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Post by badger2305 on Dec 20, 2007 14:12:57 GMT -6
Silver weapons certainly are handy early on -- and a curious omission from the treasure tables. Aside: Based on the price for silver-tipped arrows, I figure the value as 20x that of a normal weapon. In my campaign, I've reckoned that (given the softness of silver, and its relative value) weapons are actually electroplated. The guild possessing that secret technique commands high prices. I suppose an alloy (real or fantastic) could be as good or better a rationale. Or a simple weaponsmith enchantment (something that Dwarves might do). Not a plus to hit or damage, but making the metal keep and retain an edge.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 13, 2007 16:06:38 GMT -6
Precisely. Make those MU spell books worth something. The idea that magic comes to you out of nowhere is actually kind of strange. Whatever happened to having a master who is teaching you what you need to know?
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 12, 2007 10:12:55 GMT -6
How much magic do you put in your treasures? Do you like having a lot or only a little? Why? I'm asking because I've got profoundly mixed feelings about the whole subject. On one hand, I recall the sense of achievement, as well as comfort, gained from characters having various items to use in combat and elsewhere. That Staff, along with those two Rings, and that Dagger+1 - yeah, good to have that stuff when taking on the bad guys. On the other hand, I also recall the fighter who had the Golf Bag for his magical sword collection. "Barney, my good fellow, would you please hand me the +1, +3 Flametongue Bastard Sword? That's a fine chap - we've got a Cold Wyrm to dispatch." What I want, basically, is for a +1 Sword to still mean something to the adventurer that finds it. Maybe that's asking for a lot, but I can dream, can't I? I'm thinking for my next campaign that magic items that have permanent enchantments might be kinda rare. Scrolls, potions and the like will be relatively common. Items with charges (and there's a concept right there worthy of more discussion) would be a little less common, and then the enchanted stuff that stays that way would be pretty rare. What do you all think?
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 7, 2007 8:25:02 GMT -6
I wait until the party has gotten to a safe place, or where there is a natural "break-point" in the action during an adventure (usually these things coincide). Each player got their own XP reward then (which might be different from each other, and I discouraged sharing OOC information such as levels, etc.).
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 12, 2007 10:01:03 GMT -6
For D&D, I'll probably always stick with the standard rules on this one. However, for my d20 Star Wars game, I do like the method of Vitality Points & Wound Points. For those not familiar, VP are equivalent to standard HP's (you gain them every level, as determined by your character class). WP are calculated by your Constitution Score (i.e., Oltekos has a Con. of 12, so he has 12 WP). VP are defined as a near-hit, a glancing blow, your hair being singed by a blaster, etc. Any damage taken always comes from VP first (unless otherwise stated by your GM [i.e. a critical hit, you have no more VP to deduct, etc.); WP are summarized as actual "physical" damage (like a wookie ripping your arm out of it's socket, a blaster bolt in the back, the Force Grip power, etc.). Once you reach 0 WP (no matter if you still have 1VP or 100VP remaining), your dead (at least in my game). Armor, OTOH, is calculated as Damage Reduction (if you are wearing a Leather Jerkin with a DR of 1, & your opponent scores a critical hit with his blaster rifle, inflicting a total of 16 WP against you, you only apply 15 to your character. If it wasn't a critical hit, the damage is applied to your VP, & DR doesn't come into play. I don't see why you couldn't apply Damage Reduction rules to D & D (it kind of makes since, since Armor doesn't really make you any harder to hit anyhow, it just absorbs the blow), but I haven't tried, & I probably never will. I'll keep my D & D the same; Star Wars for me is a completely different animal. ;D The Wound/Vitality points model has been around in house rules for D&D for pretty much as long as I can remember. Early disties of Alarums & Excursions and The Wild Hunt had variations on this theme cropping up pretty much right away, if I recall correctly. That having been said, I can understand keeping it for Star Wars and not necessarily for D&D. But I would suggest that - like so many things we're rediscovering about our early game - some of the preference for straight up "hit points" is a kind of nostalgia triggered by overly-complex rules of today. Frankly, to me, the Wound/Vitality point model is much more elegant and easy to use than the Feat-driven metastasized combat system found in D&D 3.14159Ed. - they had to come up with a way to deal with the general stat inflation that they had developed: "I'll use my Butt-Stomping Aerial Blade Attack to do three attacks at quadruple damage!" "Wait, he gets an Attack of Opportunity before that, right?" "But I have Cloak of Evasiveness AND the my natural ability as a Dark-just-before-Dawn Elf to deny the AoO!" "Was that in that expansion book for Eberron or somewhere else?" etc. etc. etc. In the current system (3e), the rules have overtaken creativity and thinking and obliterated them in the process.
