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.
