By 1976 and throughout the later use of 1e we were all using '1' critical miss and possible shoot friend if within 2-3" of tgt or fumble and drop weapon (1 turn to recover) and '20' critical hit = max wpn damage or player could choose to roll and x2 roll result. Apparently Gygax hated these crit rules used by most players at the time.
Why did you roll 3d6 for initiative? It's 1d6 for both parties with highest roll going first. Also, for the surprise for the fighter & goblin, the fighter is surprised for only 2 segments. The goblin has normal chance to surprise & thus gets no bonuses to surprise. If he did, then there could be more than two segments of surprise.
Gygax didn't write bad rules (as such), he wrote rules badly. This section of the DMG has about 6 paragraphs going ON AND ON, explaining the idea of how surprise works, and also includes two examples, and two tables of results. The result is that instead of being clear it seems IMPENETRABLE. :) The second table (on p62) is even INCORRECT. The normal chance of surprise is 1 or 2 on a d6. If you are surprised, then the number rolled EQUALS the number of segments that you are surprised. If the PC's side rolls a 1 then they would be surprised for 1 segment. If they roll a 2 they're surprised for 2 segments. If they roll a 3 through 6 then they are not surprised. Same range of outcomes applies for the other side. The table referenced says in the second to last entry that if the party rolls 1 and the monsters roll 2 that THE PARTY is then surprised. That's both wrong and inaccurate. It's inaccurate because the party IS surprised - just for LESS time than the monsters who rolled a 2. It's wrong because the party side is then able to take 1 segment of surprise action against the monsters - not the other way around. The party is, in that circumstance, therefore surprised for 1 segment, the monsters for 2 segments. A segment goes by with neither side able to take actions because BOTH are surprised for that segment. Then the party gets to act against the monsters for 1 segment because the monsters ARE STILL SURPRISED FOR 1 MORE SEGMENT. Then the last entry reverses the rolls - and gets it all wrong again in the same way and for the same reasons.
Gygax will never use a simple solution if one that requires reading 7 books, finding the 12 paragraphs talking about it he hid in the DMG, then climbing a mountain exsists.
I use max damage for a nat 20 in B/X. With a nat 1 I usually improvise: a dropped weapon, an immediate counterattack by the opponent, or something else interesting.
We had a local RPG magazine, and they made a criticals and fumbles charts. A natural 1 was a fumble, and a 20 was a critical. It was fantastic. Easier than Rolemaster but not as deadly.
Giant frogs clearly have 1 to 3 hit dice. You can tell this by at least 3-4 clues. First is the typography. Look at how they write “1-3”. Now look at how they write the titan’s hit dice: it’s 17-22. Titans don’t have 17 HD minus 22 hp. It’s a range. The only creature in the Monster Manual with a reduction in hit points after the hit dice is the goblin, which has 1 HD minus 1 hp. That’s written as “1 to 7 Hit points”. Second is the actual textual description to the monster. It tells you how big a 1-HD frog is, a 2-HD frog, and a 3-HD frog. Third is the DMG. In the monster statistics summary in Appendix E, you can see the THAC0 improve with the hit dice. Outside of the main books, adventure modules like Temple of Elemental Evil describe giant frogs with more hit points than your 1 minus 3 reading. Other people have commented on your weird 3d6 initiative thing. I’m sure it’s a house rule, either of your own or from an old DM. I’ve seen countless people on TH-cam and in real life assuming house rules they used were in the books because they never double-checked. You didn’t give the giant frog his +4 bonus to attack with his tongue. Thieves don’t use a different surprise die when they backstab. Or ever. You didn’t give the goblin his 3 rounds of surprise. You gave him one. TH-cam issue, not D&D issue: many of your dice rolls took place off the screen. Opinion: if you’re going to do a tutorial on 1e combat, you should include determining distance, movement, use the weapon vs. AC table, use morale for the monsters-showcase all the rules. Another opinion: to demonstrate combat, you should show something other than “I swing. I hit.” “The monster swings. It misses.” Show some ranged combat, cast a spell, use a magic item. Another opinion: a goblin and a kobold are, compared to many different monsters, really similar. Demonstrating combat against a goblin and then against a kobold didn’t add anything substantial to the lesson. Another opinion: don’t rely on the dice. The goblin fight slowed to a crawl at one point with all the misses, and the giant frog never got a chance to use his neat special ability.
Yeah I was trying to work out the brain fog of being so long away from this edition of the game. I need to update this video with better examples as I’m afraid this one was more nostalgia for me than it was actual useful information. Great points and thanks for commenting!
Hi Loyd, do you have anything positive to add? You just post a lot of negative comments. I personally like the simplicity of the instructions. I am new to this version, so, as a new player, why would I want to know about range or magic combat? I am most interested in the essential, which is melee’ combat.
