House Rules Rstites style

Keep On The Borderlands

• Fighters: I'm expanding the multiple attack rule, unless you have an objection. I never liked how the official rule allowed multiple attacks on 1 HD creatures but nothing for 2 HD creatures, etc. Going forward, fighters can attack their level of creatures per round that are half the fighter's level or less. This just boils down to 2nd level fighters can attack 2 1 HD creatures, 3rd level fighters can attack 3 1 HD creatures, but now 4th level fighters can attack 4 1 HD creatures or 2 2 HD creatures. Also, they can mix-n-match, if it comes up. So a 4th level fighter can attack 1 2 HD creature and 2 1 HD creatures in a round, etc. Does that make sense? It seems easy enough to me. I figure with Knuckles and Dayrell at that point it was worth discussing.*

• Magic Users: This shows up in a couple of OSR games and is one (or many) interpretation of the OD&D rules on magic. The magic user memorizes the number of spells listed and never forgets those. However, they also happen a number of castings equal to what their level shows, but they can pick an choose which memorized spell to cast every time. The advantage here is that there's no reason to memorize multiple castings of the same spell. There's also no reason to carry a spell book out into the wilderness. Example: 3rd level MU gets 2 first level and 1 second level spell per day. The character has Sleep (1st), Floating Disc (2nd), and Web (2nd) memorized. The character can cast 2 first level spells every day, so it could be Sleep twice, Floating Disc twice, or even each one once. The character can cast 1 second level spell every day, which can by Web. They can choose to cast a first level spell with that slot, so could potentially cast Sleep or Floating Disc again using the 2nd level slot. The advantage of this is allowing you to keep some of those utility spells around without giving up access to combat magic. Thoughts? Note: the balancing mechanism here will be that it takes days to exchange spells in memory so you won't swap them out as easily as now.

• Clerics I'd like to do exactly the same thing as for magic users here, if we do it, but with clerics there's no spell memorization at all. The cleric simply knows miracle/spells and gains them as they go up. Whatever two first level spells they know now, will always be there. They'll simply add new ones as they more up. For me, this jives a bit with the idea that not all clerics (depending on cult) will necessarily use all of the listed spells.

• Thieves. Undecided.

• NOTE: This one fits into the original premise of running the game like I did back in the day, as this was a standard modification I always did. The spell stuff is new for me.

The first one, I can't imagine there's any complaints about. The second two I'd like buy-in before implementing them. If you don't agree, that's fine. I'll just shelve them and stay RAW for now.