The Stupid Of 5E

So in an attempt to "lighten the mood" (blogger just deleted a rather long comment I was scribbling re the conflict in Ukraine...I'll take that as "a sign"), I'm going to go ahead and denigrate the current edition of D&D for a bit. 

[how is that lightening the mood? Because my readers appear to enjoy my rantings like a crazed lunatic and, in the end, it doesn't matter terribly whether one finds an edition of Dungeons & Dragons to be "cool" or "crap." It's just a game...play it if you like, or don't. Besides, venting appears to be good for the spleen or something]

*ahem*

SO...here's the deal: a couple posts back, I wrote about how my child purchased the 5E PHB (with my approval and blessing, though with HIS money, not mine) in order to learn the new system for a game his friend intended to run (said game never having materialized...they're 11 years old, you know?). Well, he read the book and pretty much hated a lot of it...so much so that even when I offered to buy a copy of the DMG and MM and actually run the game he vehemently rejected to offer out of hand. 

[I have little doubt the boy would slap Satan in the chops if Ol' Scratch appeared on the road with a bag of temptations]

Anyway: I'll admit I was slightly disappointed, just because I was curious to see what would happen if I actually ran the game in the manner to which I've become accustomed...

[just by the way, I've done so little writing the last couple-three months, I'm finding my typing skills to be woefully rusty...I keep misspelling words and hitting the wrong keys and generally annoying myself. Sorry, but that needed to be vented, too...]

...a playstyle that is most assuredly NOT the type currently in fashion with the New D&D crowd. 

However, I only felt comfortable making my offer because I'd been reading the books (the DMG on-line) co-currently with the boy, doing my own studying. And I decided, early on, that I would keep a running list of all the stupid found in the 5E game. Seriously, I just started a running list on my phone's Notes app called "5E Stupid." It was last updated 3/20/2022 at 9:04 am. For posterity (and so that I can delete the thing off my phone) and for my own amusement, I present it here.

In no particular order:

• Eldritch bolts (cantrips in general)
• Cost of normal plate armor = cost of gauntlets of ogre power PLUS immovable rod PLUS helm of telepathy (economy)
• Wights > Specters (and no energy drain in the game)
• 300 days to craft plate armor (economy)

[if there's a common thread, it's the host of issues with the fantasy economy of the game. The game design seems more of arbitrary, video game economy than anything based or grounded in reality. For example, it's an easy Google search to find information on the historical forging of plate armor and, NO, it did not take ten months to manufacture. When designing a living, breathing campaign world, these details become important and their missteps become glaring]

• Less XP needed to get from 11th level to 12th level than from 10th level to 11th level (total arbitrariness)

[again, this is just sloppy, nonsensical design]

• Hellish rebuke (3d10 damage, 60' cantrips available to all tieflings of 3rd+ level)
• Humans demonstrably weaker than every other race in the book (no skill proficiencies, spells, abilities, etc. for a cumulative bonus of +1.5), promoting a non-human-centric game.

[i.e. not D&D as originally conceived]

• Staff of Withering (non-magical magic)

[again, this note...these are all just notes...requires some explanation. I'd invite unfamiliar folks to read the original description of this magic item as presented in Book 2 of the LBBs, or even the description from the DMG: so much potential for one's game, so many plots and ideas that can stem from the consequences of its use, whether against the players or prominent NPCs, so much FLAVOR in a single item of enchantment...powerful, fairy tale stuff. Contrast that with the 5E version:

The staff can be wielded as a normal quarterstaff. On a hit, it deals damage as a normal quarterstaff. and you can expend 1 charge to do an extra 2d10 necrotic damage to the target. In addition, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or have disadvantage for one hour on any ability check or saving throw that uses Strength or Constitution.

That's it. That's all it does. Fail a save and you have disadvantage for an hour. The damage inflicted by the thing doesn't even do as much damage as the hellish rebuke that can be cast at will by any tiefling of 3rd level or higher. Were the designers actually trying to strip all the magic and wonder out of the D&D game? Their staff of withering is but one example]

• Adamantine plate armor is cheaper than normal plate armor (as an "uncommon" magic item, its value is only 500 gold pieces, compared to plate armor's 1,500 g.p, value).
• Limits of "attunement" (attuning magic items in general).
• Evil high priest cantrips (spare the dying or chill touch are the only available options...which is appropriate)

[can't remember what I meant by "appropriate;" I think I meant it sarcastically with regard to spare the dying]

• Average shopkeeper earns 36.5 g.p. per month (after expenses and paying salary of employee); cost for "aristocratic lifestyle" is 10 g.p. per month (making every baker and shoemaker an aristocrat).
• Medieval bakers would be expected to bake/sell 80 (4 pound) loaves per day. To earn the AVERAGE shopkeeper income (not profit), a 5E baker would need to sell an AVERAGE of 3,475 loaves per day (2 c.p. isn't  a bad price given that 2-3 english pennies...1/240th of a LB...is fairly similar). Considering that a medieval village of 2,500 people could expect to host four bakers (and each medieval person ate roughly 1# of bread per day), that's a surplus of 11,400 pounds (more than 5.5 TONS of bread per day)...even assuming NO ONE is baking their own!
• True polymorph allows for substantial creation of wealth (by bards, warlocks, wizards) unlike the limitations of the wish spell.
• Wraiths > specters; wraiths only CR 5, specters CR 3.

[ha! I repeated myself. But to be fair, I was rather flabbergasted by this change, not to mention the nerfing of such (previously) feared undead phantoms]

• All damage is attrition (HP) based; purple worm poison, or being swallowed (for example) simply do "damage" of various types. 5E appears to have a phobia of "save or die" effects.
• AT THE SAME TIME "revivify" becomes available as a 3rd level spell (for clerics of 5th+ level) with raising carrying NO penalties, so long as the spell is used within 1 minute (10 combat rounds in 5E) of death, for a minimal (300 g.p.) cost.

[two notes: the 5E version of the vorpal sword DOES retain (somewhat) its auto-kill effect so kudos (I guess); also 300 g.p. may NOT be all that minimal...it's difficult to tell with the general wonkiness of the 5E economy. However, the point remains that for a game that appears to fear PCs inadvertently dying, it sure is easy to bring folks back from the dead]

• If you can attack me, I can attack you (re: "reach" from larger creatures).

[this was with regard to combat maneuvering. If a troll...or whatever...is going to swipe at me with a long arm, it doesn't matter that I'm armed with a dagger instead of a spear. If he can "touch" me, my weapon can touch him. His effective range is zero because he's unarmed..."reach" should only come into play when using weapons (like a pike versus a knife)]

Aaaaand...that's where my notes end. They could have continued, but I think 3/20 was around the time I decided there was no use examining it further when no one in our home had any desire to play the thing.

Folks should note that ALL of these things are complaints I had with regard to actual DESIGN...there's plenty of "stupid" (IMO) regarding the way the game is written, choices of aesthetic, of focus, etc. But these decisions of design...things like the way the crafting or finances or spells or magic items are handles...are things that I see undermining any type of meaningful (or satisfying) long-term play using the 5E system. They were things I found so striking that I felt compelled to jot them down.

Of course, people DO play 5E, and have been playing it for years, so it's not really appropriate to stamp it with any type of "failure" judgment. The game has been successful...clearly...at its general aims (reclaim market share, generate returning consumers, make lots of money). It's also, clearly, not my cup of tea. 

