A Quick Thought on Magic-Users

A la "vintage" D&D. A thought I've had over time, and I've seen expressed my many others, is that magic-users should dominate world affairs at higher levels. I find it to be a valid point. Many rules and house rules have sought to mitigate this. Some are mechanical, the so-called nerfing of the class. Some are setting-based, with magical colleges dedicated to keeping rogue wizards in check.

I submit to you that a possible answer to this conundrum lies at the point of character creation: the HP roll. We've all played in vintage games where characters start 1st level with maximum hit points. Sometimes there's even a "kicker" of 10 to 25 points. Survivability at low level, we say.

Now, bear with me down a brief tangent. Stat requirements for classes were implemented by Mr Gygax as a way to simulate the relative rarity of certain classes. If only 1 person in 1000 was a paladin, that needed to be reflected in the rules somehow. Lest every Tom-Dick-and-Harry would play one.  Stat requirements keep the occurrence of certain classes within norms.

Now, back to the magic-user. With a d4 hit die, and likely no CON bonus (3d6 and all), it would be a rare magic-user that makes it to 2nd level, let alone to empire-controlling majesty. So, I propose that the "control" on runaway magic-users is baked right into the class at inception.

That brings me to a larger thought about tinkering and house rules, but that will be another time.

A Quick Thought on Thieves

I was thinking about BECMI yesterday. I love those rules. Of course, I was well "advanced" when they came out, so they weren't my introduction. In point of fact, I've never played or ran a single session under these rules. I owned all the sets, though, and I longed to use them. My group, however, wasn't having it.

See, even in the mid/late 80's I was feeling drawn to a simpler D&D. It seemed to me that we could have a rousing good time with these sets, most especially the BEC components. From time to time I would drift back to them, but more for my own edification.

Anyway, one of the knocks against them is the thief progression. It was recalibrated from Moldvay/Cook to allow for (ultimately) a 36-level progression. Consequently the numbers were lowered. I've not taken an in-depth look to see how egregious the offense actually is, but it does get talked about a lot.

Here's an interesting thing, though. A 1st level fighter needs a 19 to hit an AC0 target, strength bonus not withstanding. That equates to a 10% chance. A 1st level thief can Find/Remove Traps and Hide in Shadows at 10%. A common thought would be "Yeah, but 1st level fighters don't usually tangle with AC0 opponents!" and you'd be right. Somewhere around AC4 is more of a "suitable" encounter. Better than that and it may be time for a retreat strategy.

Here's my question: Why not give the thief similar easement? Look at the percentages as serious tests of their skill. AC0 opponents for a 1st level fighter are likely to be life-or-death situations. Treat rolls at the base percentages the same for thieves. Otherwise give them bonuses, reasonable bonuses, based on circumstances. Say the party is held hostage in an orc outpost. Orc locks are likely to be clunky, unsophisticated affairs, so give the thief a bonus to picking one. To me is stands to reason that if an orc is easier for the fighter to defeat then so to should an orc lock be easier for the thief. There's a certain symmetry there.

Anyway, I know that for the most part my groups have rarely modified the thief tables, aside from Dex ands race. I know there are many of you that do it without a thought and all this is old news to you. Juxtaposing it with the fighter, though, really opened my eyes to the possibility.

The Collapsing Column Conundrum

In this post I talked about a friend's game where we found ourselves in a room filled with granite columns falling all about us. I was contrasting one of the differences between D&D and Dungeon World. That difference being that in D&D getting "hit" by a column was a matter of losing hit points, while in the fiction-first world of DW, missing a roll to avoid a granite column would likely prove fatal.

I'm in a DW mood again and I found myself pondering this situation again. Even though I'm in a DW head, I think I've stumbled on a more satisfying way to handle this in D&D.

The real crux of problems like this in D&D is remembering that hit points are abstract constructs that represent many facets of a character's ultimate survivability (see this post). In this sense, hit point loss is a narrativist opportunity. Well, D&D isn't a narrativist game, so hmmm.

Here's my idea (finally): In the column room example my character was a fighter (natch, I usually play fighters), with somewhere around 70 hp. The room was quite large and filled with these falling columns. I think another way to handle this would be to say "In order to cross the room, you have to make 3 successful Dex checks (or saving throws, whatever). For every one you fail you take d10 damage."

