Bringing Back the Fighting Man

[Lanefan]

Variant cleave rules would work best here.
After you reduce a target to 0, make attack roll vs one target withing reach, if attacks hits deal remaining damage to that target, if still is remaining damage, repeat.

That's not the same, though. With the 1e version, instead of running out of damage you get a fresh damage roll each time you hit.

If you're a 6th level Fighter surrounded by mooks you get 6 completely independent attacks* per round and a normal damage roll for each one that hits.

* - unless you run out of reachable foes first.

 

[Gus L]

I remember being very happy with the "sweep" ability in my first long-running OD&D game, when around 4th level or so our fighters started being able to handle a couple of dozen orcs without needing a sleep spell to save the party.

I think the ability would still be very good in B/X, but at least Moldvay reduced the numbers of humanoids encountered to help compensate for the loss. I do include a variant on the sweep rule in my current B/X house rule package.

Oh I've certainly used it in B/X and as you say it can be very fun when there's a wave of low HD attackers (feral halflings I remember in an old ASE game), but again it's quite situational and I like to farm situational abilities (weird spells, consumable magic items etc) off to the players rather then making them core class components.

Also I should add that as a general principle I am leery of adding too many rules because they seem cool - especially combat rules as it already takes too much time in my opinion. I think cleave/sweep is a decent addition as long as it's implemented in a simple way, but I often see this desire to pile so many rules into combat that it just becomes frustrating. The very opposite of intentional game design.

 

[Mannahnin]

Oh I've certainly used it in B/X and as you say it can be very fun when there's a wave of low HD attackers (feral halflings I remember in an old ASE game), but again it's quite situational and I like to farm situational abilities (weird spells, consumable magic items etc) off to the players rather then making them core class components.

Also I should add that as a general principle I am leery of adding too many rules because they seem cool - especially combat rules as it already takes too much time in my opinion. I think cleave/sweep is a decent addition as long as it's implemented in a simple way, but I often see this desire to pile so many rules into combat that it just becomes frustrating. The very opposite of intentional game design.

I've got a group four 4th levelers in the middle of Praise the Fallen right now, and the last encounter they had was with a couple of dozen 1HD cultists. It was pretty great. Shades of Conan, Valeria and Subotai raiding Thulsa Doom's cult orgy in Conan the Barbarian.

I agree that it's somewhat situational, although I think the situation of encountering large numbers of 1HD or less monsters is a pretty common one, even into high levels, unless you deliberately leave them out of one's adventure design and random encounter tables.

I remember one of the things that finally convinced Delta that this was a core rule was the large numbers of humanoids in the Number Encountered in the monster entries. Of course Gnolls are a little bit of a sticking point there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's not the same, though. With the 1e version, instead of running out of damage you get a fresh damage roll each time you hit.

If you're a 6th level Fighter surrounded by mooks you get 6 completely independent attacks* per round and a normal damage roll for each one that hits.

* - unless you run out of reachable foes first.

Yup. My preferred OSR uses a similar rule for cleave. If you down an opponent, you can make another attack roll against an adjacent opponent (you can also take a 5-foot step if needed) and potentially keep going for a number of cleaves based on class and level (fighter gets the most).

 

[Mannahnin]

Yup. My preferred OSR uses a similar rule for cleave. If you down an opponent, you can make another attack roll against an adjacent opponent (you can also take a 5-foot step if needed) and potentially keep going for a number of cleaves based on class and level (fighter gets the most).

This is my latest version, for B/X:

Fighters Sweep:
Fighters, Dwarves, Elves, & Halflings make a number of attacks equal to their level when fighting foes with fewer than 2HD. When using this rule do not roll damage; each hit defeats a foe. Fighters (only) may also divide their level by the HD of their foes to make such attacks against foes with >=2 HD. So a 4th level Fighter may attack twice against foes with 2HD. A 6th level Fighter may attack twice against foes with 3HD, or three times against foes with 2HD, and so on. Disregard any + values after the HD for this rule.

One of the nice things about this is speed of resolution. Figure out how many attacks you're eligible for and just roll that many d20s- each hit kills (or conceivably knocks unconscious, if you want to spare a prisoner).

 

[darjr]

I’ll need to find it but there was a OSR game that had fighters that could attack until they missed.

Edit: found it, FMC Basic

FMC Basic by Traverse Fantasy

Personal house rules for FMC

traversefantasy.itch.io

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I’ll need to find it but there was a OSR game that had fighters that could attack until they missed.

Obviously, the overall context of the rules matters ... but that seems a bit much!

(Yes, misses happen more often, but once fighters start getting bonuses from magic items and so on, I'd be concerned with how this would play out. I'm not saying I'd be per se against it, but it feels like this wouldn't work, and I'd have to know more about how it actually plays out.)

 

[grimmgoose]

There's a common school of DM though that PCs should never ever encounter 1 hit die creatures after about 4th level, 'cause such encounters are "no challenge." Since they're no challenge, they're no fun - and if players do seem to find such encounters fun, then it must be false consciousness, or munchkinism, or some other morbid player dysfunction.

I'm of the opinion that pitting lower CR creatures against higher-level players is a waste of precious time.

My table gets 2.5 hours each week to play. Only on the absolute rarest of occasions am I okay with putting a foregone conclusion on the table that will eat up 30+ minutes of our time each week.

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm of the opinion that pitting lower CR creatures against higher-level players is a waste of precious time.

My table gets 2.5 hours each week to play. Only on the absolute rarest of occasions am I okay with putting a foregone conclusion on the table that will eat up 30+ minutes of our time each week.

I suppose that depends upon the mechanics. How flat the math is (are the orcs actually able to hit them?), etc. And on the DM, perhaps, to design the encounter well.

Obviously if it's just going to be a hour-long slog of dice rolls with an inevitable ending, we should skip it. But if a hundred orcs is an encounter which presents three 8th level fighters a similar challenge that 10 orcs did at 2nd level, and can be resolved in a reasonable period of time? That's a pretty neat embodiment of them being what OD&D dubbed "Superheroes" and potentially a fun encounter. The PCs can feel heroic not just when they fight a giant instead of an orc, or a dragon instead of a giant, at higher levels, but when they're capable of fighting a whole warband or small army.

Fighting a horde when you've got a goal other than just "kill the mobs" is also a thing. Can 8th level heroes fight their way through literal hundreds of foes to steal the McGuffin or rescue the sacrificial victim or escape from the villain's army to warn the people of the oncoming invasion? That sounds pretty heroic and fun. Again, assuming the mechanics and the encounter design prevent it being a slog or an excessively foregone conclusion.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I suppose that depends upon the mechanics. How flat the math is (are the orcs actually able to hit them?), etc. And on the DM, perhaps, to design the encounter well.

Obviously if it's just going to be a hour-long slog of dice rolls with an inevitable ending, we gotta skip it. But if a hundred orcs is an encounter which presents three 8th level fighters a similar challenge that 10 orcs did at 2nd level, and can be resolved in a reasonable period of time? That's a pretty neat embodiment of them being what OD&D dubbed "Superheroes" and potentially a fun encounter.

Fighting a horde when you've got a goal other than just "kill the mobs" is also a thing. Can 8th level heroes fight their way through literal hundreds of foes to steal the McGuffin or rescue the sacrificial victim or escape from the villain's army to warn the people of the oncoming invasion? That sounds pretty heroic and fun. Again, assuming the mechanics and the encounter design prevent it being a slog or an excessively foregone conclusion.

Agreed. I don't see fights solely as a level appropriate challenge. They are part of the setting and the PC's exploration of it just like everything else.