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Post by badger2305 on Feb 13, 2008 17:17:48 GMT -6
Of course, since dragons are crafty and devious, they may pretend to be subdued, so as to get the drop on the party. Just sayin'....
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 17, 2008 10:16:39 GMT -6
Later in college though, I did start adding races willy nilly, and these days I feel that the game is best if the races are kept to a minimum, and limitations are placed that make humans the best choice in general, such that non-humans serve as side dishes not the main course. I understand that impulse, but I'm not as human-centric as that. I just think that the "naturalism" discussion is problematic - it's a distinct issue from how many races do you want to have (or so it seems to me).
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 16, 2008 9:13:59 GMT -6
I've been thinking a long time now about jamesm's objection to thieves, and realized I had a similar one to half-elves. See, once you add half-elves to the mix, you have to start explaining where and how and why these inter-species people come from. Greyhawk simply says they exist, and then there's usually a fuzzy memory of half-elves from Tolkien.
But once you let one half-something in the door, then you get half-orcs, etc.
All of which leads to trying to explain how these beings came to be. I've tended to house rule it as only elves and humans are interfertile, and then but rarely. But there's always somebody who wants to play a half-orc, or a half-elf half-dwarf, or some other silly combination, IMHO.
But the entire idea starts leads to biological explanations for how things work in D&D, and I'm not sure this is a Good Idea. I'm not averse to it completely, but I do think it takes the edge off of the true difference between "heroes" and "the unknown" which is part of D&D being what it is, or so it seems to me.
What do you all think?
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 17, 2008 14:51:06 GMT -6
Oh Badger2305 that's definitely an Exhalt!!! I'm incorporating your method from now on. Totally makes sense, remains logical through level advancement and still makes everyone a bit different (just like we are in real life). Excellent!!! Thanks! You're welcome. A couple of additional things: - Fatigue gets restored by rest, usually at two points per hour of sleep, one point per hour of rest. (While it's called fatigue, it also includes some of the strain related to physical exertion that isn't actual damage, so even an experienced fighter may have to rest 2-3 days to get back to peak fighting condition.
- Medical magic is assumed to work on real damage to the body, so no changes there. This creates room for minor magics to help with fatigue, as well as relatively inexpensive "potions" to assist with fatigue recovery.
- Combats can take a little longer, as you need to do more damage to actually kill things (and then take their stuff). Even so, there's more strategy involved, because you can get winded and then need to retreat.
I wouldn't change anything else, though, particularly weapon damage. No need to engage in inflation of stats even through the back door. All I wanted here was a system that would provide a bit more depth to combat survival. I think I will write this up for our 'zine, giving credit to both Hargrave and Musson for initial inspiration.
