Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="thecasualoblivion" data-source="post: 4568729" data-attributes="member: 59096">While 1E/2E's magic and 3E's look similar, in practice they were wildly different:1. In 1E/2E, Cleric's had to actually memorize healing spells. The nature of the game required you to use at least half of your slots to heal, so Clerics were very limited prior to 3E.2. Prior to 3E, there were no bonus spells for high INT for Wizards. This makes a huge difference, particularly at lower levels.3. In 1E/2E, monsters tended to have far fewer HP. This made Fireball the primary offensive spell for the entire game, no matter what level. In 3E, dealing damage as a spellcaster was largely a waste of time.4. In 1E/2E, as you got higher in level save or die spells became less effective. Combined with optimization, as you gain higher levels in 3E save or die spells become more effective.5. In 1E/2E, combat was very fast. Because combat was fast, DMs generally threw more of them at you before resting. Going nova and the 5 minute workday were a lot rarer. In 3E, combat is slow and its not uncommon for adventure design to use 1-3 encounters per day as the norm. Thus, the 5 minute workday. 6. The tendancy in 1E/2E to have to deal with more encounters between resting due to adventure design, combined with fewer bonus spells for higher abilities and having to memorize healing resulted in combat spells becoming more important, and noncombat spells becoming less important. You really needed all the firepower you could get. Healing/utility wands and scrolls were also less available and in particular more difficult to create. 1E/2E spellcasters tended to be more artillery and less toolbox thanks to the nature of the game. 7. In 1E/2E, the exp system and plateau of character power around levels 9-11(particularly multiclass characters) tended to result in games going beyond that plateau being a rarity. Saying that 80-90% of 1E/2E games never went past level 11 isn't unreasonable. High level play ended up being far more common in 3E. Spellcasters become a bigger problem at higher levels, and high level spellcasters were less of a problem in earlier editions because people tended to not play those levels.I'm sure theres even more you can say here.</blockquote>

Verification