New classes in Basic D&D

[Remathilis]

I'm curious, but are there official additional classes for Basic (cyclopedia) D&D other than those mentioned in that book? I know there was a rakasta class, but was there ever a bard, ranger, etc.

The classes I know of

Fighter
Cleric
Magic User
Thief
Paladin
Avenger
Knight
Druid
Mystic (monk)
Dwarf
Elf
Halfling

others?

 

[johnsemlak]

Several new classes were added in the GAZATTER line of products.

The first was the Dervish in GAZ 2 - Ylarum. Also called the Desert Druid.

Later products had the Dwarf-Cleric, two versions of a merchant class, a varient halfling class with some arcane magic ability IIRC, two shaman classes, the Forester. There may have been others.

OD&D fan sites have lots of others. the OD&Dities fanzine had an OD&D Bard.

Oh, and the GAZ 3 Glantri also had seven magical societies that worked sort of like prestige classes. They allowed magic users to specialize in illusionism, alchemy, elements, dragon magic, necromancy, etc. I loved this bit.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

I believe there was also the Thug (Thugee) NPC class--sort of a basic D&D assassin NPC class.

There's also the Voyage of the Princess Arc articles from older issues of

• Half-elves as a race
• Druidic knight
• Bard

Magazine. Some of the stuff mentioned in there (IIRC) are:

And, more Gazetteer stuff included stuff for playing orcs, goblinoids, ogres, & the like (from the orc-specific Gazetteer).

 

[Urbannen]

The PC series created a host of monster classes.

Top Ballista gave a lot of general monster classes that could be found in the flying city of Serraine. Example classes: sky gnome, sphinx, gremlin, nagpa.

Tall Tales of the Wee Folk gave fey classes. Examples: treant, pooka, sidhe, hsiao, centaur.

Night Howlers gave lycanthrope classes. Examples: wereshark, werebear, wereboar, weretiger.

The last one was about aquatic adventures (can't remember the name). Example classes: merfolk, tritons

 

[Remathilis]

Do you know which issues of Voyages had those classes/races? I have the dragon archieve CD rom.

Thanks, to everyone who replied.

 

[edventure]

There is a bard for Original D&D. It might have been in a Dragon mag or something. All I ever got when I played as one were some photocopied pages from a magazine. I can dig out the pages and look for markings if you're interested.

Interesting character. By the time the campaign ended he was a Nosferatu.

 

[Walter_J]

I know I have an old Best of Dragon that had several character classes in it that didn't jive with 1E, but were obviously post-white box. I know the Ranger, Bard (maybe the one a previous poster mentioned) and a witch class were in there. I'll look around later and, if I come across it, I'll get back to this thread.

 

[T. Foster]

I know I have an old Best of Dragon that had several character classes in it that didn't jive with 1E, but were obviously post-white box. I know the Ranger, Bard (maybe the one a previous poster mentioned) and a witch class were in there. I'll look around later and, if I come across it, I'll get back to this thread.

Those classes from Best of The Dragon vol. 1 (the ranger, the bard, and the illusionist) originally appeared in various issues of The Strategic Review in 1975-6 and were all for use with the white-box (they are in fact the direct precursors of the classes with those names in 1E). I know some people have tried to use them, but IMO these classes wouldn't really work with later (BX, BXCMI, RC) versions of the "non-Advanced" game because the assumptions between editions are too different. The Witch in BOTDv1 wasn't really a "class" as such -- they didn't have an xp table, for instance -- but more of a really really detailed monster-type.

 

[Dogbrain]

It's not quite what you're looking for, but it might help you in designing your own. I took the time to rework the "race classes" (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling) for Cyclopedia D&D so that each race now had a Fighter, a Thief, a Cleric, and a Magic User as separate classes. Once you see that, you could use it as a springboard to design other classes that could work with more than one race. It still keeps the Cyclopedia D&D flavor and seemed to work in actual play.

http://mypage.iu.edu/~brmalone/classic/variety.html