Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
I get you. And it's not to everyone's taste, certainly! I enjoy it as a very different style.I don't see any fun no challenge in playing a crossbow-user who can occasionally cast some spells. For me, a magic user should be using magic as his main trick. If I wanted to play a crossbow-user, I would play a fighter instead, perhaps multiclassing it with wizard if I want occasional spells. That would be challenging and rewarding. To play just for the challenge alone is not my idea of fun.
But, perhaps I'm just not wired that way. After all, I started D&D with 4e (actually, very late 3.5, but not enough to consider the experience meaningful to me). Never experienced old school RPG, but the idea that these posts are giving me is that this kind of game would be very stressful for me.![]()
It may help you to understand that magic was still a Magic-User's main trick back in the day. Combat wouldn't be taking up most of the session time. And when an M-U did deploy one of his smaller number of spells, it was generally much more impactful.
Charm Person made the target your slave or henchman, not merely briefly helpful. And it was permanent in OD&D; in Greyhawk and later versions it would still be a month before they got another save to shake it off if they were low Intelligence, a week if moderate Int, or a whole day only if high Int.
Sleep took out a whole encounter's worth of low level monsters at once with no saving throw, assuming they weren't undead or a construct.
Light allowed a save, but if cast on a powerful single monster's eyes and they didn't save meant it was either completely unable to attack or took a heavy penalty to attacks (depending on which edition we're talking). This one spell could make the difference between the fighters killing the monster easily or being killed by it.
Invisibility was PERMANENT until the target attacked (which meant forever if you cast it on an object, for example).
The more powerful nature of most spells meant that an old-school MU wasn't necessarily using magic every round (although they might still at higher levels, especially once they had some wands and scrolls), but when they did use it that magic was usually STRONG. Is it cooler and more magical to use weaker spells every round, or strong spells less often? That's a matter of opinion.
