Monks, Bards, and Rangers. The 'other' white meat options.

Why, yes it did. It was made official in the Unearthed Arcana, 1st edition, along with the barbarian, all the new fangled ranger skills and whatnot and this particular book was the beginning of the end for 1st edition ad&d because they introduced rules where PC's could now start playing svirfneblin, drow, 24 different kinds of elves, mountain dwarves and duregar and opened the door to the current foolishment that goes on today in the WoTC rules, such as PC's being half halfling/half nightmare/half graveyard elemental. I might have missed a few things in there but you get the gist of it. All kinds of ridiculous things. The unearthed arcana was the power gamers book, made to give all kinds of advantages to PC's so that they wouldn't have to use their imaginations as much and rely on straight across the board overpowered advantages. The barbarian in particular was an absolutely brutal piece of work. Made straight fighters look like complete pussies because, among their huge collection of advantages, they got like double the constitution bonus. Every level. Wow. A high level barbarian would have like 400+ hit points, just unstoppable. More hit points than freaking dragons and everything else.

And, they were real favorites to have in an adventuring party because they earned experience by destroying magic items. Heh. That part I loved!

Nice wall of text there. That/s what you get for bringing up old school ad&d! :Being_a_s

Actually, I'm rather surprised that they didn't include the paladins of every alignment in that book to play as PC's.

 

My big problem with 3.5 bards is the spell progression. They acquire spell levels more slowly, but they get some spells "earlier". Let's take Dominate Person as an example. It is a 4th level bard spell available at 10th level compared to being a 5th level wizard spell available at 9th. Not such a big deal.

The bigger problem is that the bard's spells are easier to resist - the DC is one lower.

 

I see you met my ex-wife.

 

Bloody Drizzt. It's all his fault. Everyone wants to be a TWF Drow these days.

 

2nd Ed was out way before Salvatore wrote about Drizzt.

 

IIRC, dual-wielding was originally a thief skill. You got it automatically at, I think, first level. Somebody will remember better than me.

Aragorn duals a little in LotR, as does Gandalf. But for the life of me I can't stop thinking of it as a rogue skill.

As General Ghoul points out, Drizzt follows D&D, he doesn't lead it. Don't get me wrong, I like the little blue f'r, too. But Salvatore based his stuff on D&D, not visa-versa like LotR and Fafnir and the Grey Mouser.

 

1st edition rangers automatically received dual wield weapons at 1st level as a special ranger type thing. They also were the only class to start with 2d8 hit points. Man, rangers used to be cool. What happened? Oh, that's right. "Progress". :thumbsdow

Oooooo, wouldn't that be something to have a game like ToEE using Lankmar? Dare to dream. :yes:

 

I think that the 4E rules have made all classes cool, even the ranger.

 

Hi Folks
Here's where I give clues to what I was doing for a living when I did most of my PnP (1st Ed.) AD&D playing. The folks I played with patterned their Rangers (and 1st Ed. Rangers were BAD !!) after the real Rangers. No I don't mean the folks wearing the "Smokey the Bear" hats that you see at Grand Canyon National Park, I mean the bad a**es who (back then) wore Black Berets, rapelled out of Helicopters, jumped out of airplanes, and in general were (and still are) capable of kicking some serious a** . I must admit that compared to the 1st Ed. Ranger, the 3.5 Ranger is a whimp. Most of the guys I played with, played the Ranger as the ultimate "Light Infantry": Go in fast, Hit hard, and Get out before the bad guys know you are there. If you want specifics on how "whimped out" the 3.5 Ranger is compared to the 1st Ed. Ranger, lets start with stats and hit points. A 1st Ed. Ranger needed to have a minimum of 15 Strength, Intelligence and Wisdom if I remember correctly (this explains Elmo's exceptional stats: in the PnP module he was a Ranger) and they started with 2D8 hit points. At 8th or 9th Level (I don't remember which) they started to receive both Druid and Wizard spells. Oh yeah, lets not forget their Giant fighting skills: at 8th or 9th Level (which is currently about the level that most parties playing Co8 hit the second level of the temple) no goblinoid/giant smaller than a bugbear would survive one hit from a ranger with a dagger, let alone a magic sword. 1st Ed. Rangers also got more than one animal follower, and some of the followers they got could be pretty good. For example at the end of UK2 "The Sentinal" there is a 10th Level Ranger who has the following companions: 1 Brown Bear, 1 Brownie (think Lawful Good Leprechaun), 2 Blink Dogs (imagine Attack Dogs that can Blink at will, as the spell), and a pack of 7 Wolves. Like I said, WoTC whimped out the Ranger in v3.5, the original was much tougher.
The Royal Canadian

 

First publish dates of the Icewind Dale Trilogy (the original novels featuring Drizz't)
The Crystal Shard (1988)
Streams of Silver (1989)
The Halfling's Gem (1990)

AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook was released in 1989.

 

Just went to look at my 1978 AD&D Player's Manual. No Ranger or Thief dual-wielding.

In my 1989, 2ed Player's Manual (which I am NOT that familiar with), Ranger can dual at 1st, no thief dualling.

Anybody got the boxed set and the three expansions. I'm SURE my memory is perfect after 30 years twitch. Thieves could dual-wield somehow, maybe with sufficient Dex?

I never heard of Drizzt until the middle 90's, so I'm no expert. But I still think Ranger dual-wielding comes from something else.

 

For those that don't have the Handbooks and whose memory is imperfect then OSRIC is 99% faithful to 1st Ed rules and it's a free download. As you can copy & paste from that document, I'll quote it on TWF here:

"two-weapon fighting: If a character desires to fight with one weapon in each hand, the off-hand weapon must be either a dagger or a hand axe. The weapon in the primary hand attacks with a –2 modifier, and the off-hand weapon attacks at –4. The character’s dexterity bonus (or penalty) for missile weapons is added to both attacks. Thus, a character with a dexterity of 3 would be attacking at -5/-7. However, although penalties can be offset, this rule can never result in a bonus to attacks! The off-hand weapon cannot be used to affect parrying."

That's the only mention made.