D&D Lankhmar

[Finarvyn]

This thread on DF has gotten me thinking a little about the TSR AD&D boxed set The New Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and its various supplements.

When I run a F&tGM game I use the Lankhmar Board Game as my DM's map, although it does seem kind of strange to have cities fill up more than one hex in size.

I tend to cap character levels a lot and assume that a "Hero" is level 4 and "Super Hero" level 8, so Fafhrd gets to be a Fighter-6 Thief-2 while Mouser is Figher-3 Thief-4 MagicUser-1. I have the Lankhmar city supplement, but more often than not default to the City-State of the Invincible Overlord to represent Lankhmar instead.

Has anyone else here run Lankhmar/Nehwon as an OD&D or AD&D game and how did it work out? Did you use the rules as found in the box or change them?

[doc]

Being a huge Lankhmar fan ever since I read the Nehwon writeups in Dieties & Demigods, I've both played in and ran campaigns set in Nehwon ever since I started gaming. I've never played using the OD&D rules, though. If I had to convert the Lankhmar heroes to OD&D I would use a cap of level 12 (my default cap for OD&D).

I would rate Fafhrd and Mouser as "super heroes" since they are well known throughout most of their game world and they continued to grow in skill and experience through the series. In the bulk of the books (say, books 2-5) I would put them as follows:

Fafhrd: Ranger-8 (from The Strategic Review), Thief-5
Gray Mouser: Thief-8, Fighting Man-5, Magic User-1

Doc

[Finarvyn]

See, I rated them as "Super Hero" types as well, which is why I had their total levels add up to 8. Your approach to max out their best level at 8 gives them 13-14 levels, which (to me at least) would appear to violate your own level-12 cap.

I guess we just count levels differently.

[TheMyth]

Jun 20, 2009 14:08:29 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

See, I rated them as "Super Hero" types as well, which is why I had their total levels add up to 8. Your approach to max out their best level at 8 gives them 13-14 levels, which (to me at least) would appear to violate your own level-12 cap.

I guess we just count levels differently.

But, one point:

Levels in pre-3e D&D are not additive the way they are in 3e. The xp charts don't really work that way. Multi-class characters really are only a level or 2 above their highest level in terms of ability. They fight and save at the highest number possible, hit points are usually the highest option among the classes used, etc. Only spell charts remain separate.

[Finarvyn]

You're right, of course. I don't usually use XP charts so I forgot that point.