Colour Pie Subclasses

Idraluna* added flavours to OD&D Magic-Users using the five colour system from Magic: The Gathering to group spells into schools. The colour pie is an incredibly elegant thing and it maps very well to OD&D magic because you can map the colors to just about anything. It helps that spells are exactly what it was designed for in the first place, but it uses broad philosophies rather than strict definitions, so it's very widely applicable.

*The chain of inspiration goes deeper if you follow the links in that blog, but it's the post that directly inspired this.

Almost the colour pie, but it's actually just a coloured pie graph that happened to be CC licensed.

Not only did Idraluna apply the colours to spells, but to the Magic-Users themselves. They have to wear colour-coded robes and can only cast their colour's spells. Each colour was also given one innate power, effectively making five subclasses of Magic-User.

This works pretty well with my philosophies around class design. There's options, but it's still pretty broad. The colours of Magic-User can roughly map to modern understandings of Clerics, Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerers and Druids, but there's plenty of wiggle room in there to be your own character instead of the prescribed stereotype.

I liked this so much I wanted to create similar subclass systems for other classes. I began with Fighting-Men. I workshopped a selection of four or five fighting disciplines that functioned similarly. The core class remains the same, but the fighting discipline modifies it in some broad flavourful way while having a set of tools available that has some crossover with other subclasses (spells for casters, weapons for fighters). I came up with Military, Religious, Martial Art, Barbarian, and Competitive archetypes I wanted to cover, but it still just didn't feel right. The closest I got to something I liked was a trio, with trained fighters (soldiers, knights, gladiators), ascetic fighters (monks, paladins, barbarians) and those who fight dirty (rogues, brawlers, swashbucklers). That almost maps to alignments, which I think is neat, but it still wasn't quite where I wanted it to be.

At some point it suddenly struck me that I'd been missing the obvious: just use the exact same subclasses as Magic-Users. This can apply to the Fighter and the Expert (Thief/Specialist).

The subclasses for all classes are White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green.

Fighters

Here are some Fighter subclasses I threw together. They are quick and untested and I opted for evenly spread passive bonuses to encourage certain styles rather than active abilities - partly because I feel like an active ability defines the character too narrowly (again, I like classes with wiggle room). Note that these are designed for something like Chainmail, where +1 is fairly significant (and simultaneous turns are relevant to a handful). In other systems, granting advantage might be more appropriate.

White Fighters are knights, soldiers, paladins. They fight as part of a collective, for order. 

• +1 to melee when fighting as part of a formation or close group.
• +1 to missile fire when firing as part of a volley.
• -1 to melee when caught alone.

Blue Fighters are commanders, duelists, weapon masters. They are well-studied experts in fighting.

• +1 to melee for one turn after successfully dodging or parrying.
• +1 to missile fire at long range.
• -1 to melee for one turn after taking a hit.

Black Fighters are rogues, brawlers, ruffians. They fight to win and will do whatever it takes to survive.

• +1 to underhanded moves in combat and while catching the opponent off guard (flanking, attacking while stunned etc).
• +1 to missile fire while unseen.
• -1 to melee when you don't have an escape route.

Red Fighters are berserkers, renegades, dervishes. They fight uninhibited, striking with passion (or reckless abandon, depending on your perspective).

• +1 to melee when fighting in light armor (or none).
• +1 to missile fire when close enough to the target to be at risk of a charge.
• -1 to melee when your opponent moved toward you this turn and you did not move toward them.

Green Fighters are barbarians, rangers, hunters. They fight with their instincts, knowing their capability as a predator.

• +1 to melee versus creatures significantly larger than you.
• +1 to missile fire versus creatures that are flying or climbing.
• -1 to melee when outnumbered.

Experts

This is a bit of a tricky one because I'm gearing it toward an Expert class that could have any set of skills like the one I did for DCC. That's why it's the Expert, not the Thief. In contrast to Fighters where I didn't feel it was appropriate to solidify one archetype as the colour's title, the titles here are still broad enough to encompass any Expert skillset.

It's also assuming 7-in-6 odds. Again, other systems will need their "+1" to be something else.

White Experts are Initiates, part of a cooperative guild or some other organization or community. As skilled cooperators, they are granted a +1 when their skill check directly enables someone else's action or protects them.

Blue Experts are Students, often formally trained and in the pursuit of knowledge. As academics, they perform best when they have time to study. Performing one extra dungeon turn of observation, research, or prep before making their skill check grants a +1.

