101 Old Edition Rules You'd Bring Back


Homebrew and House Rules

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Resisted the urge to make this a "101" thread 'cause I'm falling into a rut on that. Screw it, let's do this! Incidentally, this may belong in the Homebrew/Suggestions/House Rules subforum.

So I've been thinking about this a lot. What are some old-fashioned rules angles you kinda miss? What house rules would you introduce to bring them back? Focus on the little things for this thread.

1. Light Spells: I really don't like how easy light is to access now. Lighting has been solidly eliminated as an issue. Torchbearer? Grimlocks who sunder the lantern? Nope. Everyone's got the cantrip. They cast it on everything they own. Is that an adventuring party or a walking disco ball? Wait, it just killed Frank, it's an adventuring party.
Frankly, light may be a bit undervalued as a spell. I'd make it and dancing lights a first-level spell, or perhaps keep dancing lights as a cantrip but say it's semi-sentient and has a percentile chance of fleeing combats. I've always wanted to do this, but never gotten around to it. To me, light as a cantrip is the best symbol of the constant desire to simplify game aspects that are insufficiently "heroic" whether or not they're interesting to play with.

Magic Missile wrote:
Magic Missile: Perhaps the best 1st-level spell in the game, magic missile may not do a lot of damage, but it requires no attack roll, has a medium range, needs no saving throw, and harms incorporeal creatures. Even if magic missile were 2nd-level, smart casters would still learn it.

Don't tell me this doesn't apply to a 1st-level light spell. A long-duration illumination that requires no arms/killable hirelings and can't be conveniently eliminated without high-level magic? It won't be the "Oh, you didn't get light? What, did you forget it existed?" it is now, but it'll still be a very popular spell.

There's another I've always wanted to do, but I can't for the life of me remember it now. Come to think of it, I think that's why most of my house rules never see use. :P

Silver Crusade Contributor

Dot (while I try to remember). :)


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Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

ACP is doubled for swim checks.


Oh, this one's really teensy, but:

3. Giant Vermin Restored: Seriously, Giant Vermin as it is just seems kinda silly. I don't want to risk an argument on this, but it seems like a crappy summoning spell with inconvenient components that brings in servants who can only follow the simplest, most immediate orders. At least with the 3.5 version you could get a spider mount or the like. Honestly, just not a fan of this spell in general, but I like 3.5's version better.


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OH! I just remembered:

4. Poison: It actually kills people instead of very rarely kinda annoying them if they're really low-level and rolling pretty bad.


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This isn't exactly an old rule I want to bring back. It's a thing I've noticed in play under 3.x rules that I don't recall ever experiencing with AD&D.

My issue is buff spell duration. As written, I think they encourage rushing through encounters and running through dungeons.

Specifically, I'd like to eliminate the buff spell durations of "1 minute/level" and "10 minutes/level," replacing them with durations of "5 minutes" and "4 hours" respectively.

With 1 min/level spells (and to a lesser extent 10 min/level buff spells), players start to adopt a "No time to look around! GO! GO! GO!" attitude when exploring.

As a GM, I HATE THAT!!

It's almost impossible to build ambiance or a sense of place when the cleric or wizard keeps saying, "How long does that take? Hurry up! Only 6 more minutes of this awesome buff spell! Come on!"

Dropping the duration of the "1 minute/level" spells to "5 minutes" means that the spell is obviously intended to be used in a specific single combat and its immediate aftermath (or preparation). It's still long enough that it's OK to cast it a bit before the battle starts. But now, it would be so short that there would be little incentive to start rushing through the dungeon looking for more enemies to fight before it wears off. The idea of those spells is to use them "once per combat" (or possibly "through a very short series of closely-timed combats").

Extending the "10 min/level" spells to "4 hours" means that you'll only need to cast them once (or possibly twice) in a given game-day, which would allow the PCs to explore at leisure without a self-imposed ticking clock.

I haven't implemented this in my games yet, but I'm strongly thinking about it.