All right, that's enough for now (deleting page of notes...and...done!). The next couple days are going to be pretty busy for me, so for folks looking for content, take a listen to Settembrini's podcast interview of Trent Foster Smith. It's about three hours long and has some fascinating insights, as well as some things I wouldn't mind addressing in my next (hopefully soon) blog post.

Later, Gators!

Finding the Gnome

I am absurdly happy this morning (despite little annoyances) because, as of about 9:30am, I finally, finally have a decent write-up of the illusionist class.

Hmm. Actually, "write-up" is a phrase too far...I have the nuts-n-bolts figured out (including spell lists) and scribbled on a spreadsheet. Sometime in the next couple-few days I'll get the chance to write the class up (hope-hope). But the point is, I've got the mechanics nailed down, especially the aforementioned spell lists which was a major sticking point. Turns out that going back to OD&D was the (as with many things) the cureall for what ails me: building from the ground up is so much smoother (even if it's time-consuming) when you start your construction on the foundation stone.

But we'll address Ye Old Illusionist in another post...this one is about a (slightly) related subject: the gnome.

As they appear in OD&D

I haven't blogged about gnomes much at all over the years. They're just not...well, just not a subject that's come up. They're not a class in B/X (though I included one in The Complete B/X Adventurer) and even back in my AD&D years, I don't remember seeing all that many.

Scratch that, I don't remember seeing ANY.  As a DM, I probably wrote one up as an NPC (I did that at one time or another with most all of the various class/races), but I'm sure it never saw play at the table. And if I had to guess, we neglected the gnome mostly because A) the racial level limits prevented high level advancement, and B) there was a general lack of enthusiasm for illusionists in our circle (and the ability to multi-class as an illusionist is one of the gnome's strongest recommendations). Personally, I've played one or two in Advanced Labyrinth Lord games (generally, assassin/illusionists) but these were all one-off games, not long term campaign play.

So let's talk about the gnome now...prior to starting up an OD&D campaign, I was deconstructing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with the thought of creating an AD&D campaign. As such (and since then) I have done a LOT of reading/research of the OD&D books, pre-'78 copies of The Dragon, and old records of The Strategic Review (the periodical/magazine that directly preceded The Dragon). For most of AD&D rules, I can find precursors in these older texts...as one would expect, given that AD&D was, by and large, a reorganizing of the complete OD&D material into a readily usable (and uniform) format.

The gnome, however, is not present.

At least not as a player character. The "gnome" has been around as long as CHAINMAIL, where it appears as part of the entry for dwarves:

DWARVES (and Gnomes): Because their natural habitat is deep under the ground, these stout folk operate equally well day or night. Although they are no threat to the larger creatures, Trolls, Ogres, and Giants find them hard to catch because of their small size, so county one-half normal kills when Dwarves and Gnomes fight with them, for either attacks upon the Dwarves and Gnomes or returns...Goblins and Kobolds are their natural (and hated) enemies, and Dwarves (Gnomes) will attack Goblins (Kobolds) before any other enemies in sight...However, Dwarves and Gnomes will not have to roll an "obedience die" (as do Knights) to follow orders...

They are listed on the same line of the "Fantasy Reference Table" and they have the exact same move, charge, special abilities, attack, and defend ratings. There is NO difference between the two, and they are both listed on the side of Law.

In Men & Magic (OD&D book 1), the section on dwarves makes no reference to gnomes, except with regard to languages in which the text states dwarves speak Gnome, Kobold, and Goblin (interesting it does not reference them speaking their own Dwarvish language...unlike the entry for Elves). The reference for the race in the alignment list shows them as Dwarves/Gnomes (rather than two separate entries); the only other "double species" so listed is Goblins/Kobolds.

In Monsters & Treasures (OD&D book 2) the entry for gnomes IS separate from the dwarves and says only the following:

GNOMES: Slightly smaller than Dwarves, and with longer beards, these creatures usually inhabit the hills and lowland burrows as opposed to the mountainous homes which Dwarves choose. They are more reclusive than their cousins, but in all other respects resemble Dwarves.

Their lines in the Monster Reference chart are nearly identical, mainly differing in treasure type and lair percentage.

The Greyhawk supplement is the first time OD&D offers a physical description of the dwarf character  type and here gnomes ARE referenced, stating:

Dwarves are about four feet tall, stocky of build, weigh 150 pounds, shoulders very broad, their skin a ruddy tan, brown or gray, and are of various types (hill, mountain, or burrowers) (such as gnomes).

Greyhawk makes no reference to using gnomes as a player character, nor do any of the later supplements. Neither do I find any reference to gnomes as player characters in The Strategic Review and early (pre-AD&D) issues of The Dragon magazine. Their sudden appearance as a playable race in the AD&D PHB is slightly strange...unless one considers they were being used as such all along.

Look: in OD&D, monsters (other than humans found in dungeons) do not have "levels of experience." Only player characters (or those with the potential to be player characters: men, elves, etc.) have levels. You'll find no group of goblins or lizard men containing a 5th level leader for groups over 50 or 200 or whatever. Liches (appearing in Greyhawk) are a slight exception as they were a high level Magic-User "in life;" the presumption is that now, as a monster, they no longer adventure nor advance in level. Tritons use spells "commensurate with their hit dice," though not mapping on an equal basis (5-7 hit dice mapping to 2nd-4th level ability) and hit dice are based on size and strength, not necessarily experience gained (some tritons are just born bigger, better, and stronger).

1977 Monster Manual

But gnomes, as stated "in all other respects [besides reclusiveness] resemble dwarves." And dwarves do have character classes: one "above average fighter" (of various levels) for every 40 dwarves appearing. Thus, gnomes, too, would have above average fighters of various levels. This is born out in the 1977 Monster Manual (released before the original Players Handbook) which shows gnomes encountered in groups of more than forty having fighter types up to 6th level (normal dwarf maximum per OD&D) and clerics up to 7th (again, normal dwarf maximum for NPC clerics, per Greyhawk). Thus, other than size (1' shorter, per the MM) gnomes appear to correspond in all aspects to their dwarf "cousins."

For me, this is enough to allow a player to claim their OD&D "dwarf" character is, in fact, a gnome...that gnomes are simply a smaller variation of the dwarf species. As I use the increased level limits found in Greyhawk (17 strength dwarves may progress to 7th level and 18 strength dwarves to 8th level), I would limit any such character to a maximum of 16 strength, seeing as how there doesn't appear to be gnomes over the 6th level fighting experience. Easy-peasy.

So then...from whence comes the idea of gnome illusionists?

That's an even more interesting quandary (at least for those who, like me, enjoy this type of pseudo-research). Dwarves are notoriously non-magical in the early editions of the game; they even have a higher resistance to magic than other character types (as do halflings) perhaps as a justification for their lack of wizards...despite raising the sticky question of who it is manufacturing all these dwarven warhammers +3?

My initial thought was that this was a svirfneblin thing. The "deep gnome" race, introduced by Gygax in his classic adventure Shrine of the Kuo-Toa is as notorious in its magic abilities as dwarves are in their absence. Like the Drow, the svirfnebli possess a number of innate spell abilities (summoning earth elementals?!), magical resistance, and enchanted accoutrements that make them inappropriate as player characters (*AHEM*), and I reasoned that perhaps the idea for gnomes as a magic-using (or, rather, illusion using) race might have germinated with this unique adventure.

