In Search Of Canon

WOTC's November 19, 2013 release of the re-mastered Original Dungeons and Dragons white box has been on my mind of late. 

Two books, which some consider so-called OD&D canon, were casualties in that release, having never made the final cut: Chainmail and Swords & Spells.  Tis a shame, since Chainmail germinated, and provided the original mass and heroic combat rules to, Dungeons and Dragons, and Swords & Spells was the progeny of Chainmail, filling the same role in OD&D, in updated fashion.

It may be that Chainmail's omission from the re-mastered release resulted from lingering doubts over copyright ownership.  But that rejection hardly seems plausible in the case of Swords & Spells, coming after the original LBB's and first four supplements, and undeniably a property of Gygax and TSR. 

Few would argue S&S is as useful as Chainmail, or, for that matter, the other supplements that were included in the re-master and release.  Still, the omission of both Chainmail and S&S reminds me of the scene from The Da Vinci Code, where, at the Council Of Nicea, the Christians debate and resolve which of the theological positions and gospels will be included in the Bible.  S&S should have been included, despite its lesser popularity and questionable rules-heft, if, for nothing else, historical value.

I'm no slave to so-called canon, of course.  I consider most any publication released during that initial blossoming of role-playing creativity a worthy addition to the game, just as I see modern attempts to graft to and restyle the original and reimagined rule-sets laudable. 

But there is, you must admit, something particularly charming and magical about the earliest D&D-esque publications, unstructured and divergent and un-self conscious.  Publications like the Arduin Grimoires.  Or the Little Soldier Games booklets. 

LSG's 1977 The Book Of Sorcery, authored by Dan Bress and Ed Konstant, was one of several non-canon OD&D sources that were whole-heartedly adopted as canon, at least among the role-players with whom I was acquainted. 

In the modern nomenclature, The BOS would be styled as fluff, rather than crunch, since BOS was rules-light, but flavour and idea-heavy.  There were rules, like the one below, enumerating the consequences of mis-cast spells, but much of The BOS was like the passage above, providing interesting flavour to the dangerous art of spell casting.

The early days of D&D were punctuated by the promotion of all manner of magical items and role-playing approaches.  The BOS pitched its own brand of magic item creation, as evidenced by the following passages, for communing instruments, rings of invisibility and enchanted swords.

I liked The BOS, Arduin Grimoires, and other non-canon D&D books as much for the art as the text.  Even now, I find the art in The BOS particularly creepy, and because it was by artists other than those in the TSR stable, the art brought a different esthetic to our game.

The BOS, and it's sister book, the Book Of Demons, contained quite a few images of demons and undead in unlikely situations and poses.  That art fostered a rather grim mood and lent itself to gritty, horror-filled D&D games.

 

 

One of the features of those old, non-canon D&D books was their similar shape and binding to that of the TSR publications.  The Arduin Grimoires and Little Soldier Games books were the same size as the TSR books, and fit conveniently within the White Box.  All the more reason to use all of them in your D&D games.

 

It's encouraging to see WOTC's issuance of re-mastered copies of the original D&D books, despite the regrettable absence of Chainmail and S&S.  And doubly encouraging is the recent, parallel re-publication of some of the non-canon third-party materials.  Hopefully modern and nostalgic gamers will discover those third-party materials and incorporate them into their re-discovery of Original D&D.

Horse Power

You'll excuse me if I get on my high horse, once again, over the lack of satisfactory cavalry rules in Dungeons and Dragons.

Gary Gygax's original Chainmail rules recognized the advantages of fighting from horseback. In those original 1971 Chainmail rules, mounted warriors were three or more times as effective in combat than their foot-bound brethren.

But in DnD's transition away from Chainmail's mass combat rules, and towards the alternate d20 combat system, the importance of mounted combat diminished.

This is true of every version of DnD I own, and while I don't own a copy of the 4E rules, i'm willing to bet that mounts provide little or no combat advantage in the most recent version.

Mounted combat is a problem for DnD, of course. Certainly in the early years, much of Dungeons and Dragons was focused on underworld adventures, an uncomfortable milieu for one's horse. And there were significant dangers in leaving your favorite warhorse tethered outside the dungeon entrance, not the least of which was returning to find nothing but bones.