0E spell slots weren't per day, they were per adventure.

Liberty's Edge

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5. SMAAAAASH! Hit: In ye olden days, a fighter could take a -5 penalty to an attack roll made with a two-handed melee weapon. If he still hits his target, the lucky fighter adds his Strength score to his damage in addition to his Strength modifier and weapon damage.

6. The Cost of Specialization: When your wizard/mage specialized in one school of magic in... pretty much every edition of D&D before Pathfinder, he had to choose one or two schools as his banned schools (or if you played Second Edition, they were chosen for you automatically) "Banned" did not mean "I need two spell slots to cast Magic Missile because I banned evocation," "banned" meant "Cannot cast Magic Missile ever."

7. Sneak Attacking: Rogue sneak attacks did not add extra d6s of damage in pre-3e days. Instead, you flat-out doubled your damage. (Or tripled, or quadrupled, or even quintupled, at high enough levels!)

8. Morale: Everyone from cohorts to monsters had a Morale rating which ranked from 2 to 12 (base 7, adjusted by Charisma mod for a PC's followers; monsters had a flat 2-12 ranking.) Under some circumstances (first time taking damage this combat, ally was just killed, is outnumbered 2:1) you would roll 2d6 and try to get less than or equal to the target's Morale. Success, and your follower (or the DM's monster!) remained in the combat. There were three exceptions to this:

  • 2 Morale means you're automatically running away from combat by all means possible.
  • 12 Morale means you're either suicidally reckless or extremely overconfident, and will never ever ever break off combat until you or your foes are dead.
  • Player Characters do not have Morale scores; you guys decide what you're doing on your own.

9. Movement and Multiple Attacks: You could move your full speed and make as many attacks as you were entitled to back before 2000. (Different classes, of course, got attacks faster than others, but there were only eight and a half classes in the Rules Cyclopedia days, what do you expect.)

9a. Monks: Monks Mystics were a variant fighter who could never wear armor ever (not even Bracers of Armor!) but they could flurry with any weapon they were proficient with, which works just like it does now.

Mystics were proficient with every weapon in First Edition, because they were variant fighters.

So yes, you could flurry with a greatsword if you felt like it.

Silver Crusade

I want my milieu back


10. Continual Light. Now replaced by stupid continual flame torches and lanterns. Permanent light spells that you could throw around, attach to objects, put in glowing globes to hover around you like the lights from the Dune movie, etc. AND being able to cast light/continual light on an enemy to blind the idiot for a couple of rounds and such.

11. Darkness-The caster should be able to see through his darkness spells! Now you can't cause players or vice versa, GM controlled enemies to run in panic because they can't see and you can! Unless you use another 1st level slot for ebon eyes from the Spell Compendium, or have true seeing up.

Grand Lodge

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Snorb wrote:
9. Movement and Multiple Attacks: You could move your full speed and make as many attacks as you were entitled to back before 2000. (Different classes, of course, got attacks faster than others, but there were only eight and a half classes in the Rules...

12. BAB and their iteratives: While we're at it, let's get rid of the whole idea of iterative attacks altogether. If I get multiple attacks in a round, why should each attack get progressively suckier? If I get a second attack (or a third attack), those attacks should also be at my full/highest BAB.

Also, this applies to Fighters only, although other martials (Paladins, Rangers) should also get extra attacks to a lesser degree. Giving iterative attacks to Clerics/Bards/Rogues etc. didn't happen until later editions and was totally unnecessary.


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13. Fly: One of the great joys of the flight spell for GMs was the fact that the spell had a random duration after the base one. Not knowing if you fly spell was going to go out when you engaged the dragon in melee was fun. Of course, any self-respecting dragon would dispel it and you would fall to the ground, but the principle was the same.

14. Mook-Killer!: A fighter could attack any 1 HD or less creature a number of times equal to their level. This prevents the being swarmed by 87000 goblins BS that older edition modules loved to pull. Now that monsters can have class levels, not so much of an issue, but it's still fun to pull out so you can prove how bad ass a martial character you are.

