Out of Character discussion:

Gang, I'm going to be out and about over the weekend and Monday. I'll be back for a bit Sunday night.

Okay. I assume Eltrezar is going to throw daggers on a broad, ten to fifteen-foot area around any zombies?

For sure. His main priority is to provide light, but he's happy to throw daggers ineffectively at the horde of undead!

I’m wondering if there’s any way we can resolve this zombie combat more speedily. We are coming up on 6 weeks of combat, with no end in sight and things are grinding to a halt it seems. Any ideas?

Well in theory, you've found close to a dozen undead down there, but most of them appear to have been turned and have no interest in giving chase up the stairs. Only two have followed the party up. So yeah, you really only have to kill two of them for the time being, but at some point you're going to have to return to the basement and deal with the rest, because I don't think Turn Undead works indefinitely.

I'm debating if XP should even be awarded for the ones that were turned, to be honest.

Sounds like its time to set off on another adventure then :D

So how about I give the party the XP for the turned zombies, but from here on those zombies are permanently turned...

Normally I'd say keep them in play, but this is a super slow format for a game... permanent turning status might just work out. I agree that some quicker resolutions might be nice, but that does seem to detract from the higher lethality that older D&D provides.

I think its better to keep players interested than to keep stick exactly to RAW. No one is going to be telling a game story about the time they died to a group of zombies they had been fighting more than a month lol.

Plus there really is no RAW for turn duration in B/X or OSE. But I agree, more adventure less time in battle.

Noted. So the turned zombies are officially turned permanently, and the party will enjoy the XP from Mal's labors. They'll probably be wandering around that basement for quite some time, and may cause minor problems in the future, but they most likely will always flee in a direction away from Mal and her holy symbol, and killing them will not yield any further XP.

Now we just need to ensure that Mal never dies.

@funfungiguy
I know I'm not officially in the game yet, but I've been observing the battle and the discussions related to it for a couple of weeks. Did you want another input/opinion on the [I]turning undead[/i] topic, or is that already a settled issue and there's no sense in resurrecting it?

I'm thinking that the turn undead issue is sorted for now but I'm always open to listening to suggestions from all players at any time.

Well, I was skimming through the Basic DMG and it doesn't specifically address XP earned for turned undead. However, it [I]does[/i] specify the duration of the turn and suggests (if not overtly) that they will "return to the fray" after a while. I believe it even gives an amount of time (I can check it if needed). Since it's a [I]temporary[/i] effect, I think that's why you don't earn XP for it. It talks about defeat and capture but defines capture as if they willingly surrender.

Forgive me if I'm way off. I recall some uncertainty about what happens 'after' they're turned and on whether XP should be awarded or not, so I was looking for those two points.

I have easy access to the book (it's literally sitting 9' away) and can verify anything if needed.

What book are you referring to as the Basic DMG? Just out of curiosity...

This one:

Uh oh. That's actually the wrong Basic set book. You're using the Basic rulebook for the the BECMI rules, written by Frank Mentzer and published in 1983. Were using the B/X rules by Tom Moldvay and published in 1981. Looks like this:


The rules are pretty much the samesies, with only a few notable differences. The main difference between the BECMI rules and and the B/X rules was Moldvay's B/X used only 2 books: Basic (covering characters levels 1-3), and Expert (covering characters levels 4-14). Mentzar's BECMI system had five books: Basic (levels 1-3), Expert (levels 4-14), Companion (levels 15-25), Master (levels 26-36), and Immortals (everything beyond 36)

For the most part they're pretty similar, but there are some notable differences besides how high you can level up. The BECMI Cleric started out with a spell already at Level 1, whereas in B/X you don't get spells until Level 2. The Thief Class actually had some major differences between the two editions, and honestly, I think most people argue that the BECMI thief class got seriously hosed over compared to the B/X thief, because a 14th Level Thief in B/X has about the same Thief skill numbers as a 36th in BECMI. It just took way longer to become awesome at Thief class in BECMI and your skill improvements were pretty minimal from one level to the next compared to B/X. At first level, all your numbers should be the same, but I'll double check.