I think this is the best way to finish up my series on classes by being a just a whee bit heretical. There really weren’t any multi-classing rules and, well, the races (especially the Elf) were the replacement.

This isn’t about that age old debate of race vs class. Do it how you want. I got no problems with that. Heck, I’ve done it both ways in various campaigns. But I do tend to lean a bit more towards the multi-classing option. Here’s my thoughts. You can use the four basic classes and then combine them to make most of the other classes that go beyond the basic four. Want to be paladin? Ok that’d be a Fighter-Cleric. Assassin or Ranger; Fighter-Thief. Bard; Thief-Magic User. Yes, i know those aren’t exact correlations. And you’d need to do a little more tweaking for Ranger. But you get the idea. Go right ahead and flex those creative muscles and work things out. Bend those rules.

Here’s the crunchy bits on how I handle. First, the decision to multi-class is made at 1st level and what classes the character has. The character has all the the abilities and weaknesses of all their classes, So the Fighter-Magic User can’t cast spells in armor. You could house rule that magic armor is OK. That’s up to you. For the attack bonus, use the better. Average their Hit Points. For the Saving Throw, use the worst one but use all of the bonuses. How many XP to level up? Just add them together. That way the character levels up in all of their classes at the same time.

This little technique may sound harsh but it keeps things simple especially with combining the XP into one lump sum. The character progresses slower but all the leveling happens at the same time. Just the price to pay for having all those abilities. What about racial level limits? Well. use them if you want to. I’ve rarely had it be an issue but it can happen in a long campaign or one with lower death rate.

Thanks for stopping by. Next week, I might spells or monsters. Just wait and see.

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Time to wrap this year’s installments of White Box Wednesday. Don’t worry more will be coming next year. So to wrap things up, let’s talk about Clerics.

There’s an old post that I did about Clerics and like any adult a few of my views have changed over the years but I want to go over a few of the highlights here. In modern games, the Cleric is basically the heal-bot. I blame video games. But in those old-school games that was just a fringe benefit. The Cleric’s main job was to turn those level draining undead. That’s right. You shoved the Cleric out front and hoped for the best.

The Cleric is a pretty good class. Good armor, OK weapons and the second only the Fighter when it comes to Hit Points and Attack Bonus. But their magic has always kind of bugged me. I always just envisioned it differently. I always thought of some faith healer screaming at the top of his lungs, “Be healed!” A Cleric would pray for their spells as they needed them.

Sure that sounds cool and I tried it. It slowed down the game so much that it wasn’t worth it. Heck, even changing them up every day would slow things down. So what did I finally do?

Clerics could only change their spells when they leveled up. The progression chart in the book shows how many spells of which level that they had access to. No more praying for two Cure Wounds spells. So how many spells does a Cleric get to cast each day? This is fun part. They don’t know. At any time, the fickle gods can say, “Nope, that’s all for you for today.”

So how do I do this? Pretty simple. The Spell’s Level is the chance on a d6 that the gods say, “Nope”. So First Level; 1 in 6. Second; 2 in 6. And so on. And remember, I’m talking about White Box core on this one and Cleric spells top out at 5th Level.

And there you go another hack on the good old cleric. Thanks for stopping by.

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This week I’m going to delve into Magic-Users and do a little bit of house ruling. To be honest, I never liked the Vancian magic. I understand the resource management, game balance, and origin of it. But I just don’t like. It doesn’t blend that well with so much fantasy sagas.

So there’s two systems that I’ve used in my games and they do have some similarities and that’s where I’ll start. Magic-Users start with their INT MOD+1 spells. They only learn new spells by acquiring ancient tomes, spell books, scroll; or they can learn them through research. (I generally use the spell research rules from Lamentations of the Flame Princess.) The highest level spell that a Magic-User can cast is equal to half their level rounded up which is basically the way it works in the book.

Method A: The Magic-User may cast their INT Mod+Level spells per day. Spell level doesn’t matter. That’s how many spells they can cast. It’s a quick and simple system. I’ll admit I was inspired by the Far Away Land OSR Edtion for this method.

Method B: Roll To Cast. That’s roll them dice to cast the spell. Most White Box skill systems that I’ve talked about use the good old X in d6 system. But I don’t think it’ works in this case. I think the spell is basically the Magic-User attacking reality. So it’s time to break out a d20 and use the good old Saves as Skills idea. So make a Saving Throw. No modifiers at all. Make the Save and cast the spell. Fail then the character loses the spell for the day. Fumble then very bad things happen. The DM needs to snag up one of the many Spell Fumble/Mishap Charts online or just write on up. The thing is the chart isn’t fair. Magic is powerful but it’s also dangerous. If you haven’t had a TPK due to friendly fire then you haven’t played enough old school games.

And there you go. A couple of little rules tweaks the Magic-Users in your White Box game.

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