House Rules: Generating Stats and Hit Points

Generating Stats


The rules:
Get a deck of cars and pull out two sets of Ace through 6. You should have 12 cars.


Shuffle the cards and then deal a pair to each stat, in order.


Add the cards together, plus six. This is the value of the stat.


You may swap one pair of stats.


The reasoning:


Some people want total control over the character generation process, the same way a Magic: The Gathering player has total control over the content of their deck. But I don't see it that way. Part of the game of D&D is making the best of what random happenstance hands to you, and role-playing with it.


At the same time, I understand that some rolls matter more than others. If you roll one bad attack, you'll probably get another chance. If you roll bad stats you're stuck with them for as long as the character survives, and you may have a much worse character than the other players at the table. This isn't very fair.


So how do we square the desire for randomness with the desire for fairness? We do it with a deck of cards. Everyone has the same cards in their deck, so no one is going to get to the table with straight 18s, or straight 9s. Everyone will be working off the same dealt hand. Some people might get two sixes and start the game with an 18, but this meaans all their other stats are lower. Other people will have more average stats across the board. Different, but fair.


Rolling Hit Points


The rules:
At first level, you start with the maximum value of your Hit Dice plus any modifiers from your Constitution, race, or class. This is your Maximum Hit Points.


At each subsequent level, when you level up, you roll the entire dice pool of Hit Dice you have accumulated, plus all modifiers. A 2nd level Fighter might roll 2d10+6, and a Rogue 4/Wizard 4 might roll 4d8+4d6+8. And so forth. Add all the dice results and modifiers together. If this number is larger than your current Maximum Hit Points, this is your new Maximum Hit Points. If the rolled total is less than your current Maximum Hit Points, your new Maximum Hit Points is equal to the previous Maximum Hit Points plus one.


The reasoning:
As with rolling stats, rolling Hit Points is too important to make characters live with bad rolls their entire career. I've see 4th level fighters that rolls two 1s for HP, and it's sad. It makes them impossible to play. With this system a bad HP roll only lasts as long as the level you're in. Next level you roll the whole pool again and get another shot at a higher result.


In the long run this will cause PCs Max HP to be somewhat random but also they'll always revert to the mean value. If  you roll low for two levels in a row, that's too bad, but you'll probably see a huge jump the third time. Similarly if you roll really high for a level or two you'll have outsized HP for a while, but then you'll probably have to live with the +1 HP for a couple levels until you revert back to the mean.

But what am I supposed to do?

One of the shortcomings in classic D&D is what some call the "Take Turns Having Fun" problem. More accurately, it's taking turns at doing well at something in one of D&D's two primary sub-games. Fighters and Rangers really kick-ass in combat, while Thieves really kick-ass at dungeon crawling. Clerics are more evenly divided between the sub-games depending on what spells them have prepared and Magic-Users either suck at both or dominate both depending on what level they are. Result: players spend 20 minutes watching other players being awesome while they have nothing to add.

Please note that I have no problem in inexact equality. That's the stuff of life and makes the game more authentic. But everyone wants to feel like they can help out, even if only in a small way. Helping each class find ways to help out is the topic of this post.

D&D 4E "solved" this problem by basically making every character exactly the same - they all have at-will, encounter and daily combat powers and a Skill Challenge System for dungeon crawling and wilderness/urban encounters. No one has to take turns because everyone can do anything anyone else can do using the same mechanics. That's one solution I suppose, but it's not a solution I am in favor of. One of the key strengths of classic D&D is that playing one class doesn't feel even remotely like playing any of the other classes. I like that magic works by different rules than swordplay, as you would expect magic to.

The "take turns having fun" problem is why I proposed in my previous post that some classes ought to have sub-sets of the traditional Thief skills. All classes have the same 1-in-6 chance of finding traps, but now Magic-Users can also Read Languages and Read Magic Scrolls, and Fighters and Elves can improve their climbing as they level up. An OD&D DM operating without supplements would of course be free to provide these skills at his pleasure, but since they have been provided to the Thief I have provided them to others as well to avoid the suggestion of deliberate omission. In this way more players have defined roles they can jump into in helping the dungeon crawl sub-game. All of the roleplaying and free-form opportunities, such as using iron spikes to keep a trap door from opening, of course remain.