@@perplexedmoth I wish I had the time. I own 3 game stores, a game company, and a distribution company. The best 1st edition accuracy I've seen on TH-cam is the folks at GrogTalk. James is rock solid.
@@CraftDD very valuable info as I ponder whether to run a 1st Ed ADD game like I used to play - except when I was 10 we threw a lot of rules out such S weapon type modifiers, encumbrance etc. Surely someone has written a script or program to automate all the lookups by now?
We never played Hit Dice like that. The frog would have had 1, 2 or 3 D8's for his hit points. No wonder my dungeons were so tough. 😅 But still, had the frog rolled a 2 on one D8 for its hit points, it would have had -1 hp?
Initiative should be a single d6 per "side." In my home game every player rolls their own d6 and then gets placed into the segments. They reroll every round because they like how it mixes up the flow of combat and adds to the immersion. That's definitely not for everybody though. As written it's 1d6 for the party and 1d6 for the monsters.
Would it be faster & perhaps more fun when fighting low level monsters to avoid taking turns & initiative and instead both sides simply do a "dice-a-thon"? That is, players & DM write down AC and hit points for all combatants, then on 1, 2, 3 . . . everyone simultaneously starts rolling d20s and damage dice until one side is reduced to zero hp or runs away. You could pause the action to resolve spells or complex actions. On a battle grid you could even roll dice to move PC and monster figures, like 1d4 or 1d6 squares per roll. With movement modifiers for terrain and zones of control.
I don't understand where you got the 3d6 for initiative. It's just d6 for each party. I suppose it's technically the same thing but unnecessary? Others have alreadu pointed that out. I guess though to add tonit, thr goblin should have 3 segments to attack. He rolled a 5, you rolled a 2. 5-2=3 he gets to attack for each segment.
I have aome questions but first I love the large dice I Kay now get me some. So I know some of dungeons an d dragons and my first question is on surprise their was two spots for a 3 to 6 for a human on the books chart or am I reading it wrong? Then their was no thaco why is thaco not being used, and do we not use ithe max hot points for 1st level then as we progress we add to it the 1d10 roll. So should not Mountain have ten points not five? And finally where did you.get the cool large hex paper amd the rock tokens? As well please do a.follow up so Mountain can get his revenge against the goblin.
I did play in many games from the start with house rules. We always used 1d6 for surprise in all of them. A natural 1 is always a fumble, hit friend, break or drop weapon. A natural 20 always hit with double damage(roll double weapon damage dice)
It depends on the Hit Matrix table in the DMG for the class. In general though, a natural 20 will always hit, regardless of the AC. Note, in AD&D BTB, natural 20s are not a critical hit. There aren't critical hits in AD&D. It's just a very popular house rule. Kind of like Free Parking getting all the money in the middle in Monopoly.
I messed up there actually. That should have been a single d6 for the fighter and a single d6 for the monster. Thanks for brining it to my attention - appreciate it!
@Michael Johnson Page 63 of my AD&D DMG shows that for initiative you roll a d6. "Again, a d6 is rolled and the scores of the two parties compared." There are 10 segments in the round though. The first 6 segments are for regular actions and the last 4 segments are usually for spells to finish going off, held actions, fighters with a second attack routine, etc. I like your monster creation shortcut. Anything to streamline everything is great.
No normally when it says #-# it means, # to # hit dice. I could be wrong but I bet the frog has more or less hit dice based on the age. Idk because I don't have my mm out rn but if it was 1d8-3 the you could roll negative numbers meaning it would start the combat dead or unconscious lol.
@@realherbalism1017 That works if you don't mind rolling up goblins in units of 10 (40, 50, 60, ... , 400) without the possibility of getting numbers between (like 47 goblins).
@@RobertWF42 it's much easier to take care of even numbers than odd numbers when dealing with large contingencies of monsters. Especially as many as 400. It may be less realistic but it also helps keep things straight.
RIP Skoobum.
By 1976 and throughout the later use of 1e we were all using '1' critical miss and possible shoot friend if within 2-3" of tgt or fumble and drop weapon (1 turn to recover) and '20' critical hit = max wpn damage or player could choose to roll and x2 roll result. Apparently Gygax hated these crit rules used by most players at the time.
That's exactly what we did then too.
Why did you roll 3d6 for initiative? It's 1d6 for both parties with highest roll going first. Also, for the surprise for the fighter & goblin, the fighter is surprised for only 2 segments. The goblin has normal chance to surprise & thus gets no bonuses to surprise. If he did, then there could be more than two segments of surprise.
Gygax didn't write bad rules (as such), he wrote rules badly. This section of the DMG has about 6 paragraphs going ON AND ON, explaining the idea of how surprise works, and also includes two examples, and two tables of results. The result is that instead of being clear it seems IMPENETRABLE. :) The second table (on p62) is even INCORRECT.
