Dungeons & Dragonsis an old game, as it was released all the way back in 1974. From then to now, we’ve had five editions of the game, and most of them were further expanded or adjusted with expansion books, meaning there were even more changes than we may think at first glance.
Along with new content, these editions have released and replaced some of its rules. Some were due to how arbitrary they were or unnecessarily complicated they could be. Either way, D&D has evolved a lot, with the game functioning a lot better than it was in its very first edition.
10Races As Classes
A Dwarf Is Just A Dwarf
Back in 1e, species (or races, as they were called) worked like a class. Initially, you have the fighting-man, the cleric, and the magic-user. Supplements added different classes, and among them, we had dwarves, elves, and halflings.
Each had its own evolution line, restrictions, and abilities, showing that these species worked as their unique class. Eventually, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons introduced us to a system that is more common today, where your species grants you bonuses, but you mix those with the class you chose.
9Race-Class Restrictions
Let My Dwarf Cast Spells
We’re not done with species, though. Despite AD&D (and AD&D 2e) allowing us to mix species and classes, these choices came with limitations. Some classes could be played by any species, but others had limitations, such as dwarves not being an option for mages.
Other cases, like paladins, were exclusively for humans, favoring the species significantly compared to the others. Still, as mentioned, there were options available for everyone, like the fighter. And nowadays, you get to pick and choose as you wish.
8Alignment Restrictions
Paladins Can’t Be Evil, Can They?
When picking your class in older editions, they come with options foryour alignment.Some allowed you to pick whatever you wanted, like a ranger, while others gave you a few options, like monks needing to choose between lawful good, lawful neutral, or lawful evil.
That said, there were classes with no choices whatsoever, such as the paladin, who could only be lawful good. While it is expected for some classes to lean more towards goodness or evil, the ability to do whatever makes more sense to your character is far better than having your personality dictated by your class.
7System Shock
Pass The Check Or Die
Magic is unstable, and depending on how strong a spell affects your physical body in 2e, you’d have to roll for a system shock. This roll, which relied on your constitution score, would see if you would survive the effects of the magic on your body.
Though the chances of surviving weren’t that bad (unless you dumped your constitution), the fact that you have this random roll that will instantly kill your character should you fail it is annoying, to say the least. This also made non-violent spells surprisingly lethal, such as Polymorph, which is not meant to kill but affects your physical body and thus requires a System Shock roll.
6To Hit Armor Class 0
Aka THAC0
THAC0 is a system where your class and level give you a fixed number, which, when subtracted by the enemy’s AC, will determine how much you’ll need to roll to hit said enemy with your attack. At least, that’s the gist of it, as a thorough explanation would be long.
While this system is not particularly complex once you get the hang of it, it takes a while, and it’s not intuitive since you need to check multiple numbers to see if you hit someone, and it causes non-intuitive situations, such as enemies with a negative AC being harder to hit. Now, you just roll an attack, add your bonuses, and see if the number equals or exceeds the enemy’s AC.
5Level Loss
Careful With Undead
There were situations in older editions where, instead of gaining a level with your character, you could instead lose your most recent level, thus losing all the benefits that came with it. This is a notorious consequence of Energy Drain.
Undead enemies could use this powerful ability to make you permanently weaker, as the only way to recover a lost level is to literally level up, and any other method would be irreversible. You can trya Wish spell,though.
4Death At Zero Hit Points
Avoid Dying At All Costs
What happens to someone with zero hit points? Nowadays, you are down and start doing your death-saving throws, but back in older editions, you simply died. No rolls, just your DM handing you a new character sheet.
Resurrection was already on the table back then, so it’s not like your character was forever lost. Still, there were penalties like the aforementioned losing a point of your constitution (meaning you’ll be permanently dead if it reaches zero), and you needed to succeed a check to be revived.
3Gold As Experience
It’s A Rich Man’s World
All things considered, this isn’t a bad rule, but having it at your table will severely change the focus of the game, leaving the narrative style of more modern editions and incentivizing an exploration-heavy, dungeon-crawling game.
You get experience based on the amount of money you find, which means that every coin you find while exploring a dungeon is of extreme importance, as that’s what will level your character up.
2Weapon Speed Factor
The Tie-Breaker
If you and an enemy got tied at initiative, the weapons you wielded would make a lot of difference. Weapons came with their own speed factor, and the lower the number, the better, as it meant the weapon was faster, and thus the wielder would react first. It would also be used to grant you multiple attacks against certain opponents.
Not only is this not the most accurate thing (heavy weapons aren’t that slow in real life), but it also made things too cumbersome. Now, initiative ties are decided by the players and DM or through house rules, such as whoever has the highest dexterity.
1Encumbrance
And We Still Don’t Care About It
Encumbrance as a system exists even in 5e, even though most games rarely care about it, and the5e rules for encumbranceare rather simple. That said, things were very confusing in the original version of D&D.
The weight of objects was related to the weight of coins, and the more you carried, the slower you would be. Thus, you had to watch out how much you had in you and whether it was worth keeping certain items or not.
