D&D 1E Should 5e adopt 1e style arcane magic?

[P1NBACK]

My old school games had as much combat as now, sometimes even more. AD&D was as much about combat as any other edition, whether it was random dungeons using the tables in the DMG, playing published TSR modules, or short adventures out of Dragon.

Even if the wizard wasn't "throwing darts", once out of spells, there wasn't much to do, even in exploration. Even worse, the wizard at low level had to choose between some exploration spells and combat spells. Yes, your level 2 wizard could memorize detect magic, but probably took sleep, twice.

I don't understand how "random dungeons" = combat.

Dungeon does not equal combat. Dungeon equals exploration. You can explore an entire dungeon with zero combat. Sure, you might encounter stuff that gets you into combat, but it's not what the game is about.

In fact, it's often to the benefit of the PCs find clever ways to outright avoid combat with a monster entirely.

Especially using GP for XP. Monsters still gave XP, but very little compared to just taking the treasure. So, if you can sneak in and make off with all the loot, you're more efficient (never mind that combat was so deadly at lower levels). That's an explicit difference between later editions where combat was the focus. It's how you earned XP. It's what all of your powers were about. It's why combat needed to be "balanced" and encounters "designed" by the DM.

4E is about combat. AD&D (B/X) is about dungeon exploration.

And, that's what I hope they get back to with "D&D Next".

 

[ren1999]

4th Edition Spells are too random repetitive sometimes contradictory and disorganized.

I get a feeling that some spells weren't even play tested in a game. This is really why 4th Edition fails in a lot of things. Even writers of modules may not have play tested their modules.

But Pathfinder, while a better D&D spell system, has too many spells and too many ways to calculate the difficulty class and too many ways to save. Some of those are contradictory as well. For example, a spell might say no save and then later go on to mention a reflex save. See Magic Missile.

I think that 5E needs to have a very clean and simple to follow spell system that is in no way redundant.

Group all the spells together according to their function. Such as anti-gravity feather fall, fly.. etc.

Then make all spells at-will.

Make encounter and daily versions of the spells by adding either burst, the number of targets, or the damage.

All burst and multiple attack spells should be encounter or daily.

After that, make all spells level-up scaled. Don't make some spells scale every 10 levels. Don't make other spells scale up every level.
Have a nice median such as increase the damage every 5 levels.

 

[Mattachine]

I don't understand how "random dungeons" = combat.

Dungeon does not equal combat. Dungeon equals exploration. You can explore an entire dungeon with zero combat. Sure, you might encounter stuff that gets you into combat, but it's not what the game is about.

In fact, it's often to the benefit of the PCs find clever ways to outright avoid combat with a monster entirely.

Especially using GP for XP. Monsters still gave XP, but very little compared to just taking the treasure. So, if you can sneak in and make off with all the loot, you're more efficient (never mind that combat was so deadly at lower levels). That's an explicit difference between later editions where combat was the focus. It's how you earned XP. It's what all of your powers were about. It's why combat needed to be "balanced" and encounters "designed" by the DM.

4E is about combat. AD&D (B/X) is about dungeon exploration.

And, that's what I hope they get back to with "D&D Next".

In my AD&D games, random dungeons were mostly empty rooms and combat, interspersed with traps and tricks. Definitely that is exploration, but most of the time was combat. My groups went away from the gold = xp by the time I hit high school. We too often found weird situations when characters would sell magic items to gain levels, or when characters that did comparatively little in an adventure got xp because they got gold. Maybe that's why it changed in the editions that followed.

The game is about whatever the gaming group wants it to be about. I am only speaking from my own experience.

I will note, too, that my experience isn't unique. Many folks, including those that have posted in this thread, experienced the "wizard reduced to darts" situation in AD&D, or "wizard with a crossbow" from 3e. If you or one of your players imagines the excitement of playing a wizard, but all you get is a spell or two, it is a big let down.

Some players love the idea of strategically choosing when to use that one good spell, and other players find it disappointing.

 

[Gentlegamer]

In short, yes, I want all of that for 5th edition. Perhaps not the specific mechanics, but the spirit they embody. The Magic-user was the 'high risk, high reward' class in AD&D.

