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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6348224" data-attributes="member: 87792">Quite simply (which isn't to say easily).  By getting a massive wall of meat and hiding behind it.  The meat in question being hirelings.  Or war dogs.  And then getting lucky enough to get loot.  If you aren't going in with at least a dozen people in your raid you are in trouble - and few people on the first level of the dungeon have burst attacks.  Hirelings and charisma are a key part of oD&D and cascade into 1e.  You talk about the wizard being hit by a fear trap alongside the fighter - to me this begs the question as to why the wizard was so far forward and there wasn't at least a rank of meat between them and the trap.  The best analogy I can use for the wizard in oD&D/1e is a mortar in house to house fighting; one of them can be really useful at the right moment but you either want it deployed dug in in a battery on a scenic overlook, or a single one of them to a platoon.  And I don't think I've ever played a 1e or OSRIC first level character of any class that didn't bring at least two war dogs or hirelings on their first adventure to hold the melee line (and then insisted in the hireling's case that they got their share of the loot whether or not they died - or were invalided out on 1hp half way through the adventure).From memory the brown box has more rules for hirelings than combat, as does Holmes.Now how anyone leveled up an MU in 2e is beyond me.One monster hit.  Big difference when the fighter can only take two (three if they are lucky) but might have an AC of 3 at first level, and a lot of first level enemies have a THAC0 of 20.Honestly, the impression I'm getting from you is that your version of 3.5 (?) includes the 3.5 PHB, the 3.0 MM (I seriously doubt you use e.g. the nerfed <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/golem.htm" target="_blank">3.5 Golems</a> - <a href="http://www.dragon.ee/30srd/" target="_blank">spot the difference</a>?) - and the 1E DMG.  Gygax said quite openly "If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" and then proceeded to fill both PHB and DMG with a lot of rules and advice to restrain magic, and Zeb Cook proceeded to tear out most of the advice, with the rules being removed by Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, and Skip Williams.  Everything I'm reading from you says you still use the advice that hasn't actually been part of D&D since 1989 (and D&D is the worse for it).  All of which means the methods you use to restrain spellcasters are (a) good and (b) not actually part of either 3.0 or 3.5.OK.  This is a weird strawman.  The point wasn't that he wanted to be weaker for the sake of being weaker.  It was that he wanted to be unusual - which is not the same thing at all.  He wanted to be validly strong but in a different way.  Insisting that this means he must be weaker is punishing the player for wanting to do something unusual.  Insisting it means he wants to be weaker is claiming things that haven't been established and are unlikely to be true and is therefore effectively punishing the player for wanting to do something unusual.And this is once again you reading in things that have not been said and using it to punish the player.  The player wants to do something unusual and interesting.  This of itself neither means they want to be weaker or want to be stronger in combat.If what someone wants is to be weaker in combat I've never in my life seen a game that doesn't enable this.</blockquote>

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