15.Barbarian Horde!:1st Ed barbarians had these crazy abilities to create a barbarian horde equal to their XP divided by 250 I think. You tell the horde to go do something, and the horde does it. I loved 1st Ed barbarians....

Dark Archive

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Cleric Spheres and Specialty Priest: This was awesome and one of my favorite things about 2nd AD&D was the variety of priests and clerics available to a player based on the deity their character worshiped. Where not only the spell selection more appropriate to the deity that a priest worshiped but so were the class abilities.

In my personal opinion Domains were and still are a very poor substitute to how much fun specialty priests were especially since apart from domains all clerics are exactly the same. Sure Pathfinder alleviates this, kind of, through archetypes but it just isn't the same to what was available in 2nd AD&D.

I want Spheres and Specialty Priests to make a return, to have in a way similar options of variety to Mysteries and Bloodline... also to a lesser extent Specialist Wizards. More have these options and class abilities tied strongly with the deity that the Cleric worships.

With this, allow for priests to have roles variety somewhat based on deities. How that the Cleric of Shelyn has less combative ability but perhaps more of a bardish feel to it, while a Cleric of Gorum is more combative but perhaps has less of a spell selection, or more a Cleric of Nethys is very much like a wizard having the same BAB and proficiencies but a spell list that is much the mix of divine/arcane.

Sure, it my be more complex but it feels for me more real and believable, since I see the priests of different deities having strengths and weaknesses when it comes to abilities or powers..


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I generally revile earlier editions (I've played them plenty, and they're... ew), but one thing I did like:

17. Regaining Spells: Much like the OD&D rule of having Spells Per Session, not Spells Per Day(!), spellcasters REALLY had to be careful not to spam all their spells in 1st and 2nd Ed.

Not only did you have to get several hours of rest (8, I believe), but you also had to spend time memorizing EVERY SPELL, and the level of that Spell determined how much time you must spend memorizing it.

You're a 20th Level Wizard and used up every spell you know?

Well, that's fine - it's only going to take ((9x15)x4)+((8x15)x4)+((7x15)x4)+((6x15)x4)+((5x15)x4)+((4x15)x4)+((3x15)x4 )+((2x15)x4)+((1x15)x4) = 2700 minutes, or a total of 45 Hours, not including Bonus Spells (which there have to be because of your high Int).

Re-establishing that ALONE basically nerfs the Wizard down to near-human levels, because he'd need basically 3 days of holed-up-alone studying in order to regain all his spells from empty.

Prepared Arcane Casters have to Study for (15 minutes x spell level) minutes per spell in order to regain that spell (these minutes need not be consecutive; you can study in three 15 minute increments in order to relearn a 3rd-level spell).

Prepared Divine Casters need to perform Religious Rituals for the same amount of time.

Spontaneous Casters need to simply Rest for that long.

Obviously Cantrips and Orisons are renewed for free (0 x anything, after all).


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I'd like to bring back the DR/+1 and similar rules. Oh, that epic great wyrm has super hard damage resistant scales? Eh, my puny +1 dagger cuts right through it. Bah, bullcrap. I want monsters to have the high DR/+5 and such again (and also the removal of the dumb bypass DR just for having a high enhancement bonus)


Haladir wrote:

This isn't exactly an old rule I want to bring back. It's a thing I've noticed in play under 3.x rules that I don't recall ever experiencing with AD&D.

My issue is buff spell duration. As written, I think they encourage rushing through encounters and running through dungeons.

Specifically, I'd like to eliminate the buff spell durations of "1 minute/level" and "10 minutes/level," replacing them with durations of "5 minutes" and "4 hours" respectively.

With 1 min/level spells (and to a lesser extent 10 min/level buff spells), players start to adopt a "No time to look around! GO! GO! GO!" attitude when exploring.

As a GM, I HATE THAT!!

