Fight On! index of articles

Not sure why but I just felt inspired to create an index of all articles in Fight On! magazine, issues 1 to 13. I've done it as a public google doc, so please feel free to add value to it :) It would be especially nice if the "type" column was filled in, to make it easy to (for example) get a list of all the adventures, new classes or new spells in the magazines.

Deutsche Dungeons

I might enter this this year... The German One Page Dungeon Contest for Labyrinth Lord. Sounds like it'd be fun to scrawl slightly wacky non-native speaker German all over a dungeon map!

House rules - written in stone

Following some recent wrangling with house rules and character creation options, and a lot of discussion with the players in my campaign, I've come up with a finalised house rules / chargen document. I have had it both tattooed onto my face and carved into a huge stone altar from which I conduct my games.

It's been a long process, going from basic Labyrinth Lord plus some additional per-class character options plus quite a few house rules, to full-blown Advanced Labyrinth Lord, to the current state of moving back to basic(s) and gradually eliminating a lot of the house rules!

The character options (class specialisations, as I've called them) remain, as does the advanced concept of separate race & class. Aside from those points though, the house rules are very minimal.

It's a good feeling to have gone through that process and eventually come to a set of character creation rules which I'm happy with (and which hopefully the players are too, or can bear at least! ;).

For anyone who's interested, here's the final PDF: Character Creation in the Realm of old Aalia.

It also contains some encouraging OSR philosophy, in an attempt to explain the flavour of basic D&D.

20 quick questions

Having been thinking quite a bit about house rules lately, I thought I'd answer Untimately's 20 Quick Questions as well...

1. Ability scores generation method? 3d6 in order. I allow a single swap of class prime requisites (for example a character with STR 14 and INT 8 could have those two attributes swapped and become a magic-user). That means that CHA, CON and WIS (there's no clerics in my campaign) cannot be changed -- you get what you roll.
2. How are death and dying handled? 0hp = dead. I do allow the use of a substance called "tonic" which, if used within a couple of rounds of a character reaching 0 or -1hp, can revive them. It costs 50gp a pop.
3. What about raising the dead? Courtesy of your friendly local Temple of Orcus.
   
4. How are replacement PCs handled? We've been starting new PCs recently at 5,000XP, which is a bit below what most PCs in the party have (they're mostly at the high end of 3rd level now, approaching 4th).
5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else? Group, 1d6. We actually just switched from a freestyle combat procedure to the by-the-book Labyrinth Lord procedure, and we're all very much enjoying rolling those 1d6s!
6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work? Natural 20 = auto-hit, natural 1 = auto-miss. As DM I always add a bit of flavour as well... dropping or breaking weapons, hitting allies, pinning or stunning opponents, that sort of thing. I don't use any tables for it, just go with whatever comes to mind in the moment.
7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet? +1 AC. Unconventional, I know, but I thought it gives a good simple reason to buy and wear one!
8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly? Oh yes. PCs have famously been killed by this.
9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything? Running can definitely be wise at times. Not that the players in my games do it very often (or ever, if I come to think of it!).
10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no? Yes, I like to keep undead scary. Only one character has got level drained in the campaign so far, and he didn't like it very much, haha.
11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death? Yes. Some poisons for sure.
12. How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked? Semi-strictly, I'd say. Sometimes I make a point of keeping track of torches burning out and so on, at other time (normally when there's more action) not. I'm a bit more of a stickler for encumbrance. I always at least roughly want to know someone's movement rate -- I'm not gonna let some plate-clad fighter run around as fast as an unencumbered magic-user!
13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time? No training (I see adventuring as training in itself). Magic-users don't gain new spells -- they have to find or buy them. No level gains in the middle of an adventure.
14. What do I get experience for? Classic: defeating monsters (small amount) and gaining loot (large amount).
15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination? Either really. I prefer the former, but most of the players seem happier just to make a die roll. I draw the line at allowing a trap to be disarmed by a simple die roll -- descriptions will be required then. I'm not a huge placer of traps anyway.
16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work? Neither encouraged nor discouraged. No player has ever tried to hire a retainer.
17. How do I identify magic items? With difficulty. The standard identify spell is available for a price at the wizards' guild -- though the results are pretty unreliable, and it's quite expensive. I have wondered about either house ruling the spell to make it more reliable or perhaps making up some other means of finding out about magic items, as I think it's pretty frustrating for players to find something they know is magical but not have a clue what it does.
18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions? Yes. Potions and scrolls are available for sale in the big city (where the campaign is set). Magical weapons and armour (only the basic +1 variety) are also available, but at fairly steep prices. Other items might occasionally be found for sale, but not as a matter of course.
19. Can I create magic items? When and how? Definitely. Get to 9th level first, then we'll talk about it. Oh actually I do have the (Holmes-inspired) house rule that magic-users can make scrolls from 1st level, costing 150gp + one week of time per spell level. It's hardly been used, which I find interesting.
20. What about splitting the party? Hm... I guess so. It's rarely been an issue. I wouldn't do anything to prevent it happening, but would certainly encourage the group to get together again before too long.

