The Gygax 75 Challenge Part 6

When detailing the Town for the Gygax 75 Challenge, Otus suggests by starting with the equipment list. With it, various locals can be intuited: “a smith for arms and armor, a stable for mounts, etc.”

I haven’t really looked at Moldvay’s equipment list in a long time. I am normally playing a clone due to the fact that having one or more physical rulebooks at the table is both satisfying and useful and my physical copy of Basic D&D is rather fragile. So I was rather shocked that there is a glaring omission from his list: there isn’t anything there having to do with travel. There are no horses, no other types of animals, and no vehicles whether land or water. I guess this stems from the fact that I actually never played with Moldvay’s rules back in the day. When I did play Basic, it was with Holmes and his list has a mule, four types of horses and two each for land and water vehicles.

So, strictly speaking, if I am staying within Moldvay as much as I possibly can (and I have only violated this limitation twice in this whole process: once to grab the pterodactyl from Cook and once to grab a 3rd-level magic-user spell for a treasuries my dungeon), I really only have two shops in town: the place that sells armor and weapons, and the place that sells everything else.

At this point, Otus suggests using a name generator. I don’t disagree; however, I do have a piece of advice. In order to give a campaign a sense of place and culture, it is useful to assign real world naming conventions to different cultures in the game world. For example, one of the coolest non-gaming books I own that I use almost exclusively for gaming is The Celtic Book of Names by D. J. Conway.  It lists names from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Each list of names could represent a different culture in my world. In order to give a fantasy flair to these lists, a random name table can be easily generated by choosing first and second syllables from each list of names. For example:

First Syllable (Irish)

1. Aed-
2. Bra-
3. Cal-
4. Con-
5. Dub-
6. Fin-
7. Mac-
8. Shan-
9. Tor-
10. Uil-

Second Syllable (Male/Irish)

1. -ach
2. -aed
3. -an
4. -art
5. -bre
6. -ger
7. -ghus
8. -lain
9. -lum
10. -thi

Second Syllable (Female/Irish)

1. -ait
2. -cla
3. -dre
4. -eal
5. -een
6. -ind
7. -is
8. -ith
9. -na
10. -ri

With a ‘3’ and a ‘5’ I get Calbre (male) or Caleen (female) and with a ‘9’ and a ‘2’ I get Toraed (male) or Torcla (female). A repeated letter here or there to make it look better is up to you. This exercise will result in names that sound slightly familiar, seem to be related, and yet are far enough outside the real world to fit in a fantasy setting. Of course, these lists can be expanded well beyond just ten entries. I limited myself for brevity’s sake.

My two stores can thus be called: Calleen’s General Store and Toraed’s Armory.

I know that I will eventually need to give my players access to Cook’s list of land and water vehicles, so I need to have a place for them. The randomly generated map I used for my town offers an intriguing solution to the problem. Outside the walls of Darkport are two small communities. In the north, there is Newsteps and opposite is South Ward. Given the harsh conditions of the immediate area (arctic), population growth isn’t a satisfying answer to explain why these two communities exist.

A far more satisfying answer is economic necessity. Vehicles and animals of burden are not allowed inside the walls of Darkport. Thus, all economic activity that relates to those items found on Cook’s equipment list would have to exist outside of Darkport. Thus, Newsteps and South Ward come about to cater to this economic need.

Do We Still Need Labyrinth Lord?

Now that both Moldvay’s Basic Edition and Cook’s Expert Edition are available as .pdfs from WotC, one can legitimately ask the question: Do we still need Labyrinth Lord?

I would answer that question with an unequivocal YES for two very important reasons:

1. LL is an established brand with a license that hobbyists like myself and small publishers can easily and legally publish under with full knowledge that whatever we produce can be used by those who want to do the B/X thing with virtually no conversion at all.
2. More importantly to me, LL has a library of compatible games that are specifically designed to be modular. Original Edition Characters, Advanced Edition Companion, Mutant Future, Realms of Crawling Chaos and Starships and Spacemen 2e are all specifically designed to be able to be integrated together to create all kinds of cool homebrew campaign worlds without having to house rule. In addition, Dan Proctor has provided several free .txt documents for us hobbyists to do exactly that.

Despite the fact that I gleefully grabbed up the .pdfs of B/X (and was very pleased to see how well they are bookmarked) I still plan to use LL as my default ruleset precisely because of the versatility it provides me as a hobbyist. There are still many things within the LL library that await to be exploited to go places where B/X on its own can’t go without a lot of work that has already been covered by the LL library.

Thus, while I am very happy about what WotC is doing for the hobby and they deserve my gratitude and thanks, Dan Proctor also needs to be thanked because his work has greatly expanded the awesomeness of B/X and taken it to places it never went on its own.

Homles & Cook: The Paladin

Earlier this week, Stuart of Strange Magic posted a very nice version of the paladin/anti-paladin for Basic D&D. Stuart does an excellent job of delineating several of the historical problems with the class and then elegantly deals with each of them. There is one problem, however, that Stuart does not address — my main beef with the class. The holy warrior already exists. It is called the Cleric (though I really do like Stuart’s version of the anti-paladin as a stand-in for a non-druidic anti-cleric).

Still, I find Stuart’s version of the paladin really inspiring. Surprisingly, the factor that was most intriguing to me was the limitation No Ranged Weapons. I say this because this limitation is a natural companion to the limitation I placed on my Holmesian version of the Ranger, which is limited to only ranged or thrown weapons.

Thus, I’ve been fiddling with an idea for a Holmesian version of the paladin. Since I am not much interested in doing the whole holy warrior thing, I am going to fall back on the word paladin itself, which means trusted military leader from the Late Latin for courtier or imperial official. Thus, a paladin is a fighter who foregoes training with/use of ranged and thrown weapons (because they are too lowly and/or they interfere with the ability to see the whole battlefield) in order to specialize in leadership skills — Leadership, Tactics and Defender:

• Leadership. Paladins have a floating +1 bonus that may be given once per combat round to one other PC as a bonus to hit, to damage, to AC or to a saving throw. The only time the paladin can use this floating bonus on themselves is in conjunction with the Defender skill (see below). If the paladin has a Charisma of 13+ the floating bonus is +2. This then may be split between two PCs if desired.
• Tactician. Once per combat round, a paladin can interrupt the normal initiative order. Before an action is taken by another PC or opponent, the paladin may switch places with them in the initiative order.
• Defender. By forgoing an attack during a combat round, the paladin may force an opponent to attack the paladin rather than another PC. While doing this, the paladin gains +2 AC and may use the floating bonus (if it hasn’t already been used that round) to add to this AC bonus.

Note that the Tactician skill assumes the initiative rules found in Holmes, which has a static initiative order based on Dex. Note also that there is no longer an alignment restriction (although these skills do make much more sense within the context of a Lawful alignment).

Meditating on The Mythic Underground

One of the more interesting aspects of OD&D, as interpreted by various corners of the OSR, is its portrayal of the Dungeon as the Mythic Underworld. For those unfamiliar with this particular theme I suggest Philotomy’s musings on the subject here. I, myself, have played with this interpretation in my own musings about the Holmes Basic Edition here and here.

In the classic mythological trope, the hero finds it necessary to descend into the Underworld in order to obtain something vital in order to achieve their overall quest. This could be information, an item, a skill or even a person. The hero emerges, changed and readied to take on the rest of their quest.

D&D (particularly in its B/X form) emulates this trope very well. The early levels of character development occur primarily in the Dungeon, where they obtain magic items, maps and experience. Once they reach 4th level or so, the characters emerge ready to take on the rest of their quest — explore and tame the Wilderness in order to build a stronghold.

I mention this, especially my own musing on the Holmesian version of the Dungeon (an ever-changing and unconquerable place that is almost a character unto itself), because Christianity takes this classic tale of the hero and turns it on its ear. Christ — the hero figure of the Christian story — does not descend into the Underworld in order to gain some special object or skill. He descends into the Underworld in order to conquer.

