AD&D Class Combat Progression Across Versions
It’s interesting how the four main classes progression in combat has changed over time. This table shows the first three editions in the format of percentage of level as attack bonus. So for 3E at 12th level a fighter would be +12, clerics & thieves +9, and magic-users +6. It should be noted that on the actual tables will vary a bit as 1E has a lot of built in non-linearities to its progressions and 3E had a “always round down” rule for attack bonuses which caused some numbers to be repeated for consecutive levels.
| Level | 1E | 2E | 3E | QR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fighter (Warrior) | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Cleric (Priest) | 67% | 67% | 75% | 50% |
| Thief (Rouge) | 50% | 50% | 75% | 50% |
| Magic-User (Wizard) | 40% | 33% | 50% | 33% |
- 2E just simplified 1E save for a slight drop for magic-users/wizards.
- 3E gave a huge boost to thieves/rouges and smaller boosts to cleric/priests and magic-users/wizards.
- 4E shall not be spoken of
- 5E nuked all of this with “bonded accuracy” and unified proficiency progression bolstered by various feat available to certain classes. I’ll have to explore that in a later post.
All this is particularly important to me because it’s the benchmark I used to set the core, adjacent, and opposing levels for QuestRex talents. I’ll be making an adjustment to bring them inline with 2E progression so opposing will advance at 1/3 of level instead of 1/4 previously. Thus a 12th level character with an opposing talent will now be 4th, not 3rd level with it.
First Edition
Attack Matrix for Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Bards, and 0 Level Halflings and Humans
Attack Matrix for Clerics, Druids and Monks
Attack Matrix for Thieves and Assassins
Attack Matrix for Magic-Users and Illusionists
Second Edition
Calculated THACOs & Creature THACO
Third Edition
The Fighter Base Attack Bonus
The Cleric Base Attack Bonus
The Rouge Base Attack Bonus
The Wizard Base Attack Bonus
