Would you burn hit points to hit harder?

“The man gasped agonizedly and went to his knees, but his tall mate lunged in, in ferocious silence, raining blow on blow so furiously that Valeria had no opportunity to counter. She stepped back coolly, parrying the strokes and watching for her chance to thrust home. He could not long keep up that flailing whirlwind. His arm would tire, his wind would fail; he would weaken, falter, and then her blade would slide smoothly into his heart.”
 — Red Nails by Robert E. Howard, 1936

What if you could burn hit points to get an attack bonus for one mêlee attack? How much would you burn? 1 hit point? 2 hit points?

What if you could burn hit points to get a damage bonus for one hit with a mêlee weapon? How much would you burn? 2 hit points? 4 hit points?

What if you could burn hit points to get an additional attack that round with a mêlee weapon, subject to a maximum no. of total attacks that round equal to your level? 2 hit points? 4 hit points?

What if you could burn hit points to improve your AC against a single attack (mêlee or missile)? How many hit points would you burn? 1 hit point? 2 hit points?

What if special combat manœuvres such as disarm, knockdown, bullrush, et cetera cost hit points instead of coming free at certain levels?

In this way, players can make tactical choices of whether or not to play it safe or try to end a combat quickly.

After all, hit points represent stamina and luck as well as combat skill.

A forgotten 0D&D Rule for Fighters

Conan the Destroyer by Frank Frazetta

One of my favourite rules from TSR era D&D is that fighters get 1 attack per level of experience versus 0-level Humans and monsters of less than 1 HD. Consider the following:

Heroes attack 4 times per round, Trolls & Ogres attack 6 times per round, Superheroes attack 8 times per round, and Giants attack 12 times per round versus Normal Men. Normal Men are defined as typical soldiers.
— Paraphrased from Chainmail by Gary Gygax & Jeff Peren

“Attack/Defense capabilities versus normal men are simply a matter of allowing one roll as a man-type for every hit die, with any bonuses being given to only one of the attacks, i.e. a Troll would attack six times, once with a +3 added to the die roll.”
— D&D Book II Monsters & Treasure by Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson, page 5 (premium edition)

“Note: This excludes melee combat with monsters (q.v.) of less than one hit die (d8) and non-exceptional (0 level) humans and semi-humans, i.e. all creatures with less than one eight-sided hit die. All of these creatures entitle a fighter to attack once for each of his or her experience levels (See COMBAT).”
— AD&D Players Handbook by Gary Gygax, page 25 (premium edition)

There are two reason why I like this rule. The first is that it evokes Conan wading through an army of Picts, leaving a pile of bodies in his wake! The second is that during my years of fighting in the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA) I would watch the very best fighters mow down the novices like a scythe through wheat. When I was one of the novices, I can tell you that the attacks came so fast and furious, I was defeated before I could react. Come to think of it, the same thing happend to me during my martial arts period as well.

But why stop with 1st level soldiers? It has always struck me as odd that a 1st level fighter is such a threat to a 20th level fighter (e.g. Conan) that the 20th level guy redirects so much of his effort into defence as to reduce the number of attacks from 20 to 1 (depending on edition). It is most certainly true that masters of the martial arts fight more cautiously against another master so I support the idea of less number of attacks. But why not a continuum instead of a binary solution. Consider the following:

“A super hero, for example, would attack eight times only if he were fighting normal men (or creatures basically that strength, i.e., kobolds, goblins, gnomes, dwarves, and so on).

Note that he is allowed one attack for each of his combat levels as the ratio of one Orc vs. the Hero is 1:4, so this is treated as normal (non-fantastic) melee, as is any combat where the score of one side is a base 1 hit die or less.” [emphasis mine]

— Questions Most Frequently Asked About Dungeons & Dragons Rules, (presumably written by E. Gary Gygax) The Strategic Review, Summer 1975, Vol. 1, No. 2

Note that what Gygax is saying is that if the Orcs were instead Gnolls (2 HD humanoids) and the fighter a Superhero (8 HD), the ratio is 2:8, simplified to 1:4 so the combat is treated as “non-fantastic” meaning that the superhero gets… 8 attacks or 4? I think his intention is that the superhero gets 4 attacks per round versus Gnolls and 8 attacks per round versus Orcs.

