Useful links now here: http://pastebin.com/JtFH682q Link fo

I'm looking for a piecemeal armor system that is compatible with B/X based systems. Anybody know of any good ones?

>>44524911
>this thread was made before I made my post about basic dnd
Damn, I feel bad

>>44525267
It happens. I replied to your thread anyway.

>>44525406
Thanks. I'm surprised to be honest, I guess the main limitation of it is it's limited class choices.

>>44525486
Opinions on that vary. Some people will say that the small number of classes is a strength, others note that it's very easy to homebrew a new class.

>>44525519
Is there somewhere I can find homebrew classes? I searched and have little fruit to show for my efforts

>>44525617
The Gazetteer series in the Trove has a bunch of extra Basic classes and some interesting material besides. Otherwise there's a lot of (dubious) classes being marketed on rpgnow.

>>44525617
There's a large section of classes here: https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/LinksToWisdom/Player_Character

File: Saboteur OSR.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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Posting my Saboteur class again. Would like to know how I could improve it.

>>44525617
Well, there's AD&D. All old school D&D is built on the same core system, so it's pretty easy to lift classes from one edition and import them into another. Labyrinth Lord (a retroclone based on, and sticking very close to Moldvay Basic) has an Advanced Edition Companion, which is designed to introduce the additional options of AD&D (more classes and spells and so forth) while keeping the rules more streamline like Basic (with mixed success, in my opinion). The AEC is designed to be compatible with the core rules, such that you can have a party of mixed characters, some designed by core rules and some by AEC. They honestly aren't that different than what you'd see in AD&D, other than the reduced hit dice size (everybody but magic-users got their hit dice size increased by one, such that thieves go from d4 to d6, clerics from d6 to d8, etc.), but it might be slightly easier to grab stuff from there to put into Basic.

>>44526537
What rules are you using as a baseline? It looks like a D20 class.

>>44526580

Yeah, d20 material just like all OSR stuff.

>>44527891
When I ask about D20, I'm thinking of the D20 System that underpinned D&D 3.X and its cousins. Not all OSR stuff is D20 System (in fact, most of it doesn't, although almost all of it uses d20s.

The rules for your Saboteur look more like D20 System material because you reference raw ability modifiers. There might be OSRs with a "Dexterity modifier", but (for example) AD&D doesn't have one.

File: FEARSOME GODS OSR.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>44528103

Oh sorry, I misunderstood. I am using a d20 base for an OSR style game I'm making yes, but its not quite the same as later edition DnD. I made ability modifiers more important because I like the idea of making each class feel different and making different aspects pop out.

Here's a full document I've been working on. I've posted it a few times in the thread so far, not trying to shill or anything, just being honest.

>>44528543
>I made ability modifiers more important
That's not very OSR. (Not trying to dump on your project, just being honest.)

>>44528605

I know. The purpose for it however is the desire to make no stats useless or easy dump stats; even warriors need intelligence to better learn their fighting techniques, Wizard need charisma for magic resistance, and so on. It's supposed to open up new character paths; even two level 1 Bastards (Fighters) of the same race can be different with these stats.

>>44529042
That seems to just up the ante on rolling a character with high stats. Would you let someone re-roll their character until they got abilities they liked, or would they have to get their characters killed the old-fashioned way?

>>44533094

I would prefer it if they didn't kill all their characters just to get new and better stats.

For one thing, I allow players to switch their stats around as needed for their class; but they are stuck with those numbers.

Number two, I also allow training and growth of stats during downtime. There is no reason somebody should be stuck with a wimpy strength or low intelligence; these can be trained.

Finally and thirdly; the average skill distribution of 3d6+1 makes an average of 11 or 12 from 11.5 being the average. This means your average and most likely stat roll is going to be one or two points GREATER then the average human/being of this world. You are literally already ubermensch. People shouldn't be bitching about that I honestly feel.

>>44533094
>>44533740
As long as their death means something or if they just take high risk high reward choices until they drop, it's fine if they conveniently get to roll a potentially better character.

Being deliberately and unabashedly suicidal, however, should be penalized on the new character. XP penalties for example.

>>44525230
Anyone?

whats the best published version of greyhawk, the ad&d ruins of greyhawk or the C&C version

>>44535019
I mean, I've got something in my own homebrew (with inspirations) here: >>44439841 http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/44403270/#44439841. I have it slightly tied to the fact that I'm also using a combination of generic weapons from LotFP and ideas based off of Dungeon World's tags, but it's easy enough to get your own inspirations and tweak it to your own design.

>>44535702
Huh, it actually linked to the post. Genuinely surprised it's still in the archive.

Anyway, something I just realized that may not be your particular cup of tea: I designed my shit to be ascending AC, starting at 11. To switch it to descending, you can start at base 9 AC and just swap the positive modifiers of the armor for negative ones.

To give a quick comparison between what I have and B/X (well, BECMI/RC) armor:
Helmet & Gambeson = Leather
Helmet, Aketon & Brigandine = Scale
Helmet, Aketon & Hauberk = Chain
Helmet, Aketon, Hauberk & Brigandine = Banded
Helmet, Aketon, Hauberk & Cuirass = Plate
Plate Harness = Suit Armor

>>44533740
>Finally and thirdly; the average skill distribution of 3d6+1 makes an average of 11 or 12 from 11.5 being the average. This means your average and most likely stat roll is going to be one or two points GREATER then the average human/being of this world. You are literally already ubermensch. People shouldn't be bitching about that I honestly feel.
Fucking Gygax himself repeatedly said that 3d6 stats were too shit to play in games where stats and stat modifiers actually mattered. 3d6+1 is not a meaningful difference.

You seem to have a shitfarmer fetish.

>>44528605

The B part of BECMI D&D used a single number as an ability score modifier. Not sure about the ECMI part though.

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>>44539505

The average roll is still above average for a normal person. You're more then likely to get a positive number, even higher with just a little luck, why do you believe all characters should be demigods?

Plus I wouldn't force you to play a shitty unplayable character. Do the whole LoTFP thing; if your total modifier is negative you can reroll. I would possibly do a kind of karmic justic thing and let players get a bonus to rolling up their next character for legit playing a real character even with such a shitty disadvantage. The entire point of /osr/ is randomness and fun roleplaying and adventure, its not meant to be a point buy mechanical masterpiece.

>>44528543
>>44528605
>>44529042
>>44533740
>>44534382

So lets recap.

1. The author makes more stats important to every character.
2. The author forces you to sometimes play a race that is overtly worthless, and not merely globally inferior.
3. The author punishes you for attempting to skip out on your hazing by trying to switch to a character who is actually fun.
4. The author uses a stat gen system worse than the one recommended as the minimum by Gygax (4d6k3), who wrote for an edition where stats were far less essential than this. Ubermensch they are not.
5. Although he has already made stats drastically more important than is reasonable for OSR, the author uses roll under saves for ability scores, which amps up the already atrocious stat generation system to 11 -- instead of a 7 being a -1 and a 17 being a +1, a stat of 7 is, for a saving throw, the equivalent of a stat of 3 and a 17 is now the equivalent of a stat of 24.

Why does this guy shoehorn heavy 3e onward design philosophy into OSR, and why do you create a system where most people will be grossly, grossly disadvantaged based off total randomness? In what universe is it fun to play a game where the majority of characters will be saddled with freakish cripples who you aren't even allowed to suicide or switch out from?

>>44539505
>3d6+1 is not a meaningful difference.
I'm not necessarily arguing the other stuff, but I do think +1 is a significant difference. 3d6 gives you an average of 10.5, and 4d6 drop low gives you 12.24. 3d6+1 is closer to the latter than the former.

With 3d6+1, you're almost 1 and 1/2 times as likely to get a positive modifier, and twice as likely to get a +2 or higher.* That's not nothing, and it has a considerable effect over the course of 6 attributes, making it much harder to end up with a gimp character. On 3d6, your character has a 17% chance to have no positive modifiers at all. On 3d6+1, that chance drops to 6%.

*Assuming we're using the standardized Basic scale, where 13-15 is +1, 16-17 is +2, and 18 is +3.

>>44540374
>Plus I wouldn't force you to play a shitty unplayable character.
3d6 isn't some magical force of nature. 3d6 (or 3d6+1) stats simply generate a shit character. There's a reason D&D ran screaming from 3d6 as soon as it made stats more meaningful to character capabilities.

>The entire point of /osr/ is randomness and fun roleplaying and adventure
Shit stats that make your character weak are toxic to fun roleplaying and adventure. They're fine in B/X, because stats don't matter so much. They're actively harmful in games where people keep loading more and more benefits on high stats and penalties on low stats.

Even OSR randomness is in service of a fun and enjoyable game. Wanking about how anyone who doesn't use dirt-farmer stat rolls "believes all characters should be demigods" is pathetic.

>>44540374
>why do you believe all characters should be demigods?

Nobody is saying all characters should be demigods. They should however be either A) notably above average or B) not in an RPG which punishes characters with poor stats worse than WotC editions and far worse than any edition of D&D.in that respect.

>The entire point of /osr/ is randomness

Uh, no. Not in character generation, anyway. A fighter has about a 10% chance of a +1 to hit from str and other classes have a 10% and 10% chance of a +1 or -1 respectively, but that's not something you can't play through regardless. You are endorsing a system where this relatively minor variance is made far worse.

>fun roleplaying and adventure

Randomly hazing players because they got shit characters and randomly lavishing rewards on players because they rolled awesome isn't particularly conductive to fun.

>>44540427
The whole "you can't make attributes important because that'll hamstring folks who rolled poorly" argument misses the point, I think. Rather than the crappy solution of making attributes relatively unimportant, you should use a better method of stat generation.

Seriously, look at the AD&D official stat-rolling methods some time.

1) 4d6, drop lowest.
2) 3d6 x 12, best 6.
3) 3d6 six times, take the best... for each stat.
4) 3d6 in order 12 times, pick one.

>>44540482
>Randomly hazing players because they got shit characters and randomly lavishing rewards on players because they rolled awesome isn't particularly conductive to fun.

Why do you assume this is any different from normal gameplay? Are you saying that its wrong for a GM to let players kill monsters who roll high when rolling for damage, and that they are 'hazing' players who roll shitty damage with their swords? What are you even on about?

>>44540503
Which is the issue - dude wants to make stats matter, but also is obsessed with making characters average peasants. Even WHFRP 1e threw its shitfarmers some fate points.

