Another Nodwick fan, I see.
Well, obviously he was using his crit disc.
Bah! Old timers.
That rule about getting “<level> attacks per round against opponents with less than one hit die” only appeared in AD&D 1st Edition. It wasn’t anywhere to be found in 2nd Edition, and 2nd Edition came out way back in 1989.
Of course, in 3rd Edition, the attacks-per-round point is moot; he’s obviously got the Great Cleave feat.
My brother was convinced that Bard’s “black arrow” was an Arrow of Slaying.
Obviously, it would have to have been an Arrow of Slaying where the type of creature it was designated to slay was “dragons.” You couldn’t very well go around killing dragons in a single hit if the arrow was designated to slay “paladins” or something. But even so, this raises an important issue: Where did Bard get hold of an Arrow of Slaying in the first place? The 1st Edition DMG lists the sales price of those things at 2500 g.p.* a pop.
*) Note to those pathetic losers out there who play WoW or EQ but have never cracked open an [A]D&D rulebook: Gold pieces in the [A]D&D Universe are the victims of rampant hyperinflation. One g.p. in AD&D, any edition, will buy you about as much as a 5-dollar bill does today. A longsword, for example, costs 15 g.p., and a plain old hooded lantern costs 7 g.p… And if you think that’s bad, in 1st Edition AD&D, a gold piece weighed a whopping 1/10 of a pound, or almost 1-and-a-half Troy ounces. So, while 2500 g.p. is a sizeable chunk of change, it’s not the unbelievable fortune it would be in, say, WoW.
I am definitely one of those old timers. I used rules before AD&D, I met Gygax when he was just an uber-geek among a few thousand others.
The Black Arrow was a treasured family Heirloom. Not an arrow of slaying. Its properties were to never break and always be recoverable and extremely accurate. The Arrow was probably a +6.
I would Classify Bard as an Archer specialist who took a -10 to hit the location of the missing scale. He took a long shot and rolled his 20.
Now that I think about it even more, I’d be really pissed to have Frodo in my party. Here’s a newbie powerleveled beyond his ability, and he’s got the most powerful item conceived – but the guy doesn’t know how to use it. It’s like the level 50 empathy defender in COH who hasn’t played more than ten hours and has no idea how to properly apply heals to the group. Had he leveled up with the Ring, he’d have been able to control it successfully and countless thousands wouldn’t have died and lost xp, equipment, loot, et cetera, and had to spend who knows how much time running back to the Pelennor fields.
Guys like that should be banned.
With all the magicians, alchemists, and probably the occasional sampo around, I’m not surprised.
(“Are you with the bride or are you with the loser?”)
(“Well, we could use the sampo—oh. that’s right, we don’t have one, do we?”)
A friend of mine did some calculation and realized that all DnD peasants are now fantastically rich, owning hundreds of pounds of gold worth in equipment. Apparently, gold is nearly worthless in DnD.
At the prices they list, it would make a fine roofing material, and probably would be used casually in the manufacture of coatins for ordinary items. Make that iron longsword and then coat it in gold to prevent it from rusting. When the coating wears off, get more!
I dunno
For some reason I expect that I’d wake up one day to find him liking my foot. 
I guess Verant should have just nerfed the One Ring.
More details, please! Sounds VERY interesting. Did your players visit Umbar, or the Sea of Rhun? Ever meet with King Elessar or Queen Arwen? Was Moria resettled by the Dwarves?
Stangely enough, yes to every question.
Also a huge war in Mt Gundabad and Angmar.
A quest to finish off Shelob that Legolas as the Elven Lord in Ithilien led.
A partial cleaning out of the Barrow Downs with aid of some Noldor of Rivendell.
We played a long time with two generations of characters.
They even visited Snowmen of Forochel (Considered a boring set of adventures but recovered some clues to lost palantír)
They searched for Entwives, failed to find them, but discovered many new lands to the East.
That sounds VERY cool. I once played AD&D with a GM who liked to use Tolkien names now and again, but it wasn’t Middle-earth. I’d like to find out more about your campaigns. How can I contact you?
franchi@comcast.net is my spammed Email account, I don’t want to post by primary account.
Impossible.
Even back in the days of 1st Edition AD&D, when the largest dragons only had as many hit points as your average high-level fighter, Smaug would have had at least 50 hit points (mid-size adult red dragon).
There’s no way a non-slaying arrow could do 50 damage points in a single hit.
Like hell you can. Maybe if you do nothing but hack’n’slash every session. I’ve been in the same 3rd ed. campaign for four or five years now, and have only gone from 8th to 15th. I think your GM was doing something wrong.