OSR - Weird Adventure Edition

You know how sometimes DMs roll when there's nothing going on, to keep players on their toes?

What about the opposite of that? I was thinking of putting some kind of mat down to make dice rolling silent so that players can't ever tell if I'm rolling or just consulting a table or taking a note or following along a map or whatever behind my GM screen.

Then things will seem to just happen and they'll have to always be careful.

Just have your smartphone or tablet behind your screen and a dice app open.

How about a society that's all about tact and finesse? Think Victorian era, where appearance is everything, though maybe with a bit less of a puritanical overcoat. It's not that they don't do everything any other society does, but they put great importance on being tactful about things.

>What we might say: Man, that girl is hot.

>How we sound to them: Oh my fucking God, Jesus, I can't stand how incredibly fuckable that bitch is!!! I need--like NEED--to stick my dick inside her!!!

>What they might say: I won't deny that she comports herself with unusual grace.

This is, of course, comedy gold as members of this society attempt to hire or work with the party, expecting a level of subtlety and finesse from them that no group of adventurers has ever displayed. They can only recoil in horror when the party acts like a bull in a china shop, that shits all over the place as it smashes everything, they can only recoil in horror. In fact, the party's behavior is probably so outrageous to them that (fortunately for the party), they are so dumbfounded that they can't even formulate a proper response--one they would view as severe enough to match the party's deeds. Their reaction might be about the same as to somebody who pulls out their dick and starts swinging it around while insulting your sister. Yes, by all rights, he should get punched in the teeth, but mostly you just want to get the fuck away from the guy and make sure that nobody thinks you are in any way associated with him.

I totally saved that a couple threads ago. Good work user. You should keep it up.

Formatting a module to sell online (PWYW with a suggested price of $2.50 or so). I know it doesn't matter all that much once you buy it, but do you tend to be more drawn to covers that imitate the style of old D&D module covers, with the diagonal strip in the top left corner saying what system it's for, the title across the top, then a picture, then a description below that, or covers that are unique and try to do something different visually?

> Question of the thread: What's the weirdest shit you've ever encountered (or for you foreverDMs, put) in a dungeon?
Inconsequential Quantum Pig. Don't ask. I still don't get what happened.

I'd say go with the former, unless you are actually educated in the fine art of cover design (and don't need Veeky Forums's opinion; which, I gather, is not the case).

A question: how would you express the difference between Rulings, not Rules and Narrative railroading?

>A question: how would you express the difference between Rulings, not Rules and Narrative railroading?
Narrative railroading is "you can't try anything I didn't already think of and account for." Rulings not rules is "this is how we'll resolve your attempt because it's intuitive enough and doesn't make us take five minutes to handle IRL something that takes five seconds in-game."

If a player says "can I jump off this building and land on this dragon that's flying by?" railroading is "no." Rules-lawyering is "let me see if it's in the book, and how to handle it." Ruling is "you can try. Roll strength to get out far enough and roll attack to grab hold while it tries to dodge you."

I like low level play because it means the players get to feel like they're turning into badasses over time, because they get to know that their success wasn't a matter of stats but of their own cleverness, and so on.

My only concern is that I can't see how to have level 1 players take on remotely intelligent enemies and survive. If I throw my party up against cartoonishly stupid goblins, they have a chance. But if they're in a dungeon with intelligent goblins who sound the alarm when they see something suspicious, who re-set traps that have been disarmed, who have tactical maneuvers and seek the high ground and so on, even if they play cleverly, they're fucked in the long run.

Any thoughts?

It'll teach the PCs not to dawdle, that avoiding fights is better than engaging in them, and stealth is overall preferable to drawing the ire of an entire goblin tribe.

> My only concern is that I can't see how to have level 1 players take on remotely intelligent enemies and survive.
Well, you can have them fight intelligent rats, but that's not the answer you are looking for.

How do you engage in combat equal, but numerically superior enemy and win? Short answer: you don't.

