Seriously basic magic user question(s)

[Sorin_777]

What's up friends-

I am returning to D&D after 20 years, and am thrilled at the whole OSR movement. I am going to launch a family game tomorrow night using an old TSR module with the BFRPG rules.

I have a sticking point about magic users, and this is an original rules issue, not one with Basic Fantasy. What's the deal with only using a spell once per day, and doesn't that make the magic user pretty useless? I played pretty consistently for about five years back in the 80's, and my DM at the time seemed very knowledgeable. But the way we played, the magic users definitely cast their spells as many times as they wanted to. I want to trust not only the developers but the play testers, and am looking for an answer that this is probably a balance of power issue. Please feel free to elaborate.

Secondly, what are the opinions in general about the splitting of races and classes, as it applies to the elf? On the one hand, I never liked the cork sniffing AD&D types who bragged that they could have a "Lawful-Evil Half-Orc Fighter Wizard", I just thought that was way too silly. But... Under the B/X and BECMI system, the elves were a strange class/race. At first, why not play them? You get a level of fighter and magic user every time, but then you max out at level ten. So I kind of like splitting characters and races, but am left with my second question: why play elves? Would they still have level limits, smaller hit dice, and then left with just infravision as the only special ability?

Thanks in advance!

[Metroknight]

What's up friends-

I am returning to D&D after 20 years, and am thrilled at the whole OSR movement. I am going to launch a family game tomorrow night using an old TSR module with the BFRPG rules.

Hi and welcome to the community

I have a sticking point about magic users, and this is an original rules issue, not one with Basic Fantasy. What's the deal with only using a spell once per day, and doesn't that make the magic user pretty useless? I played pretty consistently for about five years back in the 80's, and my DM at the time seemed very knowledgeable. But the way we played, the magic users definitely cast their spells as many times as they wanted to. I want to trust not only the developers but the play testers, and am looking for an answer that this is probably a balance of power issue. Please feel free to elaborate.

It is mostly about balance. There are optional rules that allow for additional casting amounts. I think smoots houserule supplement has a table in it.

The reasoning that I was told all so many years ago is that the magic being held in a casters mind was so complex and powerful that they could not remember or retain the spell formula for more than that one casting. I think I read in one official novel a description of a spell and how the caster felt it crawling, writhing in his mind so much that it almost hurts till it is released. Over time the caster grew adapted / adjusted to the spell and was able to retain more spells as time went along.

Secondly, what are the opinions in general about the splitting of races and classes, as it applies to the elf? On the one hand, I never liked the cork sniffing AD&D types who bragged that they could have a "Lawful-Evil Half-Orc Fighter Wizard", I just thought that was way too silly. But... Under the B/X and BECMI system, the elves were a strange class/race. At first, why not play them? You get a level of fighter and magic user every time, but then you max out at level ten. So I kind of like splitting characters and races, but am left with my second question: why play elves? Would they still have level limits, smaller hit dice, and then left with just infravision as the only special ability?

Thanks in advance!

I personally like the races and classes being separated but there are no level limits in BFRPG.

[Dimirag]

The spell system is called vancian magic for a reason

[Jandolar]

Hmmm.... Maybe I was doing it wrong all those years ago but we tended to let our MU's cast spells multiple times depending on what they had memorized. I'll use the BFRPG rules as an example since that's what I have in front of me.

Sparky McSpell is a 5th level MU. His progression is 2/2/1. Meaning he can memorize 2 first level/2 second level/1 third level spell before having to re-memorize or study his spell book. With that said he can memorize Magic Missile and Charm and either cast MM twice or MM once and Charm once. Then he can so the same for 2nd level spells (either one spell and cast it twice or two spells cast once each). You probably see where I'm going with this.

The caveat in our games was that the MU could memorize as many spells per level that he had "slots" for (2/2/1 in our example) but could cast no more spells than he had slots for. For example Sparky at 20th level has 6 slots for 1st level spells. He can have 6 memorized and available to cast but can only cast 6 times out of his first level "pool" of spells. 6 Magic Missiles, 5 MM's and one Charm, etc... Each spell took a "slot" out of his "pool". Of course we also made the MU track his spell components so there were times when a Lightning Bolt was needed but the MU didn't have the crystal rod and bit of fur needed to cast it.

