AD&D rules were great. I played so much I could do the math calculations off the top of my head without having to reference the manuals. It was great fun. I don't know why people think it's terrible. I still have my books in the closet.

Baldur's Gate 3: Returning to the city after 20 years

"Return to Baldur's Gate for the first time in 20 years as the iconic city prepares for war. Rediscover legendary locations, uncover new mysteries, and embark on a journey to shape the city's destiny.

Though your journey hasn’t been easy, you arrive at a city preparing for war. As the Steel Watch patrols Baldur’s Gate’s labyrinthian streets, the printing press prepares the daily news cycle. There are factions within the city vying for control, all disagreeing on what to make of outside threats, and new faces within the city walls. Opportunity in times of struggle is rife. What you make of it -- and what it makes of you -- will be determined by your choices up to the city walls, and beyond their shadow."

Having played so many CRPGs over the years (note that I include both WRPGs and JRPGs in this category), I can tell you that AD&D has numerous design issues, including traps where certain things done at character creation can screw up characters down the road.

Some issues:
* The base chance of hitting is just too low. A level 1 fighter should not be missing against level-appropriate enemies as often. Also, HP is too low at that level, making combat too random at the start.
* Racial level limits make many interesting choices non-viable once you get past lower levels. (In Pools of Darkness, non-humans are basically useless as a result. Thankfully, this rule isn't implemented in Baldur's Gate 2 and its expansion.) It doesn't help that the level limits are only published in the Dungeon Master's Guide, which players are not supposed to read, so they can't try to avoid this issue later.
* Related: The fact that in 1e, female characters aren't allowed as much strength as male characters. Fortunately, this sexist rule didn't make it into 2e.
* Dual classing requires high ability scores. If you don't have them at character creation, you can't dual class later. Since ability scores don't improve through normal play, you can't just meet them later, as you can in other games like Wizardry. (Note that I'm referring to dual classing, not multi classing, which is a different set of rules.)
* Ability scores being random at the start and not improving afterwords is another issue I have with the system. It also doesn't help that having a sub-optimal casting stat means you can't ever use higher level spells.
* Healing is too weak, until you get Heal which is a full heal and suddenly makes even the second strongest healing spell seem pointless. Also, the second weakest healing spell comes too late.

I mean I havent checked out too many, but I've yet to see a JRPG system where I didnt have quite a couple issues.

In my experience its only MMORPGs who get the chance to finetune their rulesystems for years who can really come up with satisfying rulesystems.

And thats exactly the advantage of using something like D&D. You can get a carefully finetuned and complex rulesystem. The shortcomings can be explained quite easily, too - you have to keep calculations as simple as possible, and the dice rolls as few as possible.

What do you think of AD&D second edition? It's the first one I was introduced to in the late 90s. I have a dream of owning every book from that edition.

Thing is, many of the glaring flaws of D&D are obvious right from the start of the game.

Play almost any JRPG, and you'll find that the game system doesn't appear to have any glaring flaws, at least at first.

Biggest example: In D&D, you're going to miss a lot with your level 1 party, and that can be quite frustrating. (Enemies also miss, but your misses tend to be more noticeable and more frustrating, especially when an enemy hits you after you keep missing, which ends up feeling unfair.) In most JRPGs, misses are much rarer at the start; you might even be able to gain a few levels before you see a miss.

And if we're talking late game, I note that D&D breaks down at higher levels, especially older editions. You run into the situation where attack bonus and AC become irrelevant; either all attacks nearly always hit, or they nearly always miss. And unlike in JRPGs, in D&D armor doesn't mitigate the damage you take.

(By the way: A TTRPG could reduce the number of dice rolls involved in combat by just not including attack bonus and AC. When you attack, you'd roll for damage, apply modifiers (including subtracting target defense), and a result of 0 or less could be treated as a miss.)

It solved some issues with 1st Edition, particularly removing that sexist female strength rule, but:
* Some classes were removed. (Though I note that none of the CRPGs implemented those classes.)
* It still has some of the same issues, including the miss frequency that plagues all editions of the game.

Which classes were removed?

Also, wasn't there an intersection of race and class? IIRC dwarf was a class at one point. I tried using Google to check but it's giving me info for 5e.

I believe Assassin, Barbarian, and Monk were removed. (They came back later in 3e, although Assassin appeared as a prestige class.)

Dwarf and Elves were not classes in 1e AD&D; it's only before that, and in (non-Advanced) D&D, that they were classes. Elf was interesting due to being a hybrid class, and one that actually felt more like a hybrid than something like Paladin (no spells until level 8 or 9 or so, and apparently many campaigns ended before them) or Ranger (again, no spells until late).

By the way, the phrase that's often used is "race as class".

Apparently the 1981 Basic Set is one edition that used race as class.

I see, that was very informative. Thanks for the info.

In the 1e Player's Handbook, Monk was listed a primary class and Assassin as a sub-class of Thief. While the Monk and Assassin were in 2e, they weren't listed in the Player's Handbook - only in other supplementary materials.

In the 1e Unearthed Arcana, Cavalier became another primary class (with Paladin as a sub-class, interestingly), and the Thief got Acrobat as a sub-class. Again, both show up in 2e but in various class-specific supplements. While the Unearthed Arcana is technically a supplement, I knew several players who considered it a sort of "Player's Handbook - Part 2" and treated it a core rulebook, but that's entirely up to personal opinion, of course.

Demi-human races being treated as classes was a thing back in the "basic" D&D rules. Dwarves and Halflings were basically Fighters who had some extra racial abilities, and they advanced at the same (or close to the same) XP rate as Fighters. Elves were essentially multi-class Fighter/Mages, along with some racial abilities and required double the normal experience as a Fighter. They were a single class, though, so rather than being a level 2/3 Elven Fighter/Mage, you were simply a level 2 Elf.

Thank you.

By the way, the Warlock class, which is core in 5e, is actually a late edition. The first appearance of the class, I believe, was toward the tail end of 3.5e, when they were experimenting with some new mechanics that may have formed the basis for 4e.

I also note that 4e is very different from other editions, to the point where I think WotC should have called that system something else and developed it in parallel to a more traditional system. Worth noting that, due to the system being different from what players were used to, combined with WotC abandoning the OGL at that point, Pathfinder 1e (basically a fork of 3.5e) ended up outselling 4e at times.

Then again, I hear that Pathfinder 2e, while not selling as well as D&D 5e, is still outselling Patfhinder 1e, a statement that has some interesting implications.