Chris Gonnerman on player survival strategies (video)

[Deleted]

New video by Solomoriah I found this morning.


I feel like this is well known advice to people around here, but may be useful to share with players new to Old School gaming in general. 

[tkdco2]

Good video! I didn't know he had his own YouTube channel.

[rredmond]

He keeps it, somewhat, regularly updated too.

[tkdco2]

Solomoriah now has a great video about combat. It's about an hour long, but it's well worth watching.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYgeS97VNPw

[jamiltron]

Nice, thanks for pointing this out. I'm definitely going to subscribe and listen to these videos while painting minis.

[waysoftheearth]

Feb 16, 2021 16:44:39 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

Solomoriah now has a great video about combat. It's about an hour long, but it's well worth watching.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYgeS97VNPw

I had a good watch or two; nice video. So... it takes 45 minutes to (mostly) resolve a surprise encounter between four gnolls and four 2nd-level PCs. Granted, Chris explains everything he's doing as he goes, but on the other hand it might take longer with discussion/decisions and general banter between four players at the table.

Do folks here feel this is quick or slow or typical for OD&D?

I went away and ran the same encounter a couple of times myself (with my flavor of OD&D combat) and I noticed a few things:
1) Chris was quite generous to the surprised PCs; I gave the gnolls an unanswered surprise attack and then the first strike in subsequent rounds.
2) I saved a bunch of time by not rolling initiative at all (almost half of Chris' dice are initiative throws),
3) The players lost twice in a row for me. Getting ambushed on all sides simultaneously by roughly equal opponents is a hard place to get caught in!

[tkdco2]

I'd go with the unanswered surprise attack but roll initiative each round. Note that I usually use group initiative for the monsters.

[Deleted]

Feb 27, 2021 18:11:02 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Feb 16, 2021 16:44:39 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

Solomoriah now has a great video about combat. It's about an hour long, but it's well worth watching.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYgeS97VNPw

Do folks here feel this is quick or slow or typical for OD&D?

It would be very slow. I've never taken that long for a similar encounter, but as you said, he's giving a detailed explanation as he goes. I'm sure it would have unfolded much faster in real-time. 

[tkdco2]

I would say it was a bit slower than normal play because Solomoriah is explaining things, and he has to play all the characters as well as the monsters. I notice the pace is similar to my solo games. It would probably play faster if he were running for a group of people.

[yesmar]

I ran a similar combat thrice, resulting in one TPK, one case where half the party was slain, and one time where the party won. The first time was a 10 round slugfest resulting in total PC annihilation with a single Gnoll left standing with just 1 HP. (Maddening, I tell you.) The second time was anti-climactic: the Magic-User nonchalantly dropped all 4 Gnolls with Sleep in the 1st round. The Gnolls slew two Fighters in the third combat, with the MU once again dropping the Gnolls with Sleep in the third round. (I didn't intend to do this, but panic set in once I experienced a 50% casualty rate. I mean, these dudes are just 2nd level after all.)

Combat in each case went fairly quickly for me. It helped that I have familiarity with the system and didn’t need to explain and/or wait on anyone. I should point out that I use a phased real-time round structure like that of Kriegspiel. I don't think that materially affected outcomes, though. Poor dice rolling on my part surely had more of an impact. In any case, if the opponents are sized about equally you should consider not engaging or, if you must, hit and run. If this had been my game I would have had a heck of a lot more than 4 adventurers. Bring on the men-at-arms!

[waysoftheearth]

Mar 3, 2021 12:55:33 GMT -6 yesmar said:

The second time was anti-climactic: the Magic-User nonchalantly dropped all 4 Gnolls with Sleep in the 1st round. The Gnolls slew two Fighters in the third combat, with the MU once again dropping the Gnolls with Sleep in the third round.

Not sure if this is an explicit rules difference or a referee thing, but I'm pretty sure OD&D doesn't allow casting spells in melee. *Possibly* the ref might--at a stretch--given that Chris (generously) allowed the elf player a second surprise check after the party had already been surprised on the first check--allow the elf to get a spell off *before* melee is joined. But even then, an area effect spell (like sleep) wouldn't be a great option when surrounded.