I have a few other suggestions for improving sub-game participation. Some of them may seem radical, and I do not suggest they all be adopted en masse without careful thought, but here they are for your consideration:

1) Allow Thieves to set up attacks by others. A thief has little to offer in combat once his backstab chance has been lost. Allow him to attack a melee opponent vs. AC 10 in order to disrupt that opponent's defenses. Success grants another PC a +2 to-hit that round.

2) Improve the AC of Thieves and Monks while armed with appropriate weapons. They need it.

3) Remove the weapon restrictions from magic-users. This goes against the grain for many classic D&D players, but there are many fantasy examples of wizards using swords and other weapons (Glamdring, anyone? Even Jack Vance's Dying Earth wizards had swords. And don't forget Stormbringer). Frankly magic-users have such poor ACs and to-hit that they won't be getting mixed up in combat often anyway, but at least this way they can have a crossbow to help out with and (if cornered) can draw that sword and not be completely helpless against a couple orcs. As they level up their to-hit will fall further behind as their spells become more potent, allowing them to transition smoothly from "poor man's fighter-m/u" to arch-mage.

4) Establish some non-spell magic for Clerics and Magic-User to interrogate the magical traps and oddities found in the world's dungeons. Just as Clerics and Magic and scribe scrolls and brew potions independently of spell casting, you could have Rituals (from 4E; great idea) to perform minor divinations given time and proper components.

5) Give Clerics light-sabers and rename them "Jedi." ... just kidding. :-)

6) Most importantly, and this is more a guideline on good Dungeon Mastering than a rule, remember to not roll any Thief Skill checks or similar rules until all roleplaying and free-form problem solving options have been exhausted. This ought to be sufficient reminder to the players that D&D is first and foremost of game of player skill rather than character skill, and that good ideas sufficient to overcome any challenge faced can come from anyone.

Making items magical

There are few things as potentially destabilizing to a D&D campaign as introducing a poorly considered magical item (or, god forbid, artifact). Which is of course exactly why players want to make them - they need all the advantages they can get!

Rules for making magical items can be difficult to draft but they are somewhat necessary for a Gygaxian Naturalist DM who wants to explain where all the magic swords and rings in the campaign world came from. The most open route is to go where 3E went and have Feats, costs and markets clearly defined in the DMG. This sort of sucks the mystery out of what's supposed to be magical though. The more mysterious and magical but very restrictive answer is to say "They were made by Arch-Wizards of the Old Empire, in the days before the Art was lost. No one living today can recreate them." That's certainly very Vancian and post-apocalyptic, but it also sort of sucks the wind out of the sails of the player's enthusiasm. It also doesn't explain the abundance of consumable potions and scrolls, which you would have thought would have been all used up since the days of the Old Empire.

Just recently though I came across the fantastic idea of "Sword Spirits." 

Interactions between magic, Nature, Chaos, and the gods (at least some of which owe their own existence to a process similar to the way the universe formed) has given rise to a variety of elemental beings, not all of which are as insensate and uncaring as Nature itself. I'm currently toying with the notion that the process of metalworking, which involves (to some degree) the interaction of all four elements inadvertently gave rise to a "fifth elemental" -- spirits that are sometimes drawn into crafted objects, endowing them with magical powers and, in many cases, allow the spirit to exercise its own intelligence and will.

The hows and whys of the process I prefer to keep strange and mysterious, including why it is that these metal spirits seem to manifest most fully only when drawn into swords -- thus giving rise to their more common name: "sword spirits." But I very much like the idea that the fashioning of magic weapons isn't simply a matter of a magic-user deciding to do so by following some hoary formula that always results in a sword +1, +2 vs. lycanthropes. I want magic weapons to be, on some level, accidental in their origins, something beyond the ken of men, elves, and even dwarves (who were probably the first to notice the phenomenon). It makes magic swords special and a little bit dangerous and that's a good thing.

A very good thing indeed! Bloody brilliant. 

I would riff off this idea to say that very, very few of the permanent magical items in existence (other than maybe some older artifacts created by the Old Empire of course) were created completely on purpose. At most the caster can influence type of spirit summoned into the item, but the final abilities would be somewhat random. Naturally we would have random charts to determine the results!

