The Dream-Ship Captain

The Dream-Ship Captain by James Maliszewski

A Dreamlands Character Class in Honor of Lovecraft's Birthday

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Grognard's Grimoire: Moon Prowler

Hunter in shadow. Wanderer in dream. Watcher beneath the moon.

Origin: Dreamlands

Requirement: Minimum DEX 9

Prime Requisite: DEX
Hit Dice: 1d4
Maximum Level: 9
Armor: None (see below)
Weapons: Claws, small melee weapons (see below).
Languages: Alignment, Dreamspeech, Feline, Moonspeech.

A moon prowler is no ordinary feline. Sleek and clever, with eyes like twin moons and a mind sharp as a knife’s edge, she prowls the Dreamlands with an ease no human could match. She speaks in purrs and riddles, slips through shadows like silk, and leaps across rooftops as though gravity were an optional courtesy. She is feared and respected by all, for the law of the Dreamlands is clear: no man may kill a cat.

Prime requisite: A moon prowler with at least 13 DEX gains a 5% bonus to experience. If DEX is 16 or higher, the moon prowler gets a +10% bonus. 

Combat

A moon prowler cannot wear armor of any kind. However, her uncanny agility grants her a base AC 7 (modified further by DEX). She prefers to fight with her claws (1d3 damage), but may use melee weapons suited to her size (referee’s discretion).

Feline Advantages

A moon prowler can squeeze through any opening large enough for her head and balance on narrow surfaces (ledges, ropes) without requiring a check.

• 1st–4th level: Immune to normal falling damage from heights up to 20’.
• 5th–7th level: This increases to 30’.
• 8th–9th level: This increases to 40’.

Feline Curse

Anyone who kills a moon prowler is cursed.

• Immediately suffers a –4 penalty on all rolls made at night.
• Cats, whether ordinary or dream-born, are always hostile.
• Lasts until the killer dies or an appropriate penance is made (referee's discretion)

Feline Drawbacks

A moon prowler cannot carry heavy burdens. Beyond a dagger and a few small items, she refuses loads. She also loathes water, avoiding it unless magically compelled or under dire circumstances.

Keen Senses

Thanks to heightened hearing and smell, moon prowlers have a 2-in-6 chance to:

• Detect hidden or invisible creatures nearby.
• Notice unusual sounds, scents, or disturbances in their surroundings.

Moon Leap

When under moonlight, a moon prowler may leap up to 30’ horizontally or 15’ vertically. This ability may be used both in and out of combat.

Nine Lives

Once per day, a moon prowler may avoid the effects of a single attack, spell, trap, or other hazard that would otherwise kill her.

Silent Stalker

In dim light or darkness, a moon prowler surprises opponents on a 1–4 on 1d6. In full daylight, this only applies against distracted or unaware targets.

Moon Prowler Level Progression

D: Death / poison; W: Wands; P: Paralysis / petrify; B: Breath attacks; S: Spells / rods / staves.

Grognard's Grimoire: Dreamer

With apologies to Peter von Sholly

Stranger in waking life. Adventurer of the Other World. King in dreams.

Origin: Waking World

Requirements: None

Prime Requisite: WIS
Hit Dice: 1d6
Maximum Level: 10
Armor: None
Weapons: Any
Languages: Alignment, Common, Dreamspeech

A dreamer is a mystic who slips beyond the borders of waking reality into strange and hidden realms. His body may be plain and earthbound, but his mind wanders distant dimensions where wonder and dread intertwine. He may return with uncanny powers – or lose himself forever. In the waking world, a dreamer often serves as a seer, prophet, or enigmatic wanderer, forever shaped by what he has seen. 

Combat

A dreamer can use any weapon, but he is unable to use to shields or wear any kind of armor.

Between Two Worlds

If a Dreamer is reduced to 0 hp in the Dreamlands, his body in the Waking World convulses and falls into a deathlike coma. He vanishes from the Dreamlands immediately, reappearing in his mortal body after 1d6 days of real-world time. During this period, he cannot enter the Dreamlands by any means.

However, each time a Dreamer is “slain” in the Dreamlands, there is a 1-in-6 chance that his soul becomes untethered. If this occurs, his waking body dies instantly and his spirit is trapped in the Dreamlands forever, unless restored by magic or divine intervention capable of true resurrection. Thereafter, any subsequent death is permanent.

Starting at 7th level, this risk is reduced to 1-in-12, reflecting mastery over his dream-self.

Dream Lore

At 1st level, a dreamer must choose one of the following:

• Moon Scholar: Has studied the secret languages of the moonlit realms. Gains the ability to speak and read one additional ancient or alien tongue (e.g. Feline, Moonspeech, etc.)
• Oneiric Talisman: Possesses a relic from dreams that anchors thought. Once per day, may re-roll a failed saving throw versus attempts to alter thoughts, emotions, or will.
• Prophetic Memory: Once per day, may declare an event as something foreseen in a dream. Gains +4 bonus on one related action.
• Silver Veil: The mind slips through lies and glamour. Gains a +2 bonus to saving throws against effects that disguise reality, such as illusions and other deceptions of sight, sound, or thought.