Greek Shorthand for Christ Conquers

For He crushed the gates of bronze and shattered the bars of iron — Psalm 107:16 (cf. Isaiah 45:2) 

For as Jonah remained in the belly of the sea-monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of man be in the heart of the earth for three day and three nights. — Matthew 20:14 

In the body He was put to death, in the spirit he was raised to life, and, in the spirit, he went to preach to the spirits in prison. — 1Peter 3:18-19

In other words, the implied pattern of dungeon-delving in context of the Christian story is not just exploration, but restoration. This flies in the face of the Mythic Underground as understood by Philotomy and my own understanding of the Dungeon in Holmes.

Given that I am very interested in a Holmesian Underworld as well as playing in a Christian context, I have been trying to meditate on how to reconcile these two divergent views of the Hero and the Underworld. Part of my thinking in this direction is inspired by the general move that the OSR has made in recent months toward the Weird.

In a world where the Dungeon is a semi-intelligent and ever-changing NPC (Holmes), it makes sense to understand that part of this change can be imposed. What if, when a level or a sub-level of a dungeon were cleared (and thus restored) or otherwise "rescued" that it physically moved from the underworld to the surface world? In context of a dungeon beneath a city, these dungeon levels could be additional neighborhoods that spring up. In context of a dungeon in the wilderness, the levels could be ruins restored to full functionality. The more of the dungeon that is restored, the more Civilization takes root and the more Wilderness (whether on the surface or in the underworld) retreats.

The Dungeon would then change in response to the foray by the adventurers. Either the next level could "move up" or another level or sub-level could spring up in its place. Thus, the semi-intelligent and ever-changing Dungeon of Holmes can actually play a vital role in the context of the Christian hero story.

Fighting the Future: A Monster List

One of the themes that I am playing with as I work on my version of the Chateau des Faussesflammes is that of time. I plan on having various levels exist in the distant past, the distant future and, in some cases, both at the same time. One of the easiest ways to dress a level to indicate these various time frames is monsters.

There are multiple choices and themes present in Homes, Moldvay, Cook and LL for monsters of the past. The are plenty of "Lost World" monsters (dinosaurs, neanderthals, saber tooth cats, etc.) as well as ancient Greek monsters (minotaurs, cyclops, medusa etc.). The challenge I am facing is finding monsters to effectively represent the future.

What follows is a preliminary list of monsters from Homes, Moldvay, Cook and LL (those not included in Holmes and Cook will appear in [brackets]) and an explanation as to why they suggest a future timeframe to me:

• [Ape, Albino] and [Baboon, Higher] — Four words: Plant of the Apes.
• Black Pudding — I have always felt that black pudding would fit better on an episode of Star Trek rather than as a stand-in for some primordial slime.
• Blink Dog and Displacer Beast [Phase Tiger] — These two have a definite sci-fi flavor. Their mutual hatred suggests a level of intelligence not necessarily represented in their statistics. I image the displacer beasts to be the equivalent of space-born Nazi war criminals and the blink dogs to be akin to a space-faring version of the Mossad hunting them down. The only question is, are the blink dogs actual agents or are they the pack of hunting dogs used by the agents (which would be some other kind of alien)?
• Carrion Crawler [Carcass Scavenger] — This tentacled monstrosity has more than a little HPL-inspired flavor. While I do use HPL as inspiration a lot, I usually do so from a sci-fi/futuristic POV rather than a fantasy one.
• Doppleganger — I despised DS9, but Odo proved the doppleganger is just as appropriate for a sci-fi setting as it is for a fantasy setting (if not moreso).
• Gelatinous Cube — I have an easier time believing this to be the result of a science experiment gone wrong than the consequence some kind of magical research.
• Ghoul, [Ghast] — These undead most closely resemble the zombies found in all those zombie apocalypse movies cranked out by Hollywood every couple of years.
• Golem, Bronze — This could very easily be re-skinned as a robot.
• Gorgon — Likewise, this could easily pass as some kind of living machine.
• Men, Berserker — Reavers. Serenity. Nuff Said.
• [Morlock] — as an homage to the inhabitants of H.G. Wells' dystopian future from The Time Machine, this is one of the few (if not only) D&D monster that is explicitly from the future.
• Ochre Jelly — Described as a giant amoeba, I can't help but think of the Invisible Monster from the episode of the same name from the first season of Johnny Quest. (This could also be the inspiration for the Invisible Stalker; however, I like Ochre Jellies better)
• Owl Bear — although described as the result of a magical experiment, this could also easily pass for a mutant from the future or the result of a genetic experiment.
• Rust Monster — These guys just beg to be seen as biological constructs created to clean up abandoned cities after some kind of future war that levels most, if not all, urban centers.
• [Statue, Animate (Iron)] — Like the Bronze Golem above, this can easily be re-skinned as a robot.
• Zombie — While ghouls and ghasts do more accurately depict Hollywood's version of zombies, that doesn't mean I can't also have the D&D version, too.

More Level Titles: Thieves

This list of level titles for the Thief is my own attempt to make explicit what is implicit in OD&D — all adventurers are thieves. Therefore, this list can be applicable to every class — the thief (or burglar, as I prefer to call them) is the one class that has no other guild/set of titles as an alternative.

Implied in what follows is another robust guild structure. Note, this is not a thieves' guild as found in later iterations of the game. Rather, it is an adventurer's guild. One of the driving forces behind play, especially as portrayed in Holmes & Cook, is of a desire by the current civilization to recover that which was lost from past civilizations. This is the reason for dungeon delving and the reason that dungeons exist in the first place — there are secrets hidden in places deep built by a lost people in the ancient past.

As such, it makes sense that there would be some kind of societal structure to help support such an endeavor. The following is a way to imply that structure in the game world.

1. Auxillary — Though these would-be adventurers have the right to pay dues and therefore receive a discount on various adventurer-type goods as well as access to equipment not sold to the general public or otherwise tightly regulated (such as lock picks and greek fire), auxiliaries still must prove themselves in order to gain full membership.
2. Delver — Having survived one or more expeditions, the delver is officially enrolled in the guild. These lists are made public, therefore delvers are more likely to have access to and attract higher quality henchman.
3. Adventurer — The adventurer has access to guild experts to help identify and appraise treasures found on expeditions. At this point, the guild will start offering better prices for said treasures than normal street value.
4. Journeyman — It is expected that a journeyman provide a minimum of three different maps or tomes as donations to the guild's library. After these donations, the journeyman is granted access to the guild's library.
5. Compagnon — The compagnon is gifted with a necklace or other type of jewelry that when shown to any guild will allow access to that guild library.
6. Traveller — A traveller is granted the right to borrow a map or tome from their own guild library as long as an item of equivalent value is left in exchange.
7. Explorer — An explorer is granted the same privilege as a traveler for any guild library.
8. Burglar — A burglar has the right to "borrow" maps and/or tomes from other guild libraries (one from each) for the express purpose of creating a new guild library.
9. Master Burglar — A master burglar has the right to found their own guild.

Please note: the term "burglar" is understood to mean one who opens doors.

Holmes & Cook: Level Titles

Love them or hate them, level titles are definitely part of both Holmes and Cook. Therefore, for the purposes of my thought experiment, I need to deal with them. Frankly, this is not something I mind because, personally, I am very fond of the idea of level titles.

There is something inspiring about reading old session reports where a dwarven character is not referred to as Noto the 5th-level dwarf, but rather as Noto the Dwarven Swashbuckler. It seems to me, therefore, that level names had more meaning in the early years of the hobby. Take, for example, the 2nd Level Wandering Monster Table in Holmes. He does not use class names (fighting-man, cleric, magic-user, thief) but, rather, level titles: Swordsmen, Conjurers, Priests, and Robbers. At some point in our hobby, saying Conjurer translated to 3rd level magic user. Personally, I think that is really cool.

Nevertheless, there is a big however in my thinking — for those of you who think level titles are stupid, I agree with you. They read more like a thesaurus entry rather than a progression of rank. While Swashbuckler and Myrmidon sound cool, they have no real meaning — how are they different and what makes a Myrmidon better than a Swashbuckler? As is, level titles have no real sense of rank.

