2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Seventy

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

Today is Part 15 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

Today we will look at the 2nd Level Magic-User Spells:

Detect Invisible (Objects): A spell to find secreted treasure hidden by an Invisibility spell (see below). It will also locate invisible creatures. Durations: 6 turns. Range: 1” × the level of the Magic-User casting it, i.e. a “Wizard” would have a range of 11”, more if he was above the base value.

This had a duration of 6 turns, so I ruled that it was effective over an area 10 feet wide within the range of the Magic-User and during that time it could be moved around to search a considerable area. Bear in mind it was "detect" and not "locate."

Levitate: This spell lifts the caster, all motion being in the vertical plane; however, the user could, for example, levitate to the ceiling, and move horizontally by use of his hands. Duration: 6 turns + the level of the user. Range (of levitation): 2”/level of Magic-User, with upwards motion at 6”/turn.

You descended at the same rate that you ascended so it was vitally important to make sure you had allowed sufficient time to return to the ground before the spell ran out or suffer falling damage. Accurate tracking of time was quite important. No extra weight could be carried beyond the normal clothing, a wand or stave or scroll and small items. Constant concentration was not necessary, so you could do other things; however, concentration was required to stop or start an ascent or to change over to descent and to stop or start descent.

Phantasmal Forces: The creation of vivid illusions of nearly anything the user envisions (a projected mental image so to speak). As long as the caster concentrates on the spell, the illusion will continue unless touched by some living creature, so there is no limit on duration, per se. Damage caused to viewers of a Phantasmal Force will be real if the illusion is believed to be real. Range: 24”.

So yes, Phantasmal Forces can kill if the level of belief is high enough. We did a savings throw vs spell altered by the wisdom score. For example a 6th Level Magic-User saves vs spells by rolling 12 or higher. So with a 13 Wisdom or higher, it reduces the saving throw target from 12 to 11. But with a Wisdom of 8 or less the saving throw target is increased from a 12 to a 13.

Locate Object: In order for this spell to be effective it must be cast with certain knowledge of what is to be located. Thus, the exact nature, dimensions, coloring, etc. of some magical item would have to be known in order for the spell to work. Well known objects such as a flight of stairs leading upwards can be detected with this spell however. The spell gives the user the direction of the object desired but not the distance. The desired object must be within range. Range: 6” + 1“/level of the Magic-User employing the spell, i.e. a “Necromancer” has a 16” range.

This spell pulled their fat out of the fire on numerous occasions.

Invisibility: A spell which lasts until it is broken by the user or by some outside force (remember that as in CHAINMAIL, a character cannot remain invisible and attack). It affects only the person or thing upon whom or which it is cast. Range: 24”

In combination with a Silence Spell(an added spell), we had many a plate clad Fighting-Man that walked right up to an enemy and subdued/captured that enemy. But sometimes the wind shifted and then they could smell the approaching Fighting-Man.

Wizard Lock: Similar to a Hold Portal, this spell lasts indefinitely. It can be opened by a Knock without breaking the spell. A Wizard Lock can be passed through without a spell of any kind by a Magic-User three levels above the one who placed the spell.

I always thought it was pretty sweet that you could open it with a Knock spell without ending the spell, as was the three levels above the caster power.

Detect Evil: A spell to detect evil thought or intent in any creature or evilly enchanted object. Note that poison, for example, is neither good nor evil. Duration: 2 turns. Range: 6”.

Some creatures such as Evil High Priests and Vampires were always detectable. Orcs, Ogres, Dragons, and many others might or might not be detected depending on circumstances. Remember in the original game, very few things were all evil all the time, very few.

ESP: A spell which allows the user to detect the thoughts (if any) of whatever lurks behind doors or in the darkness. It can penetrate solid rock up to about 2’ in thickness, but a thin coating of lead will prevent its penetration. Duration: 12 turns. Range: 6”

Varied from highly useful or not at all depending on what was on the other side of the door and what the door was made of. The deeper you went into the dungeon the more likely the character would be saving some of these for use once you got there.

Continual Light: This spell creates a light wherever the caster desires. It sheds a circle of illumination 24” in diameter, but does not equal full daylight. It continues to shed light until dispelled. Range: 12”.

Unlike the Light Spell, this one was not tied to the caster and it was of indefinite duration. So it was cast on stones and other objects to use as a non-smokey light source in dungeons and at night. This could also be cast specifically at eye level to your opponents and in this way you could blind a lot of opponents at the same time. I ruled 75% chance of blinding each individual the first row, and 50% chance of blinding each individual in the second row.

Knock: A spell which opens secret doors, held portals, doors locked by magic, barred or otherwise secured gates, etc. Range: 6”. 

I was surprised at how long it took the players to figure out that it could be used to open a locked chest. Of course it also set off any traps automatically on doing so. Even that 6" range was not enough at times. Too, when you opened the chest, the trap was often not directly on the chest but somewhere else in the room often just inside the doorway to the room.

Tomorrow we will look at the 3rd Level Spells.