A little cheap research, however, turns up the fact that Gygax both D1 and D2 after completing the AD&D Players Handbook, as a way of blowing off some steam. Gnomes already had their illusionist capabilities by then, and the svirneblin was simply a suped-up version of the gnome.

So then...what? Peter Aronson's illusionist class first appears in The Strategic Review #4 and neither the original article, nor the class "update" in The Dragon #1 make any remarks about dwarves or gnomes. In fact, no remarks are made regarding ANY racial restrictions for the class, though Aronson's (unpublished) notes clearly state "Where not otherwise specified, they are as [Magic-Users]." 

[a DM going by that statement might be inclined to allow the class to be played by both elves and half-elves, actually]

So what's the deal? Where does the idea come from? Who's to blame/responsible? There are no nonhuman deities in Supplement IV (Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes) that might show a "divine influence" on the species. So somehow we went from a short, burrowing variation on dwarves to the tricky illusionist types found from the PHB on to the present. What's the deal?

As near as I can tell, the first (and only) reference to gnomes having any magical ability comes from the original Monster Manual. For the most part, the entry for gnomes transcribes all the same OD&D material found in the original texts pertaining to dwarves (with some elaboration)...except for a single, additional sentence in the paragraph on special abilities:

"It is rumored that there exists gnomes with magical abilities up to 4th level, but this has not been proved."

It is rumored? Um, okay...where? When? By whom?

Here's what I think: structurally, mechanically, gnomes were no different from dwarves. The main differences between the two were size, temperament, and habitat, all things (more or less) related to each other (hills are smaller than mountains, thus gnomes are smaller than dwarves; hills are easier reached by humans, so gnomes must be more reclusive in nature to prevent their proliferation in the "realms of man").  However, to add variety, gnomes must be distinguishable from dwarves, and the distinct mechanic, from a dungeon-delving perspective, is their lack of size...thus, a lack of strength, and corresponding lack of fighting ability (or potential fighting ability) compared to their larger cousins.

But who wants to play a small, weak dwarf? Not many folks. The solution, then, is to give them some magical ability...something conspicuously absent from dwarf player characters. Of course, you can't give them straight magic-user abilities...that steps on the toes of the thing that makes elves (and half-elves) special. And clerical spells? No...Clerics are the purview of human characters (except for NPCs) as are druids, the "neutral option" when it comes to human magic (as outlined in Eldritch Wizardry).

So illusionists, the only new magical option not addressed in the OD&D books. When the gnome is made into its own separate racial option in AD&D (as opposed to a variation of dwarf), illusionist ends up assigned to the species as a possible class option. And just to keep it really special, no other race (besides humans) even has the option of illusionist as a career.

The OD&D version...well, my OD&D version...would allow progression a little higher than 4th, however. 6th gives the character to access those 3rd level spells that really help a "reclusive" gnome community to hide in plain sight (nondetection, hallucinatory terrain), as well as drive away nosy human neighbors (fear, confusion). Since I'm using Aronson's original experience progression chart (as published in The Strategic Review), I'd stop them short of 8th level ability: no first level MU spells, no shadow monsters or improved invisibility (sorry gnome backstabbers). Call it 6th level base, 7th maximum for gnomes of 17+ intelligence.

All right...that's enough gnome talk for the day. Though I will mention (perhaps to discuss later) that there are absolutely no gnome thieves (nor multi-class thieves) mentioned in the 1E Monster Manual's description of the gnome race. For that matter, there is no mention of thieves (or multi-class thieves) in the descriptions of dwarves, elves, or even halflings. Now this I find extremely interesting.

But I'll write about that later.

The Tao of Trade

Pictured here is an image capture from my phone...sorry, I'm not a great photographer. The dogs are my "running beagles," not quite as spry as they were ten years ago (but then, neither am I). The colorful hex map on my coffee table is the pull-out map from my copy of GAZ1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos, purchased some 30 odd years ago, and the subject of my A-Z blog posts in the month of April.

The scale of the map is 8 miles to the hex. The Grand Duchy isn't all that big: I estimate the dimensions of its land mass to be roughly equal to Washington State, which itself is only slightly larger than Uruguay, the second smallest country by area in South America.

[note to future self: if using South America as a campaign setting, probably going to want to use a larger scale than 8 miles to the hex; how about 48 just for sanity's sake??]

And that's the reason I'm looking at the map: it's small. And I'm working on trying to learn the basics of Alexis Smolensk's trade system.

Alexis is a mad genius; most folks looking at his stuff will come to the conclusion that there's no need to go into the depths of world modeling (i.e. "modeling game rules based on real world subjects") that he does. And...to a degree...those folks are right. You can play D&D for years...nay, decades!...without ever worrying about the price of grain, or whether or not it's the rainy season, or how good your camp cook happens to be. I know it's possible to play without that level of detail, because I've done it myself. And just because you play a simpler game doesn't make it a "bad" game...heck, I wouldn't even call it a worse game. It's just...simpler.

And I'm looking to play something a bit more advanced.

So a coherent economy, not even a "real economy" (as Alexis will tell you, he doesn't really model "reality," he's just trying for consistency, and only so long as it improves his game), seems like a good way to start deepening and enriching my campaign...just as picking some real world geography and history as a setting can also create depth and richness. But, of course, I can't just implement something that I don't understand...that would indeed be batshit crazy. So I need to practice with something small.

And Karameikos is pretty darn small.

The nice thing about GAZ1 (What?! Actual praise for the GAZ?!) is that it does a good job documenting the demographics of its territory. It doesn't matter to me if it's based on realistic figures or not...you could always go back and justify weird population spikes and decreases based on plagues, monsters, refugees, or the presence of "magical healing waters" or whatever. What matters for my purpose is that the information has already been written down for me (thank you Aaron Allston!) and it's not a huge chunk of info.

There's only 13 detailed communities in the Grand Duchy, ranging in size from 650 to 500,000 (each community has its population given). Yes, there are also the scattered Callarii elves...about 7,500 in communities of 100-200, but I figure they'll have a single "market place" somewhere in their forest north of Specularum. Thus a total of 14 markets.

The Vyalia elves, keeping their distance from the other communities of Karameikos, won't count for purposes of "trade," and thus it doesn't matter that I have no population figures for them. Perhaps they live some sort of weird communist lifestyle, or perhaps they exist solely on what they can raid and pillage...it won't really matter unless the PCs somehow end up in their woods and want to buy shit from them.

Likewise the estimated 6,000 people scattered in random communities of 2 to 200 don't matter much; if they want to trade, they'll probably be going to the nearest market so, you know, ignore them.

[hmmmm...actually, just noticed that Rifllian IS the "trading town" for the Callarii, so there's no need to add an extra market. Well, that just made my job easier...]

It is unfortunate that the GAZ is a little light on information about what is produced and traded in each community...I mean, there is information there, it's just sparse and I'll have to fill in a lot of the blanks myself. And that's fine; as I said, it'll still serve my purpose. I'm sure the authors weren't intending for a person to try to create a living economy out of the information when they were writing it; I'd guess they simply wanted a more detailed setting in order to make for a deeper game experience. And if I can get a handle on this trade thing it will definitely do that (though perhaps not in THIS particular fantasy setting).

Anyway, that's what I'm working on at the moment. I am going to assume that I probably will end up "dumbing down" Alexis's original system; I sincerely doubt I'll end up with 1500+ references (probably more like a couple dozen). But I'm very interested to see if I can get it to work even a little bit...I can't see the exercise being anything but helpful for when I start building my own campaign setting.
: )

Powers of the Prophets (Part 2)

[continued from here; sorry that took awhile!]

