Rerolling you HP each adventure is actually quite fun. If you look at HP as purely skill, luck and endurance until that last hit that takes you to zero which is the fatal blow, then some days your character is confident and lucky, other days they feel like their doom is around the next corner. It changes the way people play the same character between adventure to adventure, going from bold to cautious and back again. A low or high roll average- out over the course of adventures so bad rolls don't really matter long term.
This works if the DM does this. The DM already has a lot of power over the experience in 0e. Concealing a character's stats turns a mostly random experience into an experience so random it's as if you're not even playing.
While I came to original D&D it was a bit later than 1974, but it was my first RPG and figuring it out from the books took me some time. Learning that others were interpreting things in their game differently delighted me then and it still does today. The little brown books bring out the creativity in every referee. Cheers!
When I war-gamed, I often had same characters as heroes, so when I transferred from War-gaming to Table top RPG's it was an easy swap over. Using a simple hit point values for figures makes combat not only more realistic but deadly increasing both players and Referees and challenge. This often created better stories!
I started D&D with a homebrewed OD&D game. We rolled 3d6 per stat in order, and played the class that matched best with those rolls. I wanted to play a Dwarf fighter, but got a higher wisdom than strength, so I played a Dwarf Cleric. Elf multiclass issues were modified by Gygax into what we got in 1st Edition AD&D because of such confusion. For HP, we rolled, then added the next increment at next level.
Thats cool. Yeah I'm aware that a lot of these confusions were eventually corrected. But I think it's a fun challenge and exercise to see how the game plays with just chainmail and the 3LBBs as references.
In the parlance of od&d an “adventure” referred to what today we would call a “session”. So if we get together on a Tuesday night to play and Jimmy is playing an elf then at the beginning of the night Jimmy would let the DM know that his elf was going to be a fighter for that night. As for hit points Jimmy would track two HP totals on his sheet, one for fighter HP and one for MU HP, similar to how an ad&d dual class character tracks HP.
A house rule I quite like is: when gaining a level, roll all of your HD and keep it if the total is higher than your current HP, otherwise - increase your HP by 1.
Great video. I started in '81-2 so I missed out on OD&D though I've gotten into it later in life with the OSR. My wife started with 4th Edition and OD&D is now one of her favorites as well. I have run OD&D in two different ways: one where your HP go up each level just like all later editions of D&D, and one where you roll your HP based on your Hit Dice at the start of every adventure. Both work fine. If you do the latter than Elf hit points aren't a big deal... the Elf decides which class they're going to be for that adventure and then rolls HP based on the Hit Dice for that class. Next time I run OD&D I'm going to add in "roll to cast" and "counterspelling" from Chainmail. The 3 levels of success for casting are whether the spell goes off immediately, takes a full round and goes off next round, or the casting fails. It's a 2d6 roll as you'd expect in Chainmail.
I like 2d6. You can see in Traveller how its origins are in OD&D + Chainmail in a lot of ways. At least in my opinion and observation. I want to run an OD&D game at some point. It seems like a lot of fun. It's funny how vague things are and how things with hit dice can be applied in such different ways as you describe. Some may not like that vagueness but I think it makes it unique. I see it as a toolbox for fantasy campaigns rather than purely a game.
@@TheBasicExpert One thing I thought about regarding Hit Dice: in the Empire of the Petal Throne rpg (boxed set in 1975 I think) it was basically OD&D but you did reroll your HP total every level, taking the new result if higher. It also introduced the idea of random leveling benefits. Regarding Classic Traveller, it's still my favorite version of Traveller. The new stuff from Mongoose is really nice, highly detailed, oatmeal-flavored sci-fi. To me the blandness comes not from the setting (I never run in the 3rd Imperium but it's a fine setting)... it comes from the path they took on task resolution. In Classic, there was no unified task system. Let's say your grav car breaks down. You tell me that you have an 8 INT and Mechanic-2. OK, you can have it up and running in a couple hours provided that all the parts are available; throw 3+ for that with a -1 DM because this planet is a backwater. I think that's a totally reasonable, on-the-fly adjudication. But you could never have enough density of "rules mass" to produce that same ruling as a rule... the game manual would make Advanced Squad Leader look like Candy Land. So instead everything is "roll an 8 on 2d6 plus bonuses and minus penalties and you do it". OK, *yawn*. In Classic you can be far more creative.
@@aaronsomerville2124 I did a whole video series on CT. One of my favorite games. I got some things wrong but I tried haha. I like how the skills work a bit differently with different modifiers and target numbers.
Great video. Very interesting! As far as HD is concerned, every level you reroll you HD. Fighter Lvl 1: roll 1d6+1 Fighter Lvl2: roll 2d6, replacing the previous roll from lvl 1. This is how I've seem this. Houserule: if roll less, you keep the last HD.
Yeah I think this a way to make the multiclassing of elves make sense. Obviously latter edition do this the way we are more familiar with but I like this way a lot for other reasons.
Worlds Without Number actually specify that you roll your total hit dice every level up, and if you roll lower than what you had, you just add 1 to the old total. If your roll higher you take the new total.
I really like this video. You are talking about the things that get me excited over the classic rules. The part you hit on which is very nuanced is the idea of getting a set of attribute stats, yet, you decide to play a different class just because it's what you feel like doing. After the Basic set came out, the idea of the zero level character appears. Its hit charts have a track for characters which are not experienced fighters and only get 1 d6 hit dice. What you see in a lot of the earlier rules is ways to minimize rather than buff things. By Greyhawk supplement all creatures and fighters go to the d8 for hit dice. It's hidden in a tiny paragraph between some charts. I have waffled over how to run my games for over 47 years now. I think the key to understanding the game is via the concept of Abstraction. Even stats should not be literal. No, you do not have to act like an idiot because your fighter has an intelligence of 6. What this means is you simply have no aptitude for using magic. If you want a copy of the pre-release rules that came out of the trial documents just message me. There is also the Dalluhn manuscript which is interesting.
The way Arneson played was actually how i played 5e with my friends for the first time. We played through discord (we didnt know there were dice bots) and i was the only one with dice. We played through the entirety of LmoP like this, where i rolled everything. It was very interesting looking back at it now lol
I, too, have heard some people say that at each level, the character would get a new total hp roll, and the higher of either that or the original hp would be kept. Since every version of D&D post-D&D has additive hp, I just assume that it was meant to be this way all along and the re-rolling at each level was a misunderstanding.
