Page 56: Underwater adventures

After an unusually long break we, uh, dive back into the DMG, taking on the topic of underwater adventures.

With one obvious exception (being the U module series, though browsing the module listings on line there are a few others), there wasn’t very much you could do under the sea in AD&D. (What, you were expecting a different song there?) That doesn’t mean that there were no ways to take the plunge, of course. The magic item section in the DMG is littered with various magical contraptions and devices that allow you to breathe water, act like a magical dive helmet, or otherwise allow you to go looking for Atlantis (or the TSR-approved campaign world equivalent) in a crayfish-shaped submarine.

Gygax hits a number of main points on this topic-

Breathing: An obvious need… at least I hope it is obvious, otherwise I have some of the undead among my readership… either that or the bone stupid, but I think being called an animated corpse is preferable to being though of as one whose mental capacity is so limited that you forget you need air. I’m amused that, after pointing out the plethora of means adventurers can use to breathe underwater, he suggests the use of “air pills“. Are they ever a good idea?

Movement: There are numerous limitations on underwater movement (save for those with certain magic items, particularly the wildly versatile ring of free action), including the inability to wear armor mundane armor or carry more than 30 lbs of gear; even 20 lbs will force you to walk on the bottom instead of swimming. Tough luck in getting your 10,000 gp idol of Dagon back from the layer of Glubgalooop, the Arcane Kraken. You also have your movement cut by 2/3rds by the way, even if you are unencumbered. That sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Vision: Underwater vision is limited by several factors- available light (largely dependent on depth), opacity of water, and obscuring objects such as seaweed. It all makes sense and seems drawn from (perhaps) wargaming spot rules about smoke/fog and some common sense. Infravision is superior to ultravision, “as ultraviolet ‘light’ does not penetrate beyond [200']” while all living things put out heat. Obviously you shouldn’t stare at a deep-sea black smoker.

Speaking of infravision, I have recalled another of my wildly inaccurate pronunciations as a child. I called that racial ability of demi-humans and humanoids to see in the infra-red spectrum… in-FRAY-shun. Gads.

Combat: If you thought movement was frustrating, you haven’t tried combat. Only thrusting weapons work (sorry clerics!) and all aquatic creatures strike first underwater. There are some nifty comments about nets and combat netting as well as a note about the fantastic underwater crossbow- they cost 10 times the regular amount, if you were curious. The section concludes with a few words about underwater spell use, but as that is the heart of page 57, I’ll leave that for later.

No comment is made at all about issues arising from compression and decompression. The omission is most likely one done out of a desire for simplicity rather than on some ignorance on Gygax’s part- the rest of the problems faced by those underwater seems grounded in reality. I guess if you’ve been fighting ixitxachitl all day, who need to bother with the bends?

New word: natatorial

Quick update

Yet again the posting is slow.  This time the delay is in part caused by finding a stash of AD&D (and a few Basic) modules at the local hobby shop.  I’ve been wallowing in nostalgia brought on by the like of the Warriors of Gorm and the dreaded Zargon (from B4- The Lost City), and letting my DMG reading duties slide.  I’ve just about finished them all now and will resume shortly.

Page 55: Waterborne Adventures (concl.); Underwater Adventures

After what seems like a lifetime in the wilderness (as opposed to Lifetime: Wilderness- the channel for outdoorsy women), we finally reach an end to ships and other above-the-waves nautical fun.  I hope you’ve saved some dramamine.

This is another grab-bag of items about ships and naval combat.  There is a table showing the burning times of various vessels, a description of ramming that fails to give actual damage that a ramming attempt would do, some rules about grappling (though not the infamous unarmed combat rules or the ill-defined skill grapple from Call of Cthulhu)…

When it comes to combat, Gygax rattles off a list of aquatic races that will attempt to board the ship- this seems odd, given that you tend to want to fight a foe in your native environment and not theirs.  If I had to fight a shark, I’d rather do it on dry land, honestly.  I don’t see why sahuagins, lacedons, kopoacinth, and  koalinth will climb up on deck rather than hulling a ship and killing the hapless sailors once they hit the water.  (I’d include those weird aquatic versions of ghouls, gargoyles, and hobgoblins in the new word list, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually use any of them or remember what they were long after reading this).

