Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
In the last year or so, Dan "Delta" Collins has done a bunch of analysis on his somewhat math-heavy OD&D blog, about the old OD&D/AD&D rule that Fighters get to make one attack per level against regular men/orcs. In OD&D it was against man-sized / 1HD or less monsters. In AD&D they scaled that back to creatures of LESS than 1HD, putting "regular men" at 1-1 HD, and trained soldiers at 1HD. Although I've come to think that was a mistake.
This in part comes out of Chainmail, but is also solidly rooted in the fantasy fiction D&D is meant to model. Elric, Conan, John Carter, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and similar really heroic figures are able to take on whole groups of men or orcs and cleave through them, piling up mounds of bodies in battle.
If you look at the wilderness encounter numbers in OD&D and AD&D it also becomes apparent that this rule makes it possible for Fighters to meaningfully contribute to fights when humanoids may be encountered in numbers from 20-200 or 30-300! To be fair this isn't the ONLY way to handle such numbers of opponents. The rules provide the ability to try to Evade encounters, and many DMs support PCs using clever tactics to reduce the number of foes the PCs have to face at once, perhaps with skirmishes and ambuscades. But on reflection there is some elegance and balance to, say, a Fighter getting five attacks a round against a pack of orcs at the same level a Magic-User learns Fireball or Lightning Bolt, and it definitely reduces the "linear Fighters, quadratic Wizards" effect, where Fighters have an unfortunate tendency to become second fiddle to the mages once the mages learn 3rd level and higher spells.
Perhaps not coincidentally, B/X expected characters to be at least 4th level before engaging in wilderness adventures. Although to their credit, the developers of the Expert set seem to observed that the wilderness numbers encountered in OD&D and AD&D for monsters like Orcs, Goblins, and Gnolls were very high, and scaled them back by about a whole order of magnitude. I think this was with the intent of keeping things simpler, with no one ever getting multiple attacks in B/X. But for my money, I really like the idea of skilled Fighters being able to do this.
I've been playing in an OD&D game for almost two years where we use this rule, although with the limitation stated in that edition that attacks after the first don't get any to-hit bonuses for level. This way you're not double-dipping for your character level, gaining both improved THAC0 (though not really THAC0 yet) AND the extra attacks for gaining in level. I've definitely been pleased with it in play. It certainly makes Fighters feel more heroic when a pack of orcs is encountered, to not be so dependent on a Sleep spell to do most of the heavy lifting.
One downside some folks don't like is the extra time required to make and resolve the extra attacks. Some folks find the speed and simplicity of a single attack or action part of the appeal of OSE or B/X. There are a couple of possible simplifications which can be made to accommodate this.
One is simply to make a single attack and damage roll for up to as many adjacent/in melee (grid vs. TotM) opponents as the Fighter's level. Another is to roll a die with as many sides as the character has levels, and have them kill that many foes within reach, abstracting out that average damage is going to equate to average HP for 1HD foes, and subsuming the attack rolls in that single die. So for a 4th level fighter, they can simply kill d4 Orcs per round. For a 5th level Fighter, you can simply roll a d6 and re-roll 6s. Same with a 7th level fighter and a D8.
Joshua Macy, on his blog, alternately suggests rolling a number of d6s equal to the number of attacks allowed, with a target number from 3-6 based on what kind of armor/AC the opponents have. He made a nice table converting the numbers needed to hit given ACs on a d20 to d6s with a little rounding. This lets you factor in the armor class but still get the attacks resolved quickly with a small handful of dice.
Another sticking point can be the very "all or nothing" nature of this rule, where it only comes into play against enemies of 1HD or less, and then as soon as the foes have 2HD or more, the Fighter is back to 1 attack only. Personally I still think it's a useful and enjoyable rule, because there are enough such enemies that are likely to be encountered (just in large groups) at higher levels, but if you want to make the ability work more broadly, you can make it work as a ratio. Say, divide the HD of the enemy into the Fighter's level to find out how many attacks he gets. So a 6th level Fighter gets 6 attacks against Orcs, 3 against Gnolls, 2 attacks against Wights, and only a single attack against a foe of 4HD or more.