I began DMing before Greyhawk. Regarding rolling characters, I did not do it at the table. I had a deck of index cards already rolled. I new player or a killed character "picked a card, any card" and played whatever was drawn. Some characters had notes. Possibly your parents trained horses and you have been riding from a young age. Often just rural/urban background and/or social class background. Regarding Hit points, I originally used the system of a second level fighter rolling two dice and maybe improving, but never going down. I had also tried blind hit points. " The orc hits your first level character for half damage." The player would not know if he had taken 3 of 6 hit points or 1 of 2 hit points. I found that to be a bother for little gain. Someone had played in a game with hit points being additive (the modern system) and I also tried that. I used a house rule that a character who was killed and raised always rerolled his hit points. This meant a low HP first level character was not permanently fragile and unable to advance. I really don't remember how I handled elf hit points. It was probably roll for your current levels and take the better. Maybe. I was running my game at college. There were occasionally more than 20 players in the campaign, but usually less than 10. The game was not limited to one "party" at a time; players played when their schedules allowed. I did have one mess when 22 players of the 23 in the campaign at the time did show up the same night. Also, not all of the characters even knew each other. [Regular players kept track of which PCs their characters knew.] I really wished for a second DM that night! I never used Chainmail. I always used the (alternative) system of using a d20 to hit. One of my players asked me why shouldn't he fight with a dagger if the damage was the same as a two handed sword. Hmmm. I didn't like that and created a system of damage by weapon type. After getting a copy of Greyhawk, which I liked a lot, I modified my system to be more like that. I didn't want a complete changeover so that no character was disadvantaged from what he previously had (backwards compatibility).
I feel with the abstraction that the DMG has explaining hit points, rolling for every game could connect to that flow of hp being more then physical but mental, stamina, blessings of the gods and luck. And that can ebb and flow adventure to adventure
The thing is though, from what I've read neither Gary nor Dave played "by the letter", so while I like the idea it's kinda silly IMHO to try and emulate 1974 era "Hey this cool game called Dungeons & Dragons just came out, let's play!" when we know that even the creators didn't do things certain ways. For example I've read that neither of them ever used the Chainmail rules for D&D, they used the "alternative" combat system that we know and love (YMMV). They didn't consider re-rolling all hit dice each level, I am pretty sure, since it's very clear that wasn't the way when Greyhawk came out.
This is why I like clones like Delving Deeper that try to hue back to the ODD rules as much as can be practical. The original three booklets are the best ofc. Awesome content idea and well executed video - despite the technical hassles you said you had- thanks. 'Holmes' Basic D&D attempted to draw all the disparate rules together into a single whole that gets at what I like. But to each their own.
This is something I have done since playing RPGs as a GM. Players RP, I roll and determine what attributes skills are required, sometimes if players wanted to roll something specific I would let them. This method speeds up game play more than any method I know of!
I didn’t start playing in 1974, but I did start with the three main books in 1976, and one thing that I think in hindsight, with all the errors in thinking that might go along with this sort of reflection, is that if you were not a wargamer, the original three books make little sense and lead to all the different ways people tended to interpret the rules. All the people that I know with wargaming experience at the time pretty much interpreted the books the same. And the rules coming from Chainmail, a set of wargaming rules, is so very, very important I think to how to interpret the books in alignment with what Gary was thinking … but not necessarily writing . Also, I think it is important to note that you are just talking about the original three books. Once he started adding books like Greyhawk some of these confusions with the rules were cleared up. For example, a wargamer is not going to conclude I don’t think that the Fighting Man at 1st level gets 1 die + 1 hit points, and then upon attaining 2nd level rolls one additional die and adds it to the hit point total because a 2nd level Fighting Man has 2 hit dice. No, I think what a wargamer would do is roll 2 dice upon attaining 2nd level and if the new total is higher than the 1 hit die + 1 hit points at 1st level, the hit point total is raised to this new level. If it is lower, the character’s hit points remain the same. This is because hit dice in Chainmail, a set of wargame rules, are associated with how many men are fighting in a unit, with one hit die equaling 1 man. As can be seen in the table, the number of hit dice is strongly tied to the Fighting Capability (number of men the character fights as). So a 1st level Fighting Man fights as 1 man with a +1 modifier, and has 1 hit die + 1 for hit points. We did not reroll hit points at the start of each adventure or game session, but I have to admit, that would be more consistent I think with the wargaming influence than the way that most of us now think of how to do hit points, which is usually to roll one die upon attaining the new level and adding it to the existing hit point total. Honestly, at first, we didn’t even use hit points. We used hit dice with each successful hit causing the loss of 1 hit die. This means that we did not ever make a “damage roll.” Just “to hit” rolls, because each successful roll of a hit causes the target to lose 1 hit die. It would still take two hits to kill a 1st level Fighting Man because they had 1 hit die + 1. This is also why, IMHO, all weapons do the same damage. It’s more about how many men are fighting, not so much what weapon they are using from a wargaming point of view. I also hope you do a video on OD&D combat using the original rules from Chainmail. I still think it’s so interesting that Gary wanted everyone to use the Chainmail rules for combat and just provided the d20 roll against AC that has become so ubiquitous in the game as an “optional” set of rules for combat. Using Chainmail was SOOOOOO much fun when playing OD&D. And it added an element of the real scariness of certain creatures like dragons and trolls who could only be hurt by Heroes, Superheroes, or Wizards. This added a very interesting element to the game that is absent in the d20 vs. AC system. And when a Hero or Superhero or Wizard would, say, fight a Troll or Dragon, the Fantasy Combat Table from Chainmail was used to resolve the outcome of the fight. It was so exciting! As far as elves go, I think we tend to overcomplicate what Gary actually wrote in Book 1 about elves because we allow our more modern knowledge of multi-classing and Demi-humans to influence what we are reading. Most people conclude that the elf must pick one of the two class and function only within that class during the adventure. But I don’t think that is what Gary meant. The passage reads, “Elves can begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users and freely switch class whenever they choose, from adventure to adventure, but not during the course of a single game. Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells.” To me, this means that elves may only earn XP in one class at a time, either Fighting-Man or Magic-user, and may begin play as either one. But they gain the benefits of both classes all the time, regardless of what class they are earning XP in. They do not switch back and forth between the classes only gaining the abilities from the class that they are earning XP in, which is closer to the way we think of things like multi-classing now. Class for the elf is just about which class they are earning XP for, not their abilities like for other character races. They literally “gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells.” It doesn’t say that these things are tied to the class in which they are earning XP. They have the abilities of both the Fighting Man and the Magic-user all the time. This will change in later books when he writes about multi-classing, but at this point, with the three original books, I think this is the way he intended the elf to function in the game. The level in the respective two classes determines things like their hit dice, how many men they fight as, and the spells they can memorize, but they have all of these abilities all of the time regardless of which of the two classes they are earning XP in. It later says, “However, they may not progress beyond 4th level Fighting-Man (Hero) nor 8th level Magic-User (Warlock).” This is what puts limits on those maximum abilities. But I don’t see anything in the text itself that indicates that when an elf is earning XP as a Fighting-Man, they cannot cast spells, for example. It clearly to me says that they gain the benefits of the abilities associated with each class. Nice video, I really enjoyed it! Newly subscribed!