>>44540512
"but but if players don't have to roll 3d6 then what's next, no damage and giving the players medals for showing up and a free level up every session and waah waah millenials entitlement I am a terrible fucking dm and game designer"

>>44528543
Maybe I just missed it, but what scale are you using for your modifiers?

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>>44540466

>3d6+1 is closer to the latter than the former.

See pic

>making it much harder to end up with a gimp character.

Not at all. Remember, you've cranked up the importance of stats, making more of them important for all characters, and to add insult to injury, you've massively increased the impact stats have on saving throws. Your RPG is actually much more likely to result in gimps than, say, 3d6 AD&D, and said gimping is more damaging since their saving throws are catastrophically fucked.

>>44540503

No one is saying that you can't make attributes important and no one has argued making attributes important is bad in this thread.

>Rather than the crappy solution of making attributes relatively unimportant, you should use a better method of stat generation.

That doesn't follow. That just exacerbates the power level difference between players.

Exactly what sort of level difference equivalent should stats account for?

Why not just roll 1d10 for starting level while you're at it? Sounds hyperbolic, but that's more than the difference between characters that 3d6+1 and roll under saves makes with regards to saving throws, for example. Why is it reasonable to have an already iffy roll that is largely beyond your control that will often result in death or incapacitation something that needs to be INCREASED in disparity between two PCs?

>>44540550
>See pic
Not sure what you're saying that proves, but the average of 3d6+1 is a full point away from flat 3d6 and only .74 away from 4d6 drop low. It *is* closer.

>Your RPG
That's not me, hoss.

>>44540512
>Why do you assume this is any different from normal gameplay?

Reread the post you're responding to. In 4d6k3 AD&D, getting a bad stat that actually penalizes your 'combat math' (which already is brutally unforgiving) is less than 6% for strength or constitution, and less than 3% for dexterity. As far as saves are concerned, its less than 6% for wisdom and then likely to be only a -1 vs certain categories of mental attacks. So, about a 15% chance that a character will have a tiny penalty to one element of combat, and about a 5.71% chance that a character will have a tiny penalty to one kind of rare saving throw. Even then, 4d6k3 AD&D chars are not demigods by any means.

>Are you saying that its wrong for a GM to let players kill monsters who roll high when rolling for damage, and that they are 'hazing' players who roll shitty damage with their swords?

It'd be wrong for a GM to make you roll damage once per session or campaign, sure.

Cranking up the randomness of power disparities to 11 is not the way to go.

>>44540580
>Not sure what you're saying that proves

It proves exactly what it proves, that 3d6+1 is closer to 3d6 than 4d6k3, at least as far as the likelihood of getting a gimped character and the improbability of getting a tough character.

>>44540624
>It'd be wrong for a GM to make you roll damage once per session or campaign, sure.
Thank you for stating that so clearly and concisely.

What would the ability modifiers be for scores above 18? The question popped up on the table and I have no idea.

>>44540669
To spell it out, you get to roll damage separately with each hit, but you only get to roll your stats once. There's little benefit to exacerbating that element, and the default 4d6k3 method already results in characters qualifying for a wide range of classes, having a lot of stats that differentiate them, etc. etc. without unduly fucking players over for elements beyond their control. Random stats giving about a 2 level power disparity is about all that is needed, for even the worst randomness addicts around.

>>44540693
In what? I don't know if you can get stats above 18 outside of special, explicitly covered situations in Basic/etc. 2e and 1e Legends and Lore covers it I think for AD&D.

>>44540644
Yeah, you're gonna have to actually quantify that and not just show a picture and make claims. Your chance of getting a negative modifier on 3d6 is 25.9%. On 4d6 drop low, it's 10.5%. On 3d6+1, it's 16.2%, which is closer to the latter (5.7 percentiles away) than the former (9.7 away).

Your chance of getting a positive modifier is 25.9% on 3d6 and 48.8% on 4d6 drop low. 3d6+1's 37.5% is a smidge closer to the latter than the former.

We've already looked at their averages, where 3d6+1 is closer to 4d6 drop low than flat 3d6. What other criteria would you like to examine?

>>44540741
>Yeah, you're gonna have to actually quantify that and not just show a picture and make claims.

I did quantify it, with probabilities and everything. Remember? I was referring to AD&D's modifiers, which makes most characters wind up with a variance of 2 points instead of 4 points from abilities.

Since you prefer Basic's greater disparity between characters, I'll point out that in terms of getting a -2 (which is a serious blow) or a +2, 3d6+1 is closer to 3d6 than 4d6k3.

>>44540788
Your chance of getting a -2 or less:
on 3d6 = 4.6%
on 3d6+1 = 1.9%
on 4d6 dl = 1.2%

Your chance of getting +2 or greater:
on 3d6 = 4.6%
on 3d6+1 = 9.3%
on 4d6 dl = 13.0%

In both cases, 3d6+1 is closer to 4d6 drop low than flat 3d6. Next?

>>44540864
OK, so ignoring that someone may have misstated the exact probabilities, 3d6+1 is still worse than the least generous system proposed in AD&D. It's bad, and you should feel bad.

>>44540864
Oops, -2 starts at 5 and not 7, my bad

>>44540909

Different anon here. I was honestly considering using the d20 attribute scale for an OSR clone, and the default d20 method of attribute generation.

>all these people on about 3d6 and 4d6k3
Who 6d4k5 here?

>>44540506
You forgot methods I and VI

>>44540941

If you really want to use random stat gen method, I would personally recommend the more subdued modifiers based off AD&D, as its a bit brutal how d20 makes Str 12 matter as much as Str 17 used to, and str 9 penalize a little more than str 7. YMMV, of course.

And I really don't endorse roll under saves either way.

>>44540941
Well, it's not that bad? It just depends on what you do with it, and how much you apply the modifiers to. Just think about your design, and test shit.

Default d20 is, IIRC, 4d6k3.

>>44540962
4d6 drop lowest is Method I. You're thinking of AD&D 2nd edition, which is not a good edition even by AD&D standards, and tried to retcon the whole "characters are competent and heroes!" thing into "characters are incompetent village idiots."

>>44540977
I mean, 2e Method I is literally tougher than any core ability generation method in D&D's previous history. Even OD&D let you trade points to get better benefits in your main stats.

But, for some reason, people latched onto it as the way D&D ~~had always been~~ and ~~true hardcore roleplaying~~ and ~~why do you believe all characters should be demigods?~~

>>44540989
Bear in mind 2e was a system with stat requirements to play core classes, for fuck's sake. Some of the core classes had less than a 1% chance of being playable with this method. It's simply not fit for purpose.

>>44540977
>>44540989

But you already play a demigod in 2e, it says the fighter is based off Hercules.

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>>44541000
0.13%

As AD&D is an ongoing game of fantasy adventuring, it is important to allow participants to generate a viable character of the race and profession which he or she desires. While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to the quirks of the dice. Furthermore, these rather marginal characters tend to have short life expectancy–which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do with some character of a race and/or class which he or she really can’t or won’t identify with.
>Gary Gygax

>>44541002
Shame about the actual rules.

>>44540977
>>44540989
Nobody uses 2I anyway. Everybody uses 2V, which is 4d6k3.

>which is not a good edition even by AD&D standards
Well, never mind, fuck off.

>>44541043

4d6 drop lowest and 4d6k3 is exactly the same thing, said different ways.

>>44540966
>And I really don't endorse roll under saves either way.
Just draw cards from a preset stack for attributes rather than rolling dice. That way nobody gets screwed.

>>44541067
I know, I just thought I should say it.

Incidentally, is there a point-buy attribute system for AD&D other than the PB system in Skills & Powers?

>>44541073

Having an ability score below average (which I'll define as inflicting a negative modifier to something) is not getting screwed. It's a roleplaying opportunity.

Of course, nobody wants 2 or more below average scores.

>>44541105

I don't think so, but I have one I use that works and is simple, and lets people get the character they want.

>here's 72 points
>split them how you like
>an ability score over 15 costs 2 points per point

>>44540989

Why can't characters start off shitty and get better?

I like the idea of first level characters being kind of shit. The warrior uses a bent scythe and a barrel lid as a shield. The thief's experience in stealing is bread from a local tavern. The Wizard is an apprentice of an apprentice who learned his first spell studying the magical readings of musing of a fucking goblin. The cleric isn't even the local preacher, just a guy who wants to reassure his faith by picking up a billy club and smashing some skeletons because that's what his faith demands, even though his teeth clatter whenever he sees them.

Then, as they get their gold and experience, they get stronger and better.

>>44541121

Different anon here. Most OSR material doesn't allow for improving your ability scores as you increase your level. I think that was a 3e thing.

>>44541121
>Why can't characters start off shitty and get better?
Good question. Why SHOULD characters be permanently punished because of a low roll at chargen?

>>44541106
Hey, remember the most iconic D&D character with a low stat, Raistlin? It always came up in play, he was coughing and weak and had really low CON.

his actual constitution in play - his lowest stat - was 10

>>44541147
Weirdly, ability scores seem to be the only thing you can't spend character points on in Skills and Powers.

>>44541147

Most does not equal homebrew system everyone is discussing, Anon.

>>44541172

Exactly. It makes a lot of sense to me; every class starts with shit equipment and abilites and gets better. Better equipment, better magic, better stats.

>>44541073
>>44541106

Roll under saves aren't precisely about good vs bad stats per se, its about stats having, for no apparent reason, 4x the impact on defensive rolls.

>>44541121
>Why can't characters start off shitty and get better?

They do. Good stats mean they probably won't stay shitty. Roll under saves mean they will stay shitty, though.

>>44541335
>>44541348

Define roll under saves for me please, just so I am sure I know what everyone is talking about.

>>44541369
Roll under saves are where you have to roll under a number to pass the save. What people are complaining about is either having save modifiers based off attributes, or using attribute checks as saves.

AD&D saves are also roll-under, but they're functions of class and level.

>>44541369
When a system substitutes save vs poison for "roll your constitution or under," save vs breath weapon for "roll your dexterity or under," etc. Its massively unbalanced, generous stat system or no, because instead of your stats giving you +5% to +10% to success chance, or a like chance to failure, suddenly they're giving you +30% or -30%... its a scaling +5/-5% per ability point over or under 10.

Basically, its more of an extreme departure from OSR than 3e's ability score systems were.

>>44541406
AD&D saves are roll over (ie 10+).

