Fixing Elves in Old "Basic" Dungeons and Dragons

I just figured out something that would have been really cool, if I had figured it out about 20 years ago.  Warning: what I'm going to say in this blog will be totally useless to anybody who's not interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons with a completely obsolete set of rules.  However, if you're into that, or you're just nostalgic for the bad old days when the rules of the game were just random, without any sense of fairness, read on.

Back in the old days, I used to play the old version of Dungeons and Dragons.  These days, the game is owned by Wizards of the Coast (the makers of Magic the Gathering), which, in turn, is owned by Hasbro.  However, way back when, Dungeons and Dragons was sold by a company, founded by the game's creators, called TSR.

In fact few people realize this but, pre-WotC, there were actually two separate games: Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D).  This was due to some copyright issues.  Dungeons and Dragons is what many AD&D players erroneously called "Basic" Dungeons and Dragons, because the first boxed set for Dungeons and Dragons was called the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set.  What few ADD players realized was that there were also four other boxed sets that went along with this: the Expert Set, the Companion Set, the Master Set and the Immortals Set.

Many AD&D players were under the mistaken impression that the Basic Set was intended as an introductory version of ADD.  That is, they falsely assumed that if ADD was "Advanced", this "Basic Set" was the basic version that it was advanced in comparison to.  In fact, it was not.  It was a introductory set, but for the Dungeons and Dragons game (which, as I've said was actually a separate game for copyright reasons).  The Expert, Companion, Master and Immortal boxed sets progressively built on the rules for Dungeons and Dragons, for which the "Basic Set" was basic.

The Basic, Expert, Companion and Master sets were later compiled into a book called the Dungeons and Dragons Rules Cyclopedia.  Taken as a whole, the rules were actually fairly complex, at least as complex as those for AD&D and quite different, too.  For example, like ADD, they had druids, but the way you became a druid was by becoming a 9th level cleric first and then changing your class to druid.  That is, a druid was actually a specialized cleric, more than a separate class and could actually cast both cleric and druid spells.

The one thing about D&D that many players (of either game -- since many people started with the D&D Basic Set and then switched to AD&D, falsely believing it to be the "advanced" version, as I've said) will remember with dread is the infamous elf class.  That's right, they didn't have races in D&D.  They only had classes.  Elves, dwarves, halflings (and actually quite a few others that ADD never had, if you include the rules from Gazetteers) were actually separate classes.

Most of these race classes were fairly balanced.  Dwarves were like fighters who could also find traps, and had a lot of other underground abilities.  Halflings were like fighters, but had special hiding abilities.  (They didn't have gnomes -- that was AD&D.)  But, elves were just obscenely unfair classes, because they were just demonstrably better than all the other classes, particularly fighters and magic-users.

Elves could fight as well as fighters, wear full armor and cast magic user spells.  So, they were basically like AD&D First Edition fighter/magic-users.  Actually, those were even more obscene.  Elves in D&D had one thing that made them not quite as insanely powerful.  They only got up to 5th level spells (out of 9 spell levels).  Still, up until that point, they were basically better than either fighters or magic-users of the same level.  Magic-users beyond that point became more powerful at spell-casting, true, but fighters didn't really get much better than elves at fighting.  As I said... obscenely unfair.

The result was that every player always wanted to play elves!  Not only that, but elves were so powerful that they were hard for the Dungeon Master (DM) to challenge.  For those of you not in the know, the DM is the non-player who creates the scenarios for the players to take their characters through.  This role has been taken over by computers in computer RPGs.  (Though it's a lot more fun with a real live person!)

One reason elves were such a nightmare in the rules is that magic-user spells include a ton of fighting spells, including the infamous fireballs and lightning bolts that do many times as much damage as a single sword slice in an entire area (a 40' diameter ball in first case and a long line in the second).

