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Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #120 on Jul 23, 2010, 6:16am »
I agree this could seem a lot of wasted dices, but maybe not so much. It means "to hit" and "damage" roll are the same. I think Ken St-André got that point in his 'reverse ingeenering' method doing T&T. But there's another point about it: how damages are shared. As far as I can see in Castle Blackmoor and in TotF, PC's are allmost allways outnumbered by monsters. Two methods could have been used : share dices or share the total value among available opponents. It means, when a hero roll 4 dices vs 4 orcs, each of them has a separate save - so probably not not all the dices are wasted. To be tinkered a bit, but I think there's a point here.
And yes, projectiles are tricky here - as they're in T&T. Maybe for the same reason.
I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 1,596 Location: Schenectady Karma: 73
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #121 on Jul 23, 2010, 4:41pm »
Woefully ignorant of T&T
We may be putting some more cracks in the mystery egg. Arnesons' use of "values" is all over the board in FCC and ToTF, but one interpretation that does fit the texts is to see "attack values" or simply "values" as akin to HD/damage dice in some references. In other references "values" clearly refers to what we now call "hit points". So maybe its possible the system involved automatic hits at variable damege values (triple hit dice, for ex), defense saves vs. AC, and variable "defense" values. Meaning maybe the "hit points" were fixed in the sense that they didn't originally increase with level, but were variable in circomstances, meaning a triple value defense meant your HP were multiplied by three for the purpose of that particular combat situation.
Its worth keeping in mind that Defense values in CHAINMAIL refer to the points give to structures in sieges, very much like hip points.
I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 1,596 Location: Schenectady Karma: 73
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #123 on Jul 23, 2010, 9:11pm »
Digging a little further I noticed two little bits in some familiar ground in ToTF:
Pg 45. Breeding pond frogs “fight at Double value for 2-12 rounds” – but 3 hit points are the only value given.
Pg 47. “double strength and HIT POINT VALUES”. There, plain as day, Arneson is specifically telling us hit points are one of the values being multiplied. Strength here means fighting strength or capability – hit dice or level in the case of player characters in D&D.
The idea of multiplying hit points in some combat situations seems really intriguing and definetly a game changer.
I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 1,596 Location: Schenectady Karma: 73
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #124 on Jul 29, 2010, 2:23pm »
Defining values and defense ala Arneson In Supplement II, Temple of the Frog we have a puzzling statement, much discussed:
"There are 8 frogmen with double strength and hit point values, each of these also having +2 on saving throws and defensive capabilities. There are 5 frogmen with triple values and +3 on saving throws and defense, and 2 frogmen with quadruple capabilities and +4 to saving throws and defense! " [Blackmoor, p. 45]
Since much of this language is unusual for D&D but appears in varying degrees of ambiguity in works to which Arneson was either the author or coauthor, its useful to look through the references and clarify the meaning if possible.
“values” – when used alone, this term means both attack values (Strength – Hit dice or Fighting Capablility) and defense “values” – hit points.
Double value means multiply Hit Points and Hit Dice by two. Following the frogmen example, it may, at the referee’s discretion, also be taken to mean to add 2 to AC and saving throws. Likewise with Quadruple (+4 to AC/saving throws and HP/HD times 4) etc.
Defensive Capabilities – this term refers to Armor class and perhaps more, including saving throws.
“defense” – When written by itself, defense refers to Armor Class. Most often appears as “saving throws and defence”
Bonuses to armor class are treated exactly as a magical bonus, meaning they remove damage dice from the opponent as in this quote from Men and Magic:” Protection: A ring which serves as +1 armor would, giving this bonus to defensive capabilities and to saving throws.”
Joined: Oct 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 679 Location: Lille, France Karma: 45
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #125 on Jul 29, 2010, 5:06pm »
I agree with the analysis. What puzzle me in the Temple of the frog is the cohexistence of a % layer and this otehr one, where modifiers are expressed in a scale which fits better a 2d6 or 1d20 system. Editing maybe one reason, but probably not the only one. If a comon frogman has AC7 and 1HD, a +3 or +4 is easy to convert into the 'alternative' system. Should we consider as well damages (1d8 for bite, 1d4 for each hand in variable system) to be doubled or tripled ?
Edit: I just finished this post, when my eyes felt on the endnotes in my open Blackmoor print, p. 13.
