Feedback for House Rules

[distortedhumor]

My players wanted to play a more "True" OD&D game as a test, (We normally play Sword and Wizardry complete) 

So we decided on Delving Deeper as the core rules, and I have generated some house rules, and wanted to get some feed back to make sure I am not breaking anything.  Some of the oddities is based on our tables preferred playstyle.


OD&D House rules
Reference document is Delving Deeper.


Races:

Humans can be Clerics, Fighters, Magic Users, or Thieves, and can be Level 12. They add 1 Hit dice to any roll to determine hit Points.

Elves are Magic Users and Fighters, and can use fighter weapons at any time, but cannot have metal armor when casting Magic User spells. They earn XP to one class per session (Which is chosen at the start of the session) and cannot be higher then a 4th level Fighter, and an 8th level Magic user. They have all the advantages as per Delving Deeper.

Dwarves are Fighters and Clerics, and can use fighter weapons at any time, They earn XP to one class per session (Which is chosen at the start of the session) and cannot be higher then a 6th level Fighter, and a 6th level cleric. Dwarves, being hardy, start with Max hit points. They have all the advantages as per Delving deeper.

Halflings are Fighters and Thieves, and can wear fighter armor. They earn XP to one class per session (Which is chosen at the start of the session) and cannot be higher then a 4th level Fighter, and an 8th level thief. They have all the advantages as per Delving Deeper.

Demihuman notes: Demihumans use the best saving throws and hitpoints per their classes.


PC generation:

Roll 3d6 seven times, drop the lowest roll, assign as you prefer.
Starting Hit Points will at least be 50%+1. (Note: Dwarves start with max hitpoints)

Each time a PC gains a level, the new hit dice is rolled, and if higher then the current hit points, that is the new hit points of that PC. Level drain will drain the higher of the two levels of a demi-human, and if level drained, the PC loses one hit dice (1d6) of total hit points.
Alignment:

Neutrality is viewed as it own alignment.

Classes:

Clerics with 15 or higher wisdom gets an extra first level spell.
Clerics can turn undead no matter the Alignment. Some clerical scrolls and items are bound by alignment.
Clerics knowledge of healing and medical treatment means that when binding wounds, they gain a +1 on the rules. (See Binding wounds.)


Fighters: If facing weak enemies (1 HD or less) they attack level number of enemies per attack.


Magic Users: Prestidigitation This spell is a minor magical trick that novice spell casters use for practice. You create a cool magical effect for RP reasons. No mechanical in-game advantage can be gained by doing so. (It may impact Morale or other such rolls at GM choice)

This can be done Level times per day.


Thieves: Backstabbing thieves who attack , from the rear or un-shielded flank of an enemy engaged against an ally of the thief may add +1 to hit and add +1 to their damage roll. This is in addition to the BTB Backstab.


Thieves skills – Thieves skills such as hide in darkness, picking pockets, climbing walls and so on is determined by the thief skill. First the referee determines if it very easy (example pick pocketing a drunk man in the dark) to very difficult (picking a complex dwarven lock of yore) and modifies the roll from +4 to -4. The Thief then gains +1 for each level. Roll a 1d12 and if the modified roll is higher then 10, then it succeeds.

Initiative: Group initiative, Roll 1d6 each round, high goes first, ties are rerolled.

Combat notes:

Combat round is about 10-12 seconds.
Combat order is

Prepped spells go off
Ranged weapons
Melee
Movement

If for some reason order needs to be determined between players, the higher dex goes first.

Spells that are interrupted are lost if reading off a scroll, Spells from memory and items such as wands and staffs are just interrupted. Spells are prepped the prior round, and can be cast at the start of the next round. Spells can be “Held” in prepped nature for one turn.

Sleep is as written, but “slumbered” targets can be awoken by using a melee action to slap/shake the person/being awake. “Heroic” creatures and PCs (4+1 hit dice or higher) get a saving throw (-2) to save.

Equipment:

Plate mail cost is increased to 200 gp
Bandages cost 5 gp

Binding wounds. After combat, a bandage can be applied, healing 1d6 damage once a combat. Clerics heal 1d6+1 due to their training.