Quickly categorizing items

Scrolls, potions, dusts and creams - anything of the "Use once" variety - should be producible without too much difficulty. A good start might be one week and 100 gp/level for making scrolls. Potions and reagents would take a similar amount of time but require a stocked Alchemistry lab and cost more. The DM can of course also limit the ability to make these items by restricting access to the necessary materials. "Yes, you have the money - but no one has a roc feather quill to sell you! And aren't you out of weresquid ink?"

Permanent items would need a master craftsman (probably not the wizard), the finest materials, and the right invocations. Costs would be high. At the end of the crafting and casting a Sword Spirit is summoned and hopefully decides to reside in the item (insert chance of failure here). If it does reside in the item the DM should roll for the puissance (+1 to +5), alignment and Intelligence (if any) and abilities of the spirit in the item.

As an example of influence might be, say you wanted to create an enchantment/charm item - try including a branch from a Dryad's tree freely given, or if you wanted to make an item good vs. lyncanthropes you might toss in the tears of a werewolf's victim and a sacrifice to the Moon goddess. The DM would value the worth of the "influence" and you get the result you want if you roll within +/- X% on the chart.

As for charged items, I am not a big fan. A Wand of Fireballs should, in my opinion, increase the damage, range or area of effect of the Fireballs you cast, not have Fireballs within it. But if you wanted charged items by the book I would make them halfway between scrolls and permanent items.

Just one of the gang now

In my previous posts I have argued that the Thief was the first made-for-D&D class because it included rules for D&D's second sub-game, the dungeon crawl, whereas "the Chainmail classes" just had rules for combat. I also pointed out that this variance-at-rules was precisely what made the Thief a "problem" to many old school gamers. What should have been part of the rule system was introduced as a class ability by accident, setting the stage for Thief Skills and (eventually) the Skill System in 3e/4e. For anyone committed to D&D's class-based advancement system (as I am) this was obviously all an unthinking mistake, and so this post is my first draft proposal of a D&D alt.history where the Thief was created in concordance with its fellow classes.

Note that the proposals in this post will reflect the specifics of the Labyrinth Lord rules, as its free PDF is what I have available both at home and office. Adapting it to your preferred flavor of D&D should not be a difficult project.

* * *

This post will be organized in three sections: Thieves, New Rule Systems and Further Suggested Changes. The Thieves section will present a Thief class with abilities and probabilities much the same as a standard Thief, but in a manner integrated with the D&D rule set. The new rule systems presented will provide rules modifying or adding generic mechanics to the Movement & Exploration rules all classes may try their hand at. The last section, Further Suggested Changes, will suggest a few changes to the other classes in the game so they may take advantage of the New Rule Systems with class-specific degrees of competency.

Thieves
Prime Requisite: Dex
HD: 1d4
Maximum Level: None

Backstab: A Thief who attacks his target while the target is Surprised (relative to the Thief; the target may be aware of third parties) receives a +4 bonus to-hit and multiplies damage by x2.

Sneaky: Thieves walk quietly and keep to the shadows out of habit as much as anything. While wearing armor no heavier than leather and no shield, and otherwise dressed and shod appropriately at the DM's discretion, the Thief surprises an opponent on 1-3. This increases to 1-4 at 7th level, 1-5 at 11th level and 1-6 at 14th level. At 14th level and above 2d6 is rolled; if both are 6 the attempt still fails. This chance may always be improved or reduced by circumstances or the senses of the Thief's adversary.

Adept Climber: While wearing no or Leather armor and no Shield Thieves subtract +1/2 per Level from their DEX Check when Climbing.

Adroit Technician: A Thief's ability to find hidden door and traps, disable traps and pick locks improves to 1-2 at 3rd level, 1-3 at 6th level, 1-4 at 8th, 1-5 at 10th and 1-6 at 13th. At 13th level and above 2d6 is rolled; if both are 6 the attempt still fails.

Hear Noise: Laying in wait, a Thief's keen ears picks up what others cannot. A Thief begins at 1st level with a 1-2/6 chance of detecting faint noise, the same as an elf. This improves to 1-3 at 3rd level, 1-4 at 6th and 1-5 at 10th.