This did three things.
1) It made our MU's have to critique a combat/encounter and decide which spell to use that would help the most. Helped turn them into combat mages.
2) It made them almost hoard scrolls of higher level spells so that they had the option of a lot of little damage at first to gauge the enemy and then use the harder hitting scroll if need be.
3) The MU's had to keep track of components much like an archer does with arrows so that there was a balance to how many times they could cook off a spell depending on how many components they could carry.

Yes it's a bit of over kill but if you wanted to be an aged mage then you needed to be able to keep track of what you could do and when it was appropriate.

Hope it helps.

[saskganesh]

That's called free casting or open casting or open slots and is a fairly common variant in these kind of games.

My game has free casting. It makes the casters much more flexible and relatively more powerful at lower levels. However, it may be more challenging at first to DM a group that has a lot of magic resources.

[Solomoriah]

Actually, his approach is more limited than "free casting." It's also a variant I've never seen before... very interesting, actually.

BFRPG doesn't use "Vancian" magic; in Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" stories, a character would literally memorize a spell, but saying the words to activate it would cause the spell to leave his or her mind. Low-level casters were required to live within this limit, while high-level casters would have so many spells memorized that it was not an issue.

Mechanically, this is similar to BFRPG. However, in Vance's stories, a spell's "level" is actually the number of syllables required to cast the spell. In other words, actually casting a spell takes little time.

BFRPG uses the "Zelaznian" model (if I can so torture his name that way). In Roger Zelazny's second Chronicles of Amber series, Merlin (and other Lords of Chaos) summons the power by force of will while speaking the many words and performing the many gestures needed to enact the magic... but leaving just a little bit unfinished. "Casting" the spell then becomes a matter of selecting from the available prepared spells and finishing one. A caster in such a system prepares spells, and the limits given have more to do with the maximum amount of unrealized power the caster can carry around at one time.

In a game mechanical sense, Vancian and Zelaznian magic are functionally the same... but in true Vancian magic, spell books can be pretty thin. BFRPG assumes that spell books, at least those for higher-level casters, are pretty big, as they might be in a Zelaznian system. Also, by the very nature of the fictional mechanics described, "memorizing" a spell without a spellbook is impossible, whereas "preparing" one without a spellbook is at least conceivable.

Having said all that, to partially answer the OP's question... in the very earliest RPG games, which were little more than modified wargames, a spellcaster would have a number of spells he or she could cast per adventure. In such a game, first-level characters walk into a dungeon like this:

- Fighter has hit points about equal to a sword stroke. If he's lucky, he survives his first encounter. Call it 50%.

- Cleric has a single healing spell. Once he casts it, he's done; thus, each cleric gives an additional 50% chance to one other character, for one encounter, maybe allowing that other character to take on a second encounter.

- Magic-user has one spell, which will probably be a combat spell if he has one.

(Thieves weren't even part of the game in those days.)

Given that first-level group... they enter the dungeon, fight a single group of monsters, and then the survivors (if any) take their loot (if any) and limp back to town. Thus, the magic-user is not at any disadvantage. He's good for one encounter, just like the fighter and the cleric.

But, you say, in that single encounter, the magic-user casts his single spell, and then stands there while the other PCs fight it out. Well, first of all, his wait won't take long... that first-level fighter has between a 50% down to maybe a 20% chance of being hit each time a monster swings at him, depending on his armor class; the situation gets worse if the monster has multiple attacks, as many do. Further, a single hit has a pretty good chance of killing him. So the fights didn't take long (still don't, if you play the game straight).

Secondly, in that first encounter, the magic-user should have daggers to throw (or darts, in games that have them) and at first level his odds of hitting aren't that much worse than everyone else. So once that one spell is cast, he can still help with the battle.

Once the characters get to higher levels, they begin to be able to survive more encounters; however, the magic-user also gets more spells, and at 5th level he has at least the possibility of Fireball or Lightning Bolt.

If you have a game where the magic-user is standing around doing nothing a lot of the time, something has changed the game balance for the other classes so that they survive longer than they "should." If that change was deliberate, that is, you wanted the other classes to be tougher, then yeah, boost the magic-user to compensate.

...

NOW, having said all that, allowing the magic-user a broader range of choices without substantially altering the game balance is not a bad idea. The system Jandolar suggests is actually kind of cool... the magic-user can select some, but not necessarily all, of the spells he has available to "memorize" so they can be cast flexibly. This expands the magic-user's role in a nice but limited way. He still can't cast any more spells, or spell levels, per day, but now he can cast that one Magic Missile and still have another later; or use a Charm Person he might otherwise not have had available (because Magic Missile is often a better choice, but not always).