In medieval Europe, there were guilds that operated on the apprenticeship system. One would get apprenticed to a craftsman, who would train you while you worked for room and board for a period of around seven years. At that time, you would become a journeyman. This word comes from the French journée, meaning one day. This refers to the right to charge a fee for one days work. The journeyman had the right to work for any craftsman, live in their own home and be paid a wage. They could not hire anyone themselves, however. This was the privilege of the craftsman. Historically, each trade and each level within a trade had its own distinctive dress. For example, in Germany a journeyman carpenter wore a wide-brimmed black hat and black bell-bottomed pants and carried a curled hiking pole.

A similar arrangement is hinted at in the D&D class-system. The first three levels are akin to an apprenticeship, for example. It follows that the next three are akin to the journeyman and the next three (up to the name level) are similar to being a craftsman. Even in a sandbox-type of game, lower-level characters can benefit greatly by having some kind of patron. By the time they reach 4th level, they have attained enough treasure and skills to go off exploring unknown lands. Higher levels, in turn, represent the clearing out of those discovered lands, the building of a stronghold and attracting what amount to a bunch of apprentices.

Name levels, therefore, ought to reflect in some way this basic structure. This can be done by various implications in the names themselves. In doing a little extra work — coming up with the names, their meaning and the subsequent behavior/costume/right that comes with the name — can add a lot of depth to a campaign world.

Take the title Swordsman, for example. If one is not allowed to purchase or carry a sword until one becomes a 4th level fighter, seeing someone carrying a sword tells you a lot about that character and about the world they live in. This, therefore, is the key to making name levels truly sing — make them specific to a campaign world.

Here, then, is an example of what can be done with name levels in a world where being a cleric means being a Christian:

1. Crucifer — meaning cross-bearer. Wearing a Crucifer's cross indicates the beginning of the path of being a cleric.
2. Acolyte — meaning follower. In following the cleric's path, an acolyte learns how to cast divine magic.
3. Ostiarius — meaning gate-keeper. This is the level just prior to ordination (they stand at the gate).
4. Exorcist — this is the lowest order of clergy. They gain the right to wear vestments. It also speaks to the growing ability of the cleric to Turn undead.
5. Auditor — meaning hearer. The cleric gains the authority to hear cases in the ecclesiastical court. They may wear an auditor's cowl.
6. Subdeacon — This is highest of the minor orders of clergy. The subdeacon may wear an Orarion — a thin strip of decorative cloth that is wrapped around the shoulders and waste in various patterns that indicate rank.
7. Deacon — meaning servant. Liturgically, this major order of clergy is responsible for the preparation and distribution of the gifts, reading the Gospel and leading the people in praying the litanies. For the purposes of D&D, it is the only major order (the others being priests and bishops) that could potentially have the freedom to be an adventurer.
8. Vicar — meaning representative or ambassador. This is a deacon who has received the seal of a bishop, granting the power to speak for and negotiate in the name of the bishop.
9. Archdeacon — where arch means over. The archdeacon has the right and responsibility to oversee and train lower level clerics.

Please note: this is an adventurer's path. Bishops and priests follow a different path. Therefore, every archbishop or archpriest is not necessarily a 9th level cleric. Depending upon how magic-heavy or readily available you want spells like Raise Dead to be, priests and bishops could all simply be the equivalent of 1st or 2nd level clerics.

Holmes & Cook: Experience

If I were doing a Holmes and Cook amalgam according to the advice given in Cook, figuring experience would be straight forward and simple — follow Cook. I am not doing that, however. In order to give Holmes precedence over Cook (while heavily relying on Cook for higher levels) some math needs to be done.

Holmes states:

all halflings and dwarves are members of the fighter class, unless they opt to be thieves.

and:

Elves progress in level as both fighting men and magic-users, but since each game nets them experience in both categories equally, they progress more slowly than other characters.

The only one of these that Cook follows is halfling fighters. Cook's dwarves require 10% more experience per level than normal fighters; Cook's elves progress as their own class that requires 500 less experience at 2nd level than if they were combining fighter and magic user requirements; and Cook (of course) has no rules for halfling or dwarven thieves.

I have to admit that I agree with Cook when it comes to dwarves. In a game where 14th level is the highest level covered, being limited to 12th level isn't much of a disadvantage compared with all of the extra abilities that a dwarf has. Therefore, there is little incentive not to be a dwarven fighter or a dwarven thief. An extra 10% experience per level makes some sense.

Halflings, on the other hand, are only limited to 8th level and only get d6 hp per level as fighters. Therefore advancing them as normal fighters makes sense. However, they would have significant advantages over human thieves without the reduction in hit dice. Therefore I would apply Cook's 10% experience increase for halfling thieves.

When it comes to Elves, I understand Cook's reasoning (4500 xp to get to 2nd does seem a bit steep), but I agree with Holmes — they should need an experience requirement of both a fighter and a magic-user. Doing some math, I think I can do this without requiring such an onerous amount.

Cook does not follow any kind of consistent pattern when it comes to assigning experience; however, there is a suggestion of one. Roughly speaking, each class doubles their experience requirement from 2nd to 3rd level and every level beyond until they reach 8th level. At this point the total requirement at 8th represents the amount of experience needed for each subsequent level.

For example: Fighters need 2000 xp to reach 2nd level. This is doubled to 4000 xp for third etc. A fighter needs 120,000 xp to reach 8th level. For each subsequent level of experience, a fighter needs another 120,000 xp — 240,000 for 9th level, 360,000 for 10th, etc. This math isn't exact (64,000 xp at 7th level is not exactly doubled to get to 120,000 xp), but it is close enough.

The magic number at 8th level for clerics is 100,000; for fighters is 120,000 and magic-users is 150,000. The math breaks down a little bit for thieves, because they also have 120,000 like fighters, but their initial experience requirement at 2nd level skews everything. In fact, there is an anomaly in the Thief progression I do not like — more experience is required to get from 9th level to 10th level (140,000) than 10th level to 11th level (120,000).

In order to fix this anomaly, to help make elf progression a little less onerous and to make the math more clean, I am going to start with those magic numbers at 8th level and work backwards. If one divides by two at every level one arrives at these experience requirements for the three core classes at 2nd level:

• Cleric = 1563
• Fighter = 1875
• Magic-user = 2350

Thus, elves would need 4225 xp for 2nd — reasonably close to Cook's 4000 while still adhering to Holmes' description as progressing "in level as both fighting men and magic-users."

In Cook, the thief 2nd level requirement (1200 xp) is roughly half of the magic-user requirement (2500 xp). If this pattern is adhered to more exactly, Thieves would require 1175 xp. Therefore, they would need 150,000 at 9th level at which point they would need 120,000 xp for every subsequent level. This gets rid of that anomaly in Cook where 9th to 10th level requires more experience than 10th to 11th.

At this point, it is simple to add an extra 10% per level for Dwarven fighters and thieves as well as Halfling thieves.

Holmes & Cook: Wandering Monster Tables

I am not a big fan of Challenge Levels/Ratings or whatever you want to call them. There is an implication that every encounter ought to be balanced so that the party should be able to handle it, etc. This, of course, runs counter to my own old-school upbringing where I expect there to be encounters well beyond the ability of a party of adventurers because running away is not only an option, but sound strategy.

Nevertheless, in describing how to create a Wandering Monster Table, Holmes strongly implies something akin to Challenge Levels/Ratings:

First level adventurers encountering monsters typically found on the first level of a dungeon should be faced with roughly equal numbers, i.e. a party of three would encounter 2-6 orcs, 3-12 giant rats, etc. However, if the party were second level, or the first level monsters were encountered on the second level of the dungeon, the number of wandering monsters encountered should be doubled. In a like manner, the number of monsters should be tripled for third level adventures or in the third level of the dungeon if the monsters appearing are first level.

This is not quite the modern conception of a Challenge Level/Rating, because the strength of the encounter is tied as much to location as it is to the strength of the party. Even so, in order to deconstruct the example Wandering Monster Tables found in Holmes and Cook, I need some way to quantify a monster's strength. Of course, this can be done roughly by means of HD, but a 2HD creature with four attacks per round and an AC of 0 can be a lot more dangerous than a 4HD creature with one attack and an AC of 7.