Dream Powers

A dreamer does not cast spells but instead manifest unpredictable powers from the Dreamlands. To do so, roll 1d8 twice on the Dream Powers table below and select one of the results. The chosen power may be used immediately or held until the end of the dreamer’s next action, after which it fades if unused and still counts toward the daily limit. Only one power can be held at a time. At levels 3, 6, and 9, a dreamer may choose one, two, and three of his daily powers respectively instead of rolling for them. Six hours of sleep restore all daily uses and remove any held power.

1. Forgotten Memory: Target forgets last 1d6 turns (save versus spells negates). Can erase knowledge of events, questions, or spells.
2. Gaze Beyond the Veil: Ask the referee one question about the situation, the future, or a hidden truth. The answer may be symbolic or vague unless manifested while sleeping.
3. Healing Light: Touch restores 1d8 + level HP. Undead take damage instead.
4. Moonblade: Summons a +1 glowing sword (1d8 dmg, lasts 1 turn, magical, parry 1d4 dmg once/round).
5. Oneiric Firebolt: 120' range, 2d6 dmg (save versus spells for half). Magical fire. On failed save, target also hallucinates for 1 round.
6. Phantom Passage: Teleport self + 1 willing target up to 60'. Must know the destination. Cannot pass through stone or magical wards.
7. Sleep of the Silver Gate: Affects up to 3 HD of creatures (no save if HD ≤ 1). Sleep lasts 1d6 turns.
8. Summon Dream-Beast: Conjures a 2 HD creature (AC 7 [12], 1d8 bite, morale 10, lasts 1 turn or until slain).

Dream Surge

When a dream powers rolls yield the same result on both dice, roll 1d20 to determine an additional consequence.

After Reaching 9th Level

At 9th level, a dreamer attracts 1d6 followers: dream-touched mystics, alien poets, or seers. Instead of a fortress, a Dreamer may establish a hidden dream-sanctum, accessible only through ritual sleep.

Dreamer Level Progression

*Modifiers from CON no longer apply.

D: Death / poison; W: Wands; P: Paralysis / petrify; B: Breath attacks; S: Spells / rods / staves.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "For NPCs Only: The Death Master"

Ah, that staple of Dragon from back in the day: the "NPC only" class. One of the oddities of the magazine was that, while there was a voracious demand for new character classes, as a house organ of TSR, it could never offer up a new class for use with D&D without a formal caveat, unless it came from the pen of Gary Gygax himself. Of course, this was done with a nod and a wink, as no referee I knew back in the day ever refrained from allowing his players to use "NPC only" classes if he felt they were well done and fit the spirit of his campaign. I know I never had any problems with it, though, to be fair, I was choosy and, in any event, most of the new classes presented in Dragon were so specialized as to have limited appeal.

Still, the presentation of Len Lakofka's death master class in issue #76 (August 1983) went above and beyond those of most other classes in terms of making it clear that it was intended only for NPCs. You can see the title of the article in which it appeared above. In addition to the "For NPCs Only" phrasing, there's the subtitle that calls the class a "monster" and notes that one shouldn't consider playing as a death master. Even more notably, the article itself begins with an "Introduction/Sermon" where Lakofka opines

The AD&D game should not have assassin player characters. In fact, no player character should be evil at all unless adverse magic affects him.

This is an interesting, though not unusual, point of view, especially as the '80s rolled on. It's also worth noting that assassins were eventually eliminated from AD&D in its second edition, a point of view even Gygax toyed with on occasion, though for different reasons. In any case, Lakofka continues in his introduction to explain that he feels evil is treated too casually in the game. One of his reasons for creating the death master class was to rectify this.

As a way of putting evil in its often without enough of a penalty proper place, here is presented an evil character that makes an assassin look like the boy next door. The death master is meant as a non-player character -- one the player characters and their party have to defeat. Please use the character that way only. If I ever run into a player character death master at a convention, I may turn evil myself. . .

Again, it's an interesting point of view, especially when viewed against the changing culture surrounding D&D at that time. Naturally, Lakofka's concerns had zero effect on me at the time, since there was for a brief time a PC death master in my old campaign – brief, because he was eventually slain by the other PCs, but I allowed the class nonetheless. The PC in question was a formerly good character turned to evil by possession of the Hand of Vecna and who became obsessed with eliminating his former companions in the belief that they would eventually destroy him. He was right, as it turned out, though, ironically, his destruction was more the result of his repeated attempts to slay the other PCs than their own desire to see his life ended. In any event, I didn't heed Lakofka's warnings and I'd be amazed if I were the only one.

The death master class itself is somewhat interesting. It's basically a necromancer, with many powers over the undead and a collection of new spells. Beginning at 4th level, the class also gains the ability to make a variety of "potions, salves, and pastes" that replicate some of his spells and class abilities. At the time, I found it an impressive addition, since it spelled out a bit more explicitly the crafting of magic items than was seen elsewhere. In retrospect, I'm not sure a new class was needed, when new spells alone could have probably sufficed, but that was the style at the time. Regardless, I'm not at all convinced that the death master did anything to advance the notion that evil should be Evil and never an option for player characters.