The normal chance of surprise is 1 or 2 on a d6. If you are surprised, then the number rolled EQUALS the number of segments that you are surprised. If the PC's side rolls a 1 then they would be surprised for 1 segment. If they roll a 2 they're surprised for 2 segments. If they roll a 3 through 6 then they are not surprised. Same range of outcomes applies for the other side. The table referenced says in the second to last entry that if the party rolls 1 and the monsters roll 2 that THE PARTY is then surprised. That's both wrong and inaccurate. It's inaccurate because the party IS surprised - just for LESS time than the monsters who rolled a 2. It's wrong because the party side is then able to take 1 segment of surprise action against the monsters - not the other way around.
The party is, in that circumstance, therefore surprised for 1 segment, the monsters for 2 segments. A segment goes by with neither side able to take actions because BOTH are surprised for that segment. Then the party gets to act against the monsters for 1 segment because the monsters ARE STILL SURPRISED FOR 1 MORE SEGMENT. Then the last entry reverses the rolls - and gets it all wrong again in the same way and for the same reasons.
Gygax will never use a simple solution if one that requires reading 7 books, finding the 12 paragraphs talking about it he hid in the DMG, then climbing a mountain exsists.
Inititive was handled with our house rules. (Basically dexterity). Morale, and Surprise we never used because it was just too complicated.
I played this for years! I still remembered all the rules. AC, HD all that. What fun!
talk about a walk down memory lane.....thanks for posting :)
Glad you enjoyed it
It is nice to see praise. Too many “professors” in this game hobby.
I use max damage for a nat 20 in B/X. With a nat 1 I usually improvise: a dropped weapon, an immediate counterattack by the opponent, or something else interesting.
Nice. I've started doing something similar.
We had a local RPG magazine, and they made a criticals and fumbles charts. A natural 1 was a fumble, and a 20 was a critical. It was fantastic. Easier than Rolemaster but not as deadly.
Giant frogs clearly have 1 to 3 hit dice. You can tell this by at least 3-4 clues. First is the typography. Look at how they write “1-3”. Now look at how they write the titan’s hit dice: it’s 17-22. Titans don’t have 17 HD minus 22 hp. It’s a range. The only creature in the Monster Manual with a reduction in hit points after the hit dice is the goblin, which has 1 HD minus 1 hp. That’s written as “1 to 7 Hit points”.
Second is the actual textual description to the monster. It tells you how big a 1-HD frog is, a 2-HD frog, and a 3-HD frog.
Third is the DMG. In the monster statistics summary in Appendix E, you can see the THAC0 improve with the hit dice.
Outside of the main books, adventure modules like Temple of Elemental Evil describe giant frogs with more hit points than your 1 minus 3 reading.
Other people have commented on your weird 3d6 initiative thing. I’m sure it’s a house rule, either of your own or from an old DM. I’ve seen countless people on TH-cam and in real life assuming house rules they used were in the books because they never double-checked.
You didn’t give the giant frog his +4 bonus to attack with his tongue.
Thieves don’t use a different surprise die when they backstab. Or ever.
You didn’t give the goblin his 3 rounds of surprise. You gave him one.
TH-cam issue, not D&D issue: many of your dice rolls took place off the screen.
Opinion: if you’re going to do a tutorial on 1e combat, you should include determining distance, movement, use the weapon vs. AC table, use morale for the monsters-showcase all the rules.
Another opinion: to demonstrate combat, you should show something other than “I swing. I hit.” “The monster swings. It misses.” Show some ranged combat, cast a spell, use a magic item.
Another opinion: a goblin and a kobold are, compared to many different monsters, really similar. Demonstrating combat against a goblin and then against a kobold didn’t add anything substantial to the lesson.
Another opinion: don’t rely on the dice. The goblin fight slowed to a crawl at one point with all the misses, and the giant frog never got a chance to use his neat special ability.
Yeah I was trying to work out the brain fog of being so long away from this edition of the game. I need to update this video with better examples as I’m afraid this one was more nostalgia for me than it was actual useful information.
Great points and thanks for commenting!
Hi Loyd, do you have anything positive to add? You just post a lot of negative comments. I personally like the simplicity of the instructions. I am new to this version, so, as a new player, why would I want to know about range or magic combat? I am most interested in the essential, which is melee’ combat.
@@txmetalhead82xk I actually offered some constructive criticism in my post.
@@lloydbrown2713 I found your comment useful. It would be amazing if you could make a video to demonstrate all that if time permits.
@@perplexedmoth I wish I had the time. I own 3 game stores, a game company, and a distribution company. The best 1st edition accuracy I've seen on TH-cam is the folks at GrogTalk. James is rock solid.
WHOOPS! You were looking at flightless bird! when getting the hitdice / hit-points
Well mistakes like that happen in these big jobs. Just like in the real game we roll with it. Thanks for commenting!