Enter Peter Regan's Oubliette Magazine. In Issue number 5, where Don Turnbull's Monster Mark System (originally published in White Dwarf Magazine in 1978/79) is updated for use with Labyrinth Lord, a couple of tables are provided with all the math necessary to come up with a rating system for most monsters. I say most because the math is based on HD, AC and attack damage. Thus, special abilities are not taken into account which makes rating monsters such as a Wight (which does no damage but does have a level drain) difficult, if not impossible to rate. However, given that LL closely emulates Cook's Expert and that the Monster Mark System is useful for rating most monsters I decided to use it as a means to examine the Wandering Monster Tables of Holmes and Cook.

I won't bore you with the math, but here are the approximate average Monster Mark Ratings of each encounter found in the Wandering Monster Tables:

• Level 1 = 5
• Level 2 = 15
• Level 3 = 35
• Level 4-5 = 95
• Level 6-7 = 175
• Level 8 = 635

In order to make this math cleave closer to Holmes' advice (where there ought be be more of a differentiation between levels 4 and 5 as well as levels 6 and 7), it is possible to extrapolate the following:

• Level 1 = 5
• Level 2 = 10
• Level 3 = 20
• Level 4 = 40
• Level 5 = 80
• Level 6 = 160
• Level 7 = 320
• Level 8 = 640

There are two interesting things about these tables. Firstly, the relative challenge of level progression is (roughly) exponential. Though this may simply be a quirk of the math involved, it is still fascinating. The other feature isn't immediately obvious in any of the numbers seen above. In each table, at every level there are always outliers whose Monster Mark Rating is much higher than the average. For example:

• Level 1 = 10
• Level 2 = 23
• Level 3 = 61
• Level 4-5 = 150
• Level 6-7 = 418
• Level 8 = 3410 (!)

Thus, there is a built-in expectation that every level of a dungeon will have an encounter that at face value is beyond the ability of a party to be able to deal with/survive. This expectation is reinforced by the fact that Homles allows for 1st Level Wandering Monster rolls to be made on the 2nd level table 25% of the time and on the 3rd level 8% of the time.

This paints the picture of a living, breathing environment that is in constant flux, where creatures from different levels are, if not constantly interacting with each other, moving through each other's territory on a regular basis.

Holmes & Cook: Movement

I have been fiddling about with making a map for my own version of Averoigne. One decision that must be made at this point is scale — more specifically, what a single hex represents. In order to make things easier later on, I wanted to tie the size of each hex to movement rates. Herein I not only found a discrepancy between Holmes & Cook, but one between Holmes and his own set of rules.

Technically, Holmes stats for four different types of movement: Combat, Exploring/Mapping, Normal and Running. The latter three are directly related to each other, while Combat seems to be its own beast (more on that later). Holmes designates three different movement categories based on armor and encumbrance: unarmored & unencumbered; fully armored or carrying a heavy load; fully armored and heavily loaded. These categories have the following rates of feet per turn while exploring/mapping: 240, 120 and 60. Normal movement doubles this rate and running triples it (though running while being fully armored and carrying a heavy load is not allowed).

This is all rather straightforward, except that the movement rates of monsters are not comparable to those of the player characters. For example, a Riding Horse has the same movement rate as an unencumbered man exploring/mapping. This is ridiculous on its face.

Cook does not deal with either encumbrance or dungeon movement, other than to indicate that in a dungeon movement is measured in feet and outdoors in yards. He is primarily concerned, however, with how many miles per day a character can travel rather than yards per turn. He therefore provides a list of moves per turn in increments of 30, beginning with 30 and ending in 240, along with a conversion to miles per day.

Looking at Cook's monster list, it quickly becomes apparent that the faster movement rates are provided in order to calculate miles per day for parties who are mounted on horseback or similar creature (several of which are provided). Indeed, it appears that Cook intends for 120' per turn to be the max movement rate for humans (as suggested by the Devil Swine which has a move of 180 in its swine form but only 120 in its human form).

Looming behind all of these inconsistencies is Holme's combat movement rates — 20' per round for an unarmored man and 10' per round for an armored man. At first glance, this doesn't seem to be related to his other movement rates at all; however, noting that someone carrying a heavy load is not going to fight/fight well Holmes is probably assuming that it must be necessary to drop the heavy load in order to fight. Therefore, there are only two categories of encumbrance.

Since Holmes' max rate of 240 makes no sense when compared to monsters in his own edition as well as in Cook's, I shall err towards Cook for movement rates; however, I like how Holmes deals with different types of movement (exploring/mapping, normal and running) and combat as conceived by Holmes is very closely related to the movement rates of 10 and 20 feet, not 30+. I therefore want to figure out a way to make Cook's normal and outdoor movement rates jive with combat movement rates of Holmes.

If we equate Cook's 30' to Holmes' fully armored with a heavy load, a fully armored man would have a move of 60' while exploring/mapping. Since 120' seems to be the max move for a human, it is the base move for an unarmored, unencumbered man while exploring/mapping. This, however, leaves a gap at 90', and suggests that there ought to be a category of partially-armored.

Taking a look at Cook's stats for men, bandits, buccaneers, and nomads are all given a move of 120'. Their descriptions have a majority wearing leather armor. Merchants are the only man-type that has a move of 90'. Their description specifies that all of them wear chain mail. Thus we see the evidence of leather/unarmored = 120', chain mail = 90', and plate = 60'.

In order to make this all jive with the combat movement of Holmes, I am going to borrow an idea from Staples over at Grognardling, who has off and on tried to come up with a way to use the metric system in D&D. He uses the elegant idea of a Base Movement Rate of 1 to 4, which is then multiplied by various factors in order to get a movement rate in a particular situation. Here is my version of BMRs for use with Holmes & Cook:

• 4 = Unarmored/Leather + Unencumbered
• 3 = Chain mail + Unencumbered OR Unarmored/Leather Armor + Heavy Load
• 2 = Plate + Unencumbered OR Chain mail + Heavy Load
• 1 = Plate + Heavy Load
• Anyone with a BMR of 1 cannot fight or run.

The BMR is multiplied by the following factors in order to arrive at movement rates for various situations:

• 5 = Combat Movement
• 30 = Exploration/Mapping
• 60 = Normal Walking
• 90 = Running
• 6 = Miles per Day
• 2 = Leagues per Day

Thus the movement rates of a  character wearing chain mail but no treasure would be:

• Combat = 15' (BMR 3 x 5)
• Exploring/Mapping = 90' (BMR 3 x 30)
• Normal Walking = 180'  (BMR 3 x 60) 
• Running = 270'  (BMR 3 x 90)
• Miles per day = 18  (BMR 3 x 6)
• Leagues per day = 6  (BMR 3 x 2)

Holmes & Cook: Stocking a Dungeon

Holmes famously wrote this piece of advice:

As a guideline, it should take a group of players from 6 to 12 adventures before any of their characters are able to gain sufficient experience to attain second level.

If we add up all of the available XP in the Sample Dungeon in Holmes by totaling all of the treasure and non-wandering monsters found in encounter areas, we arrive at a number somewhere around 5500 (some treasure and encounters are variable), with approximately 4600 of that coming from treasure.

When describing wandering monsters and advising on what numbers to use, Holmes says this:

First level adventurers encountering monsters typically found on the first level of a dungeon should be faced with roughly equal numbers, i.e. a party of three would encounter 2-6 orcs, 3-12 giant rots, etc.

Intriguingly, the numbers Holmes uses for his example Wandering Monster Table fall into this given range for a party of three! This is important because the number of monsters found in the encounter areas of the Sample Dungeon roughly fall into this range as well (for example, 4 pirates or 2d4 giant rats). In other words, the expected party size for the Sample Dungeon is approximately three PCs.

The Sample Dungeon, however, has enough available XP to allow at least some of those hypothetical PCs to get to second level. This means that, on average, about four new rooms are going to be explored per expedition into the dungeon (if you accept that it will take 6 expeditions by a party of three to explore the whole dungeon and therefore earn enough XP for many in the party to gain second level).

