Gygax on Leveling Up Monsters

The always-informative Zenopus Archives pointed out a post Gygax made in a thread on the Pied Piper forums back in in 2004. In particular, this involves the infamous Old Guard Kobolds on the 1st level of his Castle Greyhawk dungeon that had a habit of surprising and wiping out whole parties of PCs. Here he outlines the fact that every TPK they scored, he boosted their stats in some way. I kind of like this as a very low-crunch way of representing monster "experience" and resource-scavenging. He says this:

Biased?!

Fact is that I have run OD&D games avery year at several cons for the last five or so years. I start them at 2nd level and use the old dungeon levels. So far about eight parties have been taken out by some kobolds on the 1st level. New RPGers seem to have not learned to run away when in doubt.

The first to fall used a sleep spell to get eight of the kobolds, but the six remaining ones used javelins to kill two PCs, then closed and in hand-to-hand killed all but two or the remainder of the party. One was about th kill another PC, while a second charged the m-u of the group, who turned to flee, finally. Too late, a javelin got him. Each group that died thus added to the kobolds:

1st TPK brought 12 more kobolds
2nd TPK gave them armor class of 6
3rd (near) TPK gave them all +1 HP
4th TPK added +1 damage
5th TPK added 4 2nd level and 2 3rd level kobolds
6th TPK gave them tactical manouvering and a 4th level leader
7th TPK upped AC to 5
8th TPK gave them unshakable morale

At JanCon this year the Old Guard Kobolds joined battle with a group of 8 PCs and wiped them out. I haven't decided how that will add to their combat ability, but I am considreing a kobold shaman with at least two 1st level spells

Cheers,
Gary

Book of War Skirmish Rules: Odd Encounters

I've had a few inquiries lately about whether there is a skirmish-level (1:1 scale) version of my OED Book of War simple miniature-wargame rules. The fortunate answer is: yes!

My game-design partner Paul Siegel wrote and tested this adjunct to Book of War, now in its 10th year of existence, called Odd Encounters. It gives a very nice stripped-down form of combat for individual figures and mid-level heroes (as you like it), d20-based attack rolls (so it's likely directly convertible with all your standard D&D play), and nicely balanced points costs and features for one-off games. I'm so appreciative that Paul wrote this and made it available for us -- and entirely released under the Open Game License. Get it for free at the link below and tell us what you think!

Odd Encounters (Book of War Skirmish Rules)

Sarge's Advice: Target 20 Saves

Another question from an observant reader, this time regarding the Target 20 core rule for saving throws.

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Quick query on Target 20 for saves -- for OD&D and B/X, as you know, different classes have different saves. Target 20, if I am reading it correctly, basically flattens everyone to the same chance, with the mods varying only by save type and NOT class. Is that correct? 

It's true that with Target 20, the way I run games, there's no distinction between classes for the saving throws. (Occasionally old-school players first realize that when they see there are no save records on the character sheets.)

One thing I've observed in the past is that the seeming class-distinction between saves in OD&D is at least partly illusory; the classes have different rates of increase (every 3 levels for fighters, 4 for clerics, 5 for magic-users), but on average the saves are about the same regardless. Like, just picking a level off the top of my head: at 8th level the save vs. spells are all an identical score of 12. (Which happens to be 20 - 8.) I made a post about that a while back:

https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/09/od-saving-throw-charts.html

In the charts there you can see that the average/regression lines for saves vs. Spells & Stone are almost indistinguishable between the different classes. In Death & Wand saves fighters do have about a 2-point advantage on average (with Breath sort of in the middle). So in early versions of OED I was giving wizards/thieves a -2 modifier on those latter saves as the best recreation -- but that always felt mean/stingy in play, so I wound up dropping it for simplicity.

At an extremely high level (16+), magic-users in OD&D do advance their save vs. spells to a point beyond the other classes -- but play at that level seems very rare, so to date it doesn't seem like a good distinction to make a separate rule for.

Sarge's Advice: OED Player's Rules

Recently on the Wandering DMs Paul pointed out that the rules I write are very concise, with a lot of information packed into the smallest amount of text I can get away with. That may partly be a bit of a math-infection I have. It certainly differs from the direction that late/post-TSR Gygax went in, trying to hammer out every possible detail in the rules to prevent people from playing in a way he didn't approve.

So anyway, from time to time I get really good questions by email about the OED rules. As long as I'm writing responses that way, if my wisdom score was reasonably high, I would also post them here for general consumption. A good opportunity for expansion and examples that I wouldn't want to take space on in the written rulebooks. Here are a few questions regarding the OED Variant Rules for Original D&D.

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So I recently picked up OED and I have just a few question about the wizards and thieves attack bonus: Wizards list a +1/2 attack bonus/level is it rounded up or rounded down? For thieves I can't quite figure the numbers so could you clarify on those please?

With the wizard base attack bonus, like most anything else, I round down. Say it's +0 at 0th-1st level, +1 at 2nd-3rd, +2 at 4th-5th, etc. Similar principle for the thieves base attack bonus of +2/3 per level (round down). So that generates +0 at 0th-1st level, +1 at 2nd, +2 at 3rd-4th, +3 at 5th, +4 at 6th-7th, etc. (I usually take a calculator, type in level ×2/3, and round down.)

And about multiclassing it says you roll hit dice for both classes. Does it happens when the character gains a new level in any of the two classes? And for the elves I guess you roll both at level 1 but only once is it correct ?

For multiclassing the novel thing we do is track the hit point for each class in separate "tracks" and then actively use just whichever is highest as the actual hit points.

Example 1: I make a new elf PC at Ftr1/Wiz1. Respectively I roll 1d8 for 5, and 1d4 for 2 hp. So I'm operating with 5 hp maximum on the first adventure.

Example 2: I have a Ftr3/Thf4. For the fighter at this point I've rolled 3d8 for a total of 15; for the thief part I've rolled 4d6 and gotten 16. So on the next adventure this character is operating with effectively maximum hit points of 16.

The sum rolls for each class track are recorded separately on the character sheet (along with the separate XP totals). Any time either level goes up, you roll added hit points for that class; only if that "track" is or becomes the maximum, does the PC then operate at higher effective health.

About general tasks resolution do you still use the Target 20 system or do you just handwave it whenever it happens? I ask this question because I'm still the "not confident enough" kind of GM and I prefer having a good outline of rules before I try to make my own.

I love this question about "general tasks". Personally I tend to only use d20 rolls for explicitly-defined things in the rules; generally combat where the results are life-or-death. If a "brand new" thing comes up (say: baking skill, something like that) then I revert back to a d6 roll -- like OD&D uses for listening, opening doors, finding secret passages, traps opening, etc. I feel like on an improvisational basis I can estimate a reasonable chance for success out of 6 (but not 20) -- as a default I give a 2-in-6 chance to succeed, like: roll d6, add some ability bonus, and a total roll of 5+ is success.