I personally find the whole "the ancients were wiser, more knowledgable and more powerful than you will ever be" trope to be extremely grating (I do note that it's just my personal taste, though).
EDIT: That said, I wouldn't mind if the DM decided to restrict magic item creation by other means, e.g. the PCs don't have the time and/or resources to create magic items, or the PCs will only achieve the necessary skill required to create magic items after the campaign is over. So, it really is more of a flavor issue than a gameplay issue.
While in general I'd agree that an arbitrary cap of, "You'll just never be able to do that," is unsatisfying it also seems that this was the 1E solution. Aside from the decidedly non-comprehensive
Enchant an Item spell the few paragraphs on item creation in the DMG essentially amounted to, "make it up yourself if you want it that bad".
1E really needed a proper method for players to be creating items, even for the disposable stuff like scrolls and potions I wasn't exactly ecstatic with what it had. The method given by 2E in I-forget-the-name-of-the-book was not very satisfying either. Too much like it was just tacked on and trying to make sense of the senseless, and it seemed too little and FAR too late anyway.
3E's solution was to just let the PC's go to Wal-mart - and that is NOT the 1E way to do things.
The Gestalt multiclass-ing for demihumans is I think absolutely key to 1st edition flavor. Third edition multiclassing for humans is tempting as a replacement for the dual classing rules, but I think it would mean things like dropping the combat/to hit tables and wierd things with XP advancement that would make the game far more like 3rd edition than 1st.
I think that rather than multi-classing (since I've yet to see an approach to multiclassing that doesn't go awry somewhere) what is needed is NEW CLASSES. Not a fighter/mage MULTI-class but a fighter/mage CLASS. You can then set xp advancement chart, accumulated hit points, saves, hit probability, spell acquistion, power acquisition, special abilities and whatever else to EXACTLY what is wanted.
Frankly, all that is needed is to rebalance demihumans with humans enough that the level caps for demihumans are near to the high end of the expected range of play. So, for example, it might be nice if halfling fighters didn't top out at 5th level, but 8th or 10th is not an unreasonable level cap.
Which suggests that at least you agree there is a problem there that needs addressing - it's more a matter of HOW to address it.
I believe a truly generic skill system would get in the way of 1e's focus on player skill over character skill. Skills should be reserved for exceptional abilities. Skill contests and the like should be informal, and really all that is needed is some guidance to the DM in the DMG on how to resolve non-combat contests.
Part of the problem is that skills defy being reduced to a unified mechanic. The skill involved in being a successful farmer doesn't lend itself to making a skill check - you either ARE a good farmer or you AREN'T. The measure of your farming skill is a PREDICTABLE outcome, not a random one. The skill of swimming has little to do with being Michael Phelps setting new speed records and a lot to do with just avoiding drowning - and that's a different mechanic than farming. A skill like Forgery is something which depending on circumstance might work differently at different times - does the forgery have to just make it past a casual inspection or a detailed inspection by a suspiscious examiner? What CAN sword making skill allow a player to do? Can he be a legendary sword-maker or just a very good one? Make magic swords even if he's just a fighter? What benefit, if any, will the ability to make swords give the PC?
In any case the possible circumstantial adjustments to skill usages will always require DM adjudication. A skill system is not just a list of skills and a die roll for each. It's a complicated group of abilities which are much needed but are still rarely if ever a primary factor in the game.
If you are going to make psionics mechanically similar to spells, then you should drop them entirely and simply say that practioners of psionics are simply members of one particular school of wizardry. Spell like ESP, clairvoyance, and the like are already available for this purpose.
Far too many people dislike "psionics" in their D&D in any case. It HAS to be something that is NOT entwined with the rest of the game but that can be added or ignored as desired. The interesting part of 1E psionics was not psionic vs. psionic combat anyway [and that system was utterly hosed] but the psionic disciplines. If a DM wants psionics then what is needed is one or more psionic CLASSES. Their combat ability should not be SEPERATE from all other combat as it was in the original 1E system, but work seamlessly WITHIN it. You don't need a terribly complex system to do that but I think you're right that it does need to be mechanically different from spells if it's not going to BE spells.
First edition is for better or worse an entirely class centric game. Being 'player skill over character' and being able to define a character almost entirely by class and level are central to maintaining the advantages of 1e play. If you start making 1e classes more like 3e classes, then you pick up both the advantages and disadvantages of that. For one thing, you can no longer stat out an NPC simply by writing 'F5'. Simplified stat blocks are one of the major attractions of 1e, and you risk throwing it all away.
Oh HELL yes. Any suggestion of putting 3E-style ability cherry-picking into the hands of players is
dead on arrival. 1E LIVES by being based on class and adding or removing classes is strictly a DM perogative.