Quote:
**- roll of 19+ (95+, in any case) - victim seized & severed *** roll of 18+ (90%+, in any cast - victims swallowed
So, the use of % as an alternative to the alternative is confirmed there, with a roll over on a d100. It makes Blackmoor looks a proto-Rolemaster! It could explain some things about the "% layer".
I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 1,596 Location: Schenectady Karma: 73
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #126 on Jul 29, 2010, 8:22pm »
Oho! That's really interesting because I've been doing a little thinking lately about the monster list and Arnesons contributions to Supp II in general. Many of Arnesons early monsters were giant versions of ordinary creatures and I noticed the monster lists seem to be made up of a couple of seperate lists, including the list of giant creatures that have the footnotes you just pointed out. I just asked Steve Marsh on DF and he said he didn't write any of those giant monsters, but he thinks (not sure) he wrote the merman.
Joined: Oct 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 679 Location: Lille, France Karma: 45
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #127 on Aug 4, 2010, 1:03pm »
Another point with the armor / save issue. I was re-reading once again M&M, trying both to forget Chainmail and later D&Ds editions, like a 1974 buyer who do'nt owns Chainmail and wants to play D&D as a full game satnding by itself.
and p. 20-21, just after the saving throw matrix, I read
Quote:
Failure to make the total indicated above results in the weapon having full effect, i.e. you are turned to stone, take full damage from dragon's breath, etc. Scoring the total indicated above (or scoring higher) means the weapon has no effect (death ray, polymorph, paralization, stone, or spell) or one-half effect (poison scoring one-half of the total possible hit damage* and dragon's breath scoring one-half of its full damage). Wands of cold, fire balls, lightning, etc. and staves are treated as indicated, but saving throws being made result in one-half damage.
If we read it from a later D&d point of view, the passage above apply to saving thrown only. But, even if the attack matrices are described as '20-dice score to hit', nothing states clearly who roll the dice. So this could appears as being this explanation: the armor class is a saving thrown, which protects from damage (note the reverse is true too, you can use the saving thrown as an attack die). Mecanichly, this changes allmost nothing, except whoo roll the dice.
It also enable to simplify the initiative issue: both foes roll to avoid damages during the round, and those who fails get damages. After all:
Quote:
such things as speed, feocity and weaponry of the monster are subsumed in the matrixes
The only exception would probably be range weapons, where the Dex as indication of who fires first could apply.
* Also notes that poison does damages. Is it one dice of damage or half hit points could be discussed.
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Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #128 on Sept 28, 2010, 2:16pm »
That bit about saving throws and hit dice goes some way towards explaining why dragons do damage equal to their hit points in AD&D.
Here is another thought on the subject of saving throws and armour class: what if the 2d6 roll mitigated damage equal to the amount by which it exceeded armour class? Would that be too much with regard to the number of hits it could reduce damage by?
It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one's own heart, chatting without reserve about things of interest or the fleeting topics of the world; but such, alas, are few and far between.
Here is another thought on the subject of saving throws and armour class: what if the 2d6 roll mitigated damage equal to the amount by which it exceeded armour class? Would that be too much with regard to the number of hits it could reduce damage by?
It's a seriously interesting idea Matthew. I don't think it would be too much at all, and has the interesting effect of reducing the effectiveness of armour against higher level attackers. A superhero doing 8d6 damage wouldn't be much bothered by it, which makes a certain kind of sense.
In this context this quote is especially interesting "“Armor proper subtracts its bonus from the hit dice of the opponents of its wearer.” – Monsters and Treasure, page 31
The quote is in a section devoted to magical items so it seems pretty clear that Magical armour is meant, but the fact that magic isn't mentioned leaves some room for interpretation, and suggests the quote may have once had a broader meaning.
The "bonus" in this sense could simply mean any amount over AC rolled on a 2d6. If you take "hit dice" to mean "damge roll", its not that big of a reduction, but if you are taking away entire d6 Hit Dice (damage dice) then its quite possible to get no damage if you get a good roll, but also possible to take damage from a massively deadly attack no matter how good your roll.
