OSE Notes

Not quite a review.

Picked up Old School Essentials via Humble Bundle recently.  I don't think I've actually read a B/X retroclone besides ACKS (and maybe skimming Labyrinth Lord).  My understanding is that OSE is quite faithful, so the things I was surprised about were probably things that ACKS changed.  People on the ACKS discord have told me several times that I would complain less if I had actually run B/X, so... maybe I will.

First pleasant surprise was in ability scores.  I like that reaction roll bonus from Charisma caps at +2, rather than +3 in ACKS.  Likewise Dexterity's bonus to initiative.  This comes at the price of ability score bonuses being a little less standard and easy to remember.

They have the rule about trading down scores to raise your prime reqs, but they don't have one about rolling a bunch of sets.  I think it's probably important to only have one or the other of those rules; given one set of 3d6 in order, trading down seems much more reasonable, and parties where half of PCs have an 18 prime req shouldn't be too common.

Alignment languages.  -_-  Also this table introduced with "the following languages are common" includes doppelganger and harpy.  Man.

The art in this book is weird, by which I mean highly varied.  Some of it's cutesy-cartoony, some of it's sober black and white line drawings, the Giant Leech and Green Slime pieces are very...  visceral.  Feels less thematically consistent than eg ACKS or DCC.

Classes

Magic research available from 1st level to all casters.  I guess this was true in ACKS too, for spell research, and I should come back to this when I get to that part of the book.

Turning - rolled on 2d6 instead of 1d20, so I initially misinterpreted this table.  Still, interesting that you can't turn undead of 3HD more than you, while you can in ACKS (on 19+).  No miraculous deliverance here, I guess.  Whoa, and 2* HD gets its own column, for ghouls I guess, so that means a 1st level cleric can't even turn 3HD undead.  Also I have to say that I like making the target value a function of HD rather than creature type explicit.  On the other hand, having the effectiveness of turning on giant skeletons be limited by HD rolled on the 2d6 instead of the turning roll was kind of fun sometimes.  Text is not clear on how often one can turn; I rather liked ACKS' "faith shaken" rule.  Also no option to control the undead.

The THAC0 and save progression is different; ACKS smoothed it, so "+2 every n levels" meant "+1 every n/2 levels".  Here the only difference between a 1st and 3rd level fighter is HP; the gap between "veteran" and "hero" at 4th level is much bigger (and likewise "hero" from 4th-6th vs "super-hero" at 7th-9th).

Where are the level titles ):

Infravision...  hmm.  I think I agree with ACKS on this one, that infravision for PCs is mostly trouble because it circumvents torch logistics right out the gate.  It also makes the dwarf vs fighter contest even better for the dwarf, what with the saves and the fairly low XP-to-level bump.  I guess fighter's domain game is better, in that they can build a stronghold at any time while the dwarf has to wait until 9th, and the domainy rules say that a peasant family yields 10gp/year in taxes (which is...  terrible, compared to ACKS), and the dwarf can only hire dwarven mercenaries (not so bad since there are no market limits, but no heavy cav for you).  Still, rough for the fighter at low levels.

Elf prime reqs are weird, Str 16+ and Int 13+ to get +10%.

Fighters get jack shit but plate, shields, and d8 HD.  Not even +morale for hirelings, unless it's hidden later in the book.

Halflings have a min Con 9+, interesting.  Bonus to AC against big enemies, but otherwise basically Explorers with plate, a level cap of 8, and an "any time they wish" domain game.  "Explorers with plate" is a scary thought, but I guess less scary for lack of fighter damage bonus.

Wow, MUs can only use daggers, no quarterstaves or darts.  Harsh.  And no tower until 11th level.  Oh yeah, and vancian magic, no repertoire.

Thief - can't trade down Strength during chargen, weird.  Traps are divided into room traps and treasure traps; the former are big and protect areas and anyone can find them, the latter are small and mechanical and only thieves can deal with them.  An interesting split; in my own games, it is accurate to say that I use treasure traps almost exclusively, and this is probably niche protection for thieves.  Bleh, percentile thief skills.  And two-letter abbreviations for skills would take some getting used to.