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

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

Today is Part 14 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

Today we will start off looking at the original eight 1st Level Magic-User spells:

Again we will note that there are only eight spells, which as I said before is the fewest of any level. That always struck me as rather odd, you would think that the lowest level spells would be the most numerous. But first here are the spells:

Detect Magic: A spell to determine if there has been some enchantment laid on a person, place or thing. It has a limited range and short duration. It is useful, for example, to discover if some item is magical, a door has been “held” or “wizard locked,” etc.

This is a very useful spell for making sure you do not miss something important too, but when you only get one spell per day at 1st level players tend to go for the Sleep spell which we will look at in a moment. For my group bitd with multiple magic-users in the party, the players chose to diversify and not all take the same spell some of the time. The longer we played the more they coordinated the spells they were taking.

Hold Portal: A spell to hold a door, gate or the like. It is similar to a locking spell (see below) but it is not permanent. Roll two dice to determine the duration of the spell in turns. Dispel Magic (see below) will immediately negate it, a strong antimagical creature will shatter it and a Knock (see below) will open it.

This is of great benefit if you are fleeing something in a dungeon and it can provide the time you need to make your escape.

Read Magic: The means by which the incantations on an item or scroll are read. Without such a spell or similar device magic is unintelligible to even a Magic-User. The spell is of short duration (one or two readings being the usual limit).

IMO this spell means that without casting Read Magic first, scrolls are unusable by Magic-Users and then it is of short duration. So what I did originally was to rule that this was less than a 1st Level Spell (we did not use the term Cantrip at that time, I called it a Lesser Spell) and that a Magic-User could cast this Lesser Spell twice per day at 1st Level in addition to his other regular 1st Level Spell and at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th Level a Magic-User gained an additional casting of this Lesser Spell.

Read Languages: The means by which directions and the like are read, particularly on treasure maps. It is otherwise like the Read Magic spell above.

We made no change to this one and just ran it as is.

Protection from Evil: This spell hedges the conjurer round with a magic circle to keep out attacks from enchanted monsters. It also serves as an “armor” from various evil attacks, adding a +1 to all saving throws and taking a –1 from hit dice of evil opponents. (Note that this spell is not cumulative in effect with magic armor and rings, although it will continue to keep out enchanted monsters.) Duration: 6 turns.

Our interpretation of this was more powerful that most. It lasts 6 turns and was not subject to Dispel Magic and did not prevent the character from taking offensive action. It also allowed you to, for instance, face a Medusa and not worry about being turned to stone. A Fighting-Man could advance in front of the Magic-User after the spell was cast and use a sword or other weapon to attack the Medusa if it were in reach or he could use missile weapons as long as he stayed within the circle.

Light: A spell to cast light in a circle 3” in diameter, not equal to full daylight. It lasts for a number of turns equal to 6 + the number of levels of the user; thus, a 7th-level Magic-User would cast the spell for 13 turns.

Our interpretation of this was that the spell was centered on the caster and it could not be cast onto an object instead. So no light stones with this spell. 

Also here let me make a note about duration. For combat a melee round is assumed to be 1 minute and there are 10 melee rounds to a turn or 10 minutes. We used this time frame for spell duration, but we did not use it for combat or for movement. For combat I ran 6 sec melee rounds and 1 minute (60 sec) turns. So effectively 1 spell turn is equal to 10 melee or combat turns. There will be more discussion of this when we get to Book 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. At the end of this series I will post some of the things that we used bitd and how we ran it.

Charm Person: This spell applies to all two-legged, generally mammalian figures near to or less than man-size, excluding all monsters in the “Undead” class but including Sprites, Pixies, Nixies, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and Gnolls. If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the “charm” is dispelled (Dispel Magic). Range: 12”.

If successful - so we give these monsters the same saving throw as a Fighting-Man would get.

Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2–16 1st-level types (hit dice of up to 1 + 1), from 2–12 2nd-level types (hit dice of up to 2 + 1), from 1–6 3rd-level types, and but 1 4th-level type (up to 4 + 1 hit dice). The spell always affects up to the number of creatures determined by the dice. If more than the number rolled could be affected, determine which “sleep” by random selection. Range: 24”.

Always affects - i.e. no saving throw and the players loved it, except when it happened to them. 

When casting this spell most people roll once (2-16) for the total levels affected and then apply them. For example if you rolled a 16 and there were four 1st level monsters, they go to sleep. But 16-4 is 12 so the three 2nd level monsters go to sleep. But 12-6 is 6 so the one 3rd level monster goes to sleep. But 6-3 is 3 and so it falls short of putting the one 4th level monster to sleep. 

We did not do it that way, we rolled 2-16 (2d8) to see how many 1st level monsters were affected, then we made a second roll of 2-12 (2d6) to see how many 2nd level monsters were also affected and then a third roll of 1-6 (1d6) to see how many 3rd level monsters were affected and then if there were any 4th level monsters - one of those determined at random would also go to sleep. I still run it that way and IMO that is what the text is describing. Though everyone I have ever discussed it with disagrees, I am unswayed.

We also added some of our own spells to the list, but I will look at those after we look at spells from the Supplements.