I'm not intrinsically opposed to ability scores affecting your saves, though I PERSONALLY prefer it more how AD&D might handle it (as a special case, like a bonus for dwarves), so long as it isn't a MASSIVELY disproportionate modifier like with roll under.

If str 15 gives +1 to damage (just for example), then +1 to saves vs immobilization and entanglement (again, for example) isn't unreasonable. But if something gives +1 or -1 to attacks and such, but halves or doubles your failure rate for life or death matters like saves, that's clearly disproportionate.

Does anyone know if there's any official information on using non-weapon proficiencies untrained in AD&D 2e?

>>44541484
>AD&D saves are roll over (ie 10+).
Oh yes, I'm getting them confused with ability/NWP checks again.

>>44541503
NWPs are, ironically, one of the few things Skills and Powers probably did better -- specifically it has abilities modify the skills but doesn't have the huge gap between a 10 and a 15.

I am softer on NWPs than I am on saves, however -- because NWPs are rarely necessary, and you can just pick NWPs for stats you're good at anyway.

>>44541601
It's a pity you can't really rip S&P apart, due to the whole thing's reliance on character points.

>>44529042
You don't have to emphasize modifiers to make stats important. You can roll a d20 and try to roll under the stat. The higher the stat, the more likely you are to not fail. Then you can look at how much you beat your stat by. Plus one swords can temporarily increase your stats, avoiding the whole negative number stuff.

>>44541660
You can't? Use of its system for skill points in lieu of proficiencies does not require you to use its freakshow of class customization.

Also looking over the starting ratings they seem pretty deranged -- most start at a rating of 5-9, meaning a character with an 18 stat will still only have a 45%-65% chance of success, a char with a stat of 10 will almost universally have the same or lower chance than before, and a char with a stat below 10 will almost certainly have a worse chance than before.

So I guess its not all that great. Concept-wise, though, I think its good, but only concept wise.

I like 3d6 for proficiency checks on anything that doesn't warrant high levels of swinginess -- most tasks, like swimming, bear lore, crafting, and so forth, strike me as better off with the 3d6 than a d20.

>>44541743
>looking over the starting ratings they seem pretty deranged
That's because you're meant to spend character points to increase their ratings.

>>44541760
that's true, though its a bit ouch going from 3-4 starting nwps with okay ratings to 1-2 with okay ratings

>>44541792
I really want to see a character sheet designed for use with all of the Player's Option/DM's Option books. With the 18 ability scores and everything.

>>44541813
I've ran two campaigns that went from 1-20ish with 2e S&P, one before 3e came out and one after 4e came out. It was okay.

>>44541829
Did you use C&T, S&M, and HLC (HLC is for 21+, so I doubt you used that one)?

>>44541907
Yes.

>HLC

It has stuff for chars as low as level 10, iirc.

I eventually got turned off from 2e because of how poorly integrated it was and that's why I want to run a 1e hex/stronghold/military/etc. oriented campaign. There's tons of subsystems you can add, but little of it is focused on variant PCs etc.

Stuff like HLC's Bravery/Hardiness system would be perfect to give fighters from early on. I don't know why (Improved) Evasion became standard fare for rogues but not Hardiness for warrior types.

>>44541944
>how poorly integrated it was
What do you mean? Poor integration of what?

>>44541973
>What do you mean? Poor integration of what?

How 2e has tons of splats that just plain aren't remotely compatible with one another.

>>44542002
You know you don't have to use all of them.

That's what you get when they're designed across 11-odd years by 30 or more people.

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This is a pretty what the fuck ever question, but in the keep on the borderlands when the party goes on an expedition into the wilderness whats a nice number of days to have them journey before getting to the caves? I was thinking like 5 nights, and just describe some weather and have some encounters, maybe put some navigational puzzles in there so that it isn't just a loading screen. I also don't want it to become a miniature hexcrawl, because really its just a transport section before they try to sneak loot out of monster lairs in the caves.

Trying to move this thread away from 3d6 shitfests, how about a giant, semi-organised list of occasionally-interesting OSR blog posts?

https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/LinksToWisdom/All_In_One

>>44542020
>You know you don't have to use all of them.

Sure. I decided that I'd rather use none of them, especially since I've led two gaming groups to see pretty much there is everything to see. Same with 3e, except that its fairly compatible with itself.

>>44542031
I think it's canonically, like, 2 miles away from the keep? It's just a pain to find by exploring, so you'll spend a few days looking for it the first time, and perhaps not find the most direct route back if you're poor at mapping. It's just off the road... but with thick woods, it can be legitimately hard to find a ravine like that even though it's right there.

>>44542054
So you want to do a military-style campaign, and you're throwing out C&T?

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>>44542054
>>44542020
Oh, and one thing I still rather enjoy is the critical strike/injury system, particularly how its a bit reminiscent of White Wolf as well, and I'm adapting its concepts of bruised/grazed/struck/wounded/broken/shattered/whatever the fuck to be the main damage system in my RPG. Which is definitely beyond the pale for OSR, but I am trying to get the gameplay to be similar.

>>44542031
Remember that the Caves of Chaos are just the tutorial before you raid the Keep and steal everything that's not nailed down, kill everything that resists, and burn anything that looks better on fire.

>>44542087

>and you're throwing out C&T?

Well its not 2e, so I wasn't planning on using any 2e supplements for it, other than when there is literally nothing on the topic in 1e (I think like one player desperately wants to play a gnoll, and I don't think speed factors for monsters were ever included either).

I wouldn't so much say C&T is particularly about military stuff in general so much as high res, small scale combat.

>>44542126
If I were going military, I'd probably break out Castle Guide and maybe Battlesystem. Maybe Of Ships and the Sea or Seas of Cerilia if I need naval battle stuff.

Definitely want those War-sphere Cleric spells.

>>44542086
I just find it fucking odd that they'd even manage to build a keep that close to such a concentration of baddies. If they're that close and people know about the caves of chaos why haven't either side wiped out the other already.

>>44542116
If a GM let's low level players get away with that wtf is he doing

>>44524911
>Man, prepping a bunch of one sentence NPCs is a fucking shore. Got a favorite table for stuff like this?
I don't, but I'm convinced that The Dungeon Dozen must have something like that. Also check out Judges' Guild (who made tons of real-needs-based products back in the day, like the Castles and Villages books; they understood table needs better than maybe anybody else ever has) in the Trove, and I think Vornheim has a table for something like that as well.

>>44542414

Sounds like he's having a good time.

>>44542401
I thought it was the other way around.

>>44542401
The first thing the rich folk in the keep send you to do is exterminate the locals, who are living in squalid caves and keeping to themselves. They just don't want to do it themselves, because that might attract questions and make people wonder about the morality of murdering goblin children. Far easier to dangle the promise of a few gold pieces in front of the next wandering band of adventurers - if the news ever comes out, you can blame them.

I mean, all the real loot's in the keep. They're clearly the baddies.

>>44542414
Er, their job? Look at the module and tell me it's not set up for an assault on the Keep. Presumably from infiltration or as a surprise attack once you're inside, sure, but it's got a lot of tactical detail ready to go.

Might not be high enough level? That's why they have to play dirty. Perhaps recruit some travellers, bribe some guards and incite rebellion, maybe even hire some of the inhabitants of the caves in exchange for opening up trade and employment opportunities. Hell, once you've taken the Keep, you can arrange to signal them when particularly valuable caravans are passing near, in exchange for a cut and safety for the regular traders.

>>44542049
This is exactly what I need. Thanks. Free content in blog posts is the best part of playing old versions of dnd.

>>44542811
Speaking of which, can anyone help me find something?

I remember reading some posts about cubic cosmology. Basically the world was a flat, finite plane, with an underworld of dungeons below. You go through enough weird bits of the dungeons, and you can travel to other planes... which are literally the other five faces of the cube. I think the "atmosphere" was a sphere smaller than the largest diagonal dimension of the cube, so each plane had domes of liveable area surrounded by vacuum or other nastiness, making dungeons and plane shift spells the only way to travel to other planes without a hell of a lot of preparation.

Also, just because they're faces of a cube doesn't mean one of them can't be hell and another can't be a 4e-style elemental chaos... they're just weird.

>>44543410
The problem is I keep googling it and getting that damn cube of the planes or whatever it's called. Stupid magic items.

Anyone have that colorful version of the Caves of Chaos that shades in which kinds of creatures live where?

File: CavesofChaosColorMap.png (3MB, 1600x908px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 1600x908px

>>44544074
recedingrules at blog spot, /2010/05/humanoid-combatants-in-caves-of-chaos.html ?

>>44544116
Cool! Thanks.

>>44543410
This it?http://savevsdragon.blogspot.com/2015/05/finalizing-my-planar-cosmology.html?m=1

Apparently it's gonna be full product soon.

>>44544729
No, but thanks. When I say "faces of a cube" I mean that literally - there are six planes, they're the faces of a cube with domes of atmosphere or whatever. No other "planes" floating around, although they may exist and not be mentioned - just planes as sides of a die.

something something educated stupid four day eternal strict time records must be kept to have a meaningful one day planar cube

>>44542453
>Judges Guild
Took a look at their Village Book in the trove. These tables own. Lots of example village layouts too that I can shamelessly copy and reuse. Thanks for the tip.

>>44545020
Speaking of village layouts, I found some interesting little lazy ways to generate a quick village earlier.

https://1d30.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/generate-a-village/ is the simplest.

krykough at blog spot /2014/10/dinky-little-villages.html seems the most involved, and links to some others.

They're pretty neat. There's also the Pyramid Campsite for some quick random little bits of terrain: recedingrules at blog spot /2010/04/pyramid-campsite.html

>>44543410
>>44544818
That's a D&D With Pornstars post. If you can't find it with that information I'll find it for you myself later.

>>44545267
That narrows it down a lot! It's not one of Zak's posts that I have bookmarked, but I should be able to find it.

File: cubeyearth.jpg (34KB, 564x564px) Image search: [Google]

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>>44545333
Motherfucker. I searched, couldn't find anything. Went through his entire blog, clicking any post title that looked relevent or interesting, couldn't find anything in well over a thousand posts. Tried another google search, and I must have misspelled something the first time, because it came right up.

dndwithpornstars at blog spot /2011/09/why-theyre-called-planes-and-why-you.html

*screaming*

>>44545189
Are any of these map generators?

Here's a stupid idea because I'm bothered by elves.

