Arduin Grimoire, Part VIII

Markets And Magic

(And Witch Hunters, Which Don’t Start With ‘M’)

“Y’know, being a Paladin is cool and all, but I wish there was a class that let me be even more of a douchenozzle to the other players, and justify it by saying ‘I’m just playing my character!'” (Some Gamer, At Some Point In the 1970s)

Well, to be fair, that exact quote was probably never said, because ‘douchenozzle’ is much more modern slang. But if Downton Abbey can use ‘step on it’, I deserve the same leeway.

Charisma 9, Int 12, Can’t Detect Traps… Nah, No Point To Be Made Here

• We start off learning that barbarians and witch hunters detest each other and fight on sight. Also, elves and hobbits are never witch hunters, that pesky “Limitations Chart” earlier on notwithstanding. We also learn I like to fool around with the ‘torn page’ settings in SnagIt.
• The ‘torn page’ cut off the note that they are ‘99% Christian’. One of the many glories of “unofficial” material from the Cambrian Age Of Gaming is that the authors had no real concern about “public image” or being “offensive”. (Something sorely missing in the modern era, where anything deemed to be not going after Acceptable Targets generates howls of digital outrage from the Puritans¹.)
• We see the truly ‘old school’ three-point alignment system in play here, with Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic, no hint of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in sight.
• They have a very unusual magic system… in later games, this would have been modeled simply by giving them class abilities gained at various levels, but here, they’re semi-shoehorned into the spellcasting rules. Interestingly, the mana point system enables this nicely. You can give a class a small subset of spells, and the mana to cast them, and that’s that.
• Capped at 12 intelligence, 15 wisdom (for a clerical-type class?), and nine charisma. Yeah. No axe to grind here, bucko! They get a ‘+5 with Lawful types’… I don’t know if that means ‘Add 5 to their capped number (9), so they max at 14’, or ‘Remember their original rolled number, and add 5 to that’. Almost certainly the former.
• I am not sure why they are totally unable to detect traps… it seems to be an odd ability that doesn’t really fit with the theme. Besides, only thieves could detect traps, anyway. No one else had rules for doing so, unless you used a variant system where anyone could detect traps via boring the DM to death. (“I tap the walls with my ten foot pole. Also, the floors. Then I carefully burn away the cobwebs near the ceiling with my torch. Then I look at the walls and floors closely to see if there are any tiny holes which could shoot darts or gas. Then…” “For Cthulhu’s sake, man, you’re renting a room at the stables!”)
• Hating technology more complicated than a crossbow would be a non-limit in most games, but Dave handed out mu-meson blades with gay abandon. (That’ll be discussed if we ever make it to the Runes Of Doom…)
• The Witch Hunter is the only class in the core book to need two pages!

Hey, These Guys Only Go To 40th Level!

• You will note these guys only go to 40th level.
• You will also note that, adding support to my thesis that the Grimoire was assembled piecemeal from documents written at various times, that the Witch Hunter uses the “Fighting Capability” rules from the very earliest edition of D&D, something dropped fairly quickly from common play… a holdover from the original Chainmail rules.

BTW, my wife is a distant descendant of Cotton Mather. Yeah, that Cotton Mather. (These days, given the raimant of the televangelists, he’d be Polyester Mather, or something.)

Multiversal Trading

We then get to a price list. I won’t be scanning it or going on in great detail, but there’s a few cool things to note.

• This includes price ranges, not fixed prices. A nice touch.
• There are ‘poison’ and ‘venom’ antidotes, by level. I have to assume that the simple ‘save or die’ poison rules that were part of D&D until 3.0 were widely replaced by others, because there’s a lot of more complex/less insta-kill poison rules out there.
• Adamantine grappling hook? 200 gp.
• Bronze crowbars break 30% of the time; Mithril, 5%.
• A “dhowrigged galisse” costs 40,000 to 75,000 GP.
• Doctor John’s Salve, which “heals heavy wounds”, costs 1,000 GP.

Magic

Now, in two pages of teeny-tiny type, we have “Magic In Arduin” and “Even More Magic In Arduin”. Seriously, that’s how the text is broken up — not “Basic Rules” and “Advanced Rules”, or “Standard” and “Optional”. But, hey, it works!

It begins: “In fantasy wargaming there has been continual argument about magic and how it is supposed to work.” (Cross out ‘magic’ and write in ‘everything’ and you’ll be just as correct.) It then notes that the rules presented here are “a based(sic) from which to work”, and that magic is “limited only by the reader’s imagination” (and how much Chinese food he bought the DM.)

It always takes an hour to memorize all the spells of a given level, so if you can memorize 6 spells of that level, you spend 10 minutes per spell. This also means that if you know a lot of spell levels… and in Arduin, they go up to 11… actually, up to 30(!), you could easily spend most of the day memorizing.

