I wanted to cover a topic of discussion, which recently took place within the comments of one of my YouTube videos. The video in question was episode 5 of my Original Dungeons & Dragons Campaign. I have discussed how melee combat works in OD&D several times across that video series and have had to make several corrections on the matter because OD&D combat is quite challenging to grasp when trying to reconcile rules written in Chainmail with the three original OD&D books: 'Men & Magic', 'Monsters & Treasure' and 'Underworld & Wilderness Adventures'.
I originally surmised that melee range is at 30 feet (usually written as 30'). This is quite peculiar as proceeding editions of D&D states that melee range is at 5 feet, so is it correct?
OD&D Melee Range - An Old School D&D Tutorial
On the surface 30' seems an incredibly long reach for attacking with any melee weapon so would immediatly appear to be an error or typo in the rules. However, what needs to be taken into account, especially with OD&D combat is that the system is kind of an abstract. I think what it is trying to get at with a 30' melee range is the idea that two figures are exchanging blows in man-to-man combat and this entails them circling one another, running forward to strike, parrying, backing away from each other and so on. In other words they are close enough to one another that they are under threat of receiving or could easily deliver a blow at hand to hand range so are considered to be engaged in melee combat.
In April I received a comment from a Youtube viewer who wanted to know how I had concluded that melee range is 30 feet. He indicated that on page 25 of Chainmail it says 3 inches (3"), which, at 1:20 scale, (Pg. 8 talks about scale) works out to exactly 5 feet. The math checks out. At 1:20 scale 3" is 5'.
The exact wording in Chainmail on page 8 is:
"The ratio of figures to men assumed is 1:20, the ground scale is 1":10 yards, and one turn of play is roughly equivalent to one minute of time in battle. The troop ratio will hold true for 30mm figures, but if a smaller scale is used it should be reduced to 1:10."
So what does this mean? Firstly when referring to '1:20' Chainmail is not referring to scale, but the ratio of figures to men. The ground scale provided is 1":10 yards. This does not mean a scale of 1:10, it simply means 1" is the equivalent of 10 yards. I believe this would actually be a 1:360 scale according to my calculations.
Confusingly if we use ground scale 1":10 yards that would make 3" (which is melee range) 90 feet and not 30 feet. As 1 yard = 3 feet!
The YouTube viewer had already pointed out that "allowing the Thief to stab things from across the room (Especially when max range of ranged attacks is only about 25 feet) is probably a bad idea." So 90' would be very crazy indeed! Can all this be rectified?
It could well be that Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson were using a 1:20 scale when they wrote the rule "When two figures are within melee range (3"), one or several blows will be struck." However this seems unlikely to me because:
- A) Only being able to fire an arrow 25 feet seems quite unrealistic.
- B) Chainmail introduces the 1:20 ratio as referring to the ratio of figures to men and not scale.
Upon delving further into the three rulebooks I managed to clear the matter up (I think). In the Underworld & Wilderness Adventures booklet, it says "In the underworld all distances are in feet, so wherever distances are given in inches convert them to tens of feet." So I guess we can surmise from this that 3" is 30 feet in a dungeon and 30 yards in the wilderness. This would make melee range 30 feet. Or atleast you'd think so! But wait... There's more...
In regards to missile fire max range could be interpreted as being at 150 feet and not 25. In Chainmail it says on page 25 "Ranges for each weapon are divided into thirds for simplicity, so a 15" range divided into short at 0 - 5", medium at 5 - 10", and long at 10 - 15". This works out at 0 - 50, 50 - 100 and 100 - 150 in terms of feet if we apply the rule from Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, which states "In the underworld all distances are in feet, so wherever distances are given in inches convert them to tens of feet."
This all seems pretty clear now. Melee range in OD&D is 30 feet and max missile fire range is 150 feet. But is it? This is just one interpretation and on further inspection there is some significant contradictions and so the debate is not over!