It's almost impossible to build ambiance or a sense of place when the cleric or wizard keeps saying, "How long does that take? Hurry up! Only 6 more minutes of this awesome buff spell! Come on!"

Dropping the duration of the "1 minute/level" spells to "5 minutes" means that the spell is obviously intended to be used in a specific single combat and its immediate aftermath (or preparation). It's still long enough that it's OK to cast it a bit before the battle starts. But now, it would be so short that there would be little incentive to start rushing through the dungeon looking for more enemies to fight before it wears off. The idea of those spells is to use them "once per combat" (or possibly "through a very short series of closely-timed combats").

Extending the "10 min/level" spells to "4 hours" means that you'll only need to cast them once (or possibly twice) in a given game-day, which would allow the PCs to explore at leisure without a self-imposed ticking clock.

I haven't implemented this in my games yet, but I'm strongly thinking about it.

It's also a nice boost to low-level casters and a serious nerf to high level ones, especially if you apply it to most of the 1rd/level buffs. Currently, not only do you get more spells and more powerful ones as you go up in level, but you don't even need to cast the old ones as often.

My thought along the same lines was just to change all the X/level duration spells to 5X duration. Not quite the same, since it doesn't stretch the 10 minutes/level the same way.


Snorb wrote:


7. Sneak Attacking: Rogue sneak attacks did not add extra d6s of damage in pre-3e days. Instead, you flat-out doubled your damage. (Or tripled, or quadrupled, or even quintupled, at high enough levels!)

But were even harder to get - no flanking or feints, just the vaguely defined "striking from behind".


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Bring back 3d6 in order!

Thats actually a joke, because I hated it even then. I always had the lowest ability scores at the table. Or... maybe my friends all fudged.

Liberty's Edge

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18. Spell Resistance: Right now, spell resistance is basically "roll 1d20 + your caster level + 2 if you're an elf + 2 if you have Spell Penetration + 2 if you have Greater Spell Penetration, gotta meet or exceed your target's spell resistance rating." Back in a year that started with "Nineteen," not so much. Monsters didn't care what race you were, or how powerful of a spellcaster you were, there was nothing you could do to help your spells penetrate spell resistance. You just rolled d% and hoped for the best.

19. Armor Class Back in the old days, Armor Class started at 9 and went down (or up!) from there. Leather armor would set your Armor Class to 7, chain mail gave you an AC of 5, and toting a shield gave you a -1 AC bonus (and no, that wasn't a typo; lower AC was better.) In Second Edition D&D, your Armor Class was capped (capped!) at -10. That was as good as it got; whether you had a full plate +5 and a shield +5 and 18 Dexterity, or if you had 3 Dexterity and a leather armor +20 didn't matter, -10 AC was as low as the AC scale went. (Incidentally, in 2e, +10 was as high as the AC scale went.)

19a. Outclassing Inferior Opponents You had THAC0 in old editions, which measured how hard it was to hit an average guy wearing field plate. Your THAC0 score started at 20 and went down as you gained levels, meaning you needed a lower d20 roll to hit said guy in field plate.

Now, you may note that your d20 only goes down to 1 (which means "YOU BLEW IT!!!"), so what happens when your THAC0 goes lower than 2? Your THAC0 becomes 2 (+1), then 2 (+2), 2 (+3), and so on as you level up. If your opponent is so outclassed that you'll only miss on a natural 1, you deal BONUS DAMAGE equal to the number in parentheses. (Combined with the 1e Melee Smash, you could seriously hurt someone, you badass fighter, or dwarf, or elf.)

The Exchange RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

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For every "man, I wish we could get X back", there's a chorus of "man, I'm glad we don't have to deal with X any more."

Over the iterations of the game, the profession of adventuring has become easier and easier. Recall the tribulations that parties needed to go through, to identify, and then find the command words for, loot they'd found. The identify spell was prohibitively expensive, and debilitated the caster. Compare that with Pathfinder, where a cantrip and a skill roll allow a wizard to recognize every magic item a foe carries.