Its also a curiosly good reason for making AC range 2-9
I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 1,596 Location: Schenectady Karma: 73
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #130 on Jan 28, 2011, 12:47pm »
So its been some time since I started this thread and, as with any kind of scholarship, our understanding of the development of combat in Blackmoor and early D&D is maturing with time. With that in mind, I’d like to revist something I wrote a while back and consider a few of Arneson’s quotes, what they imply and what they don’t. I wrote: “It’s the special nature of Ironclad ships that requires different wargame rules. The point of Ironclads weren,'t just that they were low to the water and hard to hit, it was also that the armor plating was famously hard to penetrate. Arnesons' Civil War Ironclads game may have had ships with hit points ranging from 1-100, and a combat table or some mechanic indicating the chance to penetrate armor class by weapon type (6pdrs, 12pdrs, musket etc.), resulting in variable damage by weapon. This is entirely consistent for both a ACW Ironclads game, and for Blackmoor. In such a game, the hit points for a given type of ship/individual are fixed, but stronger attacks have a more damaging effect against weaker armors and vice versa, once a hit is successfull. This would require two steps (presumably two tables) a chance to hit/penetrate step and a damage step - as with D&D. Arneson might easily have translated Weapon type vs Armor Classs into attacker level vs Armor Class. So as the character/monster levels up and becomes a stronger weapon on the table…”
Here’s some of Arnesons comments on the initial developments:
“The major changes were lack of 'well defined' character classes, if you made your saving throw you suffered NO damage, And magic was handled more like is was in Adventures In Fantasy. There were many other details but these were the biggies.”
Arneson "Dark Lord Of Gaming" Oct 12, 2008, 8:16pm
We used CHAINMAIL three times but the COMBAT MATRIX was too simple and could not be expanded. I recall our last matrix filled a big part of the basement wall. So I went back to using my old ACW naval rule combat system.
Dave Arneson, May 22, 2008, 7:27pm Some Fred T Jane (Armor class 1912) some Fletcher Pratt (1938 hit points, armor class) plus more than a few others. Dave Arneson Aug 4, 2008, 1:01am
Something similar to Armor Class appeared in a naval wargame by Fred T Jane's (Jane's fighting ships). (The game had the players throwing darts at pinned up ship pictures for hits, I think?) They also figured in a couple WW I era sets of rules and my own Damm The Torpedos! (Never actually published.)
Arneson, Nov 30, 2008, 7:33pm
First Fantasy Campaign (1977) “AC was determined by the description of the creature (Hide, scales, etc.) and how impervious it was in the accounts given in mythology about it. HD was determined pretty much on the size of the creature physically and, again, some regard for its mythical properties… All normal attacks were carried out in the usual fashion but the player revived a ''Saving Throw" against any Hit that he received.” (Introduction)
Taken together several things are implied.
Dave is saying that AC was a featured addition to the Combat methods he used after moving from the Fantasy Combat Table in CHAINMAIL. AC as he used it was derived from his naval game experiments in which AC and HP were important classifications. In Fletcher Pratts game mentioned by Dave, Armor is part of the “hit point” calculation, but Dave seems to be making it distinctive. The combat system of early Blackmoor was the “usual” one and not one of the “major changes” between Blackmoor play and and OD&D.
Greg Svenson recalls much the same: “We used 2d6, but we were doing individual combat on the first adventure and we changed very rapidly to something far more like the alternative combat system within the first month of play (this would be in January of 1971). So, it was something in between. If we needed specific probabilities we used 3d6 (a couple of us were math majors and could figure out the dice rolls needed to get any specific probability). I did not see a d20 before the brown box came out. I actually never played Braunstein.” ODD74 Re: Combat -- How did you do it? « Reply #2 on Feb 26, 2008, 7:28pm »
We know now that Arneson did have percentile dice he could use if he wanted to and in any case he was using percentiles in his gaming from early on, as he mentions here, “We had several mathematicians, and working out percentages for six-sided dice was child's play for them, but it gave me a headache. So really, the dice sat there for three or four years. Then we did fantasy, and I said "Hey, let's use this stuff for it." So when we started on Blackmoor, we started using 20-sided dice at the same time. Go figure. They're gamers, you know?” GAMESEthingyCH “Lost Interview with Dave Arneson” While nothing conclusive comes out of these statements they strongly imply that Dave Arneson invented the “alternate” combat system as his solution to the problems of using the CHAINMAIL tables. Dave’s original system is implied to have been in percentages and have been the “usual” level vs AC. Its unclear how many AC’s there were but since they seem to have been the same as the armor categories listed in CHAINMAIL, and that’s the “usual” ones in D&D. We know for certain of only three levels initially Flunky, Hero, Superhero, but its possible there was a finer gradiation.
