Possible New B/X House Rule

Since we keep forgetting about "Shields Shall Be Splintered", I am going to do away with it, it only would have saved the Dwarfs anyway. I was talking to my buddy Darryl though and he suggested a Saving Throw vs. Death, which I guess would actually be versus Death Ray or Poison, after dropping to 0 Hit Points or lower; if you make the save you live but are out of the fight, probably unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, if you don't you are dead. He suggested that you could be coup de graced by an enemy during that time too, but I usually assume out of the fight is assumed dead by most enemies. I have amended this rule anyway to the Schrodinger's Adventurer rule- You are neither alive nor dead until after the fight is over. When the fight is finished, assuming your side wins, you can make your saving throw to see if you survived and it was merely a near death experience. If your side loses, or retreats without taking your body I guess, it doesn't really matter, now does it? This cuts down on the lethality a little while still making the game a challenge. This also scales well with level, showing the luck, goodwill of the gods or just plain toughness of higher level characters. I talked it over with Mona and Lance and they both seemed to like the proposed rules modification.

Here's some stuff that came in the mail today-

As always, the pictures are from the EBay auctions.



The Ral Partha Warrior of Chaos here is a guy I never liked back in the day. I had really strong opinions about how there should be a certain amount of realism in our fantasy, that fantasy should be grounded in realism to make the more fantastic parts of it stand out against the realistic background. I still do, I got this guy to show how far we have strayed, this guy was once the line I considered uncrossable; now he is positively realistic next to the mainstream miniatures being produced by a lot of companies. His weapon is not terribly disproportionate, his armor, while ornate, is still reasonable protective and functional.



This is a Ral Partha Turkish Spearman, historical miniatures are always welcomed at my D&D game. There is a frightening amount of mold flash on some of these old Ral Partha minis though, and this is one of them.



Ral Partha Turkish Archer, another good looking historical mini.



This one is a Ral Partha Thracian Peltast, I have to admit I just ordered him because it looked like no one else was going to bid on him and I was winning a bunch of others, I have to admit I don't know what a Peltast is exactly.



Ral Partha Super Heavy Legionary, I have a Roman area in my Garnia campaign world and he is a cool mini.



Ral Partha Sung Chinese Light Infantry, another historical mini bought on a whim.



Ral Partha Sung Chinese Heavy Infantry, I bought this guy on a whim too, but I really like him.



Ral Partha Scottish Warrior with Axe, the first thing everyone noticed about this guy was that his junk was hanging out. My ancestors apparently charged into battle wielding axe and wang.




Ral Partha Scottish Archer, unlike his buddy the Axeman, this guy is not exposing his genitalia to the world.




Ral Partha Kieran, Male Pitfighter.



Ral Partha Katora, Female Pitfighter. A matched pair.



Ral Partha Ghoul. This is a creepy little guy, maybe moreso because of the knife.



Ral Partha English Knight, this one fits my current campaign pretty well.



Ral Partha Enchantress.



Ral Partha Armored Halfling, this is perhaps the smallest Halfling miniature I have ever seen. He still looks like kind of a bad-ass though, which is cool, because all too often Halflings look comical.



Ral Partha Adventuress Mounted, I read somewhere that the dismounted version of this miniature is the first representation of a female D&D character as a miniature. This mounted version dates to 1977.



Grenadier Crossbow soldiers, or so the auction said; if they are actually Grenadier they are very late Grenadier, because scale creep has set in pretty bad. They look great, they're just bigger than the rest of my older miniatures.



This guy was just called "Knight", he's a little on the large side too.



Grenadier Princess, not too much to say about her.



Grenadier Female Barbarian Archer, she needs a bow, not a problem, and she's huge next to older minis, which kind of bums me out.



Grenadier Amazon with axe, I have to take their word that this is a Grenadier, I can't make out the markings on the base, there isn't a lot of fine detail here either, so my guess would be that maybe she came with one of the Giants Club or Dragon of the Month boxed sets?



Broadsword Evil Guard, he kind of looks like he should be one of Thulsa Doom's troops.



Broadsword Dwarf with spear, you don't see a lot of Dwarfs with spears and I kind of like the proportions on him. A lot of Dwarf minis are just too bulky.



Assassins and Thieves. I thought this band of cutthroats could come in handy, my wife is absolutely grossed out and appalled by the gallows and refuses to have anything to do with it, to the point where I'll probably have to get rid of it.



A beat up 1st edition DM's Guide. Actually, it's not as bad as the picture makes it out to be, it's in about the same shape as the one I still use, with the exception that they actually trimmed off the part of the binding that was all tattered. I bought it as a gift for Dalton, who is 18 years old and new to DMing; the 1st edition DM's Guide is still the best tool for DMs out there.