An Abominable Fancy

I'm adding some house-rules and what-nots to an edition of B/X Purple Core , and decided I wanted some Grappling Rules: Grappling (Optional Rule) If a character wishes to pin or overpower an opponent, they may attempt to grapple them. Generally speaking, as many as six grapplers can engage a single defender. Each grappler must succeed at an attack roll against the defender. The referee may choose to wholly or partially ignore armor for purposes of this attack. Roll the HD of each combatant on both sides.  • If the grappler’s side has the highest result, the defender is immobilized. They can be disarmed, tied up, pinned to the ground, or pushed in any direction at one quarter their movement. • If the results are a tie, the struggle continues and everyone must roll again unless both sides agree to discontinue.  • If the defender has the highest result, they have broken free. The grapplers are thrown back 5’ and unable to act for one round. Once engaged in grappling, ne

I used Gavin Norman's B/X Essentials Core Rules as an exercise in learning InDesign. The aesthetic is aggravatingly tasteful, but it should be easy to scroll through, with lots of hyperlinks and a few helpful annotations. Click for the PDF Feedback, as always, is accepted and solicited. Now to make a houserules edition! The B/X Monogram on the cover is based the font Rye , which is also used as the header text inside the document. If you'd like to use it for something B/X related, and want a high-rez or vectorized file, let me know! B/X Monogram by Joel Priddy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .

Hummel Rosy-cheeked, dimple-kneed, tow-headed little porcelain golems. Prime Requisite: CHA Saves and XP Progression as Fighters. Armor: Hummels can wear armor, but is must be comically too large for them, causing them to subtract the AC value of the armor from any DEX checks. Due to their short stature, Hummels receive +2 AC vs. Large opponents. Polarizing Reaction: Hummels do not have gradated reaction rolls. Roll 2d6 + CHA bonus. Any result over 6 is “Willingly helps/protects” and under is “Attacks immediately.” Baby Animals: A Hummel can charm 1 baby animal (including baby monsters) per Level. Big Tears: Upon taking damage, a Hummel can plop onto their bottom and shed a single, impossibly large tear. It hangs there, quivering, reflecting the attacker’s visage back at them and making them question the choices that have brought them to this act of cruelty. Save vs. Paralysis, or be caught in state of guilt and doubt until the Hummel moves or blinks, finally shed

I often find rules in D&D that don’t work the way I expect them to, and blame my younger self for having been too lazy to learn the rules correctly back in the day. Turns out, I’m usually just remembering Holmes Basic. This came up recently, when a campaign decided to switch from LL to AD&D, and I was ready to rock this table: My spell caster was going to get a massive upgrade to his spell book! With INT 18, he was going to go from five spells to at least 18! He had a good chance of making a clean sweep. Then someone kindly pointed out that the above percentages apply to learning spells that you find lying around amongst owlbear pellets. It takes Gygax about five paragraphs to explain this chart, and... well, let's say that clarity is not among its virtues. To summarize: If a spell caster finds a spell, they can roll their percentile chance to learn the spell. This roll can only be made once. If you fail to learn a spell, you can never learn it. Exc

Delving Deeper, like Oe and B/X, has lots of 1d6 skill rolls scattered throughout the rules— listen at doors, open a stuck door, detect traps. Except for the thief skills, DD's skills are pretty much the same as the early editions and other clones. Being someone who would much rather learn a guiding principle than memorize/look up specific instances, I decided to gather all the skills together and see what I could do with them: Listen at doors Halflings, Elves, Dwarves: 2 in 6 Thief: 4 in 6 Everyone else: 1 in 6 Dungeon Architecture Dwarves: 2 in 6 Find Secret Doors (takes 1 turn) Elves, Thieves: 4 in 6 Everyone else: 2 in 6 Thiefy Stuff: Open Locks; Disarm Device; Climb sheer surface; Sleight-of-hand Thief: 4 in 6 Stealthy movement/Hide Halflings: “nearly invisible” “almost silent” = automatic? (B/X: 10% in underbrush, 2 in 6 w/ cover) Thief: 4 in 6 Surprise Thief: 4 in 6 Everyone else: 2 in 6 Open Doors Weaklings (STR 3-6): 1 in 6 STR 7-18: 2 in