Long answer: either give players some edge (invisibility rings, for example), or give them lots of henchmen, or stop expecting them to survive.

I have a beginner's question regarding listening, is it supposed to be rolled before an encounter, to prepare the player, or is it used if the player for example want to listen to what's behind a door? Or is it both or neither?

Also, certain retroclones like LotFP doesn't seem to have listening as a skill. Does that mean that the players always should "succeed" when trying to listen?

In LotFP, I'd assume that Listen is bundled up with the surprise mechanic.

Note that that isn't to say that you can't listen, but that where surprise is concerned, it's a part of that.

What I would do is simply tell the players what they hear. If they listen at a door, and the noises on the other side should be audible, then there's no reason not to tell them that they hear a number of persons on the other side speaking the hideous goblin tongue.

And all that means is that they don't start the fight surprised. Roll surprise for the goblins, and if they fail, the PCs surprise them. Not a bid deal.

The latter.
Think of the Listen check as a reward for thoughtful players who try to listen ahead before they might potentially be surprised.

Also, in my game Undead don't make any noise at all. So on top of never stopping, never sleeping, being able to see in the dark, they are also almost impossible to detect, making them frightening as hell for my players.

So generally, if the players have listened to the door and/or have a general idea that there should be an encounter behind the door, you don't roll for surprise?

I wouldn't. They're being careful, and they should be rewarded for that. However, you could still roll Surprise, but give the PCs a nice bonus on the check.

As I said , I'd still roll surprise for the goblins (in my example).

I know that Listen not detecting Undead is a mechanic in some editions, at least. ESP even copies that aspect along with the rest of it's Knock-esque bits.

Listen is supposed to be used at doors so that you can have a chance to figure out if there's anything on the other side before you knock it open. However, it also takes a turn, and even if you have the entire party listening at a door they might not succeed.

It's a trade-off and part of the somewhat complicated resource management system in OD&D. Do you want to open the door directly and risk a dangerous encounter, or do you want to listen at it and run that much lower on torchlight in addition to getting a wandering monster check?

It's also multi-purpose, of course - even in the OD&D dungeoneering example they use Listen to have people keep watch at a door for random encounters (and then flee through a secret door with the loot once they hear someone coming).

Surprise is about whether or not you know that they're there - it's why in OD&D having a torch means that you can't surprise monsters unless you go through a door.

If you know that there's a monster in the room, you probably aren't going to be surprised by it!

Alright, that seems fair.

If listening takes a turn to do, is the DM supposed to give the players extensive information about what could be in the room if they succeed, or should it still just be "you hear something in there"?

Well, generally exploration turns are about 10 minutes long. So, yes?

I would say it depends on what's going on in the room beyond the door that they're listening to, and whether there are any other noises or something that might distort those sounds.

>Hey user, how many characters are in my party?
>mfw I just thought of an easy way to make 12000 sp

you know, there should really be a way OUT of the cage

The reason I'm asking is because I don't think my players will be okay with "listening at the door" being a ten minute thing, and they're usually okay with OSR mechanics. I myself can't really picture anyone needing to passively listen to a door for 10 minutes just to figure out if there's something in there.

Am I misunderstanding the mechanic?

It's not that they're taking the full 10 minutes (though they could if they wish). If they only listen for a few seconds, and then bash in the door, you only need to describe a little bit of the sounds on the other side.

So in the case of listening, I guess I should treat a "turn" as an abstraction rather than a strict 10 minutes?

Probably. But also remember that in OSR, when dungeon delving, you're supposed to keep track of time via turns because movement takes time, torches burn out, and disarming traps and circumventing obstacles also takes time.

Time in which wandering monsters might be encountered, for example, or where NPCs/monsters might move from room to room.

Yeah, I've got that much. Although I haven't really figured out how much time it takes to move between rooms. Is there some universal guide for this stuff?

Well, in LotFP it's on pg. 38. The table, where it says Exploration. That is the per turn movement, which in LotFP is 10 minutes long (pg. 40, under Time).