In combat with non-humanoid monsters “the men on a ship will be at a disadvantage fighting monsters in the water.  A squid will try to encircle the ship with its tentacles and sink it.”  Looks like someone’s been reading too much Verne…

Various methods of sinking a ship are also provided, but this sections seems self-evident.  Sure, it is useful to know how quickly a ship will sink, but I’d imagine most people have a dim notion (at a minimum) of what ways a ship may be sunk.  For some reason morale rules aren’t used on ships- crews will surrender if they are outnumbered 3 to 1 (though captains may convince them to fight to the death with a 1 on a 1d6 roll; no rules are provided for Tennille rallying the crew, however.)

Just in case your ship sinks or the mutinous crew throws you overboard, you can continue your waterborne adventures via swimming.  Just don’t expect to wear and armor or carry any gear beyond a dagger between your teeth, unless you want to risk drowning.  Looking at the sea travel wandering monster table later in the book, unless you were a high-level monk, you’d probably be dead long before you died of thirst, exhaustion, or hunger.  Dragon turtles are fond of swimmers, don’t you know.

Finally there is a short glossary of nautical terminology- from aft to weight anchor.  Again, while I probably could include them in the new word list, I really don’t think “stern castle” or “corvice” had much impact on my language.  I do note that the infamous ‘poop deck’ is nowhere to be found.  I wish I’d been able to keep my starboard and port sides straight at a much earlier age.  It might make the nautical scenario I’m working on that much easier to write…

There is but a single paragraph about underwater adventuring on page 55, but I found it to be particularly enjoyable:

As all readers of fantasy know, the ocean floor is home to numerous ancient submarine civilizations and dark, green realms of creatures half-man and half-fish.  Your players may have heard tales of the mountains of sunken loot that have been collected there over the centuries, of such things as pearls the size of a man’s head, of beautiful mermaids with green eyes and blue skin…  If they should find some way to investigate these stories, how will you handle it?  This section deals with methods for conducting underwater scenarios.

Page 54: Waterborne Combat tables

This page is a jamboree of tables and charts, all for a naval combat system I’m sure was as oft used as shampoo in a shaolin temple. Nevertheless, we plunge ahead…

The most surprising thing is that, unlike aerial combat, there are no exact rules given for ship movement and combat- just rates of speed, approximate strengths of ships (in “hull points”), and the effects of specific types of damage.  I guess you can just plot out naval combat like you would any melee.  ‘Hull points’ demonstrate one of the inherent difficulties in AD&D of converting the damage from human weapons to structures and items.  A realistic system would have something approximating how much damage your average ax could do to a ship (not much quickly, but can eventually sink it) versus being rammed by a trireme (no damage give, though I’d assume it could potentially sink another ship with a single hit).

Damage in AD&D was always problematic; characters- even comparatively weak ones- had twice as many hit points as most normal people and could survive situations that would almost certainly kill any real person.  Hit points were meant to approximate your ability to dodge, roll with a punch, luck (and pluck), and any mixture of gumption, grit, and determination.  Yet hit points for most monsters solely measure the structural integrity of a creature (consider the rules on damage to wings on the previous page).  At the same time you have at least two parallel systems (‘hull points’ and ’structure points’ for ships and buildings respectively) that are used to determine the effect of attacks on large objects.  The scalability of these systems is dubious at best; this is a game about people fighting, not mecha or titans after all.

This reminds me of various first person shooter games in which your character and certain objects can be blow to hell and back (repeatedly) but the environment is as indestructible as a neutronium-plated war machine.  The game is built for people whacking on monsters, not siege warfare or to reenact the Battle of Lepanto.

I suppose this is a long way for me to say that all of the material here seems incongruous at best.  Details about medieval shipping is a sensible inclusion; you need to know what types of ships existed, how quickly they moved, that sort of thing.  I don’t quite see the reason for percent chances a crewman is lost overboard in a hurricane or how many dice of fireball damage you need to guarantee you’ll burn the rigging off a ship.  I’m sure it all goes back to the games chimera of fairness.  Oh well, at least the AD&D didn’t include a lengthy naval combat mini-game.