But in a GAME where your character is simply a figure on the playing field, getting killed takes you out of play…as does being poisoned or paralyzed or diseased or reduced to so few hit points that the next blow WILL kill you and take you out of the game. And being out of the game means not playing. And the point of the game is to play, right? So how to provide an in-game reason to bring someone back from the dead (i.e. “back into the field of play”)?

“Lazarus come OUT!”

Christianity may not have the first tales of resurrection (Osiris came back from the dead after all…though he was already a god himself, and his “raising” simply put him back into heaven rather than raising him to new mortal life on earth)…*ahem* Christianity may not be the first tales of bringing someone back from the dead, but it is certainly a well-known and prominent place for such tales. MIGHTY HEALING one might call it…with the power of God anything was possible, even the raising of the dead. So the Bible would tell you (and so it’s been telling many, many people for centuries).

[as a side note, I was reading Julian Johnson's Path of the Masters a few years back...about enlightened masters and the importance of finding a guru for one's own path to enlightenment...and one thing claimed in the book was that ANY enlightened teacher (i.e. "a sainted master") has the powers exhibited by Jesus in the Bible: things like healing folks and raising the dead; however, according to the book, most enlightened masters choose NOT to do this, because suffering individuals are working off karmic debt, and preventing them from doing this (as Jesus did with his miraculous healings) is a BAD THING and will in fact place a negative karmic burden on your own soul. To me this is a load of bunk...even if such were the case (i.e. that suffering people should be allowed to suffer for the good of their souls), I personally can't believe someone would take a negative "hit" to their karma by freeing someone from their suffering; that just doesn't jibe with my world view of a caring God...maybe I'm a rosy idealist, but I'm guessing Christ didn't reincarnate as a cockroach because he cured a bunch of lepers]

SO...having a mighty Saint in your game, one able to channel the power of God (and hopefully doing His Will on Earth by acting in such a way) gives you an in-game justification for a mechanic that allows you to bring PCs back from the dead. Meaning your game can continue.

Even if your player characters aren’t high enough level to have such a miraculous supplication granted, the mere presence of such in the rules implies characters may encounter or entreat NPC clerics to do their “raising” for them (probably for a cost that helps to keep the PCs' bulging bags and backpacks light of their cash). Likewise with other clerical spells…originally, all were in aid of PRESERVING party members (including the creation of food and water for the starving and thirsty). For the most part, the cleric spell list…and here I mean the true cleric spells, not the magic-user ones deemed “appropriate” for clerics…the unique clerical spells are game mechanics designed to “save” PCs who failed their saving throws or took their damage or got themselves killed. They are spells designed to MITIGATE the impact of BAD LUCK and POOR PLAY.

[ooo…now THAT sounds harsh!]

That is to say, those spells other than the Mosaic spells (God always showed up as more of a “vengeful god” back in the days of the Old Testament). At least the speak with animals and plants gives you the ability to circumvent altercations before they begin (mmm…as does find traps). But the spells that see the MOST use in game tend to be the curing and healing and raising spells. And yeah, in a game where a single blunder of bad judgment can mean as much disaster as a single bad die roll, it’s kind of important to have something that can off-set or mitigate these effects.

Maybe.

Remember, the original point here was to figure out WHAT the inclusion of the cleric brings to the game that the class’s exclusion would cost you. In looking at the spells here I have a couple thoughts twisting through my skull:

#1 Including these spells in this form allows PCs to mitigate such things as poison, disease, damage, death, etc. In effect, this makes the campaign setting a very forgiving world (no pun intended)…which may or may not be your cup of tea. Do you want PCs to plunge ahead, heedless of consequence, knowing that only a single survivor is necessary to “bring ‘em back alive?” Are you afraid that without such easy magic close at hand your players will get all tentative and skulky and invest in a herd of cattle to drive through the dungeon before them, setting off traps and distracting monsters? How deeply do you want this to impact your world (pro or con?)?

#2 Having these spells as a “divine” form of magic preserves a LIMIT on what magicians (and sorcerers and wizards etc.) can do, which I LIKE. I like the idea that magic-users can’t create permanent effects (like healing), without resorting to magic item creation. It echoes myth and folklore and fairytales…like the magician who has the stupendous castle created wholly with magic that dissolves into nothingness when the enchanter dies. Or the sword & sorcery stories where magic spells are mainly of the mesmerize and mind control (illusion) style magic…with the exception of the occasional hideous death attack hex.

If you decide you need to keep this preservation mechanic, but don’t want to have the divine trappings of the same….either because you don’t want monotheist-style holy men in your game, or you can’t find a way to rectify a Judeo-Christian-themed spell list with a pagan priesthood…then your only option is to include these “get out of jail free cards” in the magic-user spell list…and that's a pretty f’ing lazy way to go.

I mean, in my opinion, it’s no less lazy (and nonsensical) to give magicians “healing spells” (just for the sake of having them in the game), then it is to simply keep clerics in the mix (just for the sake of having them in the game). Because if you have magicians bringing people back from the dead (for instance), you are stepping out of established folklore and myth to do so. Meaning you’re establishing YOUR OWN GENRE OF FANTASY…which is no better (nor worse) than what Gygax/Arneson did with their inclusion of the cleric.

At least the cleric makes SOME semblance of sense: again, from the original Holy Man of Christ concept that seems to be present in OD&D. Once you move out of the realm of Christian myth (whether that move is to ancient “hyborian” times or some weird-ass world where people worship Odin but no one’s ever heard of Jesus)…well, you’re pretty much in Lala Land at that point, so who cares whether or not you have clerics…or dragon-born or half-halflings or whatever!

Where'd I leave my plate mail?

Powers of the Prophets (Part 1)

[I know the last couple posts were pretty long, and this one is longer still, so I'm breaking it up into two parts...the second will be posted later today]

So now, back to our original series starter (“what clerics bring to the table”) when I wrote I could see only two real positive contributions that actually impact the party in-game with its mechanics. The first was the cleric’s undead turning ability (already discussed), and the second are the classes particular suite of spells. Let’s take a close look at those spells.

In OD&D (the original entry of clerics into the fantasy world), the total number of spells available to clerics was 22, spread across five levels (though, as with magic-users, clerics were given the ability to pursue spell research to expand the spell list). Many of these spells were nothing more than the equivalent of magic-user spells, like light and protection from evil. As these spells were already listed for magic-users in CHAINMAIL, it might be presumed (well, I'm going to presume anyway) that they were added to the cleric list simply because “these seem like they’d make good clerical spells, too.” Regardless of the actual reason (spell list padding?) we’re going to leave them out of the equation as such duplicates are redundant, unnecessary in a (game) world that can already get these spells from a magic-user (elfish or not).

Cutting leaves us with a total of 17 spells:

1^st level (adept or higher): cure light wounds, purify food & water

2^nd level (vicar or higher): find traps, bless, speak with animals

3^rd level (bishop or higher): cure disease

4^th level (bishop or higher): neutralize poison, cure serious wounds, turn sticks to snakes, speak with plants, create water

5: level (lama or higher): dispel evil, raise dead, commune, quest, insect plague, create food

Now, folks who are familiar with the Bible…even a cursory, Sunday School knowledge…will recognize many of these spells as the divine miracles associated with Biblical figures, as well as those attributed to various saints and such. Curing wounds (light and serious), disease, and poison (not to mention raising the dead) are all abilities associated with Jesus. Creation of food and water, turning sticks to snakes, and summoning an insect plague are all abilities demonstrated by Moses and his brother, Aaron. Finding traps, blessing, and speak with animals (St. Francis) are all associated with Saints and other “holy folks”…as is the ability to know God’s Will (commune) and exorcising demons (dispel evil).

