Optional Rules for Classic Games

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Posted by Angelo on September 6, 1999

Wandering Monsters

By all means, don’t rely on the rulebook for good wandering monsters. The easiest way is to just thumb through and choose something you like. Otherwise, make your own charts and you can include your own monster variations. You might also want to roll for encounters weekly instead of daily depending on how long it takes your characters to get from place to place.

Adventurers

One of the things I’ve always hated was the concept of “adventurers.” Just bunches of adventurers running around towns, killing monsters? I suggest making adventurers rare, and socially unacceptable in town. Most people think they’re kind of weird, because normal people wouldn’t want to go around risking their life, and in fact most adventurers only do it because there is something important to be accomplished. There is nothing fun about harsh travel, weather conditions, and monsters who could surprise you and kill you at any moment.

Levels

One of the hardest things for me is having adventures for level 1 characters, and getting them past level 1. One solution is to just let players start on level 2 or 3, but make a reason why they are on that level and still start them out at xp 0 instead of what they are at their current level. By far, my favorite time for gaming is when players are on levels 4 through 8.

Attacks

I allow everyone to move 5′ and attack on the same round. However fighters also have the combat option to charge. This allows a fighter to use a lance on a horse and do double damage. You can also say that fighters can run up and attack by charging with any weapon, but they don’t get double damage, and they will be prone to set spear vs charge. If you do this, you should also allow certain monsters to charge. You might not want to let monsters use every attack every round. Like dragons get 3 attacks: 2 claws and a bite, however you might want to say they can either claw or bite, or maybe even claw just once (or maybe they just don’t want to because they are arrogant and don’t consider the player a threat). In addition, two other requirements for fighter combat options that I would suggest is requiring smash to be performed two-handed.

Initiative

One of the things I liked from AD&D is the 1d10 initiative where the number rolled represents the second of the round that you go on. This also makes it easier for the DM to determine special situations where strange actions are taken that might give some kind of penalty to your initiative. I still like to roll surprise on a 1d6 though.

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