The Crusader

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Behold, the Crusader!

This is my version of the Paladin, its a bit of an admixture of the 1e AD&D Paladin and Companion Set Paladin. The reason I am calling them Crusaders and not Paladins, because the Paladins were pseudo-historical/legendary figures, whereas the dnd paladin is really just a generic fighter dedicated to a cause or church, and not really like the historical legendary figures (basically the same reason I am against the usage of druid and bard as dnd classes).

So onto the abilities, most of the names for the abilities I just took from either 3rd edition or 5th just for flavor.

Divine Grace is just taken straight from AD&D with no changes, and Divine Sense is also from the Companion set

Lay on Hands I had to modify a bit to fit with my wound system(another post there). I kept the 2hp number, but instead of that piling up to a total hp per day to be spread as the paladin sees fit, its 2 hp able to be applied to each individual wound. so the crusader kinda becomes a sort of combat medic. This is especially useful as clerical spells(miracles) are rituals that take a minimum of 10 minutes in my games. and I just rolled the cure disease ability into a more advanced form of lay on hands, though maybe i should make that switch at 12th level.

Turn undead I used the companion set version of 1/3 level, I think that fits better than the AD&D version. I also transferred the above average wisdom requirement that applied to spells in the companion set.

Relating to the above, I didn't include the ability for the crusader to cast spells even though both AD&D(at 9th level) and the Companion Set(equivalent to 1/3 cleric level) have some degree of spellcasting for the paladin. I feel like with lay on hands and cure disease and divine sense and aura of courage, these are all spell like abilities, and the reason for the crusader(paladin) to have these above and beyond what a cleric could do is to make up for their lack of ability to cast spells. These special abilities replicate spells, and to have both is basically "double-dipping" in abilities; if a crusader/paladin can cast cure light wounds, why would they have lay on hands? if they can cast cure disease, why have  class ability that allows them to do that? if they can cast remove fear why have it be a constant class ability? etc. etc. Essentially a Crusader can do all these things that mimic clerical spells/miracles precisely because they cannot perform the spells. In the fiction of the world it can be justified by saying the church has not ordained them with the authority to perform its rituals, yet through their dedication and faith are blessed by their patron. Whatever the justification, the result in gameplay is the same: a fighter who mimics some clerical abilities while staying within the fighting-man niche.

Divine Health, ie immunity to disease, I decided to bump up to name level(9th), partly because I felt enough abilities had been assigned to the 4th level tier, and partly because I felt complete immunity to disease was a fairly OP and made for a good capstone ability.

Aura of Courage with immunity to fear comes from 3e and 5e, and was bumped to level 9 for the same reasons as stated above for Divine Health. and then the full constant Protection From Evil effect from 1e seemed also a bit OP, so i bumped it to a more advance version of this ability, still not sure about the Level 24 point though, maybe 12 or 20 or something.

Smite Evil, totally stole from 3e, definitely preferred this version over the one in 5e. Only change I made was to make it apply to all evil creatures all the time, but cant be used against anyone else; this is less helpful than you might think if you been following along and remember my definition of Evil. This ability still allows the Crusader to have a significant advantage when facing such creatures though, so I feel it fits well.

And the Holy Charger. Essentially unchanged from 1e, just reworked small details. the whole only summon once every 10 years I replace with having to actually train the horse from a colt and form a bond(could take 2 to 5 years, I think, have to look up horse maturity). keep the basic stats, and applies to the type of horse the the Crusader is training to be his warhorse: Rouncey, Courser, or Destrier(my rules regarding horses is another post...). And the Lancer Fighting style I already developed takes care of special bonuses for horseback riding.

So that's the Crusader. I have plans for the Avenger next, and maybe the Warlord(a ruler and/or conqueror of a Domain). The Avenger from the Companion Set is basically just a paladin dedicated to an evil church with the same abilities, well I find that a bit boring, if I wanted to do that, it would just be the Crusader Class with different fluff. I've already got ideas to make it interesting, a devil dog instead of holy charger, fearful presence instead of aura of courage, sowing enmity/chaos instead of lay on hands (I think just a direct cause wounds is a bit too plain and not that useful if they have a weapon), I'm also going to take a look at JB's Comes Chaos supplement, and maybe incorporate corruption as part of the Avenger. I'll see what I can come up with . . .

The Fighter WIP

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I've been lax on posting my work on this blog, mostly focused on running my weekly game. At this point I rarely make new rules, just mostly rewriting and formatting. One change I have made is to make the choice of a specialization to follow occur earlier at 4th level instead of name level. It doesn't make a huge difference because in practical terms the pattern I'm following is give out one ability specific to the specialization at 4th(such as use spell scrolls for thieves) and everything else at name or higher. The reasons for doing this are varied, but it boils down to giving players choice. Back during the 5e playtest, D&D Next, one of the things I always liked about the rules presented was the whole idea of waiting to choose a subclass until 3rd level, now the published rules were less consistent on when this happened for specific classes, but the idea of starting with something basic and then building complexity as you level was always appealing to me. We already have this to some degree in Classic D&D with the proto-prestige classes of the Companion Set, and so for a while I was happy to leave it at that for a while. In building more of these specialist classes for my players, I've found a solution is to let the classes specialize earlier  to keeping them from branching out too far to the point where they need to to be their own class altogether before they are tied down to a single archetype. This way I can keep the low level classes relatively few in number and broad in scope, mid and high tier characters can be more specialized. I'm making the break at level 4 because that point is already built into Classic D&D with the Basic and Expert Sets, so we can have have Basic classes that go from level 1-3, and Expert classes that go from level 4-36. 

