Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6077364" data-attributes="member: 6680772">Character Classes Part 2Interestingly, both fighters and magic-users get the shortest entries in this section.Fighters - Renamed from "Fighting-men", it's otherwise pretty staid here.  Hercules is name-checked.  Train for battle, prime req of Strength, Str over 13 gives +10% to XP, d8 HD, use any weapon, wear any armor, use shields, no special abilities.  I'm not leaving much out!  Halflings - Halflings are demi-humans on easy mode.  Their prime reqs are Strength and Dexterity, but you only need a 13 or better in one for the 5% XP bonus, and a 13+ in both gives you 10%.  They get d6 Hit Dice, putting them on par with elves and clerics.  They can use any weapon or armor that has is halfling-sized (no two-handed swords or longbows).  They advance to a maximum of 8th level.  They have very good saves, and get a +1 halfling bonus in addition to Dex bonuses for missile fire and individual initiative.  They also get a -2 to AC versus opponents larger than man-sized.  They can hide in shadows on a 1 or 2 on d6 in a dungeon, but on a 1-9 on d10 when outside.  Pump Dex up, and these halflings are hard, bold, and wicked!Magic-users - Again, pretty staid.  Merlin is name-checked.  Cast spells, prime req is Intelligence, d4 HD, can only use daggers, no armor.  One line is very pointed: "Though they are weak at first, magic-users can eventually become very powerful."  This is what I call the different balance of old editions.  The magic-user is deliberately made weaker at first, and their dominance later in the game makes up for this initial weakness.Thieves - Humans trained in the "arts of stealing and sneaking".  Moldvay makes it a point to note that the presence of thieves is not out of the normal for adventurers, due to these skills.  But then comes the stinger - "As their name indicates, however, they do steal -- sometimes from members of their own party."  Prime req is Dexterity, Hit Dice are d4, no shield, only leather armor, but any kind of weapon.  In addition to their thief abilities, they get their backstab ability, although this is not called "backstab".  It merely says "When striking unnoticed from behind, a thief gains a bonus of +4 on "to hit" rolls and inflicts twice the normal amount of damage."  Here is one point where I wish Moldvay had provided more elaboration.  He emphasizes "unnoticed", but there isn't even any DM advice, let alone mechanics or rules for how thieves achieve these conditions.  As a result, it's entirely up to the graces of the DM if the thief is to take advantage of this ability.  It's great if you've got a "say yes" kind of DM, but if not, I can see the frustration.So, the classes.  Certainly, from a customizing, "create your imagined character" perspective, it's quite limiting.  On the other hand, I can see why Basic D&D took off like it did.  The classes not only have niche roles in a party and represent easily relatable archetypes, their various advantages and disadvantages, even on the meta-game level, IMO offer the beginning player just the right level of choice and structure.Someone once asked, "Why play a fighter in the older editions?" and from the class description there's not much that might persuade them.  Left unsaid in the Moldvay class description (although expanded on in Mentzer) is that fighters are instant gratification.  They have lots of hp, and pretty fast advancement, quickly giving them more hp and better to-hit rolls.  Dwarves are much the same, just trading some upper levels for immediate special abilities.  Magic-users, OTOH, play the long game.  If you persevere at the early levels, the rewards are great.  Elves, in addition to calling to mind Tolkien and providing an alternative to human characters, give you the chance to wield some magic and a sword, on the condition of slow advancement.  Similarly, halflings definitely call to mind Tolkien, while presenting a class seemingly built to harry opponents at range.  Thieves are for the player who isn't particularly interested in combat, but finds lots of spotlight time out of it, with rapid advancement.  And clerics have decent fighting ability, a unique set of highly useful special abilities, and fairly fast advancement.  I actually wonder that they were not a popular class (prior to CoDzilla); I would almost say they were designed to encourage at least one person to play one.Reflecting on our early games when we first played, I recall that all of us had a favorite class we tended to play.  I liked magic-users, my sister preferred elves, and my buddy was a thief man through and through.  I think that's a residue of the design.This page comes with <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_UC6wGUZJLlI/TBJTPfE-ArI/AAAAAAAAAG4/PYAzwAxO9Hg/s1600/Picture+4.png" target="_blank">this picture</a>, showing all the classes, except for the thief.</blockquote>

Verification