There are Bard and Monk classes in dragon magazine.

Any compeling reason to stick with the core 1e phb versions?

If I ever get my 1E game off the ground, I was leaning toward the dragon magazine versions.

But I would love to hear a defense of the origionals.

If you're looking for defense of the originals, you won't get it from this long time and current AD&D player.

The Dragon magazine monk is loads better than the PHB, and I use the 2e bard rules in my 1e games.

Quote from: Bill;578692There are Bard and Monk classes in dragon magazine.

Any compeling reason to stick with the core 1e phb versions?

If I ever get my 1E game off the ground, I was leaning toward the dragon magazine versions.

But I would love to hear a defense of the origionals.

Which issues? :-D

One thing for the Bard is that the ones in Dragon Magazine generally eliminate the Dual Class requirement.

But in the last AD&D campaign I participated in several months ago, my group and I found the concerns are overblown if you are award experience the way AD&D says you should award experience.

This is because roughly the amount of XP to get additional levels is doubled for the each succeeding level. So you get to 5th level Fighter to switch to Thief. But you are still adventuring with the same party gathering the same XP per character. So while they need another 10,000+ xp to get to 6th level.  That same 10,000 xp will get you several levels of thiefs.

Then when you finally switch to Bard the process repeats itself. So when the party hits 8th level, you find yourself with a couple of levels of fighter, a couple of levels of thief, and a few levels of Bard. Eventually you will slow down to where your Bard Level is one or two levels behind the highest level in the party.

Here my blog post where I talk about it.

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2012/03/ad-dual-classing-doesnt-suck-much.html

Quote from: estar;578703Which issues? :-D

One thing for the Bard is that the ones in Dragon Magazine generally eliminate the Dual Class requirement.

But in the last AD&D campaign I participated in several months ago, my group and I found the concerns are overblown if you are award experience the way AD&D says you should award experience.

This is because roughly the amount of XP to get additional levels is doubled for the each succeeding level. So you get to 5th level Fighter to switch to Thief. But you are still adventuring with the same party gathering the same XP per character. So while they need another 10,000+ xp to get to 6th level.  That same 10,000 xp will get you several levels of thiefs.

Then when you finally switch to Bard the process repeats itself. So when the party hits 8th level, you find yourself with a couple of levels of fighter, a couple of levels of thief, and a few levels of Bard. Eventually you will slow down to where your Bard Level is one or two levels behind the highest level in the party.

Here my blog post where I talk about it.

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2012/03/ad-dual-classing-doesnt-suck-much.html

Xp wise, a 1E bard is not much different than a multiclassed character, sure.

But the stock bard still gets 'free' hd and thats a bit odd.

The dragon magazine bard swaps out 'thief stuyf' for 'illusionist magic'
Different flavor.


I suppose the monk is a bigger problem than the bard.

Quote from: Bill;578712I suppose the monk is a bigger problem than the bard.

Back in the day, in my area in rural northwest PA,  we invariably substituted the Monk class in Dragon #53*. I will read it tonight to see if I brings back any memories as far as issues goes.

*I can't believe that I remembered that off the top of my head. Geesh

For clarification, do you mean the Bard of Doug Schwegman, which is essentially a fighter subclass with half-level thieves skills, percentile charm and lore, and a splash of MU spells? It sounds alright.

I'm a huge fan of the AD&D bard, however. I've played one under the high levels of experience and, contrarily to popular belief, in my particular case it was far from being a piece of cake to survive. I had to be inventive and rely on my bag of tricks - magic items of all types. The charm were handy abilities, but far from being always effective. The lore ability however was pretty much always useful to some extent (depending on DM interpretation of the actual, practical effects of the ability and where/how it exactly applies).

The beginning levels were fine as a fighter. Playing as a thief afterwards was kind of sucky but I basically zoomed past those levels (because of the discrepency in experience points with the other members of the party). Then being a bard proper under druidic tutelage meant I had to catch up yet again, but this was also pretty fast. The bard shines then briefly, on the character sheet at least, when you got a few levels of bards and have basically completed the sequence in such a way that you can use your different fighter/thief abilities plus a few druidic spells with an honest (around 1 in 3) chance of charming. Then, though you already feel the difference with single-classed humans, your sheet looks pretty cool. The more the campaign progresses, however, the more you'll feel the burn compared to single classed individuals. I ended the campaign adventuring with single-classed humans in their 20s, level-wise, and I was frankly outclassed in terms of raw power. But that made the game all the more interesting to me. I didn't meteor swarm my way through problems, and had to rely on tricks more often than not.

I had a blast playing Odhanan. You need two things to make the bard work though: decent DMs who don't screw you on magic items, research of lore and sages and the like thereof, so you can effectively build your bag of tricks over the course of play, and a long campaign that allows you to actually get there and start the character at level 1, because that's really cool to play and the character ends up different in terms of RP than if you'd started him in mid-campaign immediately with levels of bard. So, if you like the game play of things like MUs at low level, that you actually like the challenge that represents, and that you have these two conditions basically alright, then you'll have tons of fun with the PH Bard. At least that's how it played for me.