As a teaser, one Lesser Spell that I added was Light Fire, once per day (twice per day at 4th level, three times per day at 7th and four times per day at 10th) you could use it to light up to 24 candles or one campfire or as an attack for one point of damage (for which you had to roll to hit at a +4 bonus to hit).

We will move on to second level spells tomorrow.

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

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

Today is Part 13 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

So today we are going to move on to Saving Throws. The main thing that I would do if I were going to reformat the Saving Throw Table, is I would group each class together so that it would be even quicker to read. First here is the table:

Remember in the Attack Matrix how Fighting-Men advanced 1-3, 4-6 etc and Clerics advanced 1-4, 5-8 and Magic-Users advanced 1-5, 6-10? That progression is also used in the Saving Throw Matrix. So the Fighting-Man Saving Throw Target Number changes more frequently, it does not mean that they end up with the best saves in each and every category. The average save at best for Fighting-Men is 5.4, for Clerics it is 6.0 and for Magic-Users it is 5.4. So if I were going to redo the table, I might tweak the numbers a little to benefit the Cleric. This table is simple to use, you just go to the table and read the number, quick and easy with generally no adjustments.

Some of these are success or failure, save or die, save or turn to stone, etc. Others are full damage or half damage. Some do not like the way this works, I like it and have no real problem with it. 

Now we will briefly look at the Spells Table. For Magic-Users in OD&D there are Spell Levels 1 through 6 and for Clerics there are Spell Levels 1 through 5. More spells and more spell levels would be added later. For Magic-Users oddly enough there were only eight 1st Level Spells, the least of any level. For instance 3rd level and 5th level spells had 14 spells each. With 2nd level having 10 spells, while 4th and 6th level have 12 spells each.

Clerics on the other hand had only four each 2nd and 3rd level spells and six each 1st, 4th and 5th level spells.

We will come back to these tables tomorrow, because before the spell descriptions are presented we next find the Clerics versus Undead Monsters table.

Here the rolls are made with two six-sided dice (2d6). As you can see there are three possible results. It is not stated, but implied that you roll two six-sided dice (2d6) to find out how many are effected. Later other undead were added and we revised the table to include them and we extended the table from an 8th level Cleric up to a 10th level Cleric.

The next statement is looking back at the above table and ahead toward the spell descriptions:

A full explanation of each spell follows. Note that underlined Clerical spells are reversed by evil Clerics. Also, note the Clerics versus Undead Monsters table, indicating the strong effect of the various clerical levels upon the undead; however, evil Clerics do not have this effect, the entire effect being lost.

So it is noted that evil Clerics,  cannot turn or dispel/dissolve undead. I created a referee table for evil Clerics who could, depending on their level and the undead, control undead up to two dice in number or no effect. An Evil High Priest which I made equivalent to a 10th Level Cleric could create undead of the same types that the 10th Level Cleric could dispel or dissolve. The Evil High Priest could dispel or dissolve with the same roll and then up to two dice in number. I did not give any evil Cleric the create Undead power, just the Evil High Priest.

Tomorrow we will start looking at the spell descriptions.

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

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

Today is Part 12 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

OK, so today we are going to look at the Alternative Combat System.  A couple of things about this, it is really not the alternate system, it is the primary system. To explain: 1. Arneson used the Chainmail system briefly and the players (now that they were playing just one character and not an army) did not like one hit and you are done, since they were not starting as the Chainmail Super Hero, they were starting off as normal men(i.e. 1st level). So this was abandoned quickly and a new system devised. 2. Per Rob Kuntz, Michael Mornard and others who were there, Gygax never used the Chainmail system during or after the play-testing of OD&D.

So you might ask, why is the alternate system called the alternate system if in fact it was really the primary system. Easy answer, Gygax in writing OD&D down substituted a lot of his own mechanics for the ones that Arneson used. This resulted in several things, one is that OD&D (at least the first three books) do not use any percentiles which Arneson was fond of, using a 20-sided die roll instead (d20), second is that a lot of Chainmail was incorporated back into OD&D as compared to Blackmoor and a lot of references to Chainmail were added. For instance if you use initiative, it is very helpful to refer to Chainmail. By leaving some of the information out and referring to Chainmail, Gygax hoped to and did sell more copies of Chainmail. He could have just added a very few pages to OD&D, but he chose not to and that is obviously the reason. 

As another example of this, you are urged to go get the Outdoor Survival board game which was made by someone else. This could have been avoided by simply adding a couple of paragraphs to OD&D and a folded simple black and white sample map to the box set. My take on this is that it was easy to throw a few sales to Avalon Hill and that everyone that did not go that route could figure it out. I think that Gygax assumed that anyone who did not get Outdoor Survival, likely did not need it. Remember that this was written for an intended audience of other wargamers and the penetration of the non-wargamer market was unexpected.

We continue:

ALTERNATIVE COMBAT SYSTEM:
This system is based upon the defensive and offensive capabilities of the combatants; such things as speed, ferocity, and weaponry of the monster attacking are subsumed in the matrixes. There are two charts, one for men versus men or monsters and one for monsters (including kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc.) versus men.