Glad you liked it. Insightful comment. Especially about the wargamer perspective on hit dice. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think I would need to research chainmail a bit more to feel confident in a chainmail combat + OD&D video. Haha. Gotta hit the books.
@@TheBasicExpert Thanks for replying to my post. I also forgot to add another point that is related to how hit points are rolled and what I think Gary meant coming from his wargaming background. If I roll an additional die when my Fighting Man reaches 2nd level and add it to the current hit point total, my 2nd level Fighting Man would really have 2 + 1 hit dice, not 2 hit dice which is what it says in his advancement table. It says that a 2nd level Fighting Man has 2 hit dice. To me, even outside of a wargaming mindset, this is a pretty compelling point about not just adding a die roll to current hit points to get to the new total. That instead you are supposed to roll the listed number of hit dice for the new level and increase your hit points to this newly rolled number if it is higher than what the character already has. But I agree with you, I think many people interpret the rule that way in OD&D, but I think that has more to do with he influence of our current way of thinking about how to generate hit points than what Gary actually wrote or what he meant to write.
While your insights about chainmail are very revealing, I'm gonna have to disagree with the elf stuff. It reads plain as day that you pick between the classes at the start of each "adventure" (session), and that simply being able to choose is what allows you to use both. Where some real ambiguity comes in is in whether you level each class separately, which I don't think there is a reason to believe, but you could read that in between the lines of the text if you want to. Since XP is only awarded at the end of each adventure, and all classes take the same XP to level up, it's entirely reasonable to assume that you simply get the class you choose, at the level your elf character is at, respecting that if you choose fighter you can't get the fighter benefits of a level higher than the set limit, and that seems to be to be the intended reading.
It helps to remember that the original groups were avid wargamers. Their states of play weren’t just around the table, nor were they limited to a single “character”. They would correspond & detail what we might consider downtime nowadays by figuring stronghold logistics, troop movements, & local to national political maneuvers. It’s the kind of play that TSR tried to codify with BECMI. The players were in constant negotiations with the DM about what was occurring in the game world & what they could do. It’s very hard to create complex rules for that kind of play that is satisfying. That’s why there weren’t really character sheets in the beginning & the players didn’t have a rulebook to reference. Those things would have limited them & all they really needed was to trust the referee. Another thing to remember about that era of play, especially Arneson’s Blackmoor, was you typically had a bunch of hirelings along for the ride. So even if your “main” character ended up biting it, you just shifted to another one of those. The fun wasn’t over. Pretty sure that’s how the 1st dwarf PC came into being.
Related to hp: i have been actually rolling hp for monsters and it is so much better and more interesting. My players might revolt if i make them reroll hp every session, but i will see how they like it. The chassis of dnd is that HD let the game scale from 1v1 to 500v500 and keep everything cohesive. The gritty hit points specifically is only a derivative to make 1v1 more fun and more crunchy. Rerolling every seasion feels like it makes constitution much more desirable.
About every door being stuck, the very first thing my players did when i told them the doors weren't opening was to go back to town to find locksmithing tools lol. New habits die hard too 😝
I first started playing D&D in 1974. In those days Players did not know their hit point total. The Dungeon Master kept it secret - I have no idea how the DM managed the Elf hit points.
8:10 The book does explain it actually...Elf can find a secret door on a 1d6 roll of 1-4, while everyone else it's 1-2. This rule is also present in the Dungeon! board game, which funny enough, has more in common with Chainmail Fantasy than D&D as a whole...in a sense, Dungeon! was actually the prototype of D&D in itself, though it didn't actually release until 1975, one year _after_ OD&D.
I did eventually find this rule! I've never played dungeon! But I would be interested in doing so. I know they still make versions of the game today, but maybe I can find an old one...
@@TheBasicExpert The modern version by WOtC seems to have more in common with The New Dungeon! from the late 80's, though I think it does still have the option of playing the "basic" game. For the sake of you researching the history of TSR though, you could definitely go with the original one, if you can find it for a reasonable enough price. It's still pretty fun to play with friends, though I've only played a virtual version of it.
13:54 You have a score of between three and eighteen with 3d6 and the peak of the bell for that is ten *and* eleven (together) not eleven, both are equally likely, a quick and easy way to figure out the peak of the bell here is to just add the lowest possible score to the highest (3+18=21) and divide the result by two (21/2=10.5).
I just got my copy of The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg and its gaming primer section leans heavily on the Arnesonian roleplaying and refereeing method, which appeals to me.
Multiclassing for elves was easy. You track hit points separately for each class. They roll the appropriate hit dice when they level up for each of the class when they level up in that class. They used to hit dice total for the level in class they were playing for the adventure. If enough was a fourth-level fighter and third level magic user due to the experience points they had, they would have rolled 4d8 for their fighter hit points and would use that when being a fighter. For the magic user role, they had 3D4 hit points. The only variation about hit dice for people that I remember from 1975, was some GM's made you reroll your entire pool of hits each time you went up a level. Let's say you're a fighter at fourth-level and you have 13 hit points. You hit fifth level. Roll 5D 8 and that's your new total. Could be more than you had, or it level or it could be less if you're unlucky. I never used that rule cuz I thought it sucked.😊 Never heard the thing about a goblin losing its infravision once it was charmed.
Different ways to roll HP. 1. When you level up, roll one hit die and add it to your max HP. 2. When you level up, roll all your hit die and update your max HP if the total rolled is higher than your previous max HP. 3. When you level up, roll all your hit die. The result is your new max HP regardless of your previous Max HP.
Yeah I cover these. Especially the roll the new amount every level and take the amount if it is higher. I rather like that as it can keep HP totals lower for a more gritty and lower magic setting. Im using such a rule for my Aztec game which is using whitebox under the hood.
I do not believe the DM rolling 3d6 down the line is a misinterpretation. One of the teachers in high school ran an after school D&D club. If you wanted to join, he'd pull 3d6 out of his desk drawer, and roll up stats, in order, for your character. That was back in 1991, and am sure my teacher learned this method from his youth experience. Looking back, he must have been running the game for 20+ of us at any given time. We all sat at the school desks, and he was sitting at his desk to make rolls, but would then get up and use the whiteboard to sketch stuff out.
@@TheBasicExpert It was a great time in high school. He even let people use the classroom to play their own games after school. It is where my buddies and I played our Dogboy Rifts campaign and a Star Wars smugglers campaign.