Magic-Users have a spell book they use as the source of formulas and memorization, but elves don't. Instead, they are naturally in tune with whatever magic is and thus just have to focus on this nature of themselves to receive a spell imprinted in their minds. Thus, they'd either have to "pray" like clerics for their spells or its just randomized. Since Magic-Users are used to have to study magic to use it, they also get a die roll chance to decipher magic items they come across.

Does that work as a way to differentiate them? I really wanna give some sweet incentive to play as a Magic-User, even if you roll both high Int and Str.

>>44547007
Basically, yes. You have to break out pencil, paper, and physical dice, but they'll give you a village layout. The first one's simple - it tells you where the buildings are, how to arrange them, and suggests roads. Might want to combine it with something like the campsite map thing to get some topography and throw a main road in there.

You get small compounds of peasant families, some larger independent stores/inns/churches, and some relatively rich asshole and their servants to run the place.

>>44547109
Oh ok. Did you ever try Cityographer?

>>44547014
If you want them to be different, why not make them, say, a druid/illusionist hybrid? That's how most people envision them I think. Less OP since magic users have a lot more synergy (mirror image, haste, etc.) with melee guys.

>>44547148
is there a spell list for that for B/x?

>>44547014
I am bothered. Bothered by elves.

The way I'd do that is that they meditate with a tree to memorise a spell, then can reprepare the same loadout each night by meditating. If they want to change their spell loadout, they have to spend d6 hours per spell level communing in a forest, finding the right trees to meditate upon to restructure their minds to hold the new spell combinations.

This presumably has side-effects based on _what_ they decide to memorise, like hair or skin colour changing slightly, little twigs growing from their arms, or a small bird nesting in their hair. If the trees like them, they may be gifted a branch they can spend months carving into a staff. No, the staff doesn't actually do anything, but it's got magic infused into it and elves like that sort of thing, so they can trade it as a valuable gift with elven communities.

They're more independent than magic-users as they don't need a spellbook to recharge every day, but, well, they're slow to change.

>>44547195
http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2015/11/holmes-rules-illusionist-part-2.html

>>44547209
Oh, because ~~all things are one in nature~~ and ~~the forest speaks~~ and ~~dude sweet there are some awesome mushrooms~~, that 1d6 hours per spell level always counts all of them. A high-level elf who wants to switch magic missile for read magic is going to spend a week frolicking as they find a new arrangement of arcane energies to adjust all of their high-level slots to account for the change.

>>44547209
>>44547261

Is encouraging the rampant flanderization of elves as tree hugging jackasses really a good thing?

>>44547261
Sometimes a short, brown-haired male elf with blue eyes goes into the woods and a tall elf woman with green hair down to her ankles and eyes like blood comes out, claiming that of course they're still Melf, and they can support that claim with their newly-acquired fireball spells.

I mean, you can't exactly prove they aren't.

>>44547286
Yeah, as long as the players and DM actually go for it semi-seriously.

>>44547014
I... guess? I'm not seeing a strong incentive for passing up the elf here, to be honest. Unless the spells gained were fully random, which would cause massive frustration, and you'd be better off just banning elves instead.

Maybe I'm just biased, though, I like the Elf class. Best fighter/mage implementation in any game (that I've seen), for my money.


Hm, thinking about it, what I'd do if I did want to differentiate them is probably let the magic-user make potions and scrolls and stuff at earlier levels than ninth. (Elves could still do it, but not until name level)

>>44547324
That could be an entertaining take, vaguely similar to how in Exalted, each time a fair folk re-enters Creation, they can jettison their form and very Motivation and return as something that, to all onlookers, is a separate being.

>>44547359
Or just have elves not make potions and shit. They make beautiful works of art that can be passed down for a hundred generations of mortal men, not consumables.

>>44547346
I'm not sure the answer to the (perceived) problems with elves is to make them more boring and one dimensional.

>>44547372
Nothing wrong with playing up the fairy woods theme. Woods are perfectly fine and safe, save the occasional bear. Elves are perfectly fine and safe, if you buy them the good wine. Put an elf in a wood, and nope nope nope fuck that no way am I going in there I might never come out.

>>44547411
Not trying to take away your elves, friend. It's just a different clichéd representation that you see slightly less of these days, that I happen to like, just as I like other forms of elf.

>>44547359
Ok sure, maybe its better to just make the magic user more instead of working with negative spaces. Are there maybe some simple alchemy house rules somewhere? Or am I just an idiot and there are actually already rules for this stuff in the expert books? I've just read B/x and some clones.

>>44547551
Some simple mechanic for magic items and research would be fucking rad.

>>44547551
There's the crazy, massive Bard Games material? It's period, not OSR, but worth a look.
grognardia blog spot /2011/06/retrospective-compleat-alchemist.html

also how the fuck do you persuade /tg/ to let you post links to that site anyway? >>44547238

>>44547551
9 and 30 Kingdoms has a neat basic class.

>>44547635

>also how the fuck do you persuade /tg/ to let you post links to that site anyway?

Elf magic

>>44547686
The Apothecary is neat, at least. The actual Alchemist they've come up with isn't great.

Rolled 4 (1d6)

>>44547701
'k, I'll be back in d6 hours.

>>44547735
Nice tie in into the rest of the thread.

>>44547634
Letting a magic user start with a really basic utility potion or scroll sounds like a good incentive to get a person to make more of them.

>>44541002
If you're a level 20 fighter, it doesn't matter if your ability scores are all 10.
You're the greatest warrior, and leader, in the world. Bar none.

>>44548382

Eh, that's not necessarily the case at all though you've probably seen more action than any other human. Levels above 10 are not the end all be all. For example, a max physical stats level 10 fighter would probably curb stomp him.

>>44548426
No, because the 20th level fighter would have more hit points, and be more likely to hit the max stats fighter.
I don't even know how a max stats character would even come up, because the odds of rolling all 18s on your ability scores by itself is approximately 1.4 trillion to 1, and couple that with the odds of rolling a 100 on your exceptional strength, the odds become 140 trillion to 1.
This is a non-issue. Even if it were, the 20th level fighter would have superior henchmen and retainers.

If you're not playing with encumbrance, wtf. Just. Ten foot poles, really? That's a pole that is _ten_ foot. That seems kinda unwieldy.

>>44548519
>No, because the 20th level fighter would have more hit points,

Nah, they'd have about the same HP, probably more. He'd a bit less to hit, but a lot more to damage.

>ecause the odds of rolling all 18s on your ability scores by itself is approximately 1.4 trillion to 1

I'm talking combat stats, of course. About one person in 10 million with 3d6 would have str 18, dex 18, and con 18 at char generation. Presumably no rarer than level 20 fighters, though who knows. If we assume its an NPC, and a grown man, we're dealing with +3 str and +2 con, so that's not all that rare -- 1 in 167,961. If we assume str 18/00, its up to 1 in 17 million. Supposedly a level 14 character is 1 in 10 million, but who knows.

All of this, of course, is subject to debate, as stat generation isn't necessarily simulation (China may not actually be the largest supply of demigods on the planet IRL, etc) and it may actually be that the lowest levels are the hardest to escape, and gaining levels may become progressively easier rather than harder. So I'll drop the proportional rarity.

To get back to the point...

>more hit points

Something like 95 hp vs about 75 hp. The level 10 would be down about 4-5 points down in the to-hit race (4 points better AC, 7 points worse attack), 6 points more in damage. My money would be definitely on the level 10 gentleman.

>superior henchmen and retainers

The only OSR-ish supplement I can think of that gives more retainers for higher levels is Dark Sun, in which case the level 20 guy would indeed have veritable armies of level 10 dudes. Otherwise, probably depends on Charisma, though I'd bet the level 20 guy would have superior henchmen -- on the other hand, the idea of level 20 guys being uber rare depends on the idea that survivability goes down instead of up, and he may have lost his henchmen by then.

Either way, levels matter a lot less for fighters than wizards.

>>44548982
>All this stuff
What I read here was "there are good reasons to use BECMI/RC Weapon Mastery rules".

>>44549051
What are the level requirements for different mastery levels in BECMI?

>>44549051
Also I definitely would wager a level 20 isn't the best in the world of BECMI/RC, level 36 scale and all that.

>>44548982
>and he may have lost his henchmen by then.
How do you figure? Do you have the odds of that happening on you?
If not, then you're not making a very compelling point.
A wizard is limited by the spells the GM wants him to find in game. They don't get to pick whatever spells they like UNLESS they're a specialist.

>>44540427
>The author uses a stat gen system worse than the one recommended as the minimum by Gygax (4d6k3)

You don't roll 3D6 in order? Dude even my little sisters roll 3D6 in order and they're 9 years old.

>>44549180
>How do you figure? Do you have the odds of that happening on you?

Depends on, again, whether you are of the camp that suggests survivability goes down or up with levels -- the notion that a level 20 fighter is the only one of his kind in the world does heavily suggest that survivability goes down like crazy (1 in x million etc) so they'd probably have all died by then. I view predictability as going completely out the window with regards to such things (there may be as many level 20 fighters as there are 20 HD monsters, there may be none, etcetera) and that if there's one hugely high level type, its probably because his friends are so as well, and that the stronger you get the more likely someone can save or resurrect you, etcetera. But then again, that conflicts with the idea that a level 20 fighter is necessarily the greatest in the world.

>If not, then you're not making a very compelling point.

Since henchmen don't figure into either side of the aisle (whether a level 20 fighter of average stats is the best warrior in the world or whatever), its not a point, its an observation.

>>44549204
Yeah, 9 year olds aren't known for being able to tell D&D by David Cook vs D&D by Gary Gygax.

>>44549204
I roll 2d6 in order, therefore I am more hardcore and roleplaying and oldschool than you. It's realistic, really - people with average stats can get jobs doing peasant things, so only those who can't handle village life are forced out into the wild to live or die by the d20.

>>44549417
By "realistic" I mean that it produces a verisimilitudinously rigorous mileu in which the rich tapestry of true d&d can truly unfold.

>>44549118
There aren't any strict ones, but as I read the rules, level 11's the earliest you could possibly hope to reach Grand Master level. That said, a few people here in /osrg/ (or maybe just one, insistent anon?) have argued that it's better if you don't give out slots and just grant fighter-types the different levels of mastery in /all/ weapons on set levels, because restricting fighter weapon choices is a bad idea in every case. That always seemed like a reasonable claim to me.

