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<blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3530240" data-attributes="member: 16574">In Original D&amp;D clerics had fewer spells than magic-users, both smaller spell lists (4-6 spells per level for 5 levels vs. 8-14 spells per level for 6 levels for magic-users) and fewer spells per day (no spells at all until 2nd level, and generally slower progression thereafter -- though, oddly, they got 4th and 5th level spells before m-us -- at level 6 and 7 respectively, whereas m-us got them at levels 7 and 9). Classic (Basic, Expert, etc.) D&amp;D retains this progression more or less (though they did at least bump the spell lists up to 8 spells/level).1E AD&amp;D gave the clerics more spells to choose from (but still not as many as m-us), gave them spells starting at 1st level, and gave bonus spells for high Wisdom (without giving m-us bonus spells for high Int), so suddenly instead of a 3rd level cleric having 2 1st level spells to a 3rd level mage's 3 1st and 1 2nd level spells in OD&amp;D, in AD&amp;D the cleric has 4 1st and 3 2nd level spells (assuming Wis 16+) to the mage's 2 1st and 1 2nd level spells. There were two reasons for this: 1) in OD&amp;D clerics just weren't as good as mages, they were a second-class class -- AD&amp;D's beefing up of the cleric was an attempt to make the class more attractive to players; and 2) most of the cleric's spell capability is going to be spent on healing magic to the exclusion of everything else (no trading out slots for healing in those days) so the idea (presumably) was that by giving them more slots they could take the required healing magic and still have slots for other kinds of spells. Of course, neither of those quite worked as expected -- people still didn't want to play clerics, even beefed up ones, and everybody just used all those extra slots to take even more healing spells. A better solution (at least in retrospect) would probably have been to remove the healing spells from the spell-list and make them a class ability (like the paladin's, only better) and give them reduced (more like OD&amp;D) access to other spells.I can't speak to later editions.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="T. Foster, post: 3530240, member: 16574"] In Original D&D clerics had fewer spells than magic-users, both smaller spell lists (4-6 spells per level for 5 levels vs. 8-14 spells per level for 6 levels for magic-users) and fewer spells per day (no spells at all until 2nd level, and generally slower progression thereafter -- though, oddly, they got 4th and 5th level spells before m-us -- at level 6 and 7 respectively, whereas m-us got them at levels 7 and 9). Classic (Basic, Expert, etc.) D&D retains this progression more or less (though they did at least bump the spell lists up to 8 spells/level). 1E AD&D gave the clerics more spells to choose from (but still not as many as m-us), gave them spells starting at 1st level, and gave bonus spells for high Wisdom (without giving m-us bonus spells for high Int), so suddenly instead of a 3rd level cleric having 2 1st level spells to a 3rd level mage's 3 1st and 1 2nd level spells in OD&D, in AD&D the cleric has 4 1st and 3 2nd level spells (assuming Wis 16+) to the mage's 2 1st and 1 2nd level spells. There were two reasons for this: 1) in OD&D clerics just weren't as good as mages, they were a second-class class -- AD&D's beefing up of the cleric was an attempt to make the class more attractive to players; and 2) most of the cleric's spell capability is going to be spent on healing magic to the exclusion of everything else (no trading out slots for healing in those days) so the idea (presumably) was that by giving them more slots they could take the required healing magic and still have slots for other kinds of spells. Of course, neither of those quite worked as expected -- people still didn't want to play clerics, even beefed up ones, and everybody just used all those extra slots to take even more healing spells. A better solution (at least in retrospect) would probably have been to remove the healing spells from the spell-list and make them a class ability (like the paladin's, only better) and give them reduced (more like OD&D) access to other spells. I can't speak to later editions. [/QUOTE]

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