1e strength chart was loosely based on actual military presses from weight lifting and the intelligence charts were approximated with iq scores If you apply the curve to ‘reality’ then any score below a 6 you would be disabled A 5 intelligence would be a 70 iq and Forrest Gump had a 75 My issue has always been saving throws on the back side such as failing a dexterity check when you have a score of 7 Most people’s abilities are usually pretty tight on their own curve with the occasional savant or Holdor thrown in So I looked at dice calculators and found that 3d4+6 works nice for me It has a tight grouping around 12-15 point range and the curve drops off steeply on either side This eliminates goofballs and gigachads
I've played in campaigns that do hit point re-rolls every session, and I must say that it works totally fine. I've even played in a campaign where hits are re-rolled after each rest (this is the benefit of resting), with the intention of being closer to Chain Mail where hits only really exist per fight (or per adventuring day) and HP is just a more granular accounting of that. You are, I feel, overestimating the grittiness of it. Sometimes you are up, sometimes you are down, but if you're down you should probably not be the one at front anyway, that day. It keeps things a bit more lively. It has not notably made the games I've played in grittier than the ones that feature stable hit points. Of course, the original intent must have been stable hit points, because otherwise healing hit points via resting would have no bearing on anything, since you've just re-rolled your hits anyway. Now, as for level-ups, it must have been that the hit points were re-rolled totally. Or they used some really janky methods to remove the +1s that many levels have. Because if you're going from 6+1 to 7, you can't exactly take that +1 with you when you go up (especially since the +1 is the main benefit of some classes at certain levels to hit points). It might have been that they quickly introduced some rule like that you can't go down (which is quite common) from leveling up or similar, but I can't see the intent as such being anything other than re-rolling the full dice at level ups.
@@TheBasicExpert That was, funnily enough, exactly how we often reasoned it. We'd come up with half-joking explanations like being hungover from drinking too much last night, or having a bit of a cold, or even just not really feeling up to it. In a weird way it was fun to acknowledge these potential problems and adjust to them, and it was quite exciting to see what the character was like for this session. Of course, I understand why people are not too enthusiastic about it. The stability that an established HP maximum brings is not a bad thing at all.
I've honestly never really been interested in looking into the actual rules of the older editions of D&D. This was actually really intriguing though. The quirkiness is what's so alluring I think. I don't think Id want to GM a game but playing in one sounds like a lot of fun!
You should look at Whitebox Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game or Sword and Wizardry. Great clones. Whitebox is free for the PDF and the Sword and Wizardry SRD is free too.
I know people fondly remember the second edition, but it did eventually get bloated. Shoot there are some things after the core rules for 1e I don't care much for.
@@TheBasicExpert id you manage to complete 1 combat round? One cool thing about OD&D with Chainmail rules is that you can easily resolve large combats by doing it in a wargame-y fashion. Six lv2 Fighting-men charge into 10 goblins, you roll 12d6 for the Warriors and inflict casualties, then roll 1d6? for each remaining goblins and assign wounds. Takes like 30 seconds to resolve those 11 models.
When my players level up i give them the max HP for their level. Thus a fighting progresses 6 then 7 then 12 then 13 etc. In a game where coming across 5 goblins is incredibly deadly i feel like a level 4 fighter with 13 HP is perfectly fair. With elves they get the higher of the two.
One HP option not mentioned, might be the craziest: Simply put, HP is ephemeral, Damage semi-permanent, HD is permanent. Roll for HP at the point of potential damage taken ( in or out of combat). What happens to damage at the end of combat or HP loss? You keep it until it's healed. If at any point your cumulative damage surpasses your HP: death, or whatever mechanic you want to add on to make it less harrowing than death. Welcome to the chaotic meatgrinder, where you never know exactly where you stand, but it's probably deep shit. At least there's no negative hit points here. Example: Elf is currently a 4th level MU (HD 2d6+1), 2nd level Fighter (HD 2d6). He has taken 7 damage, just finished resting for 2 days, so he now only suffers from 6 damage (healing reduces damage, not increases HP, HP is a measure, not a resource). Regardless of which class he picks, he knows if he doesn't roll over 6 + new damage taken (with 2d6+1 for MU or 2d6 for Fighter), he's going to die at the end of said damage taken. Every hit has a chance to kill. Oh, and the best way to learn actual OD&D without giving WotC money is the free retro-clone Full Metal Plate Mail. It's the closest to a 1:1 copy of the white box rules, and is much more clearly explained.
The game plays differently with Chainmail. As I understand it, Gary and his colleagues always used the alternative combat system. Chainmail was mostly included as marketing to try to sell more copies.
For a setting that wanted to stand apart from Lord of the Rings, it sure is similar. Elves, dwarves and hobbits are waning. Humans are waxing. The magic of the world is disappearing along with the non-humans. At least DnD's other sources were admitted to.
Ever since my friends and I played with no player facing rules, using diagetic language only, we never turned back. It's jarring now when people talk about mechanics at the table, and never reaches the same degree of immersion.
Unfortunately the writing here is very unclear, leading to many misunderstandings if not read carefully with special knowledge of the wargaming context. Thank you for clarifying.
Attributes were rolled in order. You skipped the entire adjustments section, which would be unnecessary if PCs could just apply the best scores to the most favorable attributes for their class. Regarding Elves’ HP. It’s written in the rules. You chose which class you’ll be by the adventure. Thus, you have either Fighting-man or Magic-User HP. You don’t get to select the more favorable HP value. The advantage Elves enjoy is freely mixing spell casting while wearing armor. It’s all there in black and white. You are, of course, free to do things your own way at your table. People have been interpreting the rules and homebrewing since the dawn of the hobby. But that isn’t playing RAW.
Unless you played with Gygax or his inner circle in the mid 1970s, and have an impeccable memory, this just your interpretation. Gygax himself couldn’t remember, when he was asked, how exactly elf multiclassing worked in OD&D.
@@likelyarrow8779 Memory is fallible. I was going by the text in the books, which has always been the subject of debate. Taken at face value, however, switching from one class to another is a fairly straightforward proposition. I suspect it’s the harsh nature of the game coupled with the desire to milk the most advantages out of the choice that encourages it.
@@TheBasicExpert I was going from the text. It’s fairly straightforward, despite the eternal debate. Memory is fallible and there are survivors among the original play test group who might recall with more accuracy. Mike Mornard, for instance. If I can dig anything up, I’ll post it.
My mic keeps popping in and out of the video. I was just tired of at this point haha. Excuse the bad background removal.
Rerolling you HP each adventure is actually quite fun. If you look at HP as purely skill, luck and endurance until that last hit that takes you to zero which is the fatal blow, then some days your character is confident and lucky, other days they feel like their doom is around the next corner. It changes the way people play the same character between adventure to adventure, going from bold to cautious and back again. A low or high roll average- out over the course of adventures so bad rolls don't really matter long term.
When you don't have a character sheet the DM will drop little hints about your character like "You were the strongest person in your village.." etc.
Yeah that sounds like fun to me.
This works if the DM does this. The DM already has a lot of power over the experience in 0e. Concealing a character's stats turns a mostly random experience into an experience so random it's as if you're not even playing.