Oh man backstab damage multiplier doesn't scale up, it's just x2 forever.  That makes high-level thieves substantially less scary; their skills still get really good, but you're never going to force a morale check for half HP in the opening round against high HD opponents (assuming morale check for half HP is still a thing), nor are you ever going to insta-kill ogres.

This probably also explains death attack, that assassin ability that I've only ever seen someone use once.  Death attack always seemed dumb when scaling backstab/sneak attack damage was available, but if backstab is only ever x2, then death attack is actually worthwhile.

So now I'm wondering if thieves scale sort of like MUs - at low levels they don't get to do their thing very often (because low skill rolls and few spell slots) but when they do it's often a big encounter win (insta-kill backstab against low-HD opponents forcing morale, or sleep), and at high levels they get to do their thing a lot more often (more spell slots, higher skill rolls) but it's decisive much less often (because high-HD opponents are much more likely to save and have enough HP to not die to backstab).  It would be an interesting experiment to make death attack the default behavior of backstab, such that the parallel with high-HD enemy saves becomes more explicit.

I also don't love that for d6 rolls, you want a 1-to-x, so rolling low is good.  It didn't register when I was reading Dwarf and Elf because their Hear Noises and Find Secret Wotsits are "2-in-6" which could be rolled either way, whereas the Thief table has 1-2, 1-3, 1-4... for Hear Noises.

On the other hand, there's probably an argument from poorly-balanced dice; if half of rolls are "roll low" and half of rolls are "roll high", then even if your dice are badly balanced it should work out in expectation (until you start measuring how unbalanced your dice are and picking different dice for the different types of roll - but if you were already going to measure the unbalance, then it doesn't matter.  I could see it being sensible during the early days of the hobby, when I expect the quality of dice might've been lower and they were harder to come by so you probably didn't have four d20s to choose from).

I'm surprised that in Levelling Up, you don't reroll all your HD every level and take the better of your previous or just-rolled max HP.  I thought I had heard that OSE had that rule.  Must've been some other clone.

Here are my level titles.  But they're not linked to particular levels.  Big bummer.

Oh boy rules for levels >14.  Not something I see using much.

Inheritance - I'm not sure I understand the meaning of "a player may only leave a character inheritance once", and I certainly don't understand the intent?

Equipment

Encumbrance is measured in coins.  This is kinda clever, because it makes it sort of obvious that the stuff you should be worrying about getting encumbered with is treasure.  On the downside, it also seems like kind of a pain in the ass.  Encumbrance is optional, apparently (!?), and there's no encumbrance listed for misc adventuring gear like 10' poles - just armor, weapons, and treasure.

Only three armors, leather, chain, plate.  Nice.  Chain seems kind of crap, since it weighs almost as much as plate but gets 2 points less of AC.

No reach weapons, and 2H weapons act last instead of just -1 to init.  Brutal.  Since variable weapon damage (ie, "2H swords do d10", as opposed to "all weapons do d6") is an optional rule, 2H seems totally worthless under default rules.  OTOH, with the variable weapon damage rule, d10 is much stronger in the absence of fighter damage bonus.  Bonus to hit with ranged weapons at close range.  Maybe part of the reason MUs don't get darts is that darts just don't exist.  Huh, crossbows act last too...  but who uses crossbows?  I don't think there was a class that got crossbows but not bows...  I guess dwarves and halflings maybe, who can't use longbows, are faced with the choice between 240' range and acting last, or 150' range and not acting last.

I like vehicles and mounts as much as the next guy, and it makes sense to have something about them in with equipment because they're things that you buy, but I dunno if rules for vehicle damage, repair, boarding, and ramming needed to come before Combat is explained.  I do like the distinction between ocean-going and unseaworthy vessels.

