My Old School Essentials Advanced House Rules

Peter Mullen

Now even more Advanced!

The 1970s Advanced edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG has been translated into Old School Essentials with the Advanced Fantasy Genre Rules. These get across the myriad of exciting classes and races, its weird and wonderful monsters and treasures, and the delicious, esoteric Gygaxian flavor with the elegance and power level of B/X.

While they do a great job at things, these additional house rules hopefully bring yet more of those options — and that flavor — into my OSE Advanced Fantasy games.

Assassination Skill Errata

Gavin clarified this recently on a Dragonfoot thread. 

Assassination is intended to work on the same types of targets which affect "persons" (i.e., all humans and demihumans regardless of level, as well as all humanoid monsters up to 4+1 HD).

Chaotic Clerics & the Undead

In the 1st edition Advanced game, Evil Clerics could compel the undead to serve them upon a successful Turning. A simplified take on that is provided here for Chaotic Clerics.

Chaotic clerics may attempt to control undead creatures, binding them to their will. To command undead, the player rolls 2d6. The referee then consults the Turning the Undead table, comparing the roll against the Hit Dice of the undead monsters targeted.
If the turning attempt succeeds, the player must roll 2d6 to determine the number of HD affected.

• Turned Undead: Will be controlled for 1 turn per cleric level.

• Destroyed Undead (result of "D"): If the undead would have been destroyed, the undead are controlled for 1 day per level of the cleric.

Controlled undead behave as if charmed, obeying the cleric as if they were friends. However, if the controlled undead are turned or destroyed by a cleric during the duration of the control, the control is dispelled immediately. If the duration of the control ends without incident, the undead will flee (as if turned).

The normal limitations and rules for Turning Undead from Classic Fantasy and Advanced Fantasy still apply to Chaotic Clerics.

Neutral clerics will turn or command undead creatures, depending on the deity served (no deity favors both turning and commanding undead).

E.g., Gog is a 2nd level Cleric of Chaos trying to bring some skeletons to heel. He automatically turns 2d6 HD of them with a result of "T". The skeletons await his commands, which they will obey for 2 turns.

Frank Frazetta

Multiple Attacks

In the 1st edition Advanced game, fighters enjoyed a number of ways to increase their number of attacks against foes from mowing through weak enemies to improving their attack routine as the level up. These rules simulate these feats of glorious mayhem in a simpler (and in my opinion, more elegant) manner.

A martial class may distribute their melee attacks among a number of Hit Dice of opponents equal to their martial class level (e.g., A third level Fighter could attack up to 3 enemies with 1 HD, 1 enemy with 1 HD and another with 2 HD, or 1 enemy with 3 or more HD).

At the Referee's discretion, certain monsters may be able to distribute their attacks in such a manner.

Jeffery Catherine Jones

Damage & Healing

All characters and monsters have a hit point total, which represents their ability to avoid death. Many attack forms, including attacks with weapons in combat, subtract hit points from this total.

Dying: A character or monster reduced to 0 hit points (or as low as -3 hit points) is dying. They will lose an additional hit point per round from bleeding and shock. At -10 hit points, they are slain.

E.g., Algora only has 4 HP left. She is struck by an arrow for 4 damage and is reduced to 0 HP. She collapses and is bleeding from the wound, but she can still be saved! If she had taken more damage, the dart would have proved fatal.

Note that character brought below this initial "unconscious threshold" (0 to -3 depending on referee ruling) by a single blow die. Such injuries and blows are too severe to survive.

Aid: Dying characters can be immediately stabilized on any round where aid is administered. This could be anything from binding wounds, starting respiration, administering a draught, or whatever else is otherwise necessary to restore life.

Recovery: Being knocked unconscious is quite serious; even after returning to 1 or more hp (by means of a healing spell, potion, or natural rest) the character will remain in a coma for 1-6 turns and must rest for a minimum of one week before they will be capable of resuming any sort of strenuous activity, mental or physical.

If a character is reduced to –6 hit points or below, the scars of the wound will likely be borne for the rest of the character’s life.

E.g., Luthor was struck by a fireball and treated at -9. He might have horrible scar tissue on exposed areas of flesh — his hands, arms, neck, and face.

Bernie Wrightson

First Strike

In the 1st edition Advanced game, there were rules on weapon length and how they interacted with segment initiative. Rather than trying to adapt that whole... thing to Basic, I stick to a very simple method to make those long weapons worth it. This could be generalized as longer weapons always getting the first strike against a foe wielding a shorter weapon, in the round that foe moves to attack them.

When two weapon-wielding melee combatants first clash, the one with the longer reach weapon strikes first, regardless of initiative results. This rule applies strictly to the initial clash of melee weapon wielders. First Strike does not apply to missiles, spells, devices, and the like; neither does it pertain to the natural attacks of monsters (e.g., claws, horns, teeth).

Using this system weapon lengths should be obvious, so I would use a generous amount of common sense rather than formulating a table of lengths.

E.g., A brigand with a sword is moving in on an adventurer armed with a great sword. Even though the adventurer has lost the initiative this round he may strike first due to his weapon's superior reach.

Characters may only Brace if they are armed appropriately and not already engaged in melee. I follow Gavin's guidance on this and allow such characters to Brace automatically.

E.g., If that same brigand had elected to Charge Into Melee (OSE Advanced Fantasy Genre Rules, p. 49) and the adventurer had been wielding a weapon with the Brace quality like a halberd, he could automatically brace his weapon, attack first, and deal double damage on a successful hit.

Starting Languages (Optional)

Rather than generate or chose additional languages at the start, characters may generate their additional languages in play.

Most characters are assumed to begin to play being fully fluent in their native tongue and are literate as well if they have the necessary INT. For example, Elves and Dwarves could know the local human tongue in addition to the tongue of their particular clan or people (halflings use the local human language).

When a character comes into contact with another language, their chances of knowing the language is 1-in-6, with the character's INT modifier applying. There is a -1 penalty if the language is not local to the culture. The penalty is -2 if the language is considered to be exotic, and a -3 if it is an ancient, dead language.

A character gets one attempt to know any particular language. If that one attempt fails, the character simply does not know the language. Magical languages cannot be known using this method.

Jeffery Catherine Jones

Thief Skills

In the 1st edition Advanced game, thieves and assassins received bonuses to their chances to succeed on their various skill rolls. Rather than add a table of conditional bonuses, I follow this advice on handling thieves and their abilities to make them more consistent and capable. 

The Referee can elect to grant a 5% per DEX bonus to all thief skills except climb and hear noise. Any classes with similar skills gain similar bonuses.

E.g., a level 3 Thief is trying to move silently. Since they have a +1 modifier for their Dexterity, they have a 35% chance to sneak by without a chance of being heard, rather than a 30% to do so.