Reading OD&D from cover to cover: The character classes

I have been anticipating the coming parts of Men & Magic a lot as now we finally get to the rules. Here I expect quite a number of surprises and my intention s to (at initially) read the rules as literally as possible and revise them in a clearer (yet brief) way. In no way do I intend to add much fluff, so I was particularly curious about the very short character class section in OD&D: One and a half pages in total for the classes (with clerics getting the most text which I find interesting), three total if taking the races into account (which I will review in another post).
First of all the rules explain that here are three (3) classes. I had to chuckle about the numeral - as if that sentence were misleading ;-) Especially compared to much of what is to come ;-) The three classes are
  • Fighting-Men (occasionally spelled with or without dash)
  • Magic-Users
  • Clerics
I always have wondered about why they did call warriors "Fighting-Men" instead of just fighters (anybody out there know?) but it has wonderful archaic sound to it (only archaic in relation to RPG history - I never heard that term anywhere else).
So let's look at the classes in more detail in distill their abilities:

  • "They include the characters of elves and dwarves and even hobbits.". Again the "even" emphasis made me chuckle. Someone doesn't seem to like hobbits here or is it just me hearing some sarcasm? But maybe the author wanted to stress that even puny hobbits can be brave fighters. We'll probably never now.
  • "All magical weaponry is usable by fighters.". I wonder about magical weaponry is stressed as this implies a certain presumption about non-magical weaponry, as if there were no limits to that.
  • "They gain the advantage of more 'hit dice'" (hit points).
  • They can become barons (details omitted here).
That's it. The fighter already in OD&D was committed to be slightly... less colorful... than other classes.

The section starts with a statement about the initially very weak setup of Magic-Users but also states that they have the potential to become the most powerful characters in the game. Then it proceeds to explain the abilities:
  • "The whole plethora of magic items lies at the magic-users beck and call, save the arms and amor of the fighters...". So it's all about magic, baby. Which basically suggests that magic poor campaigns were not the norm during the early days. Otherwise this "advantage" would not be worth much.
  • "Magic-Users may arm themselves with daggers only." I find this sentence very peculiar. Maybe because I am a native German and don't understand the intricacies of the English language too well. But for me at first reading this implies that Magic-Users may wear armor. At least it could be interpreted that way looking at the translation of "to arm". And taking into account that the later section on Elves also states that elves have the special advantage of being able to wear magical armor and cast spells at the same time. Probably this is just a misunderstanding on my behalf but I need the English readers of this blog to elaborate on the various meanings of "...arm themselves with daggers only". Does this definitely and without doubt mean that they may not wear armor... or is there room for interpretation? And how much room?
  • "Wizards (11th level) and above may manufacture... items...". A power that hardly will come into use taking into account the time it takes to get to 11th level.
  • Magical research for spells can be done at any level. This is something I totally love. My favorite character of all times was a magic user kind of addicted to spell research and I love the option to do this whenever money is available.
The section also gives a table on magic items and creation costs but that is something I fail to understand at this point in the rules. The costs seem completely arbitrary, items and their bonusses have not yet been introduced into the game, etc. So this is something for which understanding will postponed until later sections of the rules (hopefully).

So we go to the final character class:

