OSR Interested in dipping my toe into OSR but don’t know where to start. Any recommendations?

[the_redbeard]

Tracking, which is part of scouting IMO, isn’t correct in the 8th printing, . I don’t have my book on me, but the tracking section gives either a -10 or greater to non-rangers for tracking.

EDIT: Sorry for delay, and apologies if misunderstanding your complaint..

PHB pg 66: "Non-Ranger Tracking. Any non-ranger making a tracking check suffers an automatic -10 penalty to any die roll."

Thanks. That's great for tracking.
But it still leaves the cleric being surprised much less than the Ranger, which in AD&D, "Rangers surprise (q.v.) opponents 50% of the time (d6, score 1 through 3) and are themselves surprised only 161/3% of the time (d6, score 1)".
I wasn't even thinking of tracking when I made the post. I'm glad by the 8th printing they fixed tracking. But the ranger as an archetype, is skilled at sensing and laying ambushes. But it's the C&C cleric that avoids ambushes, not the ranger.

 

[deganawida]

Thanks. That's great for tracking.
But it still leaves the cleric being surprised much less than the Ranger, which in AD&D, "Rangers surprise (q.v.) opponents 50% of the time (d6, score 1 through 3) and are themselves surprised only 161/3% of the time (d6, score 1)".
I wasn't even thinking of tracking when I made the post. I'm glad by the 8th printing they fixed tracking. But the ranger as an archetype, is skilled at sensing and laying ambushes. But it's the C&C cleric that avoids ambushes, not the ranger.

I was worried that I was missing one of your concerns. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

I understand where you are coming from. I am not saying that it is not a concern, but, while I do not have the same experience with the game that you do, I think it can be mitigated by the player taking Wisdom for his free Prime. That is what I would do, at least, as it would be needed for tracking, anyway.

I realize that does not solve the lack of the difficulty in being surprised as a class feature, but it is a logical workaround, and one which I would assume would be quite common.

All that aside, to me C&C feels like what I thought 2nd edition was when I started playing it way too many years ago, or what I wanted 3rd edition to be in the mid-to-late 99s when I had mostly left AD&D behind. That is to say, it takes the best of 1st and 2nd editions, updates the rules, expands into other arenas, and makes gameplay more intuitive while keeping the speed of 1st and 2nd.

 

[Retreater]

I love the Forbidden Lands system I think it does old school in a much uniform and lite way. The setting though is not my thing yikes!

Yeah, one of these days I'd like to use the system to run an old-school style hexcrawl in a different setting. It doesn't seem terribly difficult to lift it from the setting. The magic system wouldn't exactly port over to the expectations of D&D fantasy.

 

[Yora]

I'm currently working on preparations for trying that with OSE straight out of the box, which is basically just B/X.