When can a B/X Cleric Raise the Dead?

Quick question for anyone reading: when can a cleric raise someone from the dead in B/X?

At first, this seems like a simple question. Raise Dead is a 5th level Cleric spell, and Clerics gain access to 5th level spells at 7th level, so a 7th level Cleric can cast Raise Dead. However, Raise Dead reads as follows:

Raise Dead spell as it appears in Expert

The interesting part here that while a 7th level Cleric can ostensibly cast Raise Dead, we are only given rules for Clerics of 8th level or higher. We are told that an 8th level Cleric can raise a body up to four days dead, and every level after 8th adds another 4 days. But what about 7th level? They are able to prepare the spell, so why aren't we told how much time they have to use it? This seems highly open to interpretation, but I've jotted down every possible ruling I could think of, sensible or otherwise:

7th level Clerics can Raise Dead regardless of how long the body has been dead.
Probably the wildest take, but a certain reading of RAW does support this. The absence of a given time limit usually implies there is none. Having said that, I don't think any reasonable DM would rule it this way, as it makes Raise Dead more powerful at 7th level then at 14th (or even 36th). 

7th level Clerics can raise a body that has been dead for up to one day.
This is probably the ruling I would make in a pinch, but there isn't any support from RAW, and it makes the time limit progression a little clunky (one day, then four, then eight, etc). 

7th level Clerics cannot cast Raise Dead.
Harsh but fair. I think the closest we can get to RAW would be to have Raise Dead able to be prepared at 7th level, but with no legal targets until reaching 8th level. Which is goofy and unsatisfying, but it's the best RAW interpretation if we don't assume there's a typography error.

7th level Clerics can raise a body up to 4 days dead, same as 8th level.
This one sort of makes sense, but if true, why is it worded the way it is? Why only mention level 8? And if it's a typo, why not use the ruling below?

It is a typo and the spell should read, "A 7th level cleric can raise... [...] For each level above 7th [...] Thus an 11th..."
I think this is pretty likely, except it's really unclear whether or not it's really a mistake. It's probably not a true typo because they get the level wrong all three times, not just once or twice. More likely is that the Cleric spell progression got messed up at some point in development, which is famously self-evident by simply looking at them. Could it be that Clerics weren't originally meant to cast 5th level Cleric spells until level 8?

It seems likely that yes, Clerics were not meant to cast 5th level spells until they had reached 8th level. Mentzer Expert actually smooths out the Cleric spell progression, and sure enough Clerics can't cast Raise Dead -- or any other 5th level Cleric spell -- until 10th level. While I don't agree with all the changes BECMI makes, the B/X cleric spell progression looks like more of a mistake than ever in lieu of reading Raise Dead.

So how does Old-School Essentials handle this? It just doesn't:

Raise Dead spell as it appears in OSE

They change the wording a little, but the same problem exists: What happens when a 7th level Cleric prepares the 5th level spell, Raise Dead? Can they cast it? What's the time limit? Because the spell wasn't changed, this oddity remains today. It's yet another reason I have some issues with OSE -- it has no problem giving the Halfling language to halflings -- after all, that's surely errata -- but then preserves other things that are very clear typos, like the Cleric progression tables. I don't even care whether OSE reproduces everything perfectly, or whether it includes errata, but instead it does this kind of weird half measure where it provides some errata, but preserves other things that were clearly typography mistakes, like the Cleric progression.

Conclusion

I guess Labyrinth Lord was just right all along when it came to clerics? One of the things I never liked about LL was that it changed the goofy B/X spell progression of clerics, but looking back on it, if that progression was truly a mistake that went to print, it's probably best that it is treated as such and is changed. The simpler alternative would be to errata Raise Dead, and I'm curious why OSE doesn't do that if it believes the Cleric spell progression is correct and not in need of errata. So much work went into revising the spell description, and yet this uncertainty remains.

Nodes, Protocols, and Circuits

Background Information: The idea of an open-world, large scale, interconnected mega-game of D&D is becoming more prominent in the public consciousness of greater D&D and OSR communities. This video goes into more details about the subject.

