Quote Originally Posted by Kurald Galain View Post
Starts, yes, but doesn't stay there for long.

Getting back to the point, the argument being brought up is that 1E sucks because (A) characters are expected to advance through fighting, (B) even at first level, multiple combats per day is the default, (C) when not casting spells, wizards are only capable of using darts and/or a crossbow; and (D) doing the same thing every round is boring.

Even casual analysis shows that these four assumptions may be true in 3E and 4E (except for C since 4E wizards cannot run out of spells), but they very obviously do not hold in 1E or for that matter 2E.
I have always found (D) to be absolutely true.

10 year old me found (C) to be true. From the existence of thief skills we inferred that if the rules didn't provide for a chance, you weren't able to do that. I now know that was not the intention, but the rules did not expressly call out that you could attempt things not on your character sheet, and I don't think we were alone in playing that way. The problem was alleviated when non-weapon proficiencies were introduced, but by then I made the switch to multiclass characters and never had the issue again (and we dumped demihuman level limits, which I don't think was uncommon).

In my experience (B) was also true, even at first level. More non-combat encounters did not make for less combat encounters in a day, it just made for more total encounters for a day. Given how early published adventures were written (dungeon focussed, with nowhere really safe to hole up in the dungeon, often based on tournament dungeons with time pressure), I am inclined to think this was the norm.

(A) was not true RAW. However, IME a lot of groups never understood the reasoning behind granting XPs for treasure, so it often got houseruled in (I know at least one DM I played with regularly did this). And to 10 year old murder-hobos, combat was the default way of getting the treasure, so (A) might as well have been true.