(Frankly, I like the feel for older editions, where being an adventurer was a tough job.)

My personal suggestion for a rule I'd like to see implemented, is a soft cap on hit points. In versions of AD&D, a character stopped getting a metric buttload of hit points every level after a certain point. I think that reintroducing that rule would serve the game well; a 14th-level wizard shouldn't necessarily have twice the hit points of a 7th-level wizard. (Or more, since he might have a Constitution-boosting belt by 14th level...)


Chris Mortika wrote:
Over the iterations of the game, the profession of adventuring has become easier and easier. Recall the tribulations that parties needed to go through, to identify, and then find the command words for, loot they'd found. The identify spell was prohibitively expensive, and debilitated the caster. Compare that with Pathfinder, where a cantrip and a skill roll allow a wizard to recognize every magic item a foe carries.

On the other hand, magic items weren't quite as common in older editions, so this wasn't as much of an issue as it would be nowadays. :P


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I like random stat generation, level caps by race and stat prerequisites for the 'better' classes. I like save-or-die effects in general (and systems where death is much more common and permanent) and dont like masses of buffing spells. I also prefer RPGs that just dont bother with balance (or make only a token effort) rather than the fascination with it that modern games have and that most gamers seem to prefer.

The big one is speed of play though. It's the number one reason I prefer 0E type games - we get through a huge amount in our (sadly) limited number of gaming hours. When playing more modern games, it all seems to take that much longer.

Shadow Lodge

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Haladir wrote:

Dropping the duration of the "1 minute/level" spells to "5 minutes" means that the spell is obviously intended to be used in a specific single combat and its immediate aftermath (or preparation).

Extending the "10 min/level" spells to "4 hours" means that you'll only need to cast them once (or possibly twice) in a given game-day, which would allow the PCs to explore at leisure without a self-imposed ticking clock.

This is probably one of the few great changes 4e sort-of did: at-will, encounter and daily durations.


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Snorb wrote:


6. The Cost of Specialization: When your wizard/mage specialized in one school of magic in... pretty much every edition of D&D before Pathfinder, he had to choose one or two schools as his banned schools (or if you played Second Edition, they were chosen for you automatically) "Banned" did not mean "I need two spell slots to cast Magic Missile because I banned evocation," "banned" meant "Cannot cast Magic Missile ever."

+1.

Scarab Sages

Maybe this is just how it wound up translating to the 2nd Edition computer games, but I liked how the Thief's edge in combat prior to 3rd Edition was defensive rather than offensive. You started combat by killing or maiming one enemy (provided you could get the drop on them), then spent the rest of combat as an obnoxious gadfly who may not have hit particularly hard or too reliably, but was potentially harder to hit than most Fighters.

I agree with above comments about Wizard and Priest specialization.

I'd also really like to see formal rules for characters of a given class gaining extra experience for doing stuff clearly within the class's dharma (Thieves got experience for finding huge treasure hauls, Wizards got experience for learning new spells, etc.) make a comeback. You could make it a matter-of-course thing to be presented each time a new base class is published.


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Snorb wrote:

{. . .}

6. The Cost of Specialization: When your wizard/mage specialized in one school of magic in... pretty much every edition of D&D before Pathfinder, he had to choose one or two schools as his banned schools (or if you played Second Edition, they were chosen for you automatically) "Banned" did not mean "I need two spell slots to cast Magic Missile because I banned evocation," "banned" meant "Cannot cast Magic Missile ever."

That's the purpose for which Pathfinder has Thassilonian (Sin Magic) Specialist (Archives of Nethys version and d20pfsrd.com version, the latter of which is somewhat deflavored but easier to read; strangely, the Archives of Nethys lists this as an archetype, although not in archetype format, while d20pfsrd.com doesn't). The problem is that the benefits of being a Thassilonian Specialist instead of a normal Specialist usually aren't enough to outweigh the drawbacks.

