@Silence I am pretty sure they also introduced gnomes and half-elves in 1e. And yes, the Bards were based on the Celtic model- Fighter up to at least 5th level, then thief up to 8th level, then Druid, but advance as a Bard. And yeah, 1e Monk was pretty insane- especially at higher levels. But at first level, you weren't much better than a magic user. You couldn't use armor, and you got a piddly 1d3 for open hand damage. The only things were that you got to use 6 out of the 8 thieves skills, and you also needed a fairly high dex, but you didn't get any Dexterity Bonuses to Armor Class, either. Oh, but you could run faster than everyone else (humans have a move of 12, maximum, and Monks start with a 15). And Illusionists were a separate class- their spells only went up to level 7, like cleric spells, rather than level 9 like mages.
Mind you, though, rolling a Ranger or Monk was a one in 1000 chance. Dice Rolls were 3d6, no arranging (i.e. first you rolled strength, then intelligence, then Wisdom...), so getting the stats to qualify for one of these classes was insanely hard- if you rolled one, you were justly proud of doing so. In fact, that's one of the things that really stand out in 1e vs 2e. In 2e, your characters are meant to be heroic, that's why you roll stats of 4d6 drop the lowest. in 1e, you are just a normal person, so you can have absurdly low stats in some areas, because before you went into adventuring, you were just the next Joe on the street.
And don't forget another (optional) thing from 1e- Psionics.
@Bobby_Singer Yeah, that was an online game, and the main player got really sick and dropped out of the game, so it didn't last too long, but we all enjoyed it while it lasted. (You can still play P&P at playbyweb.com, which is like combining a tabletop game with playbymail, except it all happens on a messageboard for the game.) I still have a list, somewhere, of the modules I was planning to incorporate into the game. I never throw anything away... I still have most of my character sheets in a folder in my room.
Comments
Mind you, though, rolling a Ranger or Monk was a one in 1000 chance. Dice Rolls were 3d6, no arranging (i.e. first you rolled strength, then intelligence, then Wisdom...), so getting the stats to qualify for one of these classes was insanely hard- if you rolled one, you were justly proud of doing so. In fact, that's one of the things that really stand out in 1e vs 2e. In 2e, your characters are meant to be heroic, that's why you roll stats of 4d6 drop the lowest. in 1e, you are just a normal person, so you can have absurdly low stats in some areas, because before you went into adventuring, you were just the next Joe on the street.
And don't forget another (optional) thing from 1e- Psionics.
@Bobby_Singer Yeah, that was an online game, and the main player got really sick and dropped out of the game, so it didn't last too long, but we all enjoyed it while it lasted. (You can still play P&P at playbyweb.com, which is like combining a tabletop game with playbymail, except it all happens on a messageboard for the game.) I still have a list, somewhere, of the modules I was planning to incorporate into the game. I never throw anything away... I still have most of my character sheets in a folder in my room.