While I came to original D&D it was a bit later than 1974, but it was my first RPG and figuring it out from the books took me some time. Learning that others were interpreting things in their game differently delighted me then and it still does today. The little brown books bring out the creativity in every referee.
Cheers!
Yeah it's neat how I hear people do things and it still works.
I agree. It made every refs world and rules unique.
When I war-gamed, I often had same characters as heroes, so when I transferred from War-gaming to Table top RPG's it was an easy swap over. Using a simple hit point values for figures makes combat not only more realistic but deadly increasing both players and Referees and challenge. This often created better stories!
I started D&D with a homebrewed OD&D game. We rolled 3d6 per stat in order, and played the class that matched best with those rolls. I wanted to play a Dwarf fighter, but got a higher wisdom than strength, so I played a Dwarf Cleric. Elf multiclass issues were modified by Gygax into what we got in 1st Edition AD&D because of such confusion. For HP, we rolled, then added the next increment at next level.
Thats cool. Yeah I'm aware that a lot of these confusions were eventually corrected. But I think it's a fun challenge and exercise to see how the game plays with just chainmail and the 3LBBs as references.
In the parlance of od&d an “adventure” referred to what today we would call a “session”. So if we get together on a Tuesday night to play and Jimmy is playing an elf then at the beginning of the night Jimmy would let the DM know that his elf was going to be a fighter for that night. As for hit points Jimmy would track two HP totals on his sheet, one for fighter HP and one for MU HP, similar to how an ad&d dual class character tracks HP.
A house rule I quite like is: when gaining a level, roll all of your HD and keep it if the total is higher than your current HP, otherwise - increase your HP by 1.
Great video. I started in '81-2 so I missed out on OD&D though I've gotten into it later in life with the OSR. My wife started with 4th Edition and OD&D is now one of her favorites as well. I have run OD&D in two different ways: one where your HP go up each level just like all later editions of D&D, and one where you roll your HP based on your Hit Dice at the start of every adventure. Both work fine. If you do the latter than Elf hit points aren't a big deal... the Elf decides which class they're going to be for that adventure and then rolls HP based on the Hit Dice for that class. Next time I run OD&D I'm going to add in "roll to cast" and "counterspelling" from Chainmail. The 3 levels of success for casting are whether the spell goes off immediately, takes a full round and goes off next round, or the casting fails. It's a 2d6 roll as you'd expect in Chainmail.
I like 2d6. You can see in Traveller how its origins are in OD&D + Chainmail in a lot of ways. At least in my opinion and observation. I want to run an OD&D game at some point. It seems like a lot of fun. It's funny how vague things are and how things with hit dice can be applied in such different ways as you describe. Some may not like that vagueness but I think it makes it unique. I see it as a toolbox for fantasy campaigns rather than purely a game.
@@TheBasicExpert One thing I thought about regarding Hit Dice: in the Empire of the Petal Throne rpg (boxed set in 1975 I think) it was basically OD&D but you did reroll your HP total every level, taking the new result if higher. It also introduced the idea of random leveling benefits.
Regarding Classic Traveller, it's still my favorite version of Traveller. The new stuff from Mongoose is really nice, highly detailed, oatmeal-flavored sci-fi. To me the blandness comes not from the setting (I never run in the 3rd Imperium but it's a fine setting)... it comes from the path they took on task resolution. In Classic, there was no unified task system. Let's say your grav car breaks down. You tell me that you have an 8 INT and Mechanic-2. OK, you can have it up and running in a couple hours provided that all the parts are available; throw 3+ for that with a -1 DM because this planet is a backwater. I think that's a totally reasonable, on-the-fly adjudication. But you could never have enough density of "rules mass" to produce that same ruling as a rule... the game manual would make Advanced Squad Leader look like Candy Land. So instead everything is "roll an 8 on 2d6 plus bonuses and minus penalties and you do it". OK, *yawn*. In Classic you can be far more creative.
@@aaronsomerville2124 I did a whole video series on CT. One of my favorite games. I got some things wrong but I tried haha. I like how the skills work a bit differently with different modifiers and target numbers.
Great video. Very interesting!
As far as HD is concerned, every level you reroll you HD.
Fighter Lvl 1: roll 1d6+1
Fighter Lvl2: roll 2d6, replacing the previous roll from lvl 1.
This is how I've seem this.
Houserule: if roll less, you keep the last HD.
Yeah I think this a way to make the multiclassing of elves make sense. Obviously latter edition do this the way we are more familiar with but I like this way a lot for other reasons.
Worlds Without Number actually specify that you roll your total hit dice every level up, and if you roll lower than what you had, you just add 1 to the old total. If your roll higher you take the new total.
I really like this video.
You are talking about the things that get me excited over the classic rules.
The part you hit on which is very nuanced is the idea of getting a set of attribute stats, yet, you decide to play a different class just because it's what you feel like doing.
After the Basic set came out, the idea of the zero level character appears. Its hit charts have a track for characters which are not experienced fighters and only get 1 d6 hit dice. What you see in a lot of the earlier rules is ways to minimize rather than buff things. By Greyhawk supplement all creatures and fighters go to the d8 for hit dice. It's hidden in a tiny paragraph between some charts.
I have waffled over how to run my games for over 47 years now. I think the key to understanding the game is via the concept of Abstraction. Even stats should not be literal. No, you do not have to act like an idiot because your fighter has an intelligence of 6. What this means is you simply have no aptitude for using magic.
If you want a copy of the pre-release rules that came out of the trial documents just message me. There is also the Dalluhn manuscript which is interesting.
The way Arneson played was actually how i played 5e with my friends for the first time. We played through discord (we didnt know there were dice bots) and i was the only one with dice. We played through the entirety of LmoP like this, where i rolled everything. It was very interesting looking back at it now lol
It sounds like something fun to try at least once.
I, too, have heard some people say that at each level, the character would get a new total hp roll, and the higher of either that or the original hp would be kept. Since every version of D&D post-D&D has additive hp, I just assume that it was meant to be this way all along and the re-rolling at each level was a misunderstanding.
It potentially is a misunderstanding. But potentially a solution for how vague elves are.
I began DMing before Greyhawk. Regarding rolling characters, I did not do it at the table. I had a deck of index cards already rolled. I new player or a killed character "picked a card, any card" and played whatever was drawn. Some characters had notes. Possibly your parents trained horses and you have been riding from a young age. Often just rural/urban background and/or social class background.
Regarding Hit points, I originally used the system of a second level fighter rolling two dice and maybe improving, but never going down. I had also tried blind hit points. " The orc hits your first level character for half damage." The player would not know if he had taken 3 of 6 hit points or 1 of 2 hit points. I found that to be a bother for little gain. Someone had played in a game with hit points being additive (the modern system) and I also tried that. I used a house rule that a character who was killed and raised always rerolled his hit points. This meant a low HP first level character was not permanently fragile and unable to advance. I really don't remember how I handled elf hit points. It was probably roll for your current levels and take the better. Maybe.