I would ask my players, "How long do you listen for?" and maybe give them the hint that spending 10 minutes would give them a pretty good idea that nothing is on the other side.

Anyone have Old-school Adventures™ Accessory PX1 BASIC PSIONICS HANDBOOK ?

Didn't see it in the trove.

If you included a monster type tagging mechanic a la Rules Cyclopedia and 3.x &c, how would you design it? How would you avoid the oft arbitrary assigning of tags that plagued 3.x &c?

I wouldn't. Monster tagging begins to move the game toward a kind of metaplot naturalism, where every monster falls into a set ecosystem that every other person's game is supposed to be run.

That a.) ruins the mystery of a monster and b.) puts expectation on the GM from the part of any players that read the monster entries.

Back when D&D was being consolidated so that any person could go to a tournament or join any other person's game with little difference, it made sense. But OSR is meant as a return to the way things used to be. Where you had things like Tekumel and Arduin: completely different takes on the game, according to their creators' vision.

kek

That particular trap was stolen straight from Raggi's Green Devil Face #5. I kept it mostly as is, cause it's mean. Now, if you happen to obtain that waterbreather before fucking with the stone (or your party thinks of a quick way to get air to you) maybe you'd stand some sort of chance.

Seconded. There's no point. Monsters are monsters, and have d8 HD and do d6-d8 damage most of the time. They really don't need anything else, aside from a special ability or two to make them interesting, and some sensory abilities to keep the PCs from surprising them all the time.

I am also curious about this. Psionics is my bag.

The intent of the tag or keyword mechanic is not to affect statistics, but for spells and other effects to key off of. The beastmaster's animal empathy and Tolkien's swords that glow in the presence of goblins/orcs is a classic example.

For example, what IS an animal? More precisely, who is affected by speak with animals, animal empathy and may be taken as an animal companion? Only real animals or anything of minute intelligence that would naturally develop a fear of (demi)humans and humanoids and which may potentially be domesticated? An owlbear? A platypus? A platybus bear? A flying lemur? A jackalope? A duckbunny? A spider-horse?

That's all well and good, but then you start deciding the Undead are d12 HD, and that "mindless" Undead are immune to Charm Monster because they lack an Intelligence score (whereas before, they had no ability scores at all!).

I get that it's nice to have guidance with what an animal is and isn't, but tags or keywords might be better left to DM arbitration, rather than strict adherence to a system that adds greater complexity for the sake of complexity.

Any good old school campaigns in podcast format that I can just listen to while I work out or do shit around the house?

Very soon, I'll be buying some dice and a hardback copy of Swords & Wizardry Complete, to get back into the hobby full-tilt. While I'm at it, what FGG modules can you recommend I pick up to ship at the same time?

Hadn't thought about this but now I'm curious too.

>Psionics is my bag.

Me too man. Never understood all the hate.

So I've been getting more and more into OSR again (started with AD&D but didnt know the rules very well)

Here's what I like about OSR:

> lethality
> randomness
> lack of "building" your character
> rolling for stats
> things well balanced because no broken builds
> lots of room for GM fiat
> old school mechanics in general
> minimalist stat blocks

Bad stuff:

> tables for core mechanics like attacking
> obtuse rules like races as classes and race/class limitations
> tables in general for stuff besides XP and random treasure generation
> mechanics that don't fit into formulas
> overly complicated vancian casting
> saves for each ability score

BOY DO I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS FOR YOU!

Swords & Wizardry Complete. It has all the things you listed that you like, and can be played without the ones you dislike as follows:

> tables for core mechanics like attacking
S&W optionally allows you to use ascending rather than descending armor class, which would let you basically just give characters a base attack bonus like stat based on class and level (it's still listed as a chart but you can google and there's a chart which tells you what each class's attack bonus is at each level).
> obtuse rules like races as classes and race/class limitations
It doesn't have race-as-class. It DOES have race/class limitations, but you can choose to ignore those if you really want to.
> tables in general for stuff besides XP and random treasure generation
Besides in character generation and rolling for monsters and things like that, the only tables are the attack ones, which I mentioned above.
> mechanics that don't fit into formulas
Can you be clearer here?
> overly complicated vancian casting
There are plug-and-play alternate magic systems you can find online. You can Google around for that.
> saves for each ability score
In Swords & Wizardry, each class gets a single saving throw, which has to be beaten to successfully save, and which goes down as they level up. Some classes have bonus to saves vs. specific things (such as Druids getting a bonus to saves vs. fire).