I love the art for the Camel, and the dwarves? sneaking up on a sea serpent in a ship graveyard is pretty good too.

Magic

Full vancian, and no bonus slots or anything for high Int or Wis.  Can only have spells in spellbook up to number you can cast per day, and you can't read spellbooks captured from enemies "without the use of magic" (presumably Read Magic).  Oof.  I dunno, I like how ACKS encourages wizards to kill other wizards and take their books.  Having to use spell slots on Read Magic is rough.  I feel like this might be a good use for the Scholastic Wizardry proficiency in ACKS; clarify that reading other peoples' books and scrolls requires a roll, and then make Schol. Wiz. give a bonus.

Chance of failure for magic research (both item creation and spell research) is "minimum probability of 15%".  So on the one hand, because that's a Schelling point in the rules, probably about 15% most of the time, which is way more lenient than ACKS (at least for the level ranges we mostly find ourselves in).  But it does give judge discretion to go "that sounds really hard, you can do it on 16+ or 12+ with a special ingredient..."  Oh, and no library or laboratory requirements.  So definitely seems easier than ACKS' research most of the time (but you don't get XP for it).

I'm not going to read all these spells.  What is interesting is that there are fewer cleric spells (6-8 per spell level, instead of 10).  Missing spells:

1st: Command Word, Sanctuary
2nd: Augury, Delay Poison, Spiritual Weapon (but they gain Know Alignment)
3rd: Cure Blindness, Feign Death, Glyph of Warding, Speak with Dead
4th: Dispel Magic, Divination, Smite Undead, Tongues
5th: Atonement, Flame Strike, Strength of Mind, True Seeing

Wow.  Flame Strike, Spiritual Weapon, and Dispel Magic are all pretty solid losses, and we had bacon saved by Augury, Sanctuary, and Delay Poison a time or two.  But it's also not super-surprising; if I had to pick spells that felt the least like Cleric spells, Flame Strike and Spiritual Weapon would definitely be on the list.

On the MU front:

1st: Read Languages and Read Magic are two separate spells, Magic Mouth missing
6th: Lower Water and Part Water are separate spells, Wall of Iron missing

So it looks like MU keeps most of their good stuff.

Know Alignment vs Detect Evil - Detect Evil operates solely on present intent, whereas Know Alignment can tell you what their alignment is (but isn't a wide-area scan).

Bless operates on a "20' square area", weird.  But I guess if you're thinking in 10' squares and don't want to deal with circular areas of effect, it would be convenient.

I actually kind of like the layout of the spell effects.  It's not as lawyerly as ACKS, doesn't go as far into details and edge cases, but it gets the point across.

Cure Serious Wounds nerfed, 2d6+2 with no scaling by caster level.

Raise Dead is obviously much less punitive than RL&L, with no permanent side effects, but the time limit is pretty tight.

Sleep is still as good.

You can cast Invisibility on objects and it's permanent.  This could not possibly be exploited.

Phantasmal Force seems stronger, since psychosomatic effects last for 1d4 turns instead of ACKS' 1d3 rounds.  Kind of unreasonable, but compare to Web I guess.

Fly duration is randomized, glorious.  Does the caster roll it or do I get to roll it in secret?

Fireball is 20' radius, glorious.  Hmm, no expand to volume clause though, which is odd because Lightning Bolt still bounces.

No aging clause on Haste, whoa.

Wall of Fire is duration: concentration, no good for covering retreats.

Teleport has a 10' range, now you don't have to poke people to teleport them to their deaths.

Death Spell has a lower HD cap (7 vs 8).  Disintegration can disintegrate a whole ship!

Done with spells.

Adventuring

Party organization: Class and level mix recommendations, party caller, mapper, system for divvying up magic loot between party members when it's contested.  Nice.

Ten coins per pound - big honkin' coins.