Sneaky v. Hear Noise: Lower successful roll wins.

Read Languages: Thieves have double the normal chance to Read Languages.

Pick Pockets: The "other" signature ability of the Thief, Thieves can attempt relieve targets of finger rings, pocket contents or purse with the slightest bump. They can also use this skill to palm small items or perform other minor feats of legerdemain, such as swapping a fair dice for a weighted one before rolling on the craps table. Success is rolling a 1-2 on 6, improving to 1-3 at 6th level, 1-4 at 8th level, 1-5 at 10th and 1-6 at 12th. Targets of 10th level or higher reduce the odds of success by 1. If the Thief fails or rolls a 6, roll again for each target or observer. A 6 on any of the secondary rolls results in being noticed!

Build Thief Den: Per LL.

New Rule Systems (or Modifications)

Surprise

Chance to Gain Surprise

Unarmored or Leather Armor: 1-2/6

Armored in Lamellar, Mail or Plate: 1/6

Ambush: The Surprise rules assume that each side is behaving "normally", either walking or talking at normal volumes. If one side remains still and is particularly quiet however, due to deliberate attempts to hide their presence, then their chance of being surprised is reduced by 1 and their chance of gaining surprise is increase by 2.

Once you've been seen ...: No adventurer can regain Surprise once the target is aware of you, but you may be able to Surprise a target who is aware of third parties. By example, a Thief lying in wait behind a rain barrel may gain Surprise against a passing guardsman whose attention is focused on the Thief's accomplices further down the way.

It's Always the Dwarf's Fault: A group of characters moving together uses the worst Surprise roll of any member of its group.

Spells:

Invisible grants +1 to Surprise.

Silence grants +1 to Surprise.

Faerie Fire and More Cowbell makes Surprise impossible.

Ascending & Climbing (replaced Climbing rules on p. 48)

Ascending means ascending any slope or stair more than 25 degrees above level, but less than the steepness where you can reach your hand straight out and touch the surface you are ascending. You move both Forward and Upwards at 3/4 your normal movement rate. No check is necessary to succeed.

Climbing means climbing any slope or stair so steep you can reach straight out with your hand and touch the surface you are climbing, or steeper. You move Upwards at 1/4 your normal movement rate and Forwards very little if at all (ask your DM if you must know). Roll a DEX check to climb safely 100' or less (longer climbs will require more rolls, possibly with penalties for exhaustion). Failure means a fall from 1/2 the maximum height.

Common Climbing Modifiers:

Ladder, Knotted Rope, Rope Descent Automatic Success

Rope Climb (Grappling Hook, Pitons) -3

Windows & Ledges, Steep Cliff +0

Sheer Cliff, Castle Wall, Pit +3

Strange Languages & Magical Scrolls

Over the course of many adventures, adventures pick up many bits of lore and are exposed to many strange dialects and tongues.

Reading Languages: If an adventurer finds a map or document whose writings are not wholly alien to him (meaning the writings are based on a language related to languages he has been exposed to before) he may attempt to puzzle out its meaning. The chance of success is equal to (5+Additional Langues * Level)%, to a maximum of 80%. Success indicates that he has translated a % of the work equal to his odds of success.

Magical Scrolls: Any adventurer over 3rd level may attempt to use a magical scroll (magic-user, elven or clerical), however the odds of success are only (5+Additional Langues * Level)%, to a maximum of 90%. Failure can result in the spell fizzling out, being cast horribly awry, exploding, or such other result as your DM may determine.

Locks, Traps & Trap Detection (replaces rules from Labyrinth Rules)

Characters of all classes can search for and attempt to disable non-magical traps. All characters except dwarves can succeed in spotting a trap on a roll of 1 on 1d6. Dwarves succeed on a roll of 1 or 2 on 1d6. Players must declare that their characters are actively looking for traps, and they must be looking in the right place. This roll may only be made once in a particular location, and it takes 1 turn per effort made. The Labyrinth Lord secretly rolls the dice for these checks, because the players will never know if they failed to find the trap or if there is not one present.

Traps have specific triggers, whether it is opening a door or walking over a particular area. Every time a character makes an action that could trigger a trap (including any attempt to disable it), the Labyrinth Lord rolls 1d6. A result of 1 or 2 indicates that the trap springs.

