they called it Rogue. That was related to two two things: get rid of the Assassin except as an NPC (the whole of 2e was filled bowdlerization of the game in response to social pressure and a desire not to have bad press) - Assassin didn't come back until later in the edition as a kit) and it returned the Bard to being a class (SR was the origin) rather than a bizarre Prestige Class prequel thing in the 1e PHB.

Another fun bit of evolution. In 1E/2E, cleric spells only go up to level 7, although a later book introduced "quest spells" which were basically one-off spells of a higher power.
Yeah, which includes druid spells since druids are a sub class of cleric (or priest in 2e). FWIW, there was no spell higher than 6th level in the original game (Three Books before Greyhawk).

In 1E, wizards don't have a lot of spells per day. In 2E (and probably in some 1E dragon article or whatnot) you can become a specialist wizard which has an extra spell of each level. In 1E, this had already started with the "bonus spells based on higher wisdom scores" for clerics, which I think was done to induce more people to play clerics. (This from memory, but it may have been mentioned in an article in Dragon; it's been a long time).

In 3E, you get more spells based on your intelligence (in 2E, clerics got extra spells for wisdom, but wizards did not). In 4E/5E/PF, you get certain spells at will. So the wizard evolves from saving his spells for the right moment, to someone who always casts a spell every round. Yeah, Wizards got a power boost in 3.x.

Catullus64
2021-10-27, 09:45 AM
One of the class-history narratives I find most interesting is the history of making multiple attacks.

AD&D: Multiple attacks belong to the Warrior-group as a function of their level (Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, etc.) Because of how AD&D initiative works, attacks might be staggered across a round. You would also spend a pretty sizable band of levels making 3/2 Attacks per round, which never failed to feel strange to me. I think there might have been extra attacks from the extreme end of Weapon Specialization (Fighters only), but Weapon Specialization is confusing always gets me going on a rant, so I won't look too closely into it. But the upshot was (as I understand; my experience is limited) that while high-level casters were crazy powerful and good for solving big problems, a Fighter was still your best bet to kill something big and nasty very quickly.

3rd Edition: Multiple attacks for all classes are folded into one mechanic, the Base Attack Bonus; when it gets high enough, you get additional attacks at a substantially lower bonus (meaning that when you get them, they practically always miss, hooray). Also you can't do anything else on the turn on which you intend to actually make these multiple attacks, because now there's such a thing as a Full Round Action (as always, there were feats to get around this, somewhat). Sufficeth to say this was probably the most user-unfriendly era for extra attacks. Incidentally, this was probably also the nadir of caster-martial imbalance.

4th Edtion: My experience is limited here, but I'm pretty sure there's no baseline mechanic for making extra attacks, but most melee classes had numerous powers that essentially added up to some kind of multiattack routine.

5th Edition: Extra Attack is a specific feature of certain levels in a class, carefully worded so as not to stack from multiclassing. In a clean break from 3.5, you can attack, move, have a chat, wipe your nose, maybe take a Bonus Action, and then make your other attack; profound quality-of-life improvement over 3rd editon. Outside of situational additional attacks from feats and subclasses, only the Fighter really gets a scaling version of it.

My knowledge doesn't really stretch back into the antediluvian days of Chainmail and BECMI and the like. Scholars of the period, feel free to fill in.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-27, 11:06 AM
One of the class-history narratives I find most interesting is the history of making multiple attacks. Don't get me started on that ... the lack of verisimilitude for a 1 minute round coming across as 1 attack used to drive a lot of Fighing Man/Ranger/Paladin players crazy in those days .


5th Edition: Extra Attack is a specific feature of certain levels in a class, carefully worded so as not to stack from multiclassing. In a clean break from 3.5, you can attack, move, have a chat, wipe your nose, maybe take a Bonus Action, and then make your other attack; profound quality-of-life improvement over 3rd editon. Outside of situational additional attacks from feats and subclasses, only the Fighter really gets a scaling version of it. And the round is scaled down to a shorter time period

My knowledge doesn't really stretch back into the antediluvian days of Chainmail and BECMI and the like. Scholars of the period, feel free to fill in. Against 1 HD or less monsters, a Fighting man got one attack per level. Example was given in Strategic Review #2. Above that it didn't apply.
In Chainmail, a Hero figure against a regular man figure rolled more dice than the other one did.