The Encumbrance page is probably the most "hrmmm" page of the book for me.  Not tracking weight of misc adventuring gear (or having a fixed weight of 80 coins) seems like it would remove a substantial strategic element from the game (balancing military oil vs torches, choosing what equipment to dump if you find a lot of treasure).  But I do appreciate the simplicity of it.  I wonder if it's worth having a catch-all "misc adventuring gear" weight that covers sacks and backpacks, and then having weight for a small subset of adventuring gear where tradeoffs are easy to come by (consumables, maybe?  Oil, torches, spikes?).

Or you do 100-coin kits.

But, when these rules are in use, they're much less lenient for the main thing that they care about, extracting treasure.  In ACKS, with 1000 coins per stone, you can carry out a couple thousand GP on top of your gear, per character, while maintaining 60' speed.  Here, you're hard-capped at 1600 coins per character, so if you're not finding platinum, it's going to take a couple expeditions to go from (say) 4th to 5th level (8000 XP for a fighter -> 5 fully-laden expeditions of just gold pieces).  So leveling is probably slower?  Compared to ACKS, your exploration movement is pretty close until your find treasure (faster for thieves and wizards, similar for heavily-armored characters), and then your speed drops much more aggressively.  Interesting.  Maybe this preserves tradeoffs adequately.  It's always surprising to me how a one-page Optional Rules module like encumbrance or variable weapon damage can have big consequences for the way the game plays.  Complex systems.

Mm, roll under again in ability checks, and auto-fail / success on 20 and 1.  Not a big fan.

Death at 0HP.  Unforgiving.  No clause on natural healing about safe / sanitary conditions.

Drowning example on light armor with a light load seems awfully merciful.

I like the Sequence of Play Per Turn sidebar / box.  I do have a soft spot for programs and flowcharts though.

So there's this note about how undead don't make noise and aren't detectable by listening.  If infravision operates by heat, should undead be invisible to / high chance to surprise infravision too?  That would be a fun piece of dungeon ecology, where monsters, who rely on infravision, are extra-afraid of undead because they're considered sneaky.

"One chance" clauses on room searching and door-listening - per expedition, presumably?  Not for the character's lifetime?

Traps don't make attack rolls, always hit - nasty.  Wonder if they allow saves.

I like that it specifies that random dungeon encounters are at 2d6x10 feet and headed towards the party.  Position and vector.  This puts some immanence on the blips.

OK, I get it now - these subsections are organized alphabetically, which is why Climbing comes first and Wandering Monsters come last, even though the latter happens a lot more often / is more important than the former.  That's an interesting choice.  I don't like that it leads to forward references (like Flying wilderness movement pointing to Overland movement, which you wouldn't've read yet since it comes after), but this probably doesn't matter in play for this particular case, because you're likely to do a lot of normal overland movement before flying becomes a possibility, so it should be familiar by then.

Hunting and foraging are much less merciful than ACKS, because "the party has a 1-in-6 chance of finding enough food for 1d6 human-sized beings" rather than each individual forager having a chance.  So wilderness adventuring is much less sustainable and must rely more heavily on rations...  but encumbrance from rations isn't tracked, so it's just a question of expenses.  Maybe that's fine though?  But with the amount of money people accumulate by wilderness level, and the lower emphasis on cash-sinks like domains and libraries and reserve XP, I don't really see 15gp/person/week for iron rations being that big a deal (incidentally, I do like that rations are priced per week).

The "surrounded" rule on wilderness surprise is interesting (If a group of three or more monsters gets surprise, they may surround the party).

Wilderness visibility is cursory but does hit the important bit, of "3 miles to the horizon in open terrain".  Encounter distance doesn't vary by weather or terrain.

It's sort of interesting that waterborne adventure gets equal pagecount / emphasis with dungeon and wilderness adventuring.

It's weird that surprise doesn't change encounter distance for dungeon encounters, but does for wilderness and waterborne.

Wilderness evasion table looks pretty similar, might need a spreadsheet to suss out subtle differences.  Not feeling it a the moment.

