Very interesting.. when we played back in the day, we had elves able to cast in armor - which was very different from Holmes' "alternating elf" approach.
That's been the standard, pretty much since 1975. The original D&D set is the only place I can think of that has the elf choosing which class each adventure.
Didn't AD&D do something similar? I seem to remember that multi-classed characters had to choose what they wanted to be for an adventure and all XP would go to that class. I can't be dure as I gave up trying to make sense of AD&D very early on!
The tricky bit with the OD&D (and now Holmes) multi-classing is: how do you work out attack tables and saving throws? The most fair method would seem to be to find the target roll for each class at the character level and take the average.
I'm not that familiar with Greyhawk, is this how it's done in OD&D? So I assume a fighting man 2 / magic-user 2 would use the combat tables for either the 4th level fighting man or 4th level magic-user, depending on his role for that adventure. I guess that would work, too. Although it doesn't make "sense" that a character should suddenly become worse at fighting just because he is acting as a magic-user, it's just one more such quirk under the whole idea of choosing one particular role per adventure.
I guess some of the original games where players re-rolled their characters' hit points every adventure might even use different hit dice depending on the class chosen for that adventure.
Very interesting.. when we played back in the day, we had elves able to cast in armor - which was very different from Holmes' "alternating elf" approach.
ReplyDeleteThat's been the standard, pretty much since 1975. The original D&D set is the only place I can think of that has the elf choosing which class each adventure.
ReplyDeleteDidn't AD&D do something similar? I seem to remember that multi-classed characters had to choose what they wanted to be for an adventure and all XP would go to that class. I can't be dure as I gave up trying to make sense of AD&D very early on!
ReplyDeleteThe tricky bit with the OD&D (and now Holmes) multi-classing is: how do you work out attack tables and saving throws? The most fair method would seem to be to find the target roll for each class at the character level and take the average.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't they just use the attack/saves of whatever class they are adventuring as?
ReplyDeleteI'm not that familiar with Greyhawk, is this how it's done in OD&D? So I assume a fighting man 2 / magic-user 2 would use the combat tables for either the 4th level fighting man or 4th level magic-user, depending on his role for that adventure. I guess that would work, too. Although it doesn't make "sense" that a character should suddenly become worse at fighting just because he is acting as a magic-user, it's just one more such quirk under the whole idea of choosing one particular role per adventure.
ReplyDeleteI guess some of the original games where players re-rolled their characters' hit points every adventure might even use different hit dice depending on the class chosen for that adventure.