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source: RPGGeek.com |
The first thing I notice is that although characteristic-rolling remains essentially the same, it's no longer explicitly stated that the DM is supposed to be rolling your stats (indeed, this whole section is written in the passive voice, leaving it unclear who's supposed to be rolling). The order of stats is still ST/IN/WS/CO/DX/CH, even though the Thief has been added to the class list.** The tables of characteristic bonuses and penalties seem to be more or less the same, although the one for Charisma has been left out. (The description of the ability only notes that the maximum number of followers for a score of less than 13 is five, and that follower loyalty is in some unquantified manner directly related to Charisma score.)
The first set of scores is ST 6, IN 13, WI 7, CO 5, DX 12, CH 10. That set might make a thief or a magic-user, and would progress faster as a magic-user since 13 is the minimum prime requisite score for that 5% experience bonus. The 5 Constitution is going to mean a 1-point penalty to hit point rolls, and none of the other scores merit an adjustment here. Different classes now have different-sized hit dice, and mages get a d4. The roll is 3, less one makes 2 hit points. 3d6 x 10 to determine starting funds nets 110 gold pieces, and the Holmes Basic equipment list is virtually unchanged from the White Box one, so once again we can settle for a dagger or two at 3gp each and bank the rest (104 gp) for the party's adventuring supplies. our aspiring wizard will have the standard magic-user Armor Class of 9 (no armor).
Spell acquisition has become a little more complicated--a system introduced in the Greyhawk supplement has apparently become the standard. Rolling on a table determines the content of a mage's spell books, from which they can memorize their limited number of spells for the day (in this case 1 spell). With a 13 Intelligence, our first-level mage will know between 5 and 8 first-level spells, and has a 65% chance to put any given spell in their books. There are 14 spells on the first-level list, so I may want to choose carefully so as not to use up my good rolls. After several misses on high-ranking choices, I end up with the following spell book: Charm Person, Detect Magic, Magic Missile, Tenser's Floating Disk, and Light.
Languages Spoken is a thing I didn't attend to last time (and should go back and check). Here, every character can learn one extra language for each point of intelligence above 10, so our mage here gets three bonus languages. As a human he starts with just his native language (common) and alignment language (chaotic good); there's no definitive list of languages, so we'll make some assumptions about who speaks what and add elvish, goblin, and draconic to the list.
Alignment is another system that has evolved somewhat since the Little Brown Books came out. Holmes offers a two-axis graph: Law versus Chaos and Good versus Evil, with Neutral in the middle to comprise five alignment choices altogether. I've always been partial to Chaotic Good, so let's start there. That wraps up the mechanics, so let's name our rookie wizard Ambrose and set him aside for now.
The second set comes up ST 15, IN 15, WI 15, CO 14, DX 11, CH 4. That would make a good elf, fighter, or magic user, but it would also make a good cleric and (as you'll see below with the other score sets) we don't have a better candidate, so cleric it is. A 10% bonus to earned experience is the only adjustment (though that abysmal Charisma would take its toll if we could find a hiring-and-loyalty table). Clerics have a d6 hit die, and the level-one roll is 1, which is going to make it tough to use this character in a front-line capacity. We're going to make him lawful good in alignment.
First-level clerics still don't get spells, so we can move on to equipment. The cash roll is 130, which will afford us plate armor (50gp), a helmet (10gp), and a shield (10gp), as well as a lovely flail (8gp) for smacking people. This kit will give our poor cleric an armor class of 2, which is as good as it gets witrout magic protection. (Gotta keep our cleric well protected if they're ever going to make second level and learn the cure light wounds spell.) Weapons still all do 1d6 damage, so that choice is all about budget and aesthetics. We need a holy symbol (still listed as a "cross" here, unfortunately, 25 for a silver model), 103 gp spent, 27 left for the party kitty.
