CHAINMAIL Heroes & Wizard in OD&D CHAINED

 

Wizards and Heroes in OD&D CHAINED

As mentioned in the last post, there are a few ways to treat heroes in wizards in these house rules: 

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

These distinctions are important and the will likely have ramifications throughout the system. For this reason it may also be hard to put in as a "optional rules". For me, I think it boils down to this

Heroes/Wizard (CHAINMAIL) - If not used, it will have ramifications on Mass Combat as well, which would be unfortunate and would make Heroes, Super heroes and wizards significantly weaker in that aspect of the game.

Conclusion

In OD&D CHAINED all the CHAINMAIL rules for Heroes and Super-Heroes will apply, some will be specific for each combat mini-game. These effects will come into play when a character becomes a full Hero/Super-Hero/ Wizard, without any penalties (such as Hero - 1). To summarize:

OD&D CHAINED Hero

Skirmish and Mass Combat

Troop type is determined by individual training and equipment

Can hit fantastic creatures without the aid of magic weapons 

Never checks morale (applies to NPCs)

Fights as 4 figures (20x4 men in 1:20 combat, and 4 men in 1:1 Skirmish combat)

Requires 4 simultaneous hits to be hurt (this may not lead to death in skirmish combat, since HP will be used). 

 Will have various immunities to various monster special attacks, such as a Ghoul's paralyzing touch. 

Mass Combat only

A Hero grants a bonus of 1 attack die to the unit they fight in 

A Hero cannot be killed with normal missiles or melee until all normal men in the same unit have been killed first 

A Hero can kill dragons with missile fire on a 10+ (+1 on each attack using an enchanted arrow) on a roll of two dice.

Fantastic Combat (part of Mass Combat)

• Can fight fantastic opponents as Hero 

OD&D CHAINED Super-Hero

Skirmish and Mass Combat 

• As Hero except 
• Fights as 8 figures
• Requires 8 simultaneous hits
• Forces a morale check as if excess casualties on enemies within charge distance.

Mass Combat only

• As Hero except 
• A Hero can kill dragons with missile fire on a 8+ (+1 on each attack using an enchanted arrow) on a roll of two dice. 

Fantastic Combat

• Can fight fantastic opponents as Super-Hero 

OD&D CHAINED Wizard 

Skirmish and Mass Combat 

• As Hero except 
• Forces a morale check as if excess casualties on enemies within charge distance
• All other aspects of the CHAINMAIL Wizard in CHAINED will be handled by OD&D spells.

Mass Combat only

• I may use aspects of CHAINMAIL Wizards to quickly produce an NPC wizard in mass battle situations. 

Fantastic Combat

• Can engage fantastic opponents as Wizard 

In practice 

I will just add the special abilities gained at Hero/Super-Hero and Wizard levels to Men & Magic. 

I don't expect most of them to have a great effect on game play - low level enemies will have a harder time to hit Heroics PCs and will need to gang up on them to be able to hurt them. Perhaps magic-users will benefit most from this. 

The most powerful ability is probably to force enemy morale dice to be rolled within line of sight more or less. I may limit this to creatures below a certain HD, to creatures not classified as "fantastic" themselves. This ability kick in the earliest at 8th level however, and if lower level enemies cover and run at that point is probably just fun. Will have to be play tested.

King Les Edwards