Multi-class vs mixed-class characters

As I mentioned recently, after starting purely with basic Labyrinth Lord, we've had several "Advanced" style multi-classed demi-human player characters created in my campaign in the last few months. I've been thinking about the introduction of these characters and how it's changed the game.

The main influence they've had, I feel, is an unfortunate one. Their ability to do two things well has tended to overwhelm the single-classed characters, with very little downside. A thief / magic-user is equally as capable as a normal thief and a normal magic-user. As they have to split their XP between two classes, multi-classed characters gain XP in each of their classes at half the normal rate. However, while a 50% reduction sounds like a big deal on paper, due to the exponential nature of the XP progression charts this effectively means the characters are only one level behind their single-classed companions. This in my experience makes little difference (a single spell per day for MUs, or a few percentile points for thieves, for example), and is more than made up for by the fact that they are all round so much more capable. This, in combination with demi-humans' substantial racial benefits, makes multi-classed demi-humans far and away more powerful than their single-classed human brethren, at the low to mid levels of play, at least.

So I've been thinking about why players might want to create multi-classed characters. Several reasons come to mind:

1. To try something different. In a game with only three or four classes, allowing them to be combined in pairs greatly increases the number of possibilities.
2. To play a character of mixed class.
3. To counteract the level limits applied to demi-humans, by effectively slowing down the race towards the end point.

Today I want to address the second of these points -- the desire for a character that's "a bit of a thief, a bit of a wizard" or something like that. I think that players with such ideas in mind (the dabbling bard or magical assassin archetypes, for example) don't expect their character to be as good a wizard as a single-classed magic-user, or as good a thief as a single-classed thief. They simply want to have a mixture of abilities -- an option which is not presented by the strictly separated classes of standard D&D. Ignoring the odd dual-classing rules of AD&D, multi-classing is traditionally the primary way to create a character with mixed abilities.

I've been contemplating an alternative. Instead of giving a mixed-class character the complete abilities of two different classes, how about giving them half of the abilities of each of those classes? I think in essence this is actually more what players are imagining when creating mixed-class characters.

Of course what exactly constitutes half of a magic-user's, fighter's or thief's abilities is open to interpretation, and would depend very much on the rules set being used.

Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm thinking of, in terms of the standard Labyrinth Lord classes.

Mixed-Class Characters
Characters can choose two classes, and gain roughly half the abilities of each.

Mix-classed characters have the following characteristics in general, modified by the chosen classes:

• XP progression: as magic-user
• Hit Dice: d6
• To hit rolls: as thief
• Saving throws: best of two classes
• Weapons & armour: as thief

Half a Magic-User
Cannot create magic items.
Can use magic-user specific magic items from 5th level.
Labyrinth Lord's call as to whether mixed-class magic-users can cast spells while wearing armour.
Use the following spell progression:

Level    1    2    3    4    5
1    1*    -    -    -    -
2    1    -    -    -    -
3    2    -    -    -    -   
4    2    -    -    -    -
5    2    1    -    -    -
6    2    2    -    -    -
7    2    2    -    -    -
8    2    2    1    -    -
9    2    2    2    -    -
10    2    2    2    -    -
11    3    2    2    -    -
12    3    2    2    -    -
13    3    2    2    1    -
14    3    2    2    1    -
15    3    3    2    1    -
16    3    3    2    1    -
17    3    3    2    2    -
18    3    3    2    2    -
19    3    3    3    2    -
20    3    3    3    2    1

* A 1st level half magic-user must make a successful INT check on 1d20 each day to learn a spell.