The Art of the Cavalier

The first appearance of the cavalier character class in issue #72 of Dragon (April 1983) is something I remember very acutely, in large part because I loved the idea of a knightly AD&D character class. For that reason, I can also remember the three illustrations, all by Keith Parkinson, that accompanied it. Here's the first one, which has a blue background for some reason. Perhaps Dragon was experimenting with color interiors at the time?  

Though I've never been the biggest fan of Parkinson's art, I do like this piece, especially the weird combination of a barbute helmet with the brush like that worn by a Roman legate or military tribune. I also appreciate that the horse looks sturdy enough to carry a man in that kit.

Here's the second illustration, featuring what appears to be the same cavalier, possibly fighting kobolds. I say "appears," because the cavalier in this piece holds his sword in his right hand, whereas the one above holds it in his left. At first, I thought that maybe one or the other images had been reversed by accident – this happens a lot in publications – but Parkinson's signature looks correct in both of them, so I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe the cavalier is ambidextrous?

Finally, we get this depiction of a female elven cavalier astride a unicorn. One of the cavalier's abilities is horsemanship. As he levels, the cavalier gains greater skill with his mount, as well as a wider range of possible beasts he can ride. In the case of female elves, unicorns become a mount option for them starting at 4th level, which is cool, I suppose. On the other hand, I'm an obnoxious purist about unicorns. To my mind, they're not just white horse with horns but hybrid creatures with aspects of horses, deer, goats, and lions, so I'm not especially keen about this particular unicorn, but whatever. I still remember this piece more than four decades later, so I guess that's what counts.
 

The Articles of Dragon: "The Chivalrous Cavalier"

From the moment Gary Gygax first announced that his upcoming revision to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would include, among other additions, a collection of new character classes, my younger self was waiting with eager anticipation for any news about what these classes might be or what abilities they might possess. By the time issue #72 of Dragon (April 1983) had come out, Gygax had already presented previews of two of these new classes, the barbarian and the thief-acrobat, neither of which thrilled me. I didn't hate either of them, but I didn't see much scope for their use in my ongoing AD&D campaign at the time – and neither did my players, who largely ignored them a brief flurry of interest.

This issue offered readers a third proposed class: the cavalier. Described as a "sub-class of fighter ... in service to some deity, noble, order, or special cause," the cavalier was basically a knight, drawing on both historical orders of knighthood and those from legend and literature. Much like the paladin, with whom it shares many similarities (more on that soon), the cavalier has hefty ability score requirements for entrance (STR, DEX, and CON 15+, INT and WIS 10+), as well as belonging to the right social class. A cavalier must initially be good in alignment, whether lawful, chaotic, or neutral, though he may shift away from goodness before 4th level without penalty, which I always thought was an odd detail.

Unlike the paladin, which is a human-only class, the cavalier admits humans, elves, and half-elves, all of whom have the potential for unlimited advancement. The class is focused on mounted combat, which, while appropriate based on its inspirations, would seem to limit its utility in dungeon-focused adventures. No matter: cavalier get numerous other useful abilities, such as combat parries, improved saves against fear, impressive starting equipment (a consequence of their high station), weapon specialization, and, perhaps most remarkable of all, ability improvement. Every time a cavalier gains a level, he rolls 2d10 and adds the result as a note after his Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores. When the total from these rolls reaches 100 for any ability, it increases by 1 point. 

Needless to say, the cavalier was quite a popular class among my friends and I at the time issue #72 appeared. I'd long been seeking an "official" AD&D knight class, so the cavalier scratched a longstanding itch of mine. That the class Gygax presented was also incredibly potent, possessing multiple powerful abilities, was just icing on the cake. Compared to the fighter, of which it was a sub-class, the cavalier was just better in almost every way, especially, if as was usually the case, one were not too strict about the rolling of ability scores for new characters. Consequently, I saw a lot of cavalier characters for a while, both in my own games and in those of friends. I can't say I really blamed anyone for this, in light of the class's power. Plus, it had the imprimatur of Gary Gygax, so who could argue against its inclusion?

Over time, quite a lot of us fell out of love with the cavalier. The truth was that, as presented here – and, later, in Unearthed Arcana – the class was simply out of whack with those in the Players Handbook. Perhaps, I thought, once Gygax completed his full revision of AD&D, it might be more in line with the overall power level of the game, but, until then, it was simply too much. This was doubly true of cavalier-paladins, which combined the abilities of both classes – what was Gygax thinking? Yes, it's true that there were various social restrictions placed on cavaliers through their code of honor that might, in principle, keep them in line, but, as kids, that was rarely sufficient to rein them in. I soon forbade cavaliers from my games and hardly anyone complained about it.

Looking back on this article now, it's pretty clear that, by 1983, Gygax's conception of AD&D was in the process of shifting considerably from his original vision. On some level, I can't really blame him. By this time, he'd been playing some version of D&D for over a decade, so it was probably inevitable that he'd want to do something different than he'd done before. Everything he was writing around this time suggests that he was becoming increasingly interested in a more high-powered kind of fantasy, one whose characters were personally powerful and whose adventures involved high stakes and equally powerful foes. Again, I cannot blame him for this. Having refereed my House of Worms campaign for a similar length of time, I know only too well the temptations of going Big, sometimes to the detriment of the game itself.