I prefer simple classes that let you model a wide variety of characters. OD&D does this really well with Fighters. Your Fighter can be a knight, or a pirate, or a robin hood, depending on how you outfit and play them. Nice. The new wave of the OSR has provided us with several adaptations that turn the Thief into a Specialist or Expert or Adventurer, which creates a similar effect: you have a class that provides non-combat skills, be it a box-man, architect, diplomat, tracker, whatever. I like it. But spell casters are not so flexible. The spell list contains enough flavor and world-implication that your Magic User is always a D&D Magic User, and your Cleric always tithes to the Church of Gygax. Gustav Doré, Don Quixote, 1863 So. I present a completely flavor-drained spell list. Just straight mechanics. Want a Fire Mage or Shadow Walker or Time Lord or Gadgeteer or whatever? Just pick the mechanics you need and dress them up in lovely fluff. It's a lot easie

Okay, let's see if this works. Hopefully, if you follow this link, you can download a usable Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that will figure out all the variables for movement in B/X. Movement Charts and Calculator Please correct me if I've left anything out, or gotten anything wrong. It should look kinda like this. The Google Docs view is not editable, but if you download it (and have Excel), you should be able to monkey with it.

Continuing my thoughts from this post , here's a second take on Innocents Abroad . The goal is to create the sort of talented-but-inexperienced adventurer who is the protagonist of pretty much every fantasy novel and fairy tale. Several people have directed me to Zack S.'s The Alice . This is a wonderful character concept, but a little more specific than what I'm going for here. I did steal (and water-down) one of her abilities. And if you have a better idea for what to call this class, I'd be eager to hear it. Catskin by Arthur Rackham The Youngest Son/Daughter: An Untrained Adventurer Almost always the youngest of three siblings, unless they are an orphan. They might be a Princess or a Woodchopper’s Son, but they have no formal training in adventuring skills.  Requirements: CHR 9 Prime Requisite: WIS Hit Points: 1d4 Save: as Thief Weapons: Any Armor: Shields; Any armor except Plate Mail 1           Naif          

There seemed to be some interest in my notion of restricting plate mail to Fighters . First thing: I know. I know. Plate mail is not plate armor. But danged if I don’t still picture the full suit of hinged knightwear whenever I read about plate mail, and also-danged if illustrators haven’t populated rule books with image after image of adventurers running around in plate armor. I'm not a nitty-gritty combat simulationist. I like nice, broad, simple categories of armor: Light/Flexible: Leather; Hide; Studded; or, I dunno, how thick is that wool peacoat? Medium/Semi-Rigid: Pretty much everything else. Heavy/Rigid: Plate Armor; anything that would make the Kelly Gang sit up and take notice. The Story of the Kelly Gang, 1906 (motion picture) Heavy/Rigid armor:  Requires help getting into or out of. Prevents you from doing pretty much anything except walking, sitting on a horse once you've been placed on it, and swinging weapons. Wil

In my previous post of the Innocent Abroad Character Class , I think I was trying to do a few too many things at once. I'd like to break the idea down a little further: What does the baseline human adventurer look like? What would a playable untrained adventurer class look like? What would a playable all-purpose adventurer look like? I think I'll ramble on the first point, tonight. The Baseline Human Adventurer, stripped of any class benefits, looks like this: Requirements: None Hit Die: 1d4 Save as Thief Weapons: any type Armor: Any armor, any shield Would probably level at around 800 XP, like what I had for the Innocents. Pretty simple. If well-equipped, a little better in a fight than a spell-depleted MU or a Thief caught out in the open, and much better than a Normal Human. Not very useful to play, but good for evaluating other classes. The point of interest for me is the 1d4 hit die. I tend to think of 1d6 as the default hit dice, becaus

