The Glue Fighter

07 Jun, 2026

TL;DR: The Fighter is the only class that can engage with more than one foe; when any other class is targeted by multiple foes in a round, all attacks after the first automatically hit.

Introduction; Where the idea came from

So it stands to reason the cleave attack that is a pretty popular rule in the Gay Beholder server comes from a combination of the writing Gary Gygax did in The Strategic Review and Chainmail (eventually resulting in Delving Deeper, which is the reference text we use the most). Here's the quote from Gygaxio (thanks havoc!):

Combat: CHAINMAIL is primarily a system for 1:20 combat, although it provides a basic understanding for man-to-man fighting also. The Man-To-Man and Fantasy Supplement sections of Chainmail provide systems for table-top actions of small size. The regular CHAINMAIL system is for larger actions where man-like types are mainly involved, i.e. kobolds, goblins, dwarves, orcs, elves, men, hobgoblins, etc. It is suggested that the alternate system in D & D be used to resolve the important melees where principal figures are concerned, as well as those involving the stronger monsters. When fantastic combat is taking place there is normally only one exchange of attacks per round, and unless the rules state otherwise, a six-sided die is used to determine how many hit points damage is sustained when an attack succeeds. Weapon type is not considered, save where magical weapons are concerned. A super hero, for example, would attack eight times only if he were fighting normal men (or creatures basically that strength, i.e., kobolds, goblins, gnomes, dwarves, and so on). Considerations such as weapon-type, damage by weapon-type, and damage by monster attack tables appear in the first booklet to be added to the D & D series -- SUPPLEMENT I, GREYHAWK, which should be available about the time this publication is, or shortly thereafter.

and the relevant line in chainmail (according to a screenshot posted by Ktrey):

[Heroes] have the fighting ability of four figures, the class being dependent on the arms and equipment of the Hero types themselves, who can range from Light Foot to Heavy Horse.

The verbiage here seems pretty unambiguous when you take them together; Heroes can attack four times, Superheroes twice that since they are "twice as great" as Heroes (according to a later passage). What struck me was the vagueness of Chainmail's "fighting ability" phrase, which removed from the context of Chainmail's mechanics is an interesting ambiguity.

The Idea

What if we take fighting ability to mean "the ability to enter combat with" instead of "the ability to make an attack upon"¹?

Basically, the defining feature of the Glue Fighter is that they can "safely" engage with many foes, while other classes can engage with only one. If another class gets attacked by more than one foe in one round, every attack after the first ought to automatically hit. They don't have the training to fight against multiple opponents!

In the shadow of the Target 20 blogpost, let's tack the ability of the fighter to engage² with multiple opponents directly onto their level with a bit of a head start at first level to set them apart from the other classes; Level + 1 total foes engaged. This is the defining feature of the Glue Fighter; the ability to stick to more than one foe at a time in combat, like glue!

This scales nicely with level, as many of the good cleaving rules do. It avoids the rapid increase in power Cleaving Fighters gain, since the Glue Fighter's damage output doesn't change as they level (though I suppose you could give them multiattack without too much trouble, and multiattack rocks). At the same time, it adequately protects their niche as "the guy who fights" without completely removing the combat effectiveness of the other classes. In standard B/X, the Cleric is at least comparable to the Fighter in many respects and is easily one of the strongest classes. With the Glue Fighter, this is definitely not the case!

Patching Holes

The below is a series of rulings I made in my head while thinking out the concept. They're presented in the form of a problem and then a proposed solution or argument.

Why did you name them Glue Fighters?

The working name in the Discord was "Mann Fighter" and I dislike the idea of naming things after myself. What did I do to bring it about anyway? More seriously, it's because they're the only class that can stick to multiple opponents.

If only Fighters can engage multiple opponents, what happens when a large group of enemies rushes around the frontline and attacks the backline?

It is a massacre; I don't think this would proceed any differently than regular D&D, except perhaps occuring a little faster. Better make sure your shield wall is tight!

What about mercenaries and men-at-arms?

While a group only hires small amounts of mercs and men-at-arms, I think the game can proceed as normal; since these typically aren't even leveled characters I don't think ought to be able to handle more than one foe at a time.

Once the group starts to hire large amounts of mercs, the game changes; I'd probably switch to using a skirmish game of some sort to model encounters at that scale, since one of the problems of this change is that you lose a lot of the speed of D&D's resolution in large groups (you have to decide which foe is engaging who and in what order in case there's a mismatch in troop size and one force gets a bunch of free hits). In games where this is a distinct possibility and using a skirmish game isn't feasible, maybe the traditional cleave is the play.

Doesn't this let the referee abuse initiative to target weaker foes?