Characters with the proper tools may attempt to pick open a locked door or chest without breaking the lock. The odds of success are 1 in 6. Each character may only attempt to pick a particular lock once per character level. Picking a lock requires 1 round of effort.

Further Suggested Changes

Elf

Graceful Climber: While wearing no or Leather armor and no Shield Elves subtract their DEX modifier and +1/4 per Level from their DEX Check when Climbing.

Fighter

Strong Climber: Fighters roll a STR check to climb. Further, if they are wearing no or Leather armor and no Shield Fighters subtract +1/4 per Level from their STR Check when Climbing.

Halfling

Small: Halflings are easy to miss. In natural surface environments they Surprise on a 1-5. In cities or dungeons they improve their otherwise normal chance for surprising an opponent by 1.

Magic-User

Read Languages: A Magic-User has double the normal chance of Reading Languages, to a maximum of 90%. Further he not limited to languages "not wholly alien" for his arcane training has trained his mind to hold the underlying fundamental patterns of the universe, of which all languages are a mere subset.

Magical Scrolls: A magic-user or elven scroll the magic-user has scribed himself or cast Read Magic on has no chance of failure when read.

D&D's misplaced "dungeon crawl" rules

In my previous post I argued that the Thief was the first true D&D class, as the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric were very much still Chainmail classes[1] playing in a D&D game. The Cliff Notes version of that contention was this:

1. Chainmail was a combat game, while D&D was a roleplaying game with both combat and dungeon exploration elements.
2. The Thief was the first class to have a significant chunk of rules dedicated to both of D&D's major sub-games. The others were combat only.

The focus of this post is how the Thief's skills were (poorly) integrated into the D&D game and how it could have been done in a different and better way.

It was a Class Skill; It should have been a Rule System

For reasons I am not aware of it was decided that certain skills (such as opening locks, finding traps, etc.) would be presented as a skill exclusive to members of the Thief class, and not as a generic ability to which D&D Thieves would have preferential access. Contrast that with the D&D combat system, where even the Magic-User is presented with a to-hit advancement table regardless of his suitability for engaging in melee combat. The Cleric and Thief can make fighting retreats. Could you imagine if the entire combat chapter had instead been presented as Fighter/Cleric class abilities which the Thief and Magic-User simply didn't have access to?

I think most D&D players view the stats, saving throw and combat systems of D&D in much the same way that surfers view water. It is the medium on which the activity is engaged in, and while it is oft discussed its centrality and importance to all participants is never deeply questioned. The Thief skill system sticks out like a sore thumb because it is central and important to only one of the classes and none of the others. This is particularly problematic because opening locks and removing traps are non-magical skills that every D&D character has a vested interest in learning to some degree, for survival reasons if no other. More specialized or arcane abilities, such as spellcasting or weapon specialization make better candidates for class abilities than the ability to "climb walls."

You can also contrast the Thief skills with the Open Doors rule under the Strength Table. Everyone can Open Doors, because really, how hard is it to put your shoulder into a stuck door and give it a shove? Yet apparently the ability to stick a piton into a trap mechanism is something that only Thieves are good enough to have a rule for. Everyone else has to roleplay it out and have the DM make an ad hoc judgment.

Lastly, take a moment to contrast the Thief Skills with Saving Throws. Everyone can try to save vs. Death or Breath Weapon. We don't expect all classes to be equally good at these things, but saving vs. perilous encounters is at the heart and soul of a good dungeon crawl and is essential to D&D. It only makes perfect sense (from a game design point of view) that an activity which all players would engage in from time to time would have mechanics that apply to all players. Saving Throws are generic mechanics, just like combat and stats.

So why do these three generic mechancis, the combat system, the saving throw system and the stat tables, apply to all classes when Thief skills are a class ability? Why should the "Dungeon Exploration System" (as I think of Thief skills) be any different when "dungeon exploration" is something that everyone engages in? I can't think of any reason, and I think presenting it as such in Supplement I set D&D off in a poor direction that would take until 4E to really rectify.

Oh, let's just get rid of the Thief after all...

