Wednesday, February 19, 2014
In the Greyhawk Supplment, Men are listed as getting 1 or 2 attacks
Here's something I never noticed in Greyhawk before. Men are listed as getting 1 or 2 attacks, unlike humanoids. As far as I can tell this is not explained anywhere. It could be reference back to the Chainmail "Weapon class" rules for Man-to-Man Combat. If so though it should really be "1 or 2 or 3" per Chainmail, page 26. Also, it should apply to the humanoids if they are using weapons.
What is more likely is that it is an early reference to a rule change for Berserker. In OD&D Vol 2, they just get a single attack at +2 against normal men. But in the Monster Manual this was changed to 2 attacks or one at +2 to hit; thus their attacks are listed as 1 (or 2). So possibly Gygax was using this rule change at the time of Greyhawk but forgot to explain it in the text.

It may refer to two shots for stationary archers inherited from Chainmail.
ReplyDelete1 melee atk & 2 ranged atks (1 at the start of the round and one at the end)
ReplyDelete