HEROES (and Anti-heroes): Included in this class are certain well-known knights, leaders of army contingents, and similar men. They have the fighting ability of four figures, the class being dependent on the arms and equipment of the Hero types themselves, who can range from Light Foot to Heavy Horse. Heroes (and Anti-heroes) need never check morale, and they add 1 to the die or dice of their unit (or whatever unit they are with).
One hit kills in the Chainmail system.
Notes

A Hero-type, armed with a bow, shoots a dragon passing within range overhead out of the air and kills it on a two dice roll of 10 or better, with 2 plus 1 on the dice firing an enchanted arrow. Rangers are Hero-types with a +1 on attack dice. The rolls used are 2d6.
A Ranger fighting anti-hero rolls 2d6+1, anti-hero rolls 2d6. Score to hit is on a table, but for hero versus hero the Target Number is 7.

Roll TWO dice: (that means 2d6 in our current parlance).



Score UNDER total shown above means NO EFFECT
Score EQUAL to total means defender must FALL BACK 1 MOVE
Score OVER the total shown above indicates that the DEFENDER IS KILLED

As you can see, this system left Dave Arneson in his early Blackmoor days with a staggeringly high body count and players being not so sure about how fun that was. They had to come up with a different combat system for what eventually became D&D.

Back to the Original Topic:

The Original Ranger was a Hero +1 in Chainmail. :smallbiggrin:
(Chainmail, 3d edition, page 30)

Saint-Just
2021-10-27, 11:26 AM
Against 1 HD or less monsters, a Fighting man got one attack per level. Example was given in Strategic Review #2. Above that it didn't apply.

https://songoftheblade.wordpress.com/2016/10/13/a-history-of-the-fighters-extra-attacks-versus-low-level-monsters/ discusses it. I find it interesting that in transition between OD&D and AD&D attacks stopped working against 1hd-exactly-monsters (so.. orcs).

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-27, 11:28 AM
https://songoftheblade.wordpress.com/2016/10/13/a-history-of-the-fighters-extra-attacks-versus-low-level-monsters/ discusses it. I find it interesting that in transition between OD&D and AD&D attacks stopped working against 1hd-exactly-monsters (so.. orcs). Yeah, I don't know why they did that, might have been a DM vs Player thing among the DMs at TSR. I remember my third level fighter tearing through goblins though ... but hobgoblins (1+1 IIRC) were a whole different story!

Catullus64
2021-10-28, 07:56 AM
Along the same lines as the multiple attacks history, here's a brief chronicle of Sneak Attack.

AD&D: No feature called Sneak Attack, but rather the Thief's ability to Backstab, dealing double (and eventually triple, and quadruple) damage with an attack and gaining a THAC0 bonus to it when attacking from behind (that latter one being crucial for a class with a pretty mediocre THAC0 progression.) Double damage to a single attack with no other modifiers may seem pretty mediocre as a class's sole combat feature, but it's actually rather scary when you consider the fairly low HP of most AD&D monsters. The feature's wording says the creature needs to be unaware of the Thief, and also specifies that the creature must be humanoid in its general construction, and the thief needs to be able to reach its back.

3rd Edition: Now actually called Sneak Attack, it's a scaling bonus of d6s that you deal as extra damage to a creature any time it is denied its Dexterity bonus to AC, which covers a pretty wide range of circumstances; in 3rd edition you were "flat-footed" in combat until you took your first turn, and didn't get your Dex bonus to AC, so a Rogue who wins initiative over an enemy can get their Sneak Attack. It also applies when flanking. But this is 3rd Edition, so of course there has to be a severely limiting handicap, which is that Sneak Attack is ineligible to target a vast number of creature types who "lack discernible anatomy." I have no idea why plants are said to lack anatomy. It was an immense pain in the neck. For 5e players, you'll note that Sneak Attack lacked its once-per-turn restriction, and Rogues (like everyone else, see above) could get multiple attacks, so often a Rogue build was focused on getting in as many (otherwise weak) attacks as possible to trigger Sneak Attack damage.

