Gygax Time Machine, Part 2: Character Creation and Class Distinctiveness

The first couple of weeks of “sessions” – in fact, multiple 30-60 minute sessions each week, in the evening after putting the kids to bed, sorting any extra food, and doing some household jobs – saw my wife and I create 1^st Edition characters and throw them into the World of Greyhawk. What I’ll try to discuss herein is our experience of character creation, and next time I’ll look at the module I picked and the first adventures.

So, character creation. Helen created three PCs, I created four – hers to command, but I’d do the admin and run them. Of course the very oldest-school answer here would have been to make her gather some henchmen and hirelings, but in a duet game, ensuring the player has loyal allies to rely upon – at least in a team game like D&D – is valuable. I actually ended up not using any of the official Ability-generating methods in the DMG or UA, but rather 4d6 in order, keeping the highest 3 dice. I rolled a number of arrays – 10 or so, I think, for the first seven characters we created, with the lamest of those sheets being dropped into the void.

My wife created a Druid (because the stat requirements were reached!), a Fighter, and a Thief, and I added a Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, and Thief to that. I wrote up the character sheets, and custom-formatted them in Word as we went, which may seem insanely inefficient, but is a way I’ve always found useful in learning game rules. When you’re forced to churn through everything a character has or does, you get a much better impression of what the game consists of – though you don’t necessarily get a complete grasp on “what’s good”, which depends on how adventures or whatever are designed.

Things that struck me in character creation: (1) how it rewarded a systematic approach; (2) how it suffered, as everything in 1e does, from the disorganised nature of the rulebooks – less bad than their worst detractors claim, but bad enough at points; and (3) how enjoyable it was.

The first point only really applies to me learning the character creation system, and the derived stats – a player using a automated sheet wouldn’t need to be as systematic as I was, and if given an Idiot’s Guide would, I think, get through it all fairly quickly (as quickly, if not quicker, than a 5e character, though in general terms it’s simpler to make a 5e character).

The second is exemplified by the need to discover encumbrance. You might as well do it at character creation, as that’s where you discover your Strength bonus to your carry limit, and where you buy equipment. But where do you find out item weights? Well, page 37 of the Player’s Handbook, after the equipment price list (which is perfectly well-presented), has “Weight and Damage By Type” for melee weapons and for ammunition, with weight in Gold Pieces; page 27 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide has the weights of armour, in Pounds; the weight of common items such as flasks, grapnels etc is on page 225 of the DMG, with weight in Gold Pieces...oh, and missile weapons are listed on that mundane items list in the DMG, too. Three pages across two books, two of the references being in a book the players shouldn’t have access to. This is, obviously, terrible organisation, and wait – we’ve got two different measurement systems, and we haven’t even learned how Encumbrance works or affects anything, which is all explained on pp101-102 of the PHB. And carry capacity for containers is in none of the corebooks, but instead, apparently, on the Character Record Sheets (I got capacities from a useful website).

Encumbrance is actually a brilliant and worthwhile mechanic in 1e, where Gold=XP (hence gold pieces weight as one of the two measurements – with 10gp=1#). Far from being pointless maths, it informs not only movement rates, but a far wider strategic part of the game – what do you take to the dungeon, knowing you need stuff to solve problems, whilst still having space to carry back all-important loot. (Hmm, this 5gp weight gem worth 500gp is much lighter than 500gp in coins...and 500gp in gold coins is much lighter than the equivalent in silver, which is 10,000sp.) And I have to say having to search through the books has familiarised me with a lot of the rules in greater depth than before. But it’s not a way to encourage players to persevere with the system!

But my third point was how enjoyable character creation was. There’s not much heavy customization at 1^st Level aside from equipment purchases – Fighters choose Weapon Specialisation (per UA, and my sense from researching people’s very mixed views is that it’s nowhere near as unbalancing as is claimed, at least over the course of a campaign), and that’s more or less it. Obviously you pick Ancestry and Class, but beyond that a lot of the stats-side of things is automatic – Thief Skills are generated by Ancestry and Abilities, Magic-User and Illusionist spells are randomly generated (the DMG method is plainly better, and I defend the use of randomization here; we played BTB rather than letting the M-U pick), and so forth. Partly, the lack of customization was part of the fun; seeing the character take form emergently was interesting. It also wasn’t all that painful, once I’d done it a couple of times – as I say above, the process itself isn’t super-complicated, if explained concisely.

The differences between Ancestries and between Classes begin to really come out at character creation – in one sense, in many of the same ways that Classes are differentiated in some later editions, most obviously 3^rd or 5^th (2^nd, obviously, is vastly more similar to 1^st anyway). However, when I look at 5^th, and at the relative robustness of every class (max HP per starting HD, 1^st HD is d6 for Wizards/Sorcerers), at the cross-over between every class (Eldritch Knight Fighter, Hexblade Warlocks, and Arcane Trickster Rogue are a good trio to compare), at the universal set of skills all character share, which are modified generously by Abilities...there is much less differentiation in 5e than in 1e. Yes, lots of people could have told you that, but I’m telling you. And differentiation is fun. Characters needing each other is fun.