You're entitled to that opinion, but I think there's a very good argument for having rule to mediate activities which (1) come up a lot during typical D&D adventures and (2) have meaningful consequences as to success and failure. We don't need rules for running a Ye Olde Dry Goods Shoppe because that doesn't come up often (typically). If it's ever necessary DM hand-waiving or rolling a d100 to reflect how well business is doing is good enough.

We also don't need rules for cooking meals and doing the necessaries. We sort of assume those things happen at regular intervals during D&D, but you really shouldn't have to worry about losing HP or Saving v. Paralysis during these activities (we hope).

Moving Silently, Detecting Traps and Opening Locks however (1) come up a lot during typical D&D adventures and (2) can kill you if you do it wrong. Just like combat and Save v. Poison. We could benefit from rules for that.

A "TSR D&D" Dungeon Crawl System (DCS)

The purpose of this section is to propose a collection of rules (grandiosely referred to as "the DCS" because it makes me feel virile) which all classes can participate in, just as all classes have rules for combat mechanics and saving throws. It should be compatible with any pre-d20 version of D&D.

The simplest method would be to present the DCS an advancing table of static numbers from 1 to 100 that the player would seek to roll under on a d100. Essentially you draft a Thief skills table for each of the classes. Include racial modifiers if playing AD&D. The Thief would still be the best in most, but a Wizard might start with a better pick pockets (street magic practice) and Read Languages. Fighters could start with a good climb walls. Some skills, such as Open Locks might be considered specialized enough that only the Thief would have a score above 1% (everyone would have at least a 1% shot) at 1st level. We nix Move Silently and just note that Thieves get a +1 to Surprise when travelling alone or solely with halflings, elves, and other thieves none of them in metal armor. It's the mirror image of the Ranger ability, and they cancel each other out (until 5th level, when it becomes +2, then +3 at 10th, etc.).

The other method (and my preferred one, because it's easier for the DM to modify for task-specific difficulty) is to present a "to hit" table for each of the skills (we still nix Move Silently though) according to each of the classes' abilities. Thieves might start with +5 CW, +2 Open Locks, etc. Modify with the appropriate Dex or Str modifiers only. The system would work like this:

DM: Describes what the PCs can perceive. "There's a trap."
PCs: Describes what they want to achieve and their plan for doing it. "We disable it by sticking this iron helmet in the gears."
DM: Determines whether the PC's actions warrant a roll. "OK. Roll for Traps. Beat a 10."
PCs: {Rolls 2d6+modifiers} "Crap!"
DM: {Maniacal Laughter} The gears suck the helmet through and crush it like an empty Miller Lite under a Frost Giant's boots. With a groan of ancient lumber and a shriek of rusty iron wheels the ceiling begins to descend and the port cullis slams shut behind you. What now, hot shots? {Evil Chuckling}

The part in italics is critical. If the player cannot describe what his character is doing there's no way to earn a roll. The bold & italics bit is the core mechanic of this rule. Each thief skill category would have a defined failure mode (e.g., Traps that aren't disarmed "go off" on 1-3/6. Or 1-5/6 if you hate players.).

I don't have it all worked out, but I think Move Silently and Hide in Shadows should be eliminated. They would be replaced by a Thief class ability (Sneaky) to improve Surprise (+1 at 1st, +2 at 4th, +3 at 8th, etc.). They are the opposite of the Ranger's ability Wary. All of the other class abilities should be available to everyone at some point, except possibly Read Magic Scrolls (and that depends on your campaign world preferences).

From an organizational point of view I think these rules should go near the movement, vision and encumbrance rules.

Preserving the OD&D Trap-Solution Methods

I do want to emphasize that this system would not replace role playing with roll playing. First, as I mentioned above, sufficient role play interaction with the environment to state a plan and goal is necessary to even get a roll.

Secondly, I recognize that exercising one's wits to be essential to playing D&D. D&D has a long history of presenting players with challenges (rather than their characters) and I wish no hard to that tradition.My second point regarding the preservation of old school riddles however cannot be found in any rule, and must be found at the dungeon design stage of gaming (which is the individual DM's responsibility, not the game designer's). Any adventure should contain a mix of "Locked door. Do you have Thieves picks?" rolls and player-directed (rather than character-directed) challenges. And player-directed challenges should often be fully resolvable without the need for a roll.
By example, imagine two trap rooms. One can only be disabled by carefully manipulating the gears of the trap. This would call for a roll of some dice. The other room can be escaped by breaking one of four magic mirrors (but the other three will release poison gas into the room). It would be up to the players to determine which mirror to break, but once the decision is made no roll would be necessary. The DES will not help you with this puzzle, or ones related to random teleportation. Only good brain work can help a player in this regard.