4th Edition: Sneak Attack is still a scaling damage bonus, albeit slower than its 3e progression. Now it's tied to something called Combat Advantage, a bonus-to-hit that you get from a wide variety of conditions, including flanking. Like 5e after it, 4th Edition sensibly decides to scrap the limitations on creature types that you can Sneak Attack, to the general rejoicing of Rogues everywhere.

5th Edition: We return to 3.5 dice progression (+1d6 per two Rogue levels). Unlike in 3.5, Rogues have no innate multiattack, and the bonus is explicitly gated to be only once per turn, so Rogues have solid, but never crazy damage output. But Sneak Attack is now at its most convenient to use, being tied only to advantage or having an ally adjacent to the enemy, and still has no creature type restrictions. I have to say that as a main Rogue player, life has never been this good for Sneak Attacking.

Kurald Galain
2021-10-28, 09:51 AM
Along the same lines as the multiple attacks history, here's a brief chronicle of Sneak Attack.
Good point.

It strikes me that sneak attack in AD&D sounds scary but really isn't. Rogues don't qualify for "exceptional strength", can't take weapon specialization, and have fairly limited proficiency. So a rogue might deal 1d6+1 damage on a regular attack, and 2d6+2 or even 3d6+3 on a sneak attack... and that's just fairly lacklustre when a fighter does 1d10+6 on a regular hit and gets more attacks.

Also worth noting that Pathfinder fixes 3E's issue that too many creatures are immune to sneak attack.

So overall, sneak attack evolves from something that you rarely use (in early editions) to something you basically do every round (in later editions); kind of like wizard spells.

Satinavian
2021-10-28, 10:18 AM
It strikes me that sneak attack in AD&D sounds scary but really isn't. Rogues don't qualify for "exceptional strength", can't take weapon specialization, and have fairly limited proficiency. So a rogue might deal 1d6+1 damage on a regular attack, and 2d6+2 or even 3d6+3 on a sneak attack... and that's just fairly lacklustre when a fighter does 1d10+6 on a regular hit and gets more attacks.
That is true for the pure thief but dual classing/multiclassing meant you could combine it with all the fighter goodies and also the powerful weapons.

But in early addition it was never meant as a combat feature. It was an ambush/surprise attack feature. It was never intended as something that lifted the thief to the combat potential of the fighter. Only 3E started to have all classes being combattants foremost.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-28, 11:04 AM
That is true for the pure thief but dual classing/multiclassing meant you could combine it with all the fighter goodies and also the powerful weapons.

But in early addition it was never meant as a combat feature. It was an ambush/surprise attack feature. It was never intended as something that lifted the thief to the combat potential of the fighter. Only 3E started to have all classes being combattants foremost. Yes. And I'll mention that how surprise was handled in the original and AD&D game (usually by a die roll) figured into when to use sneak attack.

Aside: in 5e surprise isn't mechanically triggered, which makes for a bit of clunkiness in the Rogue/Assassin features that rely on surprise.

Psyren
2021-11-13, 01:53 PM
Also worth noting that Pathfinder fixes 3E's issue that too many creatures are immune to sneak attack.

So overall, sneak attack evolves from something that you rarely use (in early editions) to something you basically do every round (in later editions); kind of like wizard spells.

Then, as noted, 5e abolished sneak attack immunity entirely :smallsmile: And made it easier to use at range than at any time in the game's history imo.

No brains
2021-11-14, 09:16 AM
There's some nice videos on the youtube channel DM It All on the origin of the monk and the rogue. They get into some of the history of those two classes... even if it's under the premise of calling them the 'worst' classes.

Satinavian
2021-11-14, 01:42 PM
People always talk about the early fighters and early magic users. In fact so much that many believe that the thief was the third class introduced.