@@CraftDD very valuable info as I ponder whether to run a 1st Ed ADD game like I used to play - except when I was 10 we threw a lot of rules out such S weapon type modifiers, encumbrance etc.
Surely someone has written a script or program to automate all the lookups by now?
Upon a search parts of Scoobum could still have been found in Frogs lair. Considering what would have been partly digested. 🤔
I had a gnome swallowed whole by a giant frog
Now his soul may rest in piece lol
I'd love to know where you found that character sheet
We never played Hit Dice like that. The frog would have had 1, 2 or 3 D8's for his hit points. No wonder my dungeons were so tough. 😅
But still, had the frog rolled a 2 on one D8 for its hit points, it would have had -1 hp?
Why is initiative 3d6?
It's a single d6 die.
Initiative should be a single d6 per "side." In my home game every player rolls their own d6 and then gets placed into the segments. They reroll every round because they like how it mixes up the flow of combat and adds to the immersion. That's definitely not for everybody though. As written it's 1d6 for the party and 1d6 for the monsters.
Fun play example, thanks
Glad you enjoyed it
Killer frogs mate ftw
Would it be faster & perhaps more fun when fighting low level monsters to avoid taking turns & initiative and instead both sides simply do a "dice-a-thon"?
That is, players & DM write down AC and hit points for all combatants, then on 1, 2, 3 . . . everyone simultaneously starts rolling d20s and damage dice until one side is reduced to zero hp or runs away. You could pause the action to resolve spells or complex actions.
On a battle grid you could even roll dice to move PC and monster figures, like 1d4 or 1d6 squares per roll. With movement modifiers for terrain and zones of control.
I don't understand where you got the 3d6 for initiative. It's just d6 for each party. I suppose it's technically the same thing but unnecessary? Others have alreadu pointed that out. I guess though to add tonit, thr goblin should have 3 segments to attack. He rolled a 5, you rolled a 2. 5-2=3 he gets to attack for each segment.
Can someone just do a step by step guide?
I have aome questions but first I love the large dice I Kay now get me some. So I know some of dungeons an d dragons and my first question is on surprise their was two spots for a 3 to 6 for a human on the books chart or am I reading it wrong? Then their was no thaco why is thaco not being used, and do we not use ithe max hot points for 1st level then as we progress we add to it the 1d10 roll. So should not Mountain have ten points not five?
And finally where did you.get the cool large hex paper amd the rock tokens? As well please do a.follow up so Mountain can get his revenge against the goblin.
I did play in many games from the start with house rules.
We always used 1d6 for surprise in all of them.
A natural 1 is always a fumble, hit friend, break or drop weapon.
A natural 20 always hit with double damage(roll double weapon damage dice)
💕
How do you hit something with a negative ac
It depends on the Hit Matrix table in the DMG for the class. In general though, a natural 20 will always hit, regardless of the AC. Note, in AD&D BTB, natural 20s are not a critical hit. There aren't critical hits in AD&D. It's just a very popular house rule. Kind of like Free Parking getting all the money in the middle in Monopoly.
Hello. Why did you roll 3d6 for initiative rather than a single d6 for each (sorry if I missed it)? thanks.
I messed up there actually. That should have been a single d6 for the fighter and a single d6 for the monster. Thanks for brining it to my attention - appreciate it!
@Michael Johnson Page 63 of my AD&D DMG shows that for initiative you roll a d6. "Again, a d6 is rolled and the scores of the two parties compared." There are 10 segments in the round though. The first 6 segments are for regular actions and the last 4 segments are usually for spells to finish going off, held actions, fighters with a second attack routine, etc.
I like your monster creation shortcut. Anything to streamline everything is great.
you are totally wrong on imitative. each side rolls 1D6.
he is also totally wrong on surprise segments
I always did the 1-3 as a 1 to 3 hp but its 1d8-3?
No normally when it says #-# it means, # to # hit dice. I could be wrong but I bet the frog has more or less hit dice based on the age. Idk because I don't have my mm out rn but if it was 1d8-3 the you could roll negative numbers meaning it would start the combat dead or unconscious lol.
I'm curious how you can randomly generate 40-400 goblins by rolling dice? Actually, I think 4d10 x 10 + 1d10 would work without leaving gaps.
It is 4d10x10
@@realherbalism1017 That works if you don't mind rolling up goblins in units of 10 (40, 50, 60, ... , 400) without the possibility of getting numbers between (like 47 goblins).
@@RobertWF42 it's much easier to take care of even numbers than odd numbers when dealing with large contingencies of monsters. Especially as many as 400. It may be less realistic but it also helps keep things straight.
40d10 clearly
4d100 with a 40 minimum threshold.
it is exactly the same thus no one bought it .