Trimming the Fat: The Final Trimension

(Continuing on from the previous posts here and here, as well as some of my thoughts on gnomes here and here. Unlike its namesake, hopefully this installment won't be a tepid retread with Mako in a minor role.)

In my quest to build the perfect portable gaming kit, I decided that where the rules are concerned I need something small and lightweight - not just mechanically, but physically. White Box (a digest-sized and very beautifully laid out redesign of Swords & Wizardry White Box) fits the bill, and it's dirt cheap too. If my players insist on adding additional classes, it's pretty easy to integrate the ones from Swords & Wizardry Complete, and only slightly more difficult to add the few additional ones (bard and illusionist) that aren't found there.

Beowulf was a Monk

An odd thought popped into my head last night or this morning. It came while considering how to have the unique powers and playstyle of the monk class (or "mystic" in BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia parlance) without all of the kung fu and/or wuxia trappings. Consider: which hero of Old English legend...

• ...regularly fought monsters armed with few or no weapons?
• ...performed athletic feats for days on end?
• ...fought completely without armor (on at least one occasion)?

Trimming the Fat

I've been thinking a lot about the necessity of certain classes in D&D (and similar games). Fighters, mages, and thieves are pretty much essential in terms of both tone and gameplay. Clerics might not always fit tonally, but they're almost always a necessity for gameplay purposes (as the party needs to not die too quickly). Having these four as the "core" classes - a tack taken by virtually every iteration of D&D calling itself the "Basic Set" - gives a good range of options for players. The subclasses of these, however, are less clear-cut in their necessity.

Note that I'll only be talking about those classes that have been central options available in multiple editions. The class has to have been in the Player's Handbook or equivalent, and have appeared in more than one edition in such a capacity (so no cavaliers or gunslingers).

Warriors

Barbarians are completely unnecessary, and the RPG archetype is ridiculous; even Conan the Cimmerian, one of the most famous "barbarians" of fantasy literature and film, wore armor when it was appropriate. In my opinion, there's no need to have them as a distinct class from fighters.

Paladins are basically fighter/clerics, with the weapon selection of a fighter and some of the spell and turning ability of the cleric. Tonally, they might as well just be clerics, so in my view they aren't needed as a separate class.

Rangers' tracking ability and (in some editions) proficiency with two-weapon fighting are nice extra abilities, but not essential in a primarily dungeon-focused game. They might not be needed as a separate class from fighters.

Priests

Druids are a tough case, as besides their extra powers (like shape change), they sometimes have a very different set of spells from their parent class; in oD&D and AD&D 1e, they don't even get cure light wounds until second or third level! The issue is that having both clerics and druids can lead to some tonal mismatches. I might elaborate on this in a different post, but the jury's out on the necessity of druids.

Rogues

Assassins are in a similar boat as rangers, as they're basically normal thieves with some extra abilities. Assassination is largely redundant considering thieves can already backstab, but their disguise ability has so much potential; admittedly, it could just as easily be assigned to regular thieves instead (shades of Lupin the 3rd?). Since they're also of little extra use outside of cities, I'll call this one a draw.

Bards, on the other hand, are excellent to have in one type of game: one with a small number of players. In a group of six, it's easy to have at least one player character to fill each basic role, with some doubling-up as needed or desired. This is harder to do in a group of three or four, and while the bard is certainly no substitute for a fighter or a spellcaster (except in AD&D 1e, but that's a whole other kettle of fish), they can certainly pull their weight in a pinch. The problem comes when bards are designed to be equal or superior fighters, thieves, or spellcasters compared to actual, single-classed fighters, thieves, and spellcasters; 5th edition has this problem in a big way. I'll chalk this one up as a maybe due to their utility for some groups.

Wizards

Illusionists, if their spell lists are different enough from standard mages, can have interesting possibilities. I'm not a big fan of them in AD&D 2e due to the fact that mages can access every spell, with illusionists' (and other specialists') only advantage being more spell slots and easier learning. What are not different enough are...

Sorcerers. This step-headed redchild is so bafflingly similar to its parent class that both sorcerers and wizards share exactly the same spell list in D&D 3.5; even in 5th edition, their selection of cantrips is identical. If you prefer the sorcerer's more cleric-like method of casting spells, that's fine. But the presence of both sorcerers and normal wizards in the same setting destroys any reason to play the latter, and also destroys the entire rationale for wizards being somewhat rare and secretive.