Query: Could a system be designed to allow for DMs to network their game with others, with a mix of both open and closed tables, where each DM retains some control over who can and cannot play in their game?

The following is a top-down design for how I would implement it on a massive scale. Note that I don't honestly expect any of this to ever be implemented on even the most basic level. Think of this more as a thought experiment.

Goals

1. Create simple rules for transferring a character from one campaign to another.
2. Account for both open and closed tables, and how they would interact.
3. Allow for groupings of games, where all tables in a group share the same guiding principles.

Definitions

Node - An RPG campaign game that uses a short paragraph to summarize what it is and how it might differ from other nodes using the same game system.

Protocols - Rules for traveling between nodes. Handshake protocols decided on jointly by the DMs of each node.

Circuit - A circuit is a web-like grouping of nodes with agreed upon rules and regulations, connected to one another by protocols. Most have a governing body of rules that all node members agree to adhere to when joining, and these regulations can range from the extremely complicated, to absolute bare bones. Circuits can be based on game systems, genres, regional location, or even beliefs and philosophies. They can be very generic and broadly encompassing, or very specific in what is allowed.

 

Formal Rules

1. Any DM with an active campaign may create a node at any time for any reason.
• DMs may create multiple nodes, although it is highly recommended that DMs only have one active node at a time, or at the very least only one active node on a circuit.
• It is recommended that AT LEAST one full session be played before officially creating a node.
  
2. Any DM may connect their node to another node at any time for any reason, as long as the DM of that node agrees to it. The two DMs briefly collaborate on how their nodes connect (modes of travel, character conversions, and unique campaign rules). These are known as protocols.
3. Two or more DMs connected by protocols may choose to form a circuit (this is always optional).
   
• Some circuits are 'closed' -- that is, all nodes on the circuit belong to that circuit and that circuit alone.
• To join your node to the circuit, you must be invited by a DM already on the circuit.
• Other circuits are 'open' -- any node is allowed to establish protocols and connect to it freely, and they are allowed to connect to other circuits as well, thus a single node can belong to more than one circuit (there is no restriction to how many circuits a node can belong to, although circuits can regulate and restrict the connections of their member nodes in whatever way they wish).
4. Nodes can be updated at any time. It is recommended that if a node undergoes a massive update such as a complete system overhaul, any other closed nodes it is connected are contacted and all protocols are updated accordingly.
5. Protocols can be updated at any time, but each DM must agree to the protocol updates.
6. Circuit rules cannot be updated.
7. Circuits can be left at any time, and can be rejoined at any time, for any reason. Rejoining closed circuits requires an invite as if you were joining for the first time. A circuit with one or fewer active nodes is considered dissolved and disbanded.
8. Connections between nodes can be severed at any time for any reason so long as one node wishes to sever itself from the other. The protocols are instantly considered dissolved as soon as one side wishes to terminate them.
• Protocols can be reestablished at any time, but both DMs must agree to them as if creating new protocols.
9. If a node is severed from all the other nodes of a circuit, it is no longer considered a part of that circuit.
10. To join a closed node as a player, you must be approved by the DM of that node.
• Open nodes are essentially open table campaigns.
11. There is no limit to the amount of players on a circuit OR a node.
12. There is no limit to the amount of DMs on a circuit, however each node typically only has one DM. 
• It is highly recommended that different DMs create different nodes even when playing in the same 'world' or 'campaign setting'. It is harder to prune inactive nodes and sever protocols when multiple DMs share ownership of a node.
13. DMs on a circuit can join other nodes as players as per normal joining rules, but cannot enter their own node as a player.
14. Players can use protocols to travel between nodes, thus being able to play the same character across multiple campaign settings.
• Players with characters on circuits containing open tables may always choose to bring characters from that circuit to the open table game.

 

Summary

 

With this method, vast communities can be created, connecting hundreds or even thousands of campaigns. You can join communities or even subcommunities that share rules or ideologies.

The main goal is for this guideline to serve as architecture for connecting campaign worlds in a sensible manner. Each connection is basically a handshake protocol between two DMs -- they agree to allow characters to move between their worlds, and provide the necessary information for doing so. If a player wishes to play their character in a different campaign, the rules outlining how to do so are provided in the circuit regulations. The player need only an invitation, and then the node connection will list any conversion necessary.

