D&D 1E Favorite Obscure Rules from TSR-era D&D

Voadam said:

What do you mean?

Poison was usually save or die in severity. Any other effect for poison was relatively rare. The modifier was usually on the save, not the severity of effect.

Giant centipede poison at 1/4 HD is "often not fatal" because it is at +4 to save, not because the severity is not save or die for a 1/4 HD monster.

1+1 HD large spiders (size small) have "relatively weak in most cases" poison at +2 on the save or die.

2+2 HD huge spiders (size medium) have +1 save or die poison.

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Even with +4 to save, giant centipede poison is pretty often fatal!

Unless you're short. Hobbits, gnomes and dwarves probably use it as seasoning.

Snarf Zagyg said:

I thought it might be interesting to look at the class and saving throw matrix in AD&D (1e).

I'll just do lowest and highest levels.

	Para, Poison, Death	Petrification/Poly	Rod, Staff, Wand	Breath Weapon	Spell
Cleric 1-3	10	13	14	16	15
Cleric 19+	2	5	6	8	7
Fighter 1-2	14	15	16	17	17
Fighter 17+	3	4	5	4	4
Magic User 1-5	14	13	11	15	12
Magic User 21+	8	5	3	7	4
Thief 1-4	13	12	14	16	15
Thief 21+	8	7	4	11	5

I have bolded the best saves for low and high levels.

Observations!

1. Overall, I'd argue that the fighter is best. Not great to start, but rapidly gets better (advances every two levels). And good at all saves.

2. Clerics are good at the poison and death magic save, which makes sense, and is also why paralyzation is a weird fit there.

3. Magic users suffer from slow advancement, but they are good at RSW and spells, which makes sense, and ... breath weapons? Okay?

4. Thieves? Slow to advance, and they never are that great. Seriously, a TWENTY-FIRST level thief has an 8 ... against poison. C'mon. I only have one thing to say when it comes to the Thief.


GYGAX!!!!!!!!!

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Clerics had my favorite saves, because at low levels that boost to poison saves was invaluable. Poison was everywhere.

Fortunate Son said:

In 2e, at least, the large and huge spiders had type A poison.

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That was a 2e change.

I kept using my 1e MMs in the 2e era and just picked up the Ravenloft appendices so I had not noticed that had changed. A friend of mine had the MCs so I knew about things like the dragon and giant HD changes but not the spider changes. I eventually got the 2e MC PDFs after 2e era.

I see the giant centipede in 2e causes paralysis with their poison instead of death.

In 1e it is hard to find anything poisonous with an effect other than death.

billd91 said:

Yes, the thief is pretty badly effed on those tables. Notice how everybody's saves all get below 10 for every category... except for thieves and breath weapons.

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He was bitter about Tolkien? Bilbo!!!!!

Voadam said:

That was a 2e change.

I kept using my 1e MMs in the 2e era and just picked up the Ravenloft appendices so I had not noticed that had changed. A friend of mine had the MCs so I knew about things like the dragon and giant HD changes but not the spider changes. I eventually got the 2e MC PDFs after 2e era.

I see the giant centipede in 2e causes paralysis with their poison instead of death.

In 1e it is hard to find anything poisonous with an effect other than death.

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The only thing I can think of off the top of my head was the 1e drow sleep poison.

There is a 1e spell to turn sticks into snakes that will attack your enemies, with a chance for each of them to be venomous but I don't see stats for non-giant snakes in the MM or the PH or DMG.

I remember seeing them in some modules as something like 1 HD with save or die poison.

The 2e spell provides stats for the snakes except it does not specify the poison type.

Maxperson said:

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head was the 1e drow sleep poison.

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There is also a whole list of variable effect poisons (lots of variations of different damage on missed saves or even successful saves) that assassins can make in the 1e DMG.

Maxperson said:

He was bitter about Tolkien? Bilbo!!!!!

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It serves to underscore one of the truths about early D&D - some of it indicates systematic thinking in its design, but a lot of it suggests a weird conglomeration of ad hoc decisions and quirks. Sometimes, it's a wonder how it all caught on like it did.

Voadam said:

That was a 2e change.

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I could have sworn that it was a 1e thing as well, but a now that I'm home a quick perusal of my books didn't reveal anything. My memory may be faulty.

Fortunate Son said:

I could have sworn that it was a 1e thing as well, but a now that I'm home a quick perusal of my books didn't reveal anything. My memory may be faulty.

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Whenever I do one of my longer thread starters, I do my very best to scrupulously check dates and original sources. Partly it's because I enjoy doing the research, and partly it's because I am fallible. My memory of things is not always correct; for example, I have a strong memory of playing a certain module at a certain time, but I know for a fact that it couldn't have happened because the module wasn't released for several years after that memory! It's not that I want to be deceitful- either to myself, and certainly not in recounting the story, but just that after the passage of decades, events can morph, change, and bleed into one another. It happens.

The whole of the TSR era can often act like that type of confused memory. The primary issue is that all of the TSR products were largely interchangeable and interoperable. It was possible to, for example, play through B2 - a module designed for OD&D and released for B/X - using rules for 2e. In addition, the prevalence of homebrew, 3PP, semi-official rules (Dragon, Strategic Review), and lack of internet at the time for standardization can make things incredibly confusing, not to mention the nomenclature ... (Oh, Basic? Do you mean Holmes, Moldvay, or Mentzer?).

Nevertheless, there often is a strict delineation in those rules. 1e was different before UA ... and different than 2e. Holmes Basic (which is OD&D) is not Moldvay Basic (which is the BECMI line, or "Basic"). People often "read into" certain rules other rules that they remember from other eras in TSR - for example, I have seen that it is exceedingly common for people to "read back" 2e rules into 1e, primarily because they played 2e more recently.

I mention this because it is exceedingly common for people to confuse the different rulesets with the passage of time. For example, Gygax was famously again crits, and even had a diatribe against them in the DMG, and they did not exist in 1e in the core rules ... in fact, even rolling a 20 did not guarantee that you hit, although it did in BECMI/RC. This changed in 2e, with the optional critical hits in the DMG that many adopted. However, there are those that still remember core rules that provided for critical hits in 1e. Memory is funny that way!

Part of that is simply because the rules are interoperable and similar. Part of it is because people were more likely to play 2e more recently than 1e. And part of it is because memory is a tricky thing.