Pencil Markings: Several tables have a pencil check next to them. I don’t know why and it is not my handwriting. Perhaps Joe (he of the spilled milkshake) is to blame?

Page 53: Aerial Combat (cont.) and Waterborne Adventures

(Sorry for the delay.  Also thanks to a reader for reminding me that the shrinking potion I was thinking of is the potion of diminution- sadly I’m missing that page of the book…)

Now we can finally finish up the exciting details of aerial combat; as a few bits and bobs conclude the section, mostly about the mechanics of the 2nd aerial combat section (one hex per 3″ of movement, players plot movement in advance, that sort of thing.)

Missile fire is give particular consideration- long range attacks are impossible, while the remainder are penalized if you are moving (here is where the carpet of flying is of use) and even certain creatures- sorry manticore!- suffer as well. Targets of dragons’ breath weapons also get a bonus of +2. You’d think some would be totally neutralized (hello there Mr. Green) while others would be totally unaffected (Paging Mr. Blue…); ah, another minor rule quibble.

Damage, as is to be expected, has a few particular modifiers in aerial combat. If a creature flies via wings, then said wings can be damaged causing the potential for a crash. Injuries over 50% of total hit points cause the flier to be forced to land while over 75% of total causes an immediate crash. Feathered wings are (apparently) made of sterner stuff and can take significantly more damage- the creature’s hit points are assumed to be 150% of the actual total before failure or crash- so feathered fliers are forced to land at 75% of actual hit points and are killed before a crash is forced. I guess it pays to invest in your Griffon [sic].

The final note is an amusing one: players who “leap into the saddle of their hippogriff and rise to battle without taking a couple of rounds to strap in will tend to fall out in their first round of melee, and it is 1-6 points of damage for every ten feet they fall (up to a maximum 20-120 points.)” Ouch.

From the air to the sea, we now dive deep into Waterborne Adventures!

I must offer a bit of a confession- while I personally enjoy all sorts of oceanic (and lake based, hell, even floating on a log in a creek) fun, one of my more embarrassing adventure moments happened on a ship. We’d been captured and my character… I honestly don’t even recall the class, race, or name… decided the best way to escape was to set the boat alight. Unfortunately the slaver’s ship had a haul of psychotropic drugs in the hold and the fumes from that, combined with the burning ship, killed everyone. Oops. I was teased for years afterwards about burning the boat and “burning the boat” became a synonym for a catastrophic mistake. Just thought you’d like to know…

“In due course your players will evince a desire to travel by water…” Evince? Really? “From the first raft and reed boat, ambatche and catamaran, the waters have beckoned men to come and explore.”

The book provides for five types of vessels- rowboats, barges/rafts, galleys, merchant ships, and warships. I’m not sure how many adventures included some rowboat action (though I do recall the jolly boats from The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh) but I guess if you’ve got a magic item that is in effect a George Jetsons‘ suitcase version of a rowboat (the “folding boat”) you should make some mention of it.

As for the barge/raft, I again have a game-related anecdote. The local hobby shop had a regular game that I’d show up for, even if I’d missed a week or two in between and regardless of the system. I was a junkie of sorts I guess. Anyway, one week I arrived to find the group in the midst of some tension moment of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay gaming (something about teleporting dark elves). I and other player were given the character sheets for people who had not shown up and were told that we were on a barge floating down the river towards the action. We stayed on that barge for the remainder of the night (at least five hours) despite my occasional polite queries to the game master as well as my barge-buddy’s increasingly violent attempts to get some gm attention. I think he progressed from fishing, to fighting with the bargemen, to an all out assault on every living thing in sight. Nothing worked and the game ended with us still on the barge. Stupid barge. Gygax gives all sorts of details about barge management and varieties that you probably will never find in any game ever again, save perhaps Barges and Bugbears… though I also have a vague recollection of ‘bargeman’ being a possible class in Warhammer…

Galleys then float by- they have large crews and very little cargo space, which means that unless your oarsmen are the undead (or golems, or some other magical creature) you’ better stick close to shore unless your ‘to do’ list has you down for dying of thirst and/or starvation (or being clubbed to death by your crew for risking their lives to said privations).  I suspect Gygax liked sailing- more than flying at least- because this who section is infused with a passion that aerial movement was not.

