I recently bought the hefty "The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons", weighing in at 576 pages. It is a fascinating resource, with facsimile copies of the original Chainmail Fantasy Supplement, and also Gygax' original, typewritten D&D rules (complete with pencil and ballpen annotations by him and Arneson), and I am trying to understand how combat using these rules originally worked.
However, reading through these primiordial rules sets, a lot of the D&D rules refer to attack resolution for Chainmail with the class tables stating fighting capbabilities in refrence to things such as Man (for a first level Magic-User or cleric), Man(+1) for a first level Fighter, 2 Men(+2), for a second level fighter, Hero for a 4th level fighter, or Super Hero -1 for a 7th level fighter and statements like Clerics: Fight as men until they attain 6th level.
The rules in the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement explain that a HEROES fight like four figures, depending on their arms and equipment classed as ranging from Light Foot to Heavy Horse, and SUPER HEROES are "twice as powerful", which would suggest they fight like 8 units.
But what does the (+1) or -1 or +1 mean? Is there a difference between (+1) and +1? And what does +1 do, is this added to the die roll result of a d6?
I think all of these rules refer to the main CHAINMAIL combat resolution mechanism, and chainmail is also listed as required in the Equpipment list on p. 2. of the manuscript.
As far as I can tell, the facsimile of the Chainmail Fantasy Supplment that is included, is just that -- a supplement -- and does not further explain how the fundamental mechanism for combat resolution for Men in chainmail works. It does list point buy values for Light Foot and an Appendix A of COMBAT TABELES that says things like
LIGHT FOOT vs
Light Foot -1 die per man, 6 kills
Heavy Foot -1 die per 2 men, 6 kills
but it still is rather cryptic to me. Is a man here the same Man as in the OD&D manuscript? Do you roll a d6 for each side if two light foot fight each other, and on a 6 the opponent dies? Do you only roll a d6 for every two units of Light Foot when they fight a unit of Heavy Foot (ignroing a lone leftover Light Foot unit), and if you roll a 6, the Heavy Foot dies?
In the matching HEAVY FOOT table it says
Light Foot -1 die per man, 5, 6, kills
Does a roll of 5 or 6 kill both Light Foot, or only one unit (I guess the latter)? Is this "minus one" die or is the hyphen just a separator (I think it is)?
Even more puzzling, for HEROES the rules (p. 27 of the manuscript) say
When meleed by regular troops, and combat takes place on the non-Fantasy Combat Tables, four simultaneous kills must be scored against Heroes (or Anti-Heroes) to eliminate them. Otherwise, there is no effect on them.
Orcs for example are not listed in the Appendix E FANTASY COMBAT TABLE (p. 44 TMoODD), which only includes things like Balrogs, Dragons, Giants, Wraithes and other heavy hitters), and they are listed in the Appendix D FANTASY REFERENCE TABLE to attack and defend as "Hv. Ft." which I take to mean Heavy Foot; Goblins and Kobolds attack as "Hv. Ft." and defend as "Lt. Ft." i.e Light Foot.
Does this mean, that an unmounted, lightly armed and armored 4th level Fighter that fights as a HERO using the Light Foot class needs to be hit by four Orcs or Goblins in one round to be immediately killed, but just 2 or 3 Orcs have no way to kill him?
Any insight by some old-school players that have access to and used the full original CHAINMAIL rules welcome.
