I didn't say every book was core, I said all of the hardcovers were core. 1E published probably over 100 official books (not including Dragon magazine). Things like the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was official but not core.
D&D (2024) Nerf to magic users?
I didn't say every book was core, I said all of the hardcovers were core. 1E published probably over 100 official books (not including Dragon magazine). Things like the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was official but not core.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
There was no core in 1e. The concept didn't exist, but had it existed, it would have been the PHB, MM and DMG like every edition(other than 4e's silliness) that had core. In 1e there were only official and unofficial as categories.
Willie the Duck
Hero
I'm glad we agree on this. My point is that the 1:1 vs. battle we were sliding into also doesn't really speak to it. At least not any kind of relative power I suspect very many people care about. It's going to be subjective and in any comparison the person presenting a case will have to argue that their example scenario is representative, but I think 'doing what they would be doing if you were playing them in a campaign' is probably a decent starting point.
I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here, or what it has to do with what I said I don't see how what you are saying here relates to my points. It seems like you might have been hung up on my first point, which was only just an aside about all rules being optional because there's no one demanding you use them. My main point was about those specifically labelled as optional (such as large shield providing extra armor against missiles, the morale rules in BX, etc.). Those are rules in the book that it specifically states you may use or not.
Alright. I certainly agree with that. Certainly most magic user PCs in official tournaments weren't of a level to cast 9th level spells.
First and foremost, my point was about what RAW weighs in on. RAW does not assume things, nor asks what the point of things are (or cares about the consequences or implications of an activity or even contradictions. It is simply what is in the books. That's one of the reasons why 'but ____ is RAW' isn't considered all that important of an argument.
Look, I am biased -- I was on the WotC message boards during the heyday of 3.0 (when a bunch of new-to-the-internet gamers discovered the concept of RAW and decided it was a shortcut to rhetorical victory better than developing actually convincing arguments). To me, RAW (or more accurately the notion that it is a priority) is at best a distraction from more important concerns like establishing what works best at one's table. That said, for instances where RAW is seen to have value (and my personal position is immaterial), I think it is still important to recognize what it doesn't (or can't) do.
Regarding why not skip to all-18s, you sure can. I think we've all played one or more campaigns like that (or close enough to get a picture of it) and it really isn't all that it is cracked up to be. However, in general people did not do so. Either from a sense that that's playing on easy mode or established table consensus about what level of re-rolling was acceptable or not. Simply put, people don't end up rolling until they get what they want. Nor do they pick one of the stat generation methodologies in the rulebook and execute exactly one iteration of that process, and then play the character to [whatever their play0-group's conception of completion is]. Analyzing different class gameplay success contribution strictly under either situation will return results unrelated to how the game was played regularly IRL.
First aside, that isn't my position. At all. My position has been mostly about which arguments one way or the other were supporting their positions. If I had to put forth my own on the F vs. W/MU issue, it would be that playstyles varied enough that the relative strength of magic users and fighters likely changed places as to who felt like they contributed more.
Second aside, I'll note that you're making much hay about the percentage of casters who can cast 8-9th level spells, but eventually people will come back to whether that second point about not casting 8-9th level spells makes them weak.
To your main point, no, absolutely not. Characters no one plays are not relevant. There is a kernel of a point there, excluding data points that don't support one's position doesn't lead to useful information, and if you feel that's what I'm doing, I can see the frustration. However, trying to posit the pure statistical likelihood of each stat combination from the different published generation methods as the correct framing is usually fruitless as it too is a stilted and non-representative starting point for what actually would see play. People did not pick a stat generation method from the book (especially in equal numbers), go through exactly one iteration of that, then take whatever character resulted, and make a magic user out of it (much less play them all for the same length of time).
I think I get it. My department at work has a number of people with STEM degree who really love physics problems and pure-math analyses. Perfectly spherical cows in frictionless vacuums are wonderful because the answers are so perfect and absolute. Soft sciences like social science are sometimes looked down on because their analyses are less pure and perfect. I sometimes have to remind them that those fields are the ones with questions people often need answers to. I think this is the same situation -- you want to throw math at the question of fighters and magic users and come back with a pure answer. But if you don't take into account how people actually experience the game, the answer will be to a question no one finds meaningful.
