CHAINMAIL Heroes in OD&D

CHAINMAIL Heroes (and Wizards) in OD&D

Heroes and Wizards in CHAINMAIL

CHAINMAIL is a wargame and have opponents.  The Hero (or Anti-Hero) in CHAINMAIL is a type of figure with special properties making it a whole other beast than normal men. Heroes and Wizards are part of CHAINMAIL's Fantasy Supplement and are listed among all the other fantastic creatures.

CHAINMAIL Hero

• Can fight fantastic opponents in Fantasy Combat 
• Can fight as any troop type
• Never checks morale
• Infers a bonus of 1 attack die to the unit they fight in
• Fights as 4 figures (20x4 men in 1:20 combat)
• Requires 4 simultaneous "hits" to be killed (i.e. they need to be killed in 1 turn) 
• Cannot be killed with normal missiles or melee until all normal men in the same unit have been killed first
• Can kill dragons with missile fire on a 10+ (+2 to the roll if using an Enchanted Arrow) on a roll of two dice.

Additionally, a hero has various immunities to various monster special attacks.

CHAINMAIL Super-Hero (basically, what it says - a Hero on steroids)

• Has all the perks of a Hero 
• Can fight fantastic opponents in Fantasy Combat (but better than a Hero)
• Forces a morale check as if excess casualties on enemies within charge distance 
• Fights as 8 figures (20x8 men in 1:20 combat)
• Requires 8 simultaneous "hits" to be killed 

CHAINMAIL Wizard 

• Fights as 2 Armored Foot or Medium Horse if mounted
• Can use magic weapons
• Can become invisible at will. The invisibility breaks when they attack.
• Can see in darkness
• Never checks morale
• Forces a morale check as if excess casualties on enemies within charge distance
• Can throw Fireballs and Lightning Bolts at enemies (including fantastic enemies)
• Can cast additional spells (there are 16 of them in CHAINMAIL aside from the two missiles mentioned above, as well as Counter Spell spells of inferior Wizards)

 

Heroes and Wizards in OD&D 

OD&D is an adventure game and have protagonists and antagonists. In light of OD&D, two fantasy types ended up on the protagonist side - the Hero (and Super-Hero) and the Wizard. In OD&D, the hero is persists in all the classes' Fighting Capability, and Wizard only in the magic-user class. Neither have any special role in OD&D if using the Alternative d20 combat system, they are just level titles without any special perks. The Wizard title does come with special perks in OD&D (such as constructing a wizard's tower and magic items, but for Fighting-Men, Lord is arguably a more important step than Hero.

 

Heroes in OD&D with CHAINMAIL

Skirmish Combat

In short - using CHAINMAIL 1:20 combat tables to resolve combat in OD&D doesn't in itself require any need to treat Heroes and Wizards in any special way - they have the same properties as they have OD&D. This is likely the easiest and most straight forward way to treat the subject, although the Hero, Superhero and Wizard can to be translated into "Men" for each class level for ease of use on the Combat Tables. End of story really. 

Mass Combat

Using CHAINMAIL for mass combats, which seems rather natural if using CHAINMAIL for OD&D, then all the properties of heroes and wizards would come into play.

Fantasy Combat

If using the Fantasy Combat Table, the Hero, Super-Hero and Wizard have a special role to play - they enable defeating fantastic, mythical creatures in the Fantasy Combat - system. But in essence, the titles are only used for the Fantasy Combat table - dice roll, they have no further implications. All the aforementioned special rules are only relevant in normal 1:20 mass combat and CHAINMAIL man-to-man rules.

Conclusion

To me, it seems some choices will have to be made:

1. Different rules for heroes/wizards applies for skirmish combat and mass combat.
2. CHAINMAIL rules for heroes/wizards aren't used at all and consequently these rules will have to be removed from mass combats as well.
3. Rules applicable for heroes/wizards in mass combat will also apply in skirmish combat.