THAC0 with Advantage

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is what we spend most of our segments on.

Time keeps on slipping slipping slipping into the future… and we should probably have some way to track it, some reason for keeping time, and have some interesting holidays and festivals to break up the monotony of the passing of the days. Maybe even put some cool adventures inside those holiday moments. That’s what todays episode is all about.

The round is the measure of time that is most often referenced in D&D. In Original D&D, AD&D 1st Edition, and AD&D 2nd Edition, a round was one minute long, however, AD&D 2e makes the point of saying rounds are an abstract, kind of like hit points, not an absolute measure of time. Basic D&D through all versions of the Basic set, and up to the Rules Cyclopedia, has 10 second rounds, but also mentions that combat that takes less than one turn (10 minutes) should be considered to take one turn (10 minutes). That’s because we need to know when your torches burn out. D&D 3rd, 4th, and 5th has six second rounds, most likely because that means 10 rounds equates to one minute. Who uses torches anymore, we all have darkvision or light spells?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D haunts our dreams, always lurking just beyond sight . . . in the shadows.

It’s all about those spooky monsters that make us feel that uncomfortable unsettling unnerving waver in the pit of our stomachs when they show up in our games. Ang and Jared talk about the scary monsters, the ones that should be scary, and why those monsters that do scare us make us feel that way.

While a few important NPCs have been granted the descriptor of witch, like Tasha or the Simbul, actual classes have been pretty sparse. There were a few classes in the early days in Dragon Magazine, and a witch kit in AD&D 2e. The third party Mayfair product Role Aids: Witches presented a 2e witch class with nine subclasses. 3e saw five official prestige classes, two based on the Witches of Rashemen from the Forgotten Realms setting. From 3rd parties there was the Quintessential Witch from Mongoose Publishing, and the Witches Handbook from Green Ronin, both presenting witch classes. Pathfinder stepped in with their own core Witch class from the Advanced Player’s Guide. Even in D&D 5th edition, most witch options have been 3rd party offerings, including a wizard subclass from Schwalb Entertainment, and a witch class from Kobold Press’ Deep Magic Volume II. I guess the concept of an official witch class in D&D is just . . . cursed?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is the wraith that haunts all of our pretty, pretty dice.

What do we have here? 2024 D&D rules updates. Now it’s just Unearthed Arcana again and not One D&D. There’s EN Worlds Level Up: Advanced 5E that’s got a starter box coming. Interesting. We got Kobold Press and their Tales of the Vaillant, and there’s the Cubicle 7 D20 RPG. They’ve all been updating we finally got some time to catch up, check them out, and let you know what we think.

How tall are elves? Well, they average 5’4” and max out at 5’8” in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. In AD&D 1st and 2nd edition, as well as 3rd edition they average 5’1” and max out at 5’5”. When it comes to the 2014 Players Handbook they’re all around 5’5” and reach the lofty point guard heights of 6’2”. But if you read your Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance books, they’re the same height or taller than humans, going all the way back to the Old Grey Boxed Set or the Dragonlance Novels. Basically, Gygax wanted us to know that D&D elves weren’t Tolkien elves, unless they were.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is encouraging me to buy more dice.

Do you think about your next campaign while running your current one? Do you have a google drive document or folder filled with campaign ideas you’d love to get to the table but just will never have the time for? Is your brain just soup and mush full of campaign ideas floating around just waiting to bubble to the surface? Jared and Ang have all of these things happening to them. Join them to hear how they sort it all out and while your at it, let us know what campaigns ideas you have that you just haven’t gotten to the table yet.

While D&D has had many published adventures over the decades, most people only think of published campaigns in terms of the 2000s on. While some people point to the original Dragonlance Saga (DL1 to D14) as the first adventure path, when the original Greyhawk adventures were pulled together into compilations, the assumption was that they could serve as a full Greyhawk campaign experience, starting with the Slavelords series, moving on to the Temple of Elemental Evil, then Against the Giants, and finally the Queen of the Demonweb Pits. I’m surprised no DMG has said “If you’re out of ideas for how to end a campaign, just go fight a god.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is encouraging me to buy more dice.

Ah, the Campaign. They start. They proceed. Most fizzle into the nothingness of the astral sea like dead gods floating amongst the crystal sphere’s. But some. Those few. Reach their glorious conclusions, providing that closure and finish we all so enjoy and greatly desire. Ang and Jared talk about all that today and more when it comes to D&D campaigns.

Modern versions of D&D and similar games usually assume the “optimal” party of characters is 4-5 characters, all at the same level. Earlier edition adventures didn’t have exactly the same recommendations for how many characters and what level they should be. Against the Cult of the Reptile God was for 4 to 7 characters levels 1s to 3rd. The original Ravenloft adventure was for 6-8 characters of level 5 to 7. C4 To Find a King was designed for 10 players of levels 4 to 7. So, um, were you suppose to start with 10 friends, and then cut your friend group down to 8, and then 7, or how was that supposed to work?