>>44549312
>the notion that a level 20 fighter is the only one of his kind in the world does heavily suggest that survivability goes down like crazy (1 in x million etc) so they'd probably have all died by then.
That's not at all what it suggests.
Level 20 has always been a largely hypothetical point in an adventuring career, and any class can go beyond level 20 in 2e into infinity if they so chose to, but there's no point in outlining that in the game.
Normally, an adventuring career would either stop or slow down drastically when you hit level 9, because that's Name Level. The fighter gets a barony and retainers, a thief gets a thieve's guild, a cleric gets a church, and a wizard gets a tower to research in.
You would need to play the game for years and years before you even approach level 20. It's not about the lack of survivability. It's about the characters retiring from adventuring because they get what they always wanted at 9th level. Only those who actively crave risk and wish to go all the way, seeking godhood perhaps, would even consider 20th level as an option.

>>44549417

Why the ad hominum? 3d6 with no bonuses, not even counting a plus +1, is a 10.5 so its roughly average for humans in the setting. 2d6 is nowhere near average for humans, you aren't even trying.

>>44549204
>>44549380
>>44549417
Even sarcastically, let's not restart that disgraceful fucking baitfest from earlier, which as far as I can remember is the most obnoxious thing ever to happen in an OSR General.

>>44549417

I just rolled a 11, 8, 6, 4, 12, 7 and a 7, 9, 7, 9, 6, 7 out of curiosity -- the first is fairly okay and the latter is still playable, could make an okay fighter and wizard pair. Thus I propose we make 2d6 in order the new norm and deride all who deviate from it as babbies.

In DDA Cataclysm, there's a mod that makes you start with below average stats, but as you gain experience in skills, your stats slowly increase -- I wonder how an OSR-ish RPG that ties stats to class, race, and level only could work?

Some other form of variance could work too.

>>44549530
Average people work shitty village jobs all their lives. Even a first level fighting man is better than a 0-level npc.

>>44549380
True dat.
>>44549417
Sorry for being snarky. Though I'm wondering why you guys automatically assume stats must be big in Basic or earlier D&D. AD&D needed better stat so it went 4D6, but before that you could totally play with a 3D6 in order character, even with shitty stats. Specifically because we're talking about D&D. The lack of task resolution system means you has a player are supposed to find clever ways in the game to achieve your goals. "you're supposed to avoid combat" is only partially true, but it's a good summary.

Now, that's more of a taste matter but I like characters as adventurers, not heroes. They do risky shit, sometimes crazy shit, and if their actions make them heroes then so be it, but at the end, they're adventurers.

>>44549580
It's playable, but it's severely below average even for a dirt farming peasant, who would have 10s down the line.

>>44549509
>any class can go beyond level 20 in 2e into infinity
I don't recall that. 1e's theone with a 100th-level module, and 2e's the one with a specific sourcebook for levels 21-30.

File: yes this pleases starscream.png (130KB, 400x376px) Image search: [Google]

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>>44549484
>verisimilitudinously rigorous mileu

Yesss, I need to use these words more

>>44549638
>1e's theone with a 100th-level module
Wait.
Where can I read that?

>>44549638
From what I recall, max level in AD&D 2e is 20.
BECMI & B/X are 36th level maximum, but I'm not sure.

>>44549642
You should probably check the typo then -- Anon meant "milieu".

File: 9228 H4 The Throne of Bloodstone.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>44549673
>max level in AD&D 2e is 20.
30 with DM's Option - High-Level Campaigns.

>>44549661

>>44549616
The whole shitstorm started because someone posted their game which had stats mattering a whole lot more than BD&D, and 3d6+1 for stats. People pointed out that 3d6 is reasonable in games where stats don't matter as much, but not in their game, and started citing Gygax and shitting on AD&D 2e.

>>44549638
>>44549673
Looking at the core 2ePH again, I see I was mistaken. 20th level is the cap for each class, but my other point still stands.

>>44549683
...typos are old school!

And 14 levels should be enough for anyone.

>>44549721
>this pdf
I love you, anon. This is why /tg/ is the best board.

>>44549721
I believe you, never read this one. I played AD&D 2e back in the time when I never would actually READ the books before GMing. Fun times. Never could go back to it after rediscovering B/X though, too much granularity to my tastes. I've always wondered what high level PCs do in their free time, like, in between huge quests and dealing with politics and holdings.

>>44549732
It's funny that people always cite Gygax on RPG design when Arneson was the RPG guy, Gygax was the wargame guy, and Kuntz was there as well.

>>44549777
People cite Gygax when he said something smart. Not so much his rules-nazi phase. Arneson was more interesting though.

>>44549775
Politics, parties, long-term research, spending time with their families, running their domains.

>>44549805
Where can I learn more about those guys? I know who wrote and worked on what, but I've always wondered if there was some kind of documentary or something to learn from them apart from the DM's books.

>>44549739
Technically the highest-level characters in BECMI are the Full Hierarchs, which is level 61 (36 mortal, 25 Immortal).

>>44549509
>You would need to play the game for years and years before you even approach level 20.

Eh, not really. I've ran at least two campaigns with PCs reaching level 20 in 2e, one did run on for years but the level sluggishness was not on the basis of difficulty in so doing, but next to zero concept of high levels being a thing to give a damn about. The other only was about a year, and mostly Birthright oriented. My overall impression is that, as far as anything organic to the game is concerned, experience is like money -- you need it to get it, and how fast such chars would advance largely depends on how tough they are (presumably pretty tough at that point, though a level 9 thief with crippled stats may have a hard time) and whether the world is overrun with high level beasties or not (Council of Wyrms and something like Ravenloft without the Dark Powers conspiring to fuck you, for example).

I will certainly say there are few universalities about post name level PC types, although name level retirement is hardly universal, whether we're talking AD&D or BECMI. But yeah, point taken. I don't really have any strong opinion on henchmen either way.

One unique bit of flavor about OSR is that high level types USUALLY won't persist too much longer than a normal human lifespan and will generally eventually stay dead, while demihumans persist longer but probably will be merely be badass royal guard and not professional Great Wyrm stompers.

>>44549616
At the risk of reigniting the aforementioned baitfest, I'd be more confident with shit stats (like the aforementioned 2d6 rolls) in AD&D than BECMI etcetera, although I am rusty in the latter and not completely aware of which low stats ban what in the former -- the aforementioned craptacular fighter and magic user duo, from personal experience, could still go far.

Source: Played in a random 3d6 x6 1e campaign about a year ago just for larfs and proof of concept, we did fine (leaning on frequent escaping and resting) until we lost our magic users (one from troglodyte ambush and one from absentness/school) and died of instant centipede poison.

We could have done a little better with what we had, but not by too much. Cleverness only goes so far in the default dungeon setting.

>>44549902
Would you grant that reaching level 10 with a max stat fighter demands less cleverness and foresight of a player than reaching level 20 with an average stat fighter does? That, more than anything, is a deciding factor in who would win a confrontation.

Can someone sell me on the Mystara setting? Should I dive into these gazetteer books I have?

>>44549683
Yes, but he was being jocular so I felt it'd just be annoying to correct him.

>>44550084
I don't remember many details, buy my impression was that it was a hell of a lot more interesting that greyhawk and the realms.

>>44550084
>>44550135
The most interesting things about it are the Shadow Elves and the 2e version of the Savage Coast.

>>44549777
I cite Gygax not because he's the undisputed Rex Mundis of roleplay, but because he had RPGs ideas decades before their time and was great at noticing weak spots in D&D and putting forth fixes, designing new classes, etc. He is probably the most analogous figure as far as any of us, as we're more interested in analyzing and tweaking RPGs than creating something out of whole cloth.

>>44550049
Absolutely.

>>44550166
Weren't the halflings weird too?

>>44549721

Orcus is in this module. I will not be running this module. My players think I am out to get them as it is.

>>44550717
The Terrasque is also in it.

>>44550717
Personally I view running into Orcus as just one of the privileges of being in an OSR campaign deep in the dungeon or equivalent, though not killing him permanently.

>>44549846
>I've always wondered if there was some kind of documentary or something to learn from them apart from the DM's books.
It's not exactly a biography of either of them, but I'd start with Playing at the World if I were you. It's easy to get, fat as hell, and it has a ton of material on the early days of D&D and the couple of years before it.

Let me throw my hat in here about the roll unders.

What if the roll under saving throws were all double rolls? So you roll twice and try to get under the saving throw;

>If both succeed; you ignore the effect
>If one fails; you get a reduced but still negative effect
>If both fail; you get the full bad effect

This way, It's harder to get screwed over by a single roll but you will have a decent chance to get a negative unless you have a really high stat, balancing out the saving throws.

>>44549721
>At low levels, it is often incumbent on the DM to make adjustments on behalf of the PCs -- fudging the odd die roll when an unfair instant death result would hurt the game.

Welp.
But as characters get more powerful,
it is appropriate for you to get stricter
in applying the rules

>>44551441
Its not just the fact that roll under saves catastrophically fuck you over that makes roll under saves the worst post-2e OSR design ever. Afterall if you're rolling a save at all in OSR, you're probably about to throw your character sheet in the trash.

Its that some people think that its totally legit to houserule in critical probability modifiers of +/-35% in a game that mostly has stat modifiers of +/-10%. I seriously don't get that.

Its like... if you want that kind of insane disparity between PCs, just take it to the logical conclusion and have stats of up to 30-40 as normal things. Why houserule in those crazy ass +/-35% modifiers, thrown around completely carelessly and arbitrary, when abilities just plain don't work that way for anything else (ok, resurrection chance, loyalty mods, etc.)? I don't get it.

Its like people look at a game and think "Hm... well my PC has +1 to this from stats, +2 to that, he has -1 to this, +0 to that... I know! What if instead of -1 or +2, we had +5s and -5s thrown around on a completely careless basis? Brilliant!"

>>44551623
>roll under saves
Wait, wait... back up a fuckin' second.
I'm not the most well-read grognard and I know it, but... in which editions do you roll under a target number to pass a save? And how's that different to rolling over like in OSR games to the extent of fucking the game up?

I mean, I get that it's a term and it doesn't necessarily mean literally what it sounds like, but I can't follow this at all.

>>44551940

Hey man. I asked this same question essentially, earlier in the thread. There's been a shit load of posts, so I don't blame you for not having read it all.