As for the monk, all I can say is that I've seen it played, and it felt cool. One player I knew in particular managed to raise a monk from level 1 to high level and he was kind of an on and off, recurring character in the campaign. He seemed to have a lot of fun with it. I don't see any particular issue with the class myself, except I remember that this player couldn't stop threatening people (especially PCs) with his quivering palm (or try to) once he obtained the ability.

Quote from: Benoist;578726As for the monk, all I can say is that I've seen it played, and it felt cool. One player I knew in particular managed to raise a monk from level 1 to high level and he was kind of an on and off, recurring character in the campaign. He seemed to have a lot of fun with it. I don't see any particular issue with the class myself, except I remember that this player couldn't stop threatening people (especially PCs) with his quivering palm (or try to) once he obtained the ability.

:rotfl:

Brings back memories of an old monk character and the song Good Vibrations.

Quote from: Benoist;578726As for the monk, all I can say is that I've seen it played, and it felt cool. One player I knew in particular managed to raise a monk from level 1 to high level and he was kind of an on and off, recurring character in the campaign. He seemed to have a lot of fun with it. I don't see any particular issue with the class myself, except I remember that this player couldn't stop threatening people (especially PCs) with his quivering palm (or try to) once he obtained the ability.

The monks 'issues' that may not bother many people, are mechanical;

Lackluster ability to hit anyone, despite having some cool effects if they DO hit.

Lackluster armor class and lackluster HP (until super high level)



Roleplay wise they are fantastic.

One reason I don't really mind these types of things is that for me AD&D campaigns don't play like 3rd ed campaigns in the sense that I do not follow this assumption that all the members of the party should be at *this* particular level and tag along over neat progression curve. Characters come and go, the same players often have differing characters on different points of the experience curve and mix and match them as the campaign allows, etc.

If you are playing a megadungeon campaign in particular with several expeditions going on, an open table policy where players and their characters might come and abstain from playing at their own leisure, that you enforce the demi-human level limits and the like, that players have different characters for different levels of experience all within the same campaign, then what you'll end up with is parties that venture into the unknown with different levels and XP counts, sometimes with huge discrepencies actually, depending on the particulars of  the situation and specific goals the PCs want to achieve.

So the comparison of classes in a vacuum assuming that all PCs are the exact same level at all points of the campaign is simply not realistic from that POV. It's a white room concern, that actually doesn't play out that way at my game table.

Quote from: Bill;578729The monks 'issues' that may not bother many people, are mechanical;

Lackluster ability to hit anyone, despite having some cool effects if they DO hit.

Lackluster armor class and lackluster HP (until super high level)



Roleplay wise they are fantastic.

Those issues were all fixed in the Dragon magazine version

Quote from: Benoist;578730One reason I don't really mind these types of things is that for me AD&D campaigns don't play like 3rd ed campaigns in the sense that I do not follow this assumption that all the members of the party should be at *this* particular level and tag along over neat progression curve. Characters come and go, the same players often have differing characters on different points of the experience curve and mix and match them as the campaign allows, etc.

If you are playing a megadungeon campaign in particular with several expeditions going on, an open table policy where players and their characters might come and abstain from playing at their own leisure, that you enforce the demi-human level limits and the like, that players have different characters for different levels of experience all within the same campaign, then what you'll end up with is parties that venture into the unknown with different levels and XP counts, sometimes with huge discrepencies actually, depending on the particulars of  the situation and specific goals the PCs want to achieve.

So the comparison of classes in a vacuum assuming that all PCs are the exact same level at all points of the campaign is simply not realistic from that POV. It's a white room concern, that actually doesn't play out that way at my game table.

Sure, but its difficult to ignore that your character can't hit or take a hit.
This is only a problem if you are roleplaying a warrior monk; some people don't expect a monk to be an uber warrior.

Quote from: Bill;578733Sure, but its difficult to ignore that your character can't hit or take a hit.

Well, like I said, that's not how it plays out in my games.

When you have enemies that are not all the same, that you have a variety of objectives, that any combat might involve different types of targets and the like, you learn to adapt your tactics to what's going on in the game. If you play a monk and you are two levels behind the fighters and you come to a room with a chieftain wearing what looks like a magic chainmail and his underlings fighting next to him with a bunch of guys behind lobbing arrows at the party, it may be smarter to let the fighter engage in melee, avoid that hot spot to jump over the chasm or whatnot to reach the guys firing arrows and kick their asses. That kind of thing.

Sure, you'll have situations where there's just one baddy and he's so tough you got to be careful, but unless that particular encounter is boring and one dimensional and you basically have to go in melee, there are plenty of other things you could do.

I don't mean to derail the thread though. I'm just explaining how the strict comparison of character classes and abilities as though they were always all fighting the exact same foe and doing the same thing in every encounter and all strictly of the same level all the time just doesn't phase me one way or the other.

Both play much smoother then their 1st edition counter parts. Thumbs up from here.

To come back to the actual topic of the thread, I think you should just go with what feels right to your players and game table. Just select one or the other, Dragon or core version, not both, and you'll be good from there.