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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9624573" data-attributes="member: 7026617">Remember I wasn't assuming heavy use of henchmen (because I very rarely saw that), so unless you had a multiple-character per player party or a large number of players, there wasn't much of anyone to use them (neither MUs nor clerics could, and I don't recall thieves being able to either); if you did have spare fighters, they had to deal with the extra encumbrance when they were often dancing near their limits anyway, or use them as a main weapon when they were inferior (and you weren't likely to find a magic one).So, in practice, you weren't choosing between 3D8 and 3D6.  The difference in RQ was that a spear was perfectly fine as your primary weapon, and maybe carry a shortsword as a backup for those occasions when a longspear might be impractical.  Most people weren't wearing heavy enough armor for encumbrance issues  to be a real problem there.(I was also assuming post Greyhawk damage values because by the time I joined OD&D I literally never hit anyone not using them).Partly.  But honestly, it doesn't matter much; there was rarely much incentive to hire sub-level hirelings other than for bearers anyway.  If a group was going to wander around with larger parties anyway, you'd more likely just see everyone playing two PCs and make it moot.  IF they didn't want players doing that, no one was going to encourage being bringing along a bunch of hirelings or followers of any stripe anyway (and by moderate levels it was largely pointless anyway because the first fireball or dragonbreath you hit was going to delete them all en-masse anyway).  You almost never saw it happen even with classes that got it baked in at certain levels.By the time those offshoots were becoming much of a thing, I was moving out of the D&D sphere anyway.  That's why when I talk about this stuff I try to make it clear that I'm talking late-period OD&D and nothing else 95% of the time.The multiple PCs wasn't uncommon in my experience, but like I said any sort of followers were going to just be one or two to function as bearers and maybe mule managers.  Pretty quickly their combat abilities were going to be pretty minimalist;  When it gets to the point where the mages are meleeing better (because of more hit points if nothing else) you can expect that, barring the "use your hirelings as trap detectors" crowd they weren't a significant factor in combat.And on those occasions when you did have those large parties (say six fighters or equivalents (paladins, rangers, or various odd custom classes), three MUs or equivalents, and the other three mixes of thieves, clerics and various analogues (bards, assassins, druids or what all), at least two of those fighters would be guarding the rear during order-of-march situations (usually three if the GM was allowing three abreast, though one of the rear rank might be a cleric--the six/three/three pattern wasn't hard coded, it was just common).  Having the second row being one or more clerics was very common so they could do emergency healing in those circumstances.  Even if it wasn't, the second row fighters were more likely to be using bows than fiddling around with spears.Yeah, this was the only way I ever saw it done in the field.I can't say I ever remember seeing that permanent switch in play.  Of course with groups I had glancing interactions with, there's no reason I should have known if they were using it.  Certainly no one in the groups I commonly played with did it.They were still pretty early though, being another SR class.As I recall, rangers had some practical armor limits that would sometimes discourage people doing them, though as you say a lot of fighters just couldn't make the requirements.I wasn't entirely sure about them, since its been so long; I don't recall seeing many if any, though.  Were they capped low for cleric advancement?  Most of the half-elves I recall were either single class, fighter mages, or the occasional fighter/mage/thieves.</blockquote>

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