Basically, some mouthbreathers out there think it's cool to substitute roll-under-your-ability-score instead of regular saves. Got poisoned? Do a Constitution check! Never worry about those clunky as fuck save types again!

At least if I understand it, that's what it meant.

>>44552000
>There's been a shit load of posts, so I don't blame you for not having read it all.
I'll be honest, I scrolled past like 2/3 of it because of that massive an uncharacteristic (for the thread, it's totally characteristic of /tg/ in general) statrolling spergout.

>Basically, some mouthbreathers out there think it's cool to substitute roll-under-your-ability-score instead of regular saves.
Fucking Christ, that may be the worst house rule I've ever heard of.

File: barrowmaze Complete.png (746KB, 599x754px) Image search: [Google]

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What is the difference between Barrowmaze found in the Labryith Lord folder in the Trove and the Complete Barrowmaze

"BMC includes everything in Barrowmaze I and II in the same book in addition to new material, art, layout, and cover art by Ex-TSR artist Erol Otus."

>>44549846

There is a book I am reading called "Playing at the World" but it goes really in depth. Almost boring at points but you will learn the origin of many tropes and mechanics we today take for granted.

http://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047

>>44552029
>Fucking Christ, that may be the worst house rule I've ever heard of.
It could be doable but it would require much more fiddling (difficulty modifiers, level based bonuses, etc) to the point where you'd be reinventing the wheel

Why not use a smaller number of saves as per Dungeon Crawl Classics? Personally I'm not a fan of how it only uses 3 stats, could be something like;
>Fort save is strength + con
>Reflex save is Dex +Wis
>Will save is Int + Cha

Only problem with this is it switches Wisdom from Will to Reglex, but it makes more sense to me this way anyway. You could rename the last save as Mind save instead.

>>44553211
It's the same damn problem.
No scaling, and it makes stats way more important to defense than offense.

>>44553211
Okay, does it still use roll under nonsense?

>>44552932
>It could be doable but it would require much more fiddling (difficulty modifiers, level based bonuses, etc) to the point where you'd be reinventing the wheel
If in order to make it work you'd have to bolt on enough modifiers and second-order house rules to make it back into the original system only less intuitive, I for one am comfortable with just calling it "not doable" (along with some less charitable descriptors).

>>44553211
>Will
>not tied to wisdom
Already you fucked up.

>>44553265
>It's the same damn problem.
This. I don't understand how this can be so consistently hard to get across to people. Either the saves are level-based or they shit themselves.

"But what if we give characters a penalty based on the caster level of the--"

>>44553211
I really like Swords and Wizardry's single saving throw.

Saving throws themselves are already an absurd and arbitrary abstraction, this just drags it to its conclusion.

>>44553882
fair enough.
saving throw tables are dated, but they (for the most part) work in the framework they were designed for-- there's a lot of things people don't consider when they say they want to do better with x super simple system bolted on.

>>44553941
"Obviously thief skills should be affected by the level difference between the thief and his mark."

>>44553921
Yeah, seems obvious that Reflex ought to be Dex + Int and Will Wis + Cha. Then again it also seems obvious that stats shouldn't fucking play a large role, so, maybe this is just wall talk, here.

>>44553941
>based on the caster level
you'd have to start messing with spell mechanics then, too.
higher level spells are built under the assumption that they will be resisted quite often.

>>44553988
I like saving throws being unrelated to ability scores. It emphasizes the character's previous experiences with traps and pitfalls rather than innate ability.
Think "muscle memory", and not "quick reflexes".

>>44553988

I do Dex + Int / 2 for Reflex. Averaging the two stats means raw ability is not very important, but a guy with a 15 and a 16 in the tied stats will be especially good at that save.

>>44553968
They're "dated" in that they have counterintuitive names, but they work better than saves in 3e or 5e. 4e's saves aren't really comparable to anything.

>>44554045
The spoilered part was supposed to be a dunderhead objecting to strict level-based saves. Hence the quotes. It's something that drives me up the wall, not something I consider a good idea.

>>44554590
i get that but i wanted to play devil's advocate and bring it up anyway since everyone seems to forget save-or-die is not the same as it once was.

>>44554348
>They're "dated" in that they have counterintuitive names
This really seems to be the core of a lot of people's complaints about them. "They're named after what they do! They're not connected to everything else in one grand interlocking system! It's not rigorous, it hurts me in the milieu!"

I swear I try to be generous and not just assume the worst, but this kind of thing makes me want to tell people to just go back to 3E. There's clearly a level of damage where you can't ever escape it anymore.

>>44554661

My only real complaint about them is that there are a lot of exceptions as to which one to use. Some effects or items would seem to fit one, but the description clearly says to use another, and stuff like that. I don't really like exceptions in rules.

Of course, I've more or less just completely gone over to the Swords & Wizardry single, level-based save, so it's not really an issue for me.

>>44554661
the tables don't exactly look logical in progression either. it certainly doesn't look as "clean" as 3e good-good-bad save tables.

it ain't perfect but it probably has a lot more thought put in it in than joe schlub's shoestring synergistic supernal save system

>>44554814
>Some effects or items would seem to fit one, but the description clearly says to use another, and stuff like that.
Is this the 'use the left-most save first' thing, or something more weird?

>>44554814
>Some effects or items would seem to fit one, but the description clearly says to use another, and stuff like that.
Well, this is true of roughly every death save, isn't it? That category pretty much only exists so you'll be more likely to pass your saving throw if a spell kills outright on a failed save. Yeah yeah, I know, poison OR death, poison's almost never magical and you use the same save for non-lethal poisons. But you see my point...?

>I don't really like exceptions in rules.
I'm surprised you get along with the OSR, then, but good for you, S&W's doing its job right, from the sound of it.

>>44554860
>>44554814
I honestly can't remember any exception other than death/paralysis. Not saying its that great, but its the save system that has pleased me the most conceptually and in practice.

In just about everything else its such a gigantic pain in the ass to get your saves to good numbers. it is very kludgy though, I'll admit

>>44555041
>I honestly can't remember any exception other than death/paralysis
"spells" and "wands" saves tend to override any effect they cause which might suggest another save

>>44555064
or i may have that half right. "spells" gets overridden and "wands" overrides

>>44555064
what is even an example that isn't just paralysis poison or death magic? I suppose there are probably obscure 2e breath weapon spells

>>44555095
illusion spells
fireballs

>>44555041
>it is very kludgy though, I'll admit
Honestly - and I say this with love - D&D's full of admitted kludges which were just the easiest way Gygax could get the game to *actually work in play*. A lot of people's senses of order seem to be disturbed by that, including Gygax's own, but the kludges have the advantage over almost every subsequent attempted fix that they really do play well. How many games have you read in your life that look amazing, that sound great on paper, but just crumple like a house of cards when played due to badly tested mechanics?

Vancian Magic is a classic example. Gygax admitted himself within like six months of the game coming out that a mana system "would have been better" for some reason, and yet forty years later nobody's been able to build one of those that actually works well.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, and OD&D emphatically isn't perfect. It's just really, really good.

>>44555081
PPDM>RSW>PP>BW>Spells

>>44555095
Wands of Polymorph is the rulebook's example for Petrification & Polymorph.

>>44555199
>forty years later nobody's been able to build one of those that actually works well.
GURPS has some.

>>44555081
Correctamundo, the spell save's the fallback for when nothing else applies. The wand save beats the spell save because of course all wands fire spells, so a wand save would be redundant otherwise, and like the death save, the wand save's supposed to be easier to make than a "real" M-U spell. Which again is entirely for balance purposes, so that finding a wand won't savagely assrape regular spellcasting.

>>44555199
>How many games have you read in your life that look amazing, that sound great on paper, but just crumple like a house of cards when played due to badly tested mechanics?

*weeps for cthulutech*

>>44555247
RSW is always one point less than Spells proper in 2e, but you still can't scrub it because of Petrification & Polymorph.

>>44555253
It's Reign for me. ORE seemed brilliant until I actually got a chance to play around with the probabilities in it and had to accept that the math had been done by an angry toddler.

>>44555199
I say this often, but I really feel like most of the huge mechanical problems (let's not even touch playstyle) of 3E were caused by trying to "fix" the "problems" of previous editions without the designers actually having any understanding of how those clunky rules contributed to the actual experience of play.

It's really one of the best examples I've ever seen of how just because something looks ordered and coherent, that doesn't automatically make it fair or result in a better experience. If nothing else, WotC's wild missteps since acquiring the game have given me a far, far better appreciation of the older editions and how they function. It really illuminated what parts of the game are important for having the kind of experience I enjoy.

>>44555455
Agreed. I won't deny that 3e tricked the shit out of me when it first came out, and I was super happy with its "order" and "logic" for some time before I started to notice how badly it creaked. But like you, I just ended up understanding from it why that whole line of thinking's pure ass and will ruin games.

>>44553958

How does this work?

How else to do ascending saving throws? If stats give no benefit it feels kind of slow and arbitrary. Why does the guy with high dexterity get no bonus to dodging a trap? High con no bonus to poison? Maybe roll under is bad but no stats is just as bad.

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I don't get it. Leave saving throws as is. It has worked for almost 40 years.

So, what do you think about Kevin Crawford's latest project?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4qCWY8UnLrcczEwSXRRUjVXZHc

>>44556162
>Why does the guy with high dexterity get no bonus to dodging a trap?
From the 2e core:
>Defensive Adjustment [derived from DEX] applies to a character's saving throws against attacks that can be dodged - lightning bolts, boulders, etc. It also modifies the character's Armor Class, representing his ability to dodge normal missiles and parry weapon thrusts.

>Ability Checks as Saving Throws
>When a character attempts to avoid damage through the use of one of his abilities, an ability check may be used in lieu of a saving throw.
It goes on to give an example of a thief tripping a descending ceiling trap and rolling DEX to get out of the way.

>>44555223
Copout. GURPS has a million optional rules and alternative ways to play.

>>44556475

I'm not sure what that has to do with his point.
I've heard GURPS has some great magic systems before. Just because it has like eight or nine of them doesn't mean that one or two can't be really good.

>>44556162
You could easily do saving throws like 3.x, only with better math. Either have saving throws progress faster than spell DCs, or simply eliminate progressive DCs altogether, making saves vs. spells a flat number, like in OSR. Have the gap between weak and strong saves remain constant, rather than getting bigger, which makes the system more exploitable, since you can target weak saves. And finally, balance the numbers more based on people's lowest saves, because you will always target them when you can.

