OSRIC. vs. BX: The Fighter

It all starts with the fighter.

If there is one reason to play OSRIC over OSE, it's the party's core: the fighter. Without a strong fighter, the entire dungeon game falls apart, and we see this today in book after book of power-game caster powers, desperate to distract players and keep the "next OP thing" on digital store shelves.

Without a strong fighter, the whole game falls apart.

And in BX, especially OSE, the fighter comes off as just a good attack, a pile of hit points, and the best armor. I have to pull in zines to give the fighter any viability. It is not enough. Sure, in a basic game, the class is fine, but it doesn't scale in power and capability as well as OSRIC. The OSE fighter starts as one thing, and never really changes or feels powerful.

OSRIC makes a very good fighter, and this one competes with Swords & Wizardry on timing alone. Where S&W focuses on damage, OSRIC focuses on combat timing and structure, making the fighter the "lord and master" of the battle.

Weapon specialization for that first-turn, first-phase attack makes the fighter the first one to act. Every other turn, they go through phases 1 and 10 twice, and as they level, it gets better and better. And they get this from level one. Heroic assault at level 2 is the "slay the room" power, which OSE is only just adding. Might blow comes into play occasionally, but it simulates the overpowering effect of higher-level fighters outmatching some foes.

Multiple attacks and initiative-phase buffs make the fighter highly desirable to play. They have not only the best defense, but also an offense that can shape the fight.

Every other class sits downstream of the fighter. You can't even begin to understand or balance thieves, magic-users, clerics, or hybrid classes unless your fighter is rock-solid and desirable to play. If you can't get the basic core martial class right, you aren't playing D&D or a dungeon game. It is superheroes with funny shapes and accents, I guess, and the designers at Wizards are falling over each other trying to give every caster Fireball and Wall of Force. They really don't know what they are doing.

OSRIC sticks with 1E and gets it right. I haven't felt this positive about fighters since D&D 4E, which had some powerful fighters and martial classes, but was saddled with terrible, card-based play. OSRIC builds fighters into the timing and structure of the combat turn, and it needs few special rules beyond this simple design. I don't need a dozen pages of subclass rules, new martial feats, or any other modern designer dongle or rules hack.

What gets me here is how deceptively simple this is, yet it works. And OSE's fighter doesn't go all the way; it sits on a too-simple structure, meant more for rules-hacking and modding. This was Gygax's criticism of BX: the entire game felt too nebulous and undefined for organized play, and too "whatever the table felt it was."

I love BX.

But Gygax was right. A little structure solves many of the fighter's problems in BX and sets up the rest of the game's classes for success.