Chainmail - Heroes and Wizards and Wargame Spells

I’ve been musing about the history of classes in the OSR recently. The first two “classes” were two units in Chainmail: Heroes and Wizards.

Heroes (and their more powerful cousin, the Super-hero) were essentially powerful mundane combatants. They had multiple hit dice (in contrast to the one-HD-per-man of regular troops), did not have to check morale, could kill dragons with arrows, and detect invisible units within a certain range (blindsight?). There is even a reference to Rangers as far back as Chainmail:

Rangers are Hero-types with a +1 on attack dice.

Heroes had 4 hit dice, and Super-heroes had 8. I believe this influenced the level titles of the Fighting-Man in OD&D.

Wizards were the other class in Chainmail. Similar to Hero-types and Fighting-Men, the Chainmail descriptions of Wizard-types influenced OD&D Magic-User level titles:

WIZARDS (including Sorcerers at -1, Warlocks at -2, Magicians at -3, Seers at -4)

Wizards in Chainmail had limited combat capability, could conceal or detect units, and functioned as artillery with their fireball and lightning bolt spells. In fact, when one looks at the Chainmail Wizard spell list, it’s obvious that many of the staple spells of D&D were intended with tabletop roleplaying in mind. Let’s look at the original 16 spells listed in Chainmail:

1. Phantasmal Forces: The creation of the apparition of a unit or creature for four turns.
2. Darkness: An area around the caster becomes dark, and only units with darkvision can attack.
3. Wizard Light: Dispels magical darkness.
4. Detection: Detects hidden creatures or magic spells.
5. Concealment: Conceals a unit or creature. Some creatures and spells can detect the subjects of a concealment spell.
6. Conjuration of an Elemental: Summons an elemental. There is potential for the caster to lose control of the summoned elemental.
7. Moving Terrain: Shifts vegetation, hills, etc. This indicates that players would physically move wargame terrain about the battlefield.
8. Protection from Evil: Prevents evil creatures from entering an area.
9. Levitate: Levitates. No lateral movement.
10. Slowness: A unit moves at half speed for two turns.
11. Haste: A unit moves at double speed for two turns.
12. Polymorph: The caster shapeshifts into a creature as large as a giant.
13. Confusion: Targets perform the opposite of the action they intended.
14. Hallucinatory Terrain: Creates or disappears terrain. I assume this would be placing or removing wargame terrain from the table.
15. Cloudkill: A cloud of vapors that kill men it touches.
16. Anti-Magic Shell: A bubble of force that prevents anything magical from entering or leaving an area.

Some of these spells are obviously quite targeted for use with a miniatures wargame. Which is not surprising, but makes me wonder if we should be faithfully transcribing them edition to edition like we have been. Sure, moving terrain makes sense for interposing a grove of trees between your pikemen and the orcish crossbowmen targeting them, but does the move earth spell really fit the tone of a gritty dungeon crawling game? Similarly with hallucinatory terrain, phantasmal forces, slowness, and haste. They might well fit your game, but after researching Chainmail alongside OD&D, it seems to me that many things were copied over for compatibility’s or nostalgia’s sake, rather than because they fit the tone of the types of games being played with OD&D. But, I might certainly be wrong.

The next classes introduced were the Cleric, the Thief, the Paladin, and the Ranger. It’s generally agreed upon that the Cleric was imported from Arneson’s Blackmoor game. Arneson created the Cleric to provide a foil to an evil vampire PC, “Sir Fang”. Thus, it’s intended to fit the gothic horror rule of vampire-slayer. Thieves and Paladins were introduced in the Greyhawk supplement, while the Ranger was presented in an issue of The Strategic Review.