A 15 Intelligence gives our cleric five languages besides Common and his Lawful Good alignment language. Let's make these elvish, gnomish***, giant, goblin, and kobold. We name him Bodo and send him off to wait for the others
The third set also starts with two 15s: ST 15, IN 15, WI 10, CO 11, DX 7, CH 9. Despite the low Dexterity, that's a good set of scores for an elf. As in OD&D, Elves are both fighters and magic-users, but in this edition they can apparently be both at the same time, with the downside that their experience points get split evenly between the two classes and therefore they advance more slowly. That 7 Dexterity is going to impose a -1 penalty to missile fire (which means most and perhaps all ranged attack rolls), but they can focus on melee combat and do just fine. Elves also roll a d6 for hit points, and this time the result is 3. We'll make this character's alignment neutral.
Rolling 100 gp for initial cash, we have just about enough to put our elf in suitable fighting gear. Buy a suit of chain mail for 30, short bow for 25, sword, helmet and shield for 10 each, then forty arrows for another 10; that comes to 95 gold pieces, leaving 5 for party expenses. The armor and shield will put this elf's armor class at a healthy 4.
Elves play by the same spell-book rules as human magic-users, which means a lot of "know spell" rolls coming up. A 15 Intelligence gives us a 75% chance, a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 10 spells. I do better with the early rolls this time and end up with Sleep, Protection from Evil, Magic Missile, Light, Enlargement, Read Languages, Charm Person, Detect Magic, Tenser's Floating Disk, and Ventriloquism.
As an elf, this character already knows not only the Elvish, Common and Neutral languages but also the tongues of orcs, hobgoblins**** and gnolls, plus five more thanks to Intelligence. We can add the languages of lizardfolk, goblins, giants, gnomes, and (flips through monster section),l i dunno, harpies to that. Time to name our elf; we'll call her Caeriel, and off she goes to meet the previously generated party members.
The dice start to fail us on the fourth go-round: ST 8, IN 11, WI, CO 10, DX 10 CH 4. This character might as well be a thief as a magic-user, since we've already got a mage and an elf in the party and the thief is a new class to us. Thieves get a d4 for hit points, and we roll another 1. This is shaping up to be a fragile bunch who maybe shouldn't go poking around haunted ruins. The book tells us thieves don't get to claim a good alignment, so we'll make this one neutral.
We roll 120 gp for starting money, and since thieves don't need a lot of expensive gear this should leave a decent amount towards the comany's adventuring supplies. Thieves can't wear anything more protective than leather armor, which costs 15 gp, and also can't use shields, though helmets are apparently OK (despite their propensity to interfere with hearing, which a thief is going to need). That makes an AC of 7, kind of scary given the hit point total it's supposed to be protecting. There are no weapon restrictions, however (those will come later in AD&D), but because all the weapons hurt the same amount we'll play to the trope and kit this thief up with five daggers (for throwing as well as for stabbing) for another 15 gp. The equipment list doesn't include lockpicks or other thieves' tools, so that leaves us 90 gp to support the common fund.
Thieves are distinguished by a set of special skills usually just called "thief abilities": opening locks, picking pockets, finding and disarming traps, sneaking around, climbing walls, listening for noises. Each is tested on a percentile dice roll (except for listening, which uses the same d6 scale as other characters, but with better odds), and most of these start pretty low. A first-level thief has a 15% chance to open a lock, a 10% chance to disarm a trap or hide in the shadows, a 20% chance to pick a pocket or move silently, and an 87% chance to climb a sheer wall. Their chance to hear noises is 1 in 3 rather than other characters' 1 in 6, and in combat they can attack with +4 to hit and inflict double damage if they can hit their target from behind.
In Basic D&D only humans can become thieves (not even halflings! shocking!), so our character gets one extra language besides Common and Neutral. (Thieves' Cant is a later addition.) I can't even imagine trying to cover ground we haven't seen at this point, so instead of getting exotic we'll go with goblin and call it a day. We'll make this character female as well and call her Dana, then meet the last member of our party.
