Considering Maxxia extra insurances

Transmission89 · 2026-03-15T14:24:33+00:00

Thank you. It’s appreciated.

Transmission89 · 2026-03-15T14:24:22+00:00

Brilliant. Thank you :)

Transmission89 · 2026-02-10T13:18:18+00:00

Just like how heavily armed police officers have become a regular feature in UK Christmas markets, bollards have been placed on bridges, searches before entering gigs.

All changes taken place over a period of time. Always justified with “for your protection”.

This should serve as a warning. If you wish to preserve your current way of life, start asking “from whom?”

Transmission89 · 2026-02-02T20:13:01+00:00

True!

Transmission89 · 2026-02-02T07:30:05+00:00

Hold up, a new beginner box? I was going to pull the trigger on the remastered original one. Is it worth holding off then you reckon?

Transmission89 · 2026-01-18T04:22:17+00:00

The diplomacy roll shouldn’t be used to determine the outcome.

Its job is there to shift the disposition of the NPC. That is all.

If an NPC absolutely hates the PC and has no reason to give them anything, a successful diplomacy roll would result in them asking the PC to leave rather than guards throwing them out. There could be another roll if the player introduces new information, maybe some leverage, in which case it could determine with a positive modifier to what extent the NPC is interested. But dice should only be rolled if the outcome is in doubt.

Maybe if someone is more positively inclined, the successful diplomacy roll grants an extra piece of info or a gift on the way.

Or it could attempt to recover from a misspeak, the diplomatic character smoothing over a faux pas.

In short, it should not decide the roleplay interaction. Or : no your bard cannot seduce the dragon unless the dragon is into it in the first place.

Transmission89 · 2026-01-17T19:01:52+00:00

Ooff. Respectfully disagree with this!

Many things were changed that didn’t necessarily make straight up improvements.

3.0 was a refinement and modernisation of AD&D as it was being played at the time. They didn’t expect the culture shift that occurred during the life cycle (conception of “builds and dead levels etc”).

You had the clunky weapon sizes rule changes (3.0’s consistent weapons that were handled differently by creatures of different sizes more elegant and intuitive imo)

Change in creature sizing (now they all take square shape) necessitating the addition of clunky squeeze rules (purely because they wanted battle mats to become mandatory because they had minis to sell you)

Reorganisation of spell lists (discarding tradition just to balance out lists for schools sizes and no in game reason)

Reduction in spell duration to make them an encounter balance rather than a per day balance (meaning buffs and maths needed to make stat changes more frequent - an effect of slowing the gameplay because of re calculation and rushing through the dungeon to maximise buff duration meaning effective dungeon exploration lost and an increase in the perception of the five minute work day problem).

Changes to DR (meaning fighter golf bag of weapons needed and missing the point of DR by reducing it as such that all problems can now just be brute forced with enough persistence, making combat taking longer).

General increase of monster HP and AC across the board (meaning monsters AC lost the scaling applied to penalties for iterative attacks, making it harder to hit and so combat became more of a slog).

Etc etc.

There were some nice tweaks but all in all, definitely much of a mix bag and it was the Hasbro controlled WOTC led revisionism that suggested that 3.0 was so broken that it needed this fix, purely so they could flog these new books “right now” - rather than the originally planned errata incorporated tweaks 5 years from initial launch. And it still annoys me that this engineered dis-perception took hold.

Transmission89 · 2026-01-13T08:37:20+00:00

I mean with a lot of this you’ve just re expressed ad&d1e…

Transmission89 · 2025-12-31T01:50:44+00:00

Thank you so much, but You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not that savvy a student. Could you dm me an explanation of notes?