Spell books and Scrolls

As Per Holmes, any magic user can make a scroll of a spell they know and in their spell books for the cost of 1 week of time and 100 GP per level of spell. There are two types of spell books, the main spell book and traveling spell books. Main spell books are large books that do not travel well, and a Magic User will likely not travel to a dungeon with it. Traveling spell books allow a resting magic user or elf to re-memorize the spells they had memorized previously (IE, a spell caster cannot change which spells are in memory outside of access to their main spell books.)

Magic users start with Read magic, Write Magic, one random first level spell, and one spell of their choice. Elves get Read magic, write Magic, and one random 1st level spell. To insert new spell into their main Spell book, they need to use up a scroll of that spell to copy it.
A new main spell book costs around 200 GP to replace, and that does not include the spells. Needless to say, Magic Users are highly protective of their spell books.

Death door: PCs die when their hit points reach the negative value of their highest level. If a PC is at death door and recovers, it will take a week of rest to get back to basic health. Such grave injuries may result in scars or other such cosmetic injuries.

Healing by rest: 1 HP a day.

[waysoftheearth]

Hi distortedhumor great to hear your group is giving DD a whirl. Great news

I'll be happy to provide some technical comments/feedback on your house rules, but first I need to confirm you are using DDv4? Or are you going the WIP v5?

Also (side note...) I have recently got a myself a copy of the latest S&W Complete and have been slowly pawing thru it.
Ignoring the additional player classes that S&WC includes from GH, BM, and EW, I'd be very interested to know what your group perceives to be the main points of difference that DD brings to the table?

[Punkrabbitt]

I am not a player of DD, but I think I can say some things about your house rules that should be generally true.

1) It's your game. You paid for it, and you can do as you like with it.
1A) If you did not pay for it, you don't care about rules anyways. Unless they are free, in which case ignore 1A) and move on to 2)

2) Specific changes to character abilities are rarely game breaking.
2A) If it is gamebreaking, an advantage of level-based games is that things can always change drastically at the next level.

3) House rules should alter the game to provide a framework for the setting or theme you wish to convey through your storytelling.
3A) I do not find any fault with it, but I am curious why Dwarfs may Turn Undead?

Anyway, those are just my thoughts.

[distortedhumor]

Sept 4, 2023 21:31:21 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Hi distortedhumor great to hear your group is giving DD a whirl. Great news

I'll be happy to provide some technical comments/feedback on your house rules, but first I need to confirm you are using DDv4? Or are you going the WIP v5?

Also (side note...) I have recently got a myself a copy of the latest S&W Complete and have been slowly pawing thru it.
Ignoring the additional player classes that S&WC includes from GH, BM, and EW, I'd be very interested to know what your group perceives to be the main points of difference that DD brings to the table?

We are using DDv4, per the printed rules off Amazon.   



The players mostly want to give DD a whirl to compare/contrast it to S&W Core.   We messed around with WB:FMAG, Core, and Complete (and plan to do some major adventures in Complete, as we it view it as a great way to play 1st edition without some of the rule baggage of bringing out 1st or OSRIC.  They wished to have a few games that where more purely OD&D, but for me to do OD&D books itself would require me to find a printer willing to print a PDF for me without a fuss and mark it up with notes, but DD is like a fresh arrangement of the rules that is much more understandable for both players, and for poor old me the referee.   

[distortedhumor]

Sept 5, 2023 19:17:55 GMT -6 Punkrabbitt said:

I am not a player of DD, but I think I can say some things about your house rules that should be generally true.

1) It's your game. You paid for it, and you can do as you like with it.
1A) If you did not pay for it, you don't care about rules anyways. Unless they are free, in which case ignore 1A) and move on to 2)

2) Specific changes to character abilities are rarely game breaking.
2A) If it is gamebreaking, an advantage of level-based games is that things can always change drastically at the next level.

3) House rules should alter the game to provide a framework for the setting or theme you wish to convey through your storytelling.
3A) I do not find any fault with it, but I am curious why Dwarfs may Turn Undead?

Anyway, those are just my thoughts.

Came from the white Box games (S&W) where we made all the demi-humans with more then one class, and Dwarves become by default Fighter/Clerics.   We plan to also experiement converting d6 hit dice OD&D into a "Race as class" with porting B/X style Dwarves, Elves, and halflings over.   

