Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 48 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.**
Today we will look at the potions, of which there are quite a few.
A few things to note about potions in general is it gives duration for limited duration potions as 6 turns + 1d6 turns. Some potions are not described as the duplicate Magic already explained. So which potions are those? They are:
Invisibility
Levitation
Flying
ESP
Clairvoyance
Clairaudience
Poison
These are all temporary effects except one and they were all described except that one, Poison was not previously described. At the Potion Table the footnote was provided saying: ** Referee will mislead by naming any of the other Potions, but if carefully questioned should give it a singular feature.
So how does Poison work, it gets a Saving Throw as per the Saving Throw Matrix in Men & Magic. What is the result of that? Fail the saving Throw and you die in 1d12 rounds. During that time you can give a Potion of Poison Neutralization (which I added) or you can try some folk remedies which the referee gives a % chance of success (between 10-50%) based on how convinced he is by your description of what you are trying. (A chance for any player to step up and sell the referee some swampland.) If this is successful you take damage equal to 3/4 of your current total HPs and you will not be able to travel for a week. If you make the Saving Throw you take damage equal to 1/4 of your current total HPs.
This was used as indicated, strength increased according to size, otherwise you would not be able to move at all once you grew past a certain point according to your strength. But HPs do not increase!
You retain your full Strength and HPs when you shrink. This is also proportionate to the amount drunk.
This I delineated as to which type of Giant was and adjusted the damage done accordingly so they were not all two dice of damage.
I was always waiting for a player to try this when a vampire turned to gaseous form, but no one ever has.
I saved this for here so I could cover spell and potion at the same time. Now here is a potion that is similar to the Haste Spell. You may have noticed that the Haste Spell and the Slow Spell gave details that they affected up to 24 creatures. Yes, this spell as stated requires a roll of 1d24, and as far as I know, no one has ever noticed that. Since I at that point had never heard of a d24, I rolled 4d6 for 4-24.
Both Spells have a Duration of 3 Turns and a Range of 24". But it does not tell what the effect is. We also took it that Haste doubled speed and Slow halved speed. But they both affect up to 24 creatures. So the Speed potion also doubles speed, but the duration from above instead of 3 Turns is 6 Turns + 1d6 Turns.
As previously noted, I like to pay attention to what players want or expect and use that information to help sell the Delusion.
I added different types of Healing Potions in line with the way that I revised Healing Spells and created three different levels of healing.
As stated. You cannot drink two of them within a weeks time or they will increase your game-age by 20 game-years.
Players always loved these kinds of Potions and they were a lot of fun. Some players like to show off there vocabulary and in such cases the animals are just confused.
Players always loved these kinds of Potions as they could get the Undead to fight each other. Very helpful when the Cleric fails to turn the nastiest one of the bunch.
I always found this to be the most humorous.
Note that this and the next two get saving throws unlike the first three.
This is a souped up Charm Monster Spell giving you a chance of controlling more than one.
Now this is a powerful spell. Fortunately the duration is not too terribly long, but long enough for the players to get their characters into a big mess.
Not really Invulnerability, but a pretty good temporary boost especially in OD&D. Not the effect of taking more than one dose of the potion within a week, this is where I tweaked the Longevity Potion from.
Great Potion, also helps against Balrog Immolation.
Note the minimum size it will locate. If players rely too much on this potion, they will walk right on by a lot of treasures which are worth finding, but smaller than this.
As it says "all respects" it will also boost the hit points temporarily as well.
Tomorrow we will move on to Scrolls.
Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
***** See bottom of post for an update
Today is Part 47 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.**
First up today is Armor:
****(See update at the bottom) This is pretty short and sweet. If you have Plate +1 and your opponent rolls a 15 on a d20, that 15 is reduced to a 14 and you check the result on the combat table. I never did this, I always did it as Plate is AC 3, so plate +1 is AC 2, so even in the original game if you had magical plate and a magical shield it was possible to have a negative AC. I have read that some were bothered by the concept of negative AC, but as I dealt with negative numbers in math it bothered me not at all.