Under merchant ships we have some commentary about the relative merits of late medieval ships and the economics of merchants versus pirates (small crew for the former, large crew for the latter).  War ships are given but a few sentences about armaments, speed, and crew size.

Art: Again we’ve got a diagram, this time of two flight-paths laid out on a hexgrid, demonstrating two possible plottings of aerial movement.

New words: evince, ambatche, fagot, umiak, jaganda, bi-/tri-/quadriremes, drakkar, ‘clinker built‘, lanteen, cog (in the ship sense), carrack, nao

Page 52: Even more Aerial Combat

Returning to the various flying creatures I should note that some of the creatures listed (Nycadaemons at least) didn’t appear in the Monster Manual and, at the time of writing, could only be found in published modules (in the Nycadaemon’s case, D3- The Vault of the Drow).  Later, it would be included in the Fiend Folio but for now, you were out of luck…

Most of the entries on this page are for various methods of making men fly, a topic that was begun on the previous page. The basic fly spell is better for aerial combat than leviitate, as is to be expected.  You can cast spells and make attacks with bows (though there are penalties for slinging and swinging weapons).  Those under the effects of this spell are class B, by the way.

Other magical flying options abound- Brooms, Carpets, Wings- each with their own advantages and disadvantages.  Brooms forbid spell-casting (odd, considering the stereotypical ownership of such devices) but allow magic items like wands to be used (and are class C).  Flying carpets are wonderfully stable, but have no means of keeping riders attached (here your slippers of spider climbing come in handy!).  Wings of flying also prevent spell casting “due to the continual bodily motion involved”.  The do allow you to plunge like an eagle, if you want.  Clearly the extreme sports community would be very satisfied in the typical AD&D campaign world.

As for mounts, a rider reduces their flying class by 1 rank, save for E class creatures, because they are so freaking large.  Mounted spell casters also cannot use spells, leaving them at a disadvantage that most players (and DMs) were unaware of.  What’s that evil warlock doing on his manticore?  It is not casting spells!  (Most likely he’s holding on for dear life, wondering how a nice quiet career in diabolism and necromancy could have lead him to this sorry scene.)

A few more creatures are worthy of comment- pseudo-dragons are giving flying stats, though I seriously doubt any character could ever ride one (there isn’t a shrinking potion I’m forgetting?).  The shedu was always I creature I could never imagine running across in a game; the name sounds like something that would hummed by a do-wop outfit or maybe a bad cologne.  Finally, the wyvern… it reminds me that many of the people I gamed with (including myself) didn’t always know how to pronounce some of the terms correctly.  In this particular case,  most common rendition was ‘wiver-ren’.   If I remember any other particularly weird ones, I’ll post them.

Lastly, we reach the actual discussion of aerial combat.  Put WWI style dog-fights out of your head though- “most flying monsters simply cannot execute complicated maneuvers like barrel rolls or loop-the-loops”.  Rats.  Two methods are sketched out (though the discussion is mostly on the following page)- a simple and complex one.

The simple method “is to move each flyer in the direction they are facing at the beginning of the move, and execute the turn at the end by simply refacing in its new direction” while the complex “entails the use of hex paper so that actual arc turns can be indicated, and so that these turns may take place at any time during movement”.  Setting aside the question of if anyone actually plotted out aerial combat in either fashion ever, how the hell would the first method many anyone happy?  It doesn’t make any sense.

Art: Again these are more diagrams than illustrations.  The first is a bar across the bottom of the page showing the turning radii for the various maneuverability classes.  Each class has a square (labeled with the class and maximum turning ability) as well as an arrow tracing a hypothetical turn over a faint hexagonal background.  This diagram occupies the bottom portion of the page.

Above this diagram, on the right of the page, is a hexagon over which several angles (0º, 30º, 60º, 90º, 120º, and 180º) have been superimposed.

Tomorrow: Aerial combat concludes; waterborne adventures begin!

Page 51: Aerial combat (cont.)