>>44555199
>How many games

Shadowrun 5e, man. So many empty promises.

>>44556321
>https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4qCWY8UnLrcczEwSXRRUjVXZHc

It's interesting. I think there needs to be more fantasy games oriented around mythic play. After reading the Iliad, I can't help but feel disappointed that I've never enjoyed a fantasy game with that sort of fast flowing, hero figure centric brutality.

>>44556298
Never stop striving for improvement.

>>44556162
>How does this work?

Basically there is a single saving throw value that increases as you level. Each class gets a flat bonus against specific effects that the class should be good at saving against.

>>44556653
Well, there is the Age of Heroes supplement for 2e, but I'm not sure if that's what you're after.

>>44555199
>yet forty years later nobody's been able to build one of those that actually works well.

I'm pretty sure most games have a functional non-Vancian magic system. Don't be so arrogant.

>>44556751
The closest I've experienced is Scarlet Heroes.

>>44556752

He meant for D&D and its derivatives. Don't be so dim-witted.

>>44557063
>magic point system in Netheril box set
>magic point system in PO: Spells and Magic
He's still wrong.

>>44557063

Both are clunky and niggling.

>>44557141
was obviously meant as a reply to
>>44557108

I'm just sleepy as fuck.

>>44557141
In what way?

>>44556321
Can't wait.

If you are using roll up style saving throws, what to use as a base?

Or if you use standard roll under class based throws, how could you streamline it? Have a base like 4 each, growing +1 each level bases in a class rotation, or like character level +vines based on class and other bonuses?

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>>44557874
These are the saving throws in 2e. The average saving throw starts at a 35% chance of success and improves by 2.1% per level on average. So that's not quite a point every other level. For a simplified, roll under system that would be something like 6 + 1/2 level (or 15 - 1/2 level for roll over).

If you're doing a Ref / Fort / Will system, where you can often target an enemy's weakness, you should use the weak save as the basis for your numbers, and have it be either what was discussed above, or possibly a singe point worse (5 + 1/2 level for roll under, 16 - 1/2 level for roll over).

>>44540712
I'll have to check Legends and Lore then, it seems

Ever had a token ability for the fighter like "you can kick down doors more easily, get an additional +1 to force open shut doors"?

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>>44558643
Here's similar stuff for Moldvay Basic. The human classes start with the same 35% average chance of success as they do in 2e, but progress marginally faster (by 14th level they're up at 69% compared to 63% in 2e). Still, they're very close, and the simplified method I suggested above (6 + 1/2 level for roll under, or 15 - 1/2 level for roll over) gives us a value of 65% at 14th level, which is between 69% and 63%. Once you start mixing in the demihuman classes though, things get a bit wonky, as dwarves and halflings in particular have ridiculously good saves.

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>>44559044
Shit. The label on the bottom table should read "with demihumans", not "human classes only". Here is the corrected version, just in case anybody is saving it for future reference.

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So here's an idea that might make everyone happy. Every character has 6 saving throws, one roughly based on each stat, with other modifiers relevant to the character. I used a base of 5 just to show the concept, it could be changed.

Potentially this system makes it easy to keep track of many numbers and have many ways to improve your saving throws, while letting some character be better at some of them then others and letting stats play into it without being overly important such as in roll-under.

Naturally this may seem overly "3.5ish" to some, but I don't treat that shit like a boogeyman. If something works then use it.

>>44559609
I think 6 might be overkill. That's a lot of numbers to have to stat out for monsters, which don't typically even have listed attributes in OSR. Also, the fact that your sample guy has a 15% chance to save vs. illusion and telepathy underlines a potential pitfall of a system like this. An average 1st level character's worst save in 2e or B/X is 25% or 29%, and it's for breath weapons, so it isn't exactly easy to target. An attribute-based system is much more easily exploited. So to get things more in line, I'd suggest that you start at something closer to a base of 7.

>>44555125
he was talking about category overriding stuff

those are just plain saves vs spells

>>44556752
You'd be surprised. Most games with magic aren't as rigorously balanced as D&D and carry the same basic flaws of 3e. Whether its in obvious form (Runequest outright stating that the magical types are better, period) or more subtle form (Mage the Awakening has pretty much the same problems when you compare, say, Forces mages to Mind mages, as the former are used as the buttmonkey in all examples and starkly limited in options, while the latter can accomplish nearly anything, especially since it has an ultra broad definition of what can be affected by Mind magic, and Mind magic can even make you better at magic, as well as becoming invincible, etc.).

Of course, it depends on what you consider functional.

>>44555205
Sorry, should have said paralyzation/poison/death magic and petrifiation/polymorph.

>>44559609

Jeez, seems like every class but fighters suffer in terms of saving throws in your system. Actually I think even fighters are a little worse against PPD in your system. Care to explain?

>>44560014

I would give each class an equal number of saving throw increases per level and starting off. That way they are all balanced but in different areas.

As I said, 5 doesn't necessarily have to be the base but I kind of like it. The primary reason for choosing 5 by the way was that even with a -4 modifier to a stat you'd still have a 1, a single 5% chance to avoid a save.

Personally even using this lower point system I would avoid save or die style effects; making a failed save bad or leading to worse, potentially deadly things works for me.

Even with a number as low as 5, it's still a 25% chance of 1/4 chance to succeed, which could grow rapidly with level.

>>44556752
>I'm pretty sure most games have a functional non-Vancian magic system.
I specified a mana system, i.e. a "spell points system" if you prefer. I've never seen one of those that works, for the standards people would expect out of D&D. Seriously, the main reason that people think other games have magic systems "that work" is that pretty much everyone has lower standards for their own system than they do for D&D. For instance, I haven't seen *every* GURPS magic system, obviously, but the ones I have seen have been distinctly less sound than say 3E psionics. Pretty much exactly what >>44559936 said, really.

If i were a cynic I'd say it's because only D&D ends up getting played, so that the other systems run largely in their fans' imaginations, where they can be perfect. But really I think it's just because D&D has orders of magnitude more players than anything else, so it ends up having the shit bug tested out of it, and doesn't get the benefit of only being played by its relatively forgiving hardcore fans.

Delta of deltasdnd did some pretty hardcore statistical work on level distributions in the world of by-the-book OD&D, and came up with these suggestions for generating higher-level characters:

Level 0: Roll all abilities 3d6 in order.
Level 1: Roll one selected ability 2d6+6, others 3d6.
Levels 2-4: Roll three selected abilities 2d6+6, others 3d6.
Levels 5-7: Roll one ability 2d4+10, two 2d6+6, others 3d6.
Levels 8+: Roll one 2d3+12, one 2d4+10, two 2d6+6, and two 3d6.

The basic idea was that a) the world is full of large groups of low-level people with a name-level leader, and b) the world is lethal, and according to his spreadsheets and software the survivors tended to have higher stats - when he started people at 0th and assumed 1000xp to reach first level, the first-level characters had a statistically higher stat spread than 3d6 gives.

>>44562291
Specifically,

>But now let's focus on the slightly troublesome 1st level. Whereas the 0-level clearly depicts the straight 3d6-roll for newly generated normal men (average about 10.5), characters surviving to 1st level do evidence about a 1-point advantage across each of Strength, Dexterity and Constitution (average about 11.5). The problem is, using the dice "tools" above, none of the abilities quite reach halfway to the 2d6+6 roll method (mean of 10.5 and 13 = 11.75). But if we pool the overall improvement in all three scores, then we get a value a bit over 3 (3.2). So to reflect that basic trend, I'm going to give 1st-level characters in my games a boost of about 3 points by selecting one single ability -- likely their prime requisite -- and rolling 2d6+6. (This replaces my old house rule of rolling all 3d6 and then swapping two of the player's choice.)

>>44562312
>>44562291
interesting. I really wanna see an OSR spinoff that ties abilities into class and race

>>44562366
Sorry, I mean class, race, and level.

>>44562312
As penance for possibly restarting that shitfest from yesterday, I'll quote snippets from Silent Legions, Kevin Crawford's OSR Cthulhu game.

>First, go to DriveThruRPG and download Sine Nomine’s free Black Streams: Solo Heroes pamphlet. You can use those rules with Silent Legions with no real alterations, and they’ll turn every PC in the party into a glorious cultist-smashing titan of the squared circle.

>Luchadores have a maximum Madness of 20 instead of 100, but if they exceed this total they instead become fixed on a madly heroic or glorious goal related to the trauma that provoked their frenzy, and will pursue it until it is achieved or they meet their destruction.

>Aside from their normal class abilities, luchadores also can choose one special ability per level from the list to the right. Many luchador abilities can only be used while in their masked persona. A luchador can change from their normal appearance into their masked persona in a single round, provided no one is watching. A luchador’s mask cannot be removed nor their identity discerned unless they choose to permit it; the luchador’s alter-ego could step around a corner to change and reappear the next round, and onlookers would still all mysteriously fail to connect the identities involved.

>A True Heart*: Once per session, instantly befriend any decent soul.
>Defender of Innocents: In a fight containing bystanders or someone you’re protecting, foes will always attack you and your allies in preference to them.
>Distracting Gesture*: Once per session, distract everyone present long enough to change into your mask unnoticed, no matter how unlikely.
>Ill-Gotten Gains*: Once per session, instantly produce an item you just happen to have stolen recently. It can be up to a car in size, ... The police never catch you.
>The Circle Is Squared*: You suffer no Madness from impossible sights

Yes, there are a few pages with notes for such "alternate" settings in the back. It's neat.

>>44562467
I honestly can't even begin to figure out why someone would want to use a Cthulhu RPG for jokey meme campaigns.

>>44562708
Luchadores are cool, friend.

And it was a Kickstarter bonus - some people paid extra to commission one page of rules, guidelines or other writing. This was one of them. Worked out pretty well - sometimes you just want to wrestle Cthulhu.

The other commissioned pages are stuff like rules for hallucinations & visions, a mostly-good secret society trying to hold back the mythos, another secret society fucking with history, some basic tables to introduce a bit of mythos flavour into another game's encounters, SF adventure advice, Miskatonic U, and a couple of others.

The main book isn't jokey, and deviates from your traditional CoC game by being sandbox focused, and providing a lot of GM tools and tables and guidelines to come up with your own mythos, rather than just using Cthulhu again.