It also says if the shield bonus is greater than the armor bonus there is a one-third chance that the shield comes into play for the additional AC benefit. But that is not very clear, are they saying if you have Plate +2 and a Shield +1, then there is no benefit from the Shield? In practice I chose not to care what their thinking was, it was not worth spending time trying to figure it out.
I just ran it this way: If your opponent was in front of you or on your Shield side the Shield gave full benefit to AC, if your opponent was on your weapon side or behind you, then the Shield gave no benefit. IMO that was fair to the character and to the monster, it was fast and you did not waste time comparing bonuses and checking for a 1/3 chance each round. In practice, if you are fighting one opponent then you will keep moving to bring the Shield into play, if you are fighting more than one opponent, then you will not be able to do that if we assume they are not idiots. If they are behind you, you likely do not know they they are there.
This brings me to a point about combat, do your players call out things during combat, when their character can see something another player character does not? Regardless of the character names, do your fighter assign simple one syllable nicknames and yell out things like "D! Behind you!" That gives the character the chance to attempt to shift his position with his current opponent to avoid a blow from behind with a bonus to hit.
Another point that is not covered is Helms. IMC Armor automatically includes a Helm, it is not a separate item it is part of armor. Magic Armor will also have a Helm that goes with it. If a character for whatever reason is not wearing his Helm, IMC his AC dropped two steps, for example from AC 3 to AC 5.
On to Miscellaneous Weapons:
Now unlike Swords, these weapons (unless noted otherwise) all have a damage bonus to equal their to hit bonus. So weapons (unless noted otherwise) would be +1H and +1D, +2H and +2D, and +3H and +3D. Note that in OD&D sans supplements bonuses only went up to +3 for magical weapons both swords and miscellaneous.
Magic Arrows have a +1H and a +1D unless specified otherwise for the monster and so usually do 1d6+1 or 2-7 points of damage. Given the statement about bonuses above I immediately had arrows of +1, +2 and +3 as treasure options.
Magic Bows confer no damage bonus on a to Hit bonus. I also added +1, +2 and +3 options. The Magic Bow bonus and a Magic Arrow bonus are additive.
Available bows are Short Bow, Composite Bow and Long Bow. I did not have a Medium Bow, and that still seems weird to me. Also had a Crossbow and a Heavy Crossbow. (In year four of the game, I introduced Hand Crossbows for a Bard, kind of a one shot pistol.)
Now since we had different types of bows that meant the arrows or quarrels(crossbow) were for a specific size bow.
I also added in Magic Slings and Sling Stones with similar bonuses.
Axes were odd, it was noted to treat all targets as medium range. So I split axes into a Throwing Axe which is the one in the rules IMO, a regular Axe which was a one handed weapon, but not designed to be thrown so it was a -2H if thrown and while this affected the to hit ability even with the magical bonus taken into account, it still got the magical bonus to damage if you did hit.
Then I added a Battle Axe which was longer handled and could be used one handed or two handed. If used two handed it did an additional +2D and this was for magical and mundane alike. Also a Battle Axe could be thrown, but only with a two-handed throw. This was also at a -2H.
I also added Daggers to this table and a Throwing Dagger. A Throwing Dagger like a Throwing Axe had not penalty for being thrown.
A +3 War Hammer was the pride and joy of Dwarven Fighters as it had a double range when thrown and it returned automatically when used by a Dwarf. It also did two dice of damage when used by a Dwarf and an extra +3D against a giant. It had no damage bonus against other creatures as it does two dice of damage.
So I also added to this table Maces and Morning Stars.
Spears were treated like Axes and Hammers as throwing weapons with an applicable damage bonus for being thrown. Note that impalement damage is double or even treble.
So I ran it Spears can be thrown, but Boar Spears could not be thrown. Tip, when facing Trolls you wanted to have a Boar Spears because otherwise the Troll would just push himself down the Spear to get at you.