I think that makes it more narrativist. It models an escalating situation, where every column that you don't "dodge" whittles away at your chances of getting to the other side of the room alive. You're getting more tired, more tensed up. Maybe you're dodging away from one, only to step in the way of another one. In any event, if you do make it to the other side alive, the damage from the failed checks represents the physical and emotional exhaustion of such a harrowing experience.

And if the DM wanted to be extra nasty, for each failed roll impose a -1 penalty to the next roll. That would really ramp up the tension.

The Great Kingdom Trailer

The Great Kingdom is a documentary chronicling the history of TSR and D&D. This is a trailer and it looks pretty damned good. As an added bonus, parts of the trailer feature "Ten Years Gone", one of my absolute favorite songs of all time. Vastly underappreciated by the masses, it is easily one of Led Zeppelin's best, and that is saying a lot.

Ruminations on OD&D: The Endgame

It isn't hard to do an internet search (I prefer DuckDuckGo, sorry, Google) and find all sorts of forum posts, blog posts, and pontification about the ballyhooed "endgame". They run the gamut between lamenting its loss, to praising various clones for bringing it back to full glory. This post isn't like that. This is just a couple of ideas for integrating the endgame into the ongoing campaign/world. I'm not going to pretend they're original or profound, they're just my take.

First off, "name level" characters who construct strongholds attract followers. Why not base part of a campaign around that? Once the characters establish themselves, say 3rd level or so, they can offer their services to a name-level NPC who has established a stronghold. Perhaps this NPC is just starting out, so to speak. His stronghold is small and he is looking to expand. The PCs can pledge their service, and the NPC can send them on "missions". He can offer them support services, like healing and magic item identification, in exchange for finding whatever loot he desires. Maybe their liege is a cleric who sends them on a mission to recover the shrine idol stolen by bandits. The PCs would return the idol, and perhaps a tithe of other treasures recovered, and keep the rest.

I wouldn't base an entire campaign around this concept, but for a few levels, it could bring a logical structure to things. Plus, if the PCs have been honorable in their oath, when they reach name-level they will have a powerful friend and ally who can help them establish their own domain. Which brings me to . . .

Point the second. Once the PCs reach name-level, I think it would provide a nice break from the high-level game to have followers become PCs every now and then. Have each player fully create a follower, and sometimes have a session or three using the party of followers. If the campaign continued long enough, one day those followers will establish their own strongholds. I know it sounds ambitious, but the setting would develop strongholds, villages and towns, and politics very organically if it could be pulled off.

Rethinking a Rumination

Very recently, I posted about archetypes. I had something of an epiphany yesterday. Most of my thinking and rules tinkering occurs in a vacuum, since I have no group. So, when I pontificate on a topic, such as the idea of many different classes, it is essentially based more on principle than practice. It finally dawned on me that my thinking on classes comes from such a place.

My best friend and gaming buddy used to run his own brew of AD&D 1st, with bits of 2nd thrown in, and a heavy dose of house rules. He also had a lot of classes unique to his world that he had made up. Whenever you would sit down with him to make up a character, his guideline was "Any class is available, from 1st, 2nd, Dragon, whatever. If you have one you made up, run it by me." He wasn't worried about how the classes balanced against each other. If somebody wanted to play a class that was a little weak in actual play, that was their choice.

So, yesterday it hit me: a plethora of choices doesn't automatically restrict player options. Just because there is a ranger class shouldn't mean that other players can't track. Paladins do not have to be the only class that can Lay on Hands. If a players wants to make up a fighter and we can work out some backstory where he has some divine gift of healing, we can do that. If he wants to play a full-on Divine Warrior, he should be able to do so.

We do this for fun. As a player, I would not have found it fun in the least if I had told my friend "I have an idea for a druid for your new campaign" and he said "Well, ok, we'll start with a cleric. I'll try to work something in where you can quest for the shapechange ability, and I'll look over some of the druid spells and work them into the cleric list. How does that sound?" I would have said "It sounds like I'm playing a cleric. Nevermind."

As a corollary to this thought, it hit me that I don't play/referee enough for balance inconsistencies to actually manifest at the table. So, maybe some house rules isn't especially balanced. I can't tie myself up in knots over it, because it's likely I will never know, since I'll never generate a large enough play-experience example to chart it. So, maybe my latest monster design is actually too tough to appear on the 1st level of the dungeon. Well, oops. Maybe you should start running.

