I’ve had these box sets from Old-School Essentials for awhile now. They were one of the first things I bought after D&D: Welcome to the Hellfire Club. I liked the retro covers and the idea of playing Dungeons and Dragons in the same manner as the characters from Stranger Things would have played it.
I also liked the idea of simplified combat and rules. One of the things I had a hard time with when I was DMing for the kids is trying to keep the combat moving. It was just so slow and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to speed it up. Old-School Essentials promised to remedy this problem.
Hopefully, one day I’ll convince the young ones that this is actually Dungeons and Dragons, and not something else, and actually more similar to what the Stranger Things kids would have been playing. But until then, I guess I’m going to have to play it solo.
So I got around to creating some characters today. I find that character creation serves as a good orientation to any game, and game materials, and that proved to be the case here. I had glanced through the A5, table-friendly sized booklets included in the box sets (both the Classic and the Advanced sets), but never really dug into them. I had to do that today to create the characters, and I am much more familiar with the contents of the booklets now today than I was before.
Character creation was pretty straightforward, especially compared with 5e, and I thought I would just share with you the characters I created, because I’m going to start running through the two adventures I own, The Incandescent Grottoes and Halls of the Blood King, solo.
But there were two things that kind of tripped me up. First, your AC (Armor Class) is a combination of your armor and your dexterity modifier. On the table which gives you your dexterity modifier, the higher your base score in dexterity, the higher the bonus to your AC it gives you.
Here’s the thing, you don’t want a higher AC. So chainmail, for example, has an AC of 5 while simple leather armor has an AC of 7.
Any shield is listed as giving you a +1 bonus to AC.
This confused me.
You have to read the fine print in the Dexterity section for the answer. It says that any bonus to your AC lowers your AC score. But the way it is written in the book is always with a plus sign. Pretty counterintuitive if you ask me.
Also, the THAC0 table is difficult to understand if you just look at it in the Adventure booklet. The THAC0 table tells you whether your attacks hit. To really understand it, you need to reference a few different THAC0 tables, both the one included in the Adventure book but also the ones in the Character’s booklet, and you should probably consult the Monster’s stat blocks as well. That was the only way I could figure out how to make it work.
There are advantages to having these slim volumes in the box set, in that they are easier to manage at the table, but I found it necessary to have at least two of them open at all times in order to understand what was going on. Compartmentalizing all the information isn’t actually possible, as attractive as it might seem.
I chose the method of character creation offered in the Advanced boxed set where you can choose a race first and then a class. So that way you can have a Drow Assassin, like I did below. I thought this made more sense to me and also allows for the other available option of allowing for multi-classing. Because obviously now that Drow would belong to the Drow, and also the Assassins. That seemed an intuitive way of allowing for multi-classing, and the book offers no guidance on how to do that, so this way makes sense to me.
Anyway, here are the characters I created:
*odds of breaking through doors
| Name: Lila | Female | Half-Elf | Magic-User | Level = 1 | HP = 7 | AC = 9 |
| Str =12 (no melee bonus, 2 in 6 chance*) | Int =17 (native language +2, literate) | Wis = 8 (-1 magic saves) | Dex = 7 (AC -1, Missel -1, Initiative -1) | Con = 15 (+1 to HP) | Cha = 11 (no change to NPC reactions, max retainers is 4, their loyalty is 7) | Prime = Int + Str (5% experience bonus |
| Languages: Lawful, Common, Elvish, Dragon, Halfling | 2 Torches (6 pack), 1 large sack, 1 small sack, 1 iron spikes, 2 tinder boxes, 1 backpack, 2 iron rations | Dagger x 5 1D4 | no armor | Spells: Magic Missel 1D6 + 1 | gold = 41 |
| Name: Brod | Male | Human | Barbarian | Level 1 | HP = 7 | AC = 4 |
| Str =18 (+3 to melee, 5 in 6*) | Int = 5 (native, illiterate) | Wis =9 (magic saves +- 0) | Dex =10 (0 AC, 0 Missel, 0 Initiative) | Con =14 (+1 HP) | Cha = 14 (NPC reactions +1, Max retainers is 5, loyalty is 8) | Prime = Con + Str (5% bonus to experience) |
| Languages: Neutral, Common | 1 large sack, 2 torches (6 pack), 2 iron rations | Two Handed Sword (1D10) | Chainmail 5 [14] + optional shield +1 bonus | Gold = 21 |
| Name: Davil | Male | Duergar | Thief | Level 1 | HP = 5 | AC = 6 |
| Str = 7 (melee -1, 1 in 6 *) | Int = 9 (native, illiterate) | Wis = 13 (+1 magic saves) | Dex =13 (+1 AC, +1 Missel, +1 Initiative) | Con = 14 (+1 HP) | Cha =5 (NPC Reactions -1, Max retainers is 2, their loyalty is 5) | Prime = Dex (5% experience bonus) |
| Languages: Lawful, Common, Deepcommon, Dwarvish, Gnomish, Goblin, Kobold | 2 Torches (6 pack), 1 iron rations, 1 backpack, 1 thieves tools, 1 grappling hook, 1 crowbar | Two Handed Sword (1D10) | Leather 7 [12] | Gold = 0 |
| Name: Ssilvisstrraa | Female | Drow | Assassin | Level 1 | HP =5 | AC = 5 |
| Str = 6 (-1 melee, 1 in 6*) | Int = 14 (native +1, literate) | Wis = 8 (-1 magic saves) | Dex = 14 (+1 AC, +1 Missel, +1 Initiative) | Con = 6 (-1 HP) | Cha = 7 (NPC Reactions -1, Max retainers is 3, their loyalty is 6) | Prime = Dex (+5% Experience bonus) |
| Languages: Chaotic, Common, Deepcommon, Elvish, Gnomish, Human dialect | 2 torches (6 pack), 1 iron rations, 1 regular rations, 1 small sack | sword (1D8) 2 daggers (1D4) | Leather 7 [12] Shield +1 bonus | Gold = 8 |
| Name: Drew | Male | Human | Bard | Level 1 | HP = 4 | AC = 7 |
| Str = 9 (0 melee, 2 in 6*) | Int = 9 (Native, literate) | Wis = 7 (-1 magic saves) | Dex = 10 (0 AC, 0 Missel, 0 Initiative) | Con = 10 (+- 0 HP ) | Cha = 13 (+1 NPC reactions, Max retainers is 5, their loyalty is 8) | Prime = Cha (+5% experience bonus) |
| Languages: Common, Neutral | 2 torches (6 pack), 1 iron rations, 1 large sack | sword (1D8) | Leather 7 [12] | Gold = 13 |
It turned out to be a pretty well balanced party I think. According to the book, you roll your ability scores first, and then pick a class. I actually randomly chose the races, just using dice according to the order in which they appear in the book, but the classes I allowed myself to maximize depending on how the ability scores turned out. That’s the way it tells you to do it in the book.
I look forward to starting an adventure with these characters.
Thanks for reading.