I also added Tridents, Nets, and Javelins. Also added a Quarterstaff, Whips, Bolas and Caltrops.
Added a Lance (for Jousts) and a Heavy Lance for combat. The Heavy Lance did two or three Dice depending on the impalement force as per Spears. When we get to Book Three - The Underwrold & Wilderness Adventures you will see why I added Lances.
****Update: Although it does not change the way that I house-ruled and ran it, here is a better interpretation of the way the Armor Rule works. Back in 1975 I took hit dice in this context to mean the d20 to hit roll. Here an analysis by Ian Borchardt looking at the actual Hit Dice of the monster:
What I was going to say is that the LBB magic armour bonus doesn't work the way you say, because it reduces the hit dice of the attacker. Since the monster attacking table is gathered in columns of 2 HD, magic armour may not actually affect the attack chance. For example a +1 weapon won't affect anything with an even number of hit dice.
So whilst the effective modifier is to increase the number required to hit by +1 for each +1 bonus of the armour, since each descending column has a increases the number to hit by +2, it might not actually apply in every case.
There is also the interesting aspect that there is an ultimate limit to the effectiveness of armour in this method. For example you typical orc ignores magic armour totally, since you cannot reduce the hit probability beneath the lowest column.
If you also extend this to apply to characters (which is technically an extrapolation since characters use level rather than hit dice) it is also an interesting effect to.
That said, everyone I know played it as a direct modifier to AC - even before Greyhawk came out and made that the official method.
[It would also be interesting applying the magic sword bonus to the level/hit die of the character on the attack matrix in the same sort of manner (although the effective bonus would be less), since magic weapons would also depend on your class' combat ability for their final effectiveness.]
And tomorrow we will get to Potions.
Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 46 (Part B) 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 & Egoism:
As I noted in my previous post I used a minimum of a 7 Intelligence for my Magic Swords so they all have an Egoism rating. I did the same thing with Egoism, instead of rolling a d12 I used 1d6+6 for a range of 7-12. My players were make aware that with all great and powerful magic items come risks as well as rewards. Sometimes it is best to pass up an item rather than try to possess it.
IMO these five things that a Magic Swords might do adds a lot to a campaign and it does encourage the use of other weapons as well. That is part of the reason I realigned treasure to decrease the percentage of swords as part of the total and increase the miscellaneous weapons percentage.
Of course what every character wants is to be in a true rapport or attunded to a Sword, which allows the full use of the weapon. I tell players that a Magic Sword will know your true character and motivations better than anyone else in the adventuring party. If you and the Sword are not on the same page it can get ugly.
Let us look at how that plays out.
Looking at how this is done with the Strength and Intelligence of the character, think about how you would tweak this if you use Greyhawk and have Extraordinary Strength. When we get to the Greyhawk Supplement, I will show you what I did.
Next up is Egoism in Continuing Relationship with the User. This puts an interesting twist on things.
Yes, that does put a new light on it, does it not. So if the Magic Sword is Egoism of 12 and the Fighting-Man is 4th level, then the Magic Sword will prevail in all General and in all Key Situations. So for instance it could compel you to fight that Troll by yourself, or charge into battle while scouting instead of reporting back to the rest of the group, etc. Also that Fighting-Man only achieves a 25% chance in General situations, but does gain a check in Key Situations at levels 7-10. At levels 11, 12, and 13 the Fighting-Man would have a 50/50 chance and doing any stress situation check both ways. At levels 13-17 it would go 75% to way of the character and check the Key Situations. At 18th level and up then the character prevails in most cases, except IMO when the character is badly wounded and under severe mental strain from magic.
On the plus side, I allow these Magic Swords, where they and the character are in true rapport, to aid the character against mental attacks such as Charm Person, Illusions and many others.