What is with the early clerics ? Were they that bad or uninspirig ?

Mordar
2021-11-14, 03:06 PM
People always talk about the early fighters and early magic users. In fact so much that many believe that the thief was the third class introduced.

What is with the early clerics ? Were they that bad or uninspirig ?

Interesting question.

My gut reaction is: Clerics haven't changed as much as the other classes since those days. Sure, the spell list evolved, but AD&D Cleric and 3.5e Cleric felt pretty similar tome...at least in comparison to Fighter, MU/Wizard or Thief/Rogue.

- M

Kurald Galain
2021-11-14, 06:36 PM
What is with the early clerics ? Were they that bad or uninspirig ?

A big difference is that in 2E, every divine spell belongs to a domain. The generic cleric from the PHB gets all of them (well, except for certain druid-specific domains), but the idea is that if you worship a particular deity, then he grants a specific set of domains. And anything from other domains, you just can't cast.

Whereas in 3E, most divine spells aren't in a domain. Every cleric gets the whole cleric list, and in addition you get two domains which grant specific bonus spells (some of which aren't on the cleric list).

Note that wizards face a similar restriction. The default for 3E and later is that you can pretty much learn whatever spell you want; whereas the default for 1E/2E is that you can learn only the spells you happen to find on your adventure, and you have to make a roll to succesfully learn them. So putting a spell combo together is much less likely.

In addition, the idea that clerics can out-fight a fighter is mostly from 3E, not 2E. This is in part because of divine metamagic, and in part because some of the self-buffs in 3E are just better.

oxybe
2021-11-14, 08:02 PM
People always talk about the early fighters and early magic users. In fact so much that many believe that the thief was the third class introduced.

What is with the early clerics ? Were they that bad or uninspirig ?

2nd ed phb basically had 2 clerics. The generic cleric and the specialty/mythos priest. generic cleric is as mentioned: access to most spheres and can turn undead, can use all armour and shields but are restricted to blunt/bludgeoning weapons. Note that generic and specialty priests in 2e share the same ThAC0 and Save progression, as well as Prof/NWProf charts.

Here are 3 examples of specialty priests from my personal perpetually being worked on document

Boccob - TN
Alignment - Any Neutral.
Attributes - Int 14 or Wis 16
Weapons allowed - dagger, flail, knife, mace, sling, staff, staff-sling
Armor allowed - nonmetal
Raiments - purple robes with gold trim
Spheres - astral, charm, creation(min), divination, elemental all (min), guardian (min),summoning (min),
Special Spells - disc of concordant opposition
Special Powers -
1) cast all divination spells as if two levels higher,
7) commune
10) able to use magical items normally usable only by wizards;
Turn Undead - no

Ehlonna - NG
Alignment - any good
Attributes - Wis 13 or Dex 13 or Cha13
Weapons allowed - dagger, knife, longbow (and arrows), long sword, spear, staff, staff-sling, sling;
Armor allowed - leather, padded leather, or elven chain
Raiments - pale green robes
Spheres - Animal, Charm, Combat(min), Creation(min), Elemental. (air, earth, water), Guardian(min),Healing, Necromantic(min), Plant, Protection(min), Sun,Weather
Special Spells - stalk
Special Powers -
1) Tracking proficiency;
5) move silently as ranger of same level;
7) hide in woodland (as per hiding in shadows) as ranger of same level
Turn Undead - turn at - 3 levels

Erythnul - CE
Alignment - CE, NE
Attributes - Str 14 or Con 14
Weapons allowed - any (mace 1st);
Armor allowed - any
Raiments - rust colored garments, blood-stained robes for ceremonies
Spheres - Combat, Creation, Healing (rev), Necromantic (rev), Protection(min), Summoning, Sun(min)(rev),
Special Spells - none
Special Powers -
4) fear (Wiz4);
7) strength (increased by ld8 points as for a warrior) (Wiz2);
9) once per day, the priest may enchant an edged weapon for 1 round/level to act as a sword of wounding
Turn Undead -command at -4 levels

So to break it down for the 2e uninitiated

First: there are specific requirements of both alignment and stats, in addition to the 9 wis minimum needed to be a priest. Different gods demand different things from their clergy's finest beyond just a similar mindset to their own.