Combat

Monster morale is optional too!  Nooo monster morale is very important for keeping fights decisive!

Each side rolls init each round.  I like every round, I dunno about each side acting together.  Maybe it's not so bad if you have a caller.  Individual init available as an optional rule.  I guess it does make sense if you put the first initiative roll before the reaction roll, when the side as a whole decides to fight, run, or talk.  I suppose one could do per-side initiative for that initial choice, and then individual initiative per combat round.  I do like that per-side initiative makes dexterity somewhat weaker, as it is a strong stat in ACKS.  I could see the argument that per-side initiative doesn't change that much because monsters were already acting as a side before, it's just that the PCs all win together or lose together.  Implications for interrupting spellcasters?  Half the time all the party's spellcasters will be totally safe from interruption, when the party as a whole wins.  A bit "double or nothing".

The Combat Sequence Per Round suggests that everyone on a side moves, then missile attacks happen, then spells are resolved, then melee attacks happen.  This is very different from the turn structure for 3.x or ACKS, but I think it makes a lot of sense for initiative by side, imposing some order on the otherwise potential chaos of simultaneous action by n players.

I don't think I really grok the implications of fighting withdrawal and retreat yet in a by-side initiative system.  You have to pre-declare them, and then if your side wins init you get to move away (and then maybe attack someone else if you withdrew - implied by retreat noting that you can't attack), but then enemy can pursue on their move, OR the enemy wins init, they get to attack you, and then you get to move (and attack if withdrew and anyone within reach).  Maybe the important things are 1) enemies know that you declared to withdraw and can target you selectively if they win init, and 2) if you declare retreat you can't attack and are easy to hit (but if you declare withdraw, you can still attack in the round after moving "up to" half your movement, and 0 is less than half your movement, so you could declare, not move, and then attack whatever you're engaged with?  But that seems counter to the intent; there's not much reason to not declare withdraw if you can just remain engaged and attack.  I guess if you declare withdraw and the enemy also declares withdraw/retreat, then whoever loses init can't pursue, since it does specify "moves backwards"?).

I'm probably trying to lawyer something that was not intended to be lawyered here.  The reasonable response to "I declare withdraw, things are looking OK, I want to move 0 and attack" is probably "No, you committed to withdraw, you have to withdraw."

"Movement and attacking may be combined in the same round" is pretty ambiguous; presumably it means that you can move and then attack, not that you can move, attack, move.

Attacks from behind only ignore shield AC; I like ACKS' "ignore shield and +2 to hit".  Blindness is unable to attack instead of -4 which is probably reasonable really.  I like that there are rules for dropping stuff from flying monsters, this is something my players tried in ACKS and I didn't have rules for it.

A notable omission: charging.  Looking around a bit, it seems like you can charge for double damage with a lance on horseback, and some monsters like gorgons, elephants, and rhinos have a special charge attack, but for most people and monsters, charging isn't a thing.  This means that the ability to set a weapon against charges is not very important either.  Spears are still Not Bad though; they're one of the least expensive and lightest-weight d6 weapons, and they have the best range of any thrown weapon except javelins, which deal less damage.

Retainers, Hirelings, and Domains

Retainers / henchmen don't check morale ):  But what of Wiglaf's speech?  On the other hand, they do desert after adventures more often than in ACKS probably.

Retainers are paid a flat wage per day or per adventure (be still my low-continuity heart), but no such wage is listed, but a half-share of treasure rather than a sixth like in ACKS.  L0s can level into any class (...  presumably not a demihuman class, though that would be pretty funny).  Can't pile up Fanatical loyalty bonuses since loyalty rolls are just pass/fail.  Check loyalty after each adventure, and on a failure they "won't work for the PC again."  But other PCs can hire them.  That seems a little harsh, I could see working for a previous employer again but not for at least one adventure and you have to re-hire them.