That's more or less how I look at the cavalier and most of the Gygax-penned material that first appeared in Dragon and later in Unearthed Arcana: experiments gone wrong. Many of them seemed like better ideas than they turned out to be. "Even Homer nods," as the saying goes, and so it was with Gygax and the cavalier.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Charting the Classes"

One of the characteristics of what I call the Silver Age of D&D is an obsession with mathematics, using it for a wide variety of purposes, from determining the best way to model falling damage to proving if one's dice "be ill-wrought." In issue #69 (January 1983) of Dragon, Roger E. Moore offered up yet another new field for mathematical analysis: class "balance." Many old school gamers think worrying about such matters is a peculiarly modern notion, but it's not. For almost as long as I've played the game, I've known players who fretted over whether this class or that class was "overpowered" or "underpowered" compared to the others. It's a concern I've never really worried about myself, partially because I think all but the most egregious mechanical differences take a backseat to what actually happens at the table. Nitpicker and hair splitter I may be about many topics relating to D&D but this isn't one of them.

However, I'm hardly representative of anyone but myself and I expect that, when Moore wrote this article he was speaking on behalf a sizable number of gamers who had a sneaking suspicion that some AD&D character classes were better (or worse) than others -- and he was going to prove it. Moore's analysis hinges on comparing the classes according to accumulated experience points, not level. His thesis is that, by examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each class at certain XP benchmarks, he might get a sense of which classes are more (or less) potent than others. In doing this, Moore discovers that, for the most part, AD&D's classes are reasonably balanced against one another, with two significant exceptions, along with a third point of discussion.

The first anomaly concerns druids, which Moore says are unusually tough compared to other classes. Compared to clerics, they advance very quickly and, more importantly, they continue to gain full hit dice all the way to 14th level, which also nets them more Constitution bonuses as well. Druids thus wind up being comparable to fighters at mid-levels and even surpassing them at higher levels. Consequently, he recommends increasing the druid's XP requirements to compensate. The second anomaly concerns monks, which Moore says are too weak in terms of hit points for a class that is supposed to fight hand-to-hand. He recommends that they have D6 hit points. Finally, Moore says -- along with nearly every AD&D player I knew back in the day -- that bard, as presented in the Players Handbook, needs to go. He recommends Jeff Goelz's bard as a replacement.

In the end, "Charting the Classes" is actually a very modest and limited analysis of AD&D's character classes and Moore's suggestions are all quite reasonable. I believe I even adopted his recommendation regarding druids, as I know from experience that they were more potent than they had any right to be. Still, I largely find the idea of "balance" between the classes a Quixotic obsession that's played a lot of mischief with D&D in its later incarnations. But it is, unfortunately, a long and deeply held concern of many gamers and I don't expect it to ever go away.

The Articles of Dragon: "A Split Class for Nimble Characters: the Thief-Acrobat"

Issue #69 of Dragon (January 1983) is another one about whose articles I have very strong memories. The strength of my memories is bolstered, no doubt, by the issue's remarkable cover by Clyde Caldwell. Caldwell's an artist about whom my feelings are generally mixed, but I've nevertheless got a fondness for this particular piece, which, in some ways, encapsulates the vibe of the dying days of D&D's Golden Age. Consequently, I'll be returning to this issue several times in the coming weeks. 

This week, though, I want to look at Gary Gygax's "From the Sorceror's [sic] Scroll" column, in which he provides full details on the thief-acrobat "split class" that he first mentioned in a previous column. A split class is a specialization path for an existing class, in this case the thief. Provided he has the appropriate ability scores requirements (STR 15, DEX 16), a thief can, upon attaining 6th level, choose to devote himself to acrobatics as an outgrowth of his thievery – in effect, becoming a cat burglar or second story man in criminal parlance.

At the time of this article's publication, this was a comparatively unique concept, one that Gygax claims "has not been expressed before" and for which there is "nothing similar" in AD&D. I'm not entirely sure this is true. As I mentioned previously, the thief-acrobat reminds me a bit of the original concept for the paladin class, as found in Supplement I to OD&D. Likewise, the AD&D version of the bard, in which a character must first attain levels in fighter and thief before becoming a bard, is in the same ballpark in my opinion. Even so, the precise arrangement Gygax presents for the thief-acrobat isn't one we'd seen before.

I liked the idea of the thief-acrobat more in principle than in fact and my friends held similar views. Only one of them ever chose to pursue this split class and the player soon grew bored of playing him. That was probably the biggest problem with the thief-acrobat: it was very specialized and thus of limited utility. This is the kind of class that I could see thriving in, say, an urban, all thief campaign, where each character needs to distinguish himself from his fellow thieves. In a more traditional dungeon-based campaign, I think the thief-acrobat hold much less or appeal – or at least that's how my friends and I viewed it.

When it comes to the question of designing character classes, there are a couple of common approaches, neither of which is without its problems. Dungeons & Dragons began with only a few broad, archetypal classes, like the cleric, fighting man, and magic-user, but soon added many more, each one devoted to a narrower but nevertheless real archetype. AD&D opted for a larger list of available classes, while the D&D line kept to something closer to the original, narrower list. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages and I can easily defend them both.