[waysoftheearth]

Sept 5, 2023 19:19:13 GMT -6 distortedhumor said:

We are using DDv4, per the printed rules off Amazon.   



The players mostly want to give DD a whirl to compare/contrast it to S&W Core.   We messed around with WB:FMAG, Core, and Complete (and plan to do some major adventures in Complete, as we it view it as a great way to play 1st edition without some of the rule baggage of bringing out 1st or OSRIC.  They wished to have a few games that where more purely OD&D, but for me to do OD&D books itself would require me to find a printer willing to print a PDF for me without a fuss and mark it up with notes, but DD is like a fresh arrangement of the rules that is much more understandable for both players, and for poor old me the referee.   

Thanks for the additional info; great to know that context.

I had no idea DDv4 was available on Amazon... which, if true, i'll need to look into. FWIW, the linked image isn't working.

However, you can download DDv4 PDFs free from my downloads site, or browse the hypertext version online, or buy a single volume hard copy from Lulu for around $5.

Anyways, I'll ponder some technical feedback from the perspective of what might "break". But, as punkrabbit alluded to with point 3, house rules are generally about facilitating how you want your game to be, and no-one else can really tell you that.

[waysoftheearth]

Overall, I think it's all absolutely workable, and I enjoy the way you've done dwarves and hobbets along elf lines.

I'm not sure that anything is genuinely "broken" (but maybe check that the proposed Order of Battle and its relationship to spells being cast/interrupted over two rounds is what you intend? And, FWIW, I personally wouldn't have a minor cantrip affecting something so crucial as a morale check).

That said; as your stated aim was to get somewhere closer to the original... prolly the most value I can add is to point out how/where things drift away from btb-DD (and hence, the DD interpretation of the original). You might already know everything I'm about to say below, or perhaps there's a subtlety here or there you've overlooked? Either way, I point these things out with constructive intent. I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't do this or that, but simply showing how it looks through a different lens. Apologies if I get a bit to deep into the weeds... I do tend to do that with DD. And you did ask

So, without any further preamble, see my comments in line below in blue...

Sept 4, 2023 17:57:37 GMT -6 distortedhumor said:

Races:

Humans ("Humans" was a later term. Originally, we had "Men") can be Clerics, (and Anti-Clerics) Fighters, Magic Users, or Thieves, and can be (can achieve up to?) Level 12. (Men are technically unlimited in levels, but i agree level 12 is a nice practical end game for players. You may still want higher level Men as NPC bad guys. E.g., a 17th level evil sorcerer) They add 1 Hit dice to any roll to determine hit Points. (House rule. Does this mean Men have an additional HD? In DDv4 this implies Men also gain an additional attack versus normal types (albeit this is mitigated in V5 if you use the Fighting Capability/FC stat instead of HD to determine number of attacks in normal combat). It also implies in your combat rules, below, that Men are never themselves 1 HD figures and are therefore never subject to multiple attacks in normal combat. Albeit, this would not be technically correct in the original, wherein normal types are subject to multiple attacks in normal combat. It is coincidental that most (but not all) normal types happen to have 1 HD, but there are lot of refs who use 1 HD as a line in the sand between normal and fantastic combat).

Elves are Magic Users and Fighters, (this seems a bit unclear. Technically, elves begin as either a fighter or a magic-user. Thereafter they can continue as regular single-classed players, or "switch" class and become both fighter and magic-user "simultaneously"; that last word "simultaneously" is a key addition in DD, whereas the original omits this word and is therefore, arguably, somewhat ambiguous about it) and can use fighter weapons at any time, but cannot have (cannot wear?) metal armor (in DD and the original this limitation covers all non-magical armor) when casting Magic User spells (it's not just casting spells, albeit, this is the main thing. M&M says elves can wear magic armor and "act as a magic-user" so this includes using wands and staves, etc. As a side note, magic armor was generally assumed to be plate type). They earn XP to one class per session (Which is chosen at the start of the session) and cannot be higher then a 4th level Fighter, and an 8th level Magic user. They have all the advantages as per Delving Deeper. (Yes, the main ones being their combat advantages from CM)

