It’s been a long time since I posted anything on White Box. But there was a request and I’ve got a few things in my back pocket while I was prepping for the possibility of running it. So why not do a few posts about it?

Let me start with messing with the good old fighter. Why? Because they are kind of boring. They get the best armor, weapons, HP, and to-hit bonuses and that’s it. There’s very little of what I would cool factor. You run up and you hit stuff. So how about adding a little bling to the fighter.
First, drop the Combat Fury. That’s the extra attacks against opponents of 1 HD or less. I’ve found it not very useful. Instead go for the “Chop Til You Drop” Rule. Legend has it that it was Dave Arneson’s house rules in the very early days so I say it stands up to the OSR purity test. It runs like this basically. Kill an opponent. Get an extra attack. The character can only get a number of extra attacks equal to their level. It’s much more useful over the level range of the character without being overpowered. But that’s just opinion.
Next. Why should thieves have all the fun with skills? So give Fighters a skill. I call it Prowess. I could throw in a little chart but just turn the Thief page in your rule book and look at their Thievery progression. A Fighter’s Prowess follows the same progression.
So what do you do with it? Want to do some neat trick in combat. Roll Prowess. That’s the catch all. However, I expanded it a bit more for more mechanic based effects. First, the player declares what they want to do. Most of thing time this would break down to three things. It it harder, not get hit, and make sure you hit. Mechanically speaking this breaks down to bonus to Damage, Armor Class, or To-Hit. So roll that Prowess. Fail. Too bad no bonus. Success! In that case the number rolled is the bonus. So low level Fighters won’t be getting huge bonuses and they won’t get them that often. Higher level fighters have a better chance of getting a bonus but then there’s still a chance that it might only +1 which at higher levels might not help that much.
So what do you think? Should I do more of these? Let me know folks.