Black Experts are Professionals, doing what they are best at for personal gain. Their skill checks are granted a +1 when their actions put someone else at risk, or someone else takes the heat.

Red Experts are Mavericks, maybe not doing things the conventional way, but certainly doing it with aplomb. Skill checks get a +1 under pressure, immediate danger, or during combat.

Green Experts are Improvisers, working with what they are given. They get a +1 to all skill checks for which they need to improvise.

Dwarves are more interested in gold

"... the player must make an offer to tempt the desired character type into his service. As a rule of thumb, a minimum offer of 100 Gold Pieces would be required to tempt a human into service, dwarves are more interested in gold, Magic-Users and elves desire magical items, and Clerics want some assurance of having a place of worship in which to house themselves."

- Men & Magic, p. 12

This line from Volume 1 of the original little brown books stands out to me. "Dwarves are more interested in gold."

Apparently the common consensus is that this means dwarves want more gold than other races to be hired. This makes sense, as dwarves have advantages that make them extra useful as a hireling.

On the other hand, my first reading of this was that dwarves would be more pleased with gold than other races. If you were to offer 100gp to a human and to a dwarf, the dwarf would be more interested. Which is to say, you could actually get away with paying them less.

Just one of many cases in OD&D where the conversational, example-driven text leads to massive ambiguity about what the actual rule is supposed to be, though one I hadn't seen anyone talk about specifically. In this case, complete opposite interpretations can both adhere to the text, "rules as written".

Discovering Spells in OD&D's Empty Spaces

Salty Goo's GLoG magic gives each spell a combination of two words which make up the essence of the spell. Kind of like these spells but backwards, where the spell comes first and the words come later. The important thing is, you can use these words to mix and match and create new spells.

I thought that was an awesome mechanic, so I defined a bunch of spell words for all the spells in OD&D (plus Turn Undead, so it can be treated as a spell), because that's the game I'm currently fixated on. I iterated on this a few times to reduce the overall number of words - you'll see why underneath the complete word list below.

Some spell words.

The Spells and their Words

1. Animate Dead - animate + dead
2. Anti-Magic Shell - nullify + magic
3. Bless - divine + enhance
4. Cause Disease - create + disease
5. Cause Light Wounds - create + harm
6. Cause Serious Wounds - create + harm
7. Charm Monster - charm + monster
8. Charm Person - charm + person
9. Clairaudience - distant + sound
10. Clairvoyance - distant + sight
11. Cloudkill - cloud + death
12. Commune - divine + speak
13. Confusion - impair + knowledge
14. Conjure Elemental - conjure + elemental
15. Contact Higher Plane - divine + speak
16. Continual Dark - everlasting + dark
17. Continual Light - everlasting + light
18. Control Weather - control + weather
19. Create Food - create + food
20. Create Water - create + water
21. Cure Disease - heal + disease
22. Cure Light Wounds - heal + harm
23. Cure Serious Wounds - heal + harm
24. Curse - divine + impair
25. Dark - create + dark
26. Death Spell - creature + death
27. Detect Evil - detect + evil
28. Detect Good - detect + good
29. Detect Invisible - detect + invisible
30. Detect Magic - detect + magic
31. Dimension Door - dimension + door
32. Disintegrate - make + dust
33. Dispell Evil - dispel + evil
34. Dispell Good - dispel + good
35. Dispell Magic - dispel + magic
36. ESP - sense + thought
37. Feeblemind - impair + mind
38. Find Traps - detect + trap
39. Finger of Death - make + dead
40. Fire Ball - projectile + fire
41. Fly - air + move
42. Geas - quest + death
43. Growth/Animal - animal + grow
44. Growth/Plant - plant + grow
45. Hallucinatory Terrain - illusion + area
46. Haste Spell - enhance + speed
47. Hold Monster - hold + monster
48. Hold Person - hold + person
49. Hold Portal - ward + door
50. Infravision - enhance + sight
51. Insect Plague - insect + plague
52. Invisibility - person + invisible
53. Invisibility, 10' r. - invisible + area
54. Invisible Stalker - invisible + person
55. Knock - open + door
56. Levitate - levitate + self
57. Light - create + light
58. Lightning Bolt - projectile + lightning
59. Locate Object - detect + object
60. Lower Water - reduce + water
61. Magic Jar - soul + container
62. Massmorph - morph + area
63. Move Earth - move + earth
64. Neutralize Poison - nullify + poison
65. Part Water - part + water
66. Pass-Wall - part + wall
67. Phantasmal Forces - illusion + force
68. Polymorph Others - morph + person
69. Polymorph Self - morph + self
70. Projected Image - illusion + sight
71. Protection/Evil - repel + evil*
72. Protection/Evil, 10' r. - good + area*
73. Protection/Good - repel + good*
74. Protection/Good, 10'r. - evil + area*
75. Protection/Normal Missiles - repel + projectile
76. Purify Food & Water - purify + food
77. Putrefy Food & Water - taint + food
78. Quest - quest + curse
79. Raise Dead - heal + dead
80. Read Languages - read + language
81. Read Magic - read + magic
82. Reincarnation - new + body
83. Remove Curse - nullify + curse
84. Sleep - creature + sleep
85. Slow Spell - impair + speed
86. Speak with Animals - speak + animal
87. Speak with plants - speak + plant
88. Stone-Flesh - stone + flesh
89. Telekenesis - distant + force
90. Teleport - distant + location
91. Transmute Rock-Mud - stone + mud
92. Turn sticks to snakes - stick + snake
93. Turn undead - repel + undead
94. Wall of Fire - wall + fire
95. Wall of Ice - wall + ice
96. Wall of Iron - wall + iron
97. Wall of Stone - wall + stone
98. Water Breathing - water + breathe
99. Wizard Eye - sight + move
100. Wizard Lock - close + lock