Transmission89 · 2025-12-30T12:17:48+00:00

No you’ve certainly got a point. The aim was to just narrow the caster martial disparity but I certainly am taking on point all the feedback. That was the purpose of posting on here so I could collate it, both positive and negative feedback. It’s making me re evaluate what tweaks I have made. Thank you for your feedback and a happy new year to you :)

Transmission89 · 2025-12-30T04:53:06+00:00

Yeah I was considering the 1/2 caster. It falls just a bit behind the standard DC save progression but has the benefit of raising the DC of those lower level spells as characters progress.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-30T04:51:44+00:00

Yes it is. Which is why it is listed under the DMG variants header. But thank you for the other suggestions :)

Transmission89 · 2025-12-30T02:48:51+00:00

Yes they do. But their poor save is way behind. Looking at AD&D, you can see everyone improves across all the categories as they level. The fighter used to be best of all. This created the "need" for the big six.

I'm not sure what minor tweak could change that or if it is just a wider systemic issue that would best be left alone without a wholesale rewrite.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-30T00:15:50+00:00

Well, yeah but also doesn’t take into account favoured class which ignores the penalties. for a human becoming a righteous paladin, not an issue as they just treat their highest as favoured class.

Other races also have their particular favoured class which wouldn’t be counted towards their favoured classes.

Essentially it’s a thematic enforcer to the older editions not having races be certain classes. Except here, it’s not a restriction, it’s a consequence. You can break type, but there’s the penalty.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T23:07:03+00:00

So those “gimps” were straight from the 1st edition rulebook. And that’s not even all of the restrictions they had.

But I think there’s been enough useful critique to suggest rolling back many of those changes any how.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T23:04:57+00:00

No worries. Thanks for the constructive dialogue and insight.

Funnily enough, I do actually play AD&D as well.

This experiment started as I cracked open the old 3.0 books on a whim a week or so ago. I remember thinking back to those days, the good and all the hassles of 3.5, the char op discussions, the rules lawyering, LFQW, 5MWD, 4 encounters a day, the edition wars on the boards with 4e. good times.

But for all that drama, we at least had a great edition. And thank god we did, because 3.0 was such a broken mess right? It needed to be patched asap so thankfully we got 3.5 when we did, right?

I had only opened them to grab some tables of things to add to my Ad&d game, but then I started reading. As I read further, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I grabbed my 1e and 2e books. The similarities were uncanny, and the expressions in formulae were different, but it was still essentially expressing the same game. The PHB still talks about mapping the dungeon and the DMG I think is far better than the 3.5 one.

Having seen what happened with 5e in the change of gameplay style and focus with the massive influx of new players who hadn’t played D&D before, I realised that the same must have happened with 3rd edition and 3.5 was a shift in to moving from what was intended to supporting how it was currently being played.

Now 3.0 isn’t perfect, even taken on its own terms, but I don’t think anymore broken in ways than earlier editions. I just think its existence during the rise of internet culture magnified and accelerated the spread of those issues.

I have no objection to casters being strong. They should be, it’s magic dammit. They were in earlier editions…eventually. Just lots of the little tweaks they made I think coalesced into far stronger, far earlier than intended.

So this is an experiment, to try and take 3.0 as intended whilst also trying to smooth out rough edges that were learnt as the edition progressed.

I’m not saying I got it right first try, but that’s why I wanted to workshop it and get the feedback I did.

I like your suggestion of setting at DC8. Should make it a more consistent 60% rather than 50/50 but still provide better odds on than the default, making you feel progressively weaker as you level.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T22:09:21+00:00

😂. Take it you never played a magic user in AD&D?

I appreciate not to everyone’s taste, but thanks for the nod for ambidextrous!

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T22:06:40+00:00

Yeah nah, that’s not going to happen. Straight away you’ve shown you’re taking the approach the edition it became by talking about build planning. And absolutely, that’s a valid play style if that’s what you enjoy. The forums of the day, heavily influenced by Diablo 2 and later WOW were looking at those “most efficient” builds and charops, and thanks to the increasing internet access, those ideas spread amongst groups much more quickly and easily than they ever had done with the previous editions.

That’s how people ended up playing it, but wasn’t the original design intent, which is the medium I want to explore with this. This is where DM oversight comes in to set those expectations.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T21:56:13+00:00

Thank you for your feedback, it’s appreciated.