This is futher bolstered by the repeated statements of Mike Mornard, Rob Kuntz and Gary Gygax that the Alternate Combat system was used "from the start" which means either Gygax invented it literally overnight after one game with Dave (why would he do that whrn he could use his own CHAINMAIL?), or he got it from Dave as part of the game already being used in play - which seems a lot more likely.
I’ve argued previously that HD played a large role in early blackmoor combat and developed a combat table for D@D following these ideas. While I’m sure that’s true, at the very least in the sense of damage rolls, my reasoning for proposing a HD v. HD combat table had to do primarily with the combat system in AiF and because it provided a convenient way of reworking CHAINMAILs Fantasy Combat Table. Although the D@D table is an elegant way of restating a lot of what Arneson was doing, I think a stronger case can be made, in light of the above and some of the information Snorri has provided that it was probably a version of the Alternate tables that Arneson worked up back in 1971.
In light of all that I’ll post the following. I mentioned before that I have a pdf copy of a D&D manuscript prepared by Dave Arneson in 1973. The manuscript is in private hands, but for the purpose of this discussion I’ll present a photo of the combat tables, which you will note, are done in percentages:
Blackmoor Military Manpower. Distribution (Initial)
Baron Fant: HD: 8 + 2; 28 Men Captain Krey: HD: 4 + 1; 20 Men (gone) Dwarves: 150 Elves: 180 Peasants: 158 Men (base) Earl of Vestfold: HD: 9 +1; 351 Men Baron Jenkins: HD: 6 + 2; 28 Men Swenson's Freehold: HD: 8 + 5; 30 Men Merchant's: HD: 4 + 1; 14 Men Bandit's: HD: 6 + 1; 22 Men Inspector General Snider: HD: 6 + 1; 22 Men Wizard of the Wood
This list apparently dates from sometime late in the first year or early in the second of Blackmoor. There are two important things to note about the HD, which appear to refer to the troops in each location or under each person listed. First is that a number of them have unusual HD bonus numbers, especially 8+5 in Svensons freehold. These numbers need to be looked at more closely. The second thing to notice though is that they exist. Hit Dice is the only number Arneson feels is important enough to record, ergo it is likely the only number needed to resolve combats. Once again, highly suggestive of a HD v HD combat matrix.
The FFC introduction provides another clue in support of this hypothesis: “HD was determined pretty much on the size of the creature physically and, again, some regard for It's mythical properties. For regular animals that were simply made larger, like Beetles, a standard text book provided interesting facts about the critters and all were given HD proportionate to their size, relative to other Beetles for instance.” Here again HD is tied to the size and powers of the creature and suggesting it is a central combat mechanic.
I have to disagree with you here. What this shows is that baron Fant had 8+2 hit die and he arrived in blackmoor with 28 men. This page of FFC talks about when everyone first arrived, "the initial garrison" is quoted in the text. He's showing us the early history of Blackmoor.
I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.
Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 1,596 Location: Schenectady Karma: 73
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #133 on Feb 8, 2011, 11:15am »
Yep, could be that and I think thats the most common reading. The reason I thought it seemed to refer to the troops is that the wizard had no HD and the Bandits did. Then again, the bandits could have been controled by a player, and the wizard, being a wizard, was expected to be casting spells in combat not dealing damage via HD.
Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 218 Location: Kanagawa, Japan Karma: 15
Re: Blackmoor Combat and Arnesons System « Reply #134 on Sept 11, 2011, 3:04pm »
That is a fascinating table, Aldarron. The significance of the pattern "2, 2-3, 3-4, 4" still eludes me, but I suppose it explains why we see such things on the combat OD&D table. What is most interesting to me is that it is a roll over system with fighting ability ending for fighters and monsters at the same point. That fits perfectly with my own conversion of the Fantasy Combat Table, which uses "ten" points [i.e. 95, 90, 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60, 55, 50]. It is also interesting to see that HD 1 Monsters have less combat ability than level 1 fighters, who advance steadily in ability at 5% per level.
Why did Gygax not simply adapt this system on a 1:1 basis, I wonder? It would surely have made sense to go with:
Level
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Hit Dice
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
AC 2
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
AC 3
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
45
AC 4
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
45
40
AC 5
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
AC 6
75
70
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
AC 7
70
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
AC 8
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
AC 9
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
Seems like he always tended towards making things less symmetrical and more eccentric. Perhaps a desire to spread out fighting ability over levels, but that does not really explain things either. Oh well, I suppose that personality trait is part and parcel of what made the D&D game so successful, a lack of perfect intuitive sense.
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