AD&D 1E Revised and Rebalanced Magic-User for 1e AD&D

[James Gasik]

I don't believe it is the case in 3e that wands can only replicate spells. Rather, only wands that replicate spells have standard pricing (and thus full control over their cost and design by a PC). Extraordinary wands that have effects that do not replicate spells have to have their price and cost judged by the DM (such as those in the standard treasure tables like the 'Wand of Wonder'). That said, there is 1e lore I believe that you can't make a Wand of Wonder on purpose, but rather all of them are the result of defects in the wand making process of other wands.

I believe the only exception to Wands being spell storage devices were the Eternal Wands from the Magic Item Compendium, which functioned a set number of times per day instead of being charged. Every other unusual Wand pre-3e became a Rod, so the Wand of Wonder was a Rod of Wonder in 3e.

 

[Moving Pictures]

Hooboy.... here I am diving in late with a multiquote. Sorry for being a PITA, but hey, that's on-brand.
Rightho. Where was I? Oh, yes.

It also doesn't help that there is no rhyme or reason to the source of xp. The xp value of monsters has many, many examples where someone just decided on a number and called it a day. Treasure values are random, and there are many effects that can raise or lower one's level or xp total out of thin air.

What I did to solve that was take the generic calculator in the back of the DMG (Table 31/32 in the TSR 2100 version) and put all those fomulas into a spreadsheet - then tweaked them for "I don't give XP for loot." Everything is now calculated through that. So the monster XP is based on that calculator.

madness of training subsystems that function as a limiter on advancement (and additional limiters like Druids, Monks, and Assassins duking it out for the privilege of advancing to a new level of experience).

That was daft. Now, I do have the general idea that each faith has its "high priest/ess," and that given the limitations of high-end clerical magic, only the highest of practitioners may have access to the higher-level magics .... but that's an in-game limitation that would need years of play to become valid.

I also have clerics needing to return to a temple for blessings to advance at certain levels. Nature clerics, who gain shapeshifting at seventh level, must undergo religious rituals to gain those powers.

Regarding scrolls:

To be more explicit, I do not use the DMG's incomplete recommendations for scroll creatiom. All a MU has to do is pony up the 100 gp (materials cost) and 1 day of downtime.

Enter the fourth-level mage and cleric spells (if the deity grants it), "create scroll."

Problem solved.

The DMG puts obstacles in front of magic item creation because Gary wanted his PCs out adventuring and enjoying the thrill, not staying at home making bespoke items to buff themselves and the party. Like many of the rulings in the DMG, magic item creation is one part creative writing, one part system expansion, and one part antagonistic gatekeeping to preserve what he saw as the best type of gaming.

There are ways to interweave mechanics and gaming to achieve a reasonable result, though. Indeed, I had a low-level character with blacksmithing skills who wanted to create a wakizashi. He did so at a Node, which is a concentration of ley lines and magical power. He was hoping he might somehow imbue the wakizashi with magic. He did .... but he's not figured out what it is.

The node is tied to an Oracle, and the oracle is gifted (cursed) with the ability to create artworks that cryptically predict the future. The previous oracle wrote poetry, the current oracle crafts paintings that she doesn't always understand. The Samurai in my game can cast something akin to "Omen."

So that's what the sword can do. Omen, 1/month. The player hasn't discovered that yet. Is it useful? Probably not much. But ... it introduces the idea that if you go to magical places, maybe magical things will happen.

The thing is ... these nodes are .... occupied. The more powerful the node, the more powerful the occupant. But I digress.

I discussed earlier the fact that the weirdest thing about the M-U was that they leveled up very slowly when they were the weakest, and then suddenly accelerated to leveling faster than a thief just when they were really beginning to get powerful. I hadn't touched that yet because setting leveling rates on a class is always very touchy as it is easy to hidden nerf a class badly by messing with the level advancement rates. After all, it's not how powerful are you at level X that matters, but what level are you at XP total Y.

The frigged-up levelling always bothered me. The solution was to simply create new tables. Again, with easy access to a spreadsheet these days, it's simple to follow the basic double-every-level modality.



Early mage powers

Several posters raised the valid observation that many low-level mages were squishy and weak. There are solutions... to solve that problem, I (a) grant more spell points at low level. This means that even a flat-dumb mage is going to have the power to cast four first-level spells per day, more if they can rest. Intelligence bonuses mean five-six spells at first level - which is kinda ok. The ability to freely cast first-level spells if known at third character level, and upcast those to make them more oomphy is, so far, working in game. (A Runecaster got hold of Magic Missile. She now regularly blows two spell points to chuck out 2d4+4 damage.... and the Xp gained from being significantly involved in taking down some potent beings is transitioning the character into the role I wanted for Mages - that is, at fifth-eighth level they start becoming savagely potent.)

