AD&D 1E What was so bad about unearthed arcana 1e?

[Flying Toaster]

I've been playing an illusionist in an urban campaign for almost two decades and I basically have to hold myself back or I'd easily dominate the entire campaign.

While having a DM who's not anti-illusion is a big part of making the class successful, learning how to be a good illusionist is something that experience really helps with. In every edition but 4E (where they were just a reskinning of regular wizards), illusionists are ludicrously powerful in many scenarios. (They're probably not who you'd bring to an undead-heavy campaign, though.)

I was the only person in my 1E group who ever played an illusionist. My gnome illusionist / thief became one of my favorite characters. I had originally envisioned him as a sort of harlequin jester who would mix sleight of hand (thieving skills) with sensory wonders (illusion spells) to pull off various trickster shenanigans, but the adventures (including an adapted X2 Castle Amber) did not offer many opportunities for that. But I did pretty well fighting with short sword and dagger, shooting a short bow, and blasting bad guys with Chromatic Orb and Color Spray, so in effect he played more like the classic elf fighter / mage. I tried to look for opportunities to trick opponents with illusions, but TSR dungeon crawl modules did not always make that easy. One of his best exploits happened when evil monks tried to throw poisoned daggers at us and missed. He picked them up and threw them back, hitting one monk who failed his save and died!

 

[James Gasik]

A friend of mine played a variant Druid of Rhiannon out of a Dragon issue. But they were a very different class, with the ability to Turn Animals. Outside of that, I didn't see much out of Druids until 3e. It was strange- the Druid had some incredibly powerful spells, but the casting time or conditions required to make the most out of them usually made them impractical as memory serves (even if they did have a spell that could do 1000 damage!).

 

[Lanefan]

A friend of mine played a variant Druid of Rhiannon out of a Dragon issue. But they were a very different class, with the ability to Turn Animals. Outside of that, I didn't see much out of Druids until 3e. It was strange- the Druid had some incredibly powerful spells, but the casting time or conditions required to make the most out of them usually made them impractical as memory serves (even if they did have a spell that could do 1000 damage!).

We converted Druids to Nature Clerics in about 1983 to save having to design a whole other class that would be the same as Druid but pray for spells etc. like a Cleric. "Druid" as a name is also very much tied to one specific culture, which doesn't make sense when many different cultures can support a similar concept.

That said, over the years they've slowly crept up in power in our system where other classes haven't, to the point where they now need a fairly serious reining in. And that's without ever having cast the 1000-points-of-damage spell! (Creeping Doom, it's called)

 

[Sacrosanct]

The new druid and illusionist spells in particular made those underpowered classes a bit more capable.

The illusionist was underpowered, but the druid was one of the best at lower levels. People forget that you got your 2nd level spells at 2nd level, and 3rd level spells at 3rd level, and 4th level spells at 6th level--all much earlier than other casters. A 3rd level druid with call lightning is pretty crazy.

I have vague memories of the Bounty Hunter and Jester too.

Holy cow were there a lot of them: https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24436

My favorite Dragon classes were the Bounty Hunter and Duelist.

As for UA, the only parts I didn't like were the crazy weapon spec rules, and the new stat generation method. Banned that extremely quickly. Everything else I never had an issue with, not the barbarian, and not the cavalier.

 

[James Gasik]

Enchantment and Illusion magic are wildly inconsistent in D&D. The ability to beguile and trick others with magic could, in fact, be quite powerful, and that's part of the problem, I think. If an Illusionist pulls off something with a level 2 spell that other casters can only do with higher level spells, many DM's tend to feel like the players are "getting away with something", and we can't have that!

There's also something deeply rooted in our psyches that hates to be tricked. We like to think we're not gullible, that we can't be conned or fooled easily, despite all evidence to the contrary. You can con people into buying bridges and out of their wealth. The human eye is the organ we rely on the most, but it's not our most reliable sense.

And there are DM's who especially don't like it when their NPC's are being tricked by a silly illusion or enchantment. Wording a Command or Suggestion properly involves the same kind of legalistic attention of detail one expects from a Wish spell, with everyone looking to exploit a loophole.

Many creatures have resistances or even immunities to these kinds of spells as well. Illusion, in particular, rewards "skilled play" with it's open-ended effects more than most other kinds of magic. In the hand of a cunning player, with a permissive DM, you can get away with murder. In less ideal situations, you'd be better off conjuring the real thing with magic than playing around with "fake" versions of other spells.

The 1e Illusionist not only suffers from this at many tables, but then you have the added insult that, at the heights of power, you're allowed to cast...low level Magic-User spells! It really feels like the game books themselves are saying "but you're not a real spellcaster, of course!".

And it's not like the Magic-User couldn't cast a good number of Illusions already, just adding to the "why play an Illusionist?" question.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to play an Enchanter or an Illusionist. But past experience has told me that outside of "does exactly what it says on the tin" Illusions like Invisibility or Blur, you can easily avoid the entire school of magic and do just fine. And Enchantments are even worse!

And that's before we even get into the ability to disbelieve in illusions in AD&D! It shouldn't be this way, but too often, it seems like the deck is stacked against you for no real reason other than nobody wants to be fooled.