Two Vicars and a Myrmidon Walk Into a Tavern...

For every little typo and copywriting error, for every bizarre and mercurial choice found in the old D&D tomes, there is someone out there who thinks it is both 

1. intended that way, and 
2. better because of it.

Don't get me wrong, I love delving into the material for new insights, but sometimes someone just wrote down the wrong number, or picked one at random. Even TSR's brightest minds had deadlines to meet.

However, today I'm going to try to pitch the idea that the B/X level titles are secretly pretty awesome. I'm going to talk about how level titles are horribly misunderstood, and then demonstrate how they are an extremely useful tool for both the DM and the players. Hopefully by the end of this article you will be excited to use them when creating and running your own B/X D&D campaign!

Yep, I'm talking about these.

Evolution of the Previous Campaign's Hex Map

Note: This entire post was an old draft I've had sitting around since early 2020. I went ahead and took a few minutes to finish it and post it. At the time I wrote it, I was still running the game and used the map below. Even though I'm doing a (sort of) different thing now, I thought this would still make a fun postmortem, so I've gone ahead and edited it a little and posted it.

 

Current Version of Regional Map

It has taken me almost three years of tinkering, remixing, and revising in Hexographer to get the map pictured above. Even now, I make monthly tweaks to the map, and large swaths of it are still a work in progress. This is the map that I used as of the most recent session of my campaign, but the story of how I got here is a long one.

Descending Back to Basic

Before starting the previous campaign, I did a lot of playtesting by running one-shots for my friends before eventually settling on using Old-School Essentials with the optional rule for ascending AC. During this time I actually went through a couple of different systems, making minor tweaks as I went. The timeline went something like:

Swords & Wizardry -> B/X -> Basic Fantasy RPG -> Old-School Essentials

For the new campaign, my intent is to go back to B/X as our core system. The biggest change will be going back to descending armor class, which I haven't done since our earliest playtests. My players were 5e babies back then, and either didn't understand descending armor class, or thought it sucked. My reason for going back to it for the new campaign is twofold:

1. Virtually every player falls into one of two groups: either they get super into the rule set, learn how it works, and will completely understand and adapt to it; or they won't pay any attention at all, and just constantly ask me "how that works again" at every turn, no matter how easy I make it. For the former players, if I change to descending armor class, they'll quickly adapt to it and not have any issues. For the latter group, they'll always ask how it works, but they'd do that anyway, even if I made it as simple and modern as possible. So the reality is that it doesn't really matter which one I use, the same players are going to 'get it' and the same players are going to 'not get it'.
   
2. OSE does ascending armor in a really weird and frustrating way. Outside of OSE, the easiest way to convert back and forth between the two is to subtract one of them from 20 to find the other, since you are rolling a d20 to attack. It makes AC 3 becomes AC 17, it makes a +1 to hit stay a +1 to hit, and so on. This makes it so that an unmodified roll will hit the same ACs in both directions. For whatever Gygaxforsaken reason, OSE has AC 3 become AC 16. This seems like a minor, innocuous change at first, but it actually has some pretty frustrating ramifications. First of all, Normal Man now has a -1 to hit instead of just rolling a d20 straight. This feels weird and bad, because the entire to-hit matrices of D&D are so clearly and evidentially scaled to what a normal man can do. It's true that this means you don't have to give the level 1 players a +1 to hit (and that's possibly why OSE does it), but they'll still get a bonus at higher levels and they'll likely have a bonus or penalty to Strength/Dexterity even at level 1, so an extra +1 hardly makes a difference. Secondly, this makes monsters attack bonus really ugly and inelegant. Instead of monsters getting a +1 to hit for every hit die they have, they get... a +1 for every hit die beyond the first one. So instead of a 3HD monster getting a +3, they get a +2. This, more than anything, is the big deal breaker for me, because it makes converting modules a gigantic hassle when it really doesn't have to be.
   