More on Magic users

One of the perils of stream-of-conscious writing is that things get left out. I fancy myself some sort of Mozart of the blog, putting out a completed post in a single pass, no editing required. Of course, I know that's total horseshit, but we all have our delusions. Anyway . . .

There are a couple of more setting-centric thoughts about magic users that didn't make it into the recent relevant post.

I envision magic users in my setting as more adventurous than their "standard" brethren. With a more restrictive spell system, with a more limited number of acquisition options, they are forced to venture into the wild places in search of spells. They are also forced to be more pragmatic and seek more mundane solutions to many of their problems. Thus, they are slightly more robust and more capable in a fight.

• They may use any one-handed weapon
• They may wear leather armor, but still may not use shields
• Their hit points are slightly better, adding +2 on the even levels, rather than +1

It seems like there was something else, but now it eludes me. Oh well, there's always another post.

Ruminations on OD&D: Archetypes

An archetype is defined as "an ideal example of a type". We've all heard D&D classes referred to as archetypes. They are the base foundations of the characters found in the source literature. The idea is that using one of the three (or four, if you go to Greyhawk's thief), you can model pretty much any character from the stories we all know and love. Like all things with D&D, though, this takes imagination. Is Aragorn a fighting-man, straight from the book? What about Conan? Are Gandalf or Elric magic users? Of course not.

I enjoy reading new classes. I used to love it when the latest issue of Dragon featured a new class. I don't like having them in my game so much, though. For me they are like detailed skill systems: they limit player options. In fact, a lot of classes are almost like skill packages added to one of the Big 4. They take one of the archetypes and add special abilities, impose a few restrictions, tweak the XP table, and BAM! New class. The only problem is, when you make a class that automatically enjoys a +2 to saves vs Illusion, it feels like they're the only ones that should have that. Furthermore, at character creation, if a player envisions a character that sees through illusion better than most, it implies that he must be that class. Otherwise, it cheapens that class.

One of the things I really like about DCC is its philosophy about this sort of thing. In a nutshell, if you want your character to be perceptive enough to see through illusions better than most, figure out a way to quest for it. Maybe perform a great deed for the god of acuity and he will grant you such a boon.

I also don't have a problem as referee with working with a player to create and develop the character he envisions. If he wants a guy good and tracking and wilderness survival, I would rather him roll up a fighter and we'll role play the rest. I'll just give him a little bonus on whatever roll I call for in wilderness situations. If you play with a relatively mature group that is out to have a good game, that's no problem at all.

So, the bottom line is that I like additional classes as ideas. They may give me an idea for a different direction to take a standard class. Suggest some abilities that a player may like to add or quest for. Yet, when it is all said and done, all the characters in my game will be firmly based on one of the archetypes.

Ruminations on OD&D: Clerics (Addendum)

I forgot to mention how I would actually handle applying the Moldvay principle to the cleric.

Firstly, I would not require the cleric to keep a spellbook, nor study to regain spells. They would need to spend an appropriate amount of time in meditation/prayer, following proper rest.

Secondly, they may only "know" a number of spells equal to their spells slots available, +1 per spell level, if Wisdom is 15+. For example, a 4th level cleric with a Wisdom of 16 would know three 1st and two 2nd level spells.

Thirdly, they may cast any spells they know, in any combination, up to the number of times listed for their level. This is not adjusted for Wisdom. So, the cleric in the example above could cast two 1st and one 2nd level spells. They do not have to prepare them ahead of time.

Fourthly, the cleric's spell selection should be based on player choice, broadly influenced by deity. Detailed pantheons aren't strictly required. It should be a simple matter for a player to declare that his cleric is devoted to a god of battle and choose spells loosely based on that. Once chosen the selection may only be changed when the cleric gains a level. At that time, the cleric may change one spell per spell level. So, the cleric above could change one 1st and one 2nd level spell upon attaining the 5th level.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I am pretty happy with how this reads. Of course, playtest may reveal problems, but that's a horse of another color.

Ruminations on OD&D: Clerics

I've posted at length about Clerics, several times. The thrust of it is that I don't really like them. I've been thinking about that lately, though, and I think with some tweaks, they may actually work for me.

