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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6345177" data-attributes="member: 4937">In the short term, by which I mean, &quot;up until 7th level or so&quot;, it was extremely unfun to play a M-U.&nbsp; You had limited choices, and unless the DM rewarded you with a kit of magic items that made being the M-U more fun (a number of effective wands, bracers of defense and similar rare defensive magic), you were playing less of a character than a party magic item to provide utility when called on.&nbsp; But in the long run, if no one carried that burden, you'd get to 10th level or so and suddenly there would be a proliferation of &quot;problems that can only be solved by magic&quot; and a party without high level M-U's was utterly gimped in many situations.&nbsp; Consider the text of something like Mud Sorcerer's Tomb where so many situations amount to, &quot;Either you have a particular high level spell available, or else you die.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; While it's an extreme example, it's by no means atypical of play at high level.As for clerics, they rarely escaped the trap of simply being useful utility magic items the party dragged along with them.&nbsp; It's not that 1e had no balance or that there was never a reason to play something other than a spell-caster (it was probably better about that than 3.X), but rather that there was significant room for improvement in the experience of play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6345177, member: 4937"] In the short term, by which I mean, "up until 7th level or so", it was extremely unfun to play a M-U. You had limited choices, and unless the DM rewarded you with a kit of magic items that made being the M-U more fun (a number of effective wands, bracers of defense and similar rare defensive magic), you were playing less of a character than a party magic item to provide utility when called on. But in the long run, if no one carried that burden, you'd get to 10th level or so and suddenly there would be a proliferation of "problems that can only be solved by magic" and a party without high level M-U's was utterly gimped in many situations. Consider the text of something like Mud Sorcerer's Tomb where so many situations amount to, "Either you have a particular high level spell available, or else you die." While it's an extreme example, it's by no means atypical of play at high level. As for clerics, they rarely escaped the trap of simply being useful utility magic items the party dragged along with them. It's not that 1e had no balance or that there was never a reason to play something other than a spell-caster (it was probably better about that than 3.X), but rather that there was significant room for improvement in the experience of play. [/QUOTE]

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