To compensate for the greater spell points available, some of the classic AOE spells have been nerfed, or require additional investment of spell points to be powerful, but may have utility at lower levels. For example, fireball is a first-level spell, but only creates a 2-m sphere doing d6 damage. If cast as a third-level spell without extra spell points, it creates a 4m sphere doing 3d6 damage (save, dex, halved.) But a sixth-level mage could pump in extra spell points to make it larger and more potent....

In essence, yes, there are problems with 1e/2e mages, but there are solutions. Even without going to a spell point system, adopting the 5e rules for spell slots and upcasting would breathe a bit of vitality into the class under a 1e/2e umbrella.

 

[Celebrim]

The frigged-up levelling always bothered me. The solution was to simply create new tables. Again, with easy access to a spreadsheet these days, it's simple to follow the basic double-every-level modality.

If that was actually the modality going on, it would be easy. Instead, Gygax has a much more complicated pattern going on than that, and while his choices with the Wizard are understandable, they also result in him being forced - if he is to stick to the general pattern - to have a few levels where the M-U's XP requirements are increasing but linearly at exactly the moment the M-U is experiencing quadratic growth in power. To compensate, he delays acquisition of 6th level spells by a level, but it still creates this weirdness where for a brief period the M-U is leveling up faster than a thief and I'm not entirely sure what the elegant solution is. Doubling creates a problem where by 3 million XP you only hit 15th level, which I'm not sure is right. Certainly, it solves the problem that high level play is focused on the spell casters, but would you rather play a 15th level M-U or an 18th level Paladin, or a 20th level fighter, or a 22nd level cleric, or 23rd level thief? If the answer is the M-U for a considerable number of people, then we are fine, but it's not obvious to me that is true. It's hard to argue against the M-U at higher levels needing the most XP to advance, since you are the only class still gaining a great deal at every new level, but figuring out a pattern that is fair at every amount of XP and is elegant isn't trivial.

As far as the spell system goes, I've played GURPS. Spell points have their own problems. And, while you can do whatever you want at your table, the goal of this series of revisions is to make the minimal sorts of changes necessary to increase play balance and reduce ad hoc rulings and kludges to make it all work. Ideally the revisions look like something someone might have written in 1989 or so, as an alternative 2e and not like a pile of someone's house rules that take the game in unexpected directions and having very large departures from anything found in 1e/2e circa 1990 or so. I want this to really read like something written by TSR in that period. And spell points just radically would break that. On the other hand, M-U's getting bonus spells at low level similar to a cleric isn't really a big stretch or unsurprising as a mechanic given that it's a) preexisting, b) addresses a complaint widespread even at the time, and c) is eventually what was done anyway.

 

[TwoSix]

If that was actually the modality going on, it would be easy. Instead, Gygax has a much more complicated pattern going on than that, and while his choices with the Wizard are understandable, they also result in him being forced - if he is to stick to the general pattern - to have a few levels where the M-U's XP requirements are increasing but linearly at exactly the moment the M-U is experiencing quadratic growth in power. To compensate, he delays acquisition of 6th level spells by a level, but it still creates this weirdness where for a brief period the M-U is leveling up faster than a thief and I'm not entirely sure what the elegant solution is. Doubling creates a problem where by 3 million XP you only hit 15th level, which I'm not sure is right. Certainly, it solves the problem that high level play is focused on the spell casters, but would you rather play a 15th level M-U or an 18th level Paladin, or a 20th level fighter, or a 22nd level cleric, or 23rd level thief? If the answer is the M-U for a considerable number of people, then we are fine, but it's not obvious to me that is true. It's hard to argue against the M-U at higher levels needing the most XP to advance, since you are the only class still gaining a great deal at every new level, but figuring out a pattern that is fair at every amount of XP and is elegant isn't trivial.

I think my first question would be "Is there a reason to have any class that doesn't fall the same basic curve shape throughout its XP progression?" No matter what that curve shape is, does any class have some particular ability progression that would require a drastically sped-up or slowed-down progression compared to the baseline of the other classes at certain level ranges?

 

[Celebrim]

They also get various utility spells - teleport, fly, etc. - but their main focus is making things dead in neat fashion and then playing with the corpses. They also focus a bit on charming...