Honestly, in B/x. What's keeping anyone from just playing what ever class they just feel like after having rolled their stats? The stats doesn't have any noticeable impact between choosing for instance playing as a thief or a magic user. A little bonus XP, but in trying to keep asthmatics to a minimum I'd play without that. So after that its just go at it right?

Specifically, the stats Int and Wis seem to have very little to do with Magic-Users and Clerics.

>>44562780
Its not off to a good start, but I'll bite:

>Sandbox horror

What does this even mean?

>>44562816
Well, if your combat stats are ass, you'll probably pick magic user. Str/con/dex are pretty much all important for fighters, clerics, and rogues.

>>44562816
Nothing at all, mechanically. You might want higher INT and WIS for skill checks to search through libraries and what-not, but a fighter might want high INT and WIS to design astonishing new siege engines.

The bonus XP isn't really that big a deal when you consider the curve - it's the difference between being among the first and among the last to level up, but you'll be around average party level. Unless you die, but at that point someone hands you a wand and you use read magic to blow through the party's collected scrolls, punching way above your weight.

High INT is nice for diplomats and people who have to deal with deciphering ancient script. Not magical ancient script, though, so again, not a wizard thing - your fighter who's slept with men and women from every continent on the plane and has 18 INT is better at languages than a random wizard. WIS is nice for saving throws, but only against magical effects. Again, not a magic-user/prayer-sayer thing, just something that's nice to have. The stats that matter most are STR, DEX, CON, and CHA.

>>44562870
That's more from the GM perspective - rather than a pre-written bestiary and existing cults, it's tools and guidance to build your own.

Have a look - http://www.toofile.com/b4e17dfuqh8q/Silent_Legions.pdf.html seems to be the full PDF, but it might be the pre-release, unfinished, low-art version.

>>44562870
PCs get to choose which towns/areas they investigate and most probably run away screaming from.

Meanwhile between sessions, the GM uses faction mechanics to advance the machinations of different cults which probably all hate each other. This affects the world the PCs are playing in making the sandbox feel very dynamic.

Kevin Crawford's GM tools own. Motherfucker can create sandbox tools for damn near anything. I'm excited for his OSR Exalted game since it's gonna teach me how to deal with setting breaking PC shenanigans in a fun and gamelike way. Same thing with his far off in the future sandbox supers rpg.

For the system masters among you.

What are the subtle yet significant differences between old school dnd versions? Things that are small enough to seem like they don't matter to someone who hasn't played the system, but actually makes each version play and feel different from one another.

>>44563390
>What are the subtle yet significant differences between old school dnd versions?
OD&D, LBB: Stupidly well-tested, but written for people who learned to play from people who knew how to play.

OD&D & supplements: FUCKING THIEF CLASS ADDED, TAINTING EVERY FURTHER EDITION. Also a tangled mess of add-ons.

Basic, Holmes: OD&D re-written by someone who could write, limited to three levels. Good.

B/X, Moldvay: Based. Short, concise, well-designed, 14 levels.

BECMI, Mentzer &c, Rules Cyclopedia: 36 levels, and weird Immortals shit no-one used. Covers just about anything you might want.

B/X, BECMI & RC supplements: Some excellent settings, some completely nuts supplements - gnomes in biplanes, or the one where you play orcs, or the one about the tiny races. Loads of weird classes tucked away in them.

AD&D: "Fuck Arneson Edition." Gygax goes full-rules-nazi, includes rules for everything and insists they should be used. YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT. Far too much junk to bother with. Also divorces races from classes.

Smaller differences? Morale (monsters and npcs!) is a pretty big deal in Moldvay & Mentzer, and whittled away in later editions. It actually meant something, you know? You could kick down the door and shank a goblin, and the rest had a decent chance of fleeing. If they stayed, they might only stay until it's clear that the first murder wasn't an accident and that the rest of them are going down.

Smallest differences? Treasure tables in B/X are pretty neat. You have scrolls of protection that anyone can read, magic-user scrolls that only a magic-user who used one of their limited spells on read magic can cast from, treasure maps coming up regularly, magic swords that own for the fighters...

>>44563564
Also, the FUCKING THIEF actually got worse as time went on, because expanding from 14 levels to 36 was seen as an excuse to shit on their skill rolls. Not only did they steal capabilities from everyone else by inserting a terribly-designed system for certain tasks, they squandered the proceeds of their theft.

>>44563596
thieves make me angry, ok

>>44563564
Good catch on the treasure tables. Different ones really make a game feel distinctive. I can't even imagine playing without morale. Morale checks and things that can force a morale check own.

>>44556595
>DC
here we go again! I wouldn't want to calculate the saving throw DC every time anyone uses a spell.

Moldvay defaults to all weapons doing d6 damage - variable damage by weapon is presented as an optional rule.

Also, morale is explicitly not applied to PCs, who are usually too fucking stupid to know when to run.

>>44559014
I started to design a wrestling manoever for Fighters and Dwarves at some point but as I was doing it I realized it would be too overpowered. (Strangle the baddie to death if he's not more than 2 HD above you in 2 rounds granted you win opposed ability checks)

>>44563831
It'd be just as easy to have a static DC you have to beat for all spells and, well, everything you save against. Maybe somewhere from 15 or 20, depending on what kind of class-bonuses and so forth folks are expected to get.

File: od+d hd (swords + wizardry whitebox).png (36KB, 299x421px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 299x421px

>>44563831
Browser crashed on me after I wrote a long post, so I'll just give bullet points. Note that a lot of these don't end up applying because folks tweak or ignore them.

--Pay attention to initiative and particularly its effects on casters.
--In Basic, clerics don't get a spell at 1st level (though in B/X, they get that weird jump where they go from 2/2 at 5th level to 2/2/2/1/1 at 7th).
--Pay attention to the way magic spells are learned and how many you can have. In B/X, magic-users only know as many spells as they can cast per day (so if you can cast 3 first level spells per day, you only know 3 first level spells).
--What kind of armor can effective fighter/magic-users (including race-as-class elves) wear?
--What attribute generation method does the edition use, and can you allocate your stats as desired or pull points from certain attributes to put into others?
--Where do bonus modifiers start? In AD&D, for instance, you tend to have much significantly attributes before you start getting a plus than you do in Basic (then again, AD&D endorses a more generous method of stat generation).
--What kind of morale rules, if any, does the game have.
--in OD&D, all hit dice are d6s (see pic for how that works, though pic is actually from Swords & Wizardry White Box), which is nice, because it means that a +1 bonus to hit points will affect everybody by the same percentage, rather than having a much bigger impact on magic-users than fighters.
--What do you get experience points for and how much do you get for them?
--In addition to level caps (are these affected by your prime requisite?), are there attribute maximums and minimums per race and gender?
--Are there attribute requirements for classes so stringent that it's almost impossible to get into some of them?

>>44564176
>--In Basic, clerics don't get a spell at 1st level (though in B/X, they get that weird jump where they go from 2/2 at 5th level to 2/2/2/1/1 at 7th).
I always assumed that was a religion thing. 5 is Curate, 2/2. 6 is Elder, which must be a pretty big step up the hierarchy to push them to 2/2/1/1, and 7 is an outright Bishop.

It's probably a mistake, but I don't really care about that.

Also, never not use level titles. If you don't like the presented ones, create your own, but never not use.

>>44563564
>B/X, Moldvay: Based. Short, concise, well-designed, 14 levels.
Technically 36, with a brief note on xp & hp per level above 14. M-U & Cleric spells and spells per day are handwaved as "go look at tables and extrapolate, be careful," while for Thieves, it says they're good at their abilities, so give them new, different abilities.

Don't go above 14, that is a silly place.

B/X Reincarnation is a 6th-level Magic-User spell, beyond the level limits for Elves to cast. It has characters reincarnate as a level d6 character of: 30% chance original class, 60% a different class or race, 10% chance a monster randomly determined based on alignment... which can no longer gain xp, because monsters don't advance. Oh, and you reroll if it has more HD than the dead character - no butchering 1st level characters and hoping to get a party of Rocs, Unicorns, Werebears, or Minotaurs.

You're probably better off with a Cleric casting Raise Dead, to be honest, as long as you don't mind waiting two weeks to heal (no magic!) back up from 1hp and inability to do anything more than stagger at half speed and carry a sheet or paper or two. Reincarnation doesn't seem to have that side-effect. It's still a neat spell - the reversed version is Finger of Death, and Lawful Clerics are allowed to cast it in life-or-death situations.

As in Final Fantasy, Raise Dead kills undead.

>>44563564
BECMI (either C or M, not sure which) has some of the slickest treasure generation rules around.

>>44564806
What's so special about them? Please explain at great length, I love hearing what people like about these things.

>>44565277
They're easily the most "modernized" of any TSR OSR game's magic weapon charts. One of AD&D's flaws is that the goofy as fuck treasure charts shoehorn in some meta assumptions (longswords are the best weapon to specialize in by far, since you will find 70 magic longswords for every magic two handed sword), and magic weapons tend to be ultra specific.

The C/M (can't remember which it is, I just read the RC usually) charts, however, make it so you can find almost every plus, and almost every grade of enchantment, with almost every kind of weapon. Some weapon types tend to have shittier enchantments, however, based off weapon class:

A: Magic Ammo. Its own category.
B: Oddball/minor/small weapons, like hand axes, bolas, and nets. Generous probabilities of good stuff.
C: Medium weapons like battleaxes (?), maces, 'normal' and short swords. Medium probabilities of good stuff.
D: Big weapons like two handed swords, bows, and lances. Presumably due to already generous base properties, these have the poorest probabilities, but nowhere near as bad as AD&D.

On top of this there's tons of properties melee or missile weapons can have.

>>44549622
Who dares, wins

>>44563564
>YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.
But this is true. Kinda. Tracking the passage of time in the dungeon is one of those classic overlooked elements of early D&D that really affects play a lot, and as for overland time in a hexcrawl, the importance of tracking it ought to be obvious.

>>44562467
>>44562780
>luchadores
LOL EBIN MEME x-DDDDD

>>44566252
What?

>>44566802
Winter holidays is much like summer around these parts.

>>44566252
That's what happens when you let people buy content to their specifications in your kickstarter, Anon.

>>44566848
as juvenile as the delivery is, fucking injecting mexican wrestling into everything is cancer

>>44567978
Actually, 3rd Edition is cancer. Mexican wrestling does not have the same design issues.

>>44568092
and the aforementioned game is based on BECMI with Traveller skills, so 3ed is where?

>>44568142
It's everywhere.