NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ExploderWizard" data-source="post: 6249678" data-attributes="member: 66434">Like a great many things from early edition games, certain rules that supported other rules were often discarded resulting in situations which seemed  "broken" until the missing piece of the puzzle was returned to its place. In OD&D and AD&D 1E melee combat was an abstract chaotic event. One couldn't choose specific targets. Targets were selectable for missile fire only. Thus what was "protecting" the squishy magic user in melee combat was pure luck. A gentlemens agreement to not concentrate melee attacks vs the magic user were not needed per the rules because of random targeting. Casting in melee combat is still plenty risky, but by the rules having more fighters to protect the caster does actually work because of two reasons:1) More fighters means an actual physical barrier between enemies and the magic user. To be considered a possible target, the enemy must be able to reach the magic user. 2) Simple odds. If you have one fighter protecting the magic user and enemies can reach you then the magic user has a 50% chance of being the target. If you have four fighters doing the same then the chances go down to 20%. The reason for large parties of mercenaries should now be readily apparent. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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