Although it is fairly easy to assume in the context leading up to this part of the rules that attacks would generally do 1-6 points of damage each, it was not stated as such. It was not until the 5th printing that the following was added below this table:

All attacks which score hits do 1–6 points damage unless otherwise noted. 

Also while it is not noted, it should be obvious that you need to roll the target number in the table or better with a 20-sided die (d20) in order to successfully hit.

A few other things to note. It has become fashionable to refer to normal men and women as zero level characters, but this is not the case at all. Note above that normal men are equal to 1st level fighters as regards the "Alternate Combat System'.

Chainmail Reference: But the Fighting Capability of Magic-Users and Clerics in Chainmail terms is less than everyone else, since 1st level Fighting-Men are Man+1 and Magic-Users and Clerics are only equal to one Man not one Man+1. But in the alternate system they are the same as everyone else.

Also of course in the alternate system the progression is 

Level 1-3 4-6 7-9 10-12 13-15 16 & up Fighting Men

Level 1-4 5-8 9-12 13-16 16+ Clerics 

Level 1-5 6-10 11-15 16 & up Magic-Users

so the fighting ability of Clerics lags a little and of Magic-Users it lags quite a bit.

One thing to note is that some monsters are less then one hit die, so anything one hit die or less is equal to a 1st level character or a normal man. A monster that is 1+1 hit die is a step better than a normal man. Now it becomes clear the advantage that monsters have in contrast to Fighting-Men, a 2 or 3 hit die monster is equal in attack capability to a 4th to 6th level Fighting Man, a 4  or 5 or 6 hit die monster is equal to a 7th to 9th level Fighting Man. In fact a Fighting-Man does not gain a comparative advantage until he reaches 16th level and up needing a 5 to hit Armor Class 2, when 11 hit die and up monsters still need a 7 to hit Armor Class 2. Because at 15th level the Fighting-Man is still lagging behind an 11 hit die monster. As an example if you are a 15th Level Fighting-Man in the original game, you would need a +1 to Hit Magic Weapon to be equal to an 11 hit die monster and a +2 weapon to gain the advantage.

Also note this:

All base scores to hit will be modified by magic armor and weaponry. Missile hits will be scored by using the above tables at long range and decreasing Armor Class by 1 at medium and 2 at short range.

You might ask why is this note only applied to the Monsters Attacking Table and not to the Men Attacking Table. Three reasons come to mind, one is that it just was overlooked that some monsters might be wearing Magic Armor or using Magic Weapons. The second option would be, it was assumed that monsters would not be using Magic Armor or Weapons. The third option is the one that we went with, we just assumed it applied to both tables and went on with the game. 

Now the other thing is how do you apply it, we did not subtract the +1 (or better) for magic armor from the to hit roll, we applied it to improving the Armor Class, so AC 2 became AC 1 and so on and extended the table(not by writing a new table, just adjusting on the fly). That way of applying the bonus is how it was done when later you officially had negative AC and Thac0 enter later versions of the game..

The second thing of note is that missile weapons used the above table to long range and you adjusted the AC at medium and short range. For example at Medium Range an AC of 6 would become an AC of 5 for the table and at Short Range an AC of 6 would become AC 4.

Also note is that this is the original descending Armor Class system where the numbers decrease from AC 9 to AC 2 as Armor Class improves. Some other games and later versions of D&D use Ascending AC where the number gets bigger as the AC improves. I have not changed and will not, I like the original system and am thoroughly familiar with it and see no need to change and it is part of the flavor of the game. A lot of mechanics changes over the years are to "make the counting easier", my question is always "Why?" I think it is a good thing to play games where you have to count quickly in your head. IMO, even these days, that is a useful ability to have. YMMV.

Tomorrow we will get into the Saving Throw Matrix and possibly start on looking at Magic-User Spells.

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.

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

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

Today is Part 10 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

So to continue with more comments from this section. Here is more about Experience Points, Concepts and the tables we previously looked at:

Experience Points: Experience points are awarded to players by the referee with appropriate bonuses or penalties for prime requisite scores. As characters meet monsters in mortal combat and defeat them, and when they obtain various forms of treasure (money, gems, jewelry, magical items, etc.), they gain “experience.” This adds to their experience point total, gradually moving them upwards through the levels. Gains in experience points will be relative; thus an 8th-level Magic-User operating on the 5th dungeon level would be awarded 5/8 experience. Let us assume he gains 7,000 Gold Pieces by defeating a troll (which is a 7th-level monster, as it has over 6 hit dice). Had the monster been only a 5th-level one, experience would be awarded on a 5/8 basis as already stated, but as the monster guarding the treasure was a 7th-level one, experience would be awarded on a 7/8 basis thus; 7,000 GP + 700 for killing the troll = 7,700 divided by 8 = 962.5 × 7 = 6,037.5. 

This entire bit about adjusting XP based on the character level, the level of the dungeon and the level of the monster is in my mind an unnecessary complication and assumes things about the difficulty of the encounter that are not in evidence and, in fact, will vary widely from table to table. So I have never used this part of it at all. 