The Monk (or Mystic)

Monks are... an odd case. AD&D treated them as the fifth core class, and with good reason: their means of attack, defense, and other abilities can't be easily slotted under the warrior, priest, rogue, or wizard groups (although some editions, including oD&D, consider them a cleric sub-class for attack and hit dice purposes). Even in BECMI, the rechristened mystic was added as the only other human class available at first level (the druid, as well as the name-level fighter trifecta of paladin/knight/avenger, being more akin to WOTC's prestige classes). Tonally, they might not fit certain settings in their default form, but I would argue for their inclusion.

The Final Count-up

Assassin - Maybe
Barbarian - No
Bard - Maybe
Cleric - Yes
Druid - Maybe

Fighter - Yes
Illusionist - Maybe
Mage - Yes
Monk - Yes
Paladin - No
Ranger - Maybe
Sorcerer - No
Thief - Yes

(Reminder: this is all my personal opinion. Feel free to disagree, but please do so civilly.)

X is for eXpert

As much as I enjoyed reading about B/X, and as much time as I'd spent reading the Moldvay Basic Rulebook, I had never actually read through the Cook/Marsh Expert Rulebook until about six months ago. I caved and bought the PDF, and printed it out.

Every good thing you've ever heard about it is true.

The curve from 1st to 14th level is pretty good, and doesn't do as big a disservice to demihumans as the 1-36 spread does in the larger BECMI rules. The endgame is solid, as players have the ability to build castles and strongholds, sail the seas, and explore in a satisfying way; the wilderness encounter tables are better organized than the ones from OD&D, but aren't as cluttered or unintentionally hilarious as the ones from AD&D1. I'm actually going to start using them for my AD&D2 campaign, as 2e basically has none.

Plus, the art is cool. I particularly like the illustration in the character advancement tables with the human fighter talking to the two halflings. It simultaneously conveys the physical scale of the two species, the fighting capability of most halfling adventurers, the condescending attitude the taller races have towards halflings (in many settings, but not all), and the halflings' impatience with this attitude.

"Gettin' real sick of your shit, Marlowe."

I have yet to sit down and read through the entire rulebook (as I have done with the 2e Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master Guide, as well as the Moldvay Basic Rulebook), but I certainly hope to do so soon. The Expert Rules are just cool all around, and I still kind of want to run B/X in its natural form.

P is for Players

For a role-playing game, they're pretty damn important, aren't they? Some games are designed to be run with no GM - I assume the players form the tabletop equivalent of an anarcho-syndicalist commune - but players are always a must.

With D&D, the more the merrier. Particularly in "old-school" (i.e., before Wizards of the Coast) iterations of the game, having more party members means having more muscle, more bodies to soak up damage, and most importantly (from a gamer's standpoint, at least) a good buffer in case one or two players isn't able to make it. I often end up with only two or three players; in the latter case, it's usually okay, but in the former case I have to concede to reality and break out a board game or something. (Of course, there was that one time where only one player showed up...)

Even a single player might be okay, depending on the system being run. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a perfect example; the authors acknowledge in their introduction that adults are usually busy, so the game is set up for one GM and one player. My issue is that I have zero ideas for modern-day crime plotlines. (I also take exception to the idea that character death should never happen unless it's important to the story.) Hell, even for The World of Darkness, the most I can come up with is a one-shot.

My apologies if the last few posts (and possibly the next few as well) are a little disjointed and/or short. Writing two term papers in two days, and a third coming up, have left my brain a little bit tired. I will still be doing my best to stick to my commitment for the month.

O is for Otyugh

Me and the otyugh go back a ways. The very first D&D adventure I ran - the Fast Play Game based on the Dungeons & Dragons movie from 2000 - had an otyugh as its final boss, although my players never got there.

When I was running B/X, I was stunned to realize that there was never an "official" otyugh write-up for non-Advanced D&D (at least not in the core B/X or BECMI books, or the Rules Cyclopedia). To find one, I ended up going through The Basic Fantasy Field Guide, and converting the one there to use the old-fashioned armor class.

Then, when game time came, I realized that I had left it at home. So, I just winged it; I decided that it was THAC0 18, and had six Hit Dice. The players fought it, and won. As far as I know, none of them were ever aware that I was just making it up off the top of my head. Honestly, that's one of my prouder moments as a DM.

Getting back to the monster itself, I like that I could hypothetically stick one in a dungeon as an explanation for the lack of toilets. This is, in fact, what I did for the abandoned manse the party cleared out to use as a home base; the entire house has one chamber pot, but the otyugh in the basement served as more than enough waste disposal.

