D&D - Hopes, Likes, Dislikes

[Malcadon]

I forgot some Likes form before...

The wording in the old AD&D books like the DMG are so collegiate, it helped be deal with my dyslexia when I was younger. By no means am I cured, but damn did it make a huge dent in my reading skills!

The old DMG noted the effects of drugs & alcohol, rules for gambling, and it listed some random types of Harlots. As a young man, that was awesome. Old-school characters where no Dudley Do-Rights -- when they risked life and limb to clear out a dungeon, they hit the town and lived like there was no tomorrow! Shame you don't see any of that in the newer games. The only thing it was missing was a list of recreational drugs & effects and a random list of STDs and effects. Damn, that book would improve your reading level and put hair on your chest hairs.

The old art was full of little Easter Eggs or they were based on other works of art. In the old 0-edition booklets, a teenage artist named Greg Bell made some neat, if really crude, art based on what he seen in Marvel comics (mostly from Doctor Strange, Nick Fury and Dax the Damned). (He was coping for other artists well before the comics made it a thing. LOL) Darlene Pekul did some great recreations of the woodcarvings of Gustave Doré's iconic art for the Divine Comedy, it the old DMG. Bill Willingham who is also a comic book writer and artist would add references to comic books in this D&D art. For example, he made a picture of Drows with a chest of treasure stacked with Marvel references.

In the 0-edition booklets, the Ring of Three Wishes stated that the wishes had no limit to what you can wish for. Game-balance was not a big issue then. That, and it recommends that wishes should have a literal-but-ironic twist to them akin to W. W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw or the Twilight Zone. So if you wish for something really game/world braking, you'll better watch what you wish for!

As for hopes...

Well, I cut myself form WotC years ago, and I have little interest in that 3.75 game, nor the up coming 5e game. I'm just sticking to the retro-clones. The OSR movement is more then what I could ever ask for. I see a lot of great works and talent coming from that great sub-culture.

[IvenBach]

The Gastalt you speak of sounds interesting and I may have to look into that. Do they have an ECL? and would a starting fighter/mage have 1d10+1d4 HP? That sounds crazy OP. What about crazy combinations like a druid/paladin? are those allowed?

You start as a lvl 1 character but are simultaneously 2 classes. Example would be both Paladin and Sorceror. Whichever class has a better bonus you take that. For hp it'd be 1D10 from Paladin. Base Attack Bonus (BAB) again Paladin. Armor proficiencies, again paladin. Skills are from both classes. Anything that 'overlaps' from either class the better is taken. You get all the spells from the Sorceror as well as Paladin abilities. Generally you would take 2 different class types because a Fighter/Barbarian wouldn't get anything helpful. Granted power gamers will milk this for every drop that it's worth and that's why I suggested having a limited point buy system (15 points or less. About 12 points in my opinion would be optimal). The limited buy would let you max only one single stat to 18 and another to 14-17 and leave the rest at 10's. Sure you may have an 18 Charisma for Paladin abilities and Sorceror spells but every other score is average at best. Try casting a Sorceror spell in armor and see how that turns out . I'll probably do that with my gaming group at some point for a change. Any restrictions would be up to you and GM. Cleric/Wizard or Sorceror would clearly be a powergamers dream Blasting AND healing spells, why not? When you level up to a 2nd lvl character you become a lvl2/lvl2 in respective classes without any exp penalty along the way.

Don't even get me started about Bards in 2nd edition... From the odd way of letting them be both a Rogue & Wizard up till level 7, if memory serves me right, just because the way experience worked...

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Old D&D did have a lot of high level reading. They should bring it back because it did help with learning and made you hopefully reach for a dictionary while reading. I forget where I got it from but a supplemental fanmade book had all kinds of tables and info for venereal diseases, frequency of catching them etc. for all that kind of stuff. The things I remember most were the section on where Centaurs came from. Human Father + Equine mother = % chance of baby Centaur while Human Mother + Equine Father = High % problems with small possibility of Centaur. along with Bibgy's Bitch Slap which could only be used on a female character and on a failed save would slap them to the nearest kitchen be it 10-10,000ft. Yeah that one made me laugh as a teenager... Still does today actually but only at the idiocy of it.

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Back to more thoughts and discussion.

[JasonMCM]

Bibgy's Bitch Slap which could only be used on a female character and on a failed save would slap them to the nearest kitchen be it 10-10,000ft.

Is this one of the spells that got DnD a bad name for having real spells in it? Never saw that Bigby spell before.

The sex book I saw was for 3rd edition... OGL bit WotC in the bum on that one.
4% of catching a disease from WotC if you deal 1 or more damage with your bite.

[IvenBach]

quick web search brought it up http://www.istari.org/gnba/spells/gnsb/html/lev4.html#bigbys.bitch.slap as well as another variant http://www.istari.org/gnba/spells/gnsb/html/lev3.html#bigbys.bitchslap...

So there ya go.

You could also go on to http://www.istari.org/gnba/spells/gnsb/html/search.html and search for a 6th level spell that has prismatic in its name. Just saying is all...

Note: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~johol/netbooks/CarnalGuide/carnal.txt 'Unlawful guide to carnal knowledge' was what I knew it as. Was an interesting read the first time I came across it and now is terribly laughable and not in the good way.

Is this one of the spells that got DnD a bad name for having real spells in it?

Nah it's player generated stuff. Sadly I still, for the life of me, can't figure out what all the pineapples had against D&D. Sarcasm: Probably a bunch of sheltered mothers that didn't want to acknowledge the fact that their kids were awkward teenagers and had to blame it on something other than themselves and bad parenting. /Sarcasm

[Teldurn]

-From what I saw of 4th edition there is no multiclassing at all (I have only glanced through the books as the rest of my gaming group at the time gave it the arbitrary thumbs down that many did for whatever reason people do things like that, I thought that the system looked cool)

Actually, 4e does have two different forms of multiclassing.

The more straightforward one is done by taking multiclass feats at levelup, which allows you to take certain powers or skills from a second (or third) class instead of a power or skill from your own class.

The more unusual form of multiclassing is called a Hybrid class, which is much closer to 3e's gestalt multiclassing. Character generation for a Hybrid class is, you pick which two classes you want to pull from and you can basically mix and match stuff from both classes to get one amalgamation of a unique class in one.