First off, my objections have nothing to do with the "they aren't in the source literature" argument. My main beef with them, especially in OD&D, is that they are almost on par with fighters and they have spells. Not only do they have spells, they have access to every clerical spell out there, whether they are required to keep spellbooks or not. That makes them slightly above magic users, in that they can wear armor, use most weapons, and have access to their full spell list from 2nd level on. All of this is theirs for a seriously paltry XP table.

Now, I know that "access to their full spell list" may cause some of you to cite the brevity of said spell list. Accordingly, that may not seem such an advantage. I contend that it is a huge advantage due to additional spells. If additional spells, say, cherry-picked from Greyhawk, are introduced, the cleric has access to all of those as soon as they hit the street. Just adding one or two spells per level will increase the value of this advantage tremendously.

I have recently turned to Mr Moldvay's Basic for a possible solution to the Cleric Problem. According to a strict interpretation of those rules, with regard to magic users, a spell book may only contain as many spells as the magic user can cast in a day. This has the interesting side effect of making all magic users Specialists. I like this, very much. I think it can also be applied to clerics, and have several benefits, vis-a-vis my personal issues with the class.

• It promotes a sense of service to a particular patron without any heavy-handed rules for such
• It limits their spell abilities, which mitigates their low XP requirements
• It brings them more in-line with magic users and fighters, power-wise

I think this also feathers in nicely with the notion that clerical spells are divine. Done this way, the power that makes the spells work could be seem as coming from the cleric's zeal. I've always had problems with players of clerics doing things with their spells that their gods may not really approve of. Well, they can still do that using this idea, but at least the power for the spell is coming from within, rather than directly from the god.

Also, and this is a personal campaign-centric thing, I wouldn't allow clerics and paladins in the same campaign. Clerics are paladins, in that they are the righteous hand of their god. They are gifted with tremendous zeal coupled with a clarity of vision and willingness to battle forces opposed to their god. They are not kindly old men leading worship service on holy days, baptizing babies into the faith, and blessing crops every spring. They go into the dark places and meet evil head-on. Unless, of course, they've turned to evil and are hell-bent to bring suffering to all those who oppose them.

Combat Bonuses in OD&D

This is pretty off-the-cuff, so please be kind if you comment.

I was rummaging around in the Howling Tower, Steve Winter's blog. I forget the exact post, but he made the comment that characters from classic fantasy fiction are not defined by their magic weapons. That threw my mind into a spin. I like magic items, in general. A gold piece is a gold piece, and that's great, but nothing screams treasure like magic items. He has a point, though, and it lands squarely on an amorphous unease I've had for some time. I want characters to be competent, even dangerous, intrinsically, not because of a glowing sword. The glowing sword can certainly make them more dangerous. Imagine two thieves plotting to steal something from a fighter with a magic sword. If the sword defines the character, the conversation could go something like this:

"We need to separate him from that damnable sword of his. Should be pretty easy pickins if we can do that."

If the sword merely augments the fighter, the thieves' plotting could go something like this:

"We need to catch him away from that shiny sword of his."
"Are you mad? He killed five men with his bare hands just to get the sword."

I prefer a game where the second conversation is the one that happens. Seems easy enough, right? Just keep a tight reign on magic bonuses. Bam! Done.

In my mind it's not that easy. It never is. See, I do want magic weapons to mean something. I want the thieves above to shit themselves at the thought of facing the fighter with his sword. I also want them to know that if they face him without it they are in deep trouble, too. Balance that against the fact that said fighter can't be a total badass and tote a sword that makes him a total badass.

And that's the tricky part. Make the weapon something to be feared, but not something that will throw things completely out of whack when wielded by a character who is rightfully feared. Keeping weapon bonuses low doesn't do it for me. A sword that hits 5% more often isn't exactly fearsome, even though we are assured that a +1 bonus in OD&D is meaningful.  I have an idea, based in principle on Chainmail.