>the Undead are d12 HD
Why should type determine combat statistics? That is exactly the sort of insane logic that the 3e developers used. Combat statistics should be determined by the monster's role, which is not the same as its type.

>"mindless" Undead are immune to Charm Monster
I was under the impression that undead had a blanket immunity to mind effects in most editions.

>lack an Intelligence score
Don't the stat blocks in certain editions include Intelligence and/or Morale?

>tags or keywords might be better left to DM arbitration
Keywords are only important if an effect specifies a specific keyword. Giving keywords their own rules is a different thing entirely. I think a more accurate term for what you mean is "quality."

In the spirit of this thread's "weird" theme, what are some good modules that take the "weird sword and sorcery" vibe from Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser? I want weird-ass monsters and creepy, unsettling atmosphere.

>If I throw my party up against cartoonishly stupid goblins, they have a chance. But if they're in a dungeon with intelligent goblins they're fucked in the long run.
Fortunately for you, cartoonishly stupid goblins are a universally accepted trope.

Other solutions for if the goblins are already smart: bartering a deal with them for safe passage through their halls, pure luck on the attitude check when first encountered, making them generally intelligent but giving them some sort of strange compulsive obsession that hampers them, throwing treasure or food behind you to distract them as you flee. Equally intense preparations from players as from the goblins, if you like.

Here's a question I've come across in my homebrewing that I've posed to a couple of my other D&D buddies with interesting results:

In a setting with both Magic and Psionics, what differentiates the two, outside of "magic uses spell slots and psionics uses points"?

Also, how likely would you be to allow some sort of mixing of the two (i.e. a magic spell that also has some sort of psionic component to it to function, or something along those lines)?

I'll try it. Thansk user. Already have teh PDFs from for-fucking-ever ago, too.

> In a setting with both Magic and Psionics, what differentiates the two, outside of "magic uses spell slots and psionics uses points"?
One is external and learned, the other is innate and trained.

> Also, how likely would you be to allow some sort of mixing of the two (i.e. a magic spell that also has some sort of psionic component to it to function, or something along those lines)?
Depends on lots of things. Primarily - fiddlyness of implementation. In general: why not?

Rolemaster's system defines arcane/divine/mentalism as this:

They all use the same kind of energy, but derive it from different sources. Arcane is from the environment/natural substance, Divine is from deities and otherworldly entities, Mentalism/Psionics is from the individual themselves.

Here's a thought. Clerics aren't priests like we understand them.
They wear heavy armour, go on quests for their gods, and receive potent magical gifts as a result. They're basically Chaos Champions.

> They're basically Chaos Champions.
> Clerics
You sure you didn't mix up threads?

According to some guy who played in a Gygax game a long time ago and who supposedly played the First Ever Cleric, Gygax specifically made the class to deal with a faggot That Guy player in his game who played a vampire.

The Cleric was basically intended as a Van Helsing style undead-hunting warrior. Then it slowly got deformed into what it is now.

Here's some PX1 Basic Psionics for you.
>mega.nz/#!8NJ1AagK!tmjg-OyGVlhlNXJSfP6oYAvcW6WWJHZsQz5UQz5Nv_4

>In a setting with both Magic and Psionics, what differentiates the two, outside of "magic uses spell slots and psionics uses points"?
My personal favorite OSR version is the OD&D one, somehow. There the main difference is that psychics have the whole mental combat thing, while powers take so few points to use that they're really almost at-will. Not too powerful most of the time, though, and there's a shitload of downsides to being psychic in OD&D as well. Yet another thing AD&D fucked up.

