Player's Handbook, page 86: "Scrolls or magic devices can never be used to enchant an item or cast magic upon an object so prepared"
Player's Handbook, page 86: "Scrolls or magic devices can never be used to enchant an item or cast magic upon an object so prepared"
Player's Handbook, page 86: "It is also necessary to point out that while it is possible to tell when the basic (enchant an item) spell succeeds, it is not possible to tell if successive castings actually take, for each must make the same sort of saving throw as the item itself"
Okay. I see the problem. You wrote your PHB. The 1e PHB on page 86 just talks about a few 6th and 7th level spells that have nothing to do with enchantments or scrolls.
Dungeon Master's Guide, page 116
Fair enough, though you can get +1 to a stat with a single wish up to 16 in the stat. To go higher than 16 might require more wishes, depending on the DM, but since the vast majority of stats will under 16, a single wish(much easier to get than one of the books) will work better than the book will. It won't take 3-5 days to use the wish.
Seriously, have you ever read the 1e DMG? I can't remember the page but there is an admonition in there to never give the player's an even break. Honestly, at the time I considered myself a very gentle soul, and if anyone disagreed I offered to apply all the rules set forth in the DMG in compensation.
Yes I have. From the preface.
"When you build your campaign
you will tailor it to suit your personal tastes. In the heat of play it will slowly evolve into a compound of your personality and those of your better participants, a superior alloy."
"If it is all too plain and
too easy, the players will quickly lose interest, and your effort will prove to have been in vain. Likewise, if the campaign is too difficult, players will quickly become discouraged and lose interest
in a game where they are always the butt; again your labors will have been for naught. These facts are of prime importance, for they underlie many rules.""
So it's your game to make how you like it, and then a warning that if it's too easy or too hard, it will fail. Sound like he's ultimately saying to be fair to me.
Still, some players will walk all over you if you let them, carefully quoting rules but forgetting to quote the restrictions, and inventing new abilities that are not in the rules which they pass off as logical, or realistic, and so forth.
You don't have to be harsh to your players in order to keep them from walking all over you.