Without elves in the picture, everything was fair.  Fighters couldn't do the sort of mass damage to monsters that you'd need modern explosives for, but magic-users couldn't fight at all well and could be killed very easily.  They also weren't allowed to wear any armor or use any but the weakest weapons.  Fighters could wear any armor and use any weapons.  Also, magic-users had a limited supply of spells, whereas fighters were good at fighting all the time.  So, you had a choice: take on monsters one on one, but be hard to kill and be good at fighting constantly or be able to blow up whole bunches of monsters and do massive damage from a distance, but only a certain number of times and be a weak, vulnerable character otherwise.

Add in elves, and you basically have no reason to play either of the other two classes.  You have a heavily armored, sword swinging, arrow shooting combat machine who can also blow up bad guys with giant balls and rays.  It's sort of like adding something to Rock, Paper, Scissors that takes Rock, Paper and Scissors.  It ruins the game!  Why ever use Rock, Paper or Scissors when you can just use that?

Back in the old days, I actually was one of the few people out there who played Dungeons and Dragons (as opposed to AD&D) with the actual full set of rules (expanded with the Expert, Companion, Master and Immortals sets).  I used to agonize about what to do about elves.  The problem vexed me.   I had various solutions, but none of them satisfied me.

One was to do what AD&D did in their second edition, which was to say that fighter/magic-users (which you'll recall was sort of the AD&D equivalent of elves, power-wise).  In AD&D second edition, some game designer came up with the brilliant idea that fighter/magic-users can use any weapon, but can't wear armor.  This, at least, reclaimed the fighter as a valuable class and made it tougher to be a fighter/magic-user.

I experimented with doing the same for elves and I liked the idea because it fit more my image of elves: shifting through the forest, adept with bow and arrow and casting magic spells, but not putting on chain mail or suits of armor and fighting with swords or lances.

However, it still had the problem that, up to a point anyway, magic-users were still worse than elves.  They could cast the same spells, but fight more poorly, had less hit points and couldn't wield good weapons.  Elves could still blast away bad guys with ballistic magic.

I had other ideas on how to "fix" elves too, like make them gain magic spells at half the rate of magic users.  That way, they'd still have magic, but just gain it more slowly.  However, none of my solutions ever really gained acceptance with my players and, to be honest, none of them really felt right.  My players complained, rightly I think, that all of my solutions either made elves too weak or didn't really solve the problem.  The only real solution was to ban elves all together.  Doing so created a really nicely balanced game, unlike AD&D, which, back in those days, was much worse about fairness.

AD&D seemed to have no sense of fairness whatsoever, particularly in its first edition.  Cavaliers, rangers and paladins could do just about everything fighters could do only better.  Druids were at least as powerful as magic-users, except that they could fight better, use better weapons, got to wear some armor and had better hit points. 

D&D was actually a pretty good, well balanced, fair game, except for the one glaring crazy part about elves.  But, oh what a big part that was!

Now, all of this is ancient history.  Wizards of the Coast bought TSR.  They killed the Dungeons and Dragons product, renamed Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to simply Dungeons and Dragons (just to confuse everybody) and fixed much of the craziness of the rules in AD&D that had driven people like me to play D&D (sans elves) in the first place.  Back then, if I had only figured out a way to fix elves, old D&D would have been a great game.

Well, tonight, I'm not sure why my brain did this, but it suddenly spit out the answer.  I haven't played in years, you understand.  But, apparently, some part of my brain didn't know that and has been churning around on finding an answer all this time, because it just came up with one and I really like it!  I just wish the answer was needed.

Remember that I said that in D&D there was a druid class that you can't access unless you're a cleric who becomes 9th level?  They didn't introduce this until the Companion set, so it's a bit obscure.  However, old D&D actually did have druid spells (though they're a bit different from AD&D druid spells).  These spells are much less combat oriented and more nature oriented.

The answer to how to fix elves seems so obvious that I can't believe I didn't think of it before.  Just change three rules with regard to elves.  First, instead of the rule that elves can cast magic-user spells, just change that so elves can cast druid spells.  Most of these would help characters solve problems in the game (by doing things like summoning animals to be spies for you or surrounding your party with mist so you can't be seen) rather than actually make you better at fighting monsters.