Half a Thief
Choose three of the following (advancement as normal thief):

1. Pick locks & find / remove traps
2. Pick pockets
3. Backstab
4. Climb walls
5. Move silently & hide in shadows
6. Hear noise

Half a Fighter
Can use all weapons.
Can use fighter specific magic items from 5th level.
Choose two of the following:

1. d8 Hit Dice
2. Fighter attack progression
3. Use any armour
4. Use a shield

Fight On! hardcover compilations

Just spreading the word that issues 1-12 of Fight On! are available until Feb 23rd in the form of limited edition hardcover compilations, each book containing 4 issues.

Each book costs $39.99 / £25.83, and has over 400 pages, so that's pretty good value for money I reckon! They are, of course, stuffed with awesomeness.

There's also, conveniently, a Lulu code for 20% off: SWEETUK305 is the UK version, SWEET305 for the US.

Links to Lulu:

Issues 1-4

Issues 5-8

Issues 9-12

New vivimancer spell: Chimera

One of the players in my campaign has just rolled up a vivimancer character, and asked if they had any kind of summoning magic. Looking at the spell list for the class, we realised that that is actually a bit of a gap in its abilities, so I got to thinking about what sort of summoning magic they might have. Here's what I came up with.

(Image by Manticoress)

 

Chimera I
Level: 4
Duration: 2 rounds, +1 round per level
Range: 30'

In the round this spell is cast, a formless, throbbing blob of flesh appears at the chosen location within range. Over the course of the next two rounds the blob grows, mutates and finally forms into a bizarre hybrid creature which will do the caster's bidding. The creature is genetically unstable, and will dissolve into a pool of protoplasm when the spell's duration expires.

The mutant creature has 2d4 HD, an armour class of 2d4, and a movement rate of 90' / 30'. Its form and abilities are determined by rolling a d12, d10, d8 and d6, and consulting the following tables.

Body (d12) 1. fungoid, 2. furry, 3. scaly, 4. blubbery, 5. mossy, 6. worm-like, 7. segmented, 8. insectoid, 9. transparent, 10. ribbed, 11. serpentine, 12. ooze-like.

Head (d10) 1. wolf, 2. bear, 3. bull, 4. lion, 5. rat, 6. frog, 7. lizard, 8. insect, 9. spider, 10. snake.

Head attacks (d8)
1 - 2. Bite or ram attack for 1d6 damage.
3. Gaping maw -- 1d6 damage bite, plus swallow attack on a natural 20.
4. Giant tongue -- may attack up to 10' with tongue, doing 1d4 damage. A successful attack indicates the target is dragged to the mouth on the next round and suffers a bite attack for 1d6 damage automatically, unless it can successfully attack the tongue before then.
5. Breath attack (fire, cold, gas) causing 2d6 damage. Can be used once.
6. Poisonous bite -- 1d4 damage plus save versus poison or suffer 2d6 additional damage.
7. Two heads, each with a bite or butt attack for 1d6 damage.
8. Three heads, each with a bite or butt attack for 1d6 damage.

Appendages (d6)
1. Two claws which can attack for 1d6 damage.
2. Many legs -- 120' / 40' movement rate.
3. Wings -- can fly.
4. Tentacles -- 1d6 tentacles which can each attack for 1d3 damage.
5. Suckers or grippers -- can climb walls.
6. Springing -- can make a jumping attack up to 30' distant, gaining +2 to hit.

Chimera II
Level: 6
Duration: 2 rounds, +1 round per level
Range: 30'

This spell works in a similar manner to the 4th level Chimera I, creating a blob of tissue from which mutant life will emerge. This enhanced version may either be used to create a single monster with 2d4 + 4 HD, or two identical 2d4 HD creatures.


Chimera III
Level: 8
Duration: 2 rounds, +1 round per level
Range: 30'

This spell works in a similar manner to the 4th level Chimera I, creating a blob of tissue from which mutant life will emerge. This enhanced version may either be used to create a single monster with 2d4 + 6 HD, or three identical 2d4 HD creatures.