Now we come to the Origin and Purpose of Swords. Those Magic Swords that have a Purpose are very powerful indeed and go beyond other Swords, so much so that I consider them to be Artifacts and back in those days I devised some very powerful Swords.
I changed it to a score of 86 or higher. Note that Intelligence and Egoism are automatically moved to the maximum score as well as gaining an additional ability. These Swords are not to be messed with.
What makes the paralyzation and the disintegration so powerful? As saving throws are defined back in Volume 1, Men and Magic, these effects do not get a saving throw because they are from a Magic Sword, which is not identified as in that section as something you get saving throw from. That is the way that I interpret it and I am comfortable with that. And yes, monsters use magic weapons too!
There are only six purposes listed above and I added some detail to that list. A Lawful Sword would seek to Slay the Chaotic version of those in the first two columns listed and a Chaotic Sword would seek to Slay the Lawful version of those in the first two columns listed. Defeat Law and Defeat Chaos would apply to any Lawful or Chaotic creature respectively. I also added Slay Undead, Slay Giant, Slay Troll, Slay Lycanthropes, Slay *Stoners and Slay Dragon.
*Slay monsters that can turn you to stone. 🤣
Note especially that Special Purpose Magic Swords will always pursue their agenda and any, any attempt to go counter to them will cause a Key Situation Check. So be careful what you wish for, you might not like it when you get it.
This was previously noted, but is well worth reminding you of. In later years I deviated form this and gave more swords and some other weapons damage bonuses as well.
Tomorrow we will look at Armor, Miscellaneous Weapons and perhaps even Potions.
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.
Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 44 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 the Magic/Maps Determination Table and look at Miscellaneous Magic:
Now as we get into Miscellaneous Magic, we find Crystal Balls, Medallions, Amulets, Scarabs, the highly desired Bag of Holding, and so on.
Of course this table and all of the previous tables where applicable you can expand on them by using items from mythology and other sources or you can use those items as inspiration and create your own. From this you can create magic items and you can create artifacts (very powerful magic items). Of course using an artifacts can be very dangerous in many ways, not the least of which is drawing attention to yourself from very powerful beings.
Now current day it is easy to find huge lists of these mythological items from most cultures. But in 1975 it took quite a bit of work to create your own list to work from. Of course there was the winged hat of Hermes/Mercury, The Seven League Boots, The Swan Cloak, The Shirt of Nessus, The Ring to dispel any enchantment given to Sir Lancelot, The Nibelungen Ring, The Philosopher's Stone, Magic Carpets and many, many others.
Then there is fiction, both fantasy fiction and retold myths, legends, fairy tales and folklore. One example is The Star Mill by Emil Petaja (1966). You will either love this book or you will not be able to finish it, there really is no middle ground.
Of Finnish descent, Petaja's best known works make up the "Otava Series" based on the Kalevala, the Finnish verse epic: Saga of Lost Earth's (Ace Books, 1966), Star Mill (Ace Books, 1966), The Stolen Sun (Ace Books, 1967), and Tramontane (Ace Books, 1967).
You can learn more about Emil Petaja here.
Though he wrote science fiction, fantasy, horror stories, detective fiction, and poetry, Petaja considered his work part of an older tradition of "weird fiction." Petaja was also a small press publisher. In 1995, he was named the first ever Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Next we have more tables connected to the Maps mentioned before:
So you have examples of Treasure Maps for Silver, Gold, Gems and Jewelry. Maps for Magic Items, and Maps for Treasure and Magic. These tables can be repeatedly tweaked for any variety that you want.
I added these tables to go along with the adds I made at the beginning of this section:
Magical Maps:
01-50 Map of a Dungeon
51-75 Map of a Region
76-98 Map of a Continent
99 Map of a World
00 Map of some Other World
These maps have up to 10 uses each. If the uses have all been used you may not be able to return from whence you traveled.