Had Gygax remained at the helm of AD&D, we would certainly have seen more classes added to its roster, some of which, like the thief-acrobat, would have been quite narrow in their utility. That's not necessarily a problem, but it can add a lot of unnecessary complexity to the game, not to mention diluting the game's flavor. On the other hand, a goodly selection of classes can, if presented properly, increase the game's flavor, with each one revealing more about its explicit or implied setting and the sorts of activities characters are expected to undertake within it.

Whether the thief-acrobat succeeds in doing any of these things is an open question, hence my own ambivalence toward it. Even so, this article sticks in my mind, because, like others written by Gygax at the time, it offered a sneak peek into his evolving vision of AD&D. It was a really interesting time to be a fan of the game and I'm glad to have been around for it.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Character Classes to Consider"

Issue #65 (September 1982) of Dragon saw yet another "From the Sorceror's [sic] Scroll" column by Gary Gygax that I will long remember. At the time, I was an avid AD&D player, having largely cast aside the D&D line as "for kids" (despite my being only just shy of 13 at the time). So, anything Gygax wrote about an "expansion volume" for the system was of keen interest to me. In the article under examination today, Gary laid out his plans for some new sub-classes, a topic sure to cause me to catch my breath.

According to Gygax, there would be seven new sub-classes, in addition to an additional level for druids beyond 14th. Of these sub-classes, we only ever saw three: barbarian, cavalier, and the thief-acrobat, in addition to the 15th level Grand Druid (and the Hierophant levels), each appearing first in the pages of Dragon and then in Unearthed Arcana. The others never appeared under Gygax's name in any form. They were:

• Mystic: A cleric sub-class "concerned more with prediction and detection than are other sorts of clerics."
• Savant: A magic-user sub-class "specializ[ing] in knowledge, understanding, and arcane subjects." Because of their deep learning, they can even learn some cleric and druid spells and, at high levels, use scrolls of other classes as well.
• Mountebank: A thief sub-class "specializ[ing] in deception, sleight of hand, persuasion, and a bit of illusion." 
• Jester: Whether this was a sub-class or a new class all its own Gygax never explains, though he does reference Roger E. Moore's NPC jester class. Amusingly, he has already worked out the class's level titles in this article and presents them.

At the time, I was salivating at the thought of so many new sub-classes for AD&D, though, in retrospect, the only one I now think was a good idea was the mountebank and it's one of the classes we never saw. Regardless of my present feelings, the article caused quite a stir at the time, leading many to believe that the next volume of AD&D was about to appear imminently. As it turned out, it would be several more years before we saw Unearthed Arcana and that book was not at all what we were expecting.

The article also covered a handful of other topics. First up was about personalizing one's character, a key facet, Gygax claims, in a role-playing game rather than a "roll playing" game. I'm not sure if this is the first ever instance where this pun was used, but it's certainly an early example of it. Of course, for Gary, "personalizing" meant one of a wide variety of adjectives to describe one's character's complexion, skin, hair, and eye color. It's both an odd thing to include in this article and a strangely literal understanding of "personalizing."

Gygax also notes that he is "retir[ing] from the position of 'sole authority' regarding the D&D game system," making way for Frank Mentzer as his colleague. He also notes that he is working closely with Francois Marcela-Froideval on several AD&D-related projects, including two "volumes." One of these is presumably Oriental Adventures but the other could have been any number of things. Finally, Gygax once again inveighs against "cheap imitations" and "knock-off" products, urging his readers to "avoid all such fringe products." I'm not certain which products he specifically had in mind in 1982, but it's unlikely to have been the Arduin series, since they were several years old by that point.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Big, Bad Barbarian"

As I've mentioned on multiple occasions, I looked forward to reading Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" columns in Dragon whenever they appeared. As Gygax himself regularly reminded his readers, his columns were (usually) the only articles in the magazine whose content was 100% official and approved for use with AD&D. Rabid AD&D player and TSR fanboy that I was at the time, this imprimatur thus meant a lot to me, because it ensured that I was permitted to make use of this new material in my campaign without reservation – and use it I did!

Like many (most?) gamers at the time, I'm not certain I ever played AD&D "by the book." Instead, my friends and I played a cobbled-together mishmash of Holmes, Moldvay, AD&D, and random bits of RPG "folklore" we picked up from Crom knows where. We still called what we were playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, of course, because that was the game to play and we all wanted to play it, but whether we actually were playing something Gary Gygax would have recognized as AD&D is an open question. What's important to understand for our present purposes is that we believed ourselves to be playing AD&D, hence why the new material Gygax presented for use with AD&D in Dragon was so important to us. 

My first experience of Gygax's additions had come in issue #59 (March 1982) with his introduction of cantrips. While these minor spells were interesting, they were never widely adopted in our group, unlike those that began to appear a few issues later. A good example of what I am talking about is "The Big, Bad Barbarian," which appeared in issue #63 (July 1982). As its title suggests, this article gave us our first peek at the barbarian character class that would later be included in Unearthed Arcana several years later. Since this was the first new – and official – addition to the line-up of AD&D character classes, I was very excited to see it.

