OSR Old school wizards, how do you play level 1?

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Classic D&D games are only as dangerous as the DM allows them to be. The rulebooks and modules explicitly encouraged experienced Referee's to fudge or pre-decide damage or d20 rolls. Magic users can easily survive level 1- the referee just has to select numbers which won't kill them undeservedly.

 

[Mannahnin]

TSR disagreed with you. The adventures in the era we're talking about were full of combat.

The most popular adventure of the area, Keep on the Borderlands, centers on the Caves of Chaos, which are stacked with monsters, most of whom will absolutely be engaging in combat with the PCs eventually. There simply isn't an opportunity for a spell-less magic-user to do anything at the Caves other than to soak up a few kobold arrows.

The notion that D&D games used to be people sneaking through dungeons, largely avoiding combat, is revisionist history.

Eh. I think there's some retrospective revisionism at work, but maybe not as much as you do.

Keep on the Borderlands was massively popular because it shipped in multiple editions of Basic sets. And the main reason it did so was so that Gary could get the sweet (and massive, after the James Dallas Egbert III incident kicked off the D&D fad) royalty money which Mike Carr had been raking in for B1 In Search of the Unknown. B1 is much more of an "explore this weird place and occasionally run into monsters" affair than B2's packed set of monster lairs. The layout also supports fleeing from, evading, and circumnavigating enemies, which the compact lairs of B2 generally don't/

Most modules showed smaller adventure sites and often ones packed tighter with encounters than the normal dungeon stocking rules would assume, in part because many of them were originally designed for tournament sessions with relatively tight 4hr time limits. B1 was a bit of an exception, being designed by Carr to more closely replicate the kind of dungeons OD&D and the Basic sets expected DMs to construct for themselves.

I certainly think a lot of groups (especially younger players who didn't come in until the 80s and used modules like B2 for models) did have a lot of combat, but I really don't think those editions are designed for it to take up the majority of the session. Very much to the contrary, I think combat is supposed to be important but only take up a fraction of the play time. In part because when you do have combat, those fights are short, especially at low levels.

How a pending lawsuit changed the original Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set

Jon Peterson uncovers the hidden history of the Holmes Basic Set

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[thirdkingdom]

Flasks of oil, thrown daggers. Plus, magic-users are typically holding light sources until retainers can be hired to do these things. The Actual Play Youtube/Podcast 3d6 Down the Line has been adventuring in Arden Vul, and there was about a six month IRL stretch where the party's magic-user (well, illusionis, actually) was without a spellbook, and couldn't cast any spells, and managed to be incredibly resourceful and a huge contribution to the group.

 

[darjr]

The percentage of time spent exploring libraries and labs is significantly less than is spent in combat. It's not an equivalent situation.

I don’t remember you at our table?

Edit to add
I don’t disagree that it’s not ideal for many and for many people it is a problem.

 

[Cruentus]

The notion that D&D games used to be people sneaking through dungeons, largely avoiding combat, is revisionist history.

When we played Basic/Ad&d, we absolutely played it as a combat sport, and the exploration was just an avenue to get to the next combat. But we were also 13, and figuring out the rules.

Now, 40 years later, we have more exploration and social than combat, playing OSE/Basic, than in any other version of the game, and particularly compared to 5e. If we’re rolling dice during the game, we’re doing something wrong, and likely to end up badly hurt. Especially if you’re the wizard. And I play wizards and have in every edition.

YMMV.

 

[Lanefan]

This is such a weird argument. Adjust your expectations -- and play five minutes each week? Combat, even in OSR, makes up a significant part of any adventure.

I've been playing since 1979, so this isn't a case of me not knowing how the game was played at the time. Telling one of the players at the table to just sit quietly during most of the game sucked then and sucked now -- and it's a pretty crappy way for designers to treat a player and a crappier way for players to treat a friend. You wouldn't invite someone over to play a board game with you and then, after five minutes, just force them to watch everyone else play for hours.

If I'm playing a low-level mage and I'm outta gas for the day I'm still going to find a way to contribute to the fight somehow, even if it doesn't mean I'm actually doing damage to the foes.

Also, I'm fine with the long-term trade-off where I support them now because at higher levels it'll be them supporting me.

To answer your question more seriously, @M.T. Black, I never found a satisfying answer for this, other than to have people play multiple characters at a time, so they could still have something to do,

I always allow a player to run two characters at once, mostly so that if one of them dies (a frequent occurrence at low levels) they've still got the other.

Back in the day when we were continually rerunning B2, T1 and L1, most people just stopped playing magic-users in favor of other classes, which IMO was a game design failure.

MU was always intended to be the least-played class anyway. Gygax assumed that 40% of characters would be warriors (F,R,P), 30% Clerics/Druids*, 20% Thieves/Assassins*, and only 10% Mage types. (I don't know where Monks were supposed to fit in)

And over the years I've found there's rise-and-fall trends as to which class(es) generally don't get played. For a while nobody played Clerics. For another long while nobody played Thieves. There's been runs where nobody had a Mage. Warriors, however, are pretty much evergreen.

Now I have made things a bit easier on low-level MUs in that they start with 3 slots a day (so do Clerics) instead of just 1, but that's about it.

The end result is that in grand total my games have been more or less 40-20-20-20 F-C-T-M (well, more like 38-19-19-19 with the remainder being a smattering of Monks and Bards); so if anything Mages have been more frequent than Gygax intended, not less..

* - or the reverse, I can never remember whether it's 30-Cleric 20-Thief or 30-Thief 20-Cleric.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

First you tell everyone expecting you to be the most useful character in the group to quit being a jerk. Then you get to work. You crank a heavy crossbow for a fighter, render aid to anyone who's fallen, throw flaming oil, just HOLD the torch, act as lookout, throw daggers or darts or rocks or more torches or rotten apples if it stands a chance of actually doing damage or just being a useful distraction, you tip over a table that can act as protection for yourself or others, you go spike or block the other doors into a room to prevent enemy reinforcements from getting in, etc. In short - you do whatever you CAN because YOUR survival hinges upon the survival of everyone else in your party. If the ONLY thing a 1st level caster does is cast their single 1st level spell and then twiddle their thumbs - they DESERVE to be ganked.

 

[Gradine]

 

[Lanefan]

Classic D&D games are only as dangerous as the DM allows them to be. The rulebooks and modules explicitly encouraged experienced Referee's to fudge or pre-decide damage or d20 rolls. Magic users can easily survive level 1- the referee just has to select numbers which won't kill them undeservedly.

Citation(s)?

The advice I recall from the 1e DMG pretty much amounted to "let the dice fall where they may" other than in extremely rare once-per-campaign-ish circumstances.

 

[Riley]

My lone single-class, by-the-1e-PHB magic-user who survived to 2nd level carried a yo-yo, and sometimes performed gravity checks when feeling particularly bored/useless.

When able, he liked to throw things - preferably molotov cocktails. Sometimes he used a heavy crossbow, with a dexterity bonus mitigating the non-proficiency penalties.

Once cantrips were introduced, I used those for another pure magic-user.