Some of my earliest D&D memories come from this table (which is from the AD&D2E DMG, table 42, for those who didn't know). Of course my first game started in a tavern, and of course there ended up being a fight. We had great fun just rolling away on this table to see what happened. So right away I learned that charts make everything better.
On a side note, I found this really cool 2E online SRD of sorts: http://www.purpleworm.org/rules/
I hope to see a full-blown online reference for 5E some day, but I'm not holding my breath...
