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Even back in the day, one of the things I found myself doing with respect to published modules was removing what I felt were "excess" magic items. I think the one that really jumps out in my head is that in I believe I3 Pyramid there is a room that just has 3 maces +3 laying unguarded on the floor.

I don't think anyone in 1989 would consider a fix to then known problems to have been a backport of ideas from 5e, which I wouldn't even suggest as a fix to known problems of 3e - even though Monte, the games designer, foreshadowed what you are talking about in his variant of 3e in the Arcana...

Seeing as this whole project started with just a limited goal of revising the thief so that it fared well in comparison to the other core classes, I don't think that's a significant concern if we are speaking of the revised thief of the same project. RAW, then not only does the thief not get a...

Your gut feelings involve taking 5th roots of things? You're gut feelings are a lot more exacting than mine. :D I see where you are going with that, but if you are going to change so much then I don't think the classic numbers for level 2 are that important, nor is the idea of doubling every...

Well, the answer to that is probably "Yes", in as much as for example the thief - especially the RAW one not revised by me - is gaining almost nothing by leveling and has true slow linear progression of power, so you'd expect his XP requirements to be more linearly increasing than quadratically...

One thing that I'm trying to get away from that I feel is very 1e in feel but very poor in design is making lists. The problem with lists is that while they are very flexible, very flavorful, and can be balanced quite easily, they also are inimical to any expansion of the game with new content...

If that was actually the modality going on, it would be easy. Instead, Gygax has a much more complicated pattern going on than that, and while his choices with the Wizard are understandable, they also result in him being forced - if he is to stick to the general pattern - to have a few levels...

I don't believe it is the case in 3e that wands can only replicate spells. Rather, only wands that replicate spells have standard pricing (and thus full control over their cost and design by a PC). Extraordinary wands that have effects that do not replicate spells have to have their price and...

I think that's our point exactly. 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...

This is all intentional. It may look weird, but it's significantly less weird than the original table. Remember, this is just doing the reverse of what the actual table does. The actual table starts out leveling slowly through the first few levels, then departs from expectation by demanding...

The Necromancer Necromancers are the specialist M-U of the school of necromancy. They require a minimum of 14 Intelligence and 14 Wisdom. Necromancers must not be good aligned, and in most civilized areas there works are considered lawless, antisocial and depraved. Certainly, a M-U that walks...

I discussed earlier the fact that the weirdest thing about the M-U was that they leveled up very slowly when they were the weakest, and then suddenly accelerated to leveling faster than a thief just when they were really beginning to get powerful. I hadn't touched that yet because setting...

Personally I don't see the need to give any caster unlimited attack magic outside of a video game where how you are attacking is just color anyway, but these aren't insurmountable problems. For example, you could restrict an unlimited attack cantrip by having it require an arcane focus like a...

Since people have been asking about what I would do with Illusionists, I tacked on to the end of the original essay what I would do with Illusionists. It takes very little to describe, and I think is generally better balanced and more fun than the original class, which had wonky all over the...

Cantrips as presented in 1e AD&D are mostly color. Sure, every 100 hours of play you might find some real use for them if you kept some prepared, but for the most part they don't do enough to justify losing a valuable spell slot to do something as minor and unimpactful as what the cantrips do...

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...

Feats were deceptive. Because they were short, people assumed they were easy to design. In fact, the opposite is true. Designing a good feat is very hard. 3e's biggest problem was the absolute flood of mechanical content that flowed out of it and into it. Everyone wanted to get in on the...

Maybe, but in that case I would expect the mechanic to be "Invent a new signature spell of the appropriate level" and not "Discover the exact same spell everyone else uses." We can't all be Bigby.

I will bring up a few things no one has commented on yet: a) Level titles have changed to minimize overlap with other potential classes or to avoid suggesting things that are just not true of a generic M-U. Thaumaturgy and theurgy are more properly associated with clerical magic than with...

Generous. Under my rules if you were under the supervision of a higher level character, you could get it up to a whopping 2 XP per day. IIRC, you could get it up to 3 XP per day if you were willing to pay for superior experience (of whatever that meant for your class) with an outlay of some...