Whether or not you or I think that this is a realistic ratio is irrelevant (for now), because the reason I am doing all of this geeky math is to arrive at an XP per room ratio based on Holmes' Sample Dungeon. I am interested in trying to find a baseline for how much treasure a Holmesian dungeon has for the purposes of stocking my own version of the Chateau des Faussesflammes. Whereas Holmes does an excellent job of following his own advice for the number of encounter areas and encounter strength, he doesn't really give much advice for placing treasure, other than point to the random treasure tables.

There is only one problem with that. Take a look at the list of monsters he has stocked his Sample Dungeon with:

• Skeletons*
• Fighter, 2nd level
• Magic-user, 4th level
• Giant Rats*
• "Enormous" Spider (6HD!)
• Giant Crab
• Pirates
• Skeleton (with 7hp, meaning it is at least 1HD rather than the normal 1/2HD)
• Octopus
• Giant Snake
• Ghouls*
• Ape

Only those marked with an asterisk are listed in the Monster section. [Note: I am operating with the version of the rules I own, which is an early edition.]

I take two things out of this:

1. Holmes seems to be encouraging DMs to make up their own monsters.
2. I have to do all this crazy math in order to figure out what an appropriate amount of treasure is.

To that end, I have two approaches:

1. Gold pieces per room: This works out be be approximately 100gp per character. (Of course this is a ratio and the actual treasure will not be found in every room — especially since a third of all rooms are specifically empty.)
2. Gold pieces per HD of monster: This works out to be about 150gp per HD. (Likewise, not every monster will have treasure.)

I am currently working on a dungeon level with about 38 rooms and approximately 65HD worth of monsters (using the example Wandering Monster table, which assumes a party of three). Using the first method, I arrive at 11,400gp (38 rooms x 100gp x 3 characters). Using the second method, I get 9,750gp (65HD x 150 gp).

This produces a nice range, and provides me with a reasonable "stingy" number as well as a reasonable "generous" number that falls within the range of XP per room of Holmes' Sample Dungeon.

Holmes & Cook: Dungeon Design

I have been busying myself with the prospect of creating a dungeon in homage to the Chateau des Faussesflammes, one of the ruined castles mentioned by CAS in his stories of Averoigne. Being in a Holmesian kind of mood, I have been trying to tackle this particular project by reverse engineering the Sample Dungeon in the Holmes Edition. In some of my initial forays into the project, I have found an interesting curiosity.

As a life-long hobbyist, I cannot remember a time more exciting than the period we are living through right now. We have a plethora of resources at our finger tips that demonstrate an amazing amount of creative output. Being a bit of a map-geek, one such resource that I have taken particular joy in is the rebirth of the geomorph. I was fully planning on taking advantage of this revival for the purposes of creating maps for my version of the Chateau; however, go on over to Dave's Mapper and compare the (marvelous) results that you get there with the Sample Dungeon from Holmes:

The average room size in the Sample Dungeon is 60 x 60, which easily takes up more than half the space on the popular 100 x 100 geomorph used by the good folks who draw them for Dave's Mapper. The largest rooms in the Sample Dungeon wouldn't even fit on a single geomorph. Even more interesting is that the Keyed rooms are on average almost twice as big as the Empty (E) rooms (75 x 65 compared to 35 x 35).

This got me thinking about the necessity of designing a dungeon with such large rooms and, in particular, encounter areas. I think this largely has to do with the way combat works in Holmes. Missile (and Magic) combat is largely distinct from Melee combat. Once Melee combat is engaged, Missile (and Magic) combat effectively ends, due to the fact that missile fire and spells have a chance of hitting the wrong target.

Given this style of combat, movement and closing into melee and/or maneuvering to avoid melee becomes a vital element of the game. If combat were confined to small spaces (such as the majority of the rooms found in 100 x 100 geomorphs) this ability to move would be severely limited. Most combats would engage in melee almost immediately, reducing the usefulness and effectiveness of characters interested in using bows and spells. Therefore, Holmes provides encounter areas with plenty of room to maneuver.

Besides offering more evidence that the Dungeon is an ever-changing underground spawning new rooms, passageways and even monsters, the size of Empty rooms also implies an attempt by Holmes to make them dangerous.

The only monsters a party of adventurers would encounter in an Empty room are Wondering Monsters, which are meant to be a major part of the Holmesian dungeon-delving experience. Outside of evidence of an ever-changing semi-intelligent dungeon, they seem rather innocuous. Their significantly smaller size, however, limits any combat that does happen within them. Like the rooms on a typical 100 x 100 geomorph, the smaller Empty rooms limit tactical choice in combat. They are therefore a more dangerous place to encounter wandering monsters than a normal encounter area.

The long and the short — I (unfortunately) won't be using geomorphs to do my version of the Chateau des Fammesflammes because Holmesian dungeons need significantly larger rooms than we modern gamers are used to. I shall also be endeavoring to have my dungeon create a sense of claustrophobia with players despite these larger room sizes. Hopefully, they will come to fear the smaller Empty rooms, where wandering monster encounters are truly dangerous.

Holmes & Cook: Shield and Shields

I have been running some hypothetical combats using the Holmes rules as I have come to understand them in order to see how it feels. One of the things that had become immanently clear is that a central factor in combat is closing into melee. Those that do not have missile capability will want to close as soon as possible. Those that have good missile capability will want to prolong missile combat for as long as possible.

The reason: missile combat is deadly — as it should be — and missile combat effectively ends once melee begins. This reality, however, brings up a bit of a surprise. The most vulnerable characters to missile combat are the ones who normally can only really function effectively during missile combat — magic-users.

When understanding normal missile fire as volleys, targets are determined randomly. This means that magic-users have an equal chance of being targeted as anyone else. They can't hide behind the fighting-men. If they are targeted, chances are they are not only going to be hit, but killed. Ironically, in order to use their spells (especially combat spells) they need to be in missile combat. Once melee begins, they cannot throw around spells without risking the chance of affecting the wrong target.

This reality results in Shield being one of, if not the, most useful spell in a magic-user's arsenal. It also explains why it is more effective against missiles than it is against melee attacks:

By means of this spell the user imposes a self moving magical barrier between himself and his enemies. It provides the equivalent of plate armor and shield (armor class 2) against missiles, chain mail and shield (armor class 4) against other attacks.

Due to the fact that this indispensable spell has only a duration of 2 turns, I foresee a couple of outcomes:

1. Players will get frustrated at the casualty rate of magic-users. Combat encourages them to engage opponents when they are most vulnerable. That is not a good combination.
2. Most, if not all, magic-users in the game will be elves, because of their ability to wear armor and thus actually have a chance to shine as a spell caster.

Given the recent meme about shields and how they ought to do more than reduce AC by one, I have a simple solution to the dilemma of the magic-user in Holmes:

If a character is armed with a shield, they can voluntarily become the target of a volley shot against an adjacent character.

This gives the party the option to hide the magic-user behind a big, heavily armored fighting-man during missile combat. One interesting outcome I foresee with this: magic-users (unless they can afford to have a whole bunch of Shield scrolls) better play nice with the fighting-men…

Holmes & Cook: Magic Research and Production

In his section on Magic Research and Production, Cook gives us this interesting little gem:

[Those things necessary to produce magical items] should be difficult to obtain, and the spell caster will often have to adventure to acquire the items, for there are no magic stores.

This begs the question, especially since there are rules in both Holmes and Cook for creating various magic items, what are the economics of magic?

There are four different systems given in the pages of Holmes and Cook.