Dwarves are Fighters and Clerics (house rule), and can use fighter weapons at any time, They earn XP to one class per session (Which is chosen at the start of the session) and cannot be higher then a 6th level Fighter, and a 6th level cleric. Dwarves, being hardy, start with Max hit points (House rule. I wonder if this is really needed?). They have all the advantages as per Delving deeper. (FWIW, CM says dwarves take half hits--meaning kills, or "damage" in D&D-land--from ogres, trolls, and giants. DD4 says dwarves take half damage from "foes such as ogres and giants". Furthermore, DD5 heroes--including dwarf heroes--recover normal hits that don't kill them in the post combat rest. I usually extend this to fighters of all levels; which makes resting up useful and fixes the healing problem)

Halflings are Fighters and Thieves, and can wear fighter armor (house rule. Personally, I wouldn't allow a thief or a fighter/thief to "act as a thief" while wearing mail or plate armor). They earn XP to one class per session (Which is chosen at the start of the session) and cannot be higher then a 4th level Fighter, and an 8th level thief. They have all the advantages as per Delving Deeper. DD4 and 5 both give thieves the major advantage of surprising enemy more frequently than usual--which consequently means they are themselves being caught off guard less often. Meaning: they alone are surprised less often. Surprise can be decisive, especially at low levels, so this advantage should not be underestimated. Remember also that thieves are not meant to fight--if they are smart they should use their free surprise segment to run or hide!).

Demihuman notes: Demihumans use the best saving throws and hitpoints per their classes. (Yes. Note that "demi-humans" is a later addition. Originally, Elves and Dwarves were "non-humans").


PC generation:

Roll 3d6 seven times, drop the lowest roll, assign as you prefer. (House rule. Technically, the ref dices for ability scores but it shouldn't really matter who dices, if everyone dices fairly).
Starting Hit Points will at least be 50%+1. (Note: Dwarves start with max hitpoints) (See above, per dwarf fighters).

Each time a PC gains a level, the new hit dice (what if there isn't one?) is rolled, and if higher then the current hit points, that is the new hit points of that PC. (The wording is a bit confusing, but re-rolling all HD at each new level is a common house rule) Level drain will drain the higher of the two levels of a demi-human, and if level drained, the PC loses one hit dice (1d6) of total hit points. (This is a tricky area because not all levels add a HD; some levels add only +1 or +2 hp. However, your rule is straight forward, and makes energy drain something to avoid!)

Alignment:

Neutrality is viewed as it own alignment. (Yes. And is also distinct from "unaligned"--oozes and animals).

Classes:

Clerics with 15 or higher wisdom gets an extra first level spell. (House rule, backported from AD&D? Prolly encourages a bit of stat inflation pressure. However, since the cleric is pretty likely to want a number of cure wounds spells this can be somewhat mitigated by having fighters recover normal hits post combat.)
Clerics can turn undead no matter the Alignment. (Not sure what this means? BTB DD clerics are lawful only. Anti-clerics are chaotic only, but don't turn undead. Instead, anti-clerics can abide the undead, which means they can be on the same side, per the examples in UWA where an EHP lives with undead in their strongholds. Curiously (but not seminal to DD), from the 5th print, Dec. 1975, of the 3LBBs, the cleric's commitment to either Law or Chaos was delayed until the 7th level). Some clerical scrolls and items are bound by alignment. (Not really sure what this means?)
Clerics knowledge of healing and medical treatment means that when binding wounds, they gain a +1 on the rules. (See Binding wounds.) (binding wounds is a house rule. Probably similar to the comments above re fighters recovering from normal hits after combat, but extended to all classes?).

Fighters: If facing weak enemies (1 HD or less) they attack level number of enemies per attack.
(Technically, the OD&D rule on this is that: when monsters are fighting normal types they have an attack capability equal to one normal man (one normal attack) per HD they possess. This is a convenient translation from the various different Chainmail-monsters' attack capabilities versus normal troops in mass combat, to the analagous D&D-monsters' attack capabilities in 1:1 combat in D&D. In OD&D this is a combat system rule (called "normal combat", meaning: any combat involving normal types) rather than a feature of the fighter class only.