Most of page 51 is a catalog of various flying beings and creatures, so today’s entry may be a bit short.  Or long, if I blather about each creature in turn (a la the spell section)…

Before we can discuss lammasu and pteranodons, there are a few points of aerial business left to cover.  The page starts with a description of maneuverability classes C through E.  As with A and B, the lower classes are accelerate more poorly and turn at a slower rate.  Watch out Rocs!

Since I’m vaguely contemplating discussing the contents of the Monster Manual, I think I’ll forgo a creature by creature discussion.  I can’t help but comment on a few though…

The cockatrice (18″, Class C), with the power to turn creatures to stone, does have a real advantage in aerial combat- “those petrified in the air usually fall and shatter!”

The succubus (18″, Class C), will use “guile, treachery, and etherealness whenever possible”.  In combat???

Djinni (24″, Class A) “are openly contemptuous of those who need wings to fly”.  The bastards.

Ki-Rin (48″, Class B).  Not just a beer, but a magical flying horse.  I was surprised when I discovered this wasn’t a creation of Gygax’s.

Tomorrow: Levitating archers, brooms, and shedus.

Page 50: Aerial Travel and Combat

(I did say that things might slow down a little bit, yes?)

Today’s topic is aerial travel and the start of aerial combat (ominous organ music should be cued right here); the combat section runs until page 53, so prepare yourself.

But what of aerial travel? Gygax notes that flying “is one of mankind’s oldest and strongest fantasies” (though not as old “finding food” and “not being eaten by a bear“; it is more recent than “score with cheerleader” or “get rich via an IPO“). Flying rates, for long-distance movement, is derived by converting the combat movement rate; 10 mph per 3″. So, your Broom of Flying can get you there at 10 miles an hour, but remember that it “may not be very comfortable”. Sounds very similar to Greyhound…

The first thing that strikes me is that the section starts (after a few other comments) with a discussion of griffons, hippogriffs, and pegasi. Wouldn’t it make more sense to discuss the general rules for aerial movement and then discuss the specifics of various types of flying mounts? There aren’t many rules for aerial movement beyond the conversion of combat movement to long-distance travel, but it struck me as a strange topic to launch into at the start- much as the book starts with a discussion of poisons, etc.

So, we’ve got rules for training griffons (that’s the spelling used throughout rather than the standard “griffin“), hippogriffs, and pegasi- griffons are “nasty and bad tempered” and require a good amount of meat (300-600 gp worth montly as adults), but if trained from infancy make a good mount, though they can only have a single rider (i.e. no griffon rental service); hippogriffs are slightly easier to trains and are omnivorous (and are open to more than one rider); pegasi are herbivores and have a single rider for life, and are (apparently) the fasting thing in the air. Other types of flying mounts are possible, but generally require some sort of spell to control them (charm monster monster being the most obvious). I recall fighting a tribe of goblins that rode perytons or something along those lines… maybe it was giant bats? I’m a bit surprised eagles aren’t discussed, but I guess Tolkien made it clear they didn’t enjoy having riders. Not that EGG was inspired by JRRT. Nope.

With the reigns of our brass dragon (captured using the subdual rules, I swear!) in hand, we move to Combat!

Due to our old friend gravity, most aerial combat is assumed to be “nearly always [a] swoop and slash, hit-and-run affair”. Two qualities are used to determine the specifics of aerial combat- speed and maneuverability- attacks are determined as they are in terrestrial combat. There a lots of bits and bobs that are of interest for potential min-maxers: “all [diving] attacks will do double damage to targets which they themselves are not diving” is a new one to me. Do piercers count? As for maneuverability (what a fun word to spell), there are five ‘classes’- A though E, with A being the most maneuverable (able to make a 180° in a single round or reach full speed, can hover) and E the least (only able to make a 30° turn, need for rounds to reach full speed, etc.)

Tomorrow: Attack modes, all sorts of creatures in the air

New words: bullyrag

Extra: a few quick words about the blog

Regular reader(s) may have noticed that things have slackened a little bit here at readingtheDMG; Spring has arrived and various chores have reared their ugly head (as well as being busier with work) resulting in less time to pedantically dissect Mr. Gygax’s magnum opus.  Fear not, while I might not always make the once a day goal, the blog will move forward to completion.  After all, who among us can resist the lure of the naval combat rules and (eventually) the random prostitute table?