Quest is just a renaming of geas, but while an example of magic-using geas can be found in Clark Ashton Smith, one might consider a Papal edict (like the one ordering the Crusades) to be the equivalent example of quest applied on a mass scale.

The only spells that seem truly odd to me are purify food & water and speak with plants. I’m not sure where the latter comes from, unless it is based on the symbolic references of a holy person not being hindered by any form of nature (being able to pass through a forest, for example). And I’m really not even sure of what use purify food & water is…it’s not a spell I’ve seen used more than once or twice in my 30+ year history of gaming. I didn’t notice any rules for food to go bad, but perhaps this is a resource management tool (the dropped rations of a dead companion might spoil before there is the chance to eat them, and this allows a party to “waste not, want not”)…maybe food and water spoilage was a bigger deal and more frequent occurrence in the way they game was originally envisioned? No idea. Certainly it’s helpful against the AD&D water weird.

So in the main, we have a spell suite for clerics that is based wholly on a Judeo-Christian tradition, slanted heavily towards the “Christian” (although most Christians would call the spell-slinging Jesus a “god” and not an “adventurer”). Which is kind of ironic when you consider that anything pertaining to an actual Christian religion (or any type of monotheism) is conspicuously absent from any post-OD&D game product up until the 3^rd Edition Deities & Demigods (in which a monotheistic option is presented as a possible campaign setting).

CHRISTIAN. Wasn’t this the game that was decried for causing kids to worship Satan or something? I know my Born Again Christian buddy was forbidden from playing D&D for this reason (though maybe his mom didn’t like him associating with a Catholic family like mine…who knows?).

Here’s the thing (well, one of the things): if you’re playing a game where clerics are simply “priests” of some “deity” …like Thor or Athena or something…why would your god be granting you a bunch of loaves & fishes type magic? If Odin is my lord, what does he care if I can turn sticks to snakes?

See this shit doesn’t really make any sense.

But we’ll get back to my harsh judgments in a moment: let’s say, just for the sake o discussion, that the spell suite does make sense for a priestly individual. Either because the game has an explicit (as opposed to implied) Christian setting OR because creating food and curing leprosy actually was a common granted power of Horus-Ra (it wasn’t).  What does this provide to the players in your game?

Welp, it provides a bunch of “get out o jail free” cards. Character gets diseased? Bam, cured. Poisoned? Bam, cured. Damaged? Same deal. KILLED?! Zapomatic, you’re back to life.

Now remember in my earlier discussions of the genesis of The Game via the remembered recollections of Dave Arneson that there was no “hit points” in the beginning, simply a Chainmail system of “kill or be killed.” What I infer from his statements was that HPs (and variable damage) was created to prolong PC longevity. Then, of course, they had that great idea to “get better” (i.e. go up in level) after playing for awhile, which would lead to more HPs and, presumably, MORE attachment to one’s character.

Because that’s what’s stated: after a number of adventures, one develops an ATTACHMENT (if not an outright personality) for their character. I’ve seen this occur in serial board games often enough, even when there’s little real “character development.” A regular player of Siege of the Citadel wants to always play the Bauhaus guys, or always wants to use a panzerknacker. Or in Blood Bowl, my wife had a tendency to talk to her players and play favorites with them based on what they did in a particular match (based on the luck of random dice rolls), regardless of any actual skills the figure had.

Pretending to be someone, even in a game, and experiencing drama and trauma and triumph and fear is a BONDING experience. And woe betide you of you DON’T like your character…it can be miserable being stuck with an avatar you detest!

So enter the cleric…well, first let’s enter the magician. The magic-user (or wizard or sorcerer or whatever) is a figure we see throughout fantasy literature. Wizards and their “magic spells.” But there are LIMITS to what wizards can accomplish: you don’t generally see a magician bring someone back from the dead for instance…the arena of “life and death” has long been held to be a purview of God (or the gods) alone. And I know it’s not often, even in mythology, that you find folks coming back from the dead. For many, many centuries of human existence, dead was considered dead.

[to be continued]

Clerics: What You Get

So let’s start this off with a good hard look at why you need a cleric in your game. Actually, “why” is not really the right question…I mean, you don’t need any particular class really (you could have a classless RPG and just pick a number of “add-ons” or “skills” for your character, right?). What I mean is, let’s discuss what it is that the cleric provides to the game.

Now, there’re a couple things we need to throw out, right off the bat. First off, we need to throw any thought that the cleric gives us “variety.” Sure, of course it does. All classes provide variety or options, and if your sole priority is having more options you end up adding a gazillion new classes and races to the game (see D&D post 1999, or even 2^nd edition AD&D “kits”). If that's your main reason for keeping the cleric in your game, then you might as well stop reading now ‘cause there’s no reasoning with you.

After we throw that out as a reason for keeping the cleric, we need to also throw out any reason for keeping it based on self-perpetuating expectations. This is any line of reasoning that runs “well, the cleric class has always been in the game” or “even World of Warcraft has a priest class.” Just F that noise, okay? This is deconstruction, and we’re looking at REAL CONCRETE PLAYABLE ASPECTS OF THE CLASS. If we decide we can live without the cleric (which we might), that might lead us to creating different expectations down the road. Certainly there are a lot of expectations that have been attached to fantasy RPGs over the years that (IMO) need to be reexamined anyway…like the stupidity that WotC holds up as the “foundation” of D&D.

No, what I want to look at is what does the inclusion of the cleric class give you that its exclusion would cost you? Variety? No: you can always add more classes (maybe a beastmaster!). Expectation? No: we’re doing this in part to change expectation. I’m looking at the direct impact the character class has in-game; how does the cleric’s inclusion (or lack thereof) affect game play?

And since I want to make this a POSITIVE exercise, I’m going to try to look only at POSITIVE EFFECTS. For example, some might say “including the cleric makes the game cheesy,” or “forces at least one player to take up a support role as the party medic,” or “wrecks any chance of a gritty sword & sorcery feel to your game.” These phrases are not positive and thus not helpful. When I say I want to look at what the cleric gives you by its inclusion, I mean the positive, “thanks we needed that in the game” things.

Okay…everyone groks the ground rules? Let’s start.

For my purposes, it’s not all that helpful to look at the later iterations of the cleric class…that is, it’s not useful to look at the class as it’s changed over the years (whether you’re talking D20 or 2^nd Edition or even B/X). Why not? Because by the time those later iterations of the cleric came about the cat was “already out of the bag,” so to speak. The cleric was in the game from the get go, and as a major player (one of the original three classes) so any changes/variations in class abilities or spells or whatnot can be viewed simply as “tweaks” to bring the class more firmly in-line with the present edition of D&D and/or balancing certain aspects of an already existing class based on feedback from actual play/players.

*whew* That last bit was a mouthful. What it means is that I’m only looking at OD&D, where this whole cleric mess started.

