![]() This also has all the necessary combat tables. Part 5: The Encounter covers combat and includes morale, saving throws, and variable weapon damage. The Alchemist on page X21 defined what an alchemist needed to look like for me. Not only does this section open up the world of adventuring to the entire wilderness and beyond the dungeon, it gives us some of my favorite Erol Otus art ever. Eight pages of new spells including the amazing Disintegrate spell, which was one of the spells outlawed in many of my local game groups back then. New detail is given on Reversed spells for both Clerical and Magic-user/Elf spells. This section got about 90% of my attention back then. That was unheard of levels of magic for me. ![]() Additionally, thief abilities extend to 14th level as does Clerical turning Undead and new, more powerful spells 5th level for clerics and 6th level for Magic-users. Where Basic D&D went from 1st to 3rd level, this book continues on to 14th level for human classes and various levels for the demi-human classes. I thought, at the time, that the organization of this section was a vast improvement over the same section in the Basic Book. Eventually, I did do this, but not with my actual books, but rather with the printouts from the DriveThru PDFs. The idea here was for you to be able to cut up your Basic and Expert books and put them together in a three-ring binder. Here we also note that the page numbers are X# compared to the B# number. Also we get some guidelines on how this book should be used and what to do if you have an earlier (Holmes edition) of D&D Basic. This book begins with some tables from the Basic game. BUT if that was the case I soon got over it since there was SO much more for the Cleric and Magic-users. While I had not really thought about the new classes when I got my Expert set, I was a little disappointed that halflings and dwarves didn't get more than they did. While we were promised "new classes" both in the Holmes Basic book and later by Gygax himself in the pages of Dragon magazine, we stick with same seven classes four human (Cleric, Fighter, Magic-user, Thief) and three demi-human (Dwarf, Elf, Halfling). Jeff Dee's halflings, David LaForce's giants, and Bill Willingham's vampire are to this very day the first thing I think of when any of these creatures are mentioned. Some so iconic that they STILL define certain elements of the game for me. LaForce, Erol Otus, James Roslof, and Bill Willingham. The art features some of the Big Names of 1980s D&D art. The cover is full cover and the interior covers are blue ink and feature the table of contents (front) and index (back). The book is 64 pages of black & white art. The Expert book features the same cover art on a predominantly blue cover. Note the PDF does not include dice (obviously). Included in the boxed set was one of the greatest sandbox adventures ever, X1 Ilse of Dread and a set of 6 polyhedral dice d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 and a crayon. ![]() In fact, it is the current background for my phone. It remains one of my favorite pieces of gaming art ever. The art includes the art from the Basic Set a wizard scries the female wizard and male warrior fighting the dragon. The Expert Set came in a boxed set featuring cover art by Erol Otus. This Moldvay/Cook/Marsh set of rules is often called B/X to separate it from the Mentzer BECMI versions. So we often call this the Cook/Marsh Expert set to distinguish it from the Frank Mentzer Expert Set. On the heels of the Basic Set edited by Tom Moldvay, we have the first Expert Set edited by David "Zeb" Cook with Steve Marsh. That is getting ahead of my narrative.įor this review, I am going to look at the original boxed set, the mini boxed set from Twenty First Century Games S.r.i., and the newer PDF from DriveThruRPG. The Expert set lived up to that set and then blew me away. The Moldvay Basic Set was the high mark for me at the time for what an RPG should be. Just everything from the classes to all the new monsters. I know this because I have very distinct memories of going through the Expert book and just marveling at everything inside. I do know it was sometime after I had the Basic Set. I am not exactly sure when I got the D&D Expert set. The second half, the X of B/X, was the Cook/Marsh Expert Set. But that is only the first half of the story. ![]() It was 1980 though that I got my hands on the Moldvay Basic Set and my love affair with B/X D&D. December of 1979 was the time I was first introduced to Dungeon & Dragons via the Holmes Basic edition and the AD&D Monster Manual. ![]()
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