Weapons and Armour proficiencies can vary quite a bit depending on the god and raiments are just an outline of priestly robes/garb and colours. Boccob's doesn't have much martial training while it's a core part of Erthynul's and Ehlonna's is largely practical for a hunter or forager-type.

Spheres are where it gets interesting. Spheres are, as mentioned, your 2nd ed equivalent to Domains. Erythnul is a neat example case as his clergy has full access to Combat, full access to reversed Healing, minor access to Protection and minor access to reversed Sun. reversed means they can only use spells from that sphere that are flagged as reversible, and only able to use that form of the spell. minor access means they can only use spells from that sphere that are 3rd level or less.

You'll also notice he doesn't have Boccob's divination, elemental all or guardian spheres. Those spells are off-limit to Erythnul's priests by any normal means. Ehlonna is one of the gods that lets priests grab full access to the Plant, Animal, Elemental (sans the elemental fire spells) & Weather spheres the generic cleric can't

Finally, as a bit of trivia, priests only have 7 levels of spells, unlike the wizard's 9, in 2e.

Boccob and Ehlonna's special spell are only available to their respective priests, duh.

Special powers are either 1/day spell uses, or actual abilities/features. Erthynul's clergy gets access to a couple of wizard spells once per day, and in Strength's case they're even treated like a warrior instead of priest in regards to how their personal use of the spell affects them. boccob's clergy gets buffed divination & access to a wider array of magic items. Ehlonna grants proficiency but also some ranger-type abilities

The ability to Turn/Command undead is also deity-particular and may be done at a level above or below your own cleric's. Erythnul clerics can really only start commanding undead at level 5 in this case.


Personally I'm a fan of the mythos cleric, which is far more personalized and flavourful, basically a collection of different classes with a similar base chassis then the more generic clerics, but 9/22 pages of my doc are currently dedicated to what is basically just the cleric class.

Ignimortis
2021-11-15, 12:31 AM
2nd ed phb basically had 2 clerics. The generic cleric and the specialty/mythos priest. generic cleric is as mentioned: access to most spheres and can turn undead, can use all armour and shields but are restricted to blunt/bludgeoning weapons. Note that generic and specialty priests in 2e share the same ThAC0 and Save progression, as well as Prof/NWProf charts.

Personally I'm a fan of the mythos cleric, which is far more personalized and flavourful, basically a collection of different classes with a similar base chassis then the more generic clerics, but 9/22 pages of my doc are currently dedicated to what is basically just the cleric class.

It's amazing how D&D tends to first create ideas that are much better than what came before, and then discard them anyway. Mythos cleric is exactly how I perceive the ideal cleric to be, instead of the generalist who somehow can get a sun god to raise undead or cause fear.

oxybe
2021-11-15, 06:31 AM
It's amazing how D&D tends to first create ideas that are much better than what came before, and then discard them anyway. Mythos cleric is exactly how I perceive the ideal cleric to be, instead of the generalist who somehow can get a sun god to raise undead or cause fear.

Note that those mythos priests were taken from various sources (official and not) and some even had things like specific NWP requirements (or gave potential access to NPW outside the priest ones) I cut out from my document for consistency's sake.

Keeping in line with the Mythos priests, I do wish they had done more with the Specialist Mage as an Abjurer is basically an Illusionist with anything "Illusion" replaced with "Abjuration", and different banned schools and stat requirements. It's a bit of a letdown, all things considered.

Honestly I wish they had done more with the Mage's training aspect, like focusing on where/how the Mage learnt their magic as the core focus of the class and then tacking on the Specialization as a feature, similar to the Mythos Priests.