+1 for Specialty Priests and Spheres. Domains just (for the most part) don't cut it for making things interesting. The D&D 3.x/PF Cleric is powerful (possibly TOO powerful), but usually boring unless the player goes to extra effort to make them interesting (and face it, when under pressure to optimize for the sake of survival, most players are going to choose power over being interesting, even if reluctantly). The D&D 2nd Edition implementation of this left something to be desired (it was rather uneven), but the idea was much cooler.

By the way, while we're at it, put Healing spells back in Necromancy, where they belong. Conjuration(Healing)? Bah.

Snorb wrote:

7. Sneak Attacking: Rogue sneak attacks did not add extra d6s of damage in pre-3e days. Instead, you flat-out doubled your damage. (Or tripled, or quadrupled, or even quintupled, at high enough levels!)

{. . .}

I remember this. Actually, if the D&D 1st/2nd Edition Backstab was translated into a reloaded Sneak Attack by changing it into a Critical-style multiplier (and this would add to an actual Critical multiplier), this would be not a bad idea.

Random miscellaneous things: Dwarves and Half-Orcs had a penalty to Charisma with respect to interaction with others, but not an absolute penalty to Charisma. Charisma was never used as a casting stat back then, but if it was, they wouldn't have been at a disadvantage for entering classes that used this (assuming they could get in in the first place and not get capped at horribly low levels -- this last part is one part of 1st/2nd Edition for which I can say Good Riddance).


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20.) Elves will no longer have souls, just as Gygax intended.


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:


I'd also really like to see formal rules for characters of a given class gaining extra experience for doing stuff clearly within the class's dharma (Thieves got experience for finding huge treasure hauls, Wizards got experience for learning new spells, etc.) make a comeback. You could make it a matter-of-course thing to be presented each time a new base class is published.

The reason this'll never happen in Pathfinder is, of course, that classes are pretty separate from flavor now. Rogues aren't always about gold, barbarians aren't always illiterate savages.


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21. Name level Title, strongholds and followers. Also, level titles for certain classes.


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22. Potion Miscibility Table

*boom*


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The Weapon Types, General Data, and "To Hit" Adjustments table from page 38 of the AD&D Players Handbook.

This is what made different armor and weapon types actually different rather than a mindless progression on the armor side and a a situation where there are only a handful of optimal weapons that have the best crit lines for a given handedness and reach and nothing else matters.

The Exchange RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

Atarlost, I agree with you in principle.

There were a host of products, including a cardboard spinny-wheel in DRAGON, that attempted to make that data easier to use.

But yes, there should sensibly be space restrictions for big swinging weapons. When you're exploring a tight sewer tunnel, you should be able to fight with a spear but not a sweeping greatsword.

Sovereign Court

I liked priest magic spheres. 3.x/PF priests of all religions have like 95% of their spell list in common, so clerics look a lot alike. With spheres you'd only have like 30-80% overlap, depending on how similar your deities were.

A combination of houserules (I believe) with the older segment initiative system: your initiative per round depends on the weapon you use, and smaller weapons are faster. Therefore, they're good for harassing casters. However, (the houserule) you can't add more bonus damage to a weapon than the maximum dice result. So a 1d4 dagger can't have more than +4 bonus damage. Even a greatsword doesn't go above +12 damage. You don't need as many stacking rules because you're soon going to hit the bonus ceiling anyway. And you don't have to worry if you've missed a possible bonus if you hit your ceiling. That in turn made it less unprofitable to have divergent builds that don't all take the same standard "feats".

Scarab Sages

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
21. Name level Title, strongholds and followers. Also, level titles for certain classes.

+1

Also:

That fistfighting/wrestling table from 2nd Edition.

Bring back the INT-based Search skill as a separate skill from Perception (which would still be Spot and Listen combined).

Bring back Jump as a STR-based skill separate from Acrobatics (which would still be Balance and Tumble combined).

Separate Linguistics into a skill that deals with learning/understanding languages, and another one that deals with forgery and cryptography. I never liked how learning a new language automatically taught you cryptography.

