NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6837131" data-attributes="member: 996">Melee wasn't much of an alternative to spells for the Druid, in 1e (when I played a Druid through 12 levels, so it's kinda etched in my memory) the Druid got spells very rapidly, 2 at 1st level, plus wisdom bonus, 2nd level spells at 2nd, 3rd at third.  No, really.  So at second level, if an enemy was wearing metal armor, you do a lot of damage with Heat Metal, for instance.  Produce Flame was disappointing, but got much better in 2e (but you had to wait for 3rd level to get 2nd level spells).  Attacking with a weapon, especially in melee when the Druid had two 'prime requisite' stats competing with STR & DEX and nothing but leather armor and a 'small' wooden shield (they didn't make big ones for some reason), was more of a fall-back option.  You could cast Shillelagh and eke a bit more out of your melee attack, though.  No, Faerie Fire wasn't literally fire in the sense of doing fire damage, it was a very nice little spell though, made enemies glow, for a bonus to hit, and could sometimes cancel all sorts of vision-restricting shenanigans - and it was evocative of fire as part of the theme, sure.  Nor did I give a complete list, just what I remembered, but, yeah, 1 or 2 fire spells per spell level is about right.  Right around 10 spells of a given level, though, fewer at higher levels (and only up to 7th), in 1e - sub-classes didn't get big spell lists.  So, about 10% fire spells.  The 5e druid is actually less focused on fire, having a few lower-level spells, notably 3 2nd-level spells, but very few at higher levels, and some of them have been genericized.  Protection from Energy instead of Fire, full Conjure Elemental - upgrades to be sure, of course.Starting with 1e UA, you literally could:  Flame Blade.  I know that's not what you meant, I just couldn't resist. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Still wasn't a great idea to go into melee, though.  In 2e & 3e, Produce Flame got a duration and let you throw itty bitty fireballs repeatedly, so that was also a way to do it, and 5e Produce Flame is quite consistent with it.  And the 5e Druids still has Shillelagh - and Flame Blade.Not at all (though it sure helps if it isn't /universal/), it's just that the magic-less Wizard and the Commoner had abilities that were quite closely comparable.  You claimed to show that wasn't the case.  You didn't, rather, the actual abilities Wizard and Commoner classes illustrate the similarity quite dramatically.  While they weren't as neatly comparable in early editions ('commoners' essentially have no levels or class at all), while the wizard was low level, they were still pretty close:   Low hps, poor weapons, no armor.   In later editions (including PF), of course, the wizard gained at-will magic to differentiate him, even when his other spells were all expended and no magic items were available, so the commoner analogy no longer applied.</blockquote>

Verification