[RPG] AC differences between AD&D 1E and Basic D&D

In general in play they were ignored or just treated as an abstract language with no further comment.

As to where they came from, here's an answer from Gary Gygax on Dragonsfoot!

As D&D was being quantified and qualified by the publication of the supplemental rules booklets. I decided that Thieves' cant should not be the only secret language. Thus alignment languages come into play, the rational [sic] being they were akin to Hebrew for Jewish and Latin for Roman Catholic persons.

I have since regretted the addition, as the non-cleric user would have only a limited vocabulary, and little cound [sic] be conveyed or understoon [sic] by the use of an alignment language between non-clerical users.

If the DMs would have restricted the use of alignment languages--done mainly because I insisted on that as I should have--then the concept is vaible [sic]. In my view the secret societies of alignment would be pantheonic, known to the clerics of that belief system and special orders of laity only. The ordinary faithful would know only a few words, more or less for recognition.

In other words, it was supposed to be more like religious languages, but wasn't really well thought through. It disappeared in Second Edition and was not missed.

Moldvay is great... in part because it's short. Tom and I spoke at some length about the 'tack' he would take. I later used a lot of ideas that he omitted because he just didn't have room. The following will address the BECMI treatment, being the most detailed expansion of Moldvay's data. At this distance (almost 30 years), most players consider the two nearly equivalent. (With apologizes to the ardent and more discriminating fans of either edition...)

Special Abilities are defined in BECMI, and summarized in the Rules Compendium (RC). The majority are Special Attacks, which include:

Acid, Blindness, Charge, Charm, Continuous damage, Disease, Energy drain, Paralysis, Petrification, Poison, Spell ability (1 per 2 spell levels), Swallow, Swoop, Trample

Some Special Defenses (Immunity to normal weapons, Spell immunity) are also Special Abilities.

Although the carrion crawler merits only one Asterisk by-the-book (for Paralysis), the overview of 'btb' is important: all of the published details are Guidelines, not rules. The ultimate choice always rests with the gaming group. Feel free to assign it an extra asterisk if you wish.

A counter-argument would be that the small (2' long) tentacles, while formidible, can rarely be directed at more than one target... and while that's going on, everyone else can hit it easily (AC7, unlike the AC3 head in AD&D) and its magic avoidance is mediocre at best (saves as Fighter L2).

But at the bottom line, the difference is 25 XP (per asterisk for a 3+1 HD monster), divided among the party... call it 4-5 XP per person. imho, not worth arguing about. So err in the characters' favor.

FM (author of BECMI)