One thing that I'm trying to get away from that I feel is very 1e in feel but very poor in design is making lists. The problem with lists is that while they are very flexible, very flavorful, and can be balanced quite easily, they also are inimical to any expansion of the game with new content because they you have to make new lists and alter existing lists by various amendments. So you'll note that my version of the Illusionist avoids this completely by having neither a list of allowed and available spells nor a list of allowed and available magic items, a design choice that departs radically from the first instincts of just about every 1e era designer (and most 2e era designers). The class is durably designed so that it can fit into any homebrew without amendment, and doesn't really care how the game is expanded, the rules would still work as written without need for revision.

that plus their control undead ability makes their high-stat requirements Int 14 and Cha 14 (rather than the Wis 14 you have here); I have it that Charisma affects undead turning/control and charm spells/effects.

Charisma was under consideration but was rejected because I didn't want to have too many schools that depended on a particular secondary ability, and both Enchantment and Conjuration/Summoning more obviously depended on Charisma than Necromancy. I'm perfectly happy to have necromancers who are foul, unlovely and unattractive in personality or appearance as at least an option rather than to suggest that they all must be magnetic to the living as well as the dead.

 

[Celebrim]

I think my first question would be "Is there a reason to have any class that doesn't fall the same basic curve shape throughout its XP progression?" No matter what that curve shape is, does any class have some particular ability progression that would require a drastically sped-up or slowed-down progression compared to the baseline of the other classes at certain level ranges?

Well, the answer to that is probably "Yes", in as much as for example the thief - especially the RAW one not revised by me - is gaining almost nothing by leveling and has true slow linear progression of power, so you'd expect his XP requirements to be more linearly increasing than quadratically increasing. While in contrast a fighter has a fast increase in linear power, and a M-U has a quadratic one (more spells, each becoming more powerful, and more powerful ones becoming available as well). So you'd expect their XP requirements to reflect that.

But Gygax is also playing around importantly with the number of HD a class can obtain, and his general idea is that once you max out your HD, for all classes your XP needed becomes linear with weaker classes needing smaller linear XP and stronger ones greater linear XP. And as a pattern, he wants to hit that linear XP total right around when you hit maximum HD. And he's very much aware that the M-U is very squishy, but he wants NPC M-Us to be credible foes, so they need extra HD to not be too squishy. So M-U get 11 HD to the fighter's 9 HD. But that's a problem. He doesn't want to give the fighter more HD, because they'd be not squishy enough. So somehow he has to fit a class he knows needs greater XP requirements in such a way that by 11th level it needs only slightly more XP than the fighter needs to reach 9th level, while delaying the M-U spell progression by a level to slow their quadratic growth.

I think the solution here is more extreme than the one I've adopted, and involves putting the M-U XP requirements into "tiers". I ended up with two tiers (4th and under then above 4th) but probably 3 or even 4 tiers is required.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, the answer to that is probably "Yes", in as much as for example the thief - especially the RAW one not revised by me - is gaining almost nothing by leveling and has true slow linear progression of power, so you'd expect his XP requirements to be more linearly increasing than quadratically increasing. While in contrast a fighter has a fast increase in linear power, and a M-U has a quadratic one (more spells, each becoming more powerful, and more powerful ones becoming available as well). So you'd expect their XP requirements to reflect that.

But Gygax is also playing around importantly with the number of HD a class can obtain, and his general idea is that once you max out your HD, for all classes your XP needed becomes linear with weaker classes needing smaller linear XP and stronger ones greater linear XP. And as a pattern, he wants to hit that linear XP total right around when you hit maximum HD. And he's very much aware that the M-U is very squishy, but he wants NPC M-Us to be credible foes, so they need extra HD to not be too squishy. So M-U get 11 HD to the fighter's 9 HD. But that's a problem. He doesn't want to give the fighter more HD, because they'd be not squishy enough. So somehow he has to fit a class he knows needs greater XP requirements in such a way that by 11th level it needs only slightly more XP than the fighter needs to reach 9th level, while delaying the M-U spell progression by a level to slow their quadratic growth.

I think the solution here is more extreme than the one I've adopted, and involves putting the M-U XP requirements into "tiers". I ended up with two tiers (4th and under then above 4th) but probably 3 or even 4 tiers is required.

My gut feeling here.

1) Keep the classic numbers for level 2 (2500 for MU, 2000 for fighter, etc.) Keep the doubling until around level 5 for everyone.

2) Have every class gain HD until 10, then go static HP increase. More elegance with pretty much no flavor loss.

3) Take a look at the growth rate over a level range for each class. 5-10, 10-15, 15-20, or something equivalent. Apply some kind of scale to how much that growth should cost over that level range. I don't think it should approach the scaling of fighters (31x experience to get from 5 to 10) or clerics (almost 34x over the same level range), but closer to MU (12.5x) or thief (16x). Highly quadratic classes (like the MU) probably need a larger multiplier to account for their superior progression.