My favorite in how it actually works in play is probably 3.5's Psionics, though, where it's pretty much just spell point magic that actually works and is more balanced than the equivalent vancian magics. Mostly because there's no automatic scaling.

And then there's my favorite other implementation of it, which is Mentzer's Immortal rules. The actual powers are a bit too complicated and require a bunch of player knowledge (although I think you'd generally expect players to know what spells there are once they're that high level), but the actual "psionic combat"-alike system is wonderful. Mostly because it's pretty much just advanced rock-paper-scissors with a betting aspect rather than having all those complicated tables.

just charm a bunch of goblins and kill them one after the other.

Sorry, only 1000 sp per goblin, not 3000 sp.

You've got that a bit wrong, I feel - Sir Fang was in the Blackmoor campaign, and was part of the "baddies". Lots of player vs. player conflict in that campaign.

The Cleric was basically Van Helsing and made specifically as an anti-vampire class, though, that's correct. The various spells are mostly just various judeo-christian miracles.

Making a new Character Sheet for LotFP, and changed around the inventory system a bit.
A few more "base" slots for stronger characters and separate boxes serving as encumbrance points with oversized items taking up an entire box.
Does this look usable in play?

It has a bit too much art for my taste, but at the same time I like it for its whimsy. The big blank space in the lower left is probably a good idea.
Do you still have oversized items as a thing in the game and if so, where do players write them down?

It's still unfinished so I'm adding stuff as I go.
Oversized items are still a thing but instead of crossing those boxes, they just take up a whole encumbrance box for simplicity's sake.

Depending on the edition you get either one or two "moves" of, essentially, as many 10' squares as the party's movement rate, per turn. The movement rate's based on the slowest member of the group. This is the main drawback of heavy armor: plate means exploring at half the speed of going unarmored.

I see, that's a great mechanic. What movement rate should I use though, combat or sprinting or something in between?

Any recommended books that are just magic systems I can use to replace the default OD&D one? It's literally the only thing I dislike about S&W.

The primary movement rate, the one stated as just a number (from 6 to 12 for PCs unaffected by magic). I guess that's the one you're thinking of as the "combat" rate, but in practice in OD&D and Basic played by the book, it's really mainly used for exploration movement (in that more of a typical session will involve exploring than fighting, unless the players are kamikazes).

Will anything that isn't Vancian do, or do you have a specific taste?

>overly complicated vancian casting
The bad news is that if you think Vancian's too complicated, you'll probably never find a system that appeals to you. Gygax was open about choosing that system for OD&D as the mechanically simplest one possible.

>Will anything that isn't Vancian do, or do you have a specific taste?
I'm looking around right now. Not sure what I want.

Psionics is inborn/mutated mental powers derived from little more than a mind capable of interacting with physical reality. (I use the Hill Cantons Psychonaut for this which uses dailies/weekly number of uses per power instead of Memorization)
Magic is learned manipulation of the natural laws and the necessary discipline to force yourself into accepting alien (un)truths about the nature of things for long enough to affect them. Hence why high level wizards tend to be either eccentric, outright alien or crazy. (I have my Wizard's roll on a DCC mutation charts on every levelup)

Mind sharing the mutation chart, or telling me where I can find it?

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Core Book.
They're called "Corruptions".
There's also a couple floating about the net like this: tenkarstavern.com/2012/09/the-winners-of-dcc-rpg-corruption.html
I only use the mildly positive/aesthetic ones though since S&W Wizards do not do the whole risk/reward thing DCC ones do to get their mutations.

HackMaster question:

My GM thinks that d20-4 is the universal defense roll for all situations; that your Defense Modifier and Shield Bonuses have to cancel out the -4.
I'm of the impression that the Base Dice is a separate mechanic from the actual modifiers, and that if you have a shield your base roll for defense is 1d20 + X.
He's sighting the rules for animals that states they always roll a d20, but there's a chart in the beginning of the advanced combat rules (~pg 22X) that seems to list of d20-4 only happening if you're No-Shield vs Armed, with 1d20 being the base dice for any defense roll where you do have a shield. Additionally each of the combat stances lists different default defense dice for their initial and subsequent defense rolls; few of which are initially 1d20-4.