The notion that a +1 bonus is significant comes from Chainmail, where it is indeed significant. However, Chainmail is a considerably different animal than OD&D. A +1 in Chainmail would be applied in one of two ways, depending on the type of combat being prosecuted. In the 20:1 Troop system, magic weapons add an extra die per "+" (in a nutshell, you roll a certain number of d6, scoring a hit on 5-6, or 6, for the most part, and in that system a hit = kill). That's pretty potent, since it gives the opportunity to kill an additional opponent. In the Man-to-Man and Fantasy Combat it adds its "+" to the roll, which is 2d6. Modifying a 2d6 roll by even +1 is much more significant than modifying a d20 roll by +1, especially when fighting creatures that require a 10 or more on 2d6 to hit.

So, here's my thinking: if a character is a big enough badass to deal with "common" threats pretty reliably, then a badass magic weapon is just overkill. The badass fighter could deal with those thieves just fine without the sword. BUT. . . such a weapon in such capable hands allows said fighter to take on foes beyond the ken of normal men.

I am looking at Chainmail for the answer to this conundrum. I have a couple of ideas, but they require looking at the to-hit roll in a different way. In Chainmail, in the Troop and Man-to-Man systems, a hit is synonymous with a kill. When the term was ported to D&D it came to be (mis)understood as a singular "attack". The d20 roll "to-hit" does not represent an attack. It represents the chance that a combatant wounds his opponent. It is necessary to embrace this idea to process my proposals for magic weapons.  I have two proposals:

#1) Any character armed with a magic weapon of any sort rolls an additional number of d20's equal to the "+" of the weapon. The rolls themselves are not modified at all. Each roll that indicates a hit will do d6 damage. 

#2) Only a single attack roll is made, with a number of additional d6 for damage equal to the "+" of the weapon.

Obviously, the second option is more powerful, perhaps too much. I prefer the first option, myself.

This allows an interesting option for magic armor, as well. Using this, I would rule that magic armor negates one damage die per "+" of the armor. If an opponent has only one die of damage, the armor subtracts its "+" from the roll. So, if a character with no magic weapon hits an opponent wearing Plate +2, he rolls his normal d6 for damage and subtracts -2 from the roll. If he had a +1 sword, he would roll a d6 and subtract -1.

I would also rule that characters with a 15+ STR is granted a +1 to the damage roll, but this bonus will not negate any penalty due to magic armor.

So, there it is. Perhaps a bit disjointed, perhaps even confusing. I am a stream-of-consciousness kind of guy.

Ruminations on OD&D: Nostalgia or Just a Good System?

When my mind returns to OD&D, I get caught up in this sort of duality conundrum. On the one hand, I am constantly drawn to OD&D out of nostalgia. It was my first RPG. I actually started gaming with Avalon Hill wargames (Tobruk and Third Reich being the first), but that's another story. I still remember buying my white box, mail ordering Eldritch Wizardry and a set of dice (the soft ones that saw the d20 turn into a ball after some steady use). Hell, when I started there were no d10s, the d20 was numbered from 0-9 twice. All the d20s were like that, there weren't any numbered 1-20 back then.

I have a lot of extremely fond memories of those times. There's a part of me that turns to OD&D in an effort to recapture the sense of those games. That part of me doesn't want to change the game, at least no more than we did back then. So, I don't want a lot of house rules or "outside influences", beyond what we may have been using in 1976-78. This included Greyhawk, pretty much whole clothe, but very little from Blackmoor or Eldritch Wizardry. We had zero access to Strategic Review, Dragon, or Judge's Guild materials.

Then there's the other reason I turn to OD&D. It is simply a damn good system. It does what it intends to extremely well.

(An aside: It never ceases to amaze me when people compare OD&D to other games on the basis that OD&D is all about killing and looting and doesn't promote role playing at all. "There's nothing in the rules to support role playing and the only way to improve your character is by killing things" is the common refrain. Then they will point to systems, usually skill-based, as champions of "role playing not roll playing". Funny thing is, these systems all rely on die rolls to adjudicate skill use, and the skill lists are usually quite detailed, as are the rules governing their use. OD&D has no skill lists, relying instead on player skill and role playing. Players are encouraged to role play their characters' actions, rather than rely on "skill" rolls. Bizarre.)

I'm honestly not sure how much of OD&D was intentional design and how much was serendipity. We all know it was born out of a miniatures wargame. There are references to Chainmail throughout the LBBs, and it is in fact required for complete descriptions of some of the monsters. So, essentially, the LBBs were house rules bolted on to Chainmail to turn a wargame into a roleplaying game. By all rights it should have been an odd fit, to say the least. Especially with so many artifacts from a 20:1 scale miniatures game making  their way into a game about 1:1 conflict between "characters" and creatures. Yet, somehow it works, and it does so in an almost transparent-to-the-user fashion in many cases.