M is for Magicians, Magic-users, and Mages

The different names for the same class across editions are slightly amusing to me. Since the focus of this challenge is "classic" D&D, I won't be naming the name they changed to when TSR was bought out. It's interesting that a lot of OSR bloggers seem to hold a great deal of nostalgia for the "magic-user" moniker, as opposed to the equally clear but shorter and more concise "mage".

Sorry this post is so short, but I'm trying to get it out before 12:00 so as not to miss a day. Work and play have left me dry, but I'm doing my best to stick to my promise (it's 11:58 local time as I write this)!

I is for International Editions

Voici l'ouvrage indispensable pour le Maître de Donjon de AD&D. Vous y trouvrez toutes les informations dont vous avez besoin pour créer et gérer de passionnantes aventures d'épées et de sorcellerie. Vous y apprendez tout ce que vous devez savoir sur les sorts, sur des centaines d'objets et de trésors magiques, sur les combats, les voyages et les points e'expérience, et bien d'autres choses encore. Cet ouvrage à la présentation nouvelle est votre guide pour l'univers fantastique de AD&D!

That, my friends, is the blurb on the back cover of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Guide du Maître - the French version of the Dungeon Master Guide! I got it as an Easter present from my parents, and I figure it might help me brush up on my French in time for next semester's Intermediate French class.

A few things about the book itself. First, it's much nicer than my TSR/Wizards of the Coast English copy. It's printed on much thicker paper; I'm not sure whether this is just due to being printed in Europe, or if WotC cheaped out on the later AD&D2 printings. Second, the price on the back is written in francs (213,00 F); it's cool to have a tangible reminder that the switch to the Euro is pretty recent from a historical perspective - even the history of roleplaying games. Third, the game is called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; I've seen pictures of French copies of the various Basic rulebooks titled Donjons & Dragons, but I guess they decided to just keep the brand name intact here.

Aside from those differences, it's almost exactly identical to my English copy (the 1995 revision, although my English copies were made post-WotC acquisition of TSR). I'll try to upload some pictures soon, but it might be a while since my laptop (with the built-in SD card reader) is currently out of commission.

G is for Greyhawk

Supplement I  for original D&D, not the campaign setting (I find it hard to use pre-published settings). A lot of things I love come from there, as well as a lot of things I don't like one bit.

I have a love-hate relationship with variable weapon damage. Yes, it provides a reason to use different shapes of dice. Yes, it gives fighters a clear advantage in that only they can use the most damaging weapons (in B/X, those are the pole arm and the two-handed sword). But using different dice for different weapons - or even for the same weapon, used against different opponents - slows down the game, and is confusing for brand-new players. Particularly the variety whose idea of an RPG is Final Fantasy XIII. Except for the encounter tables, OD&D can really be played with just several d6's and two (old-school, 0-9 twice) d20's. This is just another instance where the commercial circumstances, i.e., not wanting to sort out the extra polyhedrals from the boxed sets, led to something that sticks with us to this day.

Exceptional Strength is one of those things that I love in principle, but in practice is a little weird. Whereas the curve for Strength modifiers for "to hit" and damage rolls in B/X (and, by extension, BECMI) is a straight -3 to +3, the versions of the game that use percentile Strength rolls (OD&D and both iterations of AD&D) have two different curves, neither of which amount to +3 without the character being a spectacularly ripped fighter, ranger, or paladin. Plus, TSR's official AD&D2 character sheet uses tiny boxes for the ability scores, so one would have to use the old calendar technique of diagonally splitting the Strength box to write a percentile score.

The thief class is necessary in OD&D for anyone who isn't an obsessive fan of Myst or Portal. It's also necessary for anyone who, like Delta, decides that the cleric class may not be a good fit depending on its implementation. At least three basic types of characters are needed so that a player doesn't feel hemmed in; even Tunnels & Trolls used three basic classes. (Granted, one of them was really a hybrid of the other two, but it's still nice to have a little bit of choice.) In the amorality of D&D's early years, I imagine that most referees would have allowed the thief to steal from their own party members... if they could get away with it, and live.

Paladins are, well, a mixed bag. I think they're necessary to provide a warrior class that is neither directly going to conflict with other players (the barbarian from Unearthed Arcana comes to mind...) nor extremely limited in their actual special abilities (like the original ranger). Their role in the setting needs to be determined, though; considering the unlikelihood of rolling a 17 Charisma on 3d6 in order, the referee should have plenty of time to think about that.