And that gets back to: what, at the end of the day, are we even trying to show? That you didn't find magic users all that powerful -- certainly not as much as some others on the thread suggest they found them to be? Great! I (and I think many others) love hearing about everyone's personal experience with the game we love. That personal experience is helpful to the discussion and I think probably a lot more beneficial than going back and forth over acceptable stat generation methods to determine how many
RAW does not create a common baseline. RAW does not speak to what kind of situations the characters will face. RAW does not speak to how well groups strategically played. RAW does not speak to how devious the DM is or was. RAW doesn't speak to how dungeons are populated --sure, the rulebooks include procedural random dungeon generation methods, and there are published dungeon modules that are a version of RAW (going back to the point about different RAWs based on which products were played with); but the rulebooks certainly did not declare those the RAW norm for game creation. RAW does not speak to how often a player will be choosing new characters to play, nor how long they will play with a group, or what happens to their character if the player leaves, or any number of hundred or thousands of concerns which will influence whether a fighter or magic user will contribute more to a group's success far and away more than these solid rules about things like stat generation. At best, RAW gives a false sense of rigor to what is really always going to be a situation of dueling personal experiences (which honestly is appropriate for something like A/D&D, an nearly-inherently social experience).
I think the term objectively is highly misapplied here.
No. It is a statement you are really insistent upon. Nothing more, nothing less.
It did exist and regardless of how your table played Unearthed Arcana specifically stated that the rules in it were "official and final". None of the hardcover books were optional.
Things like the campaign settings for Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and various other modules had "optional" rules or rules that only existed for those settings.. Forgotten Realms for example completely changed Dragons, making them MUCH more powerful and difficult, to the point of being impossible and far more powerful than Gods or any real PCs when you are talking about the older dragons. But that was not official.
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The original hypothesis that I was responding to is that Magic Users were weaker at lower levels, but more powerful than fighters at higher levels because they could cast high level spells that bypassed saving throws. With the exception of I think Death Spell, those spells are all 8th and 9th level spells (at least the effective ones are).
I believe Death Spell is 7th level and bypassed saves, but it was only effective on enemies up to 8th level I believe, making it good but not great at a level where a Fighter can routinely and easily down an 8th level foe in 2 rounds.
If the argument about Magic-User power and balance rests on the idea that they are more powerful than fighters at high level specifically because they can cast good high level spells, then the likelihood of having a high-enough intelligence to cast them, and being lucky enough to get them into your book is extremely relevant to the discussion.
If your argument is not that then what is it?
To clarify; objectively weaker as not as strong, not as powerful considering the combat mechanics, class mechanics and probabilities with randomly generated characters of each class using the rules.
I would agree with you that who would win a 1v1 battle is not relevant to game play but is relevant to this thread and the discussion of which class is more "powerful". It is specifically the metric I am using to determine which class is more powerful.
If we are using that metric, what I stated above is objectively true.
If we are not using that metric for class power then what metric are we using?
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Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
This is flat out wrong. All of every book was optional. The DMG told DMs that they could alter whatever they wanted however they wanted, but cautioned them to be careful when doing so. They weren't labeled "optional" or "guidance" like things are now, but they were entirely optional according to the DM's wishes.
That's why virtually nobody played 1e RAW. It just didn't happen.
And you apparently still don't understand what the word "core" means. Core =/= official and final. Core = center. So you gather together all the 1e hard cover books and tell me which ones are in the center of all the others, and if you can't produce a center, there is no core.
Edit: I will also point out the fact that even rules labeled optional are both official and final. Being labeled official and final =/= core.
Clint_L
Hero
I don't care what the math says. I'm telling you what actually happened. Characters with 18s in primary stats were not rare.
That's not what I meant. What I meant is that players would make lots of characters until they got one they liked. 1 in 20 parties having a magic user with an 18 is absurd. That's not how it was.
Nobody played AD&D RAW. Even Gary Gygax, by his own admission, didn't play AD&D RAW.
Your group was the exception. Magic-users were extremely powerful in 1e, where I started, though arguably more balanced in 2e since all the mundane classes got big buffs.
Look, if you want to have a hypothetical white room discussion about how high level magic-users might have been underpowered in a fantasy land, then have at it. What actually happened is that magic-users were considered weak at low levels, balanced at middle levels, and incredibly broken at high levels, and this was problem that was much debated all the way back into the mid-70s.
Andvari
Hero
I think the 18 int discussion is a bit of a red herring. It’s not like a MU needs the higher level spells if the goal is just to beat a fighter.
Can you provide a page number for this?
Yes they do need the higher level spells, because fighters have very good saving throws at high levels as well as an advantage in terms of the combat mechanics. They need spells without saves and that can be cast quickly (low casting time) to have a decent chance against a fighter of equal level and spells that have both of those things are all high level spells (except sleep which does not work on anything over 4th level).
Magic-Users do have lower-level spells that can stop a fight in one shot, but the chance of getting them off is low and the chance of a failed save is much lower than 100% (much lower than 50% at high level). A fighter is going to reliably drain the MUs hit points round after round. It is a matter of if they can get one of their spells off without being disrupted AND get a failed save on that spell in the same round. They need both these things to happen before the fighter can bring them to 0 hps. That is not likely to happen.
Dice matter certainly, and it is not impossible for a MU to better a fighter of equal level, but it is unlikely considering the 1E combat mechanics and the spells at their disposal.
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