I was running my game at college. There were occasionally more than 20 players in the campaign, but usually less than 10. The game was not limited to one "party" at a time; players played when their schedules allowed. I did have one mess when 22 players of the 23 in the campaign at the time did show up the same night. Also, not all of the characters even knew each other. [Regular players kept track of which PCs their characters knew.] I really wished for a second DM that night!
I never used Chainmail. I always used the (alternative) system of using a d20 to hit. One of my players asked me why shouldn't he fight with a dagger if the damage was the same as a two handed sword. Hmmm. I didn't like that and created a system of damage by weapon type. After getting a copy of Greyhawk, which I liked a lot, I modified my system to be more like that. I didn't want a complete changeover so that no character was disadvantaged from what he previously had (backwards compatibility).
I feel with the abstraction that the DMG has explaining hit points, rolling for every game could connect to that flow of hp being more then physical but mental, stamina, blessings of the gods and luck. And that can ebb and flow adventure to adventure
The thing is though, from what I've read neither Gary nor Dave played "by the letter", so while I like the idea it's kinda silly IMHO to try and emulate 1974 era "Hey this cool game called Dungeons & Dragons just came out, let's play!" when we know that even the creators didn't do things certain ways. For example I've read that neither of them ever used the Chainmail rules for D&D, they used the "alternative" combat system that we know and love (YMMV). They didn't consider re-rolling all hit dice each level, I am pretty sure, since it's very clear that wasn't the way when Greyhawk came out.
This is why I like clones like Delving Deeper that try to hue back to the ODD rules as much as can be practical. The original three booklets are the best ofc. Awesome content idea and well executed video - despite the technical hassles you said you had- thanks. 'Holmes' Basic D&D attempted to draw all the disparate rules together into a single whole that gets at what I like. But to each their own.
So much here I never knew. Love this. And the comments are great.
Yeah going back to the roots is super interesting!
This is something I have done since playing RPGs as a GM. Players RP, I roll and determine what attributes skills are required, sometimes if players wanted to roll something specific I would let them. This method speeds up game play more than any method I know of!
I didn’t start playing in 1974, but I did start with the three main books in 1976, and one thing that I think in hindsight, with all the errors in thinking that might go along with this sort of reflection, is that if you were not a wargamer, the original three books make little sense and lead to all the different ways people tended to interpret the rules. All the people that I know with wargaming experience at the time pretty much interpreted the books the same. And the rules coming from Chainmail, a set of wargaming rules, is so very, very important I think to how to interpret the books in alignment with what Gary was thinking … but not necessarily writing . Also, I think it is important to note that you are just talking about the original three books. Once he started adding books like Greyhawk some of these confusions with the rules were cleared up.
For example, a wargamer is not going to conclude I don’t think that the Fighting Man at 1st level gets 1 die + 1 hit points, and then upon attaining 2nd level rolls one additional die and adds it to the hit point total because a 2nd level Fighting Man has 2 hit dice. No, I think what a wargamer would do is roll 2 dice upon attaining 2nd level and if the new total is higher than the 1 hit die + 1 hit points at 1st level, the hit point total is raised to this new level. If it is lower, the character’s hit points remain the same. This is because hit dice in Chainmail, a set of wargame rules, are associated with how many men are fighting in a unit, with one hit die equaling 1 man. As can be seen in the table, the number of hit dice is strongly tied to the Fighting Capability (number of men the character fights as). So a 1st level Fighting Man fights as 1 man with a +1 modifier, and has 1 hit die + 1 for hit points. We did not reroll hit points at the start of each adventure or game session, but I have to admit, that would be more consistent I think with the wargaming influence than the way that most of us now think of how to do hit points, which is usually to roll one die upon attaining the new level and adding it to the existing hit point total.
Honestly, at first, we didn’t even use hit points. We used hit dice with each successful hit causing the loss of 1 hit die. This means that we did not ever make a “damage roll.” Just “to hit” rolls, because each successful roll of a hit causes the target to lose 1 hit die. It would still take two hits to kill a 1st level Fighting Man because they had 1 hit die + 1. This is also why, IMHO, all weapons do the same damage. It’s more about how many men are fighting, not so much what weapon they are using from a wargaming point of view.
I also hope you do a video on OD&D combat using the original rules from Chainmail. I still think it’s so interesting that Gary wanted everyone to use the Chainmail rules for combat and just provided the d20 roll against AC that has become so ubiquitous in the game as an “optional” set of rules for combat. Using Chainmail was SOOOOOO much fun when playing OD&D. And it added an element of the real scariness of certain creatures like dragons and trolls who could only be hurt by Heroes, Superheroes, or Wizards. This added a very interesting element to the game that is absent in the d20 vs. AC system. And when a Hero or Superhero or Wizard would, say, fight a Troll or Dragon, the Fantasy Combat Table from Chainmail was used to resolve the outcome of the fight. It was so exciting!
As far as elves go, I think we tend to overcomplicate what Gary actually wrote in Book 1 about elves because we allow our more modern knowledge of multi-classing and Demi-humans to influence what we are reading. Most people conclude that the elf must pick one of the two class and function only within that class during the adventure. But I don’t think that is what Gary meant. The passage reads, “Elves can begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users and freely switch class whenever they choose, from adventure to adventure, but not during the course of a single game. Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells.” To me, this means that elves may only earn XP in one class at a time, either Fighting-Man or Magic-user, and may begin play as either one. But they gain the benefits of both classes all the time, regardless of what class they are earning XP in. They do not switch back and forth between the classes only gaining the abilities from the class that they are earning XP in, which is closer to the way we think of things like multi-classing now. Class for the elf is just about which class they are earning XP for, not their abilities like for other character races. They literally “gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells.” It doesn’t say that these things are tied to the class in which they are earning XP. They have the abilities of both the Fighting Man and the Magic-user all the time. This will change in later books when he writes about multi-classing, but at this point, with the three original books, I think this is the way he intended the elf to function in the game. The level in the respective two classes determines things like their hit dice, how many men they fight as, and the spells they can memorize, but they have all of these abilities all of the time regardless of which of the two classes they are earning XP in. It later says, “However, they may not progress beyond 4th level Fighting-Man (Hero) nor 8th level Magic-User (Warlock).” This is what puts limits on those maximum abilities. But I don’t see anything in the text itself that indicates that when an elf is earning XP as a Fighting-Man, they cannot cast spells, for example. It clearly to me says that they gain the benefits of the abilities associated with each class.
Nice video, I really enjoyed it! Newly subscribed!
Glad you liked it. Insightful comment. Especially about the wargamer perspective on hit dice. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think I would need to research chainmail a bit more to feel confident in a chainmail combat + OD&D video. Haha. Gotta hit the books.
