Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 45 (Part A) of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Monsters & Treasure Volume 2.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
Now we will continue on with Explanations of Magic Items - specifically looking at Magic Swords:
Magic Swords are the elite weapon of all magical weapons as they are the only weapon which can attune itself perfectly to the wielder or seek to subvert and compromise the wielder. Either of these extremes is to further its own agenda. In my current campaign I allow certain Maces and War Hammer to be of this elite status, but those items are only usable by Paladins of which I have three types, but for about 40 years it was only the Sword that enjoyed this elite status among weapons.
I did and do use alignment in the campaign, alignment for living creatures is not some hard and fast straight jacket of forced behavior. Only Paladins ( which were not in the original three books) have a more strict code and to a lesser extent Clerics. I say to a lesser extent because the trope of corrupt clergy is unfortunately well established.
So the behavior of any character is often all over the place and very, very few people ever play the Lawful Alignment as most people are Neutral in the way that they play. Now in the 70's my group was mostly Lawful (70%) and they played that way with a high moral code of ethics the majority of the time. And the guy that always played Clerics could have played a Paladin with never a hiccup had he been interested. The other (30%) were unabashedly Neutral.
Not so with Swords, they will follow their alignment closely and consistently. So I encourage players to choose alignment carefully and strive to play that alignment, because if you get a Magic Sword that is Lawful and you said you were Lawful, but your play style turns out to be Neutral leaning Chaotic the Sword will refuse to be used by you and if it decides that you are of a different alignment, then things noted below will kick in.
This is the alignment distribution of Swords in the game, if you players are nearly all Neutral I would suggest switching the percentages for Lawful and Neutral. I do not do this, because I have an in game reason 65% of Swords are Lawful.
A interesting twist with life energy level drain Swords. I ruled that such Swords are never Neutral.
This also applies if your alignment changes after you have been using the Sword for awhile as noted above. So try not to claim an alignment that you really are not going to play. Again deviations here and there are expected and usually not a problem, unless you do something that is just the last straw or jumps the shark for your Sword.
Yes, non-player character was a term used in the original rules. As a group we did not use it though, we called them ref characters (RCs) (we thought it was easier to say and it rolled off the tongue.)
And yes, there can be real downsides to having a hireling or a henchman or a charmed person pick up a sword. Many, many possible downsides.
Here is a bit about how Intelligence and Egoism of the Sword act in play and how it can affect the person picking it up. It is best to confirm the alignment and then only have a hireling or a henchman or a charmed person pick up it up if you are giving it to them. For instance you if you have a charmed chaotic person who is fairly average you might want to give them a strong Lawful Sword. (Might is a big word in this case.) We will be looking at Egoism more in depth in Part B tomorrow.
This table is for determining the Intelligence - the mental power and communicative ability of the sword with 1-6 having no mental powers and no communicative ability. Now I had a specific flavor for my campaign so when using this table instead of rolling a d12 for the 1-12 range, I rolled a d6+6 for a range of 7-12, so all Swords would have at least one mental power and at least empathy as a communicative ability. I will talk more about this flavor when we look at Egoism. Take note of how powerful some Swords may be. Note also a roll of 12 you are sent straight to the Extraordinary Ability Table.
Primary Powers and Languages spoken appears to be a way to balance human Fighting Men out with Magic-Users and non-humans (later called demi-humans) to some extent, although I really do not think that was part of the thought process. (We will look at this more later on when I look at Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign) I have been looking at this over the years and am moving towards changing this quite a bit to have the powers relate more to fighting prowess and activated by the character advancing in Levels. Note on the Primary Powers table it is possible to be sent to the Extraordinary Ability Table Twice and not have any Primary Powers. If there is a Intelligence of 12 as noted above then you could be sent to the Extraordinary Ability Table Thrice.
With the languages spoken, note that it is possible for a Sword to speak up to 10 extra languages. If the Sword has telepathy it can translate silently for the character completely secretly. How good it can be if you are completely attuned to your Sword. Typically my players did not share (all) the powers their Sword had, although some would become obvious.
Note that here on the Extraordinary Ability Table, a Sword gets Abilities of many Magic-User Spells. If you were sent here twice from the Primary Powers table, if you rolled two 00, then the Sword could have up to six Extraordinary Abilities. If the Sword also had an Intelligence of 12, that would up the maximum possible to nine Extraordinary Abilities. That would be a vanishingly small possibility.
Note that all Primary and Extraordinary functions are passed on the wielder of the Sword and also note that with the exception of Healing and Strength there is no limit imposed on the number of uses of any of these functions. Rolling the same ability twice doubles everything about the ability.
I extended this so that if you rolled the same ability any multiple of times ( highly improbable) it would increase everything by that factor. I changed Healing to 6 points/6 times/day which is a big jump, but more in line with the other abilities. I capped the use of the no limit abilities to start at 1 use/day increasing one per two additional character levels until it reached a maximum of 4 uses/day. I also changed the strength from 1-4 times normal strength for 1-10 turns once per day to the following:
Roll Result
1 Twice Normal Strength
2 Ogre Strength
3 Troll Strength
4 Hill Giant Strength
5 Stone Giant Strength
6 Frost Giant Strength
7 Fire Giant Strength
8 Cloud Giant Strength
Usable once per day and duration of 3-6 turns (1d4+2 turns).
Tomorrow we will look at the Egoism of a Magic Sword.
