It doesn't get more old school than this
Sometimes, Wizards send out something that’s so ass-kickingly good, I’ll forgive them almost anything.
In Start Here (free-to-view, no subscription required), Bart Carroll takes a look at D&D Starter Sets through the ages, and provides us not only with PDFs of the original dungeons from the 1977 (Blue Book) and 1983 (Red Book), but also 4e stats for Bargle himself. I can hear you old-schoolers weeping with joy right now; oh yes I can. Don’t hold it back…… there there…….
Bargle’s statblock has – get this – real, honest-to-goodness old-school spells including Magic Missile, Fireball, Charm Person and Hold Person. I can see these being stolen and used as templates for further spell conversions for time to come. Lovely stuff.
All of this reinforces my impression that 4e is the new old-school. Oh yeh! Now I’ve just got to convince some players to let me run them through the original Starter Dungeons, 4e style!
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Funny, that’s exactly what I imagined Hold Person and Charm Person would be like. It seems that the “require a failed saving throw before the powerful effect” type of spell creation is a good benchmark for making old save or lose like Sleep and Hold Person into honest to goodness 4e Daily spells. Pretty cool article, and I wish you luck in your endeavors to show people the joy of 4e!
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Cool, I like it! :)
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What’s old is new again. As I have always said, “If you want a new idea, read an old book.”
It looks like the folks at WotC have been doing their homework. Gary would be proud.
And I also feel your pain in trying to find some players to let me run them through the original Starter Dungeons, 4e style. I guess they are intimidated by what I have done, where I have been, and the games I have played since I started with the 1977 Basic Set (insert evil laugh here).