D&D Supplement I: Greyhawk (Mar, 1975) by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz. Cover illustration "Sphere of Doom" by Greg Bell.
Drawn from the original Greyhawk campaign, refereed by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz, these new additions expanded the scope of the game presented in the three first rulebooks. The title page thanks Alan Lucien, Mike Mornard, and Jeff Key for their suggestions.
The booklet is divided into 3 sections, one for each of the 3 volumes in the original D&D rules, beginning with Men & Magic:
The rules open with a description of the thief class, joining the fighter, magic user, and cleric as one of the four archetypal character classes, with Dexterity as its prime requisite.
Jon Peterson discussed the origin of the thief class, back in 2012. A year later, Daniel Wagner, author of "The Manual of Aurania" (1977) elaborated on the backstory, in this thread:
It came about like this, one group had a dwarf who wanted to try picking locks with his dagger, so I had the idea for a Burglar class, which we drew up like a Magic user but with skills (like Lock picking) instead of spells. The consensus was to call the class “Thief”. Gary Switzer called Gygax long distance (a kinda big deal in those days) from his shop Aero hobbies and Gygax ran with the idea.
Later, when I met Gygax at a con, he got a little threatening said he could sue us. I brought up the Thief class, and he glowered, then laughed and said “One good steal deserves another, OK, we’re good then, I won’t sic the law dogs on you!”.
Years later, Gygax gave the literary inspirations for the thief:
Of the other portions of the A/D&D game stemming from the writing of Jack Vance, the next most important one is the thief-class character. Using a blend of “Cugel the Clever” and Roger Zelazny’s “Shadowjack” for a benchmark, this archetype character class became what it was in original AD&D.
from "Jack Vance & the D&D Game" by Gary Gygax (2001)
"Cugel the Clever" was introduced in "The Eyes of the Overworld" (1966) by Jack Vance, a novel comprised of five earlier stories (1965-66). "Shadowjack" was introduced in "Jack of Shadows" (1971) by Roger Zelazny. Both are listed in my "Appendix O".
Cover of the 1962 mass market paperback of "Three Hearts and Three Lions" by Poul Anderson.
The paladin subclass is also introduced (modeled after the character of Holger Carlsen in Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions"), with rules for its special abilities, holy sword, and warhorse as a champion of Law.
Greyhawk also introduced rules for percentile Strength bonuses for fighters, and percentile "Chance to Know any Given Spell" for magic-users (the latter table suggests that any character can become a magic-user, regardless of their Intelligence score). A table giving the probability of resurrection survival or surviving spells based on Constitution is also provided.
An alternative combat system, with bonuses and penalties for the attacker's weapon type, based on the defender's armor class, was floated (although I have never seen it used). This appears to have been intended for man-to-man combat, based on armor type (not against monsters):
Alternative combat system, based on armor types as reflected by armor class, (derived from table in Chainmail, appendix B). Note the inclusion of the arquebus, an early form of long gun (thanks to Zenopus, for pointing this out).
More importantly, variable weapon damage (with columns for both man-sized as well as larger opponents) was introduced, together with variable damage by monster type, stating "in no event is it recommended for use without the aforementioned". For this reason, I always use variable weapon damage when running a Holmes game.
Finally, new spells were added, including tables for 7th to 9th level magic-user spells, and 6th to 7th level cleric spells.
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