Experience points are never awarded above a 1 for 1 basis, so even if a character defeats a higher-level monster he will not receive experience points above the total of treasure combined with the monster’s kill value. It is also recommended that no more experience points be awarded for any single adventure than will suffice to move the character upwards one level. Thus a “veteran” (1st level) gains what would ordinarily be 5,000 experience points; however, as this would move him upwards two levels, the referee should award only sufficient points to bring him to “warrior” (2nd level), say 3,999 if the character began with 0 experience points.

I never adjusted up or down. I did not advance someone two levels in one adventure. I award XP when the party returns to town or a home base. IMC XP is not lost, but will roll over into a later adventure(s), until such time as it can all be used without going up more than one level.

Spells & Levels: The number above each column is the spell level (complexity, a somewhat subjective determination on the part of your authors). The number in each column opposite each applicable character indicates the number of spells of each level that can be used (remembered during any single adventure) by that character. Spells are listed and explained later. A spell used once may not be reused in the same day.

To clarify, I used it this way, if you have one 1st level spell slot available you could memorize a sleep spell and use it once only. If you have two spell slots you could memorize a sleep spell for each slot and use it once for each slot for a total of two uses or you could memorize two different spells and use each one, once.

I have heard of people saying no, even if you get four - 1st level spells each day you can only use each spell once, so you have to memorize four different spells. I have never subscribed to that.

On another note it says "spells that can be used (remembered during any single adventure) by that character." Our adventures could last up to two or three or four game months at a time, before returning to town or a home base, so we never did this. From the very beginning I ruled that magic-users and clerics could get all new spells each day as long as they got at least 6 or more hours sleep and took one hour to memorize spells each morning. This meant that they usually took 1st watch and then bedded down and were never on 2nd or 3rd watch. When the parties were much larger, they usually opted for four watches..

My group normally camped for 14 hours which included evening meal, setting up camp, three - watches and a breakfast and memorization time for the spells, etc. We used a 28 hour day, so that left 14 hours for travel and adventure each day. When a party went into a dungeon, a sizable group of henchman were left to guard the livestock. In wilderness adventures the most of the henchman would fight, and a few always went into the dungeons to carry equipment and would fight only if they had too.

There was no guidance given for extending the "Levels and Number of Experience Points Necessary to Attain Them" - table, but since we only went to 10th level that was simple to do.

Tomorrow we will dive into:

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

Saturday we will dive into:

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

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

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

Today is Part 9 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

Today we are going to look at the Tables for "Statistics Regarding Classes":

This first table is for Fighting-Men and again the level titles are listed. I do not know about anyone else but we used these in game, referring to the Level Name rather than Level 1 or 5 or 8. Instead of 10th Level Lord, we used Lord Baron.

A Veteran was 1+1 dice or 1d6+1, but a Warrior was 2 dice or 2d6. At 5th level the +1 showed back up and then at 7th level it was 7+1, 8+2, 9+3 and then 10+1. I gave them a minimum of a +1 at every level and 10th level instead of 10+1 I made it 10+3. There are rules that we get to tomorrow about progressions for levels about what is in the tables. For Fighting-Men I ignored that and even though we did not play above 10th level, I extended the table to grant Fighting-Men and Additional Hit die up to 14th level at 14+3 or 14d6+3 and from that point on would have added one Hit Point per level plus any Constitution Bonus at each level which would have been for some an additional Hit Point..

*The Fighting Capability column I will look at in the post on Friday.*

And of course Fighting-Men do not get spells.

We typically retired characters at 8th to 10th level max. So we did not have to worry about what to call a 12th level Wizard and since we stopped at 10th level we replaced Necromancer with Wizard.. The Magic-Users Dice for Accumulative Hits, I left as is.

*The Fighting Capability column I will look at in the post on Friday.*

The last column is the Number of Spells and the Level of the Spells available at each Level of the character. In OD&D spells only go to Levels 1-6 for Spell Level for Magic-Users. At 1st Level they get One First Level Spell and at 12th Level they get One Sixth Level Spell. Since we only played to 10th Level I deleted the first line of the spell column and shifted the column up one step which meant the Magic-User got 2 spells at 1st Level. At 10th level instead of 4,4,3,3,2,0 for spells I changed that line to 5,4,3,3,2,1.

We replaced Patriarch with Archbishop, Patriarch 9th Level with Cardinal and then used Patriarch for 10th Level.

The Clerics Dice for Accumulative Hits, I changed 9th level from 7+1 to 8 and 10th level from 7+2 to 8+2 to make them a bit tougher and had we played to higher levels I would have given them 11 dice at 16th Level versus 9+2 for the Magic-Users and 14+5 for the Fighting-Men.

*The Fighting Capability column I will look at in the post on Friday.*

The last column is the Number of Spells and the Level of the Spells available at each Level of the character. In OD&D spells only go to Levels 1-5 for Spell Level for Clerics so the last column is always a zero.. At 1st Level they get zero spells and at 10th level then get 3,3,3,3,3,0. So again since we only played to 10th Level I deleted the first line of the spell column and shifted the column up one step which meant the Cleric would get one spell at 1st Level and then added a line for 10th Level that read 4,4,3,3,3,0.

