The origin of this rule is found in The Strategic Review, Volume 1, No 2, Page 3.
It is Gygax's adaptation of the Chainmail rule where one hero type worth four figures and a superhero is worth eight figures.
What if we extended this rule
Multiple Attacks for original edition fighters
Every combat around the fighting man can attack a number of hit dice equal to their level with a minimum of 1 attack allowed. If the creature has a modifier to their hit dice round up to the nearest whole number. For example a hobgoblin has HD 1+1/2 for this rule treat this the same as a HD 2 creature.
This means a 4th level fighter while facing a Goblin Chief HD 1+1/2 and five of his minions (HD 1-1) can opt to attack up to four of the goblin minions. Or opt to attack the Chief two times as HD 1+1/2 is treated as HD 2. Or the chief once, and two of his minions provided they are within reach of the fighter's weapon.
No reason this couldn't apply to AD&D as well. I don't think it overpowers Fighter types, especially if weapon specialization isn't used.
ReplyDeleteGood point
ReplyDeleteWe have been using this rule in our Hungarian mashup of OD&D and B/X (Kazamaták és Kompániák - Catacombs & Companies) for years - it's a great little boon to fighting-men.
ReplyDeleteI like this rule and I'd like to take this as actually rules as written, when chainmail mass combat rules are used. For what other reason would the STATSITICS REGARDING CLASSES (Men & Magic,pp 17-18) state the fighting capabilities for every class in terms of e.g. "3 Men + 1"?
ReplyDeleteBy extension, I do apply this to Magic-Users and Clerics, too, when in mass combat. And I think the excerpt from strategic review can be read to indicate that this rule applies to non-fantastic combat in general, not exclusively to Fighting-Men.
I always thought the rule where you only get to attack 1 HD creatures multiple times was weird, since it required in order for this character class to use its special feature i had to make sure I structured combats such that even at higher levels they were still fighting lots of 1 HD creatures.
ReplyDeleteI tried this rule (almost word for word) in early playtesting of ACKS. However, we found it led to a strange circumstance.
ReplyDeleteA 4th level fighter fighting four 1 HD orcs gets 4 attacks.
A 4th level fighter fighting one 4 HD ogre gets 1 attack.
How many attacks does a 1st level fighter get against a 4 HD ogre?
For the math to hold true, it ought to be 1/4th. But that gets odd. So we ruled that the 1st level fighters get 1 attack each. Then what happened was that the high level fighters all focused on fighting lesser monsters, and retainers/mercs/henchmen were used to fight the high-HD monsters.
I didn't like that outcome and abandoned it in favor of ACKS's rule combo of level-based damage bonus and level-based cleaves.
-Alex