I also perplexed by it. My own sense of what a "barbarian" was had been informed by two sources: ancient history and fantasy literature, particularly Howard's stories of Conan the Cimmerian. The class that Gygax presented in issue #63, with its proficiencies in survival and suspicion of magic, was vaguely reminiscent of both, but still somehow its own distinct thing. I didn't hate the class, but neither did I wholeheartedly embrace it as I would other new Gygaxian classes. I suppose it's fair to say that, in principle, I was attracted to the idea of a barbarian class. I simply wasn't yet sold on the AD&D version.

Part of the reason why I felt this way is that Gygax's barbarian broke a lot of standard AD&D "rules." For example, the barbarian's ability scores were generated according to its own unique methods, unlike even those presented in the Dungeon Masters Guide. Strength is generated by rolling 9D6 and picking the three highest, while Constitution uses 8D6 (Wisdom, interestingly, is generated by rolling 4d4). Furthermore, barbarians get double the benefit for high Dexterity and Constitution scores, both of which they'll almost certainly have, given the way the scores are generated. The class also began play proficient in even more weapons than a fighter, in addition to many other special abilities. Even to my twelve year-old self, it all seemed a bit much.

Nevertheless, I dutifully attempted to make use of the new class. One of my friends asked if he could convert his longtime fighter into a barbarian, since he'd always imagined him as a barbarian. I agreed, since it gave us the perfect opportunity to give the barbarian a whirl, just as Gygax suggested we do. The results were ... mixed. In play, we found the barbarian exceedingly tough in combat and its various abilities useful. However, in its Dragon iteration, the class was utterly forbidden from using magic weapons, which hampered its ability to take on many powerful monsters. I imagine this was intended to be balance out its other strengths, but, in the end, it proved crippling and my friend asked to return his character to being a fighter, which I happily permitted.

My first experience with a new, official class for AD&D ended in disappointment. This made me wary of all future classes Gygax presented in "From the Sorcerer's Scroll, though, as we'll see in future posts in this series, my wariness did not sour me on the idea of new character classes in general. But the barbarian, in either its original version or its "improved" one in UA, never won me over. I retain a fondness for the concept of a barbarian class, as I've explained before. I simply haven't yet found (or created) one that I like well enough to use. One day!

Level Titles: Beyond D&D

Having now covered all of the published TSR era D&D and AD&D character classes with level titles, I wanted to turn to some other RPGs published by the same company that also include them. First up is Empire of the Petal Throne (1975), which only makes sense, as the game's rules were essentially a variant of OD&D. Here is the chart featuring level titles for all three character classes available in that game:

There are a couple of notable ways that this chart differs from its D&D predecessors. The first and most obvious is that these titles aren't in English. Instead, they're in the Tsolyáni constructed language used in the setting, though they are accompanied by rough English translations. Secondly and more importantly, most of these titles have a meaning within the setting. For example, the titles of the fighting man class are, from levels 1 through 6, actual titles within the Tsolyáni legions. Likewise, the titles of both the priest and magic-user classes are those of ranks within the "circles" (an administrative term) of the temple priesthoods and lay priesthoods respectively. In short, these level titles aren't arbitrary names but rather markers of attainment within Tsolyánu. 

Empire of the Petal Throne is not, however, the only TSR RPG to include level titles. Another one that does so is Top Secret (1980) and its titles seem to have a lot in common with those of Dungeons & Dragons. Take, for example, the titles of the Investigation section:

Like most of their D&D predecessors, the Top Secret level titles (or "designations") are just synonyms related to the class in question, as you can see in the case of the Confiscation section:

If anything, the Confiscation titles are even less plausible than those for Investigation. Shoplifter? Crook? Those don't strike me as at all credible internal designations for a covert operative. Consider, too, the Assassination section:

Punk? Hood? Muscleman? As I said, these strike me as simply synonyms – and of a decidedly colloquial sort – rather than anything that could be accepted as having any purpose within the world of the game itself. 

On the other hand, there's Gangbusters (1982), which includes level titles for some of its character professions, but not others. For example, these are the titles for FBI agents:

You'll notice several things about this chart. Firstly, not every level has a unique title. Secondly, each increase in level includes a commensurate increase in salary, which has a real in-game effect. The titles in Gangbusters are, in this way, go beyond even those of Empire of the Petal Throne in being something that definitely exists within the game world rather than being simply an artifact of the game rules. For the sake of completeness here are the charts for Prohibition Agents and police officers:

Clearly, Gangbusters puts level titles to the best use of all the roleplaying games so far examined, in that they not only reflect a setting-based reality (i.e. promotion within a character's profession) but also provides a setting-based benefit in the form of increased pay. These are small things, to be sure, and one could reasonably argue that there's no need to present such things in this fashion. However, given that Gangbusters uses a level-based system, albeit one very different from D&D, it makes some sense to do it this way. In any event, I think it's fair to say Gangbusters does level titles better than D&D and Top Secret.

Level Titles: Illusionists and the Rest

Having already covered the level titles of most of the character classes in Dungeons & Dragons, it's now time to turn to those that remain, some of which are unusual. Let's start with the most straightforward: illusionists. A sub-class of magic-user, illusionists first appeared in volume 1, issue 4 of The Strategic Review (Winter 1975) in an article written by Peter Aronson. As presented there, illusionists have the following level titles:

The AD&D Players Handbook (1978) has an almost identical list of level titles. The only difference is that the original level 1 title, minor trickster, is turned into the level 2 title, in order to make room for "prestidigitator," which also happens to be the level title for a level 1 magic-user. There is, of course, no explanation for this overlap of titles, which is, I think, unique in the game.

