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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6359417" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not sure if you're being ironic or not, but Gygax was. Here is the full passage (DMG p 39), for the benefit of those who might have taken you literally:Inform those players who have opted for the magic-user profession that they have just complete a course of apprenticeship with a master who was of unthinkably high level (at least 6th!). Having been a relatively apt pupoil, worked diligently, and mad every effort to please, master . . . was kind anough to prepare a special present for the character before he or she goes out into the world . . .  At this juncture request the plyaer to ready a piece of paper . . . Intsruct the player to entitle the page "FIRST LEVEL SPELLS KNOWN".In other words, Gygax is characterising a 6th level magic-user as being of "unthinkably high level" from the in-character perspecitve of a 1st level MU being played by a new player.The very same page also has the example of Halfdan the Necromancer (10th level player-character magic-user) trying to learn a spell from the Magician (6th level) henchmen of a 10th level fighter companion. And page 103 has the example of a fighter entering a town to seek aid from a high level magic-user, the wizard (ie 11th level+) Llewellyn ap_Owen, who has as a henchman the warlock (ie 7th level MU) Tregillish Mul.Page 191 has a city encounter table, in which 1% of encounters will be with MUs of level 7 to 12. And pages 175ff have  dungeon encounter tables, in which 5 to 10% (depending on level) of encounters will be with NPCs, who will be of level 1 to 4 if on that level of the dungeon or monster, or otherwise of level 6 to 12 (or even level 13 if on the 16th or deeper dungeon level). Once you are below the 4th dungeon level, the chance for NPCs to be higher level, if they are rolled, is between 20% (5th level) and 80% (16th level or below); it reached 50% on the 7th dungeon level. And the typical NPC party has around an 80% chance of having an MU in it.The DMG has no instructions on the frequency of wandering monsters in a dungeon, but 1 in 6 per 2 turns (20 minutes) was the suggestion in Moldvay Basic. That means there is a reasonably good chance of meeting an MU higher than 6th level if you spend 40-odd hours exploring dungeon levels below the 4th.Page 182 explains that 1 in 20 encounters in the unihabited wilderness will be with fortresses, whose rulers, around 6% of the time (depending somewhat on the nature of the fortress) will be either MUs of 11th to 14th level or Illusionists of 10th to 13th level. The encounter chance in the uninhabited wildernesss is 1 in 10, with an average of around 4 checks per day (per p 47). So that's one of those high level MU/Illusionists every 1 in 800 days of travel or so, or in otherwords just a little more often than one in every 3 years of trekking. (Hence, presumably, the tendency of questing knights to encounter castles ruled by dangerous enchantresses.)Between the chances of randomly bumping into MUs above 6th, and the lengthy example on page 103 of seeking out such an MU, I don't think that a 6th level MU in 1st ed AD&D was actually of unthinkably high level.(And I haven't factored in ecounters with bandits (around a 50% chance of a MU of level 7 to 10 ), nor pirates and merchants (around a 25% chance of a MU of level 6 to 8), nor nomads and dervishes (around a 50% chance of a MU of level 7 or 8 for dervishes and 5 to 8 for nomads).)</blockquote>

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