Where player types (e.g., PCs, NPCs, anti-heroes, evil high priests) are involved in normal combat we presumably use their Fighting Capability stats (M&M p17-18 tells us how many Men each player type "fights as") instead of their HD. In btb OD&D the FC and HD stats of M-Us and clerics don't always line up perfectly. However, DD has "smoothed" this out so that HD and FC stay neatly aligned.

Note that although the "normal combat" rule applies to all figures, fighters do have the most HD and the best FC and therefore they benefit the most from it.

Magic Users: Prestidigitation This spell is a minor magical trick that novice spell casters use for practice. You create a cool magical effect for RP reasons. No mechanical in-game advantage can be gained by doing so. (It may impact Morale or other such rolls at GM choice) (House rule. Yikes! After surprise and reaction rolls, morale is probably the next most important roll in the game: it's effectively the "win or lose combat" roll. I'd suggest that a trivial trick prolly shouldn't sway this important roll too often).

This can be done Level times per day. (House rule).

Thieves: Backstabbing thieves who attack , from the rear or un-shielded flank of an enemy engaged against an ally of the thief may add +1 to hit and add +1 to their damage roll. This is in addition to the BTB Backstab. (House rule. The DD4 and 5 thief backstab is already pretty nasty. I'm not sure that an alert and fencing target, jumping about engaged with another opponent, really is easier to hit than someone sitting at a table with their back to you drinking a beer. Also, does the target really have to be engaged specifically against an ally of the thief? Why would it matter who they are engaged against?)

Thieves skills – Thieves skills such as hide in darkness (shadows), picking pockets, climbing walls and so on is determined by the thief skill. First the referee determines if it very easy (example pick pocketing a drunk man in the dark) to very difficult (picking a complex dwarven lock of yore) and modifies the roll from +4 to -4. The Thief then gains +1 for each level. Roll a 1d12 and if the modified roll is higher then 10, then it succeeds. (house rule. DD 4 and 5 have simpler, d6-based schemes similar to OD&D's d6-based dungeoneering rolls, including the listen roll. DD5 introduces skill advancement which, from memory, DD4 lacked).

Initiative: Group initiative, Roll 1d6 each round, high goes first, ties are rerolled. (OD&D initiative is wide open for house ruling. This version is pretty standard, and not far off DD4 btb, which asserts ref edicts go first, followed by d6 per side second.)

Combat notes:

Combat round is about 10-12 seconds. (DD4 only says that a combat turn is one minute long; not specifying rounds at all. DD5 includes rounds. BTB, CM has one minute combat turns for mass combat between figures representing 20 men and, by implication, for 1:1 M2M combat as well; it is arguable whether the latter really works very well. UWA then divides the one minute combat turn into 10 rounds (or realistically up to 10 rounds, since not all combats take exactly 10 rounds) for 1:1 scale D&D, meaning that D&D rounds are at least 6 seconds long. Holmes makes rounds 10 seconds long. In B2, Gygax tells us to hand-wave any awkward fraction of the (10-minute) exploration-turn remaining at the end of a combat, rolling it into the (nominally 10-minute) turn of rest that follows immediately after combat.

It usually isn't important to know exactly how long every round is, but I agree that anything around 10 seconds-ish is about as authentic as there is).

Combat order is

Prepped spells go off
Ranged weapons
Melee
Movement
(Order of battle is another area that is widely house-ruled. There's no wrong or right way to do it.
That said, btb DD is slightly differently to the above.
DD4 is looser than DD5, but both generally assume something like CM's simultaneous movement system which suggests: 1) movement, 2) artillery/magic, 3) missiles, and 4) melee.
Movement can be interrupted at the mid-point to conduct split-move-and-fire or pass-through fire (which means: if shooting on the move, or moving through a field of fire, then shooting happens at the midpoint of the move), or at any point by melee contact.
Artillery is rarely involved in D&D-combat, so magic is typically bunched together missile fire instead, which means: shooting can interrupt spells. The Warlock rules actually track missile speed/flight time to determine if a M-U can get a spell off before being hit by an in-flight arrow! Fortunately D&D just has higher dex going first.