One thing to bear in mind about some of my increases is that my campaign was pretty deadly, so even though the characters avoided combat by using other options at every opportunity, if they did get into a battle it was always very tough. Even though the Claw, Claw, Bite attack was not present in OD&D and did not appear officially until the Greyhawk Supplement, I used it from the beginning in 1975, that is one of the ways I refereed differently from my friend the other referee. It made trolls much more deadly. I will talk about that more when I get into Book 2 - Monsters & Treasure.

Tomorrow we will look at most of the rest of this section and then Friday we will look at the Fighting Capability column.

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

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

Today is Part 8 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

Before we start today, I want to remind you that the game engine is Arneson, but many of the mechanics in OD&D are not the mechanics of Blackmoor. OD&D is the Gygax interpretation of Blackmoor and Arneson. So some things such as spells the "Vancian" fire and forget trope is two things. One it is a reinterpretation of how spells worked in the fiction of Jack Vance and it is also considerably different from spell use in Blackmoor, but more on that later.

Next up is Levels and the Experience Points needed to Level Up. Btw the common use of XP for Experience Points was not actually written anywhere in OD&D.

Now looking at the table above a few things (once I learned to play) struck me as rather odd. It is obvious (at least IMO) that the XP tables are not even remotely balanced at all. While I really do not care about balance that much, I am going to comment on it here because it does address some of the complaints about Magic-Users being so weak at low levels compared to Fighting-Men and then at high levels it is reversed and Fighting-Men are the weak ones, at least that is what everyone says.

So the "weakest" Class(M-U) requires the most XP to go from 1st Level to 2nd Level. As a side note the Class that gets to  fight and cast spells requires the least XP to make that jump.

So the XP for each class doubles each time up to 5th level where respectively they require:

Fighting-Men (16,000) Magic-User (20,000) and Clerics (12,000)

Then at 6th level the Fighting-Men doubles again going up by 16,000, but the Magic-User gets less steep of a climb going up by 15,000, while the C starts to get steeper by going up 13,000.

At 7th level the Fighting-Men doubles again going up by 32,000, while the Magic-User (who is getting a lot more powerful now) only goes up another 15,000 and the Clerics doubles going up by 25,000.

From this point it really gets worse, the Fighting-Men goes from 64,000 to 120,000, but the Magic-User only goes up another 25,000 and the Cleric doubles going up from 50,000 to 100,000.

Now that is as far as the table goes for Clerics. But for a Fighting-Men to go from 8th level to 9th requires 120,000 XP, but for a Magic-User it only requires another 25,000. Yes a Magic-User can reach 9th level, before a Fighting-Men reaches 8th level.

Now a little later it says:

Levels: There is no theoretical limit to how high a character may progress, i.e. 20th-level Lord, 20th-level Wizard, etc. Distinct names have only been included for the base levels, but this does not influence progression.

But they give no guidance on the XP needed to reach higher levels so each table had to decide what they thought would work best.

Now how would you change this if you wanted to, especially given how the Magic-User power level ramps up. Let us assume that you keep the Fighting-Men progression as it is. Here is one possible way that I whipped up, I think it would work, although it would need to be play tested. I think it would address the perceived power imbalance. Bitd I never worried about it, no one complained and since it was not broke, I saw no need to fix it. But for those who think it is broke, here is a potential fix.

Now this gives the Magic-User an easier path at the beginning, but then as they become more powerful it slows them down. Clerics keep some of their advantage at the beginning and then I brought them into line with the Fighting-Men.

Tomorrow we will get into Hit Point progression for each class and the aquistion of spells at each level.

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

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

Today is Part 7 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

Today we will talk about Non-player characters(NPCs) although we never used that term even though it was in the rule books. The reason is that the players never read the rule books, so the players called them ref characters and so we referee always referred to them that way too. FWIW, I always preferred the term ref characters. We also for that matter never used the term Player Characters (PCs), we either said what is your character doing often by character name since we played 16-24 hours a week or we just said what are you doing often blurring the distinction between player and character, it was fast and it IMO aided immersion, although of course the word immersion for what we experienced was never used by any of us at the time.

As an aside see this post by Rob Kuntz for more about immersion. Note that he says that this is something that Dave Arneson showed he and Gary Gygax. To me this is the intuitive and natural way to referee OD&D.

Next we have:

Non-Player Characters:
In all probability the referee will find it beneficial to allow participants in the campaign to “hire into service” one or more characters. At times this may be nothing more than a band of mercenaries hired to participate in and share the profits from some adventure. However it is likely that players will be desirous of acquiring a regular entourage of various character types, monsters, and an army of some form. Non-player characters can be hired as follows:

Then there is  some detail about who can be hired saying "only the lowest level of character types can be hired." Then it goes into how to go about it and what it will cost. It talks about monsters being lured into service or being Charmed. Men found in dungeons are considered monsters and in this way higher level characters can enter service. The a reaction roll is made with Charisma adjustments to determine success.