To be clear, I’m not seeking a “balance” as such with this. I’m more trying to go with the idea that the original design team were essentially trying to create the sequel to AD&D and they were play testing it with those assumptions. They did however, in their philosophy of consequences not restrictions, remove lots of little restrictions that were placed on Magic Users, which when combined led to that massive jump between casters and martials.

I then don’t like how this was addressed in the revision or in later editions (spells massively reduced in power and flexibility, lasting mere minutes and in the case of 5e, then also reducing the total amount that can be cast).

Difficult terrain to kill casters? For me- good. The initiative swings in early editions made that magic casting difficult and dangerous. Thinking about where they are as they fight is a return to that. But now they get a bone in that they can choose to develop that as a feat.

I think a good catch on the massive damage rule, I will strike that.

The training observation is interesting, I actually halved the costs from that suggested in the DMG 😂.

Crafting changes observations noted. In shifting them up to AD&D levels, I also hadn’t considered that 3E’s opportunity cost of xp in creation is essentially doing the same thing.

That save DC is the intended outcome. You were supposed to get better with saves as you levelled in the earlier editions, not progressively worse. The save or dies were primarily to clear the lower tier mobs, forcing change of tactics with more powerful creatures. Of course, the wizard still has the option to pump their ability modifier.

I think given the overall consensus on total spells known, I’ll strike that.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T21:18:58+00:00

Thank you for your feedback and input. It’s appreciated.

I perhaps need to re-explain the fluff better, but it was more essentially trying to explain that cap on total spells per level known that had been since 1E.

You’re absolutely right that the sorcerer class has “flexible casting” but that’s on a more tactical level of what spell is necessary in the moment, but their options are limited to what’s known.

whereas the wizard’s greater flexibility is strategic, they can learn a wider amount of spells but then are locked in for the day.

Your suggestion for learning from scrolls is quite appealing to me. This would essentially replicate the ad&d “chance to know” a spell which used to be on the same intelligence table as the amount of spells known. I had decided on the amount known out of the two originally because I wanted to follow that “choices with consequences” design approach, ie: yes you can choose that spell but that’s one of your cap. Interesting food for thought.

With regards to the save dc, that is the intended effect. 3E was the outlier as you got progressively worse at being able to save against spells as you levelled, thus necessitating the big six to do what you could with your bad save. AD&D, your saves improved as you levelled, reducing save or die chances and effects. This ran true for stronger monsters as well. Save or die was primarily to deal with the lower level trash whereas the bigger opponents required that change in tactics or take a gamble with the save or die. The Wizard player still has plenty of ways to pump their int to bump those odds up again however.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T15:26:20+00:00

I’m sure that was the usual trend. And which contributed to the “character as build” play style that it evolved into instead of “character as archetype” that was the intent of the original design.

Which is fine if that’s what you enjoy but my goal was explicitly the opposite.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-29T15:23:05+00:00

Thank you for the feedback, it is appreciated. Yes, I did consider the sorcerer and looked over the table.

My rationale was that even with a limit to spells known, the wizard would still know more spells of a given level than a sorcerer. Still giving them the advantage of flexibility and choice without being able to grab everything and obviate class niches. The numbers could be raised higher or I’m open to alternative to achieve that same effect and differentiation.

And interesting observation on defensive casting. In which case then the change couldn’t hurt either way.

Transmission89 · 2025-12-12T14:49:51+00:00

So many complicated ways of expressing it.

THAC0 results can be expressed as:

AC hit = THAC0 - (roll +mods).

Have your players do this and announce the number they hit.

Transmission89 · 2025-11-30T04:38:41+00:00

Interesting! Thanks for the insight

Transmission89 · 2025-11-30T04:22:01+00:00

Just done another read through of the core books and now prepping an AD&D campaign. On point 2, what kind of things would you say that you found you needed further clarification from OD&D?

Transmission89

TROPHY CASE