D&D General Nerfing Wizards the Old Fashioned Way: Magic User in 1e

[Demetrios1453]

Not sure if this counts or not, but I played the heck out of the old Goldbox games, Pool of Radiance (as mentioned before) and its three sequels, not to mention the three Krynn games and two Savage Frontier games, and worked with FRUA (the construction set) some. While no computer game can really simulate live tabletop play (especially in the 1988-1991 time period where dungeons were 16x16 maps and you could hide from monsters by running behind a wall), some of the things you're saying do ring true.

Only the first game started you at 1st level (with read magic, shield, sleep, and detect magic as described). The inefficiency of the 1st level mage is well-described--sure sleep would take down a gang of kobolds, goblins, or orcs, but after that you were pretty much useless.

The higher-level wizards got pretty powerful, though. One thing is that limits on damage output by level started with 2nd ed--the last in the series, Pools of Darkness, let your characters get up to 40th level, which meant your fireballs did 40d6 damage, in an era when monsters rarely had more than 100 hp. Even before that, though, the fights in the later games tended to devolve into spamming fireball on large numbers of monsters.

The somewhat-famous (to retrogamers anyway) first sequence of the final fight in Pools had a sequence where you face about 8 dracoliches in addition to a similar number of custom monsters (Bits of Moander, shambling mounds with a petrification or poison touch attack, Blue Bane Minions, demon analogs with blue dragon breath weapons and Fire Shield permacast in the era when it did double the damage you struck the enemy with, and Pets of Kalistes, custom giant spiders with basically the spellcasting ability of a 13th level magic-user). The whole thing turned into a Wild West-style who-has-the-highest-DEX-shoots-first-and-lives, because you had to drop a Delayed Blast Fireball on them before they wiped you out with their lightning breath. The next sequence involved your party taking on seven beholders...and there's one after that.

If you like tactical combat and can tolerate (or actively enjoy) over-the-top cheese, I actually recommend them highly.

Heh, the reason I brought up PoR earlier in the thread is that I recently re-started the series a week or so ago. I've cleared the slums and gotten everyone to levels 2 - 3, and plan on tackling Sokol Keep once I get home from vacation!

 

[Lanefan]

The rules for initiative were in the PHB. They weren't organized into a single neat section like the DMG, but it was there.

You could have stopped at "... they weren't organized": 1e initiative rules as written were a 5-alarm nightmare.

We long ago simplfied them and beat them down into something playable, a system we still use today. We also converted casting times so they'd work with 6-segment rounds (never made sense that casters used a 10-segment round [6 seconds each] while everyone else used a 6-segment round [10 seconds each]).

 

[Lanefan]

That said, it's helpful to look at what the rules provided in terms of spellcasting. There were a number of structural features in the rules to keep magic users in 1e at a relatively lower power level, especially in combat (out of combat was a different story).

Agreed.

That said, it was quite common to discard a lot of rules; weapon speed factors, weapon v. ac adjustments, and so on were not used at many tables. And it was not uncommon to see tables that didn't take into effect the length of time it took to cast a spell (or the whole V,S,M).

Yep. We dropped weapon speed and weapon-vs-armour type ages ago, but we've kept (and always will!) casting times and components.

We added 'body points' to allow for the idea of long-lasting effects of getting hurt; and as body points are something you have before you even start adventuring, the net effect was to give everyone a few more h.p. In theory this helped low-level survivability. In practice...well...

 

[Lanefan]

One of the real challenges both I and other DMs have found with higher-level 1e-ish play is trying to find ways to effectively threaten the 85-hit-point Fighters without wiping out the 20-hit-point mages and without always having to resort to save-or-dies.

 

[Ancalagon]

The 1e thief class is a cruel one. Their chances of success at doing the things they are supposed to do is so abysmal for so much of their leveling progression. Considering that a big part of that would've been trying to find and disarm traps, their poor skill at doing so would've made them the most likely to fall victim to them.

2e enabled you to use kits and special gear to at least be okay at a few things early on, but the class didn't really become viable until 3e.

I didn't do much with rogues in 3e I must admit, but the 5e rogue is so nice. When making a PC I often try to "plug gaps" - much more comfortable to do so now. Their capacity to get themselves out of trouble is very nice.

 

[Ace]

He may not have been overly found of MUs, but boy .... he really hated thieves.