B is for Beholders (and Basic)

It's interesting to me that the beholder - a classic D&D monster, present almost since the beginning (introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk along with the Thief class) - isn't in B/X D&D at all. It didn't even appear in BECMI until the Companion Set. I'd imagine that, had the original promised Companion Rules been released, the beholder would have appeared there.

Still not as poorly illustrated as in Greyhawk...
or the original Monster Manual, for that matter.

It also appeared in the Rules Cyclopedia, albeit with a nicer illustration.

Why does everyone complain about the art in the Rules
Cyclopedia? I think this is actually pretty menacing.

Somewhat off-topic, I recently bought the AD&D game Eye of the Beholder on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Being a huge fan of AD&D 2nd Edition, I love the wide selection of rules-accurate class and race combinations, including multi-classing for demihumans. Unfortunately, the game is almost unplayable without the SNES Mouse accessory. Thankfully, this game is worlds better than the Eye of the Beholder game I got a while back for the Game Boy Advance (GBA); that one was awful in ways that are too numerous to describe on a tabletop gaming blog.

Druids in Basic D&D (and the AD&D bard)

They suck.

Okay, they aren't much different from other contemporary versions of the druid in terms of how they play, but the process of getting there is freaking terrible. On the surface, the idea of having a sub-class of the cleric as a kind of "prestige class" would seem to work. After all, just as a magic-user might conceivably go from studying all of magic broadly to studying a single "school" in great detail (although I haven't seen a version of D&D that allows this, except for 3.5 and 5th edition where all wizards choose a specialization), the cosmology of Mystara might allow a cleric to switch from worshiping a larger pantheon to honoring a single Immortal from that pantheon.

Unfortunately, this logic doesn't hold up when the new focus of worship has little or nothing to do with the old one. Druids' entire nature - the thing that makes them more than just (in AD&D 2 terms) another mythos priest - is that they worship the unified force of the natural world, instead of personifying it the way that the standard cleric worships a God or Goddess of Time, of Magic, of Death, et cetera. In real-world terms, this shift would be like a Roman Catholic priest who is credited with reviving interest in the Church (thanks to his* reputation as a miracle worker) deciding, after twenty years, to convert to a pantheistic Neopagan religion.

Even worse than the complete hash this makes of Mystara's already unusual cosmology is the fact that the BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia druid is locked to clerics who have already attained name level (9th or higher, in this case). I have yet to have a party in any RPG I've run reach 3rd level, let alone 9th. Hell, I saw getting one of my AD&D players' character to 2nd level as cause for celebration. It's the same problem I have with the bard class as presented in AD&D's first edition; in a day and age where a twelve-year-old video game still has at least twice the number of players as even the newest (5e) or most popular (probably 3.5e) edition of D&D, very few people will get to a high enough level that they'll be able to play this type of character. It's one thing to make a class exceptionally difficult to qualify for due to ability score requirements - it's quite another to make the player's character jump through a number of almost-literal hoops over who knows how many months or years to play their chosen class... assuming the character doesn't get killed in the process.

I would normally just shut up and use the druid as presented for OD&D in Eldritch Wizardry, but this is the very first presentation of the class - and it really, really shows. The distribution of powers is far from equally spaced out.

As for why I've decided to write about this? I'm thinking about adopting the Rules Cyclopedia as my preferred rules set for non-Advanced D&D (for a game I'm hoping to run over the summer), but this is one of the things about it that really annoys me. My ideal goal is to find a game that I can run completely without house rules, and so far B/X is the closest to that goal.

*Yes, "his". I'm not using it as a lazy, supposedly gender-neutral pronoun like the D&D books in the 90s; I'm simply following the real world in this example, as the Roman Catholic Church still refuses to allow women to become members of the clergy. Sad, but true.

Obligatory Alignment Post

To start, here's a brief overview of the major types of alignment categories used in the various version of D&D (in case this is your first time reading anything about D&D):

• Three-point (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic). Used in OD&D, B/X, BECMI, and RC.
• Five-point, type 1 (Good, Lawful, Chaotic, Evil, Neutral). Used only in Holmes, as far as I know.
• Nine-point (LG, LN, LE, NG, TN, NE, CG, CN, CE). Used in almost every edition after AD&D 1e, including AD&D 2e, 3e and 3.5e, and the current 5e.
• Five-point, type 2 (Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Chaotic Evil). Used only in 4e and "Essentials".

