AD&D 1E Three Things that can't be Fixed in 1e AD&D

[Celebrim]

There's two in-setting reasons why lots of magic weapons and armour might be made:

--- adventurers and-or nobility pay MUs or Artificers really well to make martial items to commission (this is where the high-end stuff comes from), or
--- nobility pay, or hire, or enslave, MUs or Artificers to mass-produce martial items to equip their guards, army officers, elite soldiers, and maybe even some of the line troops (this is where all the basic stuff comes from).

None of that makes the slightest bit of sense in the context of the rules.

1) You can't even make martial magical items until you are a 16th level M-U, so in a low magic setting there should be no magic swords (for example). The production rates for such items is lower than the rate they'd be destroyed to crushing blow, etc.
2) Every single magic item created of a permanent nature potentially costs 1 point of permanent Constitution loss. It's difficult to imagine any PC caster making such an item on commission, much less for the sort of peanuts that swords +1 are supposedly worth on the market. The smallest magic item should be priced at about 1/2 of a wish, a spell that incidentally ages you 5 years.
3) You have to be a 16th level M-U to manufacture this stuff and you need access to your spellbooks and laboratory. Good luck enslaving a M-U to mass produce these things. That's as dumb as trying to enslave Tony Stark to manufacture weapons for you.
4) The rules as written preclude any sort of mass production system. They require the harvesting of rare ingredients in usually short time frames and those ingredients cannot be sourced generally without DM aid.
5) Keep in mind that by the rules it is vastly easier and less risky to make a wand of magic missiles than a +1 sword and yet look at the market prices on the two items.

So sure, you can postulate that there exists some non-documented manner by which NPCs make these things not available to PCs, but that's my point.

 

[Moving Pictures]

Huh. New trick to this old dog.

I guess I/we have always just assumed - perhaps incorrectly - that by-the-book spell studying happens all at once at the start of the day and that's it. But I suppose it doesn't have to.

Maybe the grey matter is mis-remembering, but IIRC, Rob always allowed one to "shuffle" spell points from one memorized spell to another. I know I allowed that.

Question: the way you read/run it, does the Archmage (or any mage) have to rememorize everything from scratch each time or just refill what was cast the day before?

I have it as a "re-memorize whatcha done used the day before."

IIRC, you still use the "no need to memorize lower-level spells" rules in the spell-point system, yes?

What the game doesn't have - and IMO it's a huge oversight - is mechanics that allow people in the setting to (slowly) gain levels without adventuring: the stay-at-homes who become the high-level NPCs that dot these settings.

If the stay-at-homes do things that are (new) and would give Xp, why not? I had to think about this because I've got a city setting where there's a slum of about 500+ people, struggling to make ends meet. I have established that an NPC nature cleric has set down roots, and is blowing her Spell Points every day on vast quantities of Goodberry, just to feed folks.

The PC nature cleric is now contributing on a regular basis. I gave that XP, but I'm giving it diminishing returns.... although there may be in-game rewards later, most likely as the poor who are aided will remember the PC cleric and be more likely to help/give info or - at a later stage - be recruited.

The problem is that it is anti-social mechanics. It's not necessarily fun for the group, nor is it necessarily fun for the DM, as it sort of forces you to create stories that don't have a lot of time pressure. And taking time pressure out of a story kills the fun.

Bingo. By shortening memorization times, the mages now can do other things.

I run on a spell point system rather than a spell slot system. This gives some flexibility. Mages need only memorize spells that are (a) new to them OR spells that are the highest level they can cast. The time required is 2xSP. Thus, memorizing a fifth-level spell (which requires eight spell points) is a 16-minute effort.

The acquiring a spell per level is its own rule (DMG page 39) separate from the training rules (DMG page 86) which includes both training under a higher level character and self training.

I've played and DMed under that model, and I don't like it in either form. The mage-training-from-another was part of a larger mechanic in OD&D which, IMO, was actually a "let's claw back some of the gold we've given you" process. I do not require most classes to be 'trained' as it were. People just 'become' better, with sufficient XP, a realization that comes after a long rest (usually after a night's sleep.) The exception would be certain levels of cleric, specifically seventh for nature clerics, and maybe more because I haven't got there in a totally revised system.

This is one of the (few?) things that 5e got right with spellcasters. I bump to fifth level, and I automagically get "known" spells. I don't need a teacher, I don't need to find a higher-level being... I just know stuff. I like that, esp. since I want to have mages be freaking rare as all get out. The problem I had with the old way is that now I needed to have mages around every time a mage PC bumped, and it's hard to have a "mages are rare" them when your PC can track one down when needed.

None of that makes the slightest bit of sense in the context of the rules.

1) You can't even make martial magical items until you are a 16th level M-U, so in a low magic setting there should be no magic swords (for example). The production rates for such items is lower than the rate they'd be destroyed to crushing blow, etc.

I shifted game balance by giving clerics the power to make magic items - or at least lower level/mundane ones. "Create Potion" is a third level spell for some clerics, and generally involves preserving the properties of a herb....

 

[M.L. Martin]

The assumption that I'm making here is the mysteriously appearing spell is connected to training, in as much as there doesn't seem to be any other explanation for it.

