Another observation

Why 15 is not enough?
It is average score
15,14,13,12,10,8 are the medium scores that are available in the D&D 3.5 DM manual, used to make elite character and monsters (plus racial modifiers).
15 allows to cast spells of level 5, grants +2 int points and may be easily upgraded to 16 at 4th level. For me it is good enough and the other scores may be nice to characterize the NPC. Will the wizard be more agile or with a better constitution? Will be wiser, so that he will have better saving throws against mind effects? Or will be a warrior/wizard with a decent score in strenght? Personally, I love the elven wizard, since he is still proficent with bows, rays and may be a nice help shooting arrwos from a bow when he ends spells or monsters are so puny that they are not worthy of casting any spell. After all ToEE is still a videogame where you have to kill many monsters!
otis and elmo are the ones really outpowered, while the troll, the giant and the half/demon sorceress have the terrible drawback that nobody, including shopkeepers will talk anymore to you. But hey, with who do you need to speak with, when your only wish is to make a huge carnage with every living being that you meet and that is not part of your party? ^_^

 

yeah some of the npcs do add to much power to the game. like otis, mother screng(cannoness Y'dey), the hill giant and troll. ive tried all of them and i just dont like any of them in the party or elmo either for that matter. melany is good and serena might be cool if i needed another thief at that point.

 

In 3.5, yeah, sure. But Spougnor was written in 1st ed. 15 Int was low end for a magic-user then...

 

Well, in D&D 15 was a decent score....

18 +3
16-17 +2
13-14-15 +1

instead I can't remember AD&D, but just that all values had their particular bonuses and that it was crazyness to have a minimum score of 16 or 17 for a +1/+1 bonus to something.
D&D was more non-sense than AD&D, but it was better balanced.
Anyway, nothing to complain since we are playing at 3.5, so 15 is fine.
I just wonder how programmers adjusted NPCs from the first version of ToEE to the new one.
Of course the creators of original game made NPCs according to the bonuses offered by each score, for example, if they gave a thief a 17 STR, it was just to grant him the +1/+1 bonus to hit and damage, that is like having a STR 12 or 13 in 3.0 & 3.5
But what if Troika guys just changed D&D 17 (+2/+2) or worst an AD&D 17 (+1/+1) with a 3.5 17 (+3/+3)? This would explain why some characters are so strong.

 

Ad&d depended on what score it was. I.e. strength of 15 was no bonus, 16 gave +1 damage only, 17 was +1 hit/+1 damage, and 18 was all screwed up.

Int, IIRC, only gave bonuses to the number of languages you could learn. Under normal circumstances, you couldn't go over 18, which i think gave you 7 bonus languages ( plus racial puls alignment). Talk about multi-lingual!

any magic-user HAD to have at least 12 int to even get the class.

15 was low-average. most MU's usually had 17-18.
Again...if I recall correctly. It has been decades since I opened a 1st ed. rulebook...never really played 2nd ed.

 

your right nitewolf.....every class had minimums for it. some like the paladin and bard or ranger had many and were high. you had to have a 17 cha to be a paladin along with str, con and wis 14+ so yeah it was harder to get into a class then which i actually liked more than 3.5. the new AD&D has some intresting ideas but i still prefer 2nd ed over all.

 

mr.wolves, help me to make the point
we had D&D, then AD&D, AD&D II ed, D&D 3.0, D&D 3.5, right?
I think that I missed the substantial differences between AD&D with D&D and AD&D II.

 

well orion there wasnt alot of differance between AD&D 1st ed and 2nd ed. the 2nd ed gave you more options for your characters but the basics were the same you still had the same minimum requirments for each class

original D&D was real different. you had humans that could be a fighter, cleric, mage or thief and that was it for them. demi-humans were a class of thier own.

stats well anything below a 10 was useless and you really needed prime stats at 16+ to make it

 

Actually, in the original rules the only classes were fighter, cleric, and magic user. Thief didn't come along until the Greyhawk supplement, as did the 18/% Strength scores. Monks were introduced in the Blackmoor supplement and I believe it wasn't until Eldritch Wizardry that Paladins came to be.

 

i think your right about the thief idonyo, now that i think about it. they also added classes in each box set that came out. i dont have it out but if i remember right the expert set saw the ranger and druid. the paladin was in the capanion ed. the illiusionist in the masters. dont think there was any new ones in immortal. im doing this from memory so i may have them in the wrong order. dont remember when when elves, dwarves and halflings stopped being thier own class. if they ever did in D&D as i switched over to AD&D at that point.

 

well, indeed I have all 4 manuals of D&D (first edition) and monks were among monsters and NPC classes, usable as PC too.
But still, long life to D&D that had the taste of things made with love, even if not perfect at all.

 

TSR made some changes to the original D&D when they created the boxed sets (Basic, Expert, etc.). I never played using those rules as I was far into AD&D 1st Edition by the time those came out.

The demi-human races remained their own classes throughout the original rules. When AD&D first came out, these classes were translated into class level restrictions. To sort of make up for this, demi-humans were allowed to have multiple classes.

The biggest changes to the D&D rules made in AD&D had to do with adding a structural element to things that did not previously have one. Which things, you might ask. Combat and spell casting, I would reply. ;-)

In the original rules there was the combat round. That was the only defined time slice in the game. In AD&D, time was defined as segments, rounds, and turns. The round was the basic unit of time and was defined as one minute. There were 10 segments in a round and 10 rounds in a turn. Also added were weapon speed factors, initiative modifiers for armor and dexterity, and casting times for spells, most of which were given as a number of segments or sometimes rounds, in the case of spells.

If I'm not mistaken, most of this structure has carried through each new edition of the rules.

 

I really hated that initiative thing. One time ago, a PC of my group, that was using a wizard, decided to use, without any advice and with the approval of the DM, those rules that involved intiative bonuses/maluses according woth spells and weapons (but still ignoring the spell casting time) to kick my paladin's ass. It was not nice and I really prefer now where initiative is just the ability to generically react to events. And even if light weapons should move faster than others, I still belive that it is something that is already characterized by the feat "weapon finesse" and that it has nothing to do with the ability of a single thinking being to understand situations and to react quickly to menaces.

 

The way we did it was to roll for initiative on a 10-sided die and modify the number rolled by weapon speed/casting time, dex bonus (as adjusted by armor type) and any other pertinent modifers. This gave you the number of the segment your action took place in. If it was a number greater than 10, then you went in the next round (example: a 12 would mean you went in segment 2 of the next round).

If you didn't use one part of the system, such as casting time, then you would have to leave out all of the other parts to keep everyone on the same level, so to speak.