Now the origin of the cleric class as a playable PC type is fairly well-documented (or well enough for my purposes): in the primordial soup days (before OD&D was actually published), the wargamers who were playing this “thing” were sometimes placed in adversarial roles to each other. This isn’t all that strange to me (as I saw a lot of adversarial relationships between PCs back in my early AD&D days), but for youngsters raised on the “let’s all cooperate together” versions of D&D (basically, any version from Mentzer to the present) this may seem pretty alien. Nowadays, the most you hear/see is some light ribbing at the table and the occasional paralyzed PC being teabagged by a companion…but it was different in my youth when high level play often meant pitting (PC) political powers against each other, or when rivals clashed (over love and/or loot) and vendettas were enacted against each other.

ANYWAY…back in the primordial ooze days, one PC managed to get turned into a vampire (I assume in the usual fashion, but perhaps he’d been allowed to start play as one), and used his brains along with his vampiric powers to excellent effect against the other PCs of the campaign. Sir Fang was, apparently, a nightmare in the hands of this particular PC, and as a method of “balancing” his impact on the campaign, a Van Helsing-style holy man was introduced as another PC’s character. This “anti-vampire” character was the basis for the cleric class…at least once it was mashed with a couple historic figures and given some typical holy powers similar to what one finds in the Bible (especially the New Testament). The cleric as a class was included in Book 1 of the LBBs, and has been with us ever since.

Of course, by the time of OD&D we actually have something that looks like TWO classes: a “cleric” and an “evil priest” (which becomes an “Evil High Priest” or EHP and appears to have been a major villain type in OD&D). We’ll be talking about the EHP, too, since including “good” clerics mean including their reverse as well.

So what are the attributes of a cleric in OD&D?

1.     Their prime requisite is Wisdom.

2.     They have HPs and attack ability nearly equivalent to a fighting man of the same level (and thus a little better ability in this regard than the magic-user).

3.     They have the ability to wear all armor and use shields.

4.     They are restricted in their use of edged weapons, and specifically precluded from magic swords and arrows, the purview of the fighter (and generally more important with regard to Chainmail).

5.     They have the ability to turn undead which, in OD&D, includes the following monsters: skeletons, zombies, ghouls, wights, wraiths, mummies, specters, and vampires.

6.     Beginning at 2^nd level they have the ability to cast spells, using a substantially different list than the magic-user (i.e. most spells are new, and many of them modeled on Biblical accounts of prophets, saints, Apostles, Moses, and Jesus). EHPs have the ability to reverse certain spells to cause evil effect (it is stated that Lawful clerics will do so only in direst need).

7.     A high level cleric receives divine aid (“extra funds”) when building a stronghold and attracts legions of “faithful” followers assuming they’ve been “true” to their faith.

8.     They have some alignment restrictions, being forced to choose between Law and Chaos…i.e. “good” and “evil”…in order to advance beyond a certain level.

9.     They are restricted to the human race (no elves, dwarves, or hobbits).

And that’s it…nothing else distinguishes the cleric from either of the other adventurer classifications presented in Original Dungeons & Dragons.

So of those nine attributes, which ones are pertinent to the discussion at hand?

#1 No. In OD&D the three prime requisites (STR, INT, and WIS for fighters, magic-users, and clerics respectively) have NO MECHANICAL IN-GAME EFFECT, save that they describe how good a class is at its “profession” (a high prime req gives a character a bonus to earned XP, thus facilitating rapid rise in level, while a low prime req carries a penalty to the same). Without the inclusion of the cleric class in OD&D, you might as well remove wisdom as an ability score. It serves a mechanical purpose solely for the cleric class; it can be surmised that it was only added as an ability score because of the inclusion of the cleric as a class. It adds nothing, so is not pertinent.

#2 Not particularly. In a way the cleric sets a “baseline” for PC combat ability (HPs and attack chance) with fighters being “a little better” and magic-users being “a little worse.” Without the cleric class, one of these other classes serve as the baseline with the other being exemplary (if the MU is baseline) or hopeless/pathetic (if the fighter is baseline).

#3 No. There’s nothing special about the ability to wear armor. The fact that magic-users cannot is notable…it indicates a restriction of some sort based on their magic. In another game, if being unable to wear armor was “the norm” than the cleric (like the fighter) would have an “exceptional ability.” However, such does not appear to be the case here (there are no armor restrictions for other humans in the monster section)…the magic-user class with its LACK of armor is exceptional (i.e. exceptionally bad). This isn’t worth mentioning.

#4 No. Similar to the magic-user’s lack of armor, the restriction on weapons is a lacking on the cleric’s part as other humans are not so penalized. This is a restriction; one purported to be based on a historic figure (a crusading priest who did not use blades as he did not want to “spill blood”), but is more likely included in aid of “game balance” (allowing fighters a certain niche protection when it comes to magic weapons). This is more important with the use of the Chainmail combat system as magic swords and magic arrows have specific rules. Likewise the inclusion of other magic weapons AND an alternative combat system in OD&D renders this a useless restriction for the most part…a magic mace or hammer (both useable by the cleric) has the same attack ability as a magic sword and does BETTER damage (in OD&D, magic swords do not add their “+” to damage and they top out at +3 just like the cleric weapons; ALSO, in OD&D there is no variable damage by weapon type…all weapons do D6 damage). Since this is a RESTRICTION, probably done in the name of game balance, it does not add anything to the game. It thus doesn’t bear as part of the discussion.

#5 Yes. We will discuss turning undead below.

#6 Yes. We will discuss the cleric’s unique spell list below.

#7 Yes, this should be included in the conversation, though its value is dubious. Clerics require less XP to advance in level, and thus achieve a higher level with a lesser acquisition of gold than the fighting-man. Having a rule that allows them to increase their funds for strongholds allow them to build castles at an equivalent level, even with a lesser treasury. By the same token, the cleric’s attraction of loyal followers cuts down the costs associated with hiring mercenaries to stock said stronghold. It may be hypothesized that some of this rule was included to give a newly created character class (in the primordial days) a “leg up” when it came to catching up to the baronies of longstanding, existing PCs of the campaign: the newly minted Van Helsing character getting a boost when it came to building a stronghold in opposition to that of Lord Fang’s evil barony. However, what it also adds (which I find more compelling) is a ROLE-PLAYING REQUIREMENT not found in either of the other basic classes. The player must pay attention to the tenets of his faith/alignment in order to receive these benefits. This is a marked departure compared to the other classes (who have no such strictures) and encourages role-playing “in character” for the cleric PC. That being said, I’d prefer to have some sort of “role-playing reward” system in place for ALL character types, not just the cleric(!) and it’s difficult to pin this as a “pro” of including the character in the game. It only affects/impacts the cleric PC (and only if he’s pursuing endgame action) only indirectly impacting game play for other (non-cleric) PCs.

#8 A very hesitant yes. As with #7, this actually encourages role-playing and sets up potential drama and conflict in the game. However, it impacts other players at the table even less directly than #7, especially in light of the lack of mechanical consequences/effects of alignment. If I say, “all clerics must have blue hair” or some other cosmetic difference, it DOES distinguish the PC from other classes, but it really doesn’t add anything, nor impact game play.

#9 No. As a restriction (and another one tied mainly to a stylistic choice), this attribute adds nothing to game with the cleric’s inclusion.

So there. As suspected there are only really TWO things the cleric class really brings to the table that have a real impact on game play, both for themselves and for others. Those things are:

-        The ability to turn undead.

-        A unique spell list with a divine theme.

We’ll talk about these in the next post.