So with that, I've kinda been focusing on rewriting the Basic classes to fit this new model. My plan is to have a small booklet for each class(the fighter book, the cleric book, the rogue book, etc) presenting the Basic Class and all the Expert Classes available at level 4. I've just finished redoing the basic fighter, and the first fighter expert class, The Hero. The Hero is your default weapon master fighter (I was going to use the name Man-At-Arms until just this last week I remembered the level title for a 4th level fighter is Hero and liked it better as the example of the standard fighter progression), next I need to do the crusader(the paladin), the avenger, the ranger , the berserker, and I have a few other ideas. but meanwhile here is what I got so far:

For info on the ability requisites read this post.  For weapon specialization and weapon mastery, I will have to make a separate post, but essentially I took the To Hit bonuses from weapon mastery and and separated them it into a separate ability called weapon specialization(somewhat inspired by AD&D). All classes get weapon specialization at different levels, and only fighters have access to weapon mastery. Its a topic for another time. 

 The special abilities of the Hero are pretty much all taken from the Fighter Combat Options in the Companion set with a few tweaks. 

Cleave is a combination of the Smash ability and the ability of the fighter in OD&D to make multiple attacks against mooks, I've found this to be a good balance in play without giving out completely unlimited attacks. 

Defend is just a renaming of Parry, and I turned into a deflect ability instead of an AC bonus for the same reason I made that exact same change to the weapon mastery charts; basically I want AC to be mostly an aspect of armor, and if the weapon is doing the defending I want the gameplay to reflect that. 

Disarm is pretty much unchanged

Multiple Attacks is also pretty much unchanged. For a while I was having multiple attacks by both PCs and monsters only apply to separate targets, if you had 2 attacks you couldn't attack the same person twice. I was doing this to represent the abstractedness of combat in dnd, but it really ended up being a complication that wasn't worth it in gameplay, so I've gone back to the old method in the last few months.

Fighting Styles is something I came up with to give more options in weapon mastery, for those that might want to not just specialize in a single weapon. I first floated the idea in May of 2023. And its seen some playtesting in my game(not every style though) but I've been a bit unsure of if I wanted to make it available to every PC or just fighters. With this redesign of the Fighter I am satisfied with making it exclusive to the Hero Expert Class, though I may give certain styles as a bonus ability to other Expert Classes(like Swashbuckler rogue class will have Dirty Fighting). Fighting Styles allows different flavors of fighter without having to create a whole new subclass/Expert Class. Want to play a mounted warrior? Play a Hero with the Lancer Fighting Style, no need to make a million Horse related Feats or non-sensical magical overpowered abilities(looking at you, Cavalier). I'm still thinking of adding a Marksman fighting style for archers(though I do like the idea of the Hero being more melee focused, maybe leave the archery to the Ranger), and am still open for other options if they occur to me, but think I've covered good variety

And as a teaser, this is the description I've written for the Crusader: "A Fighter may join a Crusading Order out of piety, or as a way to atone for a past life of sin. No matter the reason for their devotion, a Crusader acts as the earthly power that spreads the message of The Church."

What is the OSR

Posted this first on substack because my wife has been active there, trying to support her(she is @sarahsoloadventures, and I am @wagalade). 

What is the OSR? The perennial question asked alike by navel-gazing grognards and perplexed youngsters in our gaming hobby. And by my wife @Sarah Blount. So in an effort to confuse her even further I'm giving a small (if you saw my full list of bookmarks you'd agree this is a small number too) collection of posts others have made about the OSR, both lambasting it, praising it, trying to explain it, and even going over the long(where has the time gone?) history of this niche subset of our niche hobby:

https://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2014/10/osr-defined.html

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/where-hell-old-school-renaissance-come.html

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2014/09/once-againthe-deal-with-old-school.html

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2025/10/what-is-point-of-osr.html

https://lordofthegreendragons.blogspot.com/2010/07/from-desktop-my-final-stance-on-osr.html

https://www.greyhawkgrognard.com/2019/06/02/the-osr-has-no-gatekeepers/

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109033331/https://hexed.press/2018/01/25/o-s-r/

https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-osr-as-d-stuckists.html

https://pitsperilous.blogspot.com/2020/03/nostalgia-ok-osr-boomer.html

https://harbingergames.blogspot.com/2016/06/what-i-remember-rant-about-old-school.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-i.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-ii.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-iii.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-iv.html

https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-v.html