On a side note, I’ve noticed that a majority of searches that find this site include the word “gar“.  Sorry fishermen- Gar was a tiny fictional village that was home to an illusionist I played about two decades ago (he died after three sessions, I think; backstabbed by a thief).  I hope there are no hard feelings in the angling community.  There are stats for a giant gar in the Monster Manual though- with 8 hit dice, an armor class of 3 and a bit doing 5-20, you’ve got a pretty deadly fish there.  They can swallow a dwarf or elf whole, so chose your bait carefully!

Page 49: Adventures in the Outdoors (cont.)

The cold shudder of dread you feel is the approach of the rules-heavy combat system, what with discussions of surprise and the like today.  Long stretches of this stuff is not recommended for people with compromised immune systems, children under six, adults over seventy, or women who are pregnant or hope to become pregnant.  Okay, it is not that bad, but I certainly haven’t been looking forward to grappling with the combat system, even peripherally.

So, what do we have here?  Having just covered the odds for an encounter, the discussion turns to determining at what distance the encounter begins at (with a base of 4d6 ‘inches’); this is modified downwards depending on if one or both of the parties are surprised as well as the terrain type.  If the groups are within 1″ of each other (ah… the vestiges of being a miniatures combat game), then you end up with a “confrontation”.

I’m glad to see that the assumption for encounters is that weak monsters attempt to flee.  One of the many annoyances in computer RPGs is that even when you’ve built up a party full of ultra-powerful death machines, some idiot wandering monster attacks you only to be killed in a single round.  How many zemzeletts have to die needlessly, I ask you?  Sadly though, I suspect in most AD&D games, monsters flung themselves head-long at the party, +1 daggers and gems carefully secured in their fur, shell, scales or gizzards, shrieking the whole time; one long banzai charge, from the aarakocra to the zygom.

I think I’ve already made my point about preferring some element of realism in my encounters and in combat, so I won’t belabor the point.  I’m just glad to see that the game’s assumption is that not every ‘monster’ wants to fight or is eager to die.  Only players can decide if the same is true for them…

Turning then to movement, we get a few tidbits (I say few because “movement rates have been given elsewhere”), mostly discussing how the given rates are for parties of less than 100 individuals and that large groups may be slowed up to 50% of their movement because of their size.

If you are moving, you can become lost, as may happen to “any party not guided by a creature knowledgeable of the countryside through which the party is moving, or which is not following a well defined course, or which is not using a well-drawn and correct map”.  The chances of this are terrain dependent as well (from 1 in 10 on a plain to 7 in 10 in a forest).  As far as I can tell there are no other modifiers for race (dwarves in mountains say) or class (druids or rangers) at all, which seems rather silly just as lost parties can never accidentally go the right direction (though I suppose you might end up at a desired destination by different route).  Lost parties then roll using the chart described in ‘Art’ below, though the notes for several terrain types suggests that lost parties will only go off course by 60° or 120° at most.

The procedures for running a lost party are needlessly wordy.  Lost parties will only realize they’re lost if they make do not become lost the next day (or the next day and so on) or they venture into a known or mapped area.  Lost parties also cannot simply determine where they are and navigate from their, they are assumed to need to backtrack until they determine at what point they became lost and begin again from their.  I bet that made for some gripping gaming.

Movement is assumed to include a goodly allotment of rest; forced marches are possible and allow for a doubled rate of movement though there are numerous and ever-increasing penalties (in the form of needed rest) incurred.  If you want to move at 150% for one day, you will then have to rest a full day.  If you fail to rest for enough time, penalties to level (or a percent chance to die in the case of pack animals) are suffered.  Time to quaff another one of Truh-Ker’s Potion of Alertness, I guess.  How this gibes with real-world examples I don’t know.

Tomorrow- Adventures in the Air !

Art: Another diagram, this time of a hexagon with six adjacent hexagon, each labeled as to the degree (in 60° segments) of deviation from an intended path (60°, 120°, 180° and so on), with each hex (save the top which says “Direction of travel desired”, given a number value on a d6. This illustrates the table to randomly determine direction if a party becomes lost. I don’t know why a plain old table wouldn’t do, but what’s the point of grousing?

New words: erroneous