The main implication of the CM-style OOB for D&D is that: with movement first, it's usually possible for the monsters or players (or both!) to get across a dungeon room and crash into melee within that first half move (before split move or pass thru missile fire), or within the full move before regular missile fire and spells go off. Essentially, if the shooters or casters themselves are meleed during the move, they miss the opportunity to fire missiles or spells (possibly being interrupted if they were attempting to conjure a spell--albeit requiring a M-U to state they are conjuring a spell before knowing whether they will be meleed).

This OOB tends to emphasise the potency/threat of melee, and means spells are often at risk of being interrupted by first melee contact.
This is potentially turned around if spells and/or missiles go off before movement).

If for some reason order needs to be determined between players, the higher dex goes first. (Arguably, this is btb M&M p11. Holmes also has something like this.)

Spells that are interrupted are lost if reading off a scroll, Spells from memory and items such as wands and staffs are just interrupted. (I'm not clear on the distinction between interrupted and lost).  Spells are prepped the prior round, and can be cast at the start of the next round. Spells can be “Held” in prepped nature for one turn. (house rule. Does this mean it effectively takes two rounds to cast a spell? Prep it on the first round, then actually throw it the following round? Is this about spells being interruptable, or more about spacing them out?
CM has a Spell Complexity Table which says a spell can be delayed until the following CM-turn. However, it's ambiguous whether this delay also occupies the Wizard in the following turn or merely delays the onset of the spell effect. Moreover, the spell complexity table was introduced in CM3, in 1975, so it prolly wasn't around during DD's target era of 1st print, 1974, OD&D).

Sleep is as written, but “slumbered” targets can be awoken by using a melee action to slap/shake the person/being awake. “Heroic” creatures and PCs (4+1 hit dice or higher) get a saving throw (-2) to save.
(DD's version of the sleep spell is quite practical: it simply affects 2d6+2 normal types regardless of HD, or a single heroic figure with up to 4 HD.
The risk of rolling high and sleeping friendlies adds a certain tension at the table, and somewhat counters the otherwise "silver bullet" OP nature of the spell. BTB, there's no saving throw even for a single hero or ogre. FWIW, a "heroic" figure is any figure with heroic FC. Unfortunately, DD4 doesn't mention the FC stat (fortunately DD5 does). Instead, DD4 puts the normal-heroic line in the sand between 2 and 3 HD, even thought the 3LBBs are somewhat ambiguous about it. A useful example shared by both is a fighter who achieves Hero-1 FC at 3rd level, with 3 HD).

Equipment:

Plate mail cost is increased to 200 gp
Bandages cost 5 gp

Binding wounds. After combat, a bandage can be applied, healing 1d6 damage once a combat. Clerics heal 1d6+1 due to their training. (house rule. A good one that is widely used. See also my above comments about fighters recovering normal hits after combat.)

Spell books and Scrolls

As Per Holmes, any magic user can make a scroll of a spell they know and in their spell books for the cost of 1 week of time and 100 GP per level of spell (Yes, this is close to btb DD4, except DD4 takes 1 week (1 town turn) regardless of spell level). There are two types of spell books, the main spell book and traveling spell books. Main spell books are large books that do not travel well, and a Magic User will likely not travel to a dungeon with it. Traveling spell books allow a resting magic user or elf to re-memorize the spells they had memorized previously (IE, a spell caster cannot change which spells are in memory outside of access to their main spell books.) (Not quite sure the last sentence makes sense? But I get the gist of it; the M-U carries a subset of his full spell library in a light weight, travelling spell book, and can re-prepare any combination of spells therein while out on an adventure. FWIW, the original doesn't mention travelling spell books, but does mention the risk that spell books could be lost and require replacement at large cost).


Magic users start with Read magic, Write Magic, one random first level spell, and one spell of their choice. Elves get Read magic, write Magic, and one random 1st level spell. (house rule. FWIW, the original and DD assume M-Us and elves begin with a single spell book containing all the listed 1st level spells. Clerics presumably aquire a spell book when they reach 2nd level. They can acquire books of higher spell levels on their adventures, one book per spell level. GH introduced more spells and the idea that a M-U might know only a subset of all listed spells. FWIW, in my games I limit the number of spells a MU can know to 2 plus 1 per pip of intelligence over 10--same as the btb number of languages rule). To insert new spell into their main Spell book, they need to use up a scroll of that spell to copy it. (house rule. It's interesting that copying the scroll consumes it... Usually, i think, paying the time and gold creates an additional, new copy of the spell, without consuming the original) A new main spell book costs around 200 GP to replace, and that does not include the spells. Needless to say, Magic Users are highly protective of their spell books.