*Protection from evil/good and its AoE equivalents are given entirely different words. This does two things: solidifies their status as distinct spells rather than two power levels of the same spell, and also gives Clerics/Anticlerics access to the words for both good and evil. Of course, the way they use those words is restricted by their faith.

The Word List

The colored emojis by the words denote which classes have access to that word through their listed spells - 🔵Wizards, ⚪Clerics and ⚫Anticlerics. Word restrictions could be because they are forbidden, kept secret, impossible for their kind of magic, taboo, undiscovered, or simply not practiced by that particular tradition.

1. Air 🔵
2. Animal 🔵⚪⚫
3. Animate 🔵
4. Area 🔵⚪⚫
5. Body 🔵
6. Breathe 🔵
7. Charm 🔵
8. Close 🔵
9. Cloud 🔵
10. Conjure 🔵
11. Container 🔵
12. Control 🔵
13. Create 🔵⚪⚫
14. Creature 🔵
15. Curse 🔵⚪⚫
16. Dark⚫
17. Dead 🔵⚪⚫
18. Death 🔵
19. Detect 🔵⚪⚫
20. Dimension 🔵
21. Distant 🔵
22. Disease ⚪⚫
23. Dispel 🔵⚪⚫
24. Divine 🔵⚪⚫
25. Door 🔵
26. Dust 🔵
27. Earth 🔵
28. Elemental 🔵
29. Enhance 🔵⚪
30. Everlasting 🔵⚪⚫
31. Evil 🔵⚪⚫
32. Fire 🔵
33. Flesh 🔵
34. Food ⚪⚫
35. Force 🔵
36. Good 🔵⚪⚫
37. Grow 🔵
38. Harm⚪⚫
39. Heal ⚪
40. Hold 🔵⚪⚫
41. Ice 🔵
42. Illusion 🔵
43. Impair 🔵
44. Insect ⚪⚫
45. Invisible 🔵
46. Iron 🔵
47. Knowledge 🔵
48. Language 🔵
49. Levitate 🔵
50. Light 🔵⚪
51. Lightning 🔵
52. Location 🔵
53. Lock 🔵
54. Magic 🔵⚪⚫
55. Make 🔵⚫
56. Mind 🔵
57. Monster 🔵
58. Morph 🔵
59. Move 🔵
60. Mud 🔵
61. New 🔵
62. Nullify 🔵⚪⚫
63. Object 🔵⚪⚫
64. Open 🔵
65. Part 🔵
66. Person 🔵⚪
67. Plague ⚪⚫
68. Plant 🔵⚪
69. Poison ⚪⚫
70. Projectile 🔵
71. Purify ⚪
72. Quest 🔵⚪⚫
73. Read 🔵
74. Reduce 🔵
75. Repel 🔵⚪⚫
76. Self 🔵
77. Sense 🔵
78. Soul 🔵
79. Sound 🔵
80. Sight 🔵
81. Sleep 🔵
82. Snake⚪⚫
83. Speak 🔵⚪⚫
84. Speed 🔵
85. Stick ⚪⚫
86. Stone 🔵
87. Taint⚫
88. Trap ⚪⚫
89. Thought 🔵
90. Undead ⚪
91. Wall 🔵
92. Ward 🔵
93. Water 🔵⚪⚫
94. Weather 🔵

But why?

