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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 6226311" data-attributes="member: 3192">The best thing about early D&D is it was so customizable per character, yet had a strong backbone for satisfying play. The rules of the game are designed for strategy. "What spells do I memorize today?" Your answer to this when playing a Magic-User could mean the difference between succeeding in your goals for the day or not. It could also mean the difference in whether you lived out the day depending on everything that happens that you didn't plan for.  NPCs usually don't adventure and don't take as many risks with their spellcasting, so they are usually prepared and have spells left for the day when encountered. This makes them more powerful defensive opponents, but it also means they learn and grow at a much reduced rate compared to PCs. Of course, if all you did was defend your hidden wizard tower and hoard your hard earned arcane lore you might be cautious with how many spells you cast each day, what spells you prepared, who you taught them to, and so on. The work lends itself towards seclusion.However, each character, PC or NPC, is on a personal journey.* They are trying to work out how to perform magic individually. Even if they went the common route, years training as an apprentice to gain basic abilities, they are now on their own road to discovery. Their spells are going to be unique to them as well as their understanding of spells. Apprentices learning from their mentor may elect to learn his or her spells rather than design their own, but each of their understandings too will be unique to the individual. This same idiosyncratic nature comes up not just in wholly custom spells like Bigby's Hands, but in designs of common spells. My invisibility spell may be higher level, last longer, and be harder to dispel, but I fulfill the game effects by summoning an invisible, temporary ethereal cloak to remove the target from sight. In D&D that isn't fluff, but mechanical reference. I can do things with my spell you cannot and vice versa. If my Grease spell summons pork fat, then somewhere nearby a pig is potentially losing weight. ...or it doesn't get summoned. Tenser's grease spell is different. As is Mordenkainen's. My mentor's spell is basically the same though as I learned it from her, at least by my understanding of the spell it is. That might change as I see her cast her version more.D&D's spell system uses prepared castings for a day's work in mind with more difficult, higher level castings taking more effort and requiring more intelligence and proficiency. Perhaps your castings are cast differently, aren't justified as rote formulae, are prepared differently than what others may take as preparation, they may not even be referred to as "magic" or "spells". Whatever the personalization, these are all treated as magic use. They are tracked by similarity by the DM, support strategic play for the Player, and count as resources in balancing the game.*Yes, schools might spring up in cooperative areas where arcane lore is shared, but even those don't freely disseminate powerful knowledge lest it get into the wrong hands. They are selective with apprentice students admitted and the knowledge these students learn is recognizably derivative as a school of learning. Illusionists for instance.</blockquote>

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