The payoff of surviving as a wizard and finding creative uses for spells and magic items was a great attraction to players of the class. Let's bring that back to the game!

 

[Gryph]

My PH is half a continent away so I can't easily check, but I thought if you failed your % roll to learn a spell you could try again once you had gained a level.

As for the rest, I like the 1e casting system pretty much as is - except for pre-memorization which I have come to despise. The level advancement rate could easily come in line with other classes, it is an extremely minor factor. But all the other restrictions serve a very good purpose.

To make this work however initiative should be rerolled each round.

Lanefan

Nope, but standard rule from the DMG, if the players INT changed they could reroll for any spells they had failed. The DMG didn't specify, but we allowed rerolls for Int changes due to items. Ioun stones being a particular favorite of our MUs.

 

[Gorgoroth]

pre-memorization

is annoying, but so is choosing to walk outside with a light jacket in the springtime, when it might be cold by the time you walk home, or vice versa. Do you bring an umbrella when it's slightly cloudy out? How about heavily cloudy? If I'm carrying my backpack, I might stick in a mini-umbrella, especially if I'm planning on heading out after work and walking home.

What I'm trying to say is...vancian casting does suck when there are no at-wills and nothing magical to do. The classic dilemma of two sleeps or one sleep and one magic missile or detect magic is very real. A wizard who didn't have detect magic memorized was no better off than some idiot ogre, walking into every magic field in the dungeon. On the other hand, I believe that detecting magic at-will is a little too easy, and I never liked that "arcana" skill allowed you all sorts of benefits while athletics was rarely rolled (maybe a couple times), in a three year campaign (4e).

Wizards were the class that you played when you were the patient, cunning person in the group, who understood the concept of "delayed gratification" in a way that the fighters players never gravitated towards. I like both. They play very differently. The fighters would definitely thank you for getting that sleep spell off, but knock was also very useful for when the rogue failed his pick locks check and it's your only way forward. If you don't come prepared to a dungeon, or fail too many checks, or don't bring enough material components. You die. Possibly you all die. Imagine dying of starvation in 4e. That doesn't sound fun, but when it's completely off the table, it also sucks. I need to know that casting a huge, noisy spell will have consequences, but possibly also save us. I need to know that casting rock to mud has a chance of getting you around that blockade, or collapsing the tunnel entrance on the trolls coming at you. I need the magic back. I need the feel of danger, of risk. Of the fighters, saying...man, that was a good move, I would have never thought of that! It's happened to me many times, and were some of my proudest moments creatively in my life. I remember turning myself into a bat to save my 3rd level spell slots (AD&D evoker) from fly spells, for dispell magic and lightning bolts, to infiltrate the vampire kingdom under the city to save a teammate. We got out by turning into snakes and swimming out. It was filthy but great fun.

Another time we were chasing this pirate king's super fast ship with our slower one, and even though we tracked it well, it took us all the divinations our psionisist witch and I could muster, with my magic mirror. To get us into the path of the fast ship, calculate how long our fly spells would last, then get our own ship out of the way lest it be blown out of the water. Me and the paladins just floated in the air and let the other ship catch up to us. Having full plate paladins show up after being invisible on deck and declaring this vesel under arrest, while the rogue flew in and picked the lock to the lower decks to try and free the slaves, was such a tricky, nerve-wracking, heroic moment, I will never forget it until the day I die. These types of things are only possible in a free-flowing adventure with a DM who can think on his toes to keep adventures challenging given the spells the wizard has (especially his limits, in duration, and number of times per day, vs taking other valuable spells). In a sense, AD&D wizards came into their own at level 5, with 3rd level spells, and then had to treat each and every casting as PRECIOUSsssssly as possible. It would literally be do or die. Or do not, and die. Sometimes casting the wrong spell at the wrong time, would be your undoing. I can't imagine that ever being the case in 4e.

