AD&D 1st edition 033 - A rarely asked question Pt 3
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- G'day viewers,
This is another video about some Rarely Asked Questions.
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As our group renews our DnD roots, i need to look at these rules again. We didnt use them before. Now, i greatly wish to use them. When we stopped playing (1987) things were still fun, but i was running out of ideas. Ive been trying to steer them at collecting monster parts for big money and access to magic, but they haven't figured that out yet. "Railroad" was not something i knew of back then. But now, i indeed know and am happy i never did that "railroad" to them. They've missed some prime opportunities, but the path they chose was theirs. 😂👍
@@ironbomb6753 Thank you for sharing.
I always left the door open for my players to explore many different options, but if they don't see it, they don't see it.
I encourage where I can, but if the players don't get into it, that's OK too.
Psionics are great. If you are a DM, you should force yourself to learn the system and give every new created character that qualifies an option to roll for it. You should also roll for it when developing certain NPCs. It won't dominate the game, but it will add some fresh flavor to your crawl.
We didn't use psionics much in several campaigns. The couple of campaigns that did use them a lot though made it very dangerous to travel to different planes of existence.
I watched one psionic battle between a wizard and a demon. It was epic and over before we could do anything. Our characters basically just stood there with our mouths open.
Watching another game as a spectator, I saw the parties fighter turn into a gibbering idiot before the Mind Flayer could be dispatched.
Traveling to the other planes should be done with caution and perhaps a Helm of Protection from Psionics 😊
As crazy as they are, we loved psionics. They're just fun, but a little complicated at times. Fun stuff though, but I also enjoyed The Psionics Handbook, along with the character 'The Psionicist'. It was fun, but also a little nuts at times, lol.
Never liked psionics, even back in the day. When (and if) the PCs ever encountered a monster which possesses such abilities (per the MM or FF), I simply removed that power from its repertoire as if didn’t exist. It utilized all its other standard attack modes instead.
The XP reward and the power level can reduce considerably if you don't include it (of course, it's an optional rule for a reason).
The Mind Flayer (Illithid) is the perfect example of something that loses potency when you remove their psionic powers.
Question: Since Psionic combat takes place in segments, does this mean that a devil, for example, can do 10 mind blasts in a "round" of combat?
Sure, but...the only devil with mind blast (aside from the arch-devils) in the MM is the pit fiend. It has an ability of 213, which is 106 attack strength, which is depleted after 5 uses, leaving him very vulnerable to psionic attack afterward.
The 100 attack points or higher is what provides balance.
Even Orcus with 172 attack points can launch 4 attacks of psionic blast against non-psionic creatures.
All psionic combat happens in the first few parts of a combat round. Orcus would throw a couple of psi-blasts just to soften up the party.
Ehhh, my least favourite part of AD&D (or at least a close tie with the grappling rules). While interesting, the whole Psionics thing felt like inserted house rules of one of Gygax's cohorts (I've heard it was Kask), who seems a former Merry Pranksters fan, deeply into the 70's mind-expansion pseudoscience.
So much effort spent on something the players had next to no hope of getting, ultimately suffering due to it's inclusion, and a lot as you mentioned was pointless against non-psionic users, so largely esoteric filler. Effort could have been better served if Gygax had spent time writing about something else, leaving that particular concept in the past, but I guess after the MM came out, he was committed and no option but to follow though to the end.
So many times I wish he had made a clean break from OD&D and likely, the legibility of AD&D would have been the better for it: too many cooks with their hands in the recipe bowl at times.
I'm trying to imagine a player character from roughly the 12-13th century trying to explain 'Molecular Rearrangement' to a bewildered Sage as they don't have a clue what that is either. heh
If a player did manage to roll successfully, I can't imagine said player ever thinking of their precious character ever entering a dungeon, for fear of their character getting killed by a random goblin, before they could ever challenge the likes of demons or devils. It would become annoying real fast at the table. The player will probably never roll another one in years, so might as well retire them to start a vaudeville show and roll up another character willing to take risks.
It certainly makes some of the monsters feel alien and truly unsettling and that's probably the best compliment I can give this hodge-podge of rules. Fear of forces beyond human comprehension: seems to suit creatures that are literally on a difference plane of understanding.
Good advice for fighting Psionic-endowed monsters: just run. I feel it was Gygax's retort to one of his content reviewers: "There! I put in your Spell point system. Now stop complaining!" haha
Psionics in AD&D is a hate-hate-dislike arrangement.
For the PCs, the DM has every right to say, I'm not including it. The fact that the Mind Flayer (as an example) is worth so many points is because it is stupid tough.
If a party goes against Orcus (without his psionic abilities), they'll smack him down and declare themselves Rulers of the Abyss.
If the party goes against Orcus (with his psionic abilities), not only is it a fight, but before they start, a couple of the party might just run in pure terror, or lose all their spell casting and magical abilities.
It (Psionics) doesn't have to be included in any part of the game, but it's there.
Every edition of D&D was built atop the previous edition until 4th Ed.
What the players and DMs knew to be true in OD&D were still true with exceptions.
Likewise, some rules and explanations were left from the OD&D version, which left a few holes in the newer books.
The classes that were most likely to have Psionic ability were Clerics, Magic-users, Paladins, Rangers, and Monks.
In all of those cases, a Psionic ability would be thought of (by the unknowing NPC) as just 'being one of them strange folk'.
The way psionics were written it was "OK DM, you want to include it? Here's a truckload of extra work you have to do!"
The players.never saw a single bit of the work. The powers were spell like abilities, during a psionic attack, the best defence mode is always taken, and those charts were in the DMG not the PHB. Even if the Tower of Iron Will isn't the best defence against a psionic blast, the area effect of the defence might make it the better defence used (depending on if the player liked the party I suppose).
It's a twitchy subject and stirs the emotions like alignment questions.
Fact is, a DM has to figure out what to do when those nasties with mind powers show up.