"Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."

Sunday, May 24, 2009

When did Secret Doors become so hard to find?

I was reading through "The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures - Volume 3 of Three Booklets" today and noticed on page 9 that, "secret passages will be located on the roll of a 1 or a 2 (on a six-sided die) by men, dwarves or halflings. Elves will be able to locate them on a roll of 1-4."

On page B21 of Moldvay we see that, "Any character has a 1 in 6 chance of finding a secret door; any elf has a 2 in 6 chance."

Honestly, this is the first time I have noticed that it is tougher to find a secret door in B/X than in OD&D.

3 comments:

  1. Maybe that's what led to AD&D's difference of Secret Door vs. Concealed Door?

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  2. Holmes Basic (1977) has elves "detect secret and hidden doors about one-third of the time" (page 6), so it looks like AD&D and the later Basic sets took their lead from Holmes.

    I wondered if there was a Sage Advice at some point that lead to this decision, but didn't find one in grimbert's collection after a quick google search.

    Allan.

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  3. I'd been meaning to check Holmes but just hadn't gotten around to it. Thanks.

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