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It's coherent as I read it if and only if you can keep a checklist of all spells which exist, which makes sense only if you have a finite list like those in the Player's Handbook. They way I read the minimum spells known rule is that once you've finished the whole checklist, you can retry on...

Well, that's just RAW per Gygax's explanation of why training gave no XP in the DMG, and why levelling up through adventuring was largely unrealistic and yet supported by the rules. My point though is that he deliberately gave no mechanics for players doing any of that. As for "a level every...

What's worse about them, and what really infuriated me at the time, is that they are incoherent. They are so punishing that no M-U should ever be manufacturing magic items for fighters, since the sacrifice of doing so is enormous. If we are to take the RAW as the explanation for where magic...

It's called "Troupe Play" and I've done it before in high level 1e AD&D (by coincidence). At high level almost by accident our above name level characters diverged into their own stories and to continue playing it out, we played many sessions with one main PC and their routine of mid-level...

I think 3e requires an hour or something trivial. But yes, 3e is very much a take on the game by people who knew the game very well in 1987 and sought to take the best ideas that were floating around and unify them into a coherent game system. Feats and skills are obviously derived from NWPs...

This is what 3e does, and once again I note that a fixed 1e AD&D is 3e and really talking about fixing 1e AD&D while retaining it's feel is just a discussion of what parts of 3e do you want to implement.

They just have to refill what they cast, but since each 4th level or higher spell requires more than an hour, casting only a couple of your higher level spell slots means a whole day of study. The problem is that it is anti-social mechanics. It's not necessarily fun for the group, nor is it...

All true. Assuming you were memorizing spells for like 12 hours a day, the Archmage could get back his spells in like 4 days. Of course, the problem with this from a DM perspective is that you are beating your own nose against a brick wall in order to try to keep the power level of a PC down...

I think we were pretty close in our thinking about what the thief needs. We had gone very much in the same direction. "As for 100 gp for a first level spell on a scroll", that's very 3e thinking. The 100 gp to make the scroll isn't what I would consider to be the hurdle you have to overcome...

One interesting question is could you port Sorcerer into 1e AD&D. But your solution misses the point that fundamentally the power level of low level M-U's is not excessive. M-U's only get to be a real problem when the 5th and 6th level spells come online, and they can start doing really game...

Fundamentally though, this isn't true. If you look at the 1st level Cleric list, spells like Command, Cure Light Wounds, Detect Evil, Detect Magic, Light, Protection from Evil, and Resist Cold are just as consequential and useful as pretty much the whole 1st level M-U list. Yes, Tenser's...

I have a lot of thoughts on the why of the revisions and my philosophy here, which I have been withholding because I want to see whether people notice all the changes and hear what they think of them without biasing their viewpoint with mine. But coincidentally, after posting this I say an...

Probably not; see my next answer. At this point, no. While I never did play 2e per se, when revising 1e it's always going to be worth asking whether the official 2e revision made sense, and even back in the day we often agreed that they did and adopted them where we liked them. I think...

Yeah, sure. If you went to 9th I'd say that a little less than half of the game was getting to 7th. And if you went to 10th I'd say maybe a quarter of the game was getting to 7th, unless your GM just dumped treasure on you to power level you up. One of the disconnects I may be having, even in...

You are noticing one of the big things for sure. By cutting the preparation time by 1/5th, how long it takes to prep your spells doesn't really start to get impactful to 14th level or so. There is considerable power boost, but only before 7th level. There is not a significant boost in spells...

The changes here are small enough that one could play a game of spot the differences.

Magic-users draw upon arcane powers in order to exercise their profession. While they have mighty spells of offensive, defensive, and informational nature, M-Us are very weak in combat. They have but four-sided dice (d4) to determine how many HP of damage they can withstand, and M-Us have the...

Leaving one or two slots unprepared and then stopping for a few turns to memorize the utility spell you needed is an old trick. It just tends to summon wandering monsters if you do it too much.

Perhaps. But I think there are a considerable number of spells that have probably never been cast in play, or else are cast so rarely that you never see it, or if they are cast it's because they depend on generous house rules. And then there are the spells that are just so powerful, the DMG...

That's potentially fair. You are getting all the abilities of two 2500 XP classes. 4000 XP isn't out of line. As for the Barbarian, I left it with its 6000 XP standard progression mostly out of conservative deference to its traditional value, and to prove that for the most part the class was...