House rules: Abilities

Ability Scores

Strength - Bonus (or penalty) to melee attacks and melee weapon damage. Stronger characters can carry more weight.

Intelligence - Scores of 8 and lower are considered illiterate in all languages known. It gives bonuses (or penalties) to languages known; knowledge rolls, and spells for mages and elves.

Wisdom - Bonus (or penalty) to saving throws, and spells for clerics.

Dexterity - Bonus (or penalty) to range weapon attacks, armor class, and initiative.

Constitution - Bonus (or penalty) to hit points, and healing.

Charisma - Bonus (or penalty) to maximum hirelings/cohorts/animal companions available, and XP rewards. -3 penalty gives –20%, -2 penalty gives –10%, -1 penalty gives –5%; +1 bonus gives +5%, +2 bonus gives +10%, +1 bonus gives +5%, +3 bonus gives +15%.

Designer notes: I wanted every ability to mean something. No obvious dump stat.

BX: Castle Amber

I'm getting ready to run my first BX game in 20 years. I've been planning this for awhile. I was going to run the Desert Nomads series but decided after to try an adventure I had stayed away from in my youth, Castle Amber. I remember as a kid how I didn't like its cover.

I played BECMI and the Gazetteer supplements as a kid. However; I will be running this under BX rules, or that was my original intention. Getting my players together to do this has been tough, to say the least. I've had time to add in some Companion rules, and my own own house rules.

When I played 3e I played under my own house rules. As someone who would do his research before trying this. Research like; reading 3e game designers tips and notes from their blogs, or writing and asking them. I also for a bit was in an email discussion about 1e with Gary. So for this BXC game rules I have taken all of that, and read up on the rules of 0D&D, its clones, and some really good Grognard blogs:

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/
http://www.philotomy.com/
http://jrients.blogspot.com/
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/
http://silverbladeadventures.blogspot.com/

I went with BX over 1e since it's has easy to "plug and play" rules, and its game engine is easy to play it. I can add rules inspired from all of the other editions quite easily.

I hope it goes OK.

Welcome to my blog.

Welcome to my blog. I made this blog so I could comment on others' blogs.

Veil was an old D&D 3e character, and seems to have become the name I write under with D&D related writings.

I've pretty much have played D&D since I was around 9 or 10, start with BECMI. Than 1e; than 2e; than the Gold Box games. The direction the game took under 2e's writers and management turned me off the game (that and a social life that left no time to game). I came back playing, starting with 2e, near the end of its reign. However, did not really start playing again till 3e, than 3 revised.

I currently have a the 4e game, but have only been able to play it once so far in its year of being released (I and my game group have been busy). I do hope to start playing it. However, I hope to first get a retro game of B/X in first.