[to be continued]

Killing Vancian Magic (Part 3)

[continued from here]

The spells in Dungeon! are limited to two categories: combat (fireball and lightning) and movement (teleport). The combat spells are the most effective means of combat in the game (except against evil wizards and witches, perhaps due to an unwritten, “counter-spell” ability). This is balanced by the finite nature of the spells: each spell is recorded on a card, and spell cards are discarded with use. A wizard player starts the game with a certain number of spells (in my 1981 edition, this is 7-12 cards) and part of the “advanced play” of the wizard role is nursing that finite resource and expending it wisely. In some editions of the board game (including mine) the wizard can return to the starting chamber and spend turns to regain spell cards; in other editions, they never receive more. However, even without spells wizards are formidable in the upper works of the dungeon, and are no easier to kill than any of the other character types.

The First Fantasy Campaign provides a sketchy description of Blackmoor and its operation without providing much in the way of hard, fast rules. For example, it does not discuss the exact magic system used (the subject of this post) but it DOES discuss the justification for Arneson’s magic system. And while it appears obvious that wizard spells in Blackmoor were limited (just as they were are in D&D or the Dungeon! board game) it wasn’t based on any Vancian literary justification:

"In Blackmoor, magic followed the "Formula" pattern for most magic. The reasoning behind limiting the number of spells that a Magic User [sic] could take down into the Dungeon was simply that many ingredients had to be prepared ahead of time, and of course, once used were then powerless. Special adventures could then be organized by the parties to gain some special ingredient that could only be found in some dangerous place."

Here magic-users appear to be of a more traditional (cinematic, mythological) tradition, using magic formula requiring specific ingredients (Eye of newt? Bat wings? Alchemical concoctions?) that had to be prepared prior to entry into the dungeon. Expenditure of spells (i.e. discarding “spell cards”) represented expenditure of those prepped magical ingredients…and when gone, the mage would be left bereft of magical power.

What’s evident from examination of Dungeon! and the FFC is that Arneson found it necessary to limit the number of spells available to player character magic-users. After all, he started with the Chainmail rules and spell use in Chainmail is NOT limited as a finite resource…if a mage knows a spell, it may be cast over-and-over again (though perhaps needing a successful die roll to go off). Personally, the whole “die roll for spell-casting” thing works well for me, but remember that this doesn’t apply to the wizard’s “automatic” abilities: fireball/lightning bolt, invisibility, viewing in darkness. Those “spell effects” (for lack of a better term) could simply be used at will. And while their use was limited on the battle field of Chainmail (who cares if you can auto-kill a handful of opponents with a fireball…there’s still an army bearing down on your now revealed wizard!), in the SMALL SCALE, TACTICAL SKIRMISH game of D&D these effects…if adapted straight…would be devastatingly over-powered.

See, for me, I see yet another gross design oversight leading to years of dissatisfaction and “tweaking” ever since:

• Rules are developed for a table-top fantasy wargame (Chainmail)
• A person (D.A.) designs a small-scale fantasy adventure game (Blackmoor)
• DA adapts the wargame rules to the fantasy adventure game
• Over time, actual play shows the (wargame) magic rules to be too powerful on the small scale
• Gradually, the magic-user character is “nerfed” for balance.

The nerfing includes the following:

• Limiting the defensive capability of wizards (no armor, less hit points)
• Limiting their offensive capability (attack tables, weapon selection)
• Limiting their spell effects (“damage” infliction instead of auto-kill)
• Limiting their spells carried (in-game justification: prepping ingredients)
• Limiting spells based on complexity (some spells require ingredients only found in the dungeon, per the FFC book) and character constitution (also per FFC notes)

And eventually (with the advent of levels and experience points; remember the game didn't start with these things):

• Limiting the spells that may be known AND the spells that may be cast based on level of character.

Whether this last was an idea of Gygax or developed by Arneson’s group doesn’t much matter (though I’d lay the “credit” for this development and the foot of Gygax as a formulaic organizer). Was it simpler and easier to limit spells in this fashion? Yeah, probably (use Chainmail “complexity” as a basis for D&D “spell levels;” award a new degree of spell level mastery for every two character levels advanced; give up messy spell ingredient requirements, etc.). Very safe and easy and more consistent, math-wise. And this IS just a game, right? Playability is important in a game.

But, even accepting that D&D is a game (and thus de-emphasizing any importance on actually modeling the literary or real-world mythology surrounding “magic”), we still find the system wanting. Even accepting “this is just how it works” most folks are still dissatisfied with the mechanics of the magic system and how the magic-user class functions in the game. Which I’m sure is at least part of the reason why so many fantasy heartbreakers (note: NOT the “new Old School heartbreakers” discussed earlier) junk the Vancian magic system in part or completely. I’m not the only one who sees it as being in need of a rebuild.

Next up: Building a Better Magic-User

Killing Vancian Magic (Part 2)

[continued from here]

You read or hear (at least I do) all this garbage about “how great D&D is at the low-to-mid levels” but then "sucks after that." Tell that to the guy playing a magic-user! Just how "awesome" is it to be a 4th level magic-user (where one’s average hit points and armor class are about equal)? 10,000xp…that’s a lot of dead orcs (100 in OD&D, 2000 in B/X) that need defeating. Or huge, fat wads of treasure. Now, I’m a big believer in the “3-to-5-sessions-to-level” school of thought, which means four to six months of regular play to earn that 4th level and the right to cast two 1st level and two 2nd level spells…which will probably be sleep, charm person, invisibility, and web (or levitate), right? How can that be called “satisfying play?”

Okay, okay…I’m digressing (as usual). The point of the mini-rant from the last couple paragraphs is simply this: there are problems with character class as designed/written that make game play unsatisfying. So let’s get down to brass tacks and start DECONSTRUCTING that design:

First off, all these detrimental aspects of the magic-user class…the lack of hit points, lack of defense (armor), lack of combat ability (weapons and attack %), lack of saving throw progression (incremental increase every 5 levels? Holy crap!)…all of these detriments in the main appear to be design choices made to BALANCE the character against other classes. As in, “magic-users get to cast cool spells so we have to make them suck in every other way.”

And the reason I chalk this up to design choice is that there’s not a whole lot of literary precedent otherwise. Sorcerers and wizards found in Howard or Moorcock or Bradley or Tolkien or even Vance (look at Turjan in the Dying Earth) are hale and hearty adventurers, capable of holding their own in a fight, happy to wear armor and wield weapons. Elric is one of the greatest swordsmen of his world, only hampered by his albinism (like he rolled a “3” for his Strength score); it’s not by dint of being a wizard that he's a weakling (his sorcerer cousin Yrkoon has no such problems). Gandalf and MZB’s character Lythande are likewise depicted as able (and feared) swordsmen despite their magical professions.

So the idea of a “spindly wizard” as a class is a design choice. Please note the distinction here: there are plenty of “spindly” (or at least “below average”) wizards pictured in literature, too, like Elric’s nemesis Theleb K’aarna (though NOT Jagreen Lern, the sorcerous theocrat of Pan Tang with his plate armor and great axe). However, “wimpy as class” is much different from a “wimpy character” (of any class). Get it?

Personally, I dislike this design choice, this “balance by subtraction.” After all, one could simply make fighters stouter and more lethal (because of their training) compared to the baseline adventurer (like magic-users, etc.). Instead, it feels like thieves, or perhaps clerics, are the “baseline,” and magic-users are a step-down on the physical prowess scale. And by doing this, you make the class terribly hamstrung once the character’s vaunted magic power is exhausted (as pointed out earlier).

