It is never as easy to make comparisons between AD&D and other editions as people often think.
But before I throw it out, one last note-
People played AD&D (1e) in a variety of fashions. Not everyone played the same.
Actually, you kind of need to lead with this. It wasn't just common practice because there were no gaming police, it was being promoted directly in the rules and was widely understood - it was the DM's game to modify as they see fit. There are probably a higher percentage of 1E players today that are playing by-the-book (or trying to) than were when it was the edition of choice.
The whole "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" didn't apply in the same way in 1e, for a very simple reason. In addition to the other things I am about to point out, there is the issue of survivability.
Mostly that simply has implications for the tactics used. They avoid melee - and that's actually easier to do because 1E defines melee distance as 10'. If an opponent is beyond 10' from a caster they CANNOT melee them that round without charging. They have to spend the round closing.
Magic-users naturally cast longer range spells from positions of greater relative safety than they would otherwise, and other party members tend to be careful enough with their own tactics that their party wizard has as little to fear as possible, preventing opponents from getting close to the wizard. Also, even a simple Mirror Image spell can provide enough reasonable protection from melee and missile attacks in the following round to enable casting a higher level, devastating spell with a long casting time.
Healing was a desperate thing in 1e. For the most part, the scarcity of healing (not to mention issues regarding poison and the like) would usually require Clerics and Druids to use most or all the available spells of certain levels for healing.
Extremely circumstantial. Yes, maximizing the amount of healing spells was certainly one strategy, but again it could depend on other factors such as frequency of encounters and availability of healing potions. Heal-bots were/are by no means universal.
Well, this was noted in the PHB, which warned you that most spells take some time to cast and as such would go off at the end of the round (or sometimes, the follwoing round) and if they spellcaster was struck, "grabbed," or failed any type of save ... the spell was spoiled.
And here again it can depend a great deal upon the interpretation of how initiative works. The initiative rules for 1E were NOT in the PH. They were only provided in the DMG - one year AFTER the PH was published, meaning a large number of games would have had to create and implement their own initiative rules in the meantime. They might have used something extremely simpler as in original D&D, or they may have never played original D&D and thus made up something entirely different. Even so, those rules in the DMG when it WAS released had been written so ineffectively and confusingly that even if you hadn't already had a system of your own you might VERY EASILY misunderstand and misinterpret the DMG rules. It is most certainly common today for players who are STUDYING the 1E DMG to repeatedly misread it or fail to comprehend it. That really can't be over-emphasized and obviously it has huge implications for how all casters function in the game, when the casting of a spell is begun, when it concludes, and the chances of it being disrupted. It certainly was more likely for there to be a huge variety of initiative systems and interpretations in use when there was no internet for anyone to instantly have it explained to them in a way that was easier to come to grips with.
As to how long a spell would cast ... a typical "fast" combat spell would take (segments were 1/10 of a round, or 6 seconds) three segments - 18 seconds - to cast, as in fireball. So you see the problem. That's an effective -4 (because a tie is as bad as a loss) on initiative rolls.
But it's more complicated than that yet. Magic-user spell casting times were predominantly one segment per spell level. Clerical spell casting time was more varied, routinely it was spell level plus 3, but with a great many exceptions to that. For example, at 1st level they have plenty of 4 segment spells but a lot of full-round spells. Longer casting times makes
clerical spells less likely to be successfully cast, or then just more likely to be cast outside of combat. And 1E enables attacks on spell casters even when the caster WINS initiative.
That placed a huge premium on either the very few "emergency" combat spells (Magic Missile, the Power Words were all one segment), or required careful planning and stealth to use your spells.
And the more you're able to carefully plan your use of spells in an encounter, the more effective everyone in the party is. In fact, this is a key point to be made - there was a greater emphasis in 1E on being able to plan before getting into fights. 1E was developed out of original D&D which was much closer to a dedicated dungeon-exploring game where AVOIDING as much combat as possible was the smartest game play, not just being able to win fights by designing your character better in the first place. Cautious exploration was the norm because the DM was often playing a game of "gotcha", prompting players to be hyper-vigilant and obsessive in how they describe everything their characters do to avoid being caught. That isn't often how the game is played anymore, including by those still playing with 1E rules. That is, it's heavily WRITTEN to be played differently than the game is now played no matter what rules version you use.
As a general rule, though, spellcasting during combat was very difficult, and if you had intelligent enemies ("Tucker's Kobolds") nearly impossible.
