Five Good Ways To Die In Old School Dungeons & Dragons
Rescuing this fron an old defunct blog I had
In honor of the release of the new version of Dungeons & Dragons, I wanted to look back at the old school version. It was the era of 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the Tom Moldvay/David Cook Basic/Expert D&D. I played Moldvay/Cook and preferred the simplicity.
Back in those days, it was extremely easy for your characters to die in the first adventure. In fact, countless characters did, sometimes for the stupidest reasons. You sometimes didn't even bother to name your character until they proved they could survive. I felt bad for the people who gave their character a background, only to watch them die in the first room after a bad roll of the dice.
Those games were death traps, but there was a bright side. The simplicity of the rules was such that you could have a new character ready in a couple minutes. One of the reasons for the new rules coming out now is because the previous edition was so complicated that it took much longer for character creation.
So, I wanted to look at five of the easiest ways to die for a 1st level character in the old school game:
1-Poison: Better make that savings throw, or you are done. It could happen from a poison needle on a treasure chest, a spider or snake bite or whatever. One bad roll, and it's time for a new character.
2-Magic missile: If you faced a magic user, they may not have much of a melee attack. However, this spell was something a first level character could use, and it always hits. Higher level spell casters were worse, since they had spells that could do more damage, but a magic missile could eliminate that 1st level character too.
3-Traps: Poison needles on treasure chests were one thing. You could touch something that triggers darts to fire out of the wall or spray poisonous gas into the room. There's that pesky 10 foot pit in the hallway. A real vindictive DM would put spikes on the bottom just to do more damage.
4-Wights: Unlike skeletons and zombie, these undead could drain a level from you just by touching you. This is no fun at all. If you see one at 1st level, you learn to run away fast. Your sword may not be able to hit it anyway. All you have to do is watch what happened to Frodo in The Lord Of the Rings. He's lucky he lived, and he wouldn't have if not for the elves.
5-Anybody with a weapon: Fighters could sometimes absorb two hits, but seldom three. You have to be tactful in battle and lucky at the dice when you must fight. When you gained levels on old school D&D, they meant something.