Apart from capricious DMs and their propensity for mount-related mischief, treatment of horses, as separate from a rider, with its own hit points, meant that horses became less useful as the character levelled up. While the character increased in hit points, his favorite mount did not. Therefore, as a hit-point sink, the horse diminished in value over time.

Games like Lord Of The Rings: Strategy Battle Game restore the combat advantages of fighting from horseback. Other games, like Avalon Hill's Magic Realm, don't go quite so far, but do provide some not inconsiderable advantages to owning a mount.

Magic Realm includes three categories of mounts: ponies (pictured at the top of this post), workhorses (above) and warhorses (bottom).

The pony doubles a character's movement in Magic Realm. For every move action that a character performs, she gets a free move action, by virtue of riding the pony. Ponies allow Magic Realm characters to travel quickly across the map, permitting them to visit the natives and find monsters and treasures. However, ponies are vulnerable in combat, killed with medium damage.

Workhorses are less vulnerable, being killed by heavy damage. For example, workhorses are invulnerable during encounters with giant bats, who can inflict only medium damage. Thus, a common opening day in the Magic Realm sees all of the characters gang up on, and eliminate, the Rogues, who possess a stable-full of workhorses that can be raided once the Rogues are dispatched. In addition to providing protection against giant bats, workhorses provide an extra move phase every day.

Warhorses are kept by the Order of Knights, residing at the Chapel. Warhorses give no movement advantage, but are tremendous and armored, making them very difficult to eliminate. Warhorses make characters well-nigh unkillable.

Shields Deserve Better, Dammit!

This table is from Chainmail, the earliest combat system for Dungeons and Dragons.

I wish to draw your attention to the first three armor class columns: No Armor (9), Shield Only (8), and Leather Only (7).

As you can see, Shield Only is a better defensive option than Leather Only.

Against four weapons, Sheild Only is better than Leather Only. Against the other nine weapons, Shield Only is as good as Leather Only.

Somewhere in translation, Armor Class 7 (Leather Only) mistakenly became better than Armor Class 8 (Shield Only).

More Chainmail Resources

With thanks to Matthew of The Wheel Of Samsara... He points me to some interesting Chainmail resources.

Entitled 27th Edition Plate-mail, this ruleset uses Chainmail as the basis for a role-playing adventure game. You'll find the rulebook here, and the spell and magic items book here.

From my brief perusal, I found some of 27th Edition Plate-mail rather novel and interesting. Not sure I agree with a couple of things about these resources, though (the least of which is borrowing some classic art from other gamebooks).

Supercharging Chainmail Combat

I'm a notorious critic of the d20 combat system, hit points, power creep and variable damage. Between the four of them, they are to blame for the ascension of granularity, and the endless combats that now pass for role-playing.

As i've mentioned before, you'd be hard-pressed to recognize any game as Dungeons and Dragons that fails to include hit points. Hit points are so deeply hard-wired into the D&D culture that most gamers would recoil from anything calling itself D&D that failed to include hit points.

But if I had my druthers, hit points would be tossed out the window of the D&D automobile, replaced by a simplified system of combat and wounds.

The original "Chainmail miniatures rules" was the default combat system for OD&D. Those Chainmail rules included three combat systems: mass combat, man-to-man combat, and fantasy combat, each of which were employed based on the particular circumstances of the encounter.

For the purposes of large-scale combats, with multiple opponents on either side, Chainmail's mass combat system is applied. The method for applying that system is that each combatant rolls a number of six-sided dice, which is based on her class and level. She counts the number of successful hits she achieves, and that is the number of hit dice of damage that she inflicts upon her opponent.

For example, a 4th level gladiatrix had the fighting capability of 4 women, so she rolls 4, six-sided dice to determine how many wounds she inflicts. She might need to roll a five or six to inflict a wound, so any fives and sixes she rolled will count as a wound upon her opponent.

If I understand my D&D history correctly, the addition of variable hit points was an Arnesian invention, adopted by Gygax, necessitated by the fragility of low-level characters. But if players are being honest about their hit points, it is nearly as likely as not that a single wound to a first-level character will result in death, regardless, if six-sided dice are used for both hit points and damage. Why not be honest about it and simply give starting characters an extra wound point or two, rather than perpetuate a fraud by introducing variable hit points as a solution to fragile low-level characters.

