This is cool! I think one of the biggest (mechanical) sins of old style DnD is that fighters are so boring! And I’ve always found it odd that more people didn’t use of version of mighty deeds of arms from dcc since it’s so flavorful and fun. Really great stuff!
thank you! it bugged me that fighter is the only b/x style class where it's up to the referee giving out magic swords to make them as mechanically fun as the others. im so glad dcc and other games are re-imagining that aspect of the game
Part of it is how BX and AD&D fighters lost their OD&D abilities to do multi-attacks in melee, fire bows twice, and from Chainmail, even detect invisible opponents, cause fear, and raise morale at high levels
I think @inplacesdeep.bsky.social Nightwick Abbey does a nice job by giving fighters cleave 🪓 (if you kill, attack again within range) & archery 🏹 (if no move, attack twice w/ a bow)
That’s really interesting; I’ve only kinda read od&d so it’s a bit of a blind spot for me. Fascinating that fighters got nerfed (for lack of a better word) and then that version became the de facto.
This is an interesting take. Original D&D expected folks to have the Chainmail rules and used them. I wonder why Holmes D&D and after didn’t bring Chainmail fighter stuff over?
They got really nerfed if you consider that normals can't harm fantastic combatants. When a Fighter becomes 3rd level in #OD&D, a normal has to use a fantastic attack mode (spell, magic weapon). Same against 6th-level Clerics and 7th-level MUs.
Imagine a 3rd-level Fighter roaming the dungeons of your game that has a bunch of normals, such as Goblins and such. They'd run amok without much worry unless they had some kind of fantastic counter, like a Goblin shaman with a Magic Missile spell.
And do you know why the Magic Missile spell says it always hits. Because in Chainmail, a Magic Arrow auto-hits normals, no roll needed. Very cool when one starts to piece all the parts that make it all make sense.
Also remember that #OD&D is explicitly an Exploration game. Not a combat game. But because there'll be combat, Gygax says "use Chainmail, but hits inflict 1d6 HP." And presuming all fights would be fantastic (one roll per combatant), it really is an abstraction to get back to exploration.
Chainmail says Heroes are treated like 4 figures in normal combat. So in Man-to-Man, against normals, they attack as 4 combatants. Super Heroes "act as Hero-types in all cases, except they are about twice as powerful," or 8 combatants in normal combat. Against fantastic foes, only one strike.
This is a nifty litttle extrapolation. I like that none of them removes the next attack from the opponent, which ime is game-breaking. Also like that you could have a swahbuckler or a terrifying pit fighter right out of the gate with this system.
Ooh! We‘ve had fun things like this Trigger on a roll of “1” for Damage before (and if all your Weapons use d6, that's similar odds to start with!) Really takes some of the sting out of those low damage rolls, and doesn't require another roll on top of the process!
The features were a bit Weapon Specific though (a Spear Butt might *Trip*, while an Axe might *Sunder* a Shield, a Dagger could *Cut a Strap*, etc.) so it did help further differentiate some of them from each other as well.
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