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 16, 2008 20:29:52 GMT -6
That sounds like it would work! Care to offer an example or two? It seems much more manageable than the Arduin method (which seems almost too inflated, but better than 3rd level fighter with 4 hit points). It's pretty simple, actually. Use your CON score as your body point total. If you think about it, fighters come out usually ahead, since they place a premium on CON as well as STR. Roll hit points normally, except these are now your fatigue points. So let's take Hauk, a swordsman. - Strength 16
- Intelligence 12
- Wisdom 10
- Constitution 14
- Dexterity 12
- Charisma 13
- Body Points - 14, Fatigue Points - 6 (at 1st level)
Hauk would get 14 body points to start, and then a d6 for fatigue. If you use Greyhawk's differential for classes, he'd get a d8, and magic-users would get a d4 (which would make sense, if you think about it). If Hauk gets hit in combat, it would go first against his fatigue point total. If that gets exceeded, he starts taking real damage to his body point total AND he's winded (-negative DM to hit). If there was a critical hit (either a natural 20 or 10 over the roll needed), it goes straight to his body points. No hit location needed (or really wanted). For a monster, describe it by size: - very small (x 1/2 Con score)
- small (x 2/3 Con score)
- man-sized (normal)
- large (x 1.5 Con score)
- very large (x 3 Con score)
- then assign it a Con score, and roll hit dice (now fatigue dice) normally. Beauty of this system is that it doesn't change the hit point accumulation - it's now just fatigue. The body point total is a layer adding a little survivability to 1st level characters, but also makes some monsters tougher to fight. It also makes combat a bit more interesting. It's probably too complex for some people who want a streamlined system. It might be too complex even for me, now. But I put this together a long time ago (partly inspired by C&S, but also trying to make it more simple), and it worked pretty well.
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 16, 2008 8:30:58 GMT -6
Thanks, Wothbora, for a decent summary of Hargrave's method. I've thought about that, too. Roger Musson proposed something similar in an early White Dwarf, but he drew a distinction between "body points" - actual physical damage your character could withstand, and "fatigue points" - your capacity for fatigue. I've used something similar to that, where your constitution (and a size modifier for monsters) governed your body points - and that part of it looks very similar to Hargrave's, with many of the same modifiers. Then you gained fatigue points as you went up levels, using the hit dice progression. The way this worked in combat was simple. Most blows that connected took off your fatigue score - but critical hits went against your body points directly. Thus you could be wounded, but not winded, and vice versa. (This also allowed for a 1st level Cleric spell that restored fatigue, but Cure Light Wounds was different.) And magic-use wasn't on a point system, but used fatigue to allow magic-users to cast more spells than they would otherwise be able to in a single day; one point per level of spell. A first level magic-user could cast a single spell, but if she wanted to push things, she could cast another first level spell and expend a fatigue point. But this would eventually add up - and you needed real rest to restore fatigue. Just another houserule system to consider.
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Post by badger2305 on Feb 27, 2008 20:18:41 GMT -6
A couple of things: - As far as spell-casting is concerned, paladins in Greyhawk are able at 8th level to Dispel Evil, "simply by ordering it hence." There's also their "laying on of hands" ability, which cures wounds and disease.
- I had suggested (as a variant) that to become a paladin, a character would have to complete a Quest. I am now thinking that possibly in addition, the Charisma requirement may not be necessary - that in fact, a high Charisma is the result of becoming a paladin, and can be lost if one ever strays from the Lawful path. An ordinary character, charisma-wise, could strive to be a paladin - and then become impressive.
What do you all think?
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Post by badger2305 on Feb 27, 2008 10:01:04 GMT -6
The problem I've always had with non-proficiency penalties is that it has always been expressed as a simple to-hit penalty. If your penalty is low enough than a sufficiently enchanted weapon can offset the penalty, and probably net you some other advantage (like a bonus to damage). If the penalty is high, then you never hit and what was the point of adopting the more complicated rule anyway? I personally think that unless you're going to adopt a scheme like Zulgyan's (the idea of a Sword of Wizardry has great appeal to me) then the answer is to also make wielding a sword more dangerous to someone not trained in its proper use. I'm talking about fumble rules now, a subject that could easily warrant its own thread. Basically, if a magic-user was desparate enough to try to wield a sword, I'd ruin his day if he rolled a '1' on his to-hit die. Fumble and "klutz" rules were a staple of early fanzine discussions. There's a rather extensive description of several systems in various A&Es and The Wild Hunt.
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Post by badger2305 on Feb 23, 2008 14:02:27 GMT -6
Weapon restrictions always seemed artificial to me, at least the "you can't use a sword 'cause you're a magic-user" kind of restriction. I'm perfectly fine with penalties for using an unfamiliar weapon (which for magic-users means pretty much everything), or in-game reasons for not using certain weapons, e.g. clerics are restricted to blunt weapons for religious reasons.
Mind you, I rather like the weapon mastery rules in RC - not that different from the homebrew rules I've mentioned in the Digging Up the Past thread.
