Obryn
Hero
I'm thinking that and a d6 hit die should go a long way.No kidding. Something needs to be done there. I never figured out the best way.
I read a blog where he said they just auto succeed, but that seems anticlimactic.

I'm thinking that and a d6 hit die should go a long way.No kidding. Something needs to be done there. I never figured out the best way.
Once in a while one or two of us would think about running a Basic campaign, but we never could get over that speedbump of races being classes. In AD&D we regularly house-ruled that all races could be all classes, as well as freely multiclass, but for some reason nobody wanted to do the body of work that would be required for a similar house rule in Basic.
I must say, the impression I'm getting from this thread confirms my original beliefs - Basic D&D was not a major force.
I particularly don't count the massive sales of the Red Box as indicative fo the game being played. I see them as being used as a introduction to D&D in general, after which many people moved on to AD&D... or didn't actually continue in the hobby.
Cheers!
Yeah, BECMI had STAGES of play. Dungeons were what you did at low level--KINGDOMS is what you did at Master.
In 1980 when I started playing, the perception I had was that Basic D&D was meant to lead into Advanced and that Advanced was obviously supposed to be the 'better' product. It was years before I realized that BECMI was running in parallel with AD&D, and I can't recall anyone ever using the Expert or later sets. Arduin though, people would go on about it, occasionally even play it - it was kinda the Pathfinder of the 80s, preferred by 0D&D fans who didn't make the switch to AD&D (of course, there was no OGL back then, so Arduin got sued out of existence).
Also, it seemed at times like it was all just D&D and could be munged together, anyway.
Of course, that was just a kid's-eye view.
I think this was common. To be honest with you, I didn't often pay a lot of attention to which version of the rules we used. I know for sure that I didn't understand the difference between the Holmes, Moldvay and Mentzer versions until long after the fact.Started with basic Moldvay box, went to Expert box, jumped to Advanced after that because I was a kid at the time, there were no companion or master sets yet, and i found "advanced" D&D so i thought that was the next book in the series, logically.I didn't find out the truth till years later.