So, say a character had a +0 Defense Bonus from their Attributes and was wielding a Small Shield.
By his ruling that character would roll 1d20-4+4, but by what I understand they should be rolling 1d20+0+4.
Which one of us is right?

I just joined the group though and I don't want to argue with the DM unless I'm sure I'm correct.

The DM is right because the rule as written doesn't matter at all to enjoyment of the game.

I disagree with your insinuated values.

Good for you.
Just be aware that any DM worth his salt doesn't give a shit about this sort of nonsense.

And if you're going to be that one guy who bitches about the group accepted interpretation of the rules at least take it with him privately outside of the game session and don't try to eat up game session time with petty bullshit of this sort.

> any DM worth his salt isn't going to care about running the game correctly
Okay.
And no shit I'm not going to halt the game to discuss mechanics.

>I use the Hill Cantons Psychonaut
>that feel when the Misty Isles have been released but you're 29 days away from payday.
drivethrurpg.com/product/183439/Misty-Isles-of-the-Eld

>running the game correctly
>muh RAW for an optional section of the rules for a niche ruleset

>> any DM worth his salt isn't going to care about running the game correctly
Holy shit. You're literally the kind of person Hackmaster was designed to make fun of.

Except Hackmaster and the KOTD routinely mocks this exact sort of rules niggling rules lawyer mindset where the most important thing in the world if a roll is arbitrated with the correct modifier. (complete with a tribunal that can remove DM's cards if they fail to stick to the One True Rulesset)

They are neither optional nor my choice; the DM is imposing them himself and doing so incorrectly; it's also effectively halving our ability to defend ourselves, making an already deadly game extremely volatile.

> HackMaster
> A game built to accentuate the inadequacies of D&D and impose wider but more intuitive rules for all sorts of variables and situations
> anti-rules
A. You're retarded.
B. I'm sighting core game mechanics, not back-of-the-book alternatives or splats.

That's what I'm saying. It makes fun of rules lawyers like the user I'm quoting.
The game repeatedly mocks people who care more about the rules than the adventure.

kenzerco.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?233-HackMaster-General-Discussion

Do you think I'm sitting mid-session trying to argue him down or start a yelling contest? Do you think I'm fussing about variants and supplements in-character while the party camps? No, I'm here, between sessions, discussing concerns about inaccuracies and core mechanics. Kindly fuck-off with your, "muh fun," nonsense like I'm somehow ruining a game by questioning a simple statistical modifier during the down time.

>muh fun
Where did I say that? I'm saying players shouldn't care so goddamn much about the rules. Let the GM handle that shit. As long as they're consistent, you know how to play the game. To be honest, I think you're probably interpreting the rules the way they were intended and your GM is mistaken, but I also don't care for Hackmaster.

Anyway, you should probably check this post:

I remember some RPG book (it was a core game) that my grandfather had when I was a kid in the '90s, though the game could have been from the 70s or 80s. The cover had some guy holding the head of a decapitated dragon.

Anybody know what game that is?

Your entire argument has been pro-fun and anti-law, "muh fun," is an abstarct articulation of your general mindset; meant to mock your absurd dedication to a singular thought path and unwillingness to aid someone simply because they disagree with your agenda of party-cohesion being so much more important than running the game correctly that you should never ever question a GM's ruling over game mechanics. idk if English isn't your first language or if you've just got a 3rd grade reading level, and frankly it doesn't matter.

I found it myself; bottom left of page 224.
> "[...] Using a shield, however, negates the -4 penalty and improves the defender's roll to d20p plus Defense Bonus (as noted above and including the shield's own defense bonus)."
Thanks for nothing.