The Chainmail system works well, for fast, abstract combat, if there is a simple one-to-one relationship between the level of the character and the number of hit dice rolled to determine damage. But neither Chainmail nor OD&D make combat that simple. No class, not even the fighter, has a simple one-to-one relationship between level and hit dice rolled for wounding purposes in OD&D. The lack of a one-to-one relationship is the case because the OD&D rules assume that non-fighters will be less puissant at armed combat, and because only six-sided dice are employed.

In addition, in the Chainmail combat system, one needs to consult one of a half-dozen charts to determine what your odds of wounding are, based on the arms and armor of your opponent.

It is surprisingly easy to solve this problem, and Gygax himself promulgated the necessary polyhedral tools to do so. In the basic Chainmail mass-combat system, every character rolls a certain number of six-sided dice to determine whether, and how many times, they have wounded their opponent. In addition, in OD&D, Fighters are the most proficient in combat, followed by Clerics, Thieves and Magic-users.

Rather than using six-sided dice for all classes, then, why not use different dice for each class, with Fighters using the d6, Clerics the d8, Thieves the d10, and Magic-users the d12. Assuming that a roll of "1" is needed by each character in order to achieve a wound upon her opponent, first level Fighters would have a 17% chance, Clerics a 13% chance, Thieves 10% and Magic-users 8%. That would satisfy the OD&D assumption that different classes have different combat abilities.

Additionally, armor classes could be rationalized into four categories: 4 (no armor), 3 (light armor), 2 (medium armor), and 1 (heavy armor). That would be the same number, or less, that any character would need to roll, in order to achieve a wound upon their opponent.

Shields would act as a second-level defence, to block otherwise successful attacks, with some probability attached to deflecting blow(s), based on the size of the shield and perhaps the number of opponents the character is facing.

That, then is my crudely developed solution to the complexities of Chainmail combat, and desire to simplify and speed up battles, so there is more time for exploration and role-playing at the gaming table.

Magical Swords In ODnD

Magic swords in Original Dungeons and Dragons were far more potent that most people give them credit.

That is doubly true when using the Chainmail combat rules, rather than the "alternative" (d20) combat system. That alternative, d20 combat system diluted the power of those magic swords, and it, along with the innovation of hit points, were a baleful influence on future versions of D&D.

Remembering that the Chainmail combat rules were ODnD's original, default rules, this quote from Chainmail gives some indication of how magic swords were first viewed by Gygax as he penned ODnD:

"Magic Swords: because these weapons are almost entities in themselves, they accrue real advantage to the figure so armed. In normal combat they merely add an extra die. It is in fantastic combat the magical swords are most potent. Besides allowing Elves to combat certain fantastic figures, they give a plus 1 to the dice score when employing the Fantasy Combat Table, and Magical Swords shed a light of their own over a circle 12" in diameter (6" radius) which dispels darkness but does not equal full light. Excalibur and other 'super swords' would give a plus two or three!"
-- Chainmail, p.38

"Merely" adds an extra die? In mentioning the addition of an extra die, Gygax refers, of course, to the use of d6's, in Chainmail's normal (mass) combat rules, to determine the chance of wounding one's opponent. Using Chainmail's normal (mass) combat rules, and assuming both combatants are "armored footmen", either combatant needs to score a 6, on a single d6, to wound his opponent. The combatant with the magic sword, who adds an extra d6, needs to roll a 6 on either of his 2d6, and therefore has a 31% (11/36) chance of wounding his opponent, while the combatant, without the magic sword, has a 17% (1/6) chance of doing the same.

Put another way, that +1 sword, in ODnD, is actually a +3 sword, if you were to convert the odds of wounding over to the alternative, d20 combat system (you need an 18+ on a d20 without the magic sword, or a 15+ with the magic sword). Add to that, the 3% (1/36) chance that the magic-sword-weilding-combatant will score two wounds, and that humble +1 sword looks potent indeed!