The one truly devastating druid spell in old D&D was the infamous Lightning Strike.  However, it was much milder than the AD&D spell by the same name.  As with the AD&D spell, it can only be used in stormy weather and only outdoors.  Unlike the AD&D spell, it can only call down one lightning strike every 10 minutes (every turn) and most combats are over in well under that amount of time.  Also, it only has a 20 foot radius and it only ever does exactly 8d6 (eight six-sided dice) of damage.  This would make it more damaging than a fireball or lightning bolt only for characters of levels 5-7 (since both of those infamous magic-user spells do a d6 per level of caster).  So, it would be true that, if elves could cast druid spells instead of magic-user spells, they'd have one spell that could do massive damage, but it would be over 1/4 the area of affect of a fireball (40' diameter) and wouldn't grow to such obscene levels of damage at higher caster levels.  Also, it couldn't be done indoors or without stormy weather.  So, it would be of limited use.

The second rule change would be to give elves the same armor requirements as druids: non-metal armor only.  This would be similar, but not identical to, the AD&D second edition fix of keeping fighter/magic-users from wearing any armor.

These two changes would already make elves unique but not better than any other character class.  They'd be as good at fighting as a fighter, but with inferior armor.  They wouldn't be able to cast magic-user spells at all, reclaiming magic-users as really great at what they do, as long as they don't get hit.  Druids would still out-cast elves, because druids in old D&D can cast both cleric and druid spells.  But, elves could cast druid spells at lower levels than druids (who can't access druid spells until 9th level).  At the same time, druids would be able to cast druid spells beyond 5th level spells, an elves would not.  So, the elf class wouldn't be better in any way than any other class.

What's more, they'd fit more my image of elves.  They wouldn't thunder around in heavy, clanging armor, but limit themselves to light non-metal armor, which seems more in keeping with flitting through the trees.  Their magic would be nature magic.  I mean, it never made sense to me that elves would be shooting fireballs and lightning bolts and invading orcs.  They'd burn down the forest!

The final rule tweak would be to change the experience point matrix for elves so that they'd use the magic-user experience chart.  Elves gain experience (and therefore levels) the slowest of any other character class.  Making these tweaks in their power would make this slow level progression a little unfair.  Magic-users are the next slowest, but only slightly slower than fighters.  Having elves use this faster experience progression would give them a fair level progression, given their change in power.  I think the magic-user experience chart is right, because elves would remain fairly powerful and versatile compared to other classes.  So, we'd want to slow their progression down a little bit, but not as much as before.

But, none of this matters, because the old Dungeons and Dragons game is a dead game from a bygone era that has long since been replaced several times over by a subsidiary of Hasbro.

Why is my brain thinking of all this now?  Who knows.  I'd like to think that I'm so smart that my brain doesn't quit figuring out solutions to problems, even years later, but it's also at least as probable that it's just late at night and I'm thinking meaningless thoughts that no longer have value to anyone, in all probability.

Then again, there may be devotees of the now defunked Dungeons and Dragons game that so many folks called "Basic D&D".  So, maybe they'll get something out of it.  Personally, what I get out of it is the satisfaction that I've finally solved the problem.

As an aside, it may be interesting to note that the Immortals boxed set was actually one of the best rule sets (IMHO) that TSR ever put out for either game.  It actually had rules for playing gods (yes, you read that right) and they actually did gods right.  Mortals couldn't kill them at all and gods really were as powerful as we'd expect them to be (unlike the crazy AD&D gods, who were things like 25th level fighter / 20th level magic users with 150 hit points!  Yeah right!)  The best part was that becoming a god was so insanely difficult that half the fun was becoming one in the first place.

Okay, signing off now and admitting that it's late and I'm rambling.  I'm having fun though, and I hope my readers had fun reading this blog.  I figure every few months we should all put out completely meaningless, but, hopefully, entertaining blog posts like this one. 

I'll write a meaningful blog next time.  Really!

Good night!