Advanced Labyrinth Lord: Equalising Humans

It's an old conundrum of AD&D: the balance of humans vs demi-humans. If you look at a mixture of 1st level characters of various race/class combinations, the demi-humans are clearly way more powerful with their infravision, huge saving throw bonuses, and the ability to potentially have the complete abilities of up to three classes. All these things give them an enormous advantage compared to their full-human brethren. In a dangerous old-school campaign, 1st level demi-humans are way more likely to make it to 2nd level -- that's the fact.

And what do humans get as a balance? No level limits.

So that's the traditional state of play. Now, in my experience this is not a balanced situation, not at all. The problem lies in the fact that no campaign I've ever played or run has reached the levels of experience where demi-human level limits kick in. And I think this is a common experience. (This is with the exception perhaps of long campaigns when I was a kid, but then we were playing BECMI, not AD&D, so it an wasn't issue.) Thus, players of demi-humans basically get all this cool stuff "for free" as it were, leaving their human comrades feeling a little under-par.

I have to say at this juncture that I don't care about balance purely for its own sake, in mechanical terms (for therein lies the road to 4e). The only reason I'm drawn to consider this is my observations of how players of "lesser races" (i.e. humans) feel overwhelmed by their "do anything, +4 on saves, see in the dark, oh and by the way I speak 7 languages" counterparts.

A novel remedy to the situation came to my mind the other day, which I shall describe.

1. Remove Limits
No level limits for demi-humans. Gone. They're rarely relevant anyway, and do nothing to create a sense of balance. Limits of class by race could also optionally be removed, if you want to go all the way.

2. Remove Some Benefits
Firstly multi-classing. As I've discussed before, that's the real killer for me, resulting in characters who can "do anything" -- honestly, who needs a thief when you have a multi-classed magic-user / thief at hand?

As a second reduction in demi-human power I'd suggest the removal of infravision from all playable races. It seems like only a minor perk on the face of it, but in practice is extremely useful (depending on how lenient the DM's interpretation of its precision is). I just find it more atmospheric when PCs are venturing into dark places with naught but a feebly flickering flame to guide them.

3. Boost Humans
In order to make humans attractive, all that remains is to give them a few perks in the same order of magnitude as the demi-human racial abilities (things like the dwarven stonework abilities, extra languages, saving throw bonuses, etc).

Here's what I thought of, though of course many other things would be possible.

Firstly:

• +1 to any two attributes (player's choice).
• No attribute limits (min 3 / max 18 for all scores).

And then, to mimic the traditional idea that humans are "more flexible" (odd that they were the ones who couldn't multi-class...), how about giving them the choice of some small bits and pieces of other class' abilities. Choose one of the following:

• Use any weapon without penalty. (Magic-users only.)
• Wear one better armour than usually allowed. (Thieves or magic-users only.)
• One thief skill which advances with level. (Non-thieves only.)
• Ability to cast one 1st level magic-user spell, chosen at random from the list in LL. (Non-magic-users only.)
• Ability to cast one 1st level clerical spell, chosen at random from the list in LL. (Non-clerics only.)
• Turn undead once a day as a cleric of equal level. (Non-clerics only.)
• +4 to one saving throw (player's choice).

I reckon that should roughly equalise the field.

Mixed-Class Characters for Labyrinth Lord (PDF)

A while back I came up with the idea of a system whereby characters can be created with parts of the abilities of multiple classes -- a kind of simple pick & choose "build your own class" system, intended as a replacement for the (in my experience) over-powered multi-classing rules.

Well, after some rumination and tweaks I've just written the idea up properly. You can grab it here as a PDF.

Multi-class vs mixed-class characters

As I mentioned recently, after starting purely with basic Labyrinth Lord, we've had several "Advanced" style multi-classed demi-human player characters created in my campaign in the last few months. I've been thinking about the introduction of these characters and how it's changed the game.

The main influence they've had, I feel, is an unfortunate one. Their ability to do two things well has tended to overwhelm the single-classed characters, with very little downside. A thief / magic-user is equally as capable as a normal thief and a normal magic-user. As they have to split their XP between two classes, multi-classed characters gain XP in each of their classes at half the normal rate. However, while a 50% reduction sounds like a big deal on paper, due to the exponential nature of the XP progression charts this effectively means the characters are only one level behind their single-classed companions. This in my experience makes little difference (a single spell per day for MUs, or a few percentile points for thieves, for example), and is more than made up for by the fact that they are all round so much more capable. This, in combination with demi-humans' substantial racial benefits, makes multi-classed demi-humans far and away more powerful than their single-classed human brethren, at the low to mid levels of play, at least.

So I've been thinking about why players might want to create multi-classed characters. Several reasons come to mind:

1. To try something different. In a game with only three or four classes, allowing them to be combined in pairs greatly increases the number of possibilities.
2. To play a character of mixed class.
3. To counteract the level limits applied to demi-humans, by effectively slowing down the race towards the end point.

Today I want to address the second of these points -- the desire for a character that's "a bit of a thief, a bit of a wizard" or something like that. I think that players with such ideas in mind (the dabbling bard or magical assassin archetypes, for example) don't expect their character to be as good a wizard as a single-classed magic-user, or as good a thief as a single-classed thief. They simply want to have a mixture of abilities -- an option which is not presented by the strictly separated classes of standard D&D. Ignoring the odd dual-classing rules of AD&D, multi-classing is traditionally the primary way to create a character with mixed abilities.

I've been contemplating an alternative. Instead of giving a mixed-class character the complete abilities of two different classes, how about giving them half of the abilities of each of those classes? I think in essence this is actually more what players are imagining when creating mixed-class characters.

Of course what exactly constitutes half of a magic-user's, fighter's or thief's abilities is open to interpretation, and would depend very much on the rules set being used.

Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm thinking of, in terms of the standard Labyrinth Lord classes.

Mixed-Class Characters
Characters can choose two classes, and gain roughly half the abilities of each.

Mix-classed characters have the following characteristics in general, modified by the chosen classes:

• XP progression: as magic-user
• Hit Dice: d6
• To hit rolls: as thief
• Saving throws: best of two classes
• Weapons & armour: as thief

Half a Magic-User
Cannot create magic items.
Can use magic-user specific magic items from 5th level.
Labyrinth Lord's call as to whether mixed-class magic-users can cast spells while wearing armour.
Use the following spell progression:

Level    1    2    3    4    5
1    1*    -    -    -    -
2    1    -    -    -    -
3    2    -    -    -    -   
4    2    -    -    -    -
5    2    1    -    -    -
6    2    2    -    -    -
7    2    2    -    -    -
8    2    2    1    -    -
9    2    2    2    -    -
10    2    2    2    -    -
11    3    2    2    -    -
12    3    2    2    -    -
13    3    2    2    1    -
14    3    2    2    1    -
15    3    3    2    1    -
16    3    3    2    1    -
17    3    3    2    2    -
18    3    3    2    2    -
19    3    3    3    2    -
20    3    3    3    2    1

* A 1st level half magic-user must make a successful INT check on 1d20 each day to learn a spell.

Half a Thief
Choose three of the following (advancement as normal thief):

1. Pick locks & find / remove traps
2. Pick pockets
3. Backstab
4. Climb walls
5. Move silently & hide in shadows
6. Hear noise

Half a Fighter
Can use all weapons.
Can use fighter specific magic items from 5th level.
Choose two of the following:

1. d8 Hit Dice
2. Fighter attack progression
3. Use any armour
4. Use a shield