I like 4e, but it's not...the same. AD&D for all its flaws and warts and all, was leagues better than 4e. 3.5 I didn't play much but our 3.0 games were much better too, we had low magic DMs (including the same guy who DMed my AD&D wizard), and we had no forums to build the uber tweaked out guys with. Sure, it's different now, but DMs have the same resources and can also say, no, you can't buy that item with your starting gold. Or no, that feat or class or race is not available in this campaign setting. Same with wizards. You pick a specialist so you can be guaranteed that you will get at least certain of the spells you really want to have, the second you level. But giving up a whole school could mean a lot of lost opportunities too. Evokers give up enchantment / charm, I believe. That was a huge penalty. I was more like a war wizard, but I never felt pigeonholed. And spells were extremely hard to come by. Enemy wizards weren't exactly on every street corner, and scrolls cost exponentially more each level. By 4th I could no longer afford more, and had to resort to bartering with gold dragons for services, or corrupt court mages for theirs. This is magical to me. Make lemonade. Make the game hard, it's like a hone to a hard mind. Wizards need a hard time of it. Then if they survive, it's because they deserve to. Not because pew pew they can kill anyone and anything and any circumstance all day long with no repercussions. I've never understood the "wizards" are gods thing. If anything, AD&D psionicists were way more potent in a lot of ways, due to their versatility. We had a witch psionicist that was insane, teleporting without error, ripping outer planar demi-deities into our plane so the paladins could attack them, dominating liches and ghosts, all sorts of things.

And all very dynamically, so she would react to any situation with grace. Granted, it was great that there was competition for those powerful, world changing effects that allowed our fighters to clean up when otherwise they'd be toast, but we generally all worked together for the common good, and nobody ever complained when we sat around the war table and planned our next conquest, that my spells were too good, or that they were not contributing. They were free to play wizards too, but chose not to, but it was a very difficult class to play, and you had to have real life cunning, patience, and wit to put off, whereas a lot of folks, let's face it, like to smoke up, get drunk and smash stuff in the face without thinking too much about it. That's fine, I like that too. Some days. But I only play casters in games where I can use my spells in unforeseen ways, i.e. where the initiative ticker doesn't always have to be on. Being invisible in the air, and dropping a fireball on enemy guards, would get you dropped by arrows so fast, like a pigeon-shoot at one of those rich english shooting ranges....sigh, I miss the danger and excitement of it all.

 

[SteveC]

That makes it sound like you guys were in combat most of the time. My old school games were mostly exploration. So, throwing darts was rare. And, combats were extremely quick in most cases.

If you're playing 4E, where combats last 1.5+ hours, sure, I can see the case for dropping vancian casting and adding "at-wills". But, in our B/X game, the mages do just fine and seem to have just as much (if not more) fun with trying to make the most out of their limited resources.

I'd say you're painting with a mighty broad brush here, and one that's certainly not universally accurate.

If you look at the adventure modules of the era, there was the expectation of frequent combat, and combat at any significant level was not over in a flash.

Beyond that, I'd say that quick combat does not mean that being ineffective for most of the experience is something to be sought after.

And as for your observation about 4E combat, I'll just say that 1.5 hour combats are not the norm for an experienced group.

I played a variant of old school D&D recently (it was Labyrinth Lord) with a mix of young and old players and I can definitely say that low level wizards were not popular. The young players said "that's it?" for what a wizard could do, and the older players reminisced about our spellpoint systems...

That sort of rule is definitely not the way to go in the next edition...

 

[Ellington]

I do not want spells to scale with character levels. You gain more and more spell slots as you level up, and with every spell slot effectively gaining more and more power as you gain levels it's very hard not to have a snowball effect that leads to overpowered characters.

What little info we have on 5E's spellcasting actually sounds pretty good to me so far; the spell's power will be tied to the slot level. It makes for more linear power scaling and sounds a lot easier to balance. I'm not a huge fan of vancian casting, but it sounds like a pretty good implementation.

 

[variant]

I think the 3e Sorcerer and Wizard should just be combined. Have "Spells Memorized" similar to Spells Known and let the Wizard memorize a specific set of spells for the day, he can then just cast from those spells he has memorized a number of times based on his spells per day.

 

[Odhanan]

Where is the "Yes, I like the 1e magic-user and magic system, and see no drawback to them at all" option?

Three negative options, one "yes but optional", and two yes's pointing out some drawbacks nonetheless... This poll's options are skewed, IMO.