The paladin class first appeared as a kind of proto-prestige class to the fighting man in Supplement I to OD&D (1975). In that form, the class has no distinctive level titles. Those didn't appear until the stand-alone version of the class was presented in the AD&D Players Handbook several years later.

Unearthed Arcana (1985) formally introduced the cavalier class into AD&D. The book also made the paladin, previously a sub-class of the fighter, a sub-class of the new cavalier, which makes a certain amount of sense, given its knightly overtones. The cavalier's level titles, includes those of its two 0-levels.

Speaking of "proto-prestige classes," Unearthed Arcana also gives us the thief-acrobat. The thief-acrobat is a specialist version of the thief that an ordinary thief can opt into, starting at 6th level, provided he meets certain ability score requirements for Strength and Dexterity. Interestingly, thief-acrobats have their own distinct level titles.

Finally, there is the barbarian class, also appearing in UA. The barbarian probably has the most unusual level title chart of all:

Aside from being funny, what strikes me about the chart above is the implication that level titles actually mean something and are perhaps even bestowed by someone or some group within the world of D&D. Barbarians, as outsiders, aren't part of that world and thus have no such titles. At least, that's how I read it – but I may simply be finding meaning where there is none.

I'll return to the question of the meaning of level titles in a future post, since I've still got at least a couple more to present before I can offer any attempt at a summation of my thoughts. Stay tuned.

Level Titles: Druids, Rangers, and Bards

The druid class first appeared in Supplement III to OD&D, Eldritch Wizardry (1976). Though the supplement gives Gary Gygax and Brian Blume the byline, the class was actually the creation of Dennis Sustare, who's credited with a special thanks (and dubbed "The Great Druid"). Here's the original list of druid level titles:

The level titles of the druid found in the AD&D Players Handbook (1978) is nearly identical, except that Gygax has inserted a new title, "ovate," between "aspirant" and "initiate of the 1st circle." Its inclusion is interesting, because of its connection to British neo-druidism, where "ovate" is a type of prophet or seer. I suppose it's a good thing that the term and its connections are sufficiently obscure or else critics of the game might have had more "support" for their bad arguments against it.

The ranger class originates in volume 1, number 2 of The Strategic Review (Spring 1975) in an article written by Joe Fischer. Presented as a sub-class of fighting men akin to the paladin (which appeared in the Greyhawk supplement earlier the same year), this OD&D version of the ranger has the following level titles:

The ranger reappears in the AD&D Players Handbook. Its level titles are almost identical to those from The Strategic Review. However, a few of the titles have been transferred to different levels and the original 9th-level title (ranger-knight) has been pushed back to level 10, in order to make room for the title of "ranger." 

Like the ranger, the bard class first appeared in the pages of The Strategic Review, specifically volume 2, issue 1 (February 1976). Written by Doug Schwegman, the article presents bards as jacks-of-all-trades based on ideas drawn from the Celtic bard, the Nordic skald, and the southern European minstrel. As originally presented, the bard has the following level titles:

The level titles of the AD&D version of the bard differ from the OD&D version in only one small way. The OD&D title of "lore master" is changed – bizarrely, in my opinion – to "lorist," a coinage for which I can find very little evidence in any of the dictionaries to which I have access. Regardless, I find it notable that Gary Gygax, in translating Schwegman's bard to AD&D, retained nearly all the level titles while changing the overall nature of it. 

Druids explicitly and bards implicitly all belong to an organization that governs their advancement. In the case of druids, this advancement is similar to that of monks in being adjudicated through a trial by combat. I find details of this very fascinating for what they suggest about the "world" of Dungeons & Dragons and how the various character classes fit into it. Perhaps this is a topic worthy of a later post or two.

Level Titles: Assassins and Monks

To continue with our discussion of level titles in Dungeons & Dragons, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at two classes that first appeared in Supplement II to OD&D, Blackmoor (1975), and later in the Advanced D&D Players Handbook (1978) – assassins and monks. Here are the level titles of the former, as they were in Blackmoor:

As with most level titles, these are all mostly synonyms, with a few exceptions, the first being "dacoit," which is an archaic term that, like "thug," ultimately derives from India. Another notable exception is "guildmaster of assassins," which suggests, like the titles immediately before it, that there's some kind of organized structure granting these titles to assassins as they gain experience. The text of Supplement II more or less states this: "Any 12th level assassin (Prime Assassin) may challenge the Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild to a duel to the death, and if the former is victorious he becomes Guildmaster." This suggests there's a single Assassins' Guild rather several, as seems to be the case with thieves.

Regardless, the assassin level titles in the Players Handbook are somewhat different:

While many of the low-level titles are identical to those in Blackmoor, their arrangement is changed. In addition, Gygax indulged in his fondness for odd archaisms, like rutterkin and waghalter, while getting rid of "dacoit." Interestingly, he added a new title above "guildmaster assassin," namely, "grandfather of assassins," for reasons both historical and practical.

