Chainmail Man to Man for D&D melee?

[carjack]

I'd recently bought the pdf of the Judges Guild Ready Ref sheets, and noticed the Man to Man tables from Chainmail reprinted there.

Has anyone used this instead of the "alternate" combat system presented in vol 1? I'm kind of enamored with how this table adjusts for weapon type and also am kind of intrigued about being able to run the game almost without using a d20 at all.
(Unless there is also an alternate saving throw system lurking around somewhere as well)

If you were going to use the Man to Man rules, how would you go about implementing them? I'm supposing I'd use multiple attacks to account for level differences, but how would that affect damage? I could see combats being very deadly very quickly.

[jrients]

Off the cuff I'd give Fighting Men a number of attacks equal to their level and use the chart as written, with pre-Greyhawk d6 damage across the board.

By the way, you can use the usual to-hit and save charts with 3d6, if your main goal is to expunge the d20. Admittedly, the top end target numbers become a lot harder or impossible to roll, but that may be an interesting effect to see played out.

[carjack]

I wouldn't say my MAIN goal is to ditch the d20, but I admit it would be neat to me to play with just d6's. (Why, I have no idea..)

[coffee]

carjack said:

I wouldn't say my MAIN goal is to ditch the d20, but I admit it would be neat to me to play with just d6's. (Why, I have no idea..)

I've thought that, too. Not sure why either.

The thing with the man to man tables from Chainmail is that they're just that: Man to man. When you get into Dragons and whatnot you need to go to the Fantasy Table. The thing that keeps preventing me from using Chainmail whole hog is that the Fantasy Table only includes the monster types from Chainmail, not the expanded selection of Monsters and Treasure. I know I can expand the table myself, but the "Alternate" combat system is simpler and already something people know ... I guess I'm just lazy.

But if you do use it, let us know how it goes!

[carjack]

I'm thinking instead of using the Fantasy table, just using the equivilant AC for creatures you're fighting and making, say, a claw equal to a dagger, or a dragon's swipe equal to a sword.

Also, I need to figure bows and crossbows into this mess somewhere.

Good idea, jrients, with 3d6 for Saves. I can't see why that wouldn't work other than putting a bell curve on those throws.
Will have to work my noggin around it.

[foster1941]

I don't like non-d6 dice, and would love to remove them from the game entirely (at least for players -- removing them for the ref would require too much re-writing of the various tables). The only two problem areas (at least before Supp I introduces multi-sided hit dice and weapon damage) are combat and saving throws. The Chainmail man-to-man table works as a partial solution for combat, but you're left with 1) what to do about monsters that don't use weapons, and 2) what to do about high level characters and high HD monsters, both of which can be solved, but they require some house-ruling and fiddling about. Also, the table is pretty complex and not easy to memorize like the d20/THAC0 formula, so more table look-ups will presumably be required, slowing the game down a bit (at least at first).

For saving throws it's also fairly easy to translate the d20-based save values to 2d6-based values, either approximately (I did a table of these once, and may have even posted it at the K&K Alehouse once upon a time) or perhaps using the Fight in the Skies "percentages on 2d6" table (which was reprinted in the "What to Do When the Dog Eats Your Dice" article in The Dragon). Both of these are imperfect solutions -- the former loses the distinctive granularity and flavor of classes being better or worse at certain saves (all 1st level characters have pretty much the same saves regardless of class), the latter is wonky and non-intuitive (look at one table to see your target, look at another one to see what you have to roll to hit that target).

Were I running an actual OD&D game I think I'd just bite the bullet and use multi-sided dice, because doing otherwise is too much trouble, but I'd do so reluctantly, because I'd really like to go d6-only if I could (all those years of playing Traveller and looking down on all those inferior games that required funny-looking dice, I suppose).

[foster1941]

carjack said:

I'm thinking instead of using the Fantasy table, just using the equivilant AC for creatures you're fighting and making, say, a claw equal to a dagger, or a dragon's swipe equal to a sword.

Also, I need to figure bows and crossbows into this mess somewhere.

Actual Chainmail (but not, IIRC, the Ready Ref Sheets) has entries for missile weapons (short, medium, and long range for each weapon), so if you buy a pdf of Chainmail they'll be there.

Good idea, jrients, with 3d6 for Saves. I can't see why that wouldn't work other than putting a bell curve on those throws.
Will have to work my noggin around it.

That would make saves for low-level characters a lot tougher -- instead of 25% chance to make a save at 16+ it'll be like 5% or thereabouts (don't have the probability distribution on 3d6 memorized). As higher level characters approach the center of the curve and eventually pass to the other side things will get easier, but they'll have a much harder time getting there!

[dwayanu]

Yeah, JG left the Chainmail missile table out of the Ready Ref Sheets.

My own thought is to let more HP be the only "level bonus" (except for multiple attacks versus normal men and their ilk).

A while ago, I looked into using 2d6 DARO (doubles add and roll over) as in T&T for saving throws (with the D&D target numbers slightly adjusted). IIRC, the spread was not very appealing.

Not directly relevant, but curious: I cooked up a combat system using 1d4 to hit and 1d6 for damage (sometimes reduced by armor) that fairly closely approximated the average damage per round in 1st-level D&D combat.

[carjack]

I do have a real copy of Chainmail, but I didn't have it handy this morning while thinking about this stuff.

Maybe I can do some converting of the Saving throw table to 2d6 or some such thing. Must investigate further.

I think part of the appeal of using d6s instead is that it will differentiate the game from it's descendants a little bit. I don't want to tweak my OD&D into B/X or AD&D. I want it to be able to stand as a separate game experience from either of those two versions of the game.

Well, anyhoo, we shall see what comes of this....

[korgoth]

One thing one could do for high level types is to use the "Damage Dice" table from EPT, where a high leveler against a punk ends up rolling multiple d6 for damage when he hits.

The thing I mainly dislike about the Chainmail table (at least as it appears in the Ready Ref Sheets, since I don't own Chainmail itself) is that the Morning Star is entirely better than the sword. That just doesn't make sense to me.

[thorswulf]

yeah the morning star is pretty awful, especially if using the man to man rules for horses attacking. A heavy warhorse gets two attacks flails. Ouch! Of course a real trained warhorse was trained to rip out the throats of attackers, so maybe this isn't too far off the mark!

I have a theory about the D6 fascination. We all want a simple game, and maybe we are subconciously avoiding the 3.5 D20 madness, or whatever it is. I know I just got tired of seeing supplement after supplement slavishly following the open liscence hype. Great system, too bad it doesn't feel like D&D or AD&D anymore.

[Finarvyn]

thorswulf said:

I have a theory about the D6 fascination. We all want a simple game, and maybe we are subconciously avoiding the 3.5 D20 madness, or whatever it is. I know I just got tired of seeing supplement after supplement slavishly following the open liscence hype. Great system, too bad it doesn't feel like D&D or AD&D anymore.

An interesting theory, and one that seems to have a lot of truth in it.

I'm also taken occasionally with the notion of going back to the pre-polyhedral dice days of OD&D, and clearly the combat system is the starting point for this trend.

[foster1941]

korgoth said:

The thing I mainly dislike about the Chainmail table (at least as it appears in the Ready Ref Sheets, since I don't own Chainmail itself) is that the Morning Star is entirely better than the sword. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Remember that what Chainmail calls a morning star is basically a pole arm -- a 4-6'+ long pole with a spear-tip and heavy spiked head -- not the one-handed spiked mace or flail it's typically thought of as being in D&D. See this Wikipedia page and also Gary Gygax's article on pole arms in Chainmail from issue 2 of The Strategic Review.