Over the past few years, I've been assembling an expanded version of the Holmes rulebook, incorporating all of the material in the original LBBs and Greyhawk, as well as material from Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, and the Strategic Review. I was originally inspired by the Grey Book, but was disappointed that the Grey Book didn't live up to its original premise.
As part of this, I've tried to round out magic-user spells to 9th level. There are only nine 7th level spells and eight 8th level spells in OD&D, while there are ten 9th level spells. The Holmes rulebook includes a few new 1st and 2nd level spells that later appeared in the AD&D 1e Player's Handbook, so I thought it would be in the same spirit to include some "new" higher level spells.
For this, I chose Drawmij's Instant Summons, Mordenkainen's Sword, and Statue for the Book of 7th Level Spells - all of which later appear in BECMI as 7th level spells (although called Teleport Any Object, Sword, and Statue), and Incendiary Cloud and Otto's Irresistible Dance for the Book of 8th Level Spells (later appearing as Explosive Cloud and Dance as 8th level spells in BECMI).
The final version also includes the OD&D rules for magic item creation and clerical spells and clocks in at 16 pages. I'm attaching a link to the pdf and would be interested in any feedback.
https://sites.google.com/site/holmesgrimoire/Holmes%20Grimoire.pdf
Very well done.
ReplyDeleteLooks good!
ReplyDeleteFantastic (as I mentioned before). I don't have time to do a thorough edit, but I don't see anything to complain about. Perhaps some of the higher level spell descriptions could be shortened down. They take a lot of space but are used so rarely.
ReplyDeleteOne typo spotted; there's a stray colon after "Wall of Ice" in the Book of Spells.
Thanks - good catch! My eyes were starting to cross going through it so many times. I was thinking about shortening the higher level spell descriptions, but ended up going with the straight text as much as possible so that info is practically identical to the LBBs. The five AD&D spells I added had wordy descriptions, but I didn't want to tamper too much with Gary's inimitable prose.
ReplyDeleteYou'll notice one difference between this and your excellent 3rd level spell sheet - duration of both clairaudience and clairvoyance is 12 turns instead of 6. In Swords & Spells, these spells and ESP are all 6 turns, but ESP got bumped to 12 turns in Holmes and the description of clairvoyance in OD&D is "same as ESP". Plus, clairvoyance is 12 turns in B/X, so I went with 12 turns for all three spells for purposes of consistency.