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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9723821" data-attributes="member: 6799660">The TSR-era contained multitudes, pretty much from the beginning (and certainly by '75-'76, once the supplements started coming out). It was a harsh, no-holds-barred game where death came quick and your character was destined to lie a forgotten corpse at the end of a pit-trap spike because they were reaching for that last pile of copper. It was also the game with items of near limitless power, dragons you could turn into mounts, and spells which could rework realities. As much trash talk as was levelled against Arduin Grimoire and the admonishments in Supplement IV and all that, the foundations for this kind of escalation were laid out straightforwardly in the TSR-published material. Apparently also extant in EGG&co.'s actual games -- at least if we count the tales of them travelling between Greyhawk, Blackmoore, and Tékumel and crashing 3 world's economies; plus conjecture at what situation made the '10-20 wishes to raise stats 16+' rule for AD&D necessary, etc.I think it speaks to a maybe-not-universal, but certainly common quality among people who were 'very bright young men/women' growing up (doubly so if it's less than well-recognized afterwards). It's part of my eternally unfinished post on nerd-dom, the lessons I've learned managing people who would mostly fit in here, and how the people who are often worst to nerds are other nerds trying to claim territory. Gygax often sounds like a combo of that person online who keeps referencing the ludonarrative liminal qua verisimilitude of their ergo loquacious perspicacity, and the kid on debate team that made sure everyone knew they'd skipped 8th grade. But then, why wouldn't he (especially in the timeframe up to writing the core 1e books)? He was one of us, after all. He also was a kid-then-adult who liked sci-fi, fantasy, history, and wargames; but then didn't exactly get showered in the typical accolades of nerd-dom. From dropping out of high school and college; to jobs as a marine, shipping clerk, underwriter, and shoe repairman; to the grognards of the time (in the wargaming community) deriding first Chainmail for its fantasy supplement compared to their historical gaming, and then D&D for being not wargaming (those were his people calling his hot new innovations not his-peoplish enough). It can certainly come off as unnecessary, and maybe condescending (although I think further discoveries about Gygax in terms of ego or sparring with others probably colors that quite a bit). However, to me it comes off more as try-hard. What I notice more than the charge cost is how it eliminates the rest requirement the spell normally has. Mister "You can not have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept" is fine with the time-cost downside of a quality of the game being removed, so long as it is part of the limited and unpromised realm of found treasure. Extrapolating the logic of the rod bestowing the effect, I'm inclined to believe that using it also doesn't age the user 3 years, but perhaps telling which consequence is considered worth mentioning (admittedly this is already clarified in the unnatural aging rules). That's another wrinkle, the text on DMG p. 13 is "Note: Reading one of the above spells from a scroll (or using the power from a ring or other device) does not cause unnatural aging, but placing such a spell upon the scroll in the first place will do so!" This only mentions scrolls, but the rules for crafting magic items includes "As DM, you now inform him or her that in order to contain and accept the spells he or she desires to store in the device, a scroll bearing the desired spells must be scribed, then a permanency spell cast upon the scroll... Wands and other chargeable items do not require permanency, and of course they are used up when all the charges are gone." Does that mean that the creator of a rod of resurrection had to create a scroll (accepting the aging hit) for each charge on the rod? Given that no demihumans can reach the level of cleric to craft such an item, we're looking at a human cleric with hopefully an 18 con (to survive the 50 system shock checks, even a 17 con/98%^50 puts us at 36%) and some kind of lifespan extension. With all that rigmarole, then seeing the party half-orc assassin need revival and 8 charges disappearing has got to be a gut punch. All the more indication in my mind that  the magic item creation rules were more to keep PCs from doing so than really encouraging it.</blockquote>

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