@@TheBasicExpert Thanks for replying to my post. I also forgot to add another point that is related to how hit points are rolled and what I think Gary meant coming from his wargaming background. If I roll an additional die when my Fighting Man reaches 2nd level and add it to the current hit point total, my 2nd level Fighting Man would really have 2 + 1 hit dice, not 2 hit dice which is what it says in his advancement table. It says that a 2nd level Fighting Man has 2 hit dice. To me, even outside of a wargaming mindset, this is a pretty compelling point about not just adding a die roll to current hit points to get to the new total. That instead you are supposed to roll the listed number of hit dice for the new level and increase your hit points to this newly rolled number if it is higher than what the character already has. But I agree with you, I think many people interpret the rule that way in OD&D, but I think that has more to do with he influence of our current way of thinking about how to generate hit points than what Gary actually wrote or what he meant to write.
While your insights about chainmail are very revealing, I'm gonna have to disagree with the elf stuff. It reads plain as day that you pick between the classes at the start of each "adventure" (session), and that simply being able to choose is what allows you to use both. Where some real ambiguity comes in is in whether you level each class separately, which I don't think there is a reason to believe, but you could read that in between the lines of the text if you want to. Since XP is only awarded at the end of each adventure, and all classes take the same XP to level up, it's entirely reasonable to assume that you simply get the class you choose, at the level your elf character is at, respecting that if you choose fighter you can't get the fighter benefits of a level higher than the set limit, and that seems to be to be the intended reading.
It helps to remember that the original groups were avid wargamers. Their states of play weren’t just around the table, nor were they limited to a single “character”. They would correspond & detail what we might consider downtime nowadays by figuring stronghold logistics, troop movements, & local to national political maneuvers. It’s the kind of play that TSR tried to codify with BECMI. The players were in constant negotiations with the DM about what was occurring in the game world & what they could do.
It’s very hard to create complex rules for that kind of play that is satisfying. That’s why there weren’t really character sheets in the beginning & the players didn’t have a rulebook to reference. Those things would have limited them & all they really needed was to trust the referee.
Another thing to remember about that era of play, especially Arneson’s Blackmoor, was you typically had a bunch of hirelings along for the ride. So even if your “main” character ended up biting it, you just shifted to another one of those. The fun wasn’t over.
Pretty sure that’s how the 1st dwarf PC came into being.
Related to hp: i have been actually rolling hp for monsters and it is so much better and more interesting. My players might revolt if i make them reroll hp every session, but i will see how they like it. The chassis of dnd is that HD let the game scale from 1v1 to 500v500 and keep everything cohesive. The gritty hit points specifically is only a derivative to make 1v1 more fun and more crunchy. Rerolling every seasion feels like it makes constitution much more desirable.
About every door being stuck, the very first thing my players did when i told them the doors weren't opening was to go back to town to find locksmithing tools lol. New habits die hard too 😝
I first started playing D&D in 1974. In those days Players did not know their hit point total. The Dungeon Master kept it secret - I have no idea how the DM managed the Elf hit points.
I like the shirt.
Haha, "You are the Carbon they Want to Reduce." Haha I always get angry looks when I wear it in public.
@@TheBasicExpert Yeah, I guessed that was thee rest of it. I'm familiar with the slogan (and it's very true).
8:10 The book does explain it actually...Elf can find a secret door on a 1d6 roll of 1-4, while everyone else it's 1-2. This rule is also present in the Dungeon! board game, which funny enough, has more in common with Chainmail Fantasy than D&D as a whole...in a sense, Dungeon! was actually the prototype of D&D in itself, though it didn't actually release until 1975, one year _after_ OD&D.
I did eventually find this rule! I've never played dungeon! But I would be interested in doing so. I know they still make versions of the game today, but maybe I can find an old one...
@@TheBasicExpert The modern version by WOtC seems to have more in common with The New Dungeon! from the late 80's, though I think it does still have the option of playing the "basic" game. For the sake of you researching the history of TSR though, you could definitely go with the original one, if you can find it for a reasonable enough price. It's still pretty fun to play with friends, though I've only played a virtual version of it.
13:54 You have a score of between three and eighteen with 3d6 and the peak of the bell for that is ten *and* eleven (together) not eleven, both are equally likely, a quick and easy way to figure out the peak of the bell here is to just add the lowest possible score to the highest (3+18=21) and divide the result by two (21/2=10.5).
I just got my copy of The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg and its gaming primer section leans heavily on the Arnesonian roleplaying and refereeing method, which appeals to me.
I'm waiting for mine. I got the nice offset print. Now I have to wait.
@@TheBasicExpert my nice copy isn't here yet either, but I'm loving my table copy so far.
Multiclassing for elves was easy. You track hit points separately for each class. They roll the appropriate hit dice when they level up for each of the class when they level up in that class. They used to hit dice total for the level in class they were playing for the adventure. If enough was a fourth-level fighter and third level magic user due to the experience points they had, they would have rolled 4d8 for their fighter hit points and would use that when being a fighter. For the magic user role, they had 3D4 hit points.
The only variation about hit dice for people that I remember from 1975, was some GM's made you reroll your entire pool of hits each time you went up a level. Let's say you're a fighter at fourth-level and you have 13 hit points. You hit fifth level. Roll 5D 8 and that's your new total. Could be more than you had, or it level or it could be less if you're unlucky. I never used that rule cuz I thought it sucked.😊 Never heard the thing about a goblin losing its infravision once it was charmed.
Different ways to roll HP.
1. When you level up, roll one hit die and add it to your max HP.
2. When you level up, roll all your hit die and update your max HP if the total rolled is higher than your previous max HP.
3. When you level up, roll all your hit die. The result is your new max HP regardless of your previous Max HP.
Yeah I cover these. Especially the roll the new amount every level and take the amount if it is higher. I rather like that as it can keep HP totals lower for a more gritty and lower magic setting.
Im using such a rule for my Aztec game which is using whitebox under the hood.
I do not believe the DM rolling 3d6 down the line is a misinterpretation. One of the teachers in high school ran an after school D&D club. If you wanted to join, he'd pull 3d6 out of his desk drawer, and roll up stats, in order, for your character. That was back in 1991, and am sure my teacher learned this method from his youth experience.
Looking back, he must have been running the game for 20+ of us at any given time. We all sat at the school desks, and he was sitting at his desk to make rolls, but would then get up and use the whiteboard to sketch stuff out.
Sounds like a rad teacher.
@@TheBasicExpert It was a great time in high school. He even let people use the classroom to play their own games after school. It is where my buddies and I played our Dogboy Rifts campaign and a Star Wars smugglers campaign.