Today is Part 45 (Part A) of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Monsters & Treasure Volume 2.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
Now we will continue on with Explanations of Magic Items - specifically looking at Magic Swords:
Magic Swords are the elite weapon of all magical weapons as they are the only weapon which can attune itself perfectly to the wielder or seek to subvert and compromise the wielder. Either of these extremes is to further its own agenda. In my current campaign I allow certain Maces and War Hammer to be of this elite status, but those items are only usable by Paladins of which I have three types, but for about 40 years it was only the Sword that enjoyed this elite status among weapons.
I did and do use alignment in the campaign, alignment for living creatures is not some hard and fast straight jacket of forced behavior. Only Paladins ( which were not in the original three books) have a more strict code and to a lesser extent Clerics. I say to a lesser extent because the trope of corrupt clergy is unfortunately well established.
So the behavior of any character is often all over the place and very, very few people ever play the Lawful Alignment as most people are Neutral in the way that they play. Now in the 70's my group was mostly Lawful (70%) and they played that way with a high moral code of ethics the majority of the time. And the guy that always played Clerics could have played a Paladin with never a hiccup had he been interested. The other (30%) were unabashedly Neutral.
Not so with Swords, they will follow their alignment closely and consistently. So I encourage players to choose alignment carefully and strive to play that alignment, because if you get a Magic Sword that is Lawful and you said you were Lawful, but your play style turns out to be Neutral leaning Chaotic the Sword will refuse to be used by you and if it decides that you are of a different alignment, then things noted below will kick in.
This is the alignment distribution of Swords in the game, if you players are nearly all Neutral I would suggest switching the percentages for Lawful and Neutral. I do not do this, because I have an in game reason 65% of Swords are Lawful.
A interesting twist with life energy level drain Swords. I ruled that such Swords are never Neutral.
This also applies if your alignment changes after you have been using the Sword for awhile as noted above. So try not to claim an alignment that you really are not going to play. Again deviations here and there are expected and usually not a problem, unless you do something that is just the last straw or jumps the shark for your Sword.
Yes, non-player character was a term used in the original rules. As a group we did not use it though, we called them ref characters (RCs) (we thought it was easier to say and it rolled off the tongue.)
And yes, there can be real downsides to having a hireling or a henchman or a charmed person pick up a sword. Many, many possible downsides.
Here is a bit about how Intelligence and Egoism of the Sword act in play and how it can affect the person picking it up. It is best to confirm the alignment and then only have a hireling or a henchman or a charmed person pick up it up if you are giving it to them. For instance you if you have a charmed chaotic person who is fairly average you might want to give them a strong Lawful Sword. (Might is a big word in this case.) We will be looking at Egoism more in depth in Part B tomorrow.
This table is for determining the Intelligence - the mental power and communicative ability of the sword with 1-6 having no mental powers and no communicative ability. Now I had a specific flavor for my campaign so when using this table instead of rolling a d12 for the 1-12 range, I rolled a d6+6 for a range of 7-12, so all Swords would have at least one mental power and at least empathy as a communicative ability. I will talk more about this flavor when we look at Egoism. Take note of how powerful some Swords may be. Note also a roll of 12 you are sent straight to the Extraordinary Ability Table.
Primary Powers and Languages spoken appears to be a way to balance human Fighting Men out with Magic-Users and non-humans (later called demi-humans) to some extent, although I really do not think that was part of the thought process. (We will look at this more later on when I look at Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign) I have been looking at this over the years and am moving towards changing this quite a bit to have the powers relate more to fighting prowess and activated by the character advancing in Levels. Note on the Primary Powers table it is possible to be sent to the Extraordinary Ability Table Twice and not have any Primary Powers. If there is a Intelligence of 12 as noted above then you could be sent to the Extraordinary Ability Table Thrice.
With the languages spoken, note that it is possible for a Sword to speak up to 10 extra languages. If the Sword has telepathy it can translate silently for the character completely secretly. How good it can be if you are completely attuned to your Sword. Typically my players did not share (all) the powers their Sword had, although some would become obvious.
Note that here on the Extraordinary Ability Table, a Sword gets Abilities of many Magic-User Spells. If you were sent here twice from the Primary Powers table, if you rolled two 00, then the Sword could have up to six Extraordinary Abilities. If the Sword also had an Intelligence of 12, that would up the maximum possible to nine Extraordinary Abilities. That would be a vanishingly small possibility.
Note that all Primary and Extraordinary functions are passed on the wielder of the Sword and also note that with the exception of Healing and Strength there is no limit imposed on the number of uses of any of these functions. Rolling the same ability twice doubles everything about the ability.
I extended this so that if you rolled the same ability any multiple of times ( highly improbable) it would increase everything by that factor. I changed Healing to 6 points/6 times/day which is a big jump, but more in line with the other abilities. I capped the use of the no limit abilities to start at 1 use/day increasing one per two additional character levels until it reached a maximum of 4 uses/day. I also changed the strength from 1-4 times normal strength for 1-10 turns once per day to the following:
Roll Result
1 Twice Normal Strength
2 Ogre Strength
3 Troll Strength
4 Hill Giant Strength
5 Stone Giant Strength
6 Frost Giant Strength
7 Fire Giant Strength
8 Cloud Giant Strength
Usable once per day and duration of 3-6 turns (1d4+2 turns).
Tomorrow we will look at the Egoism of a Magic Sword.
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