Dark Archive

I am glad to see I am not the only one to liked Specialty Priests.


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23. Weapon speed this piggybacks on the above mention of weapons. I loved the idea of weapons impacting how quickly they could be brought to bear in a round. I recall with fondness the suffering of my battle axe wielding dwarf as he almost always went last in the round.


Diamond B wrote:
23. Weapon speed this piggybacks on the above mention of weapons. I loved the idea of weapons impacting how quickly they could be brought to bear in a round. I recall with fondness the suffering of my battle axe wielding dwarf as he almost always went last in the round.

Weapon Speed would simultaneously placate the people who whine about Iterative Attacks and enrage people who decry "Martial/Caster Disparity!"

I like the idea in theory, but don't think it's viable in practice.


24. Class/race restrictions. Okay, not for every campaign, but I do enjoy the flavor sometimes. It's a more Tolkienian style that emphasizes more the mental differences between the species.
25. Prestige classes being awesome. No, not as awesome, but they should at least not suck.


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chbgraphicarts wrote:
Diamond B wrote:
23. Weapon speed this piggybacks on the above mention of weapons. I loved the idea of weapons impacting how quickly they could be brought to bear in a round. I recall with fondness the suffering of my battle axe wielding dwarf as he almost always went last in the round.

Weapon Speed would simultaneously placate the people who whine about Iterative Attacks and enrage people who decry "Martial/Caster Disparity!"

I like the idea in theory, but don't think it's viable in practice.

Except you'd bring back casting initiative as well, and for most things, those were much slower than weapons. Wizards used to have to track initiative and weapon speed much closer than the fighters...


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Kobold Cleaver wrote:
25. Prestige classes being awesome. No, not as awesome, but they should at least not suck.

Unfortunately, Sturgeon's Law was in effect HARD with Prestige Classes.

There were 627 Prestige Classes, and less than 100 of them were actually decent. There were also some absolutely broken Prestige Classes.

Try as you might, you can't make Pun-Pun in Pathfinder, or anything even REMOTELY as broken, and that's a good thing.


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Kobold Cleaver wrote:

OH! I just remembered:

4. Poison: It actually kills people instead of very rarely kinda annoying them if they're really low-level and rolling pretty bad.

This. So much.


I'd rather the rules allow Pun-Pun than disallow tons of cool options. See, Pun-Pun and the sno-cone wish mage machine? You can ban those. :P


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Honestly, I'd not wish to include an older edition rules ported to Pathfinder, personally.

However, if I really thought the disparity between martials and casters could be somewhat alleviated, I'd say having different XP amounts to level up was a balancing factor in 1st edition. Readopting that for any attempts to redesign PF, that would be something I'd consider having some value.

Ultimately, though I'm fairly satisfied with the current rules, and have little nostalgia for old concepts.


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*Chases GP out with a broom*

Scarab Sages

Walking uphill in the snow both ways.


26 Armor and Wizards (Sorcerers too) Want to stop that mage from casting spells? Just put some armor on him. No more casting for you!

27 Class Unique Stuff I want to go back to where classes actually had stuff that was unique to them.


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Ok, ok, I'm gone... (wink).


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28 Jump as a Str skill ya ya, that mouse just jumped 15 feet but HULK SMASH! can only jump 2...
29 Tiny creatures got Dex to Hit tiny creatures used to get weapon finesse for free, now most don't. That fly has to try and hit you with his -4 str modifier because?
30 Unique magic items Something similar to what was said above, but I miss having magic weapons being unique, not just an increasing bonus on a carefully monitored slider...

I also agree with the general lethality, I would not mind it so much, even if it meant that I lost a character for good. I have yet to actually kill off a character, and a few have TRIED. REALLY HARD...


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31 Regeneration Trolls reproduced by being chopped to pieces. You could put a ring of regeneration on someones severed hand and they would slowly grow back.


32 I liked extra-dimensional containers exploding when put inside each other, having only portable hole/ bag of holding interactions cause explosions is boring.

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