From my perspective it seems generous to a) allow an ambushed MU to get a sleep spell off--unless it happens before melee is joined (which wouldn't be possible when surprised), and then b) allow the sleep spell to hit the gnolls only. IMC sleep is an area effect that hits friends and foes alike, starting from the least HD and working up. In this scenario, the MU himself (having the lowest HD) would probably be affected first!

YMMV of course


Question for readers: which is the earliest iteration of D&D in which it is explicitly okay/fair to cast spells while in melee?

[yesmar]

Conditions of surprise never arose during the combats I ran. Also, the MU was not in melee, proper, but rather outside. As with firing missiles into melee, I allow it with the proviso that friendly fire is a likely outcome. I ran these combats as a simple exercise, but would assume the MU slit the Gnolls throats when done, as that's how he rolls…

[yesmar]

Mar 3, 2021 17:27:50 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Not sure if this is an explicit rules difference or a referee thing, but I'm pretty sure OD&D doesn't allow casting spells in melee.

Question for readers: which is the earliest iteration of D&D in which it is explicitly okay/fair to cast spells while in melee?

I would argue that spell casting has been an aspect of combat since forever. From MAGICAL ENCOUNTERS in BTPbD, p. 24: "For Magic-Users and Clerics, almost their only chance to gain experience is to cast spells. Often these castings occur during combat." Now of course, how one interprets "during combat" is where it gets interesting. I don't play with the typical sequenced combat turns, so missile, spell (artillery), and melee don't exist as separate phases in my games. Instead, everything is interleaved, with actions being resolved group by group in free flowing format. It may not be RAW but it is a hell of a lot of fun and that's what matters to me.

[waysoftheearth]

Mar 3, 2021 18:20:53 GMT -6 yesmar said:

Conditions of surprise never arose during the combats I ran.

Okay, that's a bit different to what I reported in my tests, above. I started from post Chris' first surprise roll; i.e., the players are surprised/ambushed, now how will this turn out?

Mar 3, 2021 18:52:01 GMT -6 yesmar said:

I would argue that spell casting has been an aspect of combat since forever. From MAGICAL ENCOUNTERS in BTPbD, p. 24: "For Magic-Users and Clerics, almost their only chance to gain experience is to cast spells. Often these castings occur during combat." Now of course, how one interprets "during combat" is where it gets interesting.

Yeah, I guess the critical distinction is whether the caster him/herself is "meleed" or not. For me, it's okay to cast spells during combat from outside melee, but not if the caster is toe-to-toe with an opponent.

[Deleted]

My personal interpretation of Vancian spellcasting is that there's some elaborate arm movements and vocalizations going on as the spell is cast. If someone is menacing you with a sword or a big spiked mace or something in close-quarters, that interferes physically with the spell patterns. The "somatic" component of spell-casting. Such distinctions in spell-casting aren't part of OD&D but they're what I envision and they're present in AD&D later, which is nothing if not a clarification of the intent of OD&D.

[Deleted]

Or, here's another way of looking at such questions. There was a thread on the OSR subreddit a while back wherein the OP asked "Can a magic-user throw a flask of holy water?" and the top response was "Yes. He has arms." These same arms are what interferes with the melee spellcasting.

[waysoftheearth]

I went and refreshed my memory: Chainmail is explicit that a wizard "must be stationary and undisturbed by attack upon his person" in order to employ his spells. So, that much is presumed for OD&D, at least.

[Deleted]

Mar 4, 2021 20:18:38 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

I went and refreshed my memory: Chainmail is explicit that a wizard "must be stationary and undisturbed by attack upon his person" in order to employ his spells. So, that much is presumed for OD&D, at least.

To play Devil's Advocate: On the other hand, it's not explicitly mentioned in any of the three D&D booklets before supplements or Basic/Advanced refinements, and there's a likelihood that a large portion of D&D players never owned Chainmail, so if one were to "go full 1974" with just the booklets, either allowing or disallowing it are both equally canon. It's entirely referee dependent in this scenario. 