Personally, I prefer the nine-point alignment system, since it's the one I started off with. It also informs my interpretation of the three-point system I use in B/X; I generally assume that all PCs are in the middle of the Good/Evil axis, so they are either Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, or Chaotic Neutral. One of my players, her play style informed by Pathfinder, chose Chaotic for her character's alignment, and heavily implied that her outlook was Chaotic Good. This is why I generally prefer the nine-point alignment system, if indeed any such system is present.

EDIT: Just realized that I did absolutely no research on Holmes for this, and therefore made a horribly inaccurate statement. I'm leaving it as it stands, though.

Other Unusual Player Character Species

Apologies for any disjointedness apparent in this post; this is coming straight from my brain to the rich-text composer. (A "gonzo" post, as some might say.)

Thinking back to my adventures with Sradan, I started remembering my other ideas for having a non-traditional player character at my command. Mostly, this is due to a wish to avoid sameness among the members of a party. Playing 3.5e or Pathfinder (and, from what I've read in the Basic Rules, 5e as well), this is less of a problem, due to the proliferation of previously "optional" classes, and the removal of demihuman class and level restrictions.

The Lizard Man as he appears in the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual.

The early editions of D&D had some of this built in: in Holmes' D&D book, dwarves and halflings are explicitly stated to always be fighters, and elves to progress as a kind of split-classed fighter/magic-user (although race-as-class of the kind used in B/X and BECMI wasn't implemented - the class restrictions for demihumans were just really strict). Interestingly enough, though, there seems to have been some expectation even at this early stage of unusually creative players:

At the Dungeon Master's discretion a character can be anything his or her player wants him to be. Characters must always start out inexperienced and relatively weak and build on their experience. Thus, an expedition might include, in addition to the four basic classes and races (human, elven, dwarven, halflingish), a centaur, a lawful werebear, and a Japanese Samurai fighting man.

(Holmes p. 7)

I confess that I haven't yet had the opportunity to read any of the original AD&D (1e) books, although I do plan to pick up the original Dungeon Master's Guide on my next trip to Austin. AD&D 2nd Edition, however, is something I'm very familiar with (though, sadly, not experienced in playing or running), and it seems to be explicitly fighting back against modifying demihuman class restrictions:

Allow nonstandard race/class combinations only on a case-by-case basis. If you institute a general rule--"Gnomes can now be paladins"--you will suddenly find yourself with six player character gnome paladins.
(DMG)

Anyway, back to my original point: I had some ideas for unusual characters. One that I definitely wanted to play when I was lost in my pipe-dreams of getting people together to play 2e was the Rogue Modron (from The Planewalker's Handbook). I tend to be a very analytical, left-brain person in real life, so having a sentient creature that is quite literally the embodiment of those qualities appealed to me.

"Does you over-exuberance in attacking these slavers
have anything to do with the fact that it rained yesterday?"
(Pic from The Planewalker's Handbook)

I also thought of converting Sradan for use in 2e, using the info on Lizard Man PCs from The Complete Book of Humanoids. Close examination, however, told me that doing so strictly by-the-book was a very bad idea:

Lizard men are fairly slow and clumsy on land, having a base movement rate of 6.
(p. 42)

Okay, sounds fair. That jibes with the movement rate given in other editions, such as B/X, and is presumably still offset by their base movement of 12 in water. 

Lizard men must wet their entire bodies once a day. If they are unable to find adequate amounts of moisture (a full waterskin is enough), they begin to lose Constitution at a rate of 3 points per day. If their Constitution falls to zero, they die from dehydration.
(ibid.)

What the hell?! There is no mention of this in the Monstrous Manual, nor can I find any such references in Holmes or the Rules Cyclopedia. It's possible that there is a precedent for this in a 1e book, but I strongly doubt it.

If food (which could include a fallen friend or foe) or treasure appear during a battle, a lizard man must make a successful Wisdom check to keep his mind on the battle. Failure means he turns away from the fight to feast or gather spoils. This distraction lasts at least one round. Every additional round, the lizard man can attempt to break away from the distraction by making another Wisdom check.
(ibid.)

If this was true of them normally - i.e., when fighting them as monsters - it would make dealing with lizard man attacks much easier. As a trait for a PC, it's just stupid. And it isn't as though this is needed to balance out their wide selection of classes; their maximum levels are Fighter 12, Thief 9, and (if using some optional mythos priests) Shaman 7. Crap like this is why so many people hate the AD&D 2e splatbooks (although I must confess that I like some of the ideas in The Complete Fighter's Handbook).

Suffers from dry skin, dehydration, compulsive eating, and kleptomania.
(Pic from The Complete Book of Humanoids)