Yeah. They sucked so badly that the vast majority of well known early high level characters were magic users. If they had been good, nobody would have played them.
Yeah because in terms of thematics Magic-Users are awesome. IMO that is one reason 5E is so popular, because wizards are the most powerful class, which mathes the thematics most want out of a fantasy game.
It is also important to note that most of those high level magic-user characters were not RAW AD&D 1E, Khelben and Elminster for example had chosen of Mystra powers that made them far more potent than a Magic-User of the same level, enev one lucky enough to get their stats.
The Magic-Users that were RAW (like Raistlin for example) were not very powerful in play, despite being godlike in the fiction written about them. RAW Bigby and Raistlan could not cast 9th level spells based on their published 1E stats.
Last edited: