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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tarek" data-source="post: 4343038" data-attributes="member: 6661">It happens to be my real name.As for Prismatic Blade, I think it was an eighth or ninth level spell, and at that level, well... there were considerably better spells available.Chromatic Orb was an illusionist-only spell in 1st edition, and it was *the* major attack spell for illusionists. It was also just about their *only* direct attack spell, and practically the only one that worked against undead/constructs/creatures with high save vs. spells/illusion immunities.I notice that a lot of the spells and options you're talking about are either late 2nd edition or 3rd edition... while I agree with your point that wizards got rather overpowered if the DM didn't exercise careful oversight about what made it into the campaign, I'm not sure that this is a problem with wizards per se that caused the massive "rebalance" in 4e.In 1st edition, a fighter/magic-user who can cast two 8th level spells would be a fighter 15/magic-user 17. A pure magic-user would be 23rd level. A pure fighter would be 28th level.Like I said before, multi-classes are very versatile, but they really lag behind at the higher levels of play.You keep using the word "gestalt". I don't understand what that means when we're talking about 1st edition multi-classing. I have the feeling that "gestalt" is describing a house-rule of some kind that doesn't bear on the original multi-classing system.My own experience playing multi-classed characters is that the versatility didn't compensate enough for the slower progression and the lack of focus on one field. Frankly, I felt that a fighter/magic-user ended up feeling less capable as a fighter and less effective as a magic-user, despite being able to take either role.This is at least in part because of spell interruption and the fact that enemies would deliberately (when intelligent) target the spell-casters. And with the fighter/magic-user being frequently in melee, well, there weren't that many opportunities to get a spell off uninterrupted. That meant operating as a less-effective fighter than a pure fighter, and not operating as a magic-user except in maybe the first round of combat.</blockquote>

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