Gygax's reference to the "addition of an extra die in normal combat" is more problematic (and potentially powerful), when you consider its application to Chainmail's man-to-man combat rules. Taking the "addition of an extra die" at face value, you could interpret this to mean you roll 3d6, instead of 2d6, when consulting the man-to-man combat table. Again, assuming the employment of our ubiquitous +1 sword, against an opponent with Plate Armor and a Shield, our odds improve from 11+ on 2d6 (3/36 or 8%) to 11+ on 3d6 (109/216 or 50%).

Again, converting this to the alternative, d20 combat system, that +1 sword actually improves my chances of wounding my opponent, from 19+, to 11+. My +1 sword just became a +8 sword!

Even if you dismiss that extreme interpretation, in favor of a more reasonable +1 to the dice score on the man-to-man table, your run-of-the-mill +1 magic sword is still very potent. Against Plate, your odds of wounding improve from 17% to 28%. Against other types of armor, your odds improve from 42% to 58%. Those odds turn that simple +1 sword into a +2 or +3 sword, when converted to the alternative, d20 combat system.

I see no evidence in ODnD that magic swords were considered to be anything but the puissant and dangerous items suggested by the Chainmail rules. In addition to the above combat bonuses, there was a 50% chance that a magic sword would have sufficient Intelligence to have a Will of its own, which it would attempt to impose upon its wielder:

"Swords: among magic weaponry, swords alone possess certain human attributes. Swords have an alignment, and intelligence factor and an egoism rating .... If the Intelligence/Egoism of the sword is six or more points above that of the character who picks it up, the sword will control the person ...." -- D&D Volume II, Monsters & Treasure, p. 27

This was the case, even of the lowly +1 magic sword. Indeed, those +1 swords had a 50% chance of having some special power, a 25% chance of talking, and 17% chance of reading magic or having some other extraordinary ability.

The most powerful sword bonus in ODnD was +3, and for good reason. A +3 sword would truly have been the equivalent of an Excalibur or Stormbringer, particularly if the sword had high intelligence, ego, and several extraordinary abilities to boot. The dilution of the magic sword, first, by the introduction (without adjustment of the odds) of the alternative, d20 combat system, and second, by the introduction of hit points and accompanying applications of 'bonuses to damage' instead of additional wounds, along with a host of additional features to add "granularity" to D&D, led us to the current morass of +16 Swords of Valiant Smiting and Characters with 40 hit points at first level.

Horses, Cavalry and Mounted Combat in OD&D

Several months ago, I shared my dissatisfaction with the D&D hit point mechanic, and compared it to the Lord Of The Rings: Strategy Battle Game approach. LOTR:SBG uses a combination of wound and fate points instead of hit points. Wounds represent physical damage, while Fate represents your ability to avoid a wound, dodge or parry a blow, or otherwise escape injury. While those two types of "damage pools" each operate a little differently in LOTR:SBG, I feel that the similar approach could be used in D&D.

The D&D rules for cavalry, horses, and mounted combat are similarly dissatisfying. They are dissatisfying because there are no rules in D&D for mounted combat! Having spent the last 45 minutes trying to locate something in the way of mounted combat rules, in the AD&D books, I finally turned to Chainmail.

Chainmail provides some guidance in regards combat between mounted and foot units. In the Chainmail rules, 2 light footmen attacking 1 light horseman have a 16% chance of killing the horseman. Conversely, 1 light horseman attacking 1 light footman has a 45% chance of killing the footman. A medium horseman has an even better chance of killing a light footman, somewhere in the 65% range.

I like the way LOTR:SBG handles combat between cavalry and footmen. In LOTR:SBG each rank-and-file figure has one attack. However, any mounted figure gets an additional attack, if charging. If the mounted figure wins the attack, while charging, he gets twice as many chances to wound the footman. Therefore, since the horseman had two attacks while charging, he gets double that (4 chances) to wound the footman. Conversely, if a footman wins a combat against a cavalry figure, there is a 50% chance that the attack will hit the horse instead of the rider.

I think similar rules could be used in D&D. You could give an attacker on horseback an extra to-hit roll. That attacker could roll all of his attacks at the same time. If the attacks hit, you could then double the number of damage dice rolled.