"You see this."

  • Consider this: Missile misses

    Lots of tables have home-brew rules for firing into melee. I pick the idea apart because mechanically, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. What is a “miss”? Everyone knows that a missed attack in a TTRPG doesn’t necessarily mean you completely whiff. A miss just means your attempt(s) to attack failed to penetrate your target’s…

  • Consider this: Ignoring these rules nerfs Fighters

    Rage bait: Do the R.A.W. actually support d8 swords for Dwarves and Halflings? I say no. Here’s why.

  • Consider this: The game isn’t lethal, you are

    I suspect a lot of GMs make Raise Dead a lot less accessible than the game’s authors intended it to be. Here’s why. TL;DR The Raise Dead spell, RAW, for reference:https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Raise_Dead_(Finger_of_Death) Raise Dead at 7th Level One could make a very compelling argument that every Temple in the D&D universe should feasibly contain one person…

  • Consider this: Poor thieves!

    How Thieves benefit from RAW. A lot of DMs make the Thief a lot harder to play than it should be. They’re already disadvantaged in BX/OSE: They get no skill adjustments for dex or race as they do in 1E, lower hit die, and their skills don’t reach even-odds until about 7th level—which would be…

  • Consider this: Captured spell books

    The captured spell book is a nebulous construct in BX and OSE. The item definitively exists in the game’s ruleset, yet comes with almost no explanation. In OSE, this is all we get: [Captured Spell Books: Without the use of magic (e.g. read magic), a spell book can only be read by its owner.] That’s it.…

  • Consider this: Player mastery is meta

    This is a short rant. Around when I first posted “Just hold it” I also created this doodle to explain a superior approach to using slow, d10, 2H weapons: In brief, it explains that the slow, heavy 2H tank trope is a mistake. The wielder is better off unarmored, frankly. While the former is effectively…

  • Consider this: Non-attack actions in combat

    This will be short. I mainly didn’t want to lose the thought. (Also this largely assumes side initiative.) There’s no codified phase in BX/OSE for taking non-attack actions during a combat round. By this, I refer to drinking potions, pulling levers or ropes, pushing over a brazier, and so on. Most DMs I’ve spoken with…

  • Consider this: Running

    There are so many misconceptions regarding Running in BX and OSE that it’s difficult to determine where to begin explaining a correct RAW understanding. I have flip-flopped a dozen times on this issue myself, and this is my current, and hopefully final understanding. Stipulations: 1. Encounter movement rates govern all participants during the encounter, including…

  • Consider this: Encounter initiative rolls

    Throwing this here for the sake of posterity: A lot of tables run right over the encounter initiative roll in OSE and BX games, but that mechanic is what allows PCs and monsters alike to avoid combat, run, hide, parley, surrender, and more. Let’s review the sequence, starting with the encounter: 4. Roll for wandering,…

  • Consider this: 1E multiclass rules are punitive

    Once, I defended splitting hit die in 1E and OSE-AF, and said something like, “A F2/MU2 must have two hit die because they are 2nd level!” And I would have backed that up with something like, “If you plan to roll a hit die each time a class goes up, then you’d also have to…