Question on Who Developed Fighting Capability

[sgalland]

Hey guys,

Out of curiosity do we know who created the Fighting Capability that is listed for each class in OD&D? I am curious if that is an Arneson artifact from the Blackmoor rules or if it is a Gygax addition to the rules.

Thanks,
Sean

[Havard]

Hey guys,

Out of curiosity do we know who created the Fighting Capability that is listed for each class in OD&D? I am curious if that is an Arneson artifact from the Blackmoor rules or if it is a Gygax addition to the rules.

Thanks,
Sean

Hi Sean,
do you mean the attack vs AC charts?

I think the final version may be Gary, but clearly based on earlier versions from Dave. Dave did speak of an armor class system he had developed for an iron clads type game that was never published that he started using for Blackmoor. 

Perhaps others here know more?

-Havard

[gsvenson]

Dave Arneson started using the AC system within the first month of our adventuring in Blackmoor back in 1971. He based it upon a US Civil War iron clad game. I never played the iron clad game, so I can't tell you anymore about it, not even the title.

[sgalland]

Hey guys,

Out of curiosity do we know who created the Fighting Capability that is listed for each class in OD&D? I am curious if that is an Arneson artifact from the Blackmoor rules or if it is a Gygax addition to the rules.

Thanks,
Sean

Hi Sean,
do you mean the attack vs AC charts?

I think the final version may be Gary, but clearly based on earlier versions from Dave. Dave did speak of an armor class system he had developed for an iron clads type game that was never published that he started using for Blackmoor. 

Perhaps others here know more?

-Havard

Thanks for the replies gentlemen. I probably created confusion with my brevity. I was referring to the Fighting Capability statistic listed in OD&D on Men & Magic page 18-19.

Fighting Capability: This is a key to use in conjunction with the CHAINMAIL fan-tasy rule, as modified in various places herein. An alternative system will be given later for those who prefer a different method.

Then for instance on page 17 for a Fighter you have the table with:
Man + 1
2 Men + 1
... and so forth.

Since it's keyed to CHAINMAIL it seems like a Gary Gygax rule and not a Dave Arneson one. But I figured I would ask around. I was looking at Dan Boggs replies on the ODD74 about Blackmoor Combat and I didn't see any mention of this system.

[aldarron]

Fighting Capability is nearly certainly a Gary Gygax thing.  The term is used in CHAINMAIL and is meant to be a way to use D&D with CM's man to man rules.  There is no hint of something like it in any of Arneson's material.

[sgalland]

Fighting Capability is nearly certainly a Gary Gygax thing.  The term is used in CHAINMAIL and is meant to be a way to use D&D with CM's man to man rules.  There is no hint of something like it in any of Arneson's material.

Thanks!

[finarvyn]

But I think we do know that Arneson had some sort of levels, so characters gained abilities as they progressed. If you go back to hex-and-chit wargames you find that most counters had attack/defense (often one number, sometimes not) and movement. Fighting Capability was clearly an attempt to quantify attack and Hit Dice combined with AC would represent defense, and so to distinguish characters who were better at one than the other you would need more than one index.

I'm not sure that Arneson used the terminology "Fighting Capability" but surely he had something equivalent in his early campaign.