That was quite a rant and I could keep going, but the bottom line is that OSE adds ascending armor class as an optional rule, but implements it so incredibly poorly that I can't in good faith recommend using it. It caused more than a few headaches when I was bouncing between modules from all sorts of different systems -- something that wasn't an issue running descending armor class, or even running BFRPG (Basic Fantasy only uses ascending armor class, but gets it right).

Seeing as we are back to descending armor class, I don't really see a great argument against using B/X. My personal 3-ring binder will have those Moldvay, Cook, and Marsh books in it, and I'm going to be telling my players that we're playing 1981 Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons. However, the OSE books are staying at the table for people to reference, because at the end of the day, there's not really any difference, and my players will only be using the rulebook to create new characters and level up. At least that's the idea, but that requires a nice little handout of house rules to really make it work. Fortunately, that's next on the agenda.

The Adventure Continues

My last post on this blog was on January 25, 2020. A few weeks after that day, I had my last in-person session before my state went into full lockdown. For a few months, our group transitioned to online play, but eventually we stopped playing when our lives went back to normal. I've recently decided to reboot the campaign, and have been working on it for the past few months. The goal is to provide a small pamphlet of house rules with all the information they will ever need on it. The good news is that it's coming along nicely, but the bad news is the document keeps growing. At a certain point you have to stop and ask yourself if you're just rewriting the entire system from the ground up. Right now I think my answer is still "no". I'm still using the same classes with all the same abilities, saves, spells, restrictions, etc. So at the very least, the core rulebook will be used for new character creation and level up.

The current goal is to write a document that covers everything the players would ever need to know. So instead of flipping through large rulebooks, they can flip through a small handout, only needing the rulebook to create a character or level up. Ideally, the players wouldn't need to reference anything, and can just ask the occasional question, with the rules being simple enough to remember most of the time. But if they need to look at something, I'd rather it be a short handout than a lengthy book that gets passed around.

Right now my primary focus is getting the rules solidified so we can start playing within a month or so. As soon as we start playing again, I'll start posting more content here. This new campaign is going to be a radical departure from anything I've done in the past, and I'm excited to share some of the details.

Equipment Guide For New Characters

To help expedite the character creation process, I have a short handout that I give my players so that they don't waste too much time 'shopping' with their newly created character. Here is that handout:

Equipment Guide For New Characters

 A few notes and clarifications about this handout:

• The pages briefly mentioned in this handout reference the Old-School Essentials Rules Tome, which is currently what I'm using as a rulebook at the table.
• I use a silver standard in my games, so for vanilla B/X I recommend reverting the random silver coins to gold.
• Originally, I used the average starting wealth of a level 1 character as a budget, but over time I made modifications to keep the items varied for the different classes.
• Each character starts with everything underneath "All Classes" in addition to everything listed under their class. You get both, you do NOT choose between the two.
• Wherever it says "OR", you must choose between the options provided. You cannot mix and match between them in any way. You get everything before, after, or between the "OR" on the entry.
• For each class, you still roll for a small amount of money. If players are really adamant on purchasing a specific item before starting play with the character, I generally will let them shop a bit first if they have enough silver.
• Every class has access to a ranged weapon, with the notable exception of the Fighter (unless you count the hand axe). I decided not to start the Fighter with a good ranged option so that they would be encouraged to engage in melee, but this is subject to change soon because...
• I recently downgraded the armor from chainmail to leather on all of the classes here. I did this because it was causing some minor problems in the game I was running (I might talk about this in a future blog post). In a more traditional, vanilla B/X economy, it's likely that at the very least Fighter and Dwarf should start with chainmail, if not Elf and Cleric as well, so I'd recommend those changes.
• The inventories are far from optimized for a level 1 character. The point of this is to encourage scavenging in the dungeon as the players progress. Yes, your hand axe isn't the most optimal weapon for your character, but it creates a feel good moment when you kill a monster with it and take his sword for your own. Then you can come up with some more creative uses for that hand axe later on.

Like all my content, it's a living a document and is always subject to change based on actual play. It was updated to add coin weight based on a session from just last night. I will post updates whenever I make future changes.