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Post by True Black Raven on Mar 14, 2023 0:40:14 GMT -5
Over on the blog Smoldering Wizard ~ Old-School Role Playing in a post titled The Many Unique Rules of OD&D, Doug M. (the blogs author) for each of the 3LBBs, creates a list of rules that are unique to OD&D. He has a lot of other posts you should check out, but this one was of direct interest to me. He states: This isn't quite accurate and these aren't particularly unique to OD&D. The magic sword creation rules on p27-30 don't say specifically that all magic swords follow these rules. In fact most of the magic swords in the weapons list on page 23 of U&WA can not be made using these sword creation rules. Further the magic sword creation rules in the DMG pp166-167 (Unusual Swords) and the Marsh/Cook Expert rulebook pp x46 & x47 both have the alignment damage, intelligence and special purpose rules mentioned above. The magic sword creation rules are pretty similar across editions. One thing that is different in OD&D is that special purpose swords of a given alignment have the ability to either paralyze or disintigrate any "opponent" (possibly multiple opponents depending on your reading of p30). In later rulesets the sword only has such a power on a victim who has been hit by the sword. So the possessor can no longer just will it to happen, but has to actually strike a blow. There is no such list on that page. Second paragraph is not relevant Third paragraph implies that the sword would make contact with the opponent. For it to happen without contact, would IMO, elevate it to an Artifact for power level.
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Post by True Black Raven on Mar 14, 2023 0:44:41 GMT -5
I'll confess that this thread is overwhelming. Too many sub-topics all thrown together into one mass of discussion. For me, OD&D is a set of guidelines to help me adjudicate a campaign. Over time I've used some rules often, others not at all. I suspect that later editions of D&D were written with this in mind, so that elements not used were simply omitted. In that sense it's probably wrong to discuss "rules unique to OD&D" as much as "rules later removed from D&D, and why." For example, intelligent swords are cool but can be a bother -- lots of detail and much easier to default to a generic magic item table. I like the fact that I can use or ignore parts of OD&D as I like. That's the most unique aspect of OD&D, since later editions put such a heavy emphasis on "by the book" instead of "make something up" for rules. Overwhelming!! Really! Wow!
Intelligent swords are a bother!
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Post by True Black Raven on Mar 14, 2023 0:50:28 GMT -5
We, collectively, have the 1973 D&D draft now, which includes a whole section on combat mechanics which appear to be a near evolution of CM's Man-to-Man combat rules, albeit with %-based attack matrices (similar to the alternative attack matrices in M&M). What the draft shows (IMHO) is that at some point pre-publication--I'm pretty sure the manuscript has been speculatively dated to late 1973--EGG had written up "the combat mechanics" for D&D of the time, and those mechanics look a lot like "Man-to-Man +" with %-based attack matrices. It's interesting to speculate that play may well have demonstrated that some of these "new" combat rules were unnecessary (i.e., including a CM-like instant kill check and 1-6 hp damage on a hit must have been cumbersome as well as doubly brutal. Allowing missile fire every round, rather than every turn, must also have resulted in machine-gun fire power). This is possibly why (total speculation again) the 1973 D&D combat rules were rolled back--at the eleventh hour--to the tried and true Chainmail rules. Whatever the actual case, the only significant parts of those 1973 D&D combat rules that survived into the published booklets are the Alternative Attack Matrices, and 1-6 (or 2-12 for larger monsters) hp damage per hit. Twenty-sided dice may have come into consideration around the same time--and would have been a supreme time-saver compared to rolling d% by drawing two cards from a deck--and so we see the 1973 Attack Matrices were converted from d% to d20 by M&M. That may all be fluff, sure, but it's apparent that both authors were actively developing the combat rules right thru the early years of the game--just look at all the additional combat rules offered in the early OD&D supplements! waysoftheearth we, collectively, DO NOT have the 1973 D&D draft, only a tiny elite set that refuses to share that info has the 1973 draft. Or was that the royal We you were using?
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Post by True Black Raven on Mar 14, 2023 0:52:52 GMT -5
Well, the rules were supplemental, but Greyhawk actually sold at a 90% rate to D&D, making them almost equal. The sense it made was in the balancing of the classes, as fighters were toned down a bit from the playtests. Gary and I were always fiddling around with stuff then, but he was a greater stickler for balance (up front) than I was. I figured that DMs would find their own ways of balancing stuff like that through self-organized processes (as we had done). IMO toning down the fighters was a mistake, would love to see how they were run during the playtests.
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Post by True Black Raven on Mar 14, 2023 0:53:35 GMT -5
The sense it made was in the balancing of the classes, as fighters were toned down a bit from the playtests. I am so glad to hear this! I've always felt that GH diminished the fighter somewhat because he lost his "number of HD" advantage over the other classes. Going from the most HD per XP of all the classes, to the least HD per XP of all the classes was a significant hit. I fixed that reduction with a house rule.
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Post by El Borak on Mar 14, 2023 1:15:03 GMT -5
We, collectively, have the 1973 D&D draft now, which includes a whole section on combat mechanics which appear to be a near evolution of CM's Man-to-Man combat rules, albeit with %-based attack matrices (similar to the alternative attack matrices in M&M). What the draft shows (IMHO) is that at some point pre-publication--I'm pretty sure the manuscript has been speculatively dated to late 1973--EGG had written up "the combat mechanics" for D&D of the time, and those mechanics look a lot like "Man-to-Man +" with %-based attack matrices. It's interesting to speculate that play may well have demonstrated that some of these "new" combat rules were unnecessary (i.e., including a CM-like instant kill check and 1-6 hp damage on a hit must have been cumbersome as well as doubly brutal. Allowing missile fire every round, rather than every turn, must also have resulted in machine-gun fire power). This is possibly why (total speculation again) the 1973 D&D combat rules were rolled back--at the eleventh hour--to the tried and true Chainmail rules. Whatever the actual case, the only significant parts of those 1973 D&D combat rules that survived into the published booklets are the Alternative Attack Matrices, and 1-6 (or 2-12 for larger monsters) hp damage per hit. Twenty-sided dice may have come into consideration around the same time--and would have been a supreme time-saver compared to rolling d% by drawing two cards from a deck--and so we see the 1973 Attack Matrices were converted from d% to d20 by M&M. That may all be fluff, sure, but it's apparent that both authors were actively developing the combat rules right thru the early years of the game--just look at all the additional combat rules offered in the early OD&D supplements! waysoftheearth we, collectively, DO NOT have the 1973 D&D draft, only a tiny elite set that refuses to share that info has the 1973 draft. Or was that the royal We you were using? It is amazing how much stuff a tiny elite keeps hidden from the rest of the community and they feel no shame about it, they think they are entitled to do that.
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Post by True Black Raven on Mar 15, 2023 13:55:13 GMT -5
waysoftheearth we, collectively, DO NOT have the 1973 D&D draft, only a tiny elite set that refuses to share that info has the 1973 draft. Or was that the royal We you were using? It is amazing how much stuff a tiny elite keeps hidden from the rest of the community and they feel no shame about it, they think they are entitled to do that. What gets me is how they want to act like it is available to all of us, when that is clearly not the case.
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