Not exactly, or at least not how I typically run these games. A common practice for monsters I use is to roll randomly for who is hit by attacks. With the Glue Fighter in play, you'd want to determine who the monster is targeting before making a roll (because they may not need to roll) instead of after as I typically do. This is an easy change and preserves the randomness I use for most combats in my games, which makes the non-Fighter characters a little more likely to survive the frontlines provided they're being supported by more Fighters to soak hits, which is basically what happens already³, in my experience. To summarize, the current procedure I use is:

1. Roll enemy to-hit rolls.
2. Take the highest/possible hits and check who they were targeting.
3. Resolve damage and death.

With the Glue Fighter, the procedure would change to be as follows:

1. Determine who each monster is attacking.
2. Roll to-hit for each character in the melee.
3. Resolve damage and death.

In cases where this procedure doesn't come into play (I don't typically use it for particularly powerful or intelligent monsters) it comes down to the tactics of the party. If the wizard wants to try to stab the dragon with the fighters, they are certainly welcome provided they are prepared to face the consequences. Careful, considered tactical play makes the difference, which is the kind of gaming I'm after.

How are monsters impacted?

There are a few ways to tackle this. The first (and my preferred option) would be that they function as they did before. Monsters are naturally capable of dealing with multiple combatants. Normal humans and other demihumans might be exempt from this, though, to emphasize that this limitation is one of training among humankind and not nature.

The second option is to track this for monsters as well; each monster may engage with a number of foes equal to its HD. Maybe modified HD like "1+1" give an equivalent bonus to foes engaged. This makes a lot of creatures startlingly weak and would probably change the game too much for most people's purposes. Maybe you can think through it and come to a different conclusion, though!

How would you handle missile attacks?

I think missile attacks resolve about the same as melee attacks, though with the Glue Fighter they become much more important for the opposition. Whittling down a Glue Fighter's attention with missile attacks while they're fighting a stronger foe checks out to me.

Under this system, maybe the defining feature of firearms is that they always autohit (provided they don't misfire, explode, or malfunction) because they're far too quick to react to. Yikes! Guns are dangerous, man.

What About Monster Size?

Due to a miscommunication, we had a nice chat on the discord about monster sizes in AD&D. If you play with something like this, you could assign a ratio per level of the character to each of the monster sizes and vice versa. For example, let's say that for every level the fighter has they can engage four Small foes, 1 Medium foe, and 1/4 of a Large foe, and that for purposes of engagement the other classes are level 1.

For example, if four level 1 fighters are attacking a Large foe, then they can engage with the foe successfully and it has to roll to-hit to strike them. When it kills someone, though, the fighters can no longer engage it successfully and will automatically get hit by the foe when it attacks. This granularity adds some cool requirements to fighting Giants, for example, since you either need to be a strong warrior or an angry mob to go toe to toe with the larger beast. There are also some intersting tactical decisions that arise. Does the wizard join the fray to give his fighter buddies a better chance of survival at the cost of his own safety? When someone dies do you retreat entirely or keep battling? I'm not going to run this way, but it might light a fire under someone's ass, so I wanted to throw it out there.

Why not just make the Fighter the only class who can fight?

I think there's a lot of fun in letting every class still roll-to-hit and fight alongside the fighter. Imagine the thief sacrificing themself to leap into a horde of enemies to get a sneak attack on a powerful leader, or the wizard taking out a huge monster with a dagger before getting torn apart by smaller foes. This is contrasted with the fighter, who is able to wade in and out of combat easily with a normal-ish chance of dying. Additionally, Fighters are Force Multipliers in that they allow a few people to be much more combat effective than any other class, which feels right; 3 Clerics ought to be a little worse in combat than 2 Clerics and a Fighter, and this change achieves that without completely taking away the ability of the other classes to do combat.

Also, depending on the situation, you might run into the netrunning problem, where the Fighter has to play the game and everyone else has to sit around and watch them because they have nothing to do. This wouldn't happen a ton, but would happen sometimes, and that's no fun!

Thoughts and Observations

A handful of other observations, by myself and others.

The non-Fighter classes will probably skip more often on armor, since they don't benefit from it nearly as much (shoutout Jared for this observation). AC isn't as important for the Cleric, Thief, or MU, so expect them to shirk the plate or leather for a scroll or more adventuring equipment. Clerics become closer to Priests early on, I imagine, since they're better off spending that money on a scroll or item to be more versatile than armor, which may not even end up being useful!

The encounter balance becomes much stranger. Larger encounters pose a bigger challenge regardless of the power of the foe, and since the Fighter's damage output remains constant, will always be tougher to handle. This increases the importance of the big crowd-control spells (Sleep, Fireball) and makes Wizards that much more crucial in Overland Travel.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's the Glue Fighter. I think it's an interesting idea that reduces the power of the Cleaving Fighter while preserving the Fighter's well-deserved niche as the King of Fighting. I'd use it in games with small player counts where the focus is on high context adventures and dungeon exploration. In Arcade Gaming, I'd just stick to the classic cleave. It's fun and people feel badass when they use it.