Take for example the simple, yet profound, relationship between armor, HD, and weapon damage. In Chainmail a  standard figure was killed by a single hit. In order to score that hit a target number, based on the target's armor and the attacker's weapon, must be met. (In a sense, armor reduces damage, as a hit roll that wasn't sufficient to kill the figure is ignored. Only enough damage to kill is considered.) In OD&D this was translated as a standard figure having d6 HD and all weapons doing d6 damage. Thus, we set the standard that a normal man may be killed in a single attack. But, I digress.

My main point here is that for all the nostalgia that may fuel the OSR engine, OD&D is a fine, fun game on its own merits. It may seem antiquated to some, but I am very comfortable with its practices and forms. I have my LBB pdfs printed and spiral bound into a single volume and spiral bound. In that minimal 114(ish) page tome is all the gaming I need.

A New Critical Hit Idea

I came up with this idea yesterday. I would really like some feedback, so if you would be so kind as to comment, I will greatly appreciate it.

I don't really like have a to-hit roll of 20 represent a critical hit. It essentially means everyone crits at the same rate. I don't like "confirming" crits, either. I've discussed this in an older post. I think the damage die should be the indicator, but I am against exploding damage dice.

OD&D is about modelling results. With that in mind, I had this idea. If a player rolls max damage, he gets a +1 to-hit on his next attack against that opponent. This represents such a severe flurry of blows that it affords a continuing advantage. Really it represents the potential to do it bring the fight to a swifter conclusion, thus modelling the result of critical success in combat. I also like it because it can only occur as the result of a successful hit, which means that characters and creatures with better to-hit numbers will achieve it more often. It is also a small bonus which is well in-line with the OD&D philosophy of such things.

Please let me know what you think.

Ruminations on OD&D: Hit Points

In the pursuit of my job I have a lot of time to think about gaming (and anything else that crosses my mind). However, I have no time whatsoever to write, design, or develop anything I think about. One of the things I've been thinking about lately is OD&D, but I've been thinking about it on a much more philosophical level. I'm a huge fan of Philotomy's OD&D Musings and read and reread them frequently. This will (hopefully) be a series of posts of my personal observations, with the title inspired by those musings.

First up: Hit Points

I've blathered about hit points before. Anyone that makes a conscious choice to have D&D in their life has. I'm not going to rehash those previous thoughts; they are easy enough to find. No, this is about the drama inherent in hit points.

Over the course of my gaming travels and experimentations I have run across the notion that hit points aren't dramatic. According to many systems, designers, and players, it isn't realistic nor dramatic to know with absolute certainty how much abuse you can take before being killed. A lot of games trumpet their "fun" and "realism" by pointing out that death is always possible and any blow may kill any character at any time. Each and every creature in the game, from stableboy to the Queen's Champion, from kobold to ancient red dragon, could be killed with a single stroke of a blade.

I have been lured by this temptation myself. I have bought into the idea that it is a bit meta-gamey and jarring to base one's willingness to risk combat on knowing how much more damage on'e character can sustain. It occurred to me yesterday, though, that while ripe with dramatic potential, systems which support this notion of ever-possible character death are better in theory than in fact.

Think of it from the player's perspective. How much fun is it to have a favorite character killed by random chance? Sure, it makes combat more tense, and perhaps causes the player to actually consider the risk/reward every single combat rather than only when hit points are low. Yet, for that threat of imminent death to be real, and not just some sort of boogeyman, it has to actually happen from time to time. I was playing in a sort of mini-campaign with two friends. My friend Rick was DM and he had developed some critical hit charts that included the possibility of instant death. The other player was my friend Todd. He was playing a dwarf. We were about 4th or 5th level and quite attached to our characters. We had a random encounter with a small number of goblins, definitely not enough to pose a real threat. One of them scored a critical hit on Todd's dwarf. Rick rolled on his new chart and ended up with the goblin getting in a one-in-a-million hit that pierced the dwarf's heart, killing him instantly. Todd was devastated.

