Surprising Changes from the OD&D Draft to the OD&D Boxed Set

I've been going through the draft version of original D&D lately, searching for little bits and pieces that better explain OD&D, or that didn't make it into the final product, or were outright changed.  Despite how raw and unpolished the material is, I constantly find myself going back to this very early material and trying to mine it for insights into the game.  That, and Tao of D&D's excellent dissection of original D&D, have crystalised some thought for me that I might write about down the track.  (Warning: Alexis is very scathing in his criticism of the original booklets, click at your own peril.)  For now though, I just want to highlight a bunch of the interesting things I noticed from Gygax's early draft.

• There are no Hobbits!  This is odd, because they are in Chainmail, but here they're not presented as a PC race at all, and they're not in the monster section.  This does give some credence to Gygax's claim that he reluctantly included some of the Tolkien elements at the urging of others in his crew.  It also makes sense of a few things in the published OD&D, such as Raise Dead only working on men, dwarves, and elves.  Now we can see that it wasn't a deliberate omission, but an editorial oversight as a result of Hobbits being added late in the process.
• For some reason, dwarves get a +10% bonus to experience, meaning that they advance faster than everyone else.  In actual fact, everyone advances faster here, especially fighters and clerics.  Clerics only need 500 experience points to get to second level, which makes 5th edition something of a throwback in this regard.
• Elven multi-classing in OD&D has always been bafflingly worded and open to multiple interpretations, with the elf switching between class from adventure to adventure: In the draft the elf begins as either a fighter or magic-user, progresses as far as possible, then switches to the other class.  It's a little simpler, but still doesn't really explain what happens when the elf suddenly goes from 8th level magic-user to 1st level fighter.  
• Instead of the ability scores being Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma, we instead have Intelligence, Cunning, Strength, Health and Appearance.  Dexterity is nowhere to be seen.  Cunning is the equivalent of Wisdom, being the prime requisite for Clerics (which certainly gives them a different vibe).  Appearance is equivalent to Charisma, but it has no mechanical benefits yet, it's just used as a guideline for what might happen in situations such as being charmed by a witch.
• There is a different list of level titles for the cleric.  Instead of Acolyte, Adept, Village Priest, Vicar, Curate, Bishop, Lama, and Patriarch, we have Acolyte, Friar, Village Priest, Priest, Vicar, Curë, Abbë, and Patriarch.  I don't know why they went with two french terms.  Why not Curate and Abbot?  I also wish they'd included Friar or Abbot, and dumped Lama from the published version, it's always stuck out for me as a bit incongruous.
• The equipment list just casually has the option to buy a pegasus, griffon, hippogriff or roc, right next to the horses.  There are even special saddles and saddlebags for these fantastic steeds.  And right next to them are thoats and zitidars, on loan from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom books.
• They're not on the equipment list, but they are on the list of people you can hire once you have a castle: slaves, with different prices for male and female.  I'm actually listening to episode 68 of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast right now, which talks about the Atlantic slave trade and is a pretty sobering look into just how ubiquitous slavery has been in human history, so this stuff is on my mind right now.  I'm okay with people using slavery as an aspect of their RPG campaigns, but let's maybe not have it right there in the rulebooks as an option for the players.  Editing it out was a good call.
• The term non-player character (or NPC) has become fairly well-recognised, especially in video game circles.  It even gets bandied about as an insult now and then.  But originally the term was "non-real player", which tickles me for some reason.
• OD&D has anti-clerics as the chaotic equivalent of clerics, and even anti-heroes as the counterpart to 4th level fighters.  But is your game ready for anti-warriors?  Anti-swordsmen?  Anti-myrmidons?  Or even anti-swashbucklers?!  Because they're here in the wandering monster tables, ready to... un-buckle your swash?
• On the subject of wandering monsters, it's a notable omission that OD&D doesn't give the number appearing for dungeon encounters.  The draft does though!  It recommends 2d6 or 2d12 for level 1 monsters, 1d6 for monsters of level 1-4, and 1d4 for monsters of level 5-6.  Of course there's a contradiction for level 1 monsters, it's early D&D!
• There's are some actual guidelines on when to use Chainmail mass combat, and when to use the man-to-man rules.  It also explains why they replaced Chainmail's fantastic combat table with the "alternative system" that will become the cornerstone of D&D combat.  It makes perfect sense, you can't have a cross-reference table system that includes 50-odd monsters.  There's even an explanation of the formula behind the alternative system: if you subtract the target's AC from 20, that's what a normal man needs to roll to hit.  It's a shame they didn't find the space for this in the published game.
• Player characters get bonuses to Armor Class as they advance!  Fighters get +1 at 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th, while the other classes get a +1 at the levels equivalent to Hero and Superhero.  I wonder why this got scrapped.
• Pretty much the entire OD&D monster list is present in the draft, except for the various slimes.  Black Puddings are in the wandering monster tables though.
• There is a slightly better explanation of domain play in the rules, where it comes right out and says that players may want to fight battles against each other.  It also gives a range for the number of people that will live in a PC's barony, which OD&D left out. And magic-users can build strongholds in the draft, an option they're not explicitly given in OD&D.
• There is a long list of spells that are in the published game that weren't in the draft, as well as some other changes:
• Read Magic and Read Languages were originally a single spell
• Sleep was not present in the draft!  The only spell a 1st level magic-user had that could be used offensively was Charm Person.
• Knock is absent from the list of 2nd level m-u spells, but Wizard Lock had a system baked in where any magic-user had a chance to get through based on their level relative to the caster.  Obviously that got taken out and replaced with Knock. 
• From the 3rd level m-u list, Infravision, Slow, Haste, Protection from Normal Missiles, and Water Breathing were not in the draft.  Also, there's no explanation of how much damage a Fire Ball or Lightning Bolt does.  You can find in the section on wands, but it ain't here.
• From the 4th level m-u list: Growth of Plants, Dimension Door, Wizard Eye, Massmorph and Hallucinatory Terrain were not in the draft.
• From the 5th-level m-u list: Pass-Wall, Cloudkill, Feeblemind, and Growth of Animals was not there 
• There were no 6th level spells in the draft, but higher level Wizards could turn flesh to stone, summon an invisible stalker, or use the Animate Dead spell to resurrect the dead.  That last one is a doozy: when the caster tries it, they have to roll 2d10, and if the second roll is higher than the first the dead body is vaporised.  It reminds me of the same thing happening in the computer game Wizardry; I wonder if this somehow filtered out from early drafts into regional variations of D&D, and into that game?
• With no level 6 spells in the draft, there's a long list that are new in OD&D: Reincarnation, Lower Water, Part Water, Projected Image, Anti-Magic Shell, Death Spell, Geas, Disintegrate, and Control Weather.  Move Earth isn't new, but got moved from level 5 to level 6.
• New Cleric spells include Speak with Animals, Sticks to Snakes, Speak with Plants, Create Water, Quest, Insect Plague, and Create Food.  It was also never specified in the draft which spells are cast as opposites by anti-clerics. 
• There are no rules for intelligent swords in the draft, and no mention of artifacts
• Some items get minor but flavorful name changes between draft and publication: the Amulet of Protection becomes a Scarab of Protection, the Djinni Bottle becomes an Efreeti Bottle, the Horn of Panic becomes Drums of Panic; the Gauntlets of Giant Power become Gauntlets of Ogre Power.  Notable are the four elemental control items: in published form they are a censer, a stone, a brazier and a bowl.  In the draft, they're a medallion, a bracelet, a stone, and a gem.  The latter four are mentioned in OD&D in an editorial oversight.
• And finally, be on the lookout for that game-breaking Ring of Endless Wishes!