Spes Magna Games

I know I have more than what’s pictured. The “filing system” in my library is more of an art than a science. For example, I know I have S1. Somewhere.

I also used to have more AD&D modules than these. For example, I know I had EX1 when I was in high school. I remember staying up all night running a group of friends through it. While moving from home to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and then back to Houston, Texas, some things got lost, left behind, or (ye gods!) stolen. Whatever. Things break. They get lost. C’est la vie.

My current gaming group has taken up 5E D&D. My son Christopher started us out in the village of Hommlet (not depicted but definitely in the library somewhere). It worked well enough. When Christopher got a part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he had to slack off on the DMing, so I picked up the ball and am almost done running the group through Forest of Doom, an adventure published in one of the Dragon magazines I have stashed away.

Both Christopher and I worked on retooling the adventures for 5E, which uses different maths than AD&D. Lately, I’ve started wondering if that was necessary. Permit me to explain.

In The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, the DM is told that the “module is designed for 5-10 characters of experience levels 1-3.” Right there is a difference between 1E and 5E expectations. A party of 10 characters in a 5E adventure? The system isn’t built for that. The few official adventures for 5E I’ve read assume a party of 5 characters. The 5E DMG assumes “that you have a part consisting of three to five adventurers” (p. 83). Sinister Secret assumes twice as many characters.

5E has an encounter budget system designed to create so-called balanced encounters of varying difficulties suitable for the levels of the adventurers facing the challenges. I’m not a fan of encounter budget systems. I don’t balance my checkbook, which is certainly more important than D&D, so why should I have to balance encounters? That’s work, and I do enough work at work.

Turning to page 6 in Sinister Secret, I find the random encounter table. It has four entries: four goblins, a pair of giant rats with three of their young, a giant weasel, or six giant ants. Let’s crunch some numbers for the goblins:

AD&D Goblins (x4): AC 6, 4 hit points each (16 hit points total), THAC0 20. Translated into 5E terms, that’s AC 14, 4 hit points each, +0 attack bonus.

5E Goblins (x4): AC 15, 7 hit points each (28 hit points total), +4 to hit. Translated into 1E terms, that’s AC 5, 7 hit points each, THAC0 16 (equal to a 2 HD monster).

This might seem like 5E goblins are tougher, but not quite. 5E characters tend to have more hit points than 1E characters, and their attack and damage bonuses are better as well. The big difference, it seems to me, is the goblin’s attack bonus. 5E goblins are going to hit more often than 1E goblins. Likewise, 5E characters are going to hit more often than 1E characters, at least at 1st-level.

All in all, it seems like the two editions are close in expectations. I probably don’t need to bother adjusting this wandering monster encounter. But what about one of the more difficult combats?

In the caves beneath the haunted house in Sinister Secret, the adventurers likely encounter, all at once, these creatures: a 4th-level illusionist, a human smuggler (equal to a 1st-level fighter), and five gnolls. In 5E terms, that’s a deadly encounter for five 1st-level characters, and that’s fine. It’s supposed to be a tough fight.

But what about the hit points?

The illusionist in AD&D terms has 11 hit points. In 5E, he could have between 20-30, depending on Constitution. The 5E smuggler would likely have about the same hit points as a 1st-level fighter. The five gnolls in AD&D terms have 60 hit points total versus 110 hit points total in 5E. Assuming all five gnolls hit in a round, they’ll average 25 to 30 points of damage. In 5E? 25 points of damage. Interesting coincidence. The THAC0 of a 1E gnoll and a 5E gnoll are comparable, as are the the AC. In short, it seems that the major difference between 1E and 5E might be the hit points. (Compare, for another example, 12 hit points each for lizard men versus 22 hit points each for lizardfolk.)

So, what happens if I run a 1E adventure for 5E characters, but don’t do anything in terms of trying to balance encounters?

I’m not sure, but I’d like to find out.

Tags: 1E AD&D, 5E D&D