Getting back to my question of Conan the 20th level legendary fighter versus the 1st level veteran, according to Gygax’s FAQ, a 20th level lord gets 20 attacks per round versus the 1st level veteran because the ratio is 20:1. Likewise, Conan would get 10 attacks per round versus a 2nd level warrior, 6 attacks versus a 3rd level swordsman, 5 attacks v. a 4th level hero, 4 attacks per round v. a 5th level swashbuckler, 3 attacks vs. a 6th level myrmidon, 2 attacks per round versus 7th–10th level fighters, and 1 attack per round versus fighters of 11th level or higher.

Gygax’s system of attacks per round based on the ratio of Hit Dice between humanoid combatants explains why Conan can wade through lower level fighters but fights more cautiously against his peers. Which is always what I observed and experienced first-hand in the SCA and in martial arts.

Given that this FAQ appeared before the publication of Grayhawk, why was it not included in that supplement or the AD&D rules? Obviously we can only speculate at this point, but I suspect that it has to do with fighters, paladins, and rangers getting multiple attacks per round at higher levels which first appeared in the AD&D Players Handbook in 1978. Although, Gygax did retain the attack/level when facing creatures of less than 1 Hit Die and 0-level Humans.

I like this rule so much, I shall refer to it as the “Conan” rule. The next question then, is ‘how broadly or narrowly should this rule be applied?’

Ever since the Giants in the Earth series of articles appeared in Dragon Magazine in 1979, I realised that fighters are effectively a core component of all other classes. That is, since all classes increase in combat ability, they are effectively lower level fighters as well. For example in the AD&D Deities & Demigods, Merlin is a 14 level Druid, 15th level Magic-User, and 10th level illusionist. He has no levels in fighter per se. 14th level Druids have a THAC0 of 12 exactly like a 9th level fighter. Therefore I ruled that Merlin can fight as a 9th level fighter and gets 3 mêlée attacks every 2 rounds. So from that point forward, I gave all classes multiple attacks per round based on their equivalent fighter level. The fact that I was not the only DM to do this is proven by 3rd edition doing the exact same thing. In 3e, the number of attacks per round is determined by a character’s Base Attack Bonus (BAB) rather than an arbitrary table.

Carrying this one step further, non-fighters are treated as their equivalent fighter level for determination of how many attacks per round they receive versus lower level creatures but also for high level fighters versus them! After all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander…. So if Merlin did not want to waste any spells, he could smack 9 squires per round with his quarterstaff but Syr Launcelot (Pal 20) could reprimand Merlin at 2 attacks per round (ratio of 9:20).

So this is all very good for humanoid versus humanoid combat, but what happens when it is combat versus bears or owlbears? Alligators or dragons? What Gygax calls “fantastic combat”? I think that this is where the attacks/round of high level fighters should come into play. D&D is an abstraction and it is very difficult to adjudicate how much of an owlbear’s combat ability comes from skill versus natural talent. Theoretically, an RPG could work out that difference but no edition of D&D has done that (aside from 3e allowing humanoids to take some class levels) and I  have no desire to do that as well.

So if fantasic combat relies on the multiple attacks/round rule rather than the opponent ratio, then why does Conan get only 1 attack per round versus his doppleganger instead of 2 attacks per round (AD&D fighters levels 13+)? I rule then that the minimum number of attacks per round is always what the fantastic combat rules allow for. So Conan always has a minimum of 2 attacks/round regardless of how high level his opponent is or whether it is humanoid or not.

Below is my expansion of Gygax’s rule that can be applied to all versions of D&D:

Conan Rule: “Fighters” get multiple attacks vs. lower level opponents

Abstract: Fighters get 1 attack per level per round divided by their opponent’s fighter level with a minium equal to their standard number of attacks/round. For eample, a 4th level gets 4 attacks per round versus a 1st level fighter (4:1), 2 attacks per round versus a 2nd level fighter (4:2 = 2:1), and 1 attack per round versus 3rd level fighters and higher (4:3).

This house rule is an expansion of one that appeared in the D&D FAQ  published in The Strategic Review number 2, obstensibly written by E. Gary Gygax in 1975 prior to the release of the Grayhawk expansion.

In this rule, “fighters” include the fighter class as well as the equivalent fighter level of other character classes and humanoids (creatures of roughly human size, shape, & movement). Equivalent fighter level is determined by examining the base attack capabilities of the character class (To Hit, THAC0, or BAB). For monsters, use their Hit Dice or BAB if using 3rd edition rules. For example, in AD&D clerics of 1st & 2nd level have the same THAC0 as 1st level fighters, as do magic-users of 1st–4th level and thieves of 1st & 2nd level. Therefore they are all treated as 1st level fighters for determination of attacks/round.