Capture of Non-Player Monsters: Morale dice can cause a man or intelligent monster to attempt to surrender or become subdued. When this happens an offer of service can be made (assuming that communication is possible) as outlined above. Subdued monsters will obey for a time without need to check their reactions, and such monsters are salable (see Book II).

Very important point here monsters are not programmed killbots that always fight to the death. Players benefit by accepting surrender and using available non-slaughter options. It is implicit that characters are also not killbots.

In my campaign, characters develop a reputation. A reputation of never showing mercy means you will not be shown mercy. A good reputation means that characters do not have to fight to the death, that surrender may also be an option. This is a feature of the rules that is somewhat explicit and strongly implicit.

Loyalty of Non-Player Characters (Including Monsters): Men, dwarves and elves will serve as retainers with relative loyalty so long as they receive their pay regularly, are treated fairly, are not continually exposed to extra-hazardous duty, and receive bonuses when they are taking part in some dangerous venture.

It then goes into guidelines for the referee to determine Loyalty and Morale of retainers and notes that this is not player knowledge, the referee keeps this on his side of the table.

Non-player characters and men-at-arms will have to make morale checks (using the above reaction table or “Chainmail”) whenever a highly dangerous or unnerving situation arises. Poor morale will mean that those in question will not perform as expected.

Periodic re-checks of loyalty should be made. Length of service, rewards, etc. will bring additional pluses. Poor treatment will bring minuses.

This IMO is a vital part of the game(that is often ignored) and players that think retainers are meat shields will develop a reputation and find it nearly impossible and increasingly expensive to hire retainers. Having all your retainers killed, but you come back without a scratch is not looked at favorably.

Relatives: The referee may allow players to designate one relative of his character to inherit his possessions if for any reason the participant unexpectedly disappears, with or without “death” being positively established, for a period of one game month, let us say.

This is discussed in excellent detail IMO with the positives and possible negatives of this practice highlighted. But it also is one way to put a stop to the practice of a characters body being looted by his "friends." Of course even without this, I have had some players who will convince the party that this needs to go back to the characters family along with a portion of any loot. Those players understood Lawful alignment and also maintaining a good reputation for being good,  honest, kind and ethical. Yes, those players got a recruitment bonus and a haggling bonus for that type of play. Those they hired also got a loyalty bonus and a morale bonus.

Characters without a relative will lose all their possessions should they disappear and not return before whatever period is designated as establishing death.

Some characters would not have any known relatives. Usually in this case a donation for the poor would be made and also to the temple in the characters name. Yes, that good reputation thing.

It is interesting to watch the effect of this type of play by the adults in the game on any children (of any age) that are in the game. While I have not encountered it at my table I have heard of games where the adults play characters as amoral monsters. I really hope there are no kids in those games.

Next up is:

BASIC EQUIPMENT AND COSTS:
It will be necessary for players to equip their characters with various basic items of equipment. Selection of items is strictly up to the players, and Gold Pieces are taken away accordingly (players may sell to one another, of course, and then Gold Pieces would be transferred).

Then follows a table of items and the cost which is all on the gold standard. I converted this over to the silver standard and also added a fair number of items to this table. Back in the day this table was in the Reference Sheets that came with the books and we would pass it around for the players to use. But since that would cause the Reference Sheets to wear quickly, we would usually hand copy it several times over a couple of weeks to have several copies to pass around and preserve the Reference Sheets. These days of course you just print them off and pass them around.

Up next was encumbrance which is the weight that can be carried measured in Gold Pieces. Weights are assigned to each item in Gold Pieces. A table provides Load in Gold Pieces to movement rates and gives examples too. All coins were the same weight (Copper, Silver or Gold) and they were huge coins. Although not stated here, you could figure out that 10 coins were intended to be a pound. I redid all of this with encumbrance in pounds and coins at more historically accurate weights.

Tomorrow we will look at Levels, XP points and other things about classes and advancement.

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

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

Today is Part 6 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

As we get further into this we find this:

Changing Character Class: While changing class (for other than elves) is not recommended, the following rule should be applied: In order for men to change class they must have a score of 16 or better in the prime requisite (see below) of the class they wish to change to, and this score must be unmodified. A Cleric with a “strength” of 15, for example, could not become a Fighting-Man. In any event Magic-Users cannot become Clerics and vice-versa.

While I have never really had players who wanted to change class there is another issue that I will get into later in this series about elves compared to the other races and about changing class, multi-classing, dual-classing and such things.

Next up is Determination of Abilities:

Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role.  Categories of ability are: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. Each player notes his appropriate scores, obtains a similar roll of three dice to determine the number of Gold Pieces (Dice score × 10) he starts with, and then opts for a role.

