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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7664967" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm now back with my books, and so can confirm that you're part right - you're correct that it's Moldvay Basic (call-out to  [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] - I was wrong in my attribution upthread of this mechanic to Expert). But you got the wrong paragraph: it's on page B60, under the heading you mention, but under a different heading for the percentage-chance example (the percentage-chance chasm is under "That's not in the rules!", whereas a d20 stat check isunder "There's always a chance.")I've never heard this interpretation before.The table on PHB p 19 is headed "Armour and Weapons Permitted", and p 25 says "Magic-users . . . can wear no armour and have few weapons they can use'.Page 36, under headings "Weapons" and "Weapon Proficiency", says "The choice of weapons used by your character might be circumscribed by the class of your character . . .  At the start, you character will be able to employ but a limited number of weapons. . . . If proficiency with any given weapon is not held by the character, it is used at a penalty as shown on the table which follows." (For minutiae completists, the wizard non-proficiency penalty is -5.)There is a degree of confusion (or at least uncertainty) on p 36, because "employ" (which is a synonym of "use") is used to mean "use with proficiency", whereas six lines later there is reference to "using at a penalty for non-proficiency". I see how that first occurence could be read back into the table heading on p 19 (ie "permitted" meaning "permitted for proficiency" rather than "permitted to use at all"). I think it would be more of a stretch to read it into p 25 - the non-use of weapons is in the same breath as the non-wearing of armour, which suggests to me that it can't be done, not just that it can be done but with a penalty.The 2nd ed AD&D PHB (p 30) says that "wizards are severely restricted in the weapons they can use." Given that weapon proficiencies are optional in this edition, I don't think that the restriction on wizard weapon use is most naturally read as an aspect of the proficiency rules, although that would be a reasonable way to develop the system.Was this ever settled one way or the other back in the day, or was it just a matter of table variations?</blockquote>

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