Granted, with the charts being experimental, Rick could have invoked fiat and ignored such a horrific result, but that's not the point. The point is: the supposed fun brought on by the "dramatic tension" of the dangerous critical hits did not outweigh the let-down as a result of watching a favorite character killed by pure chance. So, ultimately, from the player perspective, I just don't see this type of thing fun. Whether it is through a bolted-on critical hit table, or baked into the health/damage system, it is not an even trade. Furthermore, since we actually play these games for fun, I wouldn't ever, as a referee, allow a player's character to be killed in such a manner. So, the threat of imminent death becomes hollow and meaningless.

From the referee's perspective, and the player's as well, to a degree, this type of system saps the fun from battles which end prematurely in the characters' favor. Who wants to spend months of real time and many sessions to get to the Ultimate Threat only to have him killed by an exploding damage die on the first hit? Again, the point of the exercise is fun, and it is hard to do that when a planned three-hour session ends in 15 minutes because of a lucky roll.

Upon reflection, I have to say that I see a lot of drama in D&D's hit point system. It's all in how it is role played. Hit points, especially in the relatively low amounts as generated in OD&D, really model the ebb and flow of a battle. I have been in countless games where I was sweating bullets because my hit points were at a point where one more really good hit could kill my character and I knew I had my opponent in bad shape (or at least I thought I knew). I was praying to the dice gods that I hit him before he hit me. For me, that is a much more satisfying sort of drama than that offered by random chance death.

Magical Efficacy

This idea can be used with any flavor of OD&D.

I've pontificated at length about options for fighters. I'm a fighter guy. However, I also desire some tactical flexibility for magic-users. Not only as a referee, but also as a player. Straight-up OD&D magic is fairly dull. The only tactical decisions to be made are which spells to memorize and which one to use in a given situation. Pretty static choices, with little room for "seat of the pants" magic. Here is a propositionto allow a little more "situational thinking" to enter into things.

The idea is really simple. If a magic-user has memorized the same spell twice, he can cast the spell double. That is, he uses both memorizations of the spell in a single casting. The results are thus:

• Range/Duration/Area of Effect/Number Affected are all increased by 50%
• Damage is increased by +1 per spell level
• Saving Throw is made at -2

If a given spell does not have a particular listed above, then, obviously, there is no benefit to that parameter. In other words, a spell that is Instantaneous doesn't suddenly have a duration, or one with a range of Touch can't suddenly be hurled across the room.

At first glance this may seem over-powered, modifying all the parameters. I haven't playtested this idea, but I don't think it will prove overpowered for a couple of reason:

• Very few OD&D spells have all of the parameters listed, so it will be a truly rare occurrence that all of the modifiers will be in effect.
• There is an inherent synergy in OD&D that will cause on to carefully consider double-casting. Think about wanting to hurl a doubled Fireball so you can ramp up the damage. The blast radius also increases, though, so you have to carefully consider the volume of space you're in and the proximity of allies. Also consider that any allies that do get caught in the blast will be saving at -2.
• There is also . . .

The Risk

A wise man once said "Pimpin' ain't easy" and neither is commanding the fickle forces of magic. If a caster wishes to double-cast, the player must make a d20 roll. He must roll under his current level + INT bonus. This roll is modified by adding the spell's level. For example:

An 8th level magic-user, with an INT 16, wishes to double-cast the ubiquitous Fireball. He must roll 6 or less (8 (Caster level) + 1 (INT bonus) - 3 (Spell Level) on d20.

If the roll is failed, the spell is still cast. The hazard is that in releasing that much magical energy in a single burst, the caster will be injured. If the roll is failed, the caster suffers damage equal to the d20 roll minus what was needed, divided by 2 (round up).

Let's suppose the caster from our example had rolled a 13. The spell still goes off, but he is injured during the casting. He will suffer 4 points of damage (13 (d20 roll) - 6 (target number) = 7 divided by 2 = 3.5 (round up)).

And there you have it. An on-the-fly tactical option that makes magic users a little more unpredictable and dangerous, but not without potential consequences.

All Along the Watchtower

Alright, folks, here it is. The perfect D&D song. I love Celtic, New Age, Midnight Syndicate, and all that sort of thing for background ambiance as much as the next guy. This song though, is it.