The Squire from The Canterbury Tales The character who appears in every fantasy novel ever, and yet isn't modeled in B/X D&D is the wide-eyed innocent: the assistant pig-keeper who dreams of glory, or the merchant's daughter who gets swept up in adventure. Characters like this often get framed as fighters, as if fighters were just the default human adventurer. This dilutes the concept of the fighter as a trained specialist in arms and armament.  You could also play the character as level 0. This works if everyone else is also staring at level 0 and your walking into a funnel. But the level 0 characters are supposed to be what B/X calls Normal Humans. Normal Humans are explicitly not adventuring types. And the assistant pig-keepers of the world may be naive and unskilled, but they are still definitely adventurers. Let's take a look at the Normal Human. Normal Human Hit Points: 1-4 Save: Death Ray 14; Wands 15; Paralysis 16; Breath 17; Spells 1

Harpies by Donna Barr. Used with permission of the artist. Flying PC's can be a real hassle, because they can circumvent challenges that were planned two-dimensionally. But I think these harpies keep things pretty balanced. Let me know if I'm wrong. They are directly inspired by Paul Kidd's Lace & Steel, created in collaboration with Donna Barr. If you know Ms. Barr's work, there's no doubt the harpies were one of her contributions to the world of Middlemarch. If you don't know Donna Barr's work, then here you go, your new favorite thing: The Midnight Library. Anyway, harpies. Harpies (Lesser Harpies, Stormcrows, the Kindly Ones) Requirements : CON 9 Prime Requisite : CON Hit Dice : 1d4 Max Level : 8 Harpies have the heads and torsos of humans and the wings and bodies of large, predatory birds. Their hands emerge from the prominent joint of their wings. Although harsh and unforgiving in disposition, lesser

Okay, I think this is the last I have to say on satyrs . A squirrel-satyr, maybe? Satyr variations: Near-Satyrs, or Marginalia There are many variations on the satyr form. They are found throughout the world, reflecting the local fauna. In a jungle setting, one might encounter elephant, zebra, lion, or gazelle satyrs. In the frozen north: caribou and polar bear satyrs. These marginalia exist in small numbers—some may be unique—found in the wild or adopted into other communities. Most near-satyrs can be handled as cosmetic variations of either the satyr class or one of the below. These variations use the base satyr class, but changing out the natural attack, and a different advantage replacing Dazzling Music. Wolf-satyr Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Hear Noise as thief. Cannot use these abilities if wearing more than leather armor. Bite: 1d2, 1d4, 1d6 Countenance: At level 4, a wolf-satyr's face looks increasingly lupine. Deer-satyr  Spe

Tim Callahan was kind enough to send me a pdf of his new ‘zine, CrawlJammer. It’s Space & Sorcery for Dungeon Crawl Classics . I haven’t read DCC and this ‘zine may contain mechanical elegances that I’m missing out on, but I can recommend this just for the inspiring setting. Tim’s approach to space is admirably divorced from science and complexity. Of course you can breathe in space, although the air is a bit thinner. Of course you can walk the deck of your planet-roving Viking longship—it establishes its own gravity well. Battle between ships uses the same mechanics as battles between characters. There are a few optional rules if you feel like tracking more stuff in order to create a spacier flavor. It takes place in a solar system much like the one gamers of a certain age grew up with: nine planets, including Pluto. And, obviously, they’re all inhabited. Is there anything greater than tales set in the fully-inhabitable Solar System? I’ll never forgive Science for not r

I mentioned in the first satyr post that their reputations have suffered from the troublesome behavior of certain extreme elements within their ranks. People think that they are hedonists because of the Bacchante , or tricksters because of the Calicantsars . But the deepest, darkest suspicion people hold against satyrs is that they trade in dark magic. This is because of the Sabbat Satyrs. Sabbat Satyr Requirements : INT 13 Prime Requisite : INT Hit Dice : 1d4 Max Level : 14 Few satyrs have the academic focus necessary to become spell casters, and even when they do, many do not pursue it. This is because satyr magical talents inevitably lean towards necromancy. May wield sickles, knives, and staves. May not wear armor. Hit Progression, Spell Progression, and Save as Magic User. May not use magic armor or divine scrolls. Cannot perform Dazzling Music as other satyrs. Spells: Sabbat Satyrs cast spells from Gavin Norman’s Necromancer spell list . Ho