The number of attacks a fighter gets against lower level opponents is determened by dividing the level of the attacker by the level of the defender, drop all fractions and give a minimum attack per round of 1 or higher if the rules allow for a higher number of normal attacks per round, e.g. AD&D fighters get 2 attacks/round at 13th level, 3e fighters get 2 attacks/round at 6th level.

For example a 9th level lord versus a 1st level veteran gets 9 attacks (9 ÷ 1 = 9) while the 1st level veteran gets but a single attack (1 ÷ 9 = 0.1111). Versus a 2nd level fighter, the lord gets 4 attacks (9 ÷ 2 = 4.5), versus a 3 level fighter he get 3 attacks (9 ÷3 = 3), versus a 4th level fighters he gets 2 (9 ÷ 7 = 2.25), versus a 5th level fighter and higher he gets only a single attack per round (9 ÷5 = 1.8). Note that in AD&D the 9th level lord has a minimum attack of 3/2.

What about Great Cleave? In third edition, fighters with the great cleave feat (at 4th level or higher), upon killing an opponent may attack another opponent within range. In this way, a fighter could theoretically kill all creatures within range so long as he hit and killed each one of them in a single swing (see the pictures at the bottom of this post). However, as soon as an attack misses or does not kill an opponent, the great cleave ends. In contrast, under the Conan Rules, a 4th level fighter gets four attacks against 1st level opponents regardless of whether he hits and/or kills the opponent. Thus, these two rules can work together if you so desire.

How this will change your game: Monsters will get scarier; and the earlier the edition, the scarier they will get. But remember that in Chainmail and 0D&D, giants have always attacked 12 times per round versus “normal” men-at-arms. Now they attack 6 times per round versus 2nd level fighting-men, 4 times per round vs. 3rd level fighters, 3 times per round versus 4th level, and 2 times per round versus 6th level fighters.

High level fighters will also becomes closer to magic-users in power. A 9th level lord now gets 9 attacks per round versus that press gang of 1st level sailors instead of only 1.

IN CLOSING

For those of you who think that this rule is too cinematic or literary, consider the follow except from the book “This is Kendo” which depicts a fight scene from the film “Sanjuro.” Yes, I am aware that I am referring to a scene from a film, but this was done without any wires or CGI and was choreographed by a expert in kenjutsu (whose name I forgot).

Postscript

I want to thank Delta of Delta’s D&D Hotspot for reminding me of the D&D FAQ in Strategic Review that mentioned number of attacks based on the hit dice ratio. I do not know if I unconciously internalised this article after I read it back in 1978 and forgot the source or if I developed this idea in parallel. Regardless, it is gratifying to see that at least at one point in time, Gygax and I shared this idea.

Happy Birthday Robert E Howard

Robert E. Howard was born this 22nd of January in 1906 in Peaster, Texas. As a reader of this blog, you no doubt know him as the creator of Conan the Barbarian and the father of the Sword & Sorcery genre. But Conan was not his only Sword & Sorcery hero. There is also Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Cormac Mac Art, Turlough Dubh, Cormac Fitzgeoffrey, Dark Agnes de Chastillon (Red Sonja), and Solomon Kane just to name a few.

In honour of Mister Howard, I am reading the Spears of Clontarf. One of his many historical fiction stories that contained hints and suggestions of the supernatural as well as graphic violence. Nobody can describe a fight scen like REH!

Spears of Clontarf also gives us the infamous Dalcassian Axe, said to be able to cleave through mail and plate like cloth. It is a one-handed axe that does damage like a two-handed axe! In game terms, I give it a d10 for damage but restrict it to the Dalcassian Irish.

Another interesting item from the story is the contrast between the Christian Irish berserkers (Barbarians) and the Pagan Viking warriors (Fighters). The Irish eschew all armour aside from shields and tightly woven linen stiffened in vinegar (except for Turlough Dubh who fights in a full maille harness). Whereas the Vikings are armoured head to toe in maille and/or scale.