This song is forever linked in a perfectly balanced trifecta with D&D and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The very first F&GM story I read began with the duo manning a watch on a city wall. Need I say more? From the very first strains of the guitar, my mind is taken to a decadent city-state, ripe for adventure. The music has a certain dancers-in-a-bazaar sound to it. The lyrics were D&D before there was D&D. I mean, they sound liked the boxed text that says "Read the following aloud to your players".

It just doesn't get anymore evocative than this.

An Idea Briefly Described

I have only a very narrow window in time to shove this through, so it will be rather spartan.

I was thinking of porting the career system from Barbarians of Lemuria to OD&D. I'm not sure right now about the acquisition rate. I'm thinking maybe 2 at first level with a bonus based on prime requisite. Then perhaps a point for improvement every three levels, and an opportunity to add a completely new one every 5 levels.

The mechanic for it would be roll 3d6 vs the relevant attribute (roll under), based on the attempt. That way creative players can seek inventive ways to play to their characters' strengths. For example, the Huntsman career should grant some benefit in a survival situation, which may logically depend on CON, but a player could accurately argue that INT is as important. Later, when trying to stalk some prey, the same player could make further use of the career, this time relying on DEX.

The way I see it right now, each point in the career subtracts one from the roll. Unusual circumstances could force the player to roll 4d6, and keep the lower or higher of the three, depending on whether the circumstances were beneficial or detrimental, respectively.

A Real A-Ha! Moment

I'm sitting here this morning sifting through some OD&D forums. I see one about combat and Fighting Capability. At some point hit points were mentioned, and for some reason my mind swung off onto a tangent. I'm glad it did, because it gave me a new perspective.

A long time ago I accepted the notion that hit points are not just blood. They are sweat, fatigue, luck, divine favor, and simply the will to continue the fight. We've all had to accept that, in some degree, in order to make peace with D&D, no matter which flavor we prefer. Well, I have a new visually stunning example of exactly how that works. Without further ado, I give you . . .

Remember the scene in the corridor of the castle, when our heroes were assaulted by Count Rugen's men? They rushed in and Indigo cut them down like the 1 HD pukes they were. One attack per man. Bam! Done.

Now, think back to the duel between Indigo and Westley. They never wounded each other (at least until Westley clocked Indigo with his pommel). Westley just wore him down. It took a while, of course, because they were both masters (with a decent number of hit points).

Remember, too, Indigo's duel with Count Rugen. He was stabbed, twice, but dug deep and kept going, because the fight was important to him. The wounds became inconsequential simply because of his will to fight, and his desire for revenge.

So, yeah, even though I've accepted the rationale behind hit points, these little a-ha moments that give me a fresh perspective on them are always welcomed.

Without a Compass

I've been back into the LBBs the last few days. I've also been looking over the Traveller Little Black Books. Something struck me. Even though these games have their warts, they have definitely stood the test of time. You look at games like Pathfiner, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and now D&D Next, all of which made extensive use of pretty open beta testing. Legions of games with decades of experience helped locate and smooth the rough spots. The result is a finished game that is playtested and really put through its paces.

LBB D&D and Traveller did not enjoy such diverse and wide-spread playtesting. Yet they are far more robust systems. I think it is also important to remember that the teams at TSR and GDW didn't have 30+ years of RPG industry to help guide them. They were operating in a strange land without a compass. Yet the games they developed and produce are more robust and more tightly designed than most games that follow, even today in the age of open beta testing. Kudos, gentlemen, and thank you.

A Selected Bit from the Old School Thread

This is a quote from the thread I linked to in my previous post. It is from an actual-play report, post #65:

There we met some elves (ie: killed three and Charmed two) . . .

This simple statement floored me. I have a vague memory of literally everything you meet as a character being a potential foe. Everything. I honestly can not remember the last time in my playing career that a statement like that would be viable. Drow are fair game, of course, but he said elves. How long has it been since elves could be just slain like any other wandering monster? I would wager that almost any DM running a game not in the old school style would balk at such a turn of events. I daresay that many DMs would actually penalize the players in some way, perhaps even forcing some alignment alteration on them.

I'm having a hard time really communicating my feelings on this. Sorry if it is confusing. If you get it, though, you get it. For me it is a really cool reminder of a really cool aspect of the old school way, an aspect I forgot about and abandoned long ago. I'm very happy to be reacquainted with it.