So that's 94 words to make up all the spells in OD&D. Ignoring the handful of duplicates (multiple spells are allowed to use the same combination of words) this creates a "wordspace" of 8742 combinations of words - or at the very minimum, 4465 if you don't consider "fire + projectile" and "projectile + fire" to be different.

And yet the wizards and clerics of the world have only discovered 100 spells. There are between 4365 and 8642 completely unused spells worth of wordspace in the magical continuum. And that's assuming they've discovered all the words, and that new ones couldn't mutate.

• 🔵Wizards have a vast library, but they are not able to cast any spells with Dark, Disease, Food, Harm, Heal, Insect, Plague, Poison, Purify, Snake, Stick, Taint, Trap, or Undead.
• ⚪Clerics are much more restricted, having access to only 34 words, but several of those words are inaccessible to Wizards. They exclusively have access to the Heal and Purify words, and also Undead which they use for their Turn Undead ability.
• ⚫Anticlerics mostly have the same words as Clerics, minus Enhance, Heal, Purify, and (bizarrely) Undead. They have access to Make, which Clerics don't, through the Finger of Death. They have exclusive access to the Dark and Taint words, making them the class which can literally bring darkness and corruption to the world.

With those restrictions in mind, let's do like this guy and discover some theoretical magic. I'll kick this off with some random rolls.

food + stick: An excellent first roll. This Cleric/Anticleric word combination produces the fearsome spell Conjure Banana.

door + dark: A Wizard would need to steal an Anticleric's spell (or vice versa) for this combo to be possible, as sharing spells between disciplines is almost universally forbidden. These words could create Veil Portal, which completely blocks perception through a doorway.

disease + purify: A Cleric spell, Proliferate Cure, which converts a disease into an infectious antidote.

food + dead: A Cleric (subject to faith) or Anticleric spell, Corpse to Food. Does what it says on the tin. Perhaps it could alternatively create a spell for humanely slaughtering livestock, though that seems less useful from an adventuring point of view.

plague + sleep: Another spell that requires input from both classes, Plaguesleep has a delayed effect which puts a target to sleep and spreads like a disease to those who touch the target (for instance, attempting to wake them up). Anyone it spreads to becomes drowsy takes a few minutes to fall asleep and can spread the effect to anyone else. Each generation of infection past the second gets a cumulative +1 to the saving throw (becoming easier to resist the further it spreads).

Not all combinations of words produce a useful or interesting spell, but that's fine. In-game, this won't be done by simply choosing random words as I did above. Finding the interesting ones is what players are for.

How to use this in-game

When PCs do spell research, have them only be able to create effects which can be combined from words they know through other spells. Discovering a whole other new word requires either researching the word itself or stealing a spell from another caster acquiring a spell with that word through legitimate means. This is technically a nerf, but it adds depth and a whole new layer of game to the process of spell research. It might help some players to have spell creation be more defined too, rather than just telling them they can make whatever they please. Limitation breeds creativity, after all. I know I wouldn't have ever written "Conjure Banana" without being prompted by the words.

Reversed Ability Checks

This idea attempts to solve a modern problem and make sense of an old school oddity at the same time. In the end, I think results are mixed. There's something here.

The Original Issue

"Strength will also aid in opening traps and so on.

[...]

Intelligence will also affect referees' decisions as to whether or not certain

action would be taken

[...]

Wisdom rating will act much as does that for intelligence.

[...]

the charisma score is usable to decide such things as whether or not a

witch capturing a player will turn him into a swine or keep him enchanted as a

lover."

- Men & Magic

But how?

OD&D gives a few examples of things that ability scores can do. Most of them are directly tied to a specific game mechanic. The above examples, however, are just stated outright with no given resolution method. It looks to me like the implication from a direct reading of the text is that the referee simply decides whether or not you have a high enough score to do something. This sucks and obviously didn't strike people as the right way to play because the early RPG scene quickly decided they needed a solution. I'm sure it led to arguments at the table; it's practically GM-fiat, lacking that arbitration of the dice that makes us blame Lady Luck instead of the person across the table.