Have any of you played much with this rule, or variants of it? What are your experiences like?
deltasdnd.blogspot.com
talesoftheramblingbumblers.com
This in part comes out of Chainmail, but is also solidly rooted in the fantasy fiction D&D is meant to model. Elric, Conan, John Carter, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and similar really heroic figures are able to take on whole groups of men or orcs and cleave through them, piling up mounds of bodies in battle.
If you look at the wilderness encounter numbers in OD&D and AD&D it also becomes apparent that this rule makes it possible for Fighters to meaningfully contribute to fights when humanoids may be encountered in numbers from 20-200 or 30-300! To be fair this isn't the ONLY way to handle such numbers of opponents. The rules provide the ability to try to Evade encounters, and many DMs support PCs using clever tactics to reduce the number of foes the PCs have to face at once, perhaps with skirmishes and ambuscades. But on reflection there is some elegance and balance to, say, a Fighter getting five attacks a round against a pack of orcs at the same level a Magic-User learns Fireball or Lightning Bolt, and it definitely reduces the "linear Fighters, quadratic Wizards" effect, where Fighters have an unfortunate tendency to become second fiddle to the mages once the mages learn 3rd level and higher spells.
Perhaps not coincidentally, B/X expected characters to be at least 4th level before engaging in wilderness adventures. Although to their credit, the developers of the Expert set seem to observed that the wilderness numbers encountered in OD&D and AD&D for monsters like Orcs, Goblins, and Gnolls were very high, and scaled them back by about a whole order of magnitude. I think this was with the intent of keeping things simpler, with no one ever getting multiple attacks in B/X. But for my money, I really like the idea of skilled Fighters being able to do this.
I've been playing in an OD&D game for almost two years where we use this rule, although with the limitation stated in that edition that attacks after the first don't get any to-hit bonuses for level. This way you're not double-dipping for your character level, gaining both improved THAC0 (though not really THAC0 yet) AND the extra attacks for gaining in level. I've definitely been pleased with it in play. It certainly makes Fighters feel more heroic when a pack of orcs is encountered, to not be so dependent on a Sleep spell to do most of the heavy lifting.
One downside some folks don't like is the extra time required to make and resolve the extra attacks. Some folks find the speed and simplicity of a single attack or action part of the appeal of OSE or B/X. There are a couple of possible simplifications which can be made to accommodate this.
One is simply to make a single attack and damage roll for up to as many adjacent/in melee (grid vs. TotM) opponents as the Fighter's level. Another is to roll a die with as many sides as the character has levels, and have them kill that many foes within reach, abstracting out that average damage is going to equate to average HP for 1HD foes, and subsuming the attack rolls in that single die. So for a 4th level fighter, they can simply kill d4 Orcs per round. For a 5th level Fighter, you can simply roll a d6 and re-roll 6s. Same with a 7th level fighter and a D8.
Joshua Macy, on his blog, alternately suggests rolling a number of d6s equal to the number of attacks allowed, with a target number from 3-6 based on what kind of armor/AC the opponents have. He made a nice table converting the numbers needed to hit given ACs on a d20 to d6s with a little rounding. This lets you factor in the armor class but still get the attacks resolved quickly with a small handful of dice.
Another sticking point can be the very "all or nothing" nature of this rule, where it only comes into play against enemies of 1HD or less, and then as soon as the foes have 2HD or more, the Fighter is back to 1 attack only. Personally I still think it's a useful and enjoyable rule, because there are enough such enemies that are likely to be encountered (just in large groups) at higher levels, but if you want to make the ability work more broadly, you can make it work as a ratio. Say, divide the HD of the enemy into the Fighter's level to find out how many attacks he gets. So a 6th level Fighter gets 6 attacks against Orcs, 3 against Gnolls, 2 attacks against Wights, and only a single attack against a foe of 4HD or more.
Have any of you played much with this rule, or variants of it? What are your experiences like?
Sweeping Up the Wilderness
How do O/AD&D "sweep attacks" affect the danger of wilderness encounters?
deltasdnd.blogspot.com
Cleaving Attacks
Dan Collins of Delta’s D&D Hotspot has a new post on what he calls “Cleaving Through the Ages”, where he goes into the history of making multiple attacks against low-level foe…
talesoftheramblingbumblers.com
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