The final set of rolls come up ST 10, IN 16 WI 5, CO 11, DX 10, CH 9. That set of scores screams "magic-user," but we're a little short on brute force so elf seems like a better choice from a party-needs perspective. This character will get a 10% bonus to the half of their experience applied to the Magic-User class, which should even out their advancement a little because magic-users advance more slowly than fighters. Hit point roll is, once again, a 1. DM fiat might allow for rerolls (or even houserule maximum hit points at first level, but my groups didn't adopt that rule until we'd been playing AD&D for a while), but I'm going to go by what the dice say. I'll assign a chaotic good alignment to this character as well.
This elf begins with 110 gp in starting money, which as in the previous example is going to be spent quickly. Plate mail is tempting if pricey at 50 gp, and if we forgo a shield we gain a point of AC (3) for an extra cost of 10 gp over chain & shield. Weapons next, and if we have 10 gp left after that we'll add a helmet. We still want a short bow (25) and forty arrows (10), which leaves 15 gp for a hand weapon if we want to add a helmet. The list isn't clear which weapons require two hands, but a sword is only 10 and that can be sheathed when we need to cast a spell, so we can still afford our helmet and drop 5 gp in the party fund.
A 16 Intelligence gives us the same chance to learn spells and the same minimum and maximum number as a 15 did for Caeriel, but I don't roll quite so well this time and end up with nine spells in my spell-book: Read Magic, Sleep, Magic Missile, Ventriloquism, Light, Charm Person, Detect Magic, Tenser's Floating Disk, Protection from Evil. And since there are three arcane spellcasters in the party, we'll have three spells available per day.
Our second elf gets to learn six languages in addition to the aforementioned elf package deal of Elvish, Common, Hobgoblin, Orc, and Gnoll. We'll go with Kobold, Goblin, Gnome, Draconic, Bugbear (if hobgoblins have their own language, I can assume bugbears do as well), and Troll. Give him a name--Elcaril--and now we have an adventuring company of five members, who need some adventuring supplies and a name.
(Note that our party lacks dwarves and halflings, mostly because the only characters who would have made good fighters had INT or WIS scores that marked them for other classes.)
The party fund for supplies is a little smaller than our OD&D party had to work with: 231 gp compared to 265. I think we still want to spend 120 on a mule and a cart to get us to and from the expedition site, leaving 111 gp for actual supplies. Tinderbox is now available instead of assumed, so that's 3 gp spent already. A lantern for 10 gp and five flasks of oil for 10 more should take care of the party's lighting needs as well as providing flammable material for combat use. A week's iron rations each costs 75, and now we've only got 13 gp left, but most of what's left to buy is pretty cheap. 100' of rope will cost 2, a 10' pole one more, and a dozen iron spikes yet another gold piece. Two more for a couple of waterskins, then two large sacks and three small sacks for a subtotal of 7gp cleans our heroes out, so they'd better hope there's gold in that thar dungeon.
Our company is kind of fragile, but they see themselves as pretty scrappy. They call themselves the Terrier Company, and when they can afford a standard they'll put a Scottie on it. Here they are in statblock form:
ST 6, IN 13, WI 7, CO 5, DX 12, CH 10
Level: 1 AC: 9 HP: 3 Alignment: Chaotic Good
Spellbook: Charm Person, Detect Magic, Light, Magic Missile, Tenser's Floating Disk
Gear: clothes, spellbooks, 2 daggers
ST 15, IN 15, WI 15, CO 14, DX 11, CH 4
Level: 1 AC: 2 HP: 1 Alignment: Lawful Good
*Though I didn't acquire a copy until the summer of 1979.
**The Thief was introduced in the Greyhawk supplement (1975).
***Holmes never states that Dwarves have their own language, but does say that, like humans, elves and halflings, they speak Common. The same statement can be found in Gygax's OD&D books, so if it's an oversight it would appear to be Gary's.
****Apparently hobgoblins and goblins do not speak the same language, though perhaps they just have dialects that aren't quite mutually intelligible.