It's not a Generic "Skill System", nor a Universal Mechanic

As a last point, please note that this would be a limited set of adventuring related skills - not an open ended skill system (like 3E, with its Perform, Craft and Profession) or any kind of stupid universal mechanic. Secondary avocations are not what the system is trying to model, and I suggest C&C's Secondary Skills or AD&D's Non-Weapon Proficiencies if that's what you want. I speak only of those activities which D&D adventurers actually engage in as part of their "primary job" of adventuring. It largely overlaps with Thief skills and might also include basic first aid, map-making and parlay rules.

[1] Yes, I am aware that there was no Cleric class in Chainmail and that the Cleric was developed by Dave Arneson as part of his proto-D&D Blackmoor campaign. Nevertheless, the Cleric is primarily a Fighter with some abilities tuned to protective magic and combatting the undead. His rules are still primarily related to combat and he would make a decent Chainmail class.

Regarding the first D&D class, the Thief

Before Dungeons & Dragons (1974) there was Chainmail, Gary Gygax's miniatures wargame released by TSR in 1971. As a wargame it had various types of fighter units, and its fantasy supplement included many spells that would make a reappearance in D&D three years later. It was on this foundation that Dave Arneson built his world changing Blackmoor campaign.

The Blackmoor campaign would be world changing, but in 1974 that was hardly a foregone conclusion. What was already established though in 1974 was that Arneson's house rules fundamentally changed a Chainmail player's viewpoint from "omniscient general" to a limited first-person viewpoint in the form a single player character, while simultaneously expanding the possibilities of the game's milieu from fixed set battles to everything imaginably achievable by a fantasy hero within a fantasy world. Combat between player characters and their fantastic foes then became a sub-game within a much larger game.

Combat would not be the only sub-game in D&D however. Dave Arneson's other great contribution to the game was the idea of the dungeon delve itself. Exploring the dungeon became "the other subgame", and rules such as movement rates (which were in Chainmail, but adapted to dungeon environments), range of vision, equipment and encumbrance, surprise and wandering monster tables, etc. etc. were developed to faciliate a rules-based interraction between the players and their environment.

What is so interesting (to me) about the dungeon delve experience however is what rules were missing. In fact most interractions between the players and their environment was not mediated by rules but solely through the DM by means of open ended questions, answers and player actions.

PC: "What do I see?"

DM: "The hallway proceeds in front of you beyond the range of your Light spell. A large flagstone about 10' in front of you is obviously about 1" lower than the rest of the floor."

PC: "Can I poke it with my 10' pole?"

And so on. It is free form, open ended, and subjective. If the players prodded locked doors or booby-trapped idols it resided solely with the DM's discretion as to whether or not the task was performed with the level of skill and care necessary to avoid nasty blowback. Many a PC died due to their player not having demonstrated sufficient attention to whether the floor the PC was walking on contained a pit trap.

But then came Supplement I: Greyhawk, and a class not existing in the Chainmail rules but made specifically for D&D - the Thief. In fact, I would say that the Thief was the first D&D class, as the others were really Chainmail classes ported over to D&D but only half "converted" to the D&D game. Unlike the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric the Thief not only had HD, to-hit advancement saving throws compatible with the combat rules (even if he sucked at combat), but he also had codified non-combat skills directly applicable to a game of dungeon exploration. Unlike the 10' pole users the Thief's player interrfaced with the dungeon through rules:

Thief: "What do I see?"

DM: "The hallway proceeds in front of you beyond the range of your Light spell. A large flagstone about 10' in front of you is obviously about 1" lower than the rest of the floor."

PC: "Ok, I'm going to roll for Find Traps."

