CHAINMAIL Spell Casting in OD&D

[radagast]

My updated CHAINMAIL Spell Casting for OD&D article.

Feedback is welcomed.

I will be releasing my updated Man to Man combat for OD&D shortly.

~Radagast

Attachments:

DD Rule Variant - Chainmail Spell Casting.pdf (33.82 KB)

[Mighty Darci]

I will take a look at it, I don't know that I can give you useful feedback since I am not familiar with Chainmail. Just a quick glance through at the counter spell part, I really like.

[Deleted]

It looks good, and I enjoyed the layout as well.

Over all else, I think my favourite part is way you handled languages and writing in spellbooks and prayer books. I really like the idea of having clerical spells written in the alignment language. The next time I run OD&D I was thinking of dropping the cleric and allowing magic-users access to all spells; in this case, I think I'll just make all magic based on alignment language.

The counterspell write-up looks very usable, though I can foresee two side effects: first, some utility spells are immediately made redundant, like knock, dispel magic or anti-magic shell (which I'm assuming you could attempt to counterspell once it's up); second, making it scale to relative character levels means that level difference becomes incredibly more important than it is in normal play. Where spellcasters are concerned, smart use of magic is often the thing that levels the playing field for a low-level party against a high-level one. With the counterspell table as it is, a magic-user really hasn't much reason to fear other magic-users that are more than 3-4 levels below them. Neither of these are problems if you don't want them to be, I just thought of them as I read the document. Also, I can see that you've cleverly limited the utility of counterspells already—class can only counter like-class, rather than type countering like-type; and spells can only be countered if cast directly at the character—so it may not be as big an issue overall. My interpretation would be that a fireball hurled at the party by a rival magic-user couldn't be counterspelled; or at least, the magic-users in the party could only counter the effects of the fireball against themselves, but the others are still affected normally. How technical do you plan to be in determining what counts as 'targeting the spellcaster' vs. 'affecting the spellcaster'? Also, how do you see counterspells working against spellcasting monsters who aren't magic-users, elves or clerics, but use spells from their lists?

The only rule I found ambiguous was the rule on maximum number of spells memorized. Under Memorization you say it's Level + Intelligence modifier (and presumably Wisdom modifier for clerics?); however, under Number of Spells you give a table that shows how many spells you get based on Level. Using this table, your first example of a 3rd level magic-user with a +2 Intelligence modifier (i.e., 5 spells per day) doesn't work—at 3rd level the magic-user should get 4 spells, plus +2 from Intelligence for a total of 6 spells.

None of it is game breaking, but it definitely changes the game—which is exactly what you want. Does it make spellcasters more like their Chainmail counterparts? I think so, definitely. Good job! I'm a huge advocate of running OD&D using Chainmail combat rules, but I've never tried fully integrating the Chainmail magic rules. I might be tempted to mine these house rules to try it out.

[Admin Pete]

Mar 4, 2017 16:10:05 GMT -5 radagast said:

My updated CHAINMAIL Spell Casting for OD&D article.

Feedback is welcomed.

I will be releasing my updated Man to Man combat for OD&D shortly.

~Radagast

Sweet! A lot there to borrow! Looking forward to seeing your Man to Man combat update.

[finarvyn]

Mar 4, 2017 16:10:05 GMT -5 radagast said:

My updated CHAINMAIL Spell Casting for OD&D article.

Are you the "Radagast the Brown" who used to post CHAINMAIL stuff on some of the older boards? (Maybe K&KA or Grognard's Tavern. I forget where I saw those files long ago.) If so, you are awesome! Love your work!