You actually see this when browsing through spells – 1e spells are often, meta-to-meta, better than their 5e equivalents, and are much more sharply distinguished by class. This sounds surprising. Surely 5e is the Generous Old-School-Feel Edition; PCs, especially from 3^rd level, seem invincible, everyone gets a prize, etc. But just compare parallel spells:

(a)    5e’s Protection from Energy - 3^rd level Druid spell, casting time 1 action (main component of a 6-second round), 1 target, duration 1 hour, requires caster Concentration (which can be broken), damage of the chosen elemental type is halved.

(b)   1e’s Protection from Fire (3^rd level), Protection from Lightning (4^th level) – Both Druid spells, casting time 5 segments (30 seconds of a 60-second round), 1 target, no Concentration required. Duration differs – for the Druid, it’s infinite until magical damage breaks it. For other targets, it’s (10 minutes x Druid level). The effect, for the Druid, is that they are immune to all normal damage from that element, and can soak up to (12 damage x Druid level) of magical damage before the spell is broken. For other targets, they gain immunity to normal element damage, gain +4 to Saves vs magical attacks requiring saves, and magical damage is halved for the duration.

Sure, in 5^th Edition, there’s much less opportunity cost for memorizing Protection from Energy, but it’s also really not very good. Its casting time is fine, it covers more damage types than the 1e equivalents, and halving said damage type is good, but it requires Concentration, thereby sucking up the Druid’s ability to cast other big spells, and halving damage – in 5^th – is not a massive effect for a 3^rd level spell slot. It has a very niche use if buffing a big guy for a one-on-one battle with a dragon or something. I have never seen it used in my experience of 5^th, over several campaigns involving Druids.

On the other hand, Protection from Fire and Lightning are both good spells. Fire is hardly uncommon! As a self-targeted spell, it’s an incredible defence for the Druid – immunity to normal instances of the damage type in perpetuity, at least until such time as the Druid takes sufficient magical damage. At lower levels, that will range from 36 points at 3^rd Level, to 72 at, say, 6^th Level. By 5^th or 6^th level, the Druid will regularly be able to soak the full brunt of a dragon’s breath attack, one of the most reliable killers in 1^st Edition. And remember – though the duration is shorter for the Druid casting the spell on someone else, it has the same mundane fire protection, and some healthy assistance on magical damage. A 54-damage breath attack could be halved once via a successful Save vs Breath Weapon (at +4 due to the spell), and then halved again by the soak element of the spell. 14 damage is often survivable for a 4^th-6^th level character. There’s a reason these spells often poll highly in “best Druid spells” lists for 1^st Edition.

There are two significant balancing factors, demonstrative of the 1^st Edition mindset: you memorize individual spells for use, not a spell list for fungible use, so if the spell is poorly chosen, that’s a slot wasted for the period (12 hours including rest needed to memorize a new 3^rd level spell, if my memory serves). And casting times make casters more vulnerable to interruption and wasted spell slots in 1^st Edition – 5 segments means there’s time for opponents to hit the Druid, cause the spell to fail, with the spell slot lost.

The 5^th Edition player cannot mitigate how lame Protection from Energy is. Concentration is very vulnerable to interruption, and the typical 5e battlefield means the Druid is unlikely to hide in the corner or be protected by others for the hour of casting! But in 1^st Edition, what mitigates the costs is player skill. Cast it before you enter the Blue Dragon’s lair. If an emergency cast is required, set the Fighters to intercept any attacks. You learn when to use the spells by playing the game; you learn their specific but very powerful use through experience. 5^th Edition cushions the capacity for failure due to poor decisions, but also reduces the scope for great skill in play; 1^st Edition stays Safety Off on both.

And only the Druid has those spells. 5^th Edition subclasses press down a lot of this distinctiveness; 1^st Edition presses into them. These differences are all over the place, from the way only the Fighter gains a proficiency bonus to weapon use (rather than simply avoiding a penalty for non-proficiency), to only the Thief having specialist stealth and legerdemain skills. Now, much of this is similar in B/X, but there are more specialised variables in AD&D (such as Ancestry-specific class restrictions and special abilities), and the mechanics provided are never bland, even if they are abstruse. They are all opportunities for player skill in the simulation provided by Gary. 

So Prince Perithil of the Amber Wood (High Elf Thief), Kurgan Ironbreath (Dwarf Cleric), Gilayra (Half-Elf Druid), Gragnak (Half-Orc Fighter), Throli (Dwarf Fighter), Eldarion (Half-Elf Magic-User), and Timtom (Human Thief) set forth, seeking glory, justice, and wealth, or some mixture thereof. Oh, and two of them managed to roll to have Psionics! We’ll talk about that another time.