In the rules as-written it was certain made tougher - but you just can't know anymore these days how many groups were REALLY sticklers for the book rules. Remember that Tucker's Kobolds was a DM acting well within the bounds of the rules in both word and spirit. Just by having average intelligent monsters do things that only require average intelligence to do makes pathetic, pipsqueak monsters into something far more dangerous and problematic. But that wasn't the norm. The norm was to treat them (and ALL monsters) in a more limited fashion making it EASIER to attack them, including with spells. Just by not having the kobolds equipped with any missile weapons a caster's difficulty is often greatly reduced. It isn't the game rules therefore that make a magic-users life so difficult as
a DM who wants to inhibit them as much as possible rather than give them a break.
I don't want to oversell this- combats could be very swingy; spells could, and would, turn the tide of the battle on a failed saving throw. But more often than not, the big boom would just fizzle.
Yep. Sheer dumb luck of the die rolls can basically END a combat (for better or worse) - but PC's don't go into combat
depending on sheer dumb luck to succeed. If they do they never live long. Players don't play any version of D&D in such a way as to maximize their faults and limitations - they minimize or eliminate them. They don't RELY on ONE spell that MUST succeed or else they lose. They will cast several spells expecting that opponent saves
will succeed, reducing or eliminating the spell's effects, until they just accumulate enough spells of half damage to do the job anyway, or that one save is finally failed. Where spells are concerned it's a game of attrition and knowing that lucky saves generally can't hold out forever.
Magic was legititmately awesome, but also kinda sorta dangerous too.
And the spells that were dangerous to the caster either didn't get used at all, were only used in extreme cases, or again required PLANNING to use safely. If the way that you're playing the game is such that you manage more opportunities to plan your attack against opponents rather than just suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself in a fight, your gameplay reduces or eliminates the difficulties that are attached to those spells. And Vancian casting means that if you have that spell studied to be able to cast you HAVE already worked out how to handle the downsides of it or else you wouldn't have it memorized in the first place.
....and everyone has a story about the first time you cast fireball in a restricted space.
Q.E.D. When you know fireballs expand in confined spaces
you don't use it in confined spaces. Not without proper planning, or at least
with the willingness to bear the consequences.
This causes pretty severe restrictions on going "nova" in many adventuring environments.
This is, IMO, not a bad thing. Is the 5/10 minute workday not a common complaint of more recent editions?
In effect, instead of being able to cast, and then re-cast on a daily basis, deciding when to cast spells (especially the high level ones) became a much more difficult game of resource management.
A LOT of 1E is a matter of resource management. You WERE (at the time) expected to be tracking rations, ammunition, spell components, encumbrance, and more. Managing the resource of how many spells you could cast was no different and NOT more difficult - except in comparison to an edition that reduces or eliminates ALL resource management rules.
And you've got the rules for resting a bit incorrect. A 1st level caster recovering a single 1st level spell only needs to rest 4 hours and then study 15 minutes per level of spells being recovered. A 1st level caster in a long day can then (theoretically) cast five 1st level spells that day, not just one. They are very capable of casting and recasting as long as time can be and IS taken to rest for a few hours at regular intervals. At the other extreme a caster needing to recover a 9th level spell needs to rest 12 hours to start with before spending 15 minutes per spell level re-studying their spells. An 18th level caster needing to recover ALL their spells will spend a total of 20 1/2 hours doing so.
As I recall, your initial spell assortment was random as well.
The method for acquiring your initial spell book contents is again ultimately up to the dungeon master. The DMG presents a method to roll randomly for it (which includes chances for players to have their choice), but also notes that the DM may let players have more that that. And there is no reason that the DM MUST limit it to that. If the DM so desires they may let the player choose ALL the spells in their spell book because in 1E D&D the DM is not held to the written rules. The DM holds
themselves to the written rules, each according to their own judgement. And those are the spells IN the characters spell book. It is quite certain that they KNOW more spells than that - they just don't have them in their spell book
yet.
Also, don't forget that classes levelled at different rates. The Magic-User needed 2500 XP for level 2, the second slowest levelling class (behind the Paladin at 2750 XP, looked it up but didn't check the Unearthed Arcana for the "expansion" classes for comparison).
Sadly, that's also inaccurate to phrase it that way. To reach 2nd level and 20th level for example, yes the magic-user is second only to the paladin in xp needed to advance. But, for example, to reach 10th level the magic-user needs LESS xp than clerics, fighters, paladins, rangers, assassins and monks. In fact, they need
HALF the xp that a
fighter needs at that level.
Clerics need less than fighters at that level. Even a ranger needs only
65% of the xp to make 10th as a fighter does. Comparison of xp requirements across classes is
never a straight-forward matter in AD&D because the tables are that inconsistent.