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D followed us home, so we kept it.

From sand tables where they busted out the rulers to the squares we’ve come to know and…deal with? Love? Hate? Whatever you’re into. Jared and Ang start at the beginning and work their way from Dungeons & Dragons the original through the trends and ideas from each edition of battle maps to the current day. Then they drop some helpful tips on how people might use battle maps today and some interesting things to think about when choosing them for your game. On this weeks THAC0 with Advantage.

In 2001, when D&D 3rd edition launched, Wizards of the Coast also attempted to relauch the Chainmail brand of miniatures combat. Chainmail was supported with a line of metal miniatures from various factions. Chainmail, like D&D 3rd edition, was meant to be set in the World of Greyhawk setting, but it developed a different continent than any other Greyhawk Product had featured, with the only roleplaying support coming in the form of Dragon Magazine articles. Given the completely uncomplicated nature of D&D canon, especially surrounding Greyhawk, I’m sure this continent is just waiting out there to be uncontroversially explored in the future.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is the titan from which the pantheon descended.

A Cleric of Hammers stands at their forge

“Please oh god of hammers. Grant me the power to smite thine foes with this hammer you have bestowed upon me the knowledge to create in my forge with my own hands and the fire from the materials I gathered and turned into this icon of your glorious divinity.”

A humanoid stands within the grove of a Fey Queen.

“Hey, umm, fey queen. How about you give me a little juice and I’ll get rid of all your enemies for you. Like be your personal assassin on the prime material plane. Sounds good. Deal.”

Gods and Patrons. That’s the jist but Ang and Jared get more into it along with the evolution of the concept through the years and editions of D&D, I know the show is called Thac0 with Advantage but it’s more like from Thac0 to Advantage D&D through the years some episodes.

Clerics were the 3rd class created for original D&D, after the Fighting Man and the Magic User. It arose from Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign, created as a variation on a vampire hunter. Good old Gary Gygax decided to give the cleric class spells sometimes based on Biblical stories (sticks to snakes), an inability to use edged weapons from apocryphal stories about Odo of Bayeux (vai-You), and a focus on monotheistically following a specific deity, rather than pantheons, even in D&D settings with multiple gods. That seems to have drifted a bit from the Van Helsing archetype, but I’m sure Van Helsing wouldn’t have minded the ability to call down a flamestrike or two.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is . . . the old neighborhood where we always love visiting and seeing what’s changed.

The city streets are dark and filled with cut throats and pick pockets. Is that man just selling odd tinctures or is he a dragon in disguise. Can you trust your “friend” with the tip you got about the mayor’s husband? All this is to say there are plenty of adventures to be had in the cities of your D&D worlds, be they old or new. Tune in that dial and hear Ang and Jared regale you with the ways your cities can smack your adventuring parties right in the face with adventure.

In the Forgotten Realms, the city of Eltabbar in Thay was built in the shape of a massive glyph that was used to trap the demon lord Eltab, which allow him to be used as a power source by the Red Wizards. Szass Tam tried to perform a ritual to permanently bind Eltab to his control, but he failed, and the city got trashed. Since Szass Tam doesn’t like bad press, this was passed off as a natural earthquake. But it works out in the long run for all of the people that had earthquake insurance but not rampaging demon lord insurance.

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is has provided us something to talk about for a year now.

Dwarfs, Elves, Dragonborn, Githyanki, Giff, Plasmoids, Draconians, Gnomes, Humans, Tieflings, Eladrin, Drow, and more. On this episode we’re talking about why people might choose the species they’re playing.

There is a LOT that can be said about the Drow and how they have been portrayed over the years, but one thing you can only say if you want to be wrong is that they were never meant to be a good-aligned character option. Two of the classes allowed to drow in AD&D’s Unearthed Arcana were Ranger and Cavalier, both classes that required you to be good aligned. Drizzt was likely a ranger because it was an option from the time drow were introduced as player options, not the other way around..

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D is where we rehearse our villain monologues over and over again.

It’s time for the Boss Fight!!! That’s what Ang and Jared are getting into today. It’s all about big bads. You’ll get some tips, tools, and tricks for running them, a bit of reminiscing about old ones, and how to get that final fight you’ve been working up to for the whole story arc.

There have been several D&D products that introduce villainous NPCs, from the Shady Dragon Inn in Basic D&D, The Forgotten Realms products Hall of Heroes, and Villains’ Lorebook, to AD&D 2nd Edition’s The Complete Villain’s Handbook. In D&D 3rd edition we got the books Elder Evils, introducing campaign ending villainous monsters, and Exemplars of Evil, introducing more down to earth villains. Across all of these supplements, one thing has remained true. Warduke made the best action figure out of everybody across all of these supplements.