Did you catch that? The original rules specify that the referee rolls up all the abilities for the players. I can tell you that we never did that even one time bitd at our tables. Everyone always rolled up their own characters. We did however roll 3d6 in order and used them that way. If you had rolls of 8, 3, 3, 5, 4 and 6 you did not complain or whine about it, you played it. Part of that was the style of play. One there were no class minimums and two the game tested the player much more than the ability stats. So while you could play a three Intelligence as a complete moron, that was a choice not a requirement and it was the same across the board. Since it was voluntary, quite a bit of the time we played to the stats; however, no one ever let that effect party survival when it was on the line.

The thing we did not do was use the stat as a reason to be a jerk. I do not recall ever hearing the phrase, "But that's what my character would do!" used at all, let alone as an excuse for being a jerk at the table. IMHO people who do that are not your friends and they are not people you want to play with. You may feel differently and I have no problem with that at your table.

Our game involved a lot of laughter, joking, puns and kidding around. But it was a lot like real life, when things get serious, all that stops and you all get serious. So our game ran the gamut of things just like we did outside the game. One moment we could be in a room full of laughter and the next moment someone got a call about a death in the family and we all banded together. Someone volunteered to let their professors know where the person was, some of us piled in a car to drive the person two hours to an airport to fly home and went back to pick them up when they returned, etc. In game worked like that too. I have heard some games are 100% slapstick and jokes and other games are 100% super serious. We were more ourselves in that the game was more of a real life mix of how people really interact. Our immersion in the game was very deep and could be a roller coaster of emotion from joy to fear. Sometimes when they were in a dungeon the room would get quiet and you could have heard a pin drop with people literally all leaning forward totally focused.

It gives an example character and comments that the player would have progressed faster as a Cleric with that Wisdom of 13 (5% bonus to XP) but the player went with their preference of a magic user with an Intelligence of 11 (no XP bonus).

Next is the Explanation of Abilities which features no real surprises that I am aware of. It does state for XP only you can swap certain scores around to adjust your prime requisite so that you could get an XP bonus. I never used this, my personal opinion is that it is silly. Let us say that I was a Cleric with a 12 Strength and a 12 Wisdom, so no XP bonus, but I could pretend that I had a 9 Strength and a 13 Wisdom and get the 5% XP bonus. So your numbers did not really change, it was just a loophole to give you more XP.

Dexterity applies to both manual speed and conjuration. It will indicate the character’s missile ability and speed with actions such as firing first, getting off a spell, etc.

This means that Dexterity would affect Initiative. We decided in the interests of maintaining a fast moving game to dispense with importing a house rule for Initiative and just went with all actions are simultaneous. I will comment on the effects of that when I talk about combat later.

Charisma is a combination of appearance, personality, and so forth. Its primary function is to determine how many hirelings of unusual nature a character can attract. This is not to say that he cannot hire men-at-arms and employ mercenaries, but the charisma function will affect loyalty of even these men. Players will, in all probability, seek to hire Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and/or Clerics in order to strengthen their roles in the campaign. A player-character can employ only as many as indicated by his charisma score:

For instance with a Charisma of 9 you could only attract 3 hirelings of unusual nature, but you could hire 50 men-at-arms. Charisma would affect the loyalty of these men-at-arms.

In addition, the charisma score is usable to decide such things as whether or not a witch capturing a player will turn him into a swine or keep him enchanted as a lover.

Even in college back in the mid '70s we kept our game pretty clean in this regard, from the standpoint of sex our game was mostly PG. That was not because we were all PG outside the game, we just did it that way. 

Finally, charisma will aid a character in attracting various monsters to his service.

Yes, in OD&D you can attract monsters to your service. This was a very fun and useful part of the game. Something that my players were always on the lookup to do. The women all wanted to ride a unicorn or a pegasus, while the men wanted to hippogriffs or griffins. This was a feature for a few months at one point and then we moved back to horses and mules and looked for other types of monsters to recruit.

Next up is Bonuses and Penalties:

What do you notice? XP bonus is +5% or +10% at the high end, but as the low end the XP penalty is -10% or -20%. The maximum Constitution bonus was +1 hit point to each hit die. Average of below average Constitution reduced the survivability of the character and Constitution  of 6 or less resulted in a -1 to each hit die subject to minimum of 1. With Dexterity you could get a maximum of +1 or -1 to hit with missile weapons. But striking is the absence of any bonuses to combat for strength. Now this would all change dramatically with the Greyhawk supplement, there was a minimum of adjustments in the original game.

I mentioned Languages before, I will just add that there was no language penalty for low Intelligence, but you did get a bonus language for every point of Intelligence above 10. This is in line with the average score on a 3-18 scale being 10.5, so rounded down 10 is dead average. Although 9-12 was the average range for everything else, for languages, 11 was above average.

Tomorrow we will talk about Non-player characters(NPCs) although we never used that term even though it was in the rule books. The reason is that the players never read the rule books, so the players called them ref characters and so we referees always referred to them that way too. FWIW, I always preferred the term ref characters. We also for that matter never used the term Player Characters (PCs), we  either said what is your character doing often by character name since we played 16-24 hours a week or we just said what are you doing often blurring the distinction between player and character, it was fast and it IMO aided immersion, although of course the word immersion for what we experienced was never used by any of us at the time.