• Holmes indicates that any magic-user (but makes no mention of clerics) of any level can create scrolls for 100 gp and 1 week for every spell level to be inscribed upon the scroll.
• Cook notes that Alchemists, if given a formula or sample, can produce potions at half the normal cost and time. They can also do magical research on potions at twice the time and cost of magic-users. All of this incurs the extra cost in the alchemist's monthly stipend of 1000 gp.
• In his section on Magic Research and Production, Cook specifies that only magic-users and clerics of name level (9th level or higher) are able to create magic items. The cost for duplicating normal spell effects requires 500 gp and 1 week per spell level duplicated. Given that he fixes the price of a Wand of Fire Balls at 30,000 gp and a time frame of 4 months, this means that this price is for every single charge placed in the wand. These endeavors always have (at least) a 15% chance of failure (and thus creating a cursed item).
• Cook continues to give the DM much more leeway in determining the price tag on items that do not duplicate spell effects. For example, he suggests plate mail +1 should cost 10,000 gp and take 6 months.

Following these guidelines, here are the prices & time requirements for various magic items involving the spell Invisibility:

• Scroll of Invisibility — 200 gp/2 weeks
• Potion of Invisibility — 1000 gp/2 weeks
• Potion of Invisibility — 750 gp/ 1 week (Alchemist with formula/sample)
• Ring of Invisibility — DM's descretion (at least 10,000 gp/6 months)

Given that a suit of plate mail only costs 50 gp (Holmes) to 60 gp (Cook) and that something as exclusive as a warhorse in barding costs 400 gp, this places even something as relatively inexpensive as a Scroll of Light well out of the price range of what any but the most wealthy could afford. Remember that at least 3 in 20 of these items are going to fail, which makes the endeavor to pay for magic item creation even more expensive.

All of this indicates that Cook is right in his assessment that there are no such things as magic shops — these items are just too expensive to expect there to be any kind of market; however, by including the alchemist in his list of Specialists and Mercenaries he indicates that there is a demand.

The only social stratus that can afford to demand magic item creation is the very rich. Given the inherent danger of this kind of endeavor (at least 15% of items will be cursed), implies either some kind of social pressure that holds enough sway so as to outweigh the possibility of a curse and/or a disquieting level of comfort with all things decadent and corrupt.

Given that the majority of magic items duplicate magic-user spells rather than cleric spells seems to indicate that magic item creation and its inherent risks are primarily an arcane magic-kind-of-thing, possibly even a pagan-kind-of-thing.

Since it is the rich and powerful who are the ones who would demand magic item creation, it would seem that there is an inherent conflict between church and state, where the state is more inclined towards paganism and the arcane power that comes with it and the church is more inclined to frown upon magic item creation of all kinds (possibly even including divine magic items).

The implied Guild structure of magic-user training and the reduced price of scroll creation, however, leave room for a middle way. The church could oversee and sanction certain magic item creation. There might be a mechanism where cooperation between magic-users and clerics reduces the potential harm of a cursed item. Indeed, I might wave the 15% chance in the case of scrolls if the magic-user inscribing them either pays a registration fee or otherwise works in concert with the church directly or through the Guild.

In summary:

• Magic research and production is both dangerous and expensive.
• Such research can only be accomplished through a patronage system, where there exists a demand among rich and the powerful.
• The church sees both the benefits and the corrupting nature of magical research. While overall discouraging such research, it does work in concert with the Guild in order to make sanctioned research as safe as possible.
• The Guild willingly works in concert with the church because, while greater magic might be possible outside the confines of sanctioned research, it is certainly safer.
• Any overly-regulated economy is going to have a black market. In this case, given the corrupting nature of arcane magic, the word black is more than appropriate.
• Given a black market, there is more than likely some kind of Inquisition-type of institution within the church (whether overt or covert) that tries to keep such activities to a minimum.

Holmes & Cook: Book of First Level Spells

In the Magic Spells section of Holmes, there is a very curious sentence. He is giving an example of how to use the table which governs whether or not a magic-user knows a spell (where Intelligence is the determinate). He gives us Malchor, a first level magic-user about to go on a dangerous quest:

His intelligence is only 10 (equal to maybe an IQ of 100!) and he can not have studied and copied into his books all the spells listed under Book of First Level Spells (this list is given later).

Besides the cool factor of such a mediocre prime requisite in an example character (are the other stats just that bad, or does the player really want to play a magic-user?), there is this curious title given the first level spell list — Book of First Level Spells — a curiosity that extends to both second and third level spell lists, which are also labelled as Books.

The example seems to allow Malchor to go through all fourteen spells in this list in order to see if he understands them. According to his Intelligence, he will have a minimum of 4 of these in his spell books and a maximum of 6. Theoretically, therefore, if a magic-user had a 17 or 18 Intelligence, he could have every single first-level spell in his spell book.

In calling his spell lists Books, and by allowing first level magic-users the potential of having any spell from the Book of First Level Spells, there is an implication that there is some kind of standardization in magic-user training. Regardless of who you are, what alignment you have or where you are from, as a magic-user, you studied the Book of First Level Spells. Depending upon your natural aptitude (Intelligence) you learned some, if not all, of those fourteen standard spells.

There are a number of potential ways to explain this:

• In a society that has moved away from the arcane magics of the past towards divine magic because of the potential corrupting nature of the arcane, it may very well be illegal to know or cast spells outside the Books.
• There is a highly organized Guild that tightly monitors its members and is the primary source for all higher-level spells. They could also be active in commissioning adventurers in order to find (and therefore control) classical and ancient magic.
• The Books represents the sum total of everything that arcane spell casters know. All the other knowledge is lost (or kept secret by those individuals who possess them). Given that there is only a flat 20% chance for success when creating new spells and a price tag of 2000 gp per spell level regardless of success, this actually seems rather plausible. What joe-normal magic-user has an average of 10,000 gp/spell level of disposable income to create new spells? It is probably far more economical to hire adventurers to go find stuff than to do the research.

The long and short of Holmes using the phrase Book of First Level Spells is that magic-users are all going to have some kind of shared experience — whether that experience is a Guild, a legal reality, a dearth of knowledge or all of the above.

Update: Another thought just came to mind. Given that Holmes has an entire section of his edition dedicated to explaining the various (and potentially confusing) ways that the word level is used, it would seem to me that the title of the Book of First Level Spells could be tweaked in order to eliminate "level" from spell lists.

Holmes & Cook: Dragons

As I mentioned yesterday, there are several dragons (blue, gold and green) that appear in Cook's wandering monster tables that are not found in either his monster section or the one in Holmes. While Cook does provide statistics for these dragons, they are missing two key elements that define what a D&D dragon is — alignment and a breath weapon.

In order to determine these traits for Cook's dragons, I must look to Holmes and how he seems to see them. I am going to begin by comparing red and white dragons, because (believe it or not) they are the most similar of the four in Holmes: they both have coned breath weapons that are expressions of thermal energy.

Red and white dragons are an exercise in extremes:

• Reds have the highest HD (in Holmes); whites have the lowest (in both Holmes & Cook)
• Reds have a breath weapon that violently releases thermal energy; whites have one that violently extracts thermal energy.
• Reds are the only type of Holmesian dragon that are not cursed with animal intelligence; whites are the most likely to be cursed.

This pattern suggests that dragon types occur in pairs — each representing an opposite or an extreme. This implies that red and white dragons (and therefore all dragon pairs) are somehow related. I can see two possibilities, both of which are very intriguing:

1. White dragons are the female of the species and reds are the male. (Holmes indicates in his description of dragons that the smallest dragons are "positively female" and the largest dragons are "positively male"). Alternately, if one interprets this Holmes description to mean that all types of dragons have both male and female, reds can only breed with whites and vice-versa.
2. White dragons evolve into red dragons (where the intelligent whites are the only ones who know how; thus, all reds are intelligent).

This last option, however, only works if both the brass and black dragons are the weaker of their dragon pairs (since both are subject to being cursed with animal intelligence). Both have 6-8 HD (higher than the white's 5-7 HD). The brass have a natural pair with Cook's gold dragon (since they are both metallic) which has 11 HD — one higher than Cook's version of the red dragon. Interestingly, Cook seems to fix the dragon HD at the middle of the Holmes HD range. Thus, a white has 6HD, red has 10HD. This is a difference of 4HD. The middle of the bronze HD range is 7; also a difference of 4HD when compared to the 11HD gold dragon. This suggests a pattern applicable to all dragon type pairs: the smaller of the two will always have 4HD less than the larger.