The 2E DMG explains it as "All the long hours of study and reading the character has been doing finally jells into something real and understandable." (p. 61, 1995 edition. The 1989 edition has it on p. 41 and adds the parenthetical "(It's kind of like waking up one morning and finally understanding what a cosine really is.)")

 

[TwoSix]

The 1989 edition has it on p. 41 and adds the parenthetical "(It's kind of like waking up one morning and finally understanding what a cosine really is.)")

Seems like an odd tangent.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, mostly they CAN'T. Gygax stacked the deck to make it impractically onerous to make or commission new items, which as Celebrim pointed out, incentivizes PCs to go adventure and find items instead. Which per D&D's implicit setting are generally from some fallen Golden Age of Magic, or more than one ancient empire which had arch-mages and demigods all over the place making items and artifacts, the likes of which present-day wizards are but a shadow.

Which is fine until you try to match the rules with the setting:

Setting --- all the magic was made long ago.
Rules --- magic items can be destroyed if exposed to AoE damage untended, or if their bearer fails to save, or by other less-common means. They can also be forever lost e.g. dropped into the mid-ocean deeps.
Rules --- it's nigh impossible to make new magic items.
Setting --- where did all the magic go?

Without at least some influx of new items being created, destruction over the long term will winnow away magic items until there's almost none left.

I totally get the impulse to house rule and change that (making the procedures easier/less expensive, inventing an artificer class who's better at it, etc.). That's the approach 3E took. As in so many other things, rationalizing and regularizing and cleaning up AD&D to make things make more sense and be more playable and user-friendly.

3e completely overdid it, making item creation trivially easy and fast and putting it directly in the hands of PCs. At the same time, it harshly toned down the item destruction chances, meaning the setting would eventually be awash in magic items because so many more are being made than are being destroyed.

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe the grey matter is mis-remembering, but IIRC, Rob always allowed one to "shuffle" spell points from one memorized spell to another. I know I allowed that.

I have it as a "re-memorize whatcha done used the day before."

IIRC, you still use the "no need to memorize lower-level spells" rules in the spell-point system, yes?

Yes to both, but I'm trying to talk RAW here (for once! ).

He still uses spell points, I went to wild-card slots.

If the stay-at-homes do things that are (new) and would give Xp, why not? I had to think about this because I've got a city setting where there's a slum of about 500+ people, struggling to make ends meet. I have established that an NPC nature cleric has set down roots, and is blowing her Spell Points every day on vast quantities of Goodberry, just to feed folks.

That's just the sort of thing that IMO should slowly earn xp for that stay-at-home NPC. She's probably chucking a few cures around here and there as well when she can, I'd guess.

Bingo. By shortening memorization times, the mages now can do other things.

I run on a spell point system rather than a spell slot system. This gives some flexibility. Mages need only memorize spells that are (a) new to them OR spells that are the highest level they can cast. The time required is 2xSP. Thus, memorizing a fifth-level spell (which requires eight spell points) is a 16-minute effort.

I still have it far slower than that. When I was still on spell points it was 10 minutes per point, capped at 8 hours. Now it's 15 minutes per slot-level (thus a 5th-level slot takes 75 minutes), still capped at 8 hours. Clerics use the same timing only they're praying rather than studying.

And this has become quite relevant in the adventure I'm running right now. Party don't want to operate during darkness because of all the nasty undead, but their overnight rest keeps getting interrupted so they're not getting enough rest to recover spells (or hit points) unless they sleep in well into the daylight hours. Result: they don't have time to fully reload during daylight, forcing them to choose between taking the day off or going out with only partial spells available.

I shifted game balance by giving clerics the power to make magic items - or at least lower level/mundane ones. "Create Potion" is a third level spell for some clerics, and generally involves preserving the properties of a herb....

There's a long-running character in the game I play in that'd like to hear about this. His whole schtick is creating potions out of herbs.

 

[Lanefan]

Seems like an odd tangent.

Maybe that was Gygax's own experience around learning cosines.

 

[Celebrim]

Which is fine until you try to match the rules with the setting

I think that's our point exactly.

3e completely overdid it, making item creation trivially easy and fast and putting it directly in the hands of PCs.

I wouldn't say that it made it easy or fast except in the cases of the most trivial sorts of items. I would say that it didn't have a fully balanced system for judging the cost of the items and that PCs naturally exploited loopholes in the rules, but magic items in 3e cost time, money, and XP in non-trivial amounts. In fact, I had players complain that one of the problems they had playing the Wizard was that it had a hidden leveling penalty, in that in order to survive it had to invest in creation of scrolls, but that investment over time put it behind the rest of the party. They aren't wrong, though that is hardly in my opinion the problem with the class which is simply it's squishy.

At the same time, it harshly toned down the item destruction chances, meaning the setting would eventually be awash in magic items because so many more are being made than are being destroyed.

And that's exactly what we see in published works going all the way back to 1e - a setting absolutely awash in magic items. How many are to be found in the Caves of Chaos, or the nearby Keep? How many are to be found in the Village of Homlet or the Temple of Elemental Evil. In practice, the setting is awash in magic items.