Best I can tell, the question was first officially answered in 1981 by Moldvay's Basic with roll-under-attribute checks, though legend has it that Gygax was doing something similar before then with 3d6 instead of a d20. Until then, I'm not sure what most people actually did. An honest reading of the rules tells me I'm supposed to simply decide that the guy with 15 strength can open things the guy with 6 strength can't. I don't expect people did that for long, if at all.

Let's not even talk about Intelligence and Wisdom outright restricting player choices. Eugh.

The Modern Problem

The party wants to bend some bars to squeeze through a space. The barbarian with 18 strength is the perfect fit for the job. He rolls a natural 3, so he fails. But then the gnome wizard steps up with his glorious 6 strength and rolls a 20, putting him to shame.

There are really two problems at play here, but they both have to do with making multiple attempts on a swingy die roll (and my solution isn't limiting the party to a single attempt - that's a problem too because it just makes sense for someone else to try after their buddy fails). One problem is that the 6-strength individual has any chance of beating the 18-strength individual in a strength contest at all. The other is that this encourages every person in the party to have a go at something when it only makes sense for one person to try it and then the best-suited to step up if they fail. The law of large numbers cheapens tests to the point of triviality.

I chose a clean strength-based example because in a realistic scenario there isn't much random chance at play. Generally, you are strong enough to do a task or you are not. What we refer to as "strength" maps pretty well to a measurable capacity to exert a force. This doesn't vary much on a case-by-case basis. In real world (or verisimilitudinous narrative) scenarios you don't generally have a ~65% chance to be able to lift something. Weightlifting contests aren't decided by a coin flip.

Reversed Ability Checks

The idea here is essentially to use that 3d6 roll Gygax once used but to frame it differently. Rather than having the player roll and attempt to score under their ability score, the roll sets the DC for the ability check. The referee notes the result. Then, anyone attempting that ability check immediately passes if their ability score is equal or greater. Any number of people can attempt the task, but the roll does not change. The person best suited will always do the best. For more or less difficult tasks you can roll more or less d6s.

What's the difference?

You are checking to see whether the bars being bent are bendable rather than whether someone gets lucky enough to bend the bars. Rolling a 3 means the masonry holding the bars in place was worn, the bars were old and decayed and probably weren't that well-made to begin with - anyone could get them out if they tried. Rolling an 18 means the bars are extremely tough and you'll need to get your strongest party member to take over. The player who had the idea still gets to make the check and attempt it, and Buffman McMuscles gets to step in and save the day if it's too hard.

This framing changes the way the check feels without changing the fact that even the referee doesn't know how it's going to play out until it gets there. The randomness of player characters' capability is instead shifted to randomness of the world. You as a player know exactly how capable you are, but not exactly what you're going to face.

When doesn't this work?

Loads of the time, to be honest. While allowing the character with the best strength to shine for strength related tasks is one of the advantages of this type of check, the disadvantage is that the obvious choice is now to always have the person with the highest in a given stat do the thing, and nobody else ever. This means that any character who isn't the best at any one thing likely never gets a chance to shine. I can see this being a problem at some tables, but if preference is given to the character of the person who thinks of the idea, it might not be. Only have Mr Save-The-Day step in if the instigator fails their attempt.

Having a single person with an 18 in the party means any checks for that ability now might as well not even be tested if the difficulty isn't extreme enough to warrant a 4d6 check. Everyone knows if the instigator fails, Baron von Biceps is guaranteed to succeed anyway. This could be a good or bad thing depending on how often it comes up and the table's preferences - it means less rolling and more moving forward.

You can't use it for something like combat, where repeated checks are necessary. Extend this limitation to any instance where there are multiple chances for failure.

So when do I use it?

I think the best way to use this style of check is, like in the bar-bending example, a player-vs-world situation. Climbing? Any player with greater than 3d6 dexterity can make it up incident-free, the rest of you have a chance of failure. It may also work for passive checks like saves - everyone with a save vs. blast greater than 3d6 takes half damage. Possibly group stealth? If every single person in the sneaking group has dexterity greater than 3d6 the group succeeds, else they fail. You're only as hidden as your clumsiest adventurer, but you don't have to go through the near-certain failure of the repeated stealth check.