A bit more flexibility is granted with free casting... the magic-user still abides by the "slots" he has available, but can cast any known spell of a given level as long as he has slots of that level unused for the day.

Above that method is free casting with demotion. This method permits the caster to "demote" a higher-level slot to cast a lower-level spell; for instance, say our magic-user has used all his first level slots, but still has second level slots... he could demote one such to cast yet another Magic Missile. Demotion grants no bonus whatsoever; using a 2nd level slot to cast a 1st level spell "wastes" the "extra power" (if those words even have meaning per se). But in games where I've allowed this method, demotion can and does happen.

All three of these methods broaden the magic-user's choices without, in my opinion, unduly increasing his power. Further, they apply equally well to clerical casters, if desired.

[Sorin_777]

Thanks for the replies, our esteemed author included!

As a minor revision to my OP, I think we'll kick off tonight with an actual BFRPG module (Morgansfort).

I appreciate the back stories that support why a MU would forget the spell or, in the second case, not have it prepared up to the final trigger. I suppose my issue is not a single encounter, but an extended campaign with a useless low level MU who can't fight and is either holding on to or already expended his one spell. I fear this makes for a boring campaign, I suppose smaller encounters for low level guys of all classes are better. But then, why an entire dungeon crawl designed for low level characters if they all have a potential of dying so easily? Please excuse me for being so green!

I have downloaded but have not read the class extension supplements, and this is deliberate. In the spirit of the B/X system I used to play, combined with the fact that we will have a five person game of novices, I want to add rules and flavor as we go. So sub-classes or multi-classes I intend on adding after level three. I assume there exists some sort of fighter-mage, or at least some way to get a wizard into armor and wielding a weapon other than a dagger, I just want to phase tgat in after a few level ups. Opinions from the crowd here?

[Solomoriah]

I suppose my issue is not a single encounter, but an extended campaign with a useless low level MU who can't fight and is either holding on to or already expended his one spell.

My point above, and perhaps I said too much and obscured it, was this: The situation you describe should not happen.

At first level, by the time the magic-user has cast his one spell, the fighter is dead or counting his blessings, where the blessing is the cleric who healed him. Another round and he might be dead too. By the time the survivors of the encounter are healed and the dead have been replaced, the magic-user has long since recovered his one spell. So here, the magic-user is not spending much time standing around.

At 5th level, the fighter can take 5x as much damage, and the magic-user can cast 5 spells... one of which might be able to do 5d6 points of damage. The cleric's healing magic probably can't do much more than prop up the fighter if he gets in bad shape, so a single "well balanced" (gah) encounter will end their day. The magic-user is still not just standing around.

Please help me understand. What circumstances lead to the magic-user standing around doing nothing (for more than a round or two on the average)? If your fighters are plowing through multiple encounters undamaged, and you're not cheating on the dice, then probably they have potent magic weapons and/or armor that are allowing them to fight longer. Did you also award the magic-user something to balance that out, like perhaps a magic wand? Even something relatively minor like a wand of paralysis will give the magic-user more to do in combat.

But then, why an entire dungeon crawl designed for low level characters if they all have a potential of dying so easily? Please excuse me for being so green!

Low-level characters have a high mortality rate; this is a feature of the classic games BFRPG emulates. It's expected that the players who successfully get characters past 1st level will (a) learn something in the process and (b) appreciate the character(s) more because of the work involved in keeping them alive. Old-school characters don't begin with deep backstories; often, they hardly have names.

Or to put it the way I've said it before: Old-school game masters don't write story. Story is what happens when the players pick up their dice and walk into the GM's world.

[Solomoriah]

... and I see a blog post coming soon. Thanks for asking the question, Sorin, as I didn't realize until now that the subject needed to be explored.

[Dimirag]

A 1st level mu has the same chances of hitting an opponent as a 1st level fighter (without abilities bonus), If he carries some daggers or other proyectile weapon he can still fight at no big disadvantage.

If you want to lengthen their "special usefulness" you can allow them to rest once every 1, 2, 3 or 4 hours. On their rest a character can patch his wounds regaining som hit points, gather mistical energies (by meditation or prayer) regaining some spells, etc.

You can give a fixed or variable duration to the rest. If you go with the variation you can allow a character to spend more time in exchange of healing more HP or gaining more spell or some higher level ones.