4) Apply a multiplier to the 5th level base, roughly equal to the 5th root of the multiplier, and smooth to get to level 10. Repeat for 15 and 20, based on a relative determination of their power growth rate over the same time frame.

 

[Celebrim]

My gut feeling here.

Your gut feelings involve taking 5th roots of things? You're gut feelings are a lot more exacting than mine.

I see where you are going with that, but if you are going to change so much then I don't think the classic numbers for level 2 are that important, nor is the idea of doubling every level until the 5th a sacred cow that I feel the need to keep alive. Your analysis should at least demonstrate to yourself how little importance there is in the long run how much XP it took to go from 1st to 2nd.

I do like how you nicely quantify what is wrong with Gygax's solution by pointing out that fighters need 31x the experience to go from 5th to 10th but MU need only 12.5x the experience for the same level range, somewhat opposite of what we'd expect based on their mechanics. It's a nice elegant way of explaining clearly what the problem is.

I don't think however the solution is to go to 10HD for all classes. The classes with smaller dice for their HD really do need those extra HD for balance reasons. That M-U have 11 HD, thieves have 10 HD and Clerics and Fighters have 9HD is not accidental or arbitrary. If anything, you could justify expanding that to M-U having 12HD, thieves having 11HD and Clerics 10HD. Druids and assassins and monks all have HD per level as a large advantage of the subclass. Indeed, it's a general feature of subclasses that they get bonus HD.

 

[LordBP]

Agreed.

What about wands that don't always directly replicate spells, e.g. Wand of Wonder?

(I don't at all buy in to the 3e idea that wands can only replicate spells, I found that both unnecessarily limiting and - worse - boring. Wands should be able to do all kinds of things.)

I would probably go with the maximum spell that the Wand of Wonder could cast and have that as equivalent as 1 charge if I would allow it to be recharged at all. Probably wouldn't allow it and would just say that the wand was created by a mistake in the wand creation process and can't be recharged.

 

[TwoSix]

Your gut feelings involve taking 5th roots of things? You're gut feelings are a lot more exacting than mine.

This is a nerdy topic, I assume we can handle exponents in a spreadsheet.

I see where you are going with that, but if you are going to change so much then I don't think the classic numbers for level 2 are that important, nor is the idea of doubling every level until the 5th a sacred cow that I feel the need to keep alive. Your analysis should at least demonstrate to yourself how little importance there is in the long run how much XP it took to go from 1st to 2nd.

That preservation is purely for flavor and aesthetics, not any sort of balance or verisimilitude. I have no particular attachment to it, other than respecting the overall concept of this series of posts in keeping a relatively light touch to changes.

I do like how you nicely quantify what is wrong with Gygax's solution by pointing out that fighters need 31x the experience to go from 5th to 10th but MU need only 12.5x the experience for the same level range, somewhat opposite of what we'd expect based on their mechanics. It's a nice elegant way of explaining clearly what the problem is.

Just in respect both to inflections points for balance, as well as to maintain a rough sense of verisimilitude for how the XP gain matches with the overall "journey" of the class, I'd like to see roughly the following.

-Thieves level fast, and cap out fast. They have the least potential growth available in their class concept, so if a game is going to get into the 7 figure XP range, thieves should be mostly done at that point, while other classes are continuing their growth.

-Fighters should be steady levelers, slower at the beginning when their greater survivability and offense has more weight, and relatively more quick at higher levels when their survivability gains and offensive prowess has mostly capped out.

-Clerics should be slow and steady, roughly on pace with fighters in the beginning thanks to superior survivability, and then more slowly at higher levels as their spells broaden their options and utility beyond healing.

-MUs should be quicker in the beginning, when their limited options and low survivability put them at highest risk, slow down to moderate levels through the late single digits, and then much slower through the teen levels as they approach their transcendant abilities.

I don't think however the solution is to go to 10HD for all classes. The classes with smaller dice for their HD really do need those extra HD for balance reasons. That M-U have 11 HD, thieves have 10 HD and Clerics and Fighters have 9HD is not accidental or arbitrary. If anything, you could justify expanding that to M-U having 12HD, thieves having 11HD and Clerics 10HD. Druids and assassins and monks all have HD per level as a large advantage of the subclass. Indeed, it's a general feature of subclasses that they get bonus HD.

The overall balance impact feels relatively small compared to the gain in elegance for my priorities, but I'm not wedded to the idea.