1e strength chart was loosely based on actual military presses from weight lifting and the intelligence charts were approximated with iq scores
If you apply the curve to ‘reality’ then any score below a 6 you would be disabled
A 5 intelligence would be a 70 iq and Forrest Gump had a 75
My issue has always been saving throws on the back side such as failing a dexterity check when you have a score of 7
Most people’s abilities are usually pretty tight on their own curve with the occasional savant or Holdor thrown in
So I looked at dice calculators and found that 3d4+6 works nice for me
It has a tight grouping around 12-15 point range and the curve drops off steeply on either side
This eliminates goofballs and gigachads
I've played in campaigns that do hit point re-rolls every session, and I must say that it works totally fine. I've even played in a campaign where hits are re-rolled after each rest (this is the benefit of resting), with the intention of being closer to Chain Mail where hits only really exist per fight (or per adventuring day) and HP is just a more granular accounting of that.
You are, I feel, overestimating the grittiness of it. Sometimes you are up, sometimes you are down, but if you're down you should probably not be the one at front anyway, that day. It keeps things a bit more lively. It has not notably made the games I've played in grittier than the ones that feature stable hit points.
Of course, the original intent must have been stable hit points, because otherwise healing hit points via resting would have no bearing on anything, since you've just re-rolled your hits anyway.
Now, as for level-ups, it must have been that the hit points were re-rolled totally. Or they used some really janky methods to remove the +1s that many levels have. Because if you're going from 6+1 to 7, you can't exactly take that +1 with you when you go up (especially since the +1 is the main benefit of some classes at certain levels to hit points). It might have been that they quickly introduced some rule like that you can't go down (which is quite common) from leveling up or similar, but I can't see the intent as such being anything other than re-rolling the full dice at level ups.
I kind of like the hit-point rerolls every session. You don't always feel your best every day. Some days you do.
@@TheBasicExpert That was, funnily enough, exactly how we often reasoned it. We'd come up with half-joking explanations like being hungover from drinking too much last night, or having a bit of a cold, or even just not really feeling up to it.
In a weird way it was fun to acknowledge these potential problems and adjust to them, and it was quite exciting to see what the character was like for this session.
Of course, I understand why people are not too enthusiastic about it. The stability that an established HP maximum brings is not a bad thing at all.
I've honestly never really been interested in looking into the actual rules of the older editions of D&D. This was actually really intriguing though. The quirkiness is what's so alluring I think. I don't think Id want to GM a game but playing in one sounds like a lot of fun!
You should look at Whitebox Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game or Sword and Wizardry. Great clones. Whitebox is free for the PDF and the Sword and Wizardry SRD is free too.
Original was best followed by the first advanced addition, after that it just became so overly bogged down and expanded upon it lost it's fun
I know people fondly remember the second edition, but it did eventually get bloated. Shoot there are some things after the core rules for 1e I don't care much for.
4:29 4e with TWELVE PEOPLE?! I thought running it for nine was rough enough!
I was a noob. I had NO IDEA what I was doing.
@@TheBasicExpert id you manage to complete 1 combat round? One cool thing about OD&D with Chainmail rules is that you can easily resolve large combats by doing it in a wargame-y fashion. Six lv2 Fighting-men charge into 10 goblins, you roll 12d6 for the Warriors and inflict casualties, then roll 1d6? for each remaining goblins and assign wounds. Takes like 30 seconds to resolve those 11 models.
When my players level up i give them the max HP for their level. Thus a fighting progresses
6 then 7 then 12 then 13 etc. In a game where coming across 5 goblins is incredibly deadly i feel like a level 4 fighter with 13 HP is perfectly fair. With elves they get the higher of the two.
One HP option not mentioned, might be the craziest:
Simply put, HP is ephemeral, Damage semi-permanent, HD is permanent. Roll for HP at the point of potential damage taken ( in or out of combat). What happens to damage at the end of combat or HP loss? You keep it until it's healed. If at any point your cumulative damage surpasses your HP: death, or whatever mechanic you want to add on to make it less harrowing than death. Welcome to the chaotic meatgrinder, where you never know exactly where you stand, but it's probably deep shit. At least there's no negative hit points here.
Example: Elf is currently a 4th level MU (HD 2d6+1), 2nd level Fighter (HD 2d6). He has taken 7 damage, just finished resting for 2 days, so he now only suffers from 6 damage (healing reduces damage, not increases HP, HP is a measure, not a resource). Regardless of which class he picks, he knows if he doesn't roll over 6 + new damage taken (with 2d6+1 for MU or 2d6 for Fighter), he's going to die at the end of said damage taken. Every hit has a chance to kill.
Oh, and the best way to learn actual OD&D without giving WotC money is the free retro-clone Full Metal Plate Mail. It's the closest to a 1:1 copy of the white box rules, and is much more clearly explained.
The game plays differently with Chainmail. As I understand it, Gary and his colleagues always used the alternative combat system. Chainmail was mostly included as marketing to try to sell more copies.
For a setting that wanted to stand apart from Lord of the Rings, it sure is similar. Elves, dwarves and hobbits are waning. Humans are waxing. The magic of the world is disappearing along with the non-humans. At least DnD's other sources were admitted to.
Ever since my friends and I played with no player facing rules, using diagetic language only, we never turned back. It's jarring now when people talk about mechanics at the table, and never reaches the same degree of immersion.
Unfortunately the writing here is very unclear, leading to many misunderstandings if not read carefully with special knowledge of the wargaming context. Thank you for clarifying.
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lol, cope
What are you talking about?
Attributes were rolled in order. You skipped the entire adjustments section, which would be unnecessary if PCs could just apply the best scores to the most favorable attributes for their class. Regarding Elves’ HP. It’s written in the rules. You chose which class you’ll be by the adventure. Thus, you have either Fighting-man or Magic-User HP. You don’t get to select the more favorable HP value. The advantage Elves enjoy is freely mixing spell casting while wearing armor. It’s all there in black and white. You are, of course, free to do things your own way at your table. People have been interpreting the rules and homebrewing since the dawn of the hobby. But that isn’t playing RAW.
Lol claiming to play OD&D raw is funny.
But to the point about elves, gygax was asked which interpretation was correct and even he said he couldn't remember.
Unless you played with Gygax or his inner circle in the mid 1970s, and have an impeccable memory, this just your interpretation.
Gygax himself couldn’t remember, when he was asked, how exactly elf multiclassing worked in OD&D.
@@likelyarrow8779 Memory is fallible. I was going by the text in the books, which has always been the subject of debate. Taken at face value, however, switching from one class to another is a fairly straightforward proposition. I suspect it’s the harsh nature of the game coupled with the desire to milk the most advantages out of the choice that encourages it.
@@TheBasicExpert I was going from the text. It’s fairly straightforward, despite the eternal debate. Memory is fallible and there are survivors among the original play test group who might recall with more accuracy. Mike Mornard, for instance. If I can dig anything up, I’ll post it.
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