Magic User Role

[teluria]

I would recommend what many of the other players have, which is offer lots of opportunities for role playing. The main thing is to make sure that they are having fun. You might also try setting up situations where fighting their way out of a situation results in negative consequences a time or two, such as a bar fight that gets them all thrown in jail for a bit. Of course that can result in a whole other adventure hook as they can make friends with the old man in the jail cell they are in and discover that he's really the rightful king etc.

There are lots of opportunities for them to run into situations where they have to talk their way out of a situation rather than fight their way out.

[Hywaywolf]

My kids once got into a tomato fight in the town square during market day. I had the watch come up and basically put them into the position of paying the farmer, spending the night in jail and paying a stiff fine or fighting their way out of town. It sort of backfired because they spent so much time trying to talk their way out of it that more and more guardsmen kept showing up until they were way out numbered and they felt they had no choice but to choose to be lawful and pay up and do their night in jail. But the lesson they took was to fight it out quick the next time and make a run for the gate rather than wait for reinforcements to show. Kids!?!

[Joe the Rat]

No, the lesson should be "have the MU cast sleep on the guards before they surround us, they probably have crap for saves. Then run for it." See, the M-U is useful!

It's difficult to get them to try and save the world when all they want to do is act like lovable rogues. Consequences will either lead them to shape up - or to get smarter about their roguishness. Honestly, I'd consider either one a roleplay success.

Oh, and on the subject of wenching: The less said, the better. And you might want to see a cleric.

[Sir Bedivere]

Yes a Fighter, Cleric, or Thief should also use the lower levels to learn their trade. If the MU gets extras then they should get some too. But I am still of the opinion that beginning players should use BTB rules as written to learn how to play their characters. making a MU a better fighter doesn't help newbies understand how fragile a MU really is.

I'm curious, why would you also give the F/C/T extras? We don't have these kind of "What do I do with my first level Fighter / Cleric / Thief character?" threads nearly as often, either here or in other forums I read, because there's no need for them. Those three classes can stand on their own from 1st level on. Only the MU has problems at low levels.

Also, there are quite a few ways to make playing the MU more interesting without making the class better at combat. It's something I've spent some developing in the MU Options supplement.

[Sir Bedivere]

All of you guys have some great role-playing ideas. It's fun just reading this thread.

[Hywaywolf]

Yes a Fighter, Cleric, or Thief should also use the lower levels to learn their trade. If the MU gets extras then they should get some too. But I am still of the opinion that beginning players should use BTB rules as written to learn how to play their characters. making a MU a better fighter doesn't help newbies understand how fragile a MU really is.

I'm curious, why would you also give the F/C/T extras? We don't have these kind of "What do I do with my first level Fighter / Cleric / Thief character?" threads nearly as often, either here or in other forums I read, because there's no need for them. Those three classes can stand on their own from 1st level on. Only the MU has problems at low levels.

Also, there are quite a few ways to make playing the MU more interesting without making