It's funny, because you read the PHB and you're all like, "Well, it's hard to be a thief."

And then you read the DMG and it's all about nerfing what little the thieves can do!

The thief was a class pushed into the game by players . Some combination of attribute rolls, surprise rolls and player ingenuity were supposed to handle those tasks.

The cleric , monk and others were also like this. The classes of course suffered for it as until 3E D&D had mediocre mechanics for things like stealth.

As to the MU, its really not very good except in the hand of a good player and even when you use max HP as many did, it was far too fragile. It ended up being "toss a spell." ad the rest of the game darts or daggers from the back.

However this because both the magic item economy and hirelings/henchmen got sidelined in play. Magic items in 1e and before were very common and mid level MU (5 or 6) may not have many personal spells but he'd have many items even a wand with lot of charges. Clever players could often find enough items to outfit the entire party and have enough left for henchmen too

From the DMG 1E

Henchmen, whether male or female, are greatly desired by the discerning players, for they usually spell the difference between failure and success in the long term view. They are useful in individual adventures as a safety measure against the machinations of rival player characters, provide strength to the character and his stronghold, and lastly serve as a means of adventuring when the player character is unable to. “

A PC MU with decent rolls might have several henchmen. hired mercs, a war dog and a large party of adventurers (player groups were often 6+ back in the day) with their own guys in some cases which can handle a lot of troubles.

We never used henchmen or hirelings or honestly reaction rolls that much which is a shame, They were a major part of the game that became to cumbersome in the kind of play that developed.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

Good observations! I played a lot of AD&D “back in the day”, and the OP rings true.

lots of MU characters never made it past 1st level. Since Sleep was an extremely effective 1st level spell in 1E, I remember low level MUs basically being one or two shot Sleep spells then throw some darts!

I also remember few games actually using speed factors or segments, but I think maybe play was influenced by speed factors. Plenty of games I played in would resolve each round by first going through any missile fire, then melee and only then spells.

IIRC, being a multiclass demihuman Fighter/MU let your cast spells in armor and wield Fighter weapons, because I remember a lot more multiclass MU characters than pure MU characters.

 

[Hussar]

@Man in a Funny Hat made a number of excellent points, but, I'd also like to address the XP thing as well. Yes, at 1st to, IIRC, 4th or maybe 5th, MU's needed a lot of XP. Then ZOOM, they just rocket up levels. To the point where they are generally one level ahead of fighters until 14th level. It was a wonky progression.

But, I'm frankly baffled why all these MU's get into melee combat. Didn't you guys plug up the front line with a couple of fighters and a cleric? Poof, no one can reach the MU and you cannot fire through melee easily. It was ridiculously easy, most of the time, for the MU to stay out of combat.

And, of course, I notice that this discussion has completely ignored magic items. Let's not forget our 100 charge wands of fireballs or magic missile. Those can't be interupted. If we're talking a double digit level MU, he's likely picked up half a dozen wands, a staff and possibly a rod or two. It's not like anyone else in the group can use them. And with the gobs of charges that AD&D wands had, it's not like you'd ever run out either.

Who else in the group did you give the Bracers of Defense to? And the ring of protection? We drilled our MU's AC into the stratosphere as fast as we could. Which also tended to mean that the MU had insane bonuses to saving throws as well - effectively saving on 2's and 3's by the time we hit double digit play.

And, this also ignores the fact that a lot of AD&D spells had insane durations. Charm person could last for WEEKS. Protection from Evil BLOCKED all physical attacks from extra-planar creatures. Stoneskin (Unearthed Arcana) lasted until you had taken X number of attacks and blocked all physical damage until then.

It's not like MU's were helpless here. Let's not oversell things.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Good observations! I played a lot of AD&D “back in the day”, and the OP rings true.

It seems to be stating the blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever played 1st edition to me.

And I still don't get the purpose of pointing it out. 1st edition was 1st edition, for those of you who liked that sort of thing 1st edition was the sort of thing you liked.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

It seems to be stating the blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever played 1st edition to me.

And I still don't get the purpose of pointing it out. 1st edition was 1st edition, for those of you who liked that sort of thing 1st edition was the sort of thing you liked.

What's the point of your comment? Why do you seem to be both condescending and rude in response to a perfectly reasonable post I made? Seriously, don't you have basic good manners?