Scrolls can only be used every other turn, due to the time needed to take them out, read them, etc. It ought to be noted here that while standard D&D rounds at the time were a minute long(!), Arduin used the six second round, which became standard with D&D 3.0. once more, well ahead of their time.

Also, if the mage is disturbed, his concentration will be broken, which could cause a backfire. There’s a lot of underlines in this text.

Also, in ALL CAPS IN THE ORIGINAL, is THIS NOTE:

MAGIC SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN CLOSE COMBAT SITUATIONS WITHOUT HEAVY PERCENTAGES OF CHANCE THAT EVEN FRIENDS WILL BE HIT. (All underlines also in original.)

The exact “heavy percentages of chance”, of course, are left up to the DM to decide. I begin with 100%, -10% for each potsticker or egg roll tossed my way.

Then there’s this. I’m too lazy to type it in, so, here you go.

Underlined Words Are IMPORTANT!

It might seem, to a modern reader, that keeping track of which spells a magic-user cast on which orc over the span of many games would be tedious. Let me assure you, however, that no orc ever survived a single encounter, so there was no need to worry that you might run into that same orc again. Within the bounds of one combat, however, the “save always/fail always” rule offers some interesting possibilities, forcing a magic user to not simply spam the same spell over and over — or perhaps encouraging this, if the target failed. It adds an interesting tactical touch… and, for the umpteenth time, I note this mechanic appears, in a modified form, in many spells and special abilities in modern D&D, esp. fear effects, where, once you make your save, you can’t be affected again by the same effect for a 24 hour period. It’s not a universal rule, but it’s a common modifier. Hargrave’s design instincts were very solid, even if the execution evinced an excess of enthusiasm over editing. (And my check from the American Alliteration Association is on its way! Ka-ching!)

The same rule applies to detecting magic — if you fail, you can’t try again for another level. (And in the modern age, Knowledge checks likewise need a level to try again… ).

Wands, amulets, rings, etc., require conscious and conspicuous action to activate. Rings, in particular, must be turned — pity if the fighter is wearing his ring of flight under his armored gauntlet, the text notes with the sinister and sadistic glee only someone who has endured too much behind the screen can muster. This activity will be noticed and enemies will take appropriate action.

“You have to have your magical goodies where your hot little hands can get them at an instant’s notice.” And if you don’t? Well, that’s where the “PHUMBLE PHACTOR” (sic) kicks in! The “P&P” (no, I don’t know what the “&” is for, maybe to avoid the childish giggles that would invariably emerge if the DM said “Roll your PP!”) is a chance — 50%, -2% per level, +/-5% for each point of Dex over 12 or less than 9, of grabbing the wrong end of your wand (that’s not a euphemism), selecting the wrong scroll, etc. (Me, I’d mandate this roll only if the caster was in a particularly stressful situation, or was partially blind, or otherwise not operating at presumably normal efficiency. Other DMs might be much less forgiving, usually with good reason.)

Next up, we have yet another piece of “design prescience” — the invention of, in effect, Touch AC!

“Another area that is seldom explored in fantasy gaming is what constitutes a “hit” when the weapon you’ve lobbed only has to touch it to work?”

For example, if you’re using a stasis compacted green slime grenade… yes, I said “stasis compacted green slime grenade”, it’s right there in the example… yeah, that is totally awesome, isn’t it?… you get a +4 bonus to attack, while, if using a cattle prod (yes, cattle prod), you only get a +2, since you must still close and attack. Makes sense to me!

Throwing things, like a shrinking potion, you add +6, but you then roll to see what percentage of it hit your target… and what percentage hit your friends. Oops.

Finally… at the very end of the magic rules… we get to the “manna” rules, around which, it is noted, “some controversy has… revolved”. You multiply intelligence by level, then divide by 4 if Int is 8 or less, by 3 if it Int is 9-12, and by two if it’s 13 or greater. This is generated per 12 hours of rest, and it’s noted that if you run out of manna before you run out of spells memorized, those memorized spells are “just empty words”. You can also choose to underpower spells — spending 2.5 points to cast a 5 point spells casts at ‘half power’, which seems like a great opportunity for cunning players to find spells that don’t lend themselves to being ‘halved’… and cunning DMs to find a way to make the bastards pay for thinking they can outsmart him. (“Well, I only need to be invisible for a few rounds, I’ll just cast it at one-third power so it only lasts as long as I need.” “OK, you turn one-third invisible. Your torso is missing, but the rest of you can be plainly seen.”)

Dave ends the section with:

“There are many more subjects I could cover, but this supplement is meant to get all you gamers to see that the sky is the limit and that no single person, publisher, or organization can have all the answers.”

Damn straight!

1)“One who cannot sleep at night for fear someone, somewhere, is enjoying themselves.”