And I think this is why many old school gamers have a problem with the Thief. The Chainmail classes were designed for wargaming, and so the only D&D sub-game where their players could interface with the world using codified, more or less complete rules was combat. When it came to D&D's dungeon exploration sub-game they were required to interract with the world solely through role playing, but the Thief wasn't. The Thief class was interracting with the dungeon exploration sub-game in a new way, and, more importantly, in a manner that the other class's players could not match or meanigfully participate in.

Was this a good change? Obviously the answer to that is subjective, but I think the enduring popularity of the Thief class as one of "the Big Four" classes through all editions of D&D rules after Supplement I is strong evidence that the majority of players want to interface with the dungeon exploration sub-game (particularly its sundry traps, deep pits and locked doors) through a ruleset that's at least semi-objective and condified. So from a "wisdom of crowds" point of view I feel confident saying it was a good change.

But it could have been better. In my next post I will argue that Supplement I should have presented not just the Thief, but also a unified Skill System and rules for "converting" the Fighter, Magic-User and Cleric to being fully integrated D&D classes.

D&D's Various Skill Systems

A perennial conversation within the D&D community is on the necessity and worth of various Skill Systems (apart from the PC's skills at melee combat and spellcasting). I think this quote from Dragonsfoot (third post down) is mandatory reading for anyone who has an opinion on the matter:

I am firmly in the camp that D&D does not need a skill system. As mentioned before, the DM can adjudicate a fair outcome for any action the PC takes even if it is not specifically covered under the class skills. The tools are already there, (attribute checks, saving throws, "to hit" rolls, common sense, etc...) and because there are infinite possibilities for players to try different things under a variety of circumstances, you will need to use those tools in many cases regardless of the presence of a skill system. Any class/skill system only gets you so far. They simplify the common mechanics, acting as a baseline for resolving many of the actions that are likely to take place in the game. They are are not designed to be an all encompassing umbrella for every single possible action a player takes, nor should they be. The game will often step outside the box of class or skills and there the DM is free to use creativity to resolve the action in a fair and fun manner. What skill should there be for kicking a table on its side for cover in a barroom brawl? or swinging down from the balcony on a tapestry into a knotted melee below? or rigging some pans on a wire to a door as an alarm against entry? or snatching a pack from a rushing river before it is swept away over a waterfall?

Emphasis added.

Anyone who wants to design a Skill System for D&D must first ask themselves: what in-game world-vs.-PC interractions am I trying to describe? What sub-game is this rule designed for? Is it supposed to function at the role play level? Within the combat engine? Am I introducing a new sub-game? Will everyone be able to participate in this game as fully as they do in role playing and combat? Etc.

D&D is a free form game where the player characters can go anywhere and do anything, to the limits of their resources and abilities. There is no possible way you can develop a simple, short and easy to implement skill system that can address all possible scenarios (which is why univeral mechanics are stupid). Or did you think saving vs. paralysis is really that similar to managing a banana plantation? The best system I have seen for addressing "everything else" is AD&D 2E's Non-Weapon Proficiency system (a.k.a., Secondary Skills in rule sets written by E. Gary Gygax), but precisely because it's really just a soft gloss on "other stuff PCs know" that is heavily dependent on DM adjudication. It's no combat engine.

However, that being said, while the AD&D 3.x Skill System was a step down from Non-Weapon Proficiencies in design quality (it was a gory mess bleeding across multiple sub-games), the AD&D 4E system was an improvement from there (even if it was a huge change in direction from the OD&D through AD&D 2E era). The designers of 4E realized that dungeon, wilderness and urban adventuring could be rule-mediated sub-games apart from roleplaying. The Skills thus defined how players interacted with these scenarios, and most of the bases were covered. This was the logic of the Thief Skills and the Ranger's tracking ability generalized to all classes.

But even 4E does not have a single "skill system" which mediates all player interraction with the world. Fighters and Barbarians can "open locks" with their war hammer, and a Wizard with a Knock spell. Further there are skills quite outside the skill system, such as the Wizard's ability to scribe scrolls (a rule descended all the way from Holmes Basic D&D). And there are many more, in the sense that the characters have a "skill" that allows them to accomplish an in-game effect.

D&D doesn't, and never had, a skill system. It has many, and as long as D&D is a roleplaying game, where players can attempt any action within their resources and abilties, that will always be the case.