Given this, black, blue and green dragons don't appear to be natural pairs. This suggests that there are three additional types of dragons out there that correspond to the black, blue and green. In the case of the latter two, these missing types may very well have 12 and 13HD! The fact that Cook has dragon types that Holmes does not and that Holmes has a type that Cook does not (brass) makes me quite comfortable about these unrepresented and potential types of dragons.

Alignment

Since gold dragons are part of the brass dragon pair and Holmes gives them a neutral/chaotic good alignment, it follows that gold dragons are chaotic good. It also follows that since all the colored dragons are chaotic evil when intelligent, so too should blue and green dragons; however, since they are likely the smaller of their respective pairs, they will have a chaotic evil/neutral alignment similar to black dragons (indicating that some have been cursed with animal intelligence).

Breath Weapons

As previously noted, white and red dragons both have breath weapons at the opposite ends of a thermal energy scale. Given that black dragons breath acid (which could be seen as an expression of chemical energy) this suggests that most dragons have a breath weapon of some type of energy. The exception is the brass dragon, which has two breath weapons with spell-like effects.

Since the red and white dragons have breath weapons on either side of the thermal energy scale, it follows that the breath weapons of various dragon type pairs ought to as well. Thus, the dragon that would complete the pair with the black would spew a line of a very strong base (the opposite of an acid).

It also follows that the gold dragon should have spell effects which are "opposite" of Sleep and Fear. I would propose Confusion and Charm Person.

Since all "colored" dragons have some kind of energy-based breath and the metallics have the spell-effect breaths, it follows that the blue and green dragons would have energy-based breaths. There are several possibilities:

• Thermal
• Chemical
• Electrical
• Radiant
• Nuclear
• Magnetic
• Sound
• Luminous

Since thermal and chemical are taken, that leaves the rest as possible breath weapons for blue and green dragons. Color only has a passing correlation (blue could easily be the color of cold, black the color one gets from being burned by fire and red is not the color opposite of white), therefore it will not be of pressing importance. Rather, the most important factor will be opposites that make sense.

As cool as electrical, nuclear and radiant energy sound, they don't immediately suggest interesting opposites. This leaves the following:

• Magnetic (attracting vs. repulsing)
• Sound (high frequency vs. low frequency)
• Luminous (light vs. dark)

Since the latter doesn't exactly inspire destructive possibilities, the blue and green dragon will have magnetic and sound-based breath weapons.

The color green has a passing association to earth, from which magnets come. Blue has a passing association to air/water through which sound travels. Therefore, green dragons will have a magnetic-based breath weapon and blue dragons will have a sound-based breath weapon.

Seeing that blue and green dragons are the most powerful of the "lesser"/female dragons, it follows that there might be extra effects tacked onto their breath weapons. I imagine that green dragons have a lined, repulser breath that moves targets away 10-60 ft (half if the save is made) in addition to the damage. Blue dragons would have a cone of high-frequency sound. Victims could be rendered deaf.

Holmes & Cook: Armor Class

In his monster section, Holmes only has stats for four types of dragons (black, brass, red and white). Though dragons do not appear in Cook's monster section, he does include them in his wandering monster tables, including three not found in Holmes (blue, gold and green). While this is interesting in and of itself, one of the more intriguing discrepancies between Holmes & Cook on dragons is armor class. Holmes gives all dragons an AC of 2, whereas Cook gives them an AC ranging from -2 to 3.

This prompted me to look at the armor class ranges of all monsters in both editions. I discovered something very interesting: there are no monsters in Holmes that have an AC lower than 2. While there are eight monsters in Cook that do, they have an average of 18 HD and only two (the dragon turtle and the 16HD elemental) have a negative AC.

Further, in Holmes, the lowest AC found in the combat tables is AC 2. This emphasizes the reality that in Holmes there are really only four armor classes:

• No armor
• Leather
• Chain mail
• Plate

I say this because, what does one do with the bonuses of magical armor? If the lowest AC found in the game is AC 2 and one is armored with a +1 shield and plate +1, what good does all that magic do? The traditional answer in D&D to this problem is to continue out the combat table to include lower ACs; however, if one accepts the reality of only four types of AC, this leaves open the possibility of penalties to the attacker's roll.

Conceptually, understanding the shield and any magical bonus as a penalty to the attacker's roll transforms the shield and the magic bonus from being AC to being things the attacker must overcome in order to be able "to hit" the target AC.

In other words, if I were a 1st level character trying to hit an NPC wearing leather and carrying a magic +1 shield, I would normally hit on a '12' (according to Holmes); however, I would have to overcome the shield and the magic because I would be subtracting 2 from my roll. This penalty could be easily be understood and noted as a Defensive Bonus.

This implementation has a couple of consequences and a rather cool implication:

1. There can be major simplification of combat tables with only four types of AC.
2. There has to be a conversion of monster ACs that do not fall into these four types. For example, AC 4 becomes Chain/DB 1.
3. For those that want shields to play a larger role in D&D combat, this concept of shields giving a Defensive Bonus rather than affecting the AC allows for a greater range of bonuses than the meager +1 that normal D&D allows. These bonuses could be tied to size and/or material. For example:

Buckler +1DB
Small Shield +2DB
Large Shield +3DB
Tower Shield +4DB

I have yet to playtest such a system, but a imagine a major complaint might be the math. A reminder: there are very few bonuses in Holmes. Strength has no bearing on combat. Most encounters would require only the penalty due to a Defensive Bonus. For those so inclined, I imagine that implementing a house rule where rolling the exact number you need to hit (a 14 in the example above) would result in maximum damage or some kind of critical hit would give enough incentive that players would adapt very quickly.

Holmes & Cook: Portown

If, as I do, one wants to place Portown and the example dungeon from Holmes into the region of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, there is the rather difficult problem of where to place it. Holmes describes it this way:

Portown is a small but busy city linking the caravan routes from the south to the merchant ships that dare the pirate-infested waters of the Northern Sea. Humans and non-humans from all over the globe meet here.

In addition, the location of Zenopus' tower is above some cliffs looking over the sea. Thus, Portown lays next to the sea, along a coast line that runs north and south.

Cook informs us that the Black Peaks/Cruth Mountains/The Steach are on the north edge of the map and that there are easterly winds coming off of the sea. These two appear to be contradictory. There is a rather large and long mountain range that runs along the top of the map in Cook (who provides no compass rose), but the sea runs along the bottom of the map. This means that, except for a small peninsula south of Specularum, there really isn't any way for easterly winds to come off the ocean if the top of the map is, indeed, north.

I am going to take advantage of this contradiction, the lack of a compass rose and the various ways the word easterly can be defined to "rotate" the map provided by Cook 90° so that Fort Doom is north of Specularum. This accomplishes two things:

1. The coast now runs north-south, so as to reflect the way Holmes describes the location of Portown.
2. If one uses the mathematical definition of easterly — towards the east — this also allows there to be winds that blow towards the east off the sea.

The main problem with orienting the map this way is that the mountain range is no longer "running along the north side of the map" as Cook describes it. There is a portion of the range, however, that does now curve towards the west at the north edge of the rotated map. If the names Black Peaks/Cruth Mountains/The Steach are limited to this section in the north (leaving room for other sections of the mountains to be named at a later date), then Cook's description of this mountain range is generally true.

This means that the caravans coming from the south that Holmes describes as transferring their goods to ships to go north are coming from Specularum and Fort Doom. This places Portown either on the northern half of the Gulf of Halag or further up the coast. The most likely place for Portown would be the river mouth that empties into the Gulf.

There are now two questions that need to be answered:

1. Why do the caravans need to put their goods onto ships and not continue north?
2. What is so valuable that there are ships willing to sail through the pirate infested waters of the Northern Sea?

The first has one of two answers: either the area is infested with something even more dangerous than pirates, or the geography makes it impossible for caravans to get across. The latter is most likely (if that something is so dangerous, why isn't it eating the pirates?). I suspect the mountains continue to swing west until they meet the sea, making caravan travel impossible.