Monks offer an intriguing parallel to assassins, because, like them, their level titles suggest the existence of a single organization that governs them and thus grants these titles. Likewise, above a certain point, the granting of these titles is tied to success in combat against the previous holder of the title, perhaps inspired by martial arts trials. The OD&D level titles are:

In the AD&D Players Handbook, we get this version of them:

The AD&D list differs only in inserting an additional level and reserving the title "grand master," as opposed to simply "master" for the highest level. Otherwise, the two lists are almost identical, even down to the progression order of the various master titles (Dragons, North Wind, West Wind, etc.). I find that interesting, but I'm unsure what conclusions, if any, we can draw from these facts. It's also worth noting that, according to some sources, the "master" titles were inspired by the names of mahjong tiles, which seems plausible, given how wide were the interests in games of men like Arneson and Gygax.

Level Titles: Clerics and Magic-Users

Yesterday, we looked at the level titles of fighters and thieves, so today we'll turn to the level titles of clerics and magic-users. These are a bit more interesting, in that there's more variability between the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. In OD&D (1974), clerics have the following level titles:

In the AD&D Players Handbook (1978), we get a similar but not identical list. Levels 1 and 2 are the same, while level 3 is simply "priest" rather than "village priest." The title of "curate" becomes a level 4 title and "vicar" disappears entirely, replaced by "perfect," which may or may not be a misspelling of "prefect." "Bishop" is replaced with "canon" and there's a title above patriarch – high priest.

The 1981 Expert Rules has yet another set of level titles, one that is fairly close to that of OD&D and yet still distinct. There's a new title, elder, that's placed in between curate and bishop, making the latter a 7th-level title rather than a 6th-level one in OD&D.

The strangest thing about all the lists of clerical level titles is how, for the most part, they're all derived from the names of Christian clergy, which says a lot about the origins of the cleric class. The anomalous titles are "adept," which strikes me as being more appropriate to a magic-user of some kind and "lama," which, while religious in character, has nothing to do with Christianity. Why these were both included in the list, I have no idea.

Turning to magic-users, we get this list in OD&D:

AD&D has a similar list, starting at level 3. The first two AD&D level titles are quite different and the titles that were replaced appear nowhere else on the list. They're simply removed. 

The Expert Rules give us yet another list. "Medium" and "seer" are restored to level 1 and 2, while "theurgist" and "thaumaturgist" are both removed entirely, much as "medium" and "seer" were in AD&D. The OD&D level titles that followed, starting with "magician" simply drop down several levels, perhaps so that "wizard" can now be the 9th-level rather than 11th-level title, since the 1981 edition places a great emphasis on level 9 being "name" level for the four human classes. Also of note is that the 1981 rules spell "conjurer" and "sorcerer" as "conjuror" and "sorceror," despite neither OD&D nor AD&D spelling them that way.

Normally, the 1983 Frank Mentzer-edited edition of D&D follows its 1981 predecessor quite closely, but there are some differences worthy of note. In the case of magic-user level titles, it's worth noting that '83 restores the "–er" endings of both "conjurer" and "sorcerer," while everything else remains the same.

I find these changes quite fascinating, but I wish I knew precisely why they were made. I have theories but no proof and I suspect, even if I were to hunt down the people responsible for doing so, they would not remember after so many decades. 

Level Titles: Fighters and Thieves

Level titles first appeared in original (1974) Dungeons & Dragons, seemingly inspired by the various types of figures available in the "Fantasy Supplement" to Chainmail (1971), about which I may make a separate post later. These titles, in themselves, have no mechanical purpose whatsoever, serving solely as a verbal way to distinguish between two characters of the same class but of different levels. Consequently, they disappeared entirely from AD&D's Second Edition (1989), but were present in all editions of D&D until the Rules Cyclopedia (1991), when they disappeared (though they did reappear in the brief and often forgotten The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game in 1994).

Since I've lately become very interested in the degree of continuity between the various editions of D&D, I thought looking at the level titles of the various classes might make for an interesting series of posts. To start, let's look at fighters (fighting men) and thieves. Here's the level title chart for the former from Volume 1 of OD&D:

 In the AD&D Players Handbook (1978), the list is identical.

However, in the 1981 David Cook/Stephen Marsh-edited Expert Rules, we get this list of level titles, which is only nearly identical. The 3rd-level title, Swordsman, becomes Swordmaster, probably for the same reason the 9th-level title, Lord, gains the parenthetical option of Lady. All later editions of D&D (1983, 1991, 1994) use these same level titles.

Thieves first appear in Supplement I to OD&D (1975) and use the following level titles:

In the AD&D Players Handbook, we get a slightly different list for thieves. Most of the titles are the same, but the levels they're associated with are swapped. We also get a couple of new titles, like Filcher at 6th level and Magsman at 8th level, because Gygax loved obscure and archaic words.

The D&D Expert Set much more closely follows the Supplement I level titles than does AD&D, replacing only Master Pilferer at 8th level with Thief instead (and lowering the level at which Master Thief becomes available).

Of the two character classes examined today, it's the thief that shows the most changes in its level titles between their first appearance in Greyhawk and later versions, though, even there, the changes are small. Meanwhile, the fighter changes barely at all. The same cannot be said of clerics and magic-users, as we'll see in the next post in this series.