Mercenary wages include supply costs.  Armorers are straight profit, since they cost 100gp/mo and can produce a suit of armor per month (worth 500gp in the case of plate), and that's before you add assistants and blacksmiths; with four assistants at 15gp/mo each and two smiths at 25gp/mo each, for a total cost of 210gp/mo, can produce four suits of plate per month.  It seems kind of bullshit that if you interrupt an animal's training it can't learn any more tricks.  I dislike that sages are fallible; I like Courtney's position from Downtime and Demesnes, that sages should be expensive but an ultimate source of truth from DM to players.  I like having spies be used for spying on groups or people, rather than for rolling in sick hijink cash, but they're also 4x the cost that they are in ACKS.

The mercenaries vs purple worm art is pretty good.  And in a system without cleaves, the worm probably isn't really that threatening to massed troops.  I do like that the construction procedure is a bulleted list.  Half a page of domain rules, only concrete numbers are how big an area mercenaries can patrol and tax revenue per settler.  Structure prices are broadly similar to ACKS', except for civilian buildings which cost about double.

Monsters

Statblocks are very dense.  I like that saves and THAC0 are in the statblocks.  Putting Number Encountered at the end is odd, especially between treasure and XP (which are both "end of combat / end of adventure" concerns and belong together).  I think there's a reasonable case for putting combat stats first because you refer to them multiple times in a single combat, but having to dig Number Encountered out of the monster listing after rolling a random encounter seems annoying.  Wilderness Lairs are just 5x as big as a dungeon lair; less complex lair / organization structures than ACKS (no gang champions for demihumans, just lair leaders...  and honestly I might be OK with this simplification.  Might miss witch-doctors though).  No "percent in lair"?  I like that it's explicit that 20% of sentient monsters speak Common.  There are some treasure types for like "goblin pocket change" individual-monster treasure.  Seems kind of annoying that these individual (crappy) treasure types are the highest letters, but that's backwards compatibility for you.

I like that behaviors are pulled out as bullets in monster descriptions; very Trilemma.

I'm not sure how I feel about having average HP in the stats.  I like rolling HP, but recognize that it can be a hassle.

I like the art for Bears.  Big cats are inquisitive.  Cave locusts can spit.  Dervishes are likely to ask Lawful characters to join their holy war.  I don't love the layout on Djinni - the Magic Powers block is really big.

No Dog entry ):  RIP war dogs, not only not on the equipment list, not even in the monsters section.

Dragons are primarily by color, with age as a secondary thing that you can tweak.  Breath weapon does dragon's current HP in damage, so injured ACKS dragons have more dangerous breath weapons than comparably-injured OSE dragons, but full-health ACKS dragons have less dangerous breath weapons than full health OSE dragons.  Dragons may pretend to be asleep - ouch.

Dragon Turtles are still king.  With good art, too.

The elemental statblocks are kind of a mess.  It's not as bad as it could be though.

Maybe Giant Ferrets are the new war dogs.  Wait I've had this thought before.

"After paralyzing a target, ghouls will attack others" rather than just whaling on the paralyzed guy.

Giants are treasure type E+5000gp.  I like that +n thing.  It's weird that they're all E; I bet ACKS did a pass over hoard types and changed things up there (giants in ACKS are mostly N, gnolls are G instead of D, examples probably abound).

More types of golems.  Lizardmen are canonically man-eaters.  I like that the Demon Boar is under the lycanthrope entry.

Rust monsters immune to nonmagical damage.  So much for "send the mage in with a wooden quarterstaff".  Not that they can use staves here anyway.

Tarentella, with dancing poison, is a hilarious monster.

"Water termite"?  With an ink cloud ability?  Wat.

It seems like monsters are worth less XP, too - Wight is 50 in OSE vs 80 in ACKS, Wolf is 25 vs 35, Wyvern is 850 vs 1140, Zombie is 20 vs 29.

