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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 9240182" data-attributes="member: 7030563">I agree with this, but this speaks to the power of the party and the need in 1E (more than modern editions) to have all roles filled.  It speaks to the power of the party though - a party of 1 fighter and 1 cleric and 1 magic-user and 1 thief is going to be more powerful than a party of 4 fighters ..... or 4 magic usersSo I agree it is true that a Magic-User could contribute to a party more than if you replaced him with a 2nd or 3rd fighter, but I don't think that speaks at all to the relative power of the classes.This was not true in 1E.  While anything is "optional" in a game as you allude to there was not rules making it optional according to the rules. In fact the DMG states that what is in the DMG are "dictums" and that "uniformity" is required for AD&D to grow.Yeah method IV.  If you are creating a character according to the rules that is the one to use.While I can't say how you played or the majority of others played, what I can say confidently is:1. The VAST majority of 1E Magic-Users published by TSR, including both NPCs and pregenerated PCs did not have high enough abilities to cast high level spells.2. The majority (maybe all?) magic user PCs used in official TSR tournaments could not cast 9th level spells.3. Elf magic-users made up a substantial  portion of the magic-users and could not cast 9th level spells regardless of intelligence.Because it assumes you are not rolling over and over to get the scores you want.  If you do  that there is  no point in rolling at all.  If you can roll and roll and roll until you get what you want then why not just skip to the end and put an 18 in every ability?Further I think this argument does not necessarily support your position that magic-users were strong.  If you roll 100 different magic-users until you get an 18 intelligence, then you still rolled 100 magic-users and if 99 of them could not cast 9th level spells, if 60 could not cast 7th level spells the vast majoirty of magic-user characters you rolled could not cast high level spells at all and this would have made them weak compared to other classes .... you just did not play those weak characters.Sure, but with 1E then you are not really playing the same game that was published.  We did not play by RAW as far as  everything and many of our rules actually made Magic-Users and multiclassed characters more powerful.But if you are talking about the relative power of the classes you need to discuss this from a common baseline and if we are using the actual rules as the baseline Magic-Users are not a strong class in 1E..Magic-Users played RAW by the 1E AD&D rules and considering the probability of the dice are objectively weaker than Fighters, Rangers, Paladins and Cavaliers.Certainly that is not every table, not even every table playing entirely RAW, but in terms of class balance it is undeniably a true statement.</blockquote>

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