 

[mixmastashizz]

The 1e Illusionist not only suffers from this at many tables, but then you have the added insult that, at the heights of power, you're allowed to cast...low level Magic-User spells! It really feels like the game books themselves are saying "but you're not a real spellcaster, of course!".

To be fair, you're still casting those low level spells as a high level character. That magic missile is coming out of the gate with some force! And burning hands will actually deal damage that makes getting that close to enemies worth it!

 

[Lanefan]

Enchantment and Illusion magic are wildly inconsistent in D&D. The ability to beguile and trick others with magic could, in fact, be quite powerful, and that's part of the problem, I think. If an Illusionist pulls off something with a level 2 spell that other casters can only do with higher level spells, many DM's tend to feel like the players are "getting away with something", and we can't have that!

Illusionists rock! Unless you're in a dungeon where the foes are all undead, in which case you brought the wrong character.

Many creatures have resistances or even immunities to these kinds of spells as well. Illusion, in particular, rewards "skilled play" with it's open-ended effects more than most other kinds of magic. In the hand of a cunning player, with a permissive DM, you can get away with murder. In less ideal situations, you'd be better off conjuring the real thing with magic than playing around with "fake" versions of other spells.

What can work really well is, in tandem with a Magic User, doubling up on the damage spells: you cast a real fireball, then I'll follow up with a fake, then you do another real one...

The 1e Illusionist not only suffers from this at many tables, but then you have the added insult that, at the heights of power, you're allowed to cast...low level Magic-User spells! It really feels like the game books themselves are saying "but you're not a real spellcaster, of course!".

Yeah, that always bugged me as well. I've never quite seen the point.

Problem is, I haven't ever come up with a good high-level Illusionist spell to fill the hole were I to take that out.

And it's not like the Magic-User couldn't cast a good number of Illusions already, just adding to the "why play an Illusionist?" question.

MUs don't get Phantsasmal Force till 3rd level - Illusionists get it at 1st - and I'm not sure if they get Improved PF or Spectral Force at all. Those spells are the Illusionist's bread and butter.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to play an Enchanter or an Illusionist. But past experience has told me that outside of "does exactly what it says on the tin" Illusions like Invisibility or Blur, you can easily avoid the entire school of magic and do just fine.

I don't do magic 'schools' as such; they're something else I never really saw the point of.

And that's before we even get into the ability to disbelieve in illusions in AD&D! It shouldn't be this way, but too often, it seems like the deck is stacked against you for no real reason other than nobody wants to be fooled.

Whether NPCs disbelieve illusions is very much a DM call; it also depends just how believable the caster's illusion really is (or, in one case we still laugh about today, whether the caster yells to the whole battlefield that she's about to cast an illusion; forgetting for as moment that the enemies can understand her just as well as her friends can).

 

[Lanefan]

To be fair, you're still casting those low level spells as a high level character. That magic missile is coming out of the gate with some force! And burning hands will actually deal damage that makes getting that close to enemies worth it!

I always read it that a 16th-level Illusionist casts these as if a 1st-level MU, with the caster level increasing as the Illusionist's level increases (1.e. 17 = 2, 18 = 3, etc.).

 

[mixmastashizz]

I always read it that a 16th-level Illusionist casts these as if a 1st-level MU, with the caster level increasing as the Illusionist's level increases (1.e. 17 = 2, 18 = 3, etc.).

It says nothing of the sort just says that you gain four 1st level magic user spells but they use your seventh level spell slots if you cast them. No language about downplaying the power to a 1st level equivalent MU. Just that they come from the 1st level MU list, and you gain an additional 1st level MU spell from the list for each level above 14.

Edit: I suppose you could read that you cast the spells as a 14th level MU, but 14th level is just when you gain 7th level spell slots, therefore I don't think it's restricting the power to that level.

 

[Mannahnin]

I actually think you are correct, but both classes seemed to be underrated and overlooked back then. They both had slightly quirky abilities that could be limited or even neutralized if the DM interpreted the rules in a particularly strict way, or if the adventure did not offer good opportunities.

Adding to the chorus on how dependent illusionists are both on DM goodwill and reasonable adjudication and on player creativity. If you've got both they can be excellent (though vulnerable to stuff like undead). If either element is missing you probably suck. There was a very good article in Dragon 130 called Hold Onto Your Illusions! which gave unsure DMs some solid guidelines and additional rules for adjudicating them, but IME DMs who let illusions be reliable tools were uncommon enough that the class was usually regarded as a loser.

The other abilities were a grab bag of pseudo-“Celtick” Stonehenge hippie tropes, and you had to get creative to use them effectively. Scimitar was always the best melee weapon choice (next best thing to a war scythe?). One point I rarely see in discussions of the 1E druid is the fact that their spellcasting could be significantly weakened if the DM wanted to be very strict about the rules for mistletoe as a material component, making adventures in environments where mistletoe does not grow very difficult.

I was wondering when someone would mention this. The rules on mistletoe freshness and harvesting meant that if played by the book nearly all your spells would be at reduced efficacy compared to the actual spell description.