[waysoftheearth]

Sure. But even acknowledging the supposed marketing angle, it's hard to deny the 3LBBs explicitly defer/refer to CM for a bunch of detail. IMHO it's hard to "go full 1974" without CM. Heck, in 1975 the 3rd ed of Chainmail was updated to reflect material published in the 3LBBs, so it's not like they're completely independent.

[Deleted]

Mar 5, 2021 6:02:07 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Sure. But even acknowledging the supposed marketing angle, it's hard to deny the 3LBBs explicitly defer/refer to CM for a bunch of detail. IMHO it's hard to "go full 1974" without CM. Heck, in 1975 the 3rd ed of Chainmail was updated to reflect material published in the 3LBBs, so it's not like they're completely independent.

Still, I'm pretty sure it's a solid fact that the first D&D box set sold a degree of magnitude more copies than Chainmail ever did, so regardless of how essential it was, it probably wasn't used by a majority of early D&D adopters.

It's not an easy thing to do, no, and there was a lot of interesting interpretation going on at the time, which is, I believe, the focus of the new book The Elusive Shift, which I ordered but haven't read yet. There were certainly very many regional interpretations of D&D back in the day, pre-Basic and Advanced. The hardest part of going "full 1974" for me is to imagine what it's like being in a world where information wasn't as easy to get ahold of. Our current era is an embarrassment of riches.


When I first got into D&D I had no idea there were even editions or different versions of the game. It wasn't being marketed that way. It just said "Dungeons and Dragons" on the book. And this was the early nineties, quite a bit into its run. (I suppose I was using what's called BECMI online now, but absolutely nobody called it that back then.) What's funny is that even some of those books referred you back to Chainmail, which had been out of print for well over a decade at the time. So, it continued its fine tradition of being both absolutely indispensable and simultaneously unread.  

[waysoftheearth]

I don't disagree @ampleframework. I have promoted similar arguments myself in various topics on these boards. The delta between what was known, intended, written, read, interpreted, by whom and at what point in time is a rabbit warren I don't intend to dive into (again!).

Up-thread in this topic I wondered when spell casting in melee became "officially" a thing (admittedly, even that was a side-track off the main topic). So, I've poked around a little bit this morning and found this much, at least:

CM doesn't allow it.
The 3LBBs are not explicit, but presumably per CM.
Holmes (p13) has: "... and certainly cannot cast a spell while engaged in combat", apparently per OD&D per CM and not altered by EGG during editing.
AD&D (DMG p65) has: "spell casting in melee" which dwells mostly on how spells can be interrupted as they are being cast during melee.


Edit: this info would be better in the AD&D rules difference topic... i'll post it there also.

[Deleted]

The Holmes version is especially confusing because it implies if the M-U is the target of projectile attacks that person can't use spells, either. In a lot of ways it's the most restrictive rule variation of the bunch.

I think I'd like to try a variant where a M-U can't easily cast spells in melee but can attempt some sort of dexterity check or saving throw to successfully pull one off. That would reflect the additional layer of difficulty while still leaving them a chance. Like a more old school variation of 5e's Disadvantage mechanic. IMO such sticking points can be presented in a non-binary way. Degrees of success or failure, like the Arnesonian ruling that the bigger the difference between the target and success/failure, the more profound the success/failure.

[waysoftheearth]

The key element, for me, is still the distinction between:
1) Being in the near vicinity of melee/danger--from where it might be plausible to be targeted by missiles/spells which could interrupt a casting attempt, but from where it would otherwise usually be okay to cast a spell, and
2) Being personally engaged in melee (i.e. "meleed")--at which point the M-U is too busy avoiding mortal injury to cast a spell.

Most players would ideally like to set up their M-Us in the first situation, behind a line of beefy fighters, for example. But if that line of fighters is overwhelmed or broken thru, or the players are ambushed (per Chris' combat demo video) then the M-Us could find themselves in the less desirable second situation. Which is kinda what I assumed above, which led us down this whole sidetrack