cjh (10/21/82)
In response to your message of Wed Oct 20 10:22:15 1982: I have two disagreements with your criticisms of AD&D. First is that I was under the impression that the combat system used was one of the least original things about AD&D; certainly Gygax owes most of his limited inspiration to FRP in LA in the early 60's (where he misbehaved sufficiently that he was told to shut down his game or get out of LASFS for egging on people who couldn't tell the difference between the game and real life) but I have been told that the combat system dates back to non-fantasy games of the 1930's. Second is that if you think a quarterstaff doesn't add to your armor class you don't know how to handle a quarterstaff. Given that having a shield adds one class a quarterstaff handled by somebody reasonably dextrous should add at least that, since (especially in @i[moulinet], in which the staff is spun rapidly around its center) anything other than another quarterstaff or a thrown object has very little chance of getting past the staff. Perhaps it should take a melee round before the shielding effect appears?
jj (10/21/82)
Apparantly my sarcasm was not evident when I complained about the rules about staffs/oriental swords/bo-sticks/etc. I was being quite sarcastic, and just to make everything completey clear, I OBJECT to the lack of an effective and sufficient armour class adjustment for staffs/etc. I use a staff and would prefer it under most circumstances to either a rapier or broadsword, assuming that the space is available. It's much easier to carry than armour, it works nearly as well, and is also useful for non-combat things. In fact I object to the way that D&D gives only (in general) a rather random AC adjustment for dexterity, and that you get it as long as you are concious, etc.etc, and that it doesn's in general depend on what you have in your hands. As to the part about LA and the combat system, each to his own, it's (the combat system) still simplistic and cumbersome at the same time. I like the analogy that someone who mailed me used: AD&D ::= IBM Mainframe. You might not like it.... Getting on the the magic rules ... P.S. I gather that one of my previous articles got chopped. Nothing much of importance, anyhow, just a plea for discussion of other rule systems.