The answer to the second question depends upon whether the Grand Duchy is in the northern or southern hemisphere:

• Since Cook indicates that there are Frost Giants on what is now the southern edge of the map, one could argue for the southern hemisphere, where the farther south one goes the colder it gets. In such a case, the trade in the Northern Sea could be driven by such things as spices, chocolate, cotton, tobacco and tea.
• If one would rather have the Grand Duchy in the northern hemisphere, the Northern Sea would probably be too cold for things like spices. Trade items might include certain metals such as iron, platinum or certain kinds of steel. In addition, there might be a whaling industry. Personally, I can imagine a fantasy version of the narwhale whose oils burn twice as long as other oils and whose horns are more valuable than ivory — possibly because they are used by magic-users to create wands. I imagine them to be better at absorbing magical energies and are therefore beneficial in the creation of wands (possibly by cutting down in creation time).

Here is a close-up map I've created to show the location of Portown (note, I've also placed Skull Mountain in the area so that there are plenty of adventuring opportunities in the immediate area):

Holmes & Cook: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos

I realize that this particular topic does not have much, if anything, to do with the rules, per se; however, within my thought experiment, the Grand Duchy of Karameikos as presented in Cook is virtually the only example I have of world-building. As such, I am actually very interested in what kind of information I can glean from a combination of the example dungeon in Holmes and the Grand Duchy in Cook.

The place I'd like to start with are names, because each name suggests a story. Put all the stories together and I see a bit of an interesting pattern:

Stefan Karameikos

According to Cook, this is the Grand Duke after which the map is named. The name Stefan invokes the first Christian king of Hungary. Though Karameikos is nothing more than a cool fantasy name, it does bear some resemblance to the Hungarian for staff and Nicholas. This very much suggests a divine magicky relic/artifact that might be known as The Staff of St. Nicholas, which may very well be a family heirloom and/or a symbol of the office of Grand Duke.

Koriszegy Keep

More popularly known as the Haunted Keep, this name is even more suggestive of Hungarian with its sz and gy. Szegy means breast and kor can either mean heart, circle, age or disease. Taken together, all these words suggest some kind of tragic love story. Its outcome may very well be the origin of the haunting that the keep is now more famous for.

Gulf of Halag

Since we already have two names which are Hungarianesque, I find it interesting how close Halag is to the Hungarian for death. The Gulf of Death would be a great place to put Fort Doom, don't you think?

Ludwig von Hendriks

Speaking of Fort Doom, the Baron has a most German name. In combination with all of this psuedo-Hungarian it calls to mind the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is quite brilliant, actually. Take a look at the sheer number of nationalities and languages that could be found inside the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire:

• German
• Hungarian
• Czech
• Polish
• Ruthenian
• Romanian
• Croatian
• Slovakian
• Serbian
• Slovenian
• Italian

This can easily justify all kinds of different character backgrounds and names, as well as the existence of demi-humans within borders of the Grand Duchy.

There was also plenty of ethnic chauvinism within the Empire. Despite claims to the contrary, I have never got the feeling that the Hungary part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were playing anything but second fiddle to the Austrian part. This suggests a reason why the Grand Duke would allow an obvious baddy like Baron von Hendriks to have control over any part of the Grand Duchy. Despite being only a Baron, von Hendriks has a pseudo-Austrian heritage compared to Karameikos' pseudo-Hungarian. Therefore von Hendriks' heritage/contacts have enough pull over the Grand Duke to get his little barony.

Luln

Though this is basically a meaningless made up name, it does have a Germanic flavor — which fits, given that the town is made up primarily of refugees from von Hendricks' Black Eagle Barony.

Black Eagle Barony

Speaking of which, the name itself doesn't suggest much; however, a black eagle on a gold field is a heraldic symbol used by Germany. This puts more weight behind the idea that von Hendricks has some family and friends in very high places.

Black Peaks/Cruth Mtns./The Steach

Though Steach has a passing resemblance to the German for rise or climb, these names don't imply much; however, it does support the Austro-Hungarian vibe. If you travel within the various parts of Europe that used to be part of the Empire, you will notice that all of the towns will have different names depending upon who you ask.

Specularum

This is the first real departure from the Austro-Hungarian vibe. It has more of a Latinesque name related to the root of the word speculate. Cook informs us that it was originally a port when the area was first being explored. Given the name, I would guess that the original port and exploration was done by a different people than the ones who currently occupy it. Personally, I would need to decide as to whether this change of hands happened within context of the modern civilization or the classical civilization implied in Holmes. Given the Latin-flavor of the name, I am inclined to choose the latter.

Portown

This is the location of the sample dungeon in Holmes. I find it interesting that it could be understood in one of two ways: — it is a town with a port or it is a poor town.

Zenopus

This is the magic user that dug the tunnels that now make up at least part of the sample dungeon in Holmes. The name suggests the Greek for foreigner and foot. Thus, he might very well represent various attempts by a foreign power at getting a toe-hold in the area around Portown. This foreign power is most likely Chaotic and pagan, given Zenopus' activities. This also suggests that Portown is not necessarily within the borders and protection of the Grand Duchy, if this foreign power sees fit to send its agents to explore the ancient city that lies beneath with such impunity.

Thus, by taking all of these names together in order to tell some stories and seeing patterns, three political entities suggest themselves:

1. A multi-ethnic/national/racial/linguistic empire modeled roughly on Central Europe. It is part of the modern (Christian/pseudo-Christian) civilization. Despite this, it is plagued by ethnic/racial chauvinism. There may very well be a rivalry between the Grand Duke and the Baron of Black Eagle. Whereas the Baron has friends in high places, the Grand Duke is the current holder of the Staff of St. Nicholas, an artifact that brings both power and prestige.
2. A foreign (possibly secret) power that harkens back to the classical civilization. They are Chaotic and very interested in the arcane secrets of the ancient civilization. They have agents that they send into other countries to find and procure these ancient secrets. Given that Cook gives the Baron a reputation for possible connections with slavers, he may very well be working with this foreign power in order to give him an upper hand in his rivalry with the Grand Duke.
3. The country and people that originally explored and settled the lands of the Grand Duchy. This may have been the outskirts of a Rome-like empire of the classical civilization just prior to its collapse. Remnants of it litter the land.

Holmes & Cook: Rangers

Yesterday, J.B. of B/X Blackrazor reacted to my recasting of the Holmesian Thief in context of Bilbo Baggins by reminding me of his previous post, How Bilbo Baggins Ruined Everything. In his latest post, he is Hating on Rangers. Therefore, I though it apropos to propose the optional Ranger class for a Holmes & Cook amalgam.

Please note: I am not trying to start some kind of war of words with J.B. who actually makes some very compelling arguments (if a little crude at times). He tends to be a B/X partisan and as such I greatly sympathize with him because I, too, feel it is one of the best versions of the game; however, I also greatly enjoy tinkering. And this whole thought experiment is exactly about that — framing a tinkering project within the confines of Holmes and Cook. Therefore, I am merely sending some gentle ribbing J.B.'s way…

The Holmesian Ranger

Rangers are specialized fighting-men who concentrate on missile combat. They are hunters, scouts, skirmishers and/or outriders. They become expert marksmen at the expense of other kinds of combat. As such, they may only use Missile Weapons or Thrown Weapons. This specialization, however, allows rangers to have the following advantages in missile combat:

• Unlike other classes, rangers do not need to fire in volleys. When firing into a group, they need not randomly determine their target. Rather, they can shoot at a specific target.
• As a result, they are able to fire into melee where friendlies are involved and not risk shooting one of their own party.

They are also better at tracking and at spotting things in an outdoor environment than other classes. They begin with a chance of 2 in 6 and increase this in the same progression as a Thief (aka Burglar) has with hear noise.

Like other fighting-men, rangers may wear any kind of armor; however, wearing heavy armor negates their targeting abilities (they may only fire in volleys).

They use the same XP progression and saving throws as other fighting-men.

Question: I am curious if there is any opinion out there as to whether or not to have a Dex requirement of 13 or to allow certain demi-humans to be rangers (personally, I am considering elves and halflings, but not dwarves).