Clerics are introduced as being a class that shares advantages from both other classes in that
  • they have access to all magical armor and all non-edged magical weapons (exluding arrows). Again I find this pretty strange. No mention about non-magical weapons and specifically no rule restricting them from using either edged non-magical weapons or non-magical arrows. And one also starts to wonder why arrows are excluded while quarrels are not (both usually being considered piercing weapons). This reinforces my bewilderment about whether magic-users actually might be allowed to wear armor. 
  • They are able to use more magical items than fighters.
  • When they reach the level of Patriarch (8th level) they can build a stronghold, gather followers and can start to collect tithes. Clerics gain more money from the territories than fighters and their church supports them building their stronghold with paying 50% of the costs.
  • They have access to spells of their own.
  • They must choose either Law or Chaos as their alignment when they reach 7th level. If a cleric changes sides he loses all benefits gained so far (especially followers). I wonder what the rationale behind this might be - it seems there are neutral clerics up to level 6 but not of a higher level. This seems to imply interesting cosmological aspects into the game - as if the world were tied in a struggle between Law and Chaos of Moorcockian scope, so that practicioners of the faith are bound to associate with one side or another if they want to get access to the higher spheres of power. This reminds me a little bit of the well-stressed Arthurian view on a world where the old faith (of druids, the balance, nature) is slowly suppressed and one has to choose one of the new more powerful religions (or a side within a given pantheon) in order to become more powerful. Very interesting and very unexpected. It's something I would not take into the rules as content except maybe for a sidebar weighing these implications. BTW, this section also mentions that there are distinct differences between clerics of law and chaos - without providing any rules for now. I'm curious what the remainder of the set has to offer in that respect.
And that's it. We are through with the character classes, next are the various races (which map closely to classes with limited levels but other benefits) - which will be examined in a future post.

As someone who not yet read OD&D in detail I am surprised about how different the ancient makeup of classes is to more modern variants of xD&D:
  • No mentioning of turning undead so far.
  • No rules about memorizing spells so far.
  • No weapon skills (one of the things I always disliked about AD&D 1st and 2nd edition).
  • Rather strange limitations to clerics who have to choose a potentially new side at some point in their career.
  • Everything is explained in very loose and broad terms.
And I am totally bewildered about arms and armor for both magic-users and clerics, see above. I'd love to get some comments on those.

It is extremely interesting to approach Whitebox OD&D in this way and I'm itching to write down distilled rules and start testing them. And I'm sooooo curious about the rest of the rules that I can't wait to continue.

Sadly I will be on two conferences next week (giving talks on each and doing the booth from Tueday to Thursday) so I guess there won't be much time for new updates. See you till the end of the week, I will try to continue reading a bit more of OD&D and I will start with the setup for my Indesign based revision of the rules and type the first actual parts of 'The Fantasy Game'.


  1. TB,
    In reference to the arming limitations of wizards, I believe the rules are trying to convey that they cannot weild any weapon other than daggers, and cannot wear any armour either. Real old school casters limited to robes and basic melee weapons must completely rely on their magical abilities. 'To Arm' in english normally refers to weaponry, not armour, but this could just be the context, because of you are told to grab your sword, you most likely grab your shield and chain mail (elven if you have it ;) too. Also, Elves ability to wear 'magical' armour and cast spells leads me to believe that armour restrics spellcasting (since wizards can use any magical items, and elves get a 'bonus' over them). Clerics in this really dont make a lot of sense. It appears as though the rules are forcing you to follow a general stereotype of shat clerics ought to be. Typically (in my experience) clerics weild crossbows and maces/clubs (in D&D and ADOM for example). I am also assuming that magical weaponry and armour is just an upgraded form of ordinary, unenchanted items -- I think that if a class can use the magical form, they can use the non-magical form as well. Although, the phrasing of these rules are really confusing and ambiguous.

  2. To arm is to furnish with weapons; that doesn't include armour.

    I read '...save the arms and armour of the fighters' as implying more strongly that magic users cannot wear armour.

  3. The really interesting thing here is that - when I try to read OD&D without all the preconceptions I have due to playing (A)D&D in various forms since 1983 - things can be interpreted very differently from what we are accustomed to. E.g. the "save the arms and armour of the fighters" part of the sentence is prefixed by "The whole plethora of enchanted items lies at the magic-users beck" - so taking pure grammar the sentence definitely (from my grasp of the English language) refers to magical (enchanted) arms and armour of the fighter.

    Which is very different from what we know about (A)D&D... and doesn't make much sense when considering that they in any case may wield nothing but daggers (who would be trained in armor without being trained in more than daggers). It's interesting nonetheless. And probably should be attributed to tired rules authors in those early days ;-)

  4. BTW I just found a very interesting thread on the OD&D discussion boards that mirrors my views quite a bit: http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=menmagic&action=display&thread=5441

    Interesting discussion there and it's really a lot of fun interpreting OD&D literally without preconceptions.

    I now will start to write down my literal discoveries :-)