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Post by badger2305 on Feb 25, 2008 10:23:55 GMT -6
And let us not forget the Zocchihedron. Ahhh, the "golfball"... ;D
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Post by badger2305 on Feb 22, 2008 22:18:30 GMT -6
Whereas I agree with the above... and, truthfully, what has been said is enough truth to go on... I may be alone in this regard, but I'm not against a skills system being added into OD&D - the system from the much later Rules Cyclopedia doesn't really offend, and I don't feel it would detract too much from the speed or spirit of the game. I'm starting an OD&D campaign, probably this summer, which will be utilizing a number of variants from both the Expansions, SR/The Dragon, and my own pen. I intend to pull all of the base rules, variants, and campaign specific stuff into small booklets for the players and myself (LBB size, of course). I love the fast and furious pace of the old rules, but, I fear, all my years playing AD&D 1e has left me thinking, "If I designed it from OD&D, what would I do differently?" I guess it would be like AD&D .75e, dropping alot of what drove me crazy as a BtB DM (which I still, more or less, am for a starting 1e campaign in Kalamar). Please don't lynch me! Gynsburghe You know, that's exactly what I have in mind - and it took me awhile to realize it. I mean, I knew I wanted something like a campaign circa summer 1977, but more of an evolved OD&D campaign, rather than AD&D. I don't want to play AD&D, because that game went in a different direction from OD&D, just as 2nd Edition, and then 3e, went off in different directions than the previous editions. One of the things I recall from that year was the on-going discussion of if one should adopt the new AD&D Monster Manual, and consequently, how to adapt to the new rules. A lot of us did adopt the Monster Manual - but what if we hadn't? What if we kept what we had been doing before AD&D came out? What would that look like - particularly if we did that today? In a sense, what I want is a fully-realized OD&D campaign, right down to house rules and modifications. To some, it might seem like AD&D - but it won't be. It'll still be OD&D - just not the OD&D from 1974 (and that's okay). After all, campaigns quickly evolved and rules additions, modifications, subtractions, divisions, etc. all came along. AD&D just provided the first of several straitjackets, which we're now learning to shed. Gynsburghe, you should do your own thing, and then tell us how it worked out. One of the great things about OD&D is that you really can do what you want.
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Post by badger2305 on Jan 6, 2008 23:05:11 GMT -6
In Men & Magic, we've got humans, elves, dwarves, and hobbits. We get half-elves somewhere in there, too. But there is also this:
So what other races do you allow? Might you allow? Any monsters? Anything truly different?
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Elves
Jan 5, 2008 17:29:22 GMT -6
Post by badger2305 on Jan 5, 2008 17:29:22 GMT -6
It's interesting, but I am fairly sure from conversations with Dave Arneson and Michael Mornard that this is not how that particular bit of game mechanics was intended to work. I have little doubt that it's not how the rules were intended to be used, but it's hard to deny that the rules as written are very unclear on this point. One of the things I find most interesting about the OD&D community is the extent to which individuals are willing to recognize the authority of apocrypha, hadiths, and the deutero-canon beyond the original Holy Writ. Well, yeah. ;D That's part of the fun - figure out what you want to do then do it. By this standard, I'm a schismatic from WAAAY back.
