- Magic resistance worked differently depending on your edition of choice. While in AD&D 1E your chance to overcome MR varied depending on your level (specifically, the listed magic resistance for a creature presumed that you were 11th level; for every level below that, you added 5% to the value, and for every level above, you subtracted 5%). Conversely, in AD&D 2E the percentage chance of magic resistance was absolute. So if a monster had MR 50%, then half of your spells were going to fail regardless of whether you were a 1st-level apprentice or Elminster himself.
It also depended on the type of monsters. Daemons and demodans had a resistance tied to spell level and to the spell caster too. A 12th level caster casting magic missile against an Arcanaloth would face a resistance of 95%. If he had casted a cone of cold, the same caster would lower it to 75% (only...).
- There were fewer safeguards written into the spells themselves. If you went off-target with a teleport spell, and ended up inside a stone wall, you were dead. No check, no saving throw, no "you shift to the nearest open space and take X damage." Everytime you used polymorph self, you made a system shock check, and while the percentage of success was slanted in your favor, if you failed then you died instantly. (On a related note, resurrection spells also had a chance of failure, and while that one was even more slanted toward success, if you failed it you were permanently dead barring divine intervention. Of course, you could only be resurrected as many times as your Constitution score anyway.)
Wrong and right. Polymorph self was an exception (as well as chape change). The survival shock was not necessary nor required for these. It was on the polymorph other that it was used. So as to avoid potential problems. I polymorph the rogue into a T-rex... abuses. The risks of dying was simply to big to take that chance.
- The level of spells that clerics could gain was partially dependent on the power of their god. Demigods could only grant up to 5th-level spells, and lesser deities could only grant up to 6th-level. This was supposed to be counterbalanced by higher-level clerics being big fish in smaller ponds, meaning that you had an outsized role in your deity's religious organization (potentially among their divine servitors as well as their terrestrial church), but that message seemed to be lost quite often.
That is why it was so important to promote your god. To get your god to have more power would allow its cleric to weild more power too. It was also related to plane of existance where a god living on the prime could grant one more level than what he could normally would but it also meant that the same god could be killed on that plane too. A good example is Iuz.
Those are just off the top of my head, but these were how AD&D avoided "linear fighters, quadratic wizards." But a lot of people didn't like restrictions on what they felt should have been super-powerful high-level spellcasters, and summarily ignored some or all of these. When they made D&D Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast listened to those complaints and did away with all of these restrictions, only for the Law of Unintended Consequences to come back and bite them hard, as 3E came to be known as "caster edition."
Yes, they were often ignored. And it is in campaign that these restrictions were ignored that many games led to believe that casters were too powerful for the martial casters. So often have I seen a wizard with no spells having to rely on his wands, scrolls and staff (when he had one) that it was a shock to me when I gamed with people at the university where these restrictions had been removed. It were the same people that complained that casters were too powerful. When you have no restriction, no reason to hold back on your spell allottement you just go out and nova.
I went to DM for them to show them how it was supposed to be with restrictions on. They played their usual characters and their regular DM played mine (a paladin). They were almost killed on their second day as they went nova, and tried to rest. The wizard and cleric could not get enough rests to memorize their spells as they were forced into random encounters as per the rules. It took them three days just to get back their spells and they were not 20th level but level 10.
In practice, most of those restrictions didn't actually restrict things very much.
You were obviously not in my games. They were there and people were applying them. The only rule I was a bit relax was encumbrance. As long as it was in a reasonable limit I could waive it.
The highest level of spells a divine caster could cast being affected by the rank of the deity they served? It would only come into play in a game where Clerics would be able to cast 6th level spells. In campaigns I saw, most ended before that. It would take about a year of regular weekly play to get to about 10th level and that's about how long most campaigns tended to last.
This is why clerics had to try to convert people to their religions. To enhance the power of their god and thus, their own. Converting people to your god was really something in my games. I had a cleric successfully raised the status of his deity from the lesser to greater god status in one of my games.
This is also why level limits didn't do much for balancing demihumans, games would usually end before the level limits came into play (especially with multiclassed demihumans).
These limits mattered a lot in my games. In fact, it was a limiting factor for the amount of demihumans in my games. A lot of demihumans would take thief as part of their multiclassing just so they could "rise" in levels after their limit was reached, as thief was the only class that was never limited (save the half-orcs that were unlimited in assassin level but limited to 8th level thieves).
The 2e method of magic item creation was so Byzantine and ornate that in practice, PC's just plain never made magic items. It wasn't adventure hooks, it was "don't bother".
It was about the same as in the 1ed. It was fun and just making one item required imagination. And the sacrifice 1 point of constitution was a real stopper. You would not do it unless necessary.
I never once, ever, actually saw a DM override a divine caster on their spells in 2e.
I certainly did. More than once and more than once per adventures. It was my way of saying: "You don't need that spells. You'll have it if you insist, but I would take "X" instead." Players would usually listened and take the advice.
I saw wizards usually get new spells via spell research more than anything else.
At a 19 intelligence, you had an unlimited capacity for new spells. This, in practice, meant that players of Wizard characters HEAVILY powergamed to get a 19 INT, such as doing anything it took to get an 18 starting INT and getting that extra +1 somehow.
Yes, and not. A lot of wizards were creating "traveling" spell book. Having a too big spell book would often be detrimental and the cost of creating an other was staggering. So wizards were often creating the travelling book with "utility" in mind.
Most of those various balancing factors just plain never came up, or players found ways around them, or there were optional rules that softened them that were widely used. . .and nobody missed when 3e came out because those rules were seen as archaic to begin with.
Yes, they were seen as archaic. And it also led to the CODZILA as people were no longer remembering the limiting factors of casters were there to prevent such a thing from happening. 3.xed was a caster's dream come true. Martial classes were there only so that the casters could rise to a high level enough to be CODZILA and after that, martial were irrelevant. That is why I love 5ed. Martial got back a lot of power that casters had taken away from them as they (the casters) no longer have restrictions. It is a good compromise between spells and fighting power.
