D&D 1E 5e encounters vs. 1e encounters

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yeah, not in any way 'encounter-building guidelines,' no. That's snipped from a monster stat block, and that's exactly what it is, stats about a monster, nothing more.

More and better stats than 5E gives you. If you meet an AD&D troll, what time is it? Probably night, because that's when trolls come out. What is the troll doing? Probably looking for meat. Is he alone? Probably not.

In AD&D, you got help building the encounter, and you had to eyeball the difficulty to see if it came out right. If you want a tough fight, and 1-12 trolls seems like too great a range, you could just pick a number within that range, like 8 trolls, but you didn't have a formula to plug in to see whether 8 was the magic number. Now, a 5E DM might lament that lack at first, until that 5E DM realizes that in 5E you get zero help building the encounter and you still have to eyeball the difficulty because the 5E formulas are still basically worthless.

Something + nothing (AD&D) > nothing + nothing (5E).

And that is why AD&D deserves to be called "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons", and 5E does not.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think that's an important point. "Encounter guidelines" =/= only guidelines for mechanical balance to the PC's level. Encounters can be many things, and there there can be guidelines that have nothing to do with mechanical balance and yet are just as valid as encounter guidelines. E.g, guidelines on building encounters that make sense in a living world completely separated from levels of whoever happens to be adventuring.

Or guidelines for what the encounter is supposed to lead to afterwards. If you wrote up the Alexandrian's series on node-based adventure design and included it in a D&D DMG, along with a few random tables for types of transitions between nodes (clues, physical transitions, events) and the instructions to generate transitions to each node and insert them into adjacent nodes--if you did that, you'd have some pretty decent encounter-building guidelines despite the fact that they say nothing at all about how to predict the outcome of a combat.

 

[Tony Vargas]

More and better stats than 5E gives you. If you meet an AD&D troll, what time is it? Probably night, because that's when trolls come out. What is the troll doing? Probably looking for meat. Is he alone? Probably not.

More, maybe, but one of the goals of 5e was to simplify, so smaller stat blocks. Better? 5e's trying to be more D&Ds to more D&Ders, so it needed to leave some degrees of freedom here and there for the DM.

Bottom line, though, stats like 'No. appearing' are in no way encounter-building guidelines, the very concept is a meta-game construct meant to help the DM gauge difficulty.

Now, a 5E DM might lament that lack at first, until that 5E DM realizes that in 5E you get zero help building the encounter and you still have to eyeball the difficulty because the 5E formulas are still basically worthless.

They're not worth the trouble if you already have the skill to eyeball or adjust encounters on the fly. In theory they're worth the trouble if you don't, they're just a bit more trouble and not so dependable as they were in the prior edition.

And that is why AD&D deserves to be called "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons", and 5E does not.

Lol.

 

[Helldritch]

I do think that monsters' entries were better in the AD&D too.

For our topic.
P174 of the AD&D DMG. The monster level determination matrix was there to give a small help to judge wheter it was easy or too hard. You had 10 monster matrix to consult, the number appearing. The number of lower monsters in a dungeon was multiplied by two or more depending on the dungeon level.
Example: Level 5 dungeon. A level 1 monster is rolled. Goblins. Normaly goblins are 6-15 stong in a dungeon of level 1. They are on the level 5 of the dungeon. So we multiply the number by 4 (level 2 and 3 were on the same line). So our goblins would be 24-60 strong.

Shadows were 1-3 in numbers in a dungeon of level 4. If encountered in a first level dungeon, their number would be shrinked by one for each level difference, so a maximum of 1 shadow would be encountered.

Of course these guidelines were for random dungeons. But they were often used as guidelines for adventure building as well. The rules detailing how to create an NPC party were particularly good for that era (and even by today's standards...).

So yep, there were guidelines to help the young DM in the DMG. It is really unfortunate that it was such a cluttered book...

 

[Sacrosanct]

I didn't say the encounter guidelines in 1e were as detailed as you'd find in 3e or 4e or 5e. How could they, the game has evolved in ALL facets since then. However, they technically did exist. Right there in writing even. Even if those guidelines were "use this table to find level appropriate monsters, and put them in where they make sense." Because that is definitely a guideline by the definition of the word.

 

[Quickleaf]

I remember there being encounter building guidelines in the BD&D Rules Cyclopedia. Laptop is in shop otherwise I'd look them up for you.

 

[Helldritch]

The guidelines of encounter building in the BD&D cyclopedia were quite basic per today's standard.

More encounter building advice were given with the DM Adventure Design Kit but it was quite basic. It was at most a not so good attempt at how to write a good scenario (or at least, a not too bad one...). Encounter charts buildings, how to make a vilain and all the yaddi yadda that might come in handy in a chase and a few more bits and pieces here and there.

True encounter building came with the 3e. What we have in 5e isn't bad but it is on the easy side, even with "deadly" encounters in mind.