This is obviously where the later addition of Kits in 2e come into play to make things a bit more interesting, as an academically focused Mage should be quite different then one who was scouted by an army at a young age to be artillery/logistics/support, or one that was raised in a temple of a god that understands and encourages magecraft to some extent like Boccob or Wee-Jas: they're just as faithful as any priest, but they manifest their devotion in other ways. But they really should have been there to begin with, but lord knows how many more pages that would add.

As another side note, I'm sure this take is relatively mild, but am I the only one who thinks any god that gives full access to the Combat spheres really should have specialized Paladin/Anti-Paladin equivalents as the more martial/militant arm of their clergy?

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-16, 10:38 AM
There's some nice videos on the youtube channel DM It All on the origin of the monk and the rogue. They get into some of the history of those two classes... even if it's under the premise of calling them the 'worst' classes. Ignorance is bliss, they say, so my guess is that this youtuber must be very happy. (But I'll say that Blackmoor monk was an odd duck; that was my experience anyway).
People always talk about the early fighters and early magic users. In fact so much that many believe that the thief was the third class introduced.

What is with the early clerics ? Were they that bad or uninspirig ? Early, as in the Original game, Clerics didn't get a spell until level 2 but they could turn undead. That was a big deal at low level when a wraith could drain a level from you or a ghoul could paralyze you. They were OK in combat in the original game, and had some niche spells that were quite helpful. They were the original way that a human player could have both heavy armor and spell casting (otherwise, only an elf could be a fighter and a magic user).

Thief, not rogue, was published fourth (Paladin was a fighter sub class in that same book). The Thief was an adventurer who lived by his wits and skill. That was the basic theme, and it's been an interesting ride from edition to edition (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/96625/22566).

Quertus
2021-11-16, 01:03 PM
Speaking of evolution:
As you level up in 1E and 2E, all your saves gradually become something you'll almost always pass.
As you level up in 3E and PF, your "weak" save stays at more-or-less a 50% chance, and your "strong" save gradually becomes one you'll almost always pass (compared to level-appropiate enemies, and assuming standard wealth).
As you level up in 4E and 5E, your "strong" save stays at more-or-less a 50% chance, and your "weak" save gradually becomes one you'll almost always fail.

I'm not saying any of these are better or worse, but the math has a very different aim.


Aside from that,
The skill system in 3E and PF is specialist. Characters are clearly good at skills they've trained in, and bad at skills they haven't. Trained characters can routinely perform tasks that ordinary characters struggle with. It is good to have a diverse party, since other PCs are trained in different things, and the country needs adventurers because they markedly possess skill levels that the average people don't.

The skill system in 4E and 5E is generalist. Characters are more-or-less equally skilled at every skill, and the deciding factor is more the roll of the die than how much training the character had. On the one hand, everybody can contribute more-or-less equally to any skill-based situation. On the other hand, untrained characters frequently beat trained characters at opposed skills, and almost all checks can also be made by a group of commoners. I'm sure someone will now bring up an 20th-level rogue as the counterexample, but during most of your campaign the PCs won't be 20th-ish level rogues.

(1E/2E don't really have a skill system).

That hardly seems fair. 2e had "nonweapon proficiencies", which was absolutely a skill system.

And it was a very interesting specialist skill system, that highly characters growing broader over piling more points into the same skills.

Then the Skills and Powers line introduced the processor to 3e skills.

Particle_Man
2021-11-16, 07:13 PM
Good stuff here so I only have a few points to add:

The illusionist first appears in The Strategic Review (the precursor to Dragon magazine) and then got into 1st Ed with a few modifications.

The assassin was neutral at first but was evil by first edition.

While not a skill system per se, there was a “background table” in 1st Ed that one could roll on (or have the DM roll on, as it was in the DMG).

In unearthed arcana first edition the paladin changed from subclass of fighter to subclass of cavalier. In 2nd Ed they, the ranger and the fighter became part of the warrior group. In 3rd Ed and after they are classes in their own right.

