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Message: <blockquote data-quote="grodog" data-source="post: 4629151" data-attributes="member: 1613">A lot of spells could be dangerous in AD&D (or in any edition), especially if not fully-understood and/or misapplied:  area effect spells like sleep, web, fireball, meteor swarm, death spell, cloudkill (one of the best arguments for memorizing gust of wind), etc. could easily catch some or all of the PCs in the area of effect; dimension doors requires you take a forced period of inactivity (most of a combat round) after using it, so if someone tries to ddoor to right behind a monster for a rear attack, they're likely instead to be caught with their pants down; identify temporarily drains 8 (!) points of CON, so casting it in the middle of a dungeon could be rather catastrophic for a low-CON MU; if you try to cast charm person on a creature that's not-charmable as a person (because many many humanoids were NOT persons to charm person/charm person or mammal spells and required charm monster), they may notice and, at the least, be ill-disposed toward you; etc.I agree with what's already been said:  it adds that element of risk (or, in the case in the 1e group I'm playing in, it's a known factor/assumption that one player in particular will consistently fireball at least some of the PCs about every third session or so); it also keeps things deadly:  if that lightning bolt hits the wall behind the EHP and ricochets back your way, it'll hit him twice---which is the intent, of course---but it just might hit you too, if you don't cast it just right....There's a recent discussion on this idea at Dragonsfoot, but FWIW, that's not an interpretation that I would use, since SS rolls only apply (in my mind, mind you <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> ) to hostile magical aging attacks (like a ghost's attacks), and not to spell casting side-effects (as with haste, resurrection, wish, etc., etc.).  In case you're interested in the DF threads (the last one is the most current):  <a href="http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2893" target="_blank">Dragonsfoot • View topic - Haste spell</a> and <a href="http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20059" target="_blank">Dragonsfoot • View topic - Haste, age and die!</a> and <a href="http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32412" target="_blank">Dragonsfoot • View topic - Haste-an offensive spell?</a></blockquote>

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