But, hey, whether I like it or not, it’s just a choice of design, and done with an eye towards BALANCE versus the magic-user’s magic, right? Okay, so now let’s look at what that magic power entails:

Since the LBBs of OD&D, arcane magic has worked more or less the same. A magic-user has a spell book containing one or more spells. The magic-user “memorizes” spells found in the spell book. Casting a memorized spell causes that spell to be “erased” from the magic-user’s memory. Advancing in level increases A) the number of spells that are known (in the spell book), B) the number of spells that can be memorized, and C) the level (magnitude) of spells that can be learned and memorized.

In addition, it’s important to note that in most (all?) editions, spells may be transcribed on scrolls and cast simply by reading the spell; however, this causes the spell to disappear from the scroll. Depending on the edition, spells might be transcribed from a scroll into a spell book, but it is unclear (or varies) as to whether or not a spell book functions like a spell scroll – i.e. can a magic-user read a spell from a spell book as from a scroll.

According to Gygax, the mechanics of the system is modeled off the magic described in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels. Wizard has book. Wizard memorizes spells from book. Casting spell erases spell from memory. However, I think it’s pertinent to point out that Vance’s magic differs from the D&D system in a number of ways. There are no degrees of magnitude (“levels”) for spells. The number of spells memorized seems more connected to the degree of complication inherent in the spell. The number of spells memorized seem much fewer in number (in Dying Earth), even for a powerful mage. Scrolls (or the transcription of spells in books) are unmentioned, as I recall.

Gygax also stated that he felt the D&D magic system may have been too powerful…which is perhaps the case once player characters reach a high level of experience (as those in Gary’s campaign must certainly have done over time). Certainly, high level magic-users have the capacity to cast a great number of spells, even those with limited spell lists (limited due to an early edition of the game or restrictions based on Intelligence score in AD&D). But if a magic-user has the ability to cast five fireballs plus chain lightning, does it really matter that feather fall isn’t in his repertoire? As a side note, I believe the increased casting times and material components found in AD&D are a kind of “patch” against high level magic abuse as neither of these are aspects of the Vance magic “system” (memorized spells in Vance get cast instantly and without components).

Here’s the thing folks: I personally think Gygax’s claim of basing the magic system on Vance is mostly bunk.

The D&D magic system…which mechanically breaks down as a resource management system based on character’s placement on the “flunky-hero” scale…may have some TRAPPINGS of the Vance literature (tomes of spells, memorization, forgetfulness, fini), but that’s all they are: trappings. Flavor. COLOR, to use the Forge term. What you have is a variety of game effects like the fancy-shmancy arrows in Hawkeye’s quiver…except in this case, your quiver is your character’s brain (or “memory”). As you shoot those arrows…the explosive one, the zip-line one, the net, etc….you gradually deplete your ammunition, until you’re left with an empty quiver, and the need to return to “base” to get more.

It’s simply a DESIGN CHOICE…a game rule to limit a character’s magical firepower. Holmes writes that he pleaded with Gygax to let him use some sort of “magic points” (a different way of tracking magic ammunition) when he was writing the first Basic set, but Gary would have none of it (perhaps he really liked the Vancian style; perhaps he’d mostly penned the PHB and didn’t want to have to change the text). But where does the mechanic come from in the first place, since it seems to have little literary precedent besides Vance’s strange Dying Earth magic? Most magic in literature seems to be limited by exhaustion/fatigue or requirements of astronomy (“the right constellations”) or the need for spell components or the limited nature of magic itself (which is very rarely as flashy as what is found in D&D and video games inspired by D&D). What was the basis for this magic-as-resource system?

I would assert it comes from a combination of Chainmail and Arneson (specifically Arneson’s Blackmoor).

We’ll talk about Chainmail first: Chainmail introduces several fantasy pieces to the table-top war game in order to inject a little Tolkien into your Normans and Saxons and Vikings. We have the dragon, of course, and the hero (and superhero). Also the giant, the wraith (as in, Tolkien ring-wraith), and the troll. And you have the wizard.

The wizard in Chainmail has the same attack and defense capability of a couple armored knights, making them pretty tough hombres (no flimsy meat bags here!). They can turn invisible at will (and thus cannot be targeted) until they make an attack (ever wonder where that rule came from?). They can see in darkness. And they have the ability to throw either a fireball or a lightning bolt (chosen at the beginning of a match), making them into a mobile piece of magical artillery…which is just fine for a table-top war game as the subtlety of sorcery in S&S literature is kind of lost on the open field of battle.

Please note all of the listed abilities are AUTOMATIC (it should also be noted that fireball and lightning don’t do “damage” in the D&D sense; instead, they simply wipe out targets, though heroic figures receive a “saving throw” to avoid this). In addition to these automatic abilities, wizards will know a number of additional spells (chosen from a short list, most of which appear later in the OD&D rules). However, UNLIKE D&D there is no mention of Vance or spell books or memorization. As with literary spell-casters, the wizard either knows the spell or does not…and a spell known may be cast over-and-over again. There is no “quiver of ammunition;” instead the player who controls a wizard must roll dice to see if, in the thick of battle, the wizard can cast the spell correctly. Depending on the result of the roll, the spell will either go into effect immediately, or go into effect on the following game turn (“delayed”). And that die roll (based on the “complexity” of the spell) is OPTIONAL.

In Chainmail, the basic magic-using figure is the wizard, but players can choose to have lesser wizards in their army as well. Why would anyone want a “lesser wizard?” They cost less “points” to field in battle (for readers that have never played war games, most pieces will have a “point value” and the sum of an army’s points is compared against the sum of an opponent’s to make sure a particular match/battle is “fair”). These lesser wizards have names that will be readily familiar to long-time D&D players: Seer (-4), Magician (-3), Warlock (-2), and Sorcerer (-1). The negative number in parenthesis indicates the penalty the lesser wizard suffers when attempting to counter another wizard’s spell; lesser wizards also know less spells, and need higher die rolls to cast those “non-automatic” spells, like phantasmal forces and hallucinatory terrain.

[another side note: interesting that Chainmail has a counter-spell mechanic unlike every single edition of D&D, but very much in-line with fantasy literature]

Now as I wrote before, Arneson used Chainmail as the base rule system for resolving conflict in Blackmoor, but it is unclear whether or not wizards, as player characters, were available from the outset (the first documented game seems to indicate all players were members of the “king’s guard” and thus soldier/fighter-types). However, it’s clear that they were eventually a part of the game and we can get a clue of HOW the magic system was changed (from Chainmail) from two different sources: the board game Dungeon! and Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign from Judge’s Guild.

Now it’s pretty well documented that the board game Dungeon! was developed from Arneson’s Blackmoor by one of his Blackmoor players. Even the combat system in Dungeon! (roll 2D6 to either one-shot the monster or not) echoes Chainmail and Arneson’s own statements about the primordial beginnings of the game.

In Dungeon! “wizard” is one of the four character types you can play (along with the “elf,” “hero,” and “superhero”). The wizard has a choice of three spells: lightning bolt, fireball, and teleport. The wizard can also fight without spells (not as well as the superhero, but better than both the elf and hero, echoing Chainmail) and I have read on-line that the first printing of Dungeon! allows wizards the choice of using magic swords (though they receive more spells if they choose not to do so). Again, the wizard is an all-around badass, which is balanced by his tougher victory conditions (wizards need more treasure to win than any of the other character types).

[to be continued]