These maps will transport you to any point on the map, if you enter the map, otherwise it will just guide you to that point. If a character(s) grasp the four corners of the map and jump in pulling the corners after them it causes a magical explosion with a number of consequences. (I had a group of players do this.) One of the consequences is that you draw the sudden attention of a number of very powerful beings who will mostly be upset with you.
Miscellaneous Map
01-50 Will direct you to the nearest good water source.
51-75 will direct you to the nearest food source
76-98 will direct you to the nearest treasure
99 will direct you to the nearest Magical Treasure
00 will direct you to the nearest Magical Item that you need
Note: The first two map types are up to 10 uses. The third map type is two uses and the last two maps types are one use. All of these maps disappear who the uses have been used.
Tomorrow we will dig into the Explanations/Descriptions of Magic Items, starting with Swords.
Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 44 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 the Magic/Maps Determination Table:
Next up is Miscellaneous Weapons which are distinguished by how few non-Sword weapons were originaly presented:
The Magic Bow was changed to a Magic Short, Composite, or Long Bow courtesy of our archery buff in the group. So then of course the arrows were specified by which bow they went with.
Also added a Magic Throwing Axe, a Magic Sling and of course Magic Sling Stones. Also added under Miscellaneous Magic, but I will mention it here a Magic Sling Stone Pouch.
Another addition was a Magical Quarterstaff (must have a nod to Robin Hood after all).
As before most items only had a + to Hit bonus, but those that named specific creatures also had a + to Damage bonus.
Now we come to one of the most fun (especially for the referee) items of all - Potions:
Potions were a source of amusement and wonder as new potions were added to the list. I will post some of my old tables once I have been through the OD&D books, the Supplements, The Strategic Review, and the early The Dragon.
One thing you will note about the list of potions is that some represent things that are not in the spell list. There will be more about that when we get to year two of my gaming history which will be quite a bit later this year.
The foot note ** for the Potion that is Poison, that advice also can be used to effect for Potions of Delusion. You should (IMO must) pay attention to anything a player says about what potion he wants or expects. This applies to things besides potions. I listen intently to remarks the players make and use that as an idea springboard.
The other big thing is that IMC healing potions are much more common than anything else.
Next up are Scrolls:
The footnote about a 25% chance that any scroll is usable by clerics was first added in the 5th printing of OD&D. Note four types of Protection Spells, this of course led to additional types of Protection Spells. As I have mentioned before I am not very fond of cursed items, although I do believe there should be some.
Also I added, if you roll 00 then you roll again to a second table:
01-75 Roll again on the Scrolls table ignoring 00
76-90 Roll twice on the Scrolls table ignoring 00
91-95 Roll thrice on the Scrolls table ignoring 00
96-99 Roll twice on this table ignoring 91-95
00 Spell Book - contents - Referee Choice
On the table for Curse Scrolls the first three items are pretty clear and deadly. But the item for a roll of 7, is it the person reading the scroll that is transported or the whole group. I always ruled that it was the whole group. I also ruled that way for the item for a roll of 8 transportation to another planet. Sometimes it was a different timeline or dimension.
Now we come to Rings:
Of these items, Weakness and Delusion are Cursed Items. Again many items can be added to this list to increase the variety of possibilities. IMO the Ring of Many Wishes (4-24) was way too much of a good thing and 4-8 was IMO a much better range for it. Eventually I did with this table the same thing I did for the Scrolls Table and having to roll two consecutive 00s to snag a Ring of Many Wishes (4-24) just felt better. More about wishes when we get to the Descriptions.
The last thing touched on today is Wands and Staves:
So Wands were Magic-Users only. The footnotes tell you who can use what in terms of the Staves. I added Rods to the table as well and also made more staves for the Clerics. But those things were done over the summer between year one and year two. There were other things added during the summer and gaming with my younger brothers (seven and ten years younger).
Tomorrow we will get into Miscellaneous Magic.
As previously noted, I like to pay attention to what players want or expect and use that information to help sell the Delusion.
As stated. You cannot drink two of them within a weeks time or they will increase your game-age by 20 game-years.