One of the characters I find fascinating is Eevin, a woman of the Dark Folk (Cruithni or Pict) who has prophetic visions and can either teleport or cast plant door because she can quickly move from the Viking “castle” to the Irish encampment and with great stealth as well. Howard told H.P. Lovecraft in one of his letters how the Picts hold a fascination with him. The Picts are the one “race” or culture that links the stories of Kull of Atlantis, Conan of Hyboria, Bran Mak Morn of Roman Britain, and probably Cormac Fitzgeoffrey of Ireland (I’m hoping to discover that in some of the unpublished fragments). Both Howard and Lovecraft subscribed to the theory that remnants of a prehistoric people gave rise to the legends of dwarves, elves, and fairies.

Howard eventually rewrote the Spears of Clontarf to give it even more supernatural elements (Eevin becomes a Sidhe) and retitled it The Twilight of the Gods a.k.a. The Grey God Passes which Roy Thomas presented as The Twilight of the Grim Grey God in Conan the Barbarian number 3. That was the very first comic book I purchased and yes indeed the name inspired Grymwurld™ and Grymlorde™.

D&D is NOT Sword & Sorcery

 A lot of OSR game companies and their legion of GMs like to tell the world how their game is based on Appendix N of the AD&D DMG. Likewise there are a lot of Old Schoolers who yell that (insert favourite version of D&D) is true Sword & Sorcery unlike (insert disliked version of D&D) which is Epic Fantasy. In most cases, they are WRONG and LYING to everyone. But not intentionally, at least I hope! Herein this post I explain what Sword & Sorcery really is, why D&D never was and never will be, and how to make your game closer to the S&S genre, if you choose.

Now that you have read the ‘clickbait,’ I wish to note that prior to the release of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, I was not concerned with being faithful to the Sword & Sorcery genre. In fact back in the ‘90s I ran a very successful campaign that simulated a Heavy Metal perspective of the Late Middle Ages. The AD&D 2nd Edition game provided a very flexible method of handling priests with their spheres, the Historical Campaigns added good advice on historical, epic, and legendary campaigns, and the Player’s Option books also provided some very interesting customisation options. More on that era in a future post. Suffice to say that since 2002, I have been compelled to find a way to be as faithful to the Sword & Sorcery as possible.

In a future post, I shall detail the ways in which D&D can hew closer to Sword & Sorcery.

What is Sword & Sorcery?

In 1961 Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser) in a response to Michael Moorcock (Elric) in the Conan fanzine Amra, wrote:

“I feel more certain than ever that this field should be called the sword-and-sorcery story. This accurately describes the points of culture-level and supernatural element and also immediately distinguishes it from the cloak-and-sword (historical adventure) story — and (quite incidentally) from the cloak-and-dagger (international espionage) story too!”

Thus, Robert E. Howard is credited with inventing the genre with his stories of Bran Mac Morn, Conan, Kull, Cormac Mac Airt, Solomon Kane, and Turlogh Dubh O'Brien. His work stands as the gold standard for which all others are judged. However, he did not invent it out of whole cloth. Rather, he built it upon a very long history of the ballads, sagas, and legends of Europe and the Greater Middle East. In effect, Sword & Sorcery is about swords versus sorcery. In “Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: the Makers of Heroic Fantasy” published in 1976, editor Lin Carter came much to the same conclusion.

Sword & Sorcery Characteristics

What then are the particular characteristics that we should be concerned about? For purposes of this essay, I am not going to discuss the literary style of picaresque, swashbuckling, or episodic versus long-form storytelling. Those elements are germane to the type of adventures which I believe should be left entirely in the hands of the individual Game Masters. Instead, we must look at the characteristics that directly contradict D&D.

Sorcerers, Not Clerics, Druids, or Paladins

The D&D cleric class is the proverbial dead elephant in the room. Prior to the Blackmoor campaign, there have been no stories of armoured clergy invoking miracles. None, nada, zilch. Go ahead and look at the pulp stories of the 20th century, Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, gothic literature, mediæval literature, hagiographies, legends, ballads, myths, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And do not forget to search Non-Western sources as well.

Previously when I raised this issue on the Internet, some of the objections were the following:

“But surely Archbishop Turpin, one of the paladins of Charlemagne….” Not according to the actual stories. He may or may not have been armoured when he conducted mass before the troops but he most certainly never invoked any miracles in any of the stories.

“Knights Templar?” Nope. Not a single crusading saint in armour.

“But what about Bishop Odo of Beyeux?” First off, Odo was a historical figure but none of the fiction written about him ever depicted him working miracles while armoured.