Encounter tables

1d20 for dungeon encounters, rather than 1d12, with more chances for potential friendlies like Traders, Halflings, and Nobles.  And tables going down to dungeon level 8.  No notes about rolling on an adjacent level table and adjusting the number encountered.  Wilderness encounter tables look broadly similar to ACKS' but organized slightly differently.

NPC parties are generated at Basic or Expert level, rather than picking a party level and generating around that.  NPC parties are more likely to be Chaotic in OSE than ACKS.

NPC strongholds and reaction to travelers is interesting and fits nicely with "NPC domains are the next step up from wilderness monster lairs in danger, make a reaction roll".

DMing Stuff

Kinda skimming here.  Expected rate of advancement is 3-4 sessions for at least one PC to reach 2nd level (presumably a cleric or thief).  Disagree with their stance on excess wealth, that DM should find a way to dispose of it (although I suppose if you must, it is best to offer them a choice between money and trouble, as suggested).  Sort of disagree with keeping stats secret, in the vein of rolling everything in front of the screen.

I like describing rooms by square counts rather than in feet.  Notes on running monsters and NPCs are decent - basically just "don't play dumb, but don't preemptively counter stuff that these monsters haven't seen the PCs do before".

Mist trap that doesn't do anything is trolling hard.  Most traps do give saves.

Wilderness can be mapped on either hexes or graph paper.  More and more these days I'm leaning towards a grid; it's just so much easier to program around.  Recommended distance between base town and dungeons is one day's travel; certainly for a starter dungeon (or I guess for a deep mega that is going to be a campaign tentpole).

Base town - "possibly more advanced services such as curing diseases or even raising the dead".  Sounds very "not available by default".  Which I guess is why there are no spellcasting services on the equipment or hireling tables.

Treasure usually accounts "for 3/4 or more of the total XP earned."  No XP for magical treasure, no option to sell it.

Awarded XP is always divided evenly - bummer.  And it sounds like retainers actually cost a full share of XP, but only get half of that, which is a pretty strong deterrent to relying heavily on them.

Treasure

Wow, treasure types are totally disorganized rather than roughly ordered by value.

Retainers may agree to be test subjects for magic item identification, but only if they can keep the item.  That's great.  No real rules for identification.

I do like that gem values are condensed a bit, though I think the expected value is lower.

Separate Basic column on magic item tables that generates lower-level items; more potions, fewer scrolls, and more misc weapons.

50% of magic armor is chainmail.  Magic armor weighs 50% less rather than 1 stone (100 coins) less per bonus.

Bags of Holding, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Helms of Telepathy, Crystal Balls, and Rings of Invisibility are all Basic items.  Daaang.  Maybe the relatively-high availability of solid items in the low levels helps differentiate characters who lack proficiencies and who have a much coarser-grained THAC0/saves curve.

Potion of Longevity can occur in random treasures.  But there aren't rules for aging so it doesn't matter much.  I guess it's basically poison to an adventurer in their early 20s.

30% of magic swords are sentient (versus single-digit percentages in ACKS), plus a 5% independent chance of special purpose+sentient.  Lawful and Chaotic swords of purpose are basically save-or-die on hit against target of purpose; Neutral swords of purpose give you a merger +1 to saves against enemies that it hates.  Amusing.

None of the misc magic weapons are cursed.

Conclusions

And we're through!  There's some pretty good art in the Index, bit sad that it ended up back here.  Author's notes on things he clarified or corrected from B/X reinforce the feeling that it's a darn faithful clone.

Characters seem weaker across the board here than in ACKS.  I do think the MU gets a pretty good deal of it (vancian is annoying, but you can still cast as many sleeps per day), as do the demihumans with infravision.  Complaints that fighter and thief are weak seem totally justified.  I wonder if what I want is somewhere about halfway between B/X  and ACKS; small damage bonuses for fighters and bring back cleaves, backstab multipliers that do rise but slowly, drop infravision, more logistics and gear tracking than B/X but less logistics than ACKS, simple domains.  A Half-ACKS'd Hack, if you will.