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Elves
Jan 5, 2008 14:32:07 GMT -6
Post by badger2305 on Jan 5, 2008 14:32:07 GMT -6
I chose to embrace the strangeness as the weird ways of the fey. One day they can fight like a Hero, the next they forget how to use a sword but can lob a fireball instead. No one but the elves themselves understand this behavior. I think that's an excellent, albeit very specific, way to make sense of the rules and rather nicely works with my own preference for elves as paradigmatic examples of Chaos-aligned creatures who are not in fact evil. I'm honestly not sure that it's what was intended but I personally find it a nifty way to square the circle, so to speak. It's interesting, but I am fairly sure from conversations with Dave Arneson and Michael Mornard that this is not how that particular bit of game mechanics was intended to work.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 25, 2007 11:31:57 GMT -6
IMC levels as it relates to characters is not an in-game concept for characters at all, it is used purely by the ref and players to track and determine the advancing growth and improvement of the characters in some areas. However, the term is used as it relates to dungeon, since characters tell each other stories about how many levels deep into a dungeon that were able to penetrate. Exactly. Discussion of character "levels" is frowned upon because it shortchanges role-playing.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 20, 2007 9:56:28 GMT -6
Depends on how many wizards they have. If a catapult drops the same area of rocks as a fireball, but the wizard only has only 4 fireballs. How much ammo do the catapults have? If I have six catapults, with plenty of ammo, and they have only one wizard, I'm not worrying. Besides, there's always the chance that the opposing army's wizard would engage in "counter-battery fire" against your wizard. Yup. I think one of the things about the "effects of magic on warfare" discussion is that people don't work out all the details. For example: - you might end up with fortresses that look like castles, because the magical protections for the fortress are in the foundations of each tower, protecting them from magical attack (and incidentally creating the need for towers connected by walls).
- Or you might have "battlefield magic" a la Tekumel, where individual level spells don't work, and the magical energy can only be directed in massive "pushes" by teams of magicians trained to work together.
- Or yet another way of this all working would be magical-nullification devices, stones, spells that are worked into each fortress.
It pretty much depends on how you want magic to work, and how you want magic to work in relation to warfare and the rest of society. As far as flying creatures are concerned, well, this might actually favor tall towers, for flak purposes if nothing else. Think about ballistae mounted on tower tops, with rapid-reload capability. On battlefields, you might get dispersed infantry tactics to avoid battlefield magic, or you might have Shield Unit spells that work on a specified group or within a certain radius, requiring that they stay together as they would in medieval warfare we see here on Earth. Basically, I would expect that magic and warfare would evolve together, such that you might see things that look very familiar and some things that might be very different - probably more "specialty" units, such as Jaegers and magical sappers and whatnot. But take the time to work it out for yourself before concluding that something is or isn't possible. Just a couple of coppers....
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 19, 2007 17:55:28 GMT -6
I'm not dogmatic on the issue; it's a personal preference thing. In general, I prefer to divide my characters into Normal Men and "heroes" and heroes, regardless of whether they're PCs or not, follow similar rules. Yes, yes, and yes. I don't see a divide between player-characters and non-player-characters. They are all people, and some of them (either PCs or NPCs) may become heroes.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 19, 2007 10:35:25 GMT -6
[/li][li] Bards. They need to be re-worked. I might take a stab at this and see what comes out.[/quote] I'd like to see what you come up with. I like Bards, but I've never played the Bard from the SR so I don't know how unbalanced or schizophrenic it really is.[/quote] [glow=red,2,300]Very, very unbalanced[/glow] - in a good way, of course. Essentially all fighter, half-MU, half-thief and bard abilities on top of it. No wonder they wanted to fix it in AD&D and later. Never did get it right because of the mish-mash of milieux in the make-up of the class.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 19, 2007 10:33:23 GMT -6
Not quite true; there was a Barbarian character class that appeared in White Dwarf, and then was considerably modified for AD&D a short while afterwards. Do you remember anything about it? What was it like? Um, lemme dig it out and post something back about it. I think Brian Asbury designed the class, but I am not sure.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 18, 2007 13:32:02 GMT -6
Barbarians are a bit like the ranger for me, further complicated by the fact that (so far as I know) there was no OD&D barbarian class Not quite true; there was a Barbarian character class that appeared in White Dwarf, and then was considerably modified for AD&D a short while afterwards.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 18, 2007 13:30:19 GMT -6
The idea of classes as archetypes is something I've been thinking about as a result of many recent discussions. Some of my thinking runs in parallel with some of the rest of you, but it also diverges. Here's my thinking: - Fighters: certainly make sense
- Clerics: also makes sense
- Magic-users: also makes sense, but because I like a variety of magic and magical themes, I am retaining illusionists, and may add other sub-classes, such as alchemists.
- Thieves: I actually find the Thief archetype to be an appropriate one and I'm not so bothered by it as others are. (This might bear some further writing, but not right here)
- Paladins: I like the idea of paladins, but I also think it is a status to which one aspires, so I wouldn't let characters start off as paladins.