>One is external and learned, the other is innate and trained.
Which means exactly what?

So Rolemaster allows for psions and casters to all do the exact same thing, but just tack on different keywords in case something's resistant to, say, divine energy or psionic attacks? DESU, I've never really looked over RM outside of hearing about their hyper-accurate attack tables, so I'm terribly unfamiliar with what you're talking about.

That's all well and good, but it's all "magic = slots, psionics = points", and I'm looking for something a bit more substantial than mechanics.

I was about to write this off like , then I looked at the Psychonaut, and I think you're probably accidentally the closest to what I'm looking for. Looking over what the 'naut is capable of, with one or two exceptions they primarily focus on persons, rather than objects or the environment.

***

What I was asking was less about the hard, crunchy mechanical differences and more about the subtle mechanics. Yeah, since basically the start of D&D there's been the "magic=slots, psionics=points" dichotomy, as well as "magic=outside, psionics=inside". That's all well and good, but how are they -actually- different?

What I had encountered when asking my personal friends, and had only reinforced my own idea, was that people tended to consider magic as the manipulation of the environment and unliving matter, while psionics was able to manipulate the self and others, along with living matter. Magic would be able to fuck around with solids, liquids and gases, while psionics would allow teleportation and healing.

To give an example, under this explanation casting Fireball would be actual magic, while hitting someone with Resist Fire to tank it would be psionics.

You're welcome.

So, grad student here; just managed to get a summer job. Pays a little better than the last one I had. That, plus a little money from the family for my birthday means I'm able to buy a hardback copy of Swords & Wizardry Complete. I'm also thinking about grabbing Crypts and Things, the S&W GM Screen, and Monstrosities.

1. What modules should I snag while I'm at it?
2. What's a good, fairly accurate, durable, easy to read brand of dice?
3. The free S&W Complete PDF should suffice for players, since they're just making characters and then rolling, right?
4. Anything else?

I know it sounds like I'm spending a lot, but I'm building a physical collection for the first time and would like to not have to buy anything else for quite a while.

>That's all well and good, but it's all "magic = slots, psionics = points", and I'm looking for something a bit more substantial than mechanics.
Oh, magic is something Wizards study and learn in their ivory towers whilst psionics is a natural gift that manifests without them necessarily having much power over how.

Wizards are vancian, psychics are X-Men.

The reason I prefer the OD&D approach to psionics is because it's still split into classes, and there's downsides to it: Fighting Men lose strength and followers, but gain "mind over body" abilities and some "second sight" powers; Magic-Users lose tons of spells, but gain at-will teleportation and detection abilities; Clerics lose spells and Turn Undead but get mind control.
None of them really get any direct damage powers, though, and "power that affects others" is mostly limited to mental effects. It's got a very different feel than magic, and the psuedo-scientific terminology used probably makes it even moreso - no wonder that the entire thing is infamous in D&D circles to this very day.

Primarily, I like the system since it lets you take an otherwise standard NPC and give them something that makes them special. Maybe the warlord can make himself immune to magic, maybe the Wizard can teleport around at-will, maybe the Evil High Priest can mind control people.

And the other big feature of Psionics is, of course, the psionic combat. It's a complicated game of rock-paper scissors - overly complicated in that incarnation, to be honest. Although OD&D did better than AD&D in that it's your action - you don't get the crazy "one combat every segment" of AD&D, and thus don't quite get into the Decker problem as much.

OD&D psychics fit "sword & sorcery" way better than D&D's version of Vancian magic.

What would you give Clerics instead of Turn Undead without depowering them too much? (I want Undead to get a less mookish treatment)
Swords & Wizardry Complete if that's relevant.

I'm sort of debating with myself between changing that and just turning all spellcasters into Wizards with different spell lists.

Maybe clerics can make holy water, which can be spread on the cleric's weapon and function as poison against undead? Then the undead get a save and all it does is extra damage.

Small roll reference for LotFP. DC checks houseruled in for things that aren't attribute based but still challenging.

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