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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9886059" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yeah, sure.  If you went to 9th I'd say that a little less than half of the game was getting to 7th.  And if you went to 10th I'd say maybe a quarter of the game was getting to 7th, unless your GM just dumped treasure on you to power level you up.  One of the disconnects I may be having, even in the case of [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER], is just how many hours are spent on an "average" campaign.  I mean sure, you'd probably find room for magic missile then, and that is sort of the point.  Without those extra spell slots, spending a lot of spell slots at 7th level on a spell that really only does 14 damage to one target is not that easy to justify compared to more copies of say Detect Magic.  Because if your 7th level fighter subclass isn't doing an average of 14 damage a round, what's wrong with your party?  If he has high strength, presumably he has a melee build that by this point is doing two attacks per round, rarely misses, and hits for like 12 damage per attack.  If he didn't have high strength, presumably he has high Dex and a ranged build that is firing 3 times a round, rarely misses, and can double damage on hits so like 6d6+18 per round or something of that sort when in magic missile range.  It's nice to be able to sometimes fling some magic missiles at an enemy spellcaster or a charging gnoll that got around the front line, but doing point damage is not your job as an M-U.  Unlesss it keeps you alive, it's largely a wasted action and spell slot.Usually it only takes one go at it to realize how futile it is, and then they plan.  The most successful M-U in my 40 year career was in 3e.  He actually implemented (without consulting me) the "dart plan" we'd discussed way back in the 80's after UA came out.  He started as a 1st level fighter then switched to wizard.  The starting hit point bump was worth the lost level of spells, something no character optimizer would tell you.  In 1e, it was easier to multiclass and get that ability to wear armor and the hit point buff, but we had discussed the idea of starting as a dart specialist fighter, taking it up a few levels to get tanky and/or get even more attacks per round (because a dart specialist is pretty viable) and then dual classing into M-U for the rest of your career just for the hit point buff (and by 6th level or so you could also throw darts well again),  No one actually ever did it, but it would probably work.  The point is you have to do that sort of crap if you want to make it as a M-U.None of that takes hit points off the angry pair of mated ogres or survives dragon breath or whatever trouble eventually comes along.  Yes, it is possible to play really skillfully, and solve problems before they become problems but invariably the dice won't favor you or the situation is just straight forward and then you have to deal damage.  Which is why getting fireball was so meaningful.  Suddenly you are doing 18 damage PER target, and unlike a point attack, that's something the fighter can't really do.  For any fantasy experience, I'm pretty much certain to go back to my 3e homebrew which just felt so joyous to run compared to anything else I've ever run.  But if I were to run AD&D, it would be something like these rules so that it didn't feel like a struggle on both sides of the screen.</blockquote>

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