“Any saints at all?” Nope. There were some former soldiers who later became saints, but they forswore arms and armour before working miracles.

“Priests of Mars or Ares?” Nope. They stayed far, far away from battle.

“Vikings?” Not even the Vikings. The closest would be chieftains officiating at a religious ceremony before battle, but none of the stories have them invoking miracles during battle.

“Chinese, Indian, Mesoamerican, Islamic, Judaic, et cetera?” Nope.

In fact the only depiction, fictional or otherwise, of an armoured spell-caster was Elric of Melnibone and he was not religious in any way at all.

But please do your own research. I would be thrilled to be proven wrong. Until then, we must deal with the fact that in ANY literary genre prior to 1970, divine spellcasters never wore armour while working their miracles. Clerics, Druids, and Paladins as we know them are inventions of Dungeons and Dragons.

Tombs, Not Dungeons

Dungeons as defined by D&D likewise do not exist in the Sword & Sorcery genre. Certainly there are stories of Conan and other S&S heroes looting tombs and encountering supernatural horrors but nowhere near the scale of the typical D&D dungeon. The “dungeon clean-up crew,” disintegrating corridors, the all other mega-dungeon weirdness is an invention of D&D

No Demi-Humans & Humanoids

Were there any dwarves, elves, gnomes, goblins, halflings, hobgoblins, or orcs in any of Howard’s work? What about Leiber or Moorcock? Looking at the world’s literature, there have certainly been stories about fairies but with the exception of a handful of half-elves, none of the protagonists have been non-Human. Moorcock’s Elric was a Melnibonean who was certainly not human but he stands as a famous exception. Except for Elric, all of the protagonists of S&S have been humans who moved through human societies. Secret societies of hidden folk such as serpent people were by definition secret and no effect on the day to day goings on.

Remember that in 1974, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit both by J.R.R. Tolkein were extraordinarily popular. And just about every D&Der I met back in the ‘70s assumed that all of the dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs, wights, Type VI demons (balrogs), and Treeants (ents) were exactly as Tolkein described them. Not only that, but there were arguments about how Trolls were supposed to be ogres and not rubbery regenerating monstrosities because the Oxford professor said so. So it should be no surprise at all that Gygax & Arneson included a strong Middle Earth element in the ruleset. After all, D&D was designed to be broad enough to encompass Sword & Planet (John Carter of Mars) and Gothic Horror (Hammer Films, et al.).

Now a case could be made that the LotR is indeed Sword & Sorcery since it is swords versus sorcery, but the general consensus in literary circles is that it is Heroic Fiction rather than S&S for a number of literary reasons. My argument is that Middle Earth is not S&S precisely because of the non-Humans nations living side-by-side with Human nations, trading and warring, et cetera. Prior to Tolkein, such depictions were relegated to children’s stories and not tales of derring-do.

Only incorporeal need magic to hit

In all of Robert E. Howard’s stories, the only creatures unaffected by non-magical weapons were incorporeal. The Wolf-Man movie does not belong in the Sword & Sorcery genre because there were neither swords nor sorcery. But as I noted above, the popular conceptions of werewolves was that they could only be hit by silver.

As an aside, in the Dark Shadows TV series, vampires could also be killed by silver bullets. Did Lake Geneva and the Twin Cities’ campaigns allow that also? I do not recall any of my players attempting that.

Minimal Magic Items

Why does D&D have so many magic items and why do DMs feel the need to sprinkle them liberally throughout their dungeons? Prior to D&D, have there been any characters in any form of media, carrying as much magic items as your typical mid-level D&D adventurer? No there has not.

And while the pre-D&D 3e rules discouraged the placement of Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, a lot of campaigns have them. Needless to say, Sword & Sorcery protagonists do not go shopping for magic items!

But Does D&D have to be S & S?

Given that it is now obvious that D&D is NOT Sword and Sorcery, is that okay? Of course it is!!! It is still YOUR game! YOU get to decide what kind of campaign you are going to run. Your players and you will agree on the genre(s), tropes, et cetera. That is the true beauty of Dungeons & Dragons unlike all other games in the world — you are encouraged to make it your own.

“As with any other set of miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign.”

— Dungeons & Dragons Book 1 Men & Magic, Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson

Next up: How to make your D&D game better fit the Sword & Sorcery genre.