Death door: PCs die when their hit points reach the negative value of their highest level. If a PC is at death door and recovers, it will take a week of rest to get back to basic health. Such grave injuries may result in scars or other such cosmetic injuries. (house rule.)

Healing by rest: 1 HP a day. (BTB it is one hp every other day, but this is painfully slow. Probably it is a good thing to get players back into the action quicker. Perhaps counter-intuitively, tougher PCs with more hp are penalised by taking much longer to recover. Many of the other actions described in the 3LBBs for time between adventures take numbers of weeks, so DD assumes a campaign turn is a week long. Personally, I think healing up completely should simply take, say, 2 weeks regardless of numbers of hp involved)

Ah, yeah. As suspected, I went down a few rabbit holes...
All intended with a constructive outlook, of course. I hope  some of that is helpful, and more or less what you were after? 

[distortedhumor]

Sept 5, 2023 20:22:47 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Sept 5, 2023 19:19:13 GMT -6 distortedhumor said:

We are using DDv4, per the printed rules off Amazon.   



The players mostly want to give DD a whirl to compare/contrast it to S&W Core.   We messed around with WB:FMAG, Core, and Complete (and plan to do some major adventures in Complete, as we it view it as a great way to play 1st edition without some of the rule baggage of bringing out 1st or OSRIC.  They wished to have a few games that where more purely OD&D, but for me to do OD&D books itself would require me to find a printer willing to print a PDF for me without a fuss and mark it up with notes, but DD is like a fresh arrangement of the rules that is much more understandable for both players, and for poor old me the referee.   

Thanks for the additional info; great to know that context.

I had no idea DDv4 was available on Amazon... which, if true, i'll need to look into. FWIW, the linked image isn't working.

However, you can download DDv4 PDFs free from my downloads site, or browse the hypertext version online, or buy a single volume hard copy from Lulu for around $5.

Anyways, I'll ponder some technical feedback from the perspective of what might "break". But, as punkrabbit alluded to with point 3, house rules are generally about facilitating how you want your game to be, and no-one else can really tell you that.

I might of gotten it on Lulu, I did two orders, one from amazon, and one from Lulu with various hardcopies of rules, and I might of picked it up with the S&W core rulebook.

[distortedhumor]

Sept 6, 2023 6:13:31 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Overall, I think it's all absolutely workable, and I enjoy the way you've done dwarves and hobbets along elf lines.

I'm not sure that anything is genuinely "broken" (but maybe check that the proposed Order of Battle and its relationship to spells being cast/interrupted over two rounds is what you intend? And, FWIW, I personally wouldn't have a minor cantrip affecting something so crucial as a morale check).


So, without any further preamble, see my comments in line below in blue...

Sept 4, 2023 17:57:37 GMT -6 distortedhumor said:

Thanks! 

The feedback was very useful.   And I made several changes.

Some of it is me using newer terms, very useful to catch (stuff like Demi-humans vs. Non-humans)

Made some changes on the Non-humans

(Halflings can't do theif stuff using more then leather armor, Dwarves PLAY as clerics or fighters (but get the saving throws/HP of the best level) so they attack as fighters, or attack as clerics but have clerical ability.   Dwarven clerics can use Axes.  Dwarves don't get max HP)

This matches the armor rule about spellcasting with Elves.   As the main goal really is to make Halflings into Fighter/theif and Dwarves as Fighter/Clerics.

Will remove the impact to Morale for the spellcasters minor ability, it purely for RPG reasons.

As for Inatitive, it clear that it is unclear, is porting over a idea from WB:FMAG as a house rule.  
The spell books could more easily be stated as "Holmes style"   with the added idea that Magic users just need their big spellbooks to change what they memorize.  

Thank you for your time and effort.