In the second issue of Strategic Review, Gary Gygax attempted to answer some frequently asked D&D questions about combat. To do this he provided a specific combat example. In regards to melee the example states:
"10 ORCS surprise a lone Hero wandering lost in the dungeons, but the die check reveals they are 30' distant at the time of surprise, so they use their iniative to close to melee distance."
Why would the Orc's need to close to melee distance if they are already within the 30' melee range?
A clue is given in the rules for Surprise on page 9 and 10 of Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. "[...]a Wyvern surprises a party of four characters when they round a corner into a large open area. It attacks as it is within striking distance as indicated by the surprise distance determination which was a 2, indicating distance between them was but 10 feet."
So we can summise melee distance or "striking distance" is atleast 10 feet, but 30' is now questionable.
The only way I could logically reconcile this contradiction in terms of melee distance is to consider there may be a difference depending on whether combat takes place in the wilderness or the underworld. In the wilderness yards are used to measure distance and in the underworld distance is measured in feet. So I thought at first that perhaps melee distance in the underworld is 10' and in the wilderness it is 30'. It was difficult to say with any conviction, however this appeared to be the only way to explain it, presuming all the rules as written are free from errors.
Then I found the following statement written in Underworld & Wilderness Adventures on page 16:
"Monsters at 10 yards distance will be able to attack."
This appears to render the whole case for a 30' melee distance defunct. There is however one further option, which would reconcile all these rules without contradiction. Perhaps rules regarding melee distance are different during a surprise round. I honestly think that this is unlikely and after my deep dive across the various original three OD&D books, including Chainmail, my conclusion is that in OD&D melee range is 10' in the underworld and 10 yards in the wilderness and we can presume that the 3" distance suggested in Chainmail has been overwritten.
Let me know what you think in the comments and be sure to check back for more content. In the meantime:
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Let's not forget about Miscellaneous Melee Information:
ReplyDelete"All types of troops are considered to control the space 1" on either side of
themselves to stop infiltration."
"Units within 3" of a melee may be drawn into it if the player to whom they
belong so desires."
In Man-to-Man Combat section:
"When using the Man-To-Man combat system all preceding rules apply, except where
amended below"
"When two figures are within melee range (3"), one or several blows
will be struck"
We need to remember that the CM combat is abstract. 1 turn (movement, missile, melee) = 1 minute. Figurines didn't have bases/stands - at least, not ones we are accustomed to. Each unit has a 1 inch zone around it. When 2 such zones meet, it can end in melee. So yes, if the distance between 2 tokens (no matter if 1:10, 1:20 or 1:1) is 3", they can fight if either side wants it.
Now take a look at Vol. III. In aerial combat section there is an interesting passage:
"When opponents are within the range indicated for melee (3”) then combat takes
place."
Yards converts to tens of feet in a dungeon, so I'd say that 30 yards become in fact 30 feet, as the distance is invariably measured in inches. As the undergroud surprise distance is 10-30 feet, one can argue that surprise is just about catching/drawing one side into melee. Take a look at wyvern example: "It bites and hits. The Wyvern may attack once again before the adventurers strike back." In CHAINMAIL (MtM): "Men attacked from the rear do not return a blow on the 1st round of melee and automatically receive 2nd blow position on the 2nd round of melee."
I agree though that passuses about closing to melee distance in order to attack are confusing. The one possibly explanation is that the game itself evolved rapidly, detaching from its wargaming roots and OD&D as published captured the moment of change. There were a lot of ideas back then. Take note that in Warriors of Mars (another Gygax game, 1974) distance for individual combat is 1"=6 feet. And in Swords & Spells "only those figures whose stands are actually touching of enemy figures will be counted".
I've written a post about it on my blog: https://roberdponury.blogspot.com/2021/04/melee-range-w-poszukiwaniu.html
it's in Polish, but you can run it through Google translate. Feel free to leave the comment.
Regards!