{"id":707,"date":"2010-02-08T04:02:01","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T09:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/707"},"modified":"2016-11-03T18:00:38","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T01:00:38","slug":"pool-of-radiance-same-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/707","title":{"rendered":"Pool of Radiance: Same Old"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve really been getting into the swing of this game. Once you’re used to the stupidity of the interface, it goes pretty quickly. I’m completing multiple missions per day now, each yielding a substantial experience bonus. (Or maybe that’s just the experience for receiving the cash reward. That’s something I had almost forgotten about the AD&D<\/em> rules: you get experience points for treasure, not just for defeating enemies.) There’s a nearly one-to-one correlation between missions and map sectors (16×16 segments, just like in Might and Magic<\/em>), and judging by a map I found in Phlan’s library, I’ve subdued most of the map by now (barring secret dungeons).<\/p>\n

It probably helps that it’s all so familiar. Apart from the fact that it’s mostly above ground, this is very much a by-the-book D&D<\/em> campaign. You’ve got your sequence of progressively-tougher humanoid opponents, starting with kobolds and goblins, working up through orcs and hobgoblins to gnolls and bugbears — all of which functionally equivalent, but rendered distinct in the mind by the way that each takes a turn at being the new, tougher-than-normal thing. At the same time, you’re also climbing a parallel ladder with the undead, starting with skeletons and zombies, moving up to ghouls and wights and so forth — which aren’t functionally equivalent, because ghouls paralyze and wights drain experience levels. 1<\/sup><\/a>Level drain a pretty big deal here, because the game provides no way to restore lost levels other than by re-earning the experience. It’s not clear to me whether this is because the game doesn’t support experience levels high enough to learn and cast Restoration, or whether the Restoration spell didn’t exist at the time. The latter is plausible; the first edition rules had all sorts of nastiness, including the infamous “saving throw vs death” effects.<\/span><\/span>