Another point of interest is that with first edition, if you didn’t go bard or use the special dual class rules, multiclassing was a decision you had to make at chargen. If you we an elf you would need to decide to be a fighter/magic-user/thief at level 1/1/1 rather than start fighter, then pick up magic-user at a higher level, then pick up thief later still. Except for some “start with half a level in each of two classes” rules, the old multi-class idea was replaced with something more like dual-classing in 3rd edition.

Oh yeah there was something else in earlier editions: The zero level npc (usually, except for one adventure module I think) character! And with the cavalier you even could have the negative level pc character (a less than upper class squire that had to earn their way up to 0 experience points).

By third edition, you had npc commoners but even the lowliest was at least a level one commoner.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-16, 07:51 PM
And in 5e, the idea of NPC classes as such went away entirely. Classes are for PCs and only optionally for use in constructing NPCs. 5e commoners are just commoners, no class levels at all. Even the closest MM NPCs (like the various Evoker, Archmage, etc ones) don't have all the class features and proficiencies, nor are they built exactly the same.

And there's a book coming out that will shift even most of those away even more from the class level paradigm by converting many spells/spell slots to x/day, recharge, and at will abilities (ie can cast x , y, and z 3x/day each).

SpyOne
2021-11-18, 01:58 AM
The bard used to have this weird thing where you became one by starting as fighter for some levels, then wizard for some more levels, then rogue for some more (I forget exactly how many), making it effectively the first Prestige Class in D&D. 2nd edition made it a regular class instead, and one that levels really quickly.

HTH!
Just wanted to clarify in case it is important to anyone: to become a Bard you started as a Fighter, then became a Thief, and finally adding Druid made you a Bard.

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-18, 09:39 AM
And there's a book coming out that will shift even most of those away even more from the class level paradigm by converting many spells/spell slots to x/day, recharge, and at will abilities (ie can cast x , y, and z 3x/day each). What book is this: Srixhaven?

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-18, 10:42 AM
What book is this: Srixhaven?

The "new" MM-style one supposedly coming out...next year is it? I forget.

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-18, 02:52 PM
The "new" MM-style one supposedly coming out...next year is it? I forget. Oh, yeah, another Mord's kind of thing?

Xuc Xac
2021-11-18, 11:15 PM
It strikes me that sneak attack in AD&D sounds scary but really isn't. Rogues don't qualify for "exceptional strength", can't take weapon specialization, and have fairly limited proficiency. So a rogue might deal 1d6+1 damage on a regular attack, and 2d6+2 or even 3d6+3 on a sneak attack... and that's just fairly lacklustre when a fighter does 1d10+6 on a regular hit and gets more attacks.


Before 3E, you weren't assumed to be facing opposition that was the same level as you were at all times. An orc chieftain who raises a warband to ravage the countryside has 4HD whether the PCs are 1st level or 10th. A 9th level thief wasn't expected to use backstab to duel 9th level Orc warlords. You were expected to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows to infiltrate the orc camp and one-shot that 4HD orc general so your Fighter friend and his loyal band of retainers and (somewhat) loyal platoon of hired mercenaries will have an easier time defeating the orcs on the battlefield the next day.

Mordar
2021-11-19, 05:19 PM
Before 3E, you weren't assumed to be facing opposition that was the same level as you were at all times. An orc chieftain who raises a warband to ravage the countryside has 4HD whether the PCs are 1st level or 10th. A 9th level thief wasn't expected to use backstab to duel 9th level Orc warlords. You were expected to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows to infiltrate the orc camp and one-shot that 4HD orc general so your Fighter friend and his loyal band of retainers and (somewhat) loyal platoon of hired mercenaries will have an easier time defeating the orcs on the battlefield the next day.

...or the guard outside the citadel, or the hobgoblin watching the road...

In short, DPS wasn't a thing then. [Inflammatory statement]Not all games are MMOs, no matter what 4e wants you to believe[/Inflammatory statement].

- M

HumanFighter
2021-11-22, 12:34 PM
There's some nice videos on the youtube channel DM It All on the origin of the monk and the rogue. They get into some of the history of those two classes... even if it's under the premise of calling them the 'worst' classes.

I love those videos, and that channel :smallbiggrin: