2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Sixty-Six

Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!

Today is Part 11 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

Today we are going to take a bit of a look at Fighting Capability which Gygax imported from Chainmail:

Fighting Capability: This is a key to use in conjunction with the CHAINMAIL fantasy rule, as modified in various places herein.

Fighting-Men ------------------------  Magic_Users ---------------------------- Clerics

As I have said, I never used Chainmail so I am not going to comment a lot, but first a few days ago Ian Borchardt posted the following as a comment to my sharing of this series at MeWe and I present his comments here with his permission:

One of the interesting things is that for a Fighting man Hero and Superhero are also Chainmail-based combat definitions that do in fact parallel the OD&D definitions (for example in Chainmail a Hero needs 4 simultaneous hits to be killed), whilst a Superhero needs 8 simultaneous hits to be killed).

The Chainmail-based Fighting Man is actually extremely powerful (if you use the combat equivalencies suggested later in the book). I mean there is a reason why units were forced to check morale when a Superhero enters charge range. I think that is where you start to get the difference in power expressed on the xp table. The pre-Greyhawk magic user is already starting to reach their limit in magical power with the lack of 7th-9th level spells (even given that these spells are markedly underpowered compared to the spells of previous levels).

This is all supposition on my part for why the xp table works as it does. Given that it was changed in later editions it reflected the increased power of the magic user and the decreased power of the fighting man in D&D.

[Incidentally the Superhero was only available to the lawful alignment in Chainmail. One of the reasons why I consider them to be paladins (in the historical sense of being the epitome of chivalry in my old game, rather than the religious game sense they would later become).]

I would add here that both Heroes and Super Heroes are only Lawful in Chainmail. The Hero does have a counterpart, the Anti-Hero which is only Chaotic. Whereas the Super Hero does not have a Chaotic counterpart, that role (IMO) being filled by the more powerful monsters. Interestingly enough the Law, Neutral and Chaos Table in Chainmail also lists Magic Weapons as Lawful and they do not appear in the other two columns.

Below is part of the information from Chainmail if you want to compare Heroes and Super Heroes.

HEROES (and Anti-heroes): Included in this class are certain well-known knights, leaders of army contingents, and similar men. They have the fighting ability of four figures, the class being dependent on the arms and equipment of the Hero types themselves, who can range from Light Foot to Heavy Horse, Heroes (and Anti-heroes) need never check morale, and they add 1 to the die or dice of their unit (or whatever unit they are with). They are the last figure in a unit that will be killed by regular missile fire of melee, but they may be attacked individually by enemy troops of like type (such as other Hero-types) or creatures shown on the Fantasy Combat Table. Heroes (and Anti-heroes) may act independent of their command in order to combat some other fantastic character. When meleed by regular troops, and combat takes place on the non-Fantasy Combat Tables, four simultaneous kills must be scored against Heroes (or Anti-heroes) to eliminate them. Otherwise, there is no effect upon them. A Hero-type, armed with a bow, shoots a dragon passing within range overhead out of the air and kills it on a two dice roll of 10 or better, with 2 plus 1 on the dice firing an enchanted arrow. Rangers are Hero-types with a +1 on attack dice.
Morale Rating — 20 Point Value — 20

SUPER HEROES: Few and far between, these fellows are one-man armies! (Particularly when armed with magical weaponry.) They act as Hero-types in all cases, except they are about twice as powerful. When a Super-hero approaches within his charge movement of the enemy, all such units must check morale as if they had taken excess casualties. A Super-hero, armed with a bow, shoots a dragon passing within range overhead out of the air and kills it on a two dice roll of 8 or better (7 or better with an enchanted arrow).
Morale Rating — 40 Point Value — 50

You can note here that the Point Value for a Super Hero is 2.5 times the Point Value for a Hero, while the Morale Rating is twice as much. There is a pdf edited by Aldaron titled "Using Chainmail to Resolve ODD Combats." I will add the link for that to this post later, I just have to locate it first.So check back in a couple of days for a link to where that file appears.

Saturday we will dive into the alternate combat system, which in truth is the primary system, as both Rob Kuntz (who was an OD&D play-tester) and Michael Monard (who was also a play-tester IIRC) say that Gygax did not use Chainmail for combat in OD&D.

An alternative system will be given later for those who prefer a different method.