- Rangers, Scouts, and the ilk: this is a thorny problem. I'm also influenced by Tolkien, so the idea of Rangers is interesting. But it is also so tied into Middle-Earth that I have to think a bit more about whether or not it really translates well into other settings. Having seen a Scout class (which seems to combine Rangers and Thieves), I'm still thinking about what I am trying to represent with this sub-class.
- Monks: I've always tended to object to Monks as a class, simply because they are so clearly grabbed from a different milieu ("kung fu" movies and the like), and so I've wondered if there is a good "fit" for them in a more European-like fantasy setting. (This also suggests that if you vary the cultures in your campaign from that Euro-centric assumption, you get different answers about what fits and what doesn't.)
- Assassins: I think this is where I notice that "thin wedge" falling squarely on my toes (to mix my metaphors). Never really liked them, and felt as though they were simply too unbalancing and not what I felt was heroic in fantasy.
- Bards. They need to be re-worked. I might take a stab at this and see what comes out.
- Druids. I like the concept, but I find myself looking for some other kind of name or identifier for this class. Druids, like monks, are more culturally specific than we really let on, so while I like the outlook of the class, their name and cultural underpinnings need work (see Monk for similar thoughts).
- And there may be other sub-classes or classes I'd want to include, such as the Houri and the Beastmaster, but in either of those cases, actual examples would be fairly rare.
More to follow, as I'm still working things out. I will note that I looked at the last list of classes I allowed in a D&D game, and tossed a bunch of them out, including Merchants and Detectives (both written up in White Dwarf, when more and more classes seemed like the thing to do). This is a good discussion; what do others think?
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 14, 2007 17:33:27 GMT -6
Another way to do this might be to treat a d6 as an average die (anybody remember average dice?).
Top attribute: 1 = 15, 2-3 = 16, 4-5 = 17, 6 = 18 2nd: 1 = 13, 2-3 = 14, 4-5 = 15, 6 = 16 3rd: 1 = 12, 2-3 = 13, 4-5 = 14, 6 = 15 4th: 1 = 10, 2-3 = 11, 4-5 = 12, 6 = 13 ...or something like that.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 23, 2007 14:12:10 GMT -6
You could always include the "cold iron" aspect as taking extra damage from iron (or steel?) weapons. You could make it an extra point of damage per die of damage done, or an extra die of damage in addition to everything else. That would make it noticeable without being killer. If the elves in question are PCs, would the rest of the group be pressured to get weapons which wouldn't have iron in them? Are there blades which are strong without iron? (I just got a mental picture of one of my buddies boasting of a six foot platinum sword.) --Sere Well, actually, well-wrought bronze is better than iron, so that's a possibility. And in some accounts of elves (particularly Poul Anderson's pastiches of sagas and the like), there is "elf-metal" which is some kind of light, strong alloy (but not mithril, which is spelled m-i-t-h-r-i-l, and that last vowel is an "i" and not "a" . Some possibilities -
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 15, 2007 13:23:20 GMT -6
You could always include the "cold iron" aspect as taking extra damage from iron (or steel?) weapons. You could make it an extra point of damage per die of damage done, or an extra die of damage in addition to everything else. That would make it noticeable without being killer.
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Post by badger2305 on Dec 23, 2007 14:56:08 GMT -6
By my reading, dwarves and elves do not have infravision. How have people played it, and what have been the pros and cons of this? I am thinking of playing it BTB on this one. "BTB" - ya gotta stop thinking this way. Seriously, the search for the Ur-D&D misses the point. As others have pointed out, infravision was present in Chainmail; the lack of inclusion in D&D wasn't necessarily intended. The idea that somehow these three little booklets were thought all the way through and consistent throughout is really, really unrealistic. Arneson and Gygax disagreed about various topics, these disagreements show up as lacunae, inconsistencies, and other vaguenesses in the rules. And what they intended was still not necessarily clear even when they did agree. Your job as a referee is not to find the "authoritative ruling" but to make up what YOU want in YOUR game. I'm not saying your original question was a bad one; I'm just trying to point out a troubling aspect of how you phrased your question.
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