Yesterday I talked about how well, or more to the point, how easy it is to use the
Castles & Crusades Mystical Companions with old-school D&D and in particular AD&D 1st Edition. I want to do something similar today but a little more focused on bridging that gap.
Today I want to look at Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook as my example, but in truth, this would apply to any C&C spell collection.
I'll do a quick review and then get into my Plays Well With Others.
Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook
For the purposes of this review, I am considering both the PDF from DriveThruRPG and the hardcover I purchased from Troll Lords.
256 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art.
This book covers (mostly) the spells of the four major spell-casting classes in C&C; Cleric, Wizard, Druid, and Illusionist. There are also two new types of spell-casters in this book, Runic Magic and Chromatic Magic.
The vast bulk of this book is given over to the spells of four classes (170+ pages). The spells are listed by class and then the alphabetic description follows. Many of these are going to be familiar since they are pulled from various C&C books and the Player's Handbook in particular. This is not a bug, but a feature. I wanted a book that had all of these spells in one place and this is what they advertise it as.
There are minor typos here and there and the art is recycled, but none of that matters to me. I am here for the spells. Honestly, I have no idea how many spells are here but it has to be upwards of 1,000. For example, there are 379 Cleric spells (0 to 9th level), 366 Druid spells, 437 Wizard spells, 305 Illusionist spells, and over 200 rune magic spells. That's a lot of magic.
I mentioned Runic Magic a couple of times. Rune Magic. Anyone can use runic magic, but the character has to master the runes first via an attribute check, this also assumes they have the necessary codices needed in order to learn the runes.
The spells of the Chromatic Mage is also presented here. This class is detailed more in the Castles & Crusades Player Archive, which I will cover more tomorrow.
If you are a fan of magic, spells or just have a desire to have a complete set then I would say pick this up.
Plays Well With Others
It has often been said that Castles & Crusades is one of the first professionally published OSR games out there. It takes the 3rd Edition base, reforms it forms it for a 1st Edition experience and even gave us rules and mechanics that would later be seen in 5th Edition. Castles & Crusades is essentially what AD&D could have become in the new millennium.
So it is no surprise then that C&C can Play Well with other forms of D&D rather easily.
1st and 2nd Edition D&D
This one is such a no-brainer it barely needs to be mentioned, but there are some things to consider. C&C uses the same spell casting classes as 1st Edition AD&D, so that conversion is easy. Though it should be pointed out that all classes have cantrips and have spells that go to 9th level.
Converting the spells is so trivial it is hardly an effort.
C&C spells casting times are in Rounds and saves are based on abilities. Largely you can save vs. Spells in AD&D unless some other sort of save (death, paralysis) makes more sense.
3rd Edition D&D
C&C might be modeled after 1st Edition, but its roots are in 3rd Edition D&D. Spellcasters get cantrips and 9th level spells in both cases.
Saves convert roughly like this Reflex = Dexterity (or rarely Intelligence), Fortitude = Constitution or Strength, Will = Wisdom or Charisma.
Likewise both games have focus components that can be used.
5th Edition D&D
C&C and D&D 5 have so much in common that you can just drop these spells right in.
Levels are the same. Cantrips are the same. Saves are the same. There is no warlock or sorcerer in C&C nor is there a dedicated Illusionist for D&D5, just the wizard archetype. But the spells can be spread out well enough. The Chromatic Mage though would make a good D&D5 style sorcerer to be honest with a little tweaking.
OSR Games
No point in going through all of these. If any of the above work then so do these. A couple of caveats.
Basic-Based Advanced Games
Basic D&D does not have the detail of spell descriptions that Advanced D&D does. So a lot of the stat blocks of the spells can be ignored or used as guidelines. Saves are always vs. Spell.
In the special case of Chromatic Dungeons, all the above applies, but I also think it would work out well if the Chromatic Mage was ported over (even via the OGL) to Chromatic Dungeons. IT would work well as another, but a different classification of Magic-User. I would use Wizard level advancement in CD and the spell progression in the Adventurers Spellbook.
I'll discuss this more tomorrow when I do my Class Struggles post.
