Heroic Fray and Minions in D&D

[MerricB]

Hey MerricB. Thanks for chiming in. I was hoping you would. I thought Fighting the Unskilled was a Fighter only ability? I don't have my 1e books right next to me. I always played it was Fighters only at least. If it was extended to all of the Warrior classes, that would certainly be the genesis of the Minion system.

It's given as a footnote to the #Attacks table for Fighters, Rangers and Paladins, so I'd assume it applied to all of them. The old Gold Box computer games by SSI (Pool of Radiance, Azure Bonds, etc.) implement the rule!

Mostly I was looking for a module/rule, akin to Fighting the Unskilled, that was either universally available or mostly so. Further, it scaled such that more powerful creatures (orcs etc) become minions as the heroes become truly powerful. Are you aware of anything like that in any Dragon mags through the years? I can't recall.

Neither am I, but my knowledge of old Dragon magazines is quite shaky - I've read a lot of them, but I tended to concentrate on what the designers were writing rather than the other articles. It may be a consequence of how the Battlesystem game handled heroes, though.

Cheers!