The idea of reducing the number of classes only makes sense if you're going to again hand the game to the players by then allowing a significant deal of individual customization to those classes. While a LITTLE bit more control being given to players is not without merit EVERY step in that direction is an increase in prep workload for the DM.
I agree with the existance of the problem, but not with the proposed solution. One of the central strengths of 1e compared to 3e is that at high levels, just as 'save or suck' is becoming common and the loss of a character disasterous, the characters are also getting better and better at avoiding effects. I'm not convinced the solution you propose helps the real problem, and it potentially involves a lot of work that only makes the situation worse.
Well I was just spitballing really. I've made aborted attempts along those lines personally but have to admit that the reason I abandoned them is that the amount of work _I_ would have to put into it wouldn't be worth the results. I'm not married to the idea but I think this IS an area that can stand improvement that DOESN'T hew close to the original material.
Some amount of spell-rebalancing is probably in order. I think your proposed changes perhaps exceed what I'm comfortable with and sound again more like a solution informed by the problems of 3e than the problems of 1e.
You're probably right about arguing against 3E but again, this was more brainstorming than formally proposing.
Some rebalancing is in order, but I don't see a need to make that the focus of the effort.
No, I DO think it's that important. If it's not the FOCUS of the effort it has to at least be the next greatest concern. It's an area where despite the work that would be required to address it the material was largely unaddressed through TWO new versions of the game. 3E made some notable changes - but only to adjust the existing spells into line with its own paradigm. Unlike everything else about the game they did NOT break down spells into their component parts to see if there was a better way to put them together again. I think there is - it's just going to take a heap of work to do it.
I'm assuming you don't mean a wand of magic missiles. I very much disagree. One of the central ideas of 1e is that your wizard has limited resources that you must horde up and carefully dispense at critical moments. I think that at low levels (below 7th) the wizard might have too few resources (at least until he gets several wands), but I don't agree with unlimited minor resources.
But the issue of wizards sucking at low levels and dominating at high levels is far too chronic of a complaint to ignore. At the very least the famine-feast needs adjustment so the low is not so low and the high is not quite so high.
You seem to find balancing the wizard much much more important than I do. I never found the wizard to be particularly problimatic in play. The main problem with Invisibility was essentially that it was permenent. The secondary problem is that the rules regarding detecting and interacting with invisibility didn't take into account things like scent and relied to heavily on intelligence rather than perception. The big problem with fireball was really that invalidated the existance of things like armies, castles, and wooden ships. It wasn't that it was broken in terms of dungeoneering. In general, you seem to find spells more of a problem than I did and I think your efforts here are misplaced.
So then you must admit that you DO see that there are problems with spells like Invisibility and Fireball even if they are not the same problems that I see. Whether either of us is right these are issues which have gone unaddressed. These were, again, just examples thrown out for discussion; the discussion only
begins there, not ends there. These are but two out of about 400 in the PH. We've got 30 years of playtesting experience on the system. Changes are DUE.
I believe that the rumors of 1e M-U's being overwhelming at higher levels is largely a myth. 1e M-U's were incredibly squishy. They had almost no hit points and never really reached the point that they weren't one bad round from trouble. They had relatively bad saving throws. They faced SR and anti-magic fields. Fighters were still essential to a successful high level party.
And the issue then is not whether things could be made to work as they were, but how they can be made to work BETTER without sacrificing the things that made 1E good even WITH all its flaws. And anecdotal evidence is strongly supportive that even if some did not have strong issues with how the mage class was balanced a LOT of others did. A 1st level wizard has ONE spell and as a consequence that spell is of distorted importance. Sleep becomes an initial must-have only to become useless later. Why CAN'T the problem be addressed, even if it's only seen by some?
I'm in general agreement with you that magic should not be fungible with money, but on the other hand, that was never really a 1e problem. That's another 3e problem that we really don't have to worry about.
I think we DO have to worry about it only to prevent it from occurring. Magic-Mart is not the 1E way, yes? That point can't just be mentioned once, it has to be reinforced by being seen repeatedly and supported by the rules as much as possible.
But again, you are ranting against a problem not really encountered in 1st edition. This is the game system that in a published module represented a group of warriors as 5HD monsters with 1d10 hitpoints each. Of course the DM can do anything he wants. You are ranting against problems introduced in 3e. We dont' really have to worry about those except to the extent that we want to avoid recreating all of them.
And I would want to avoid recreating all of them. Immediately when the subject came up responses followed with means to turn 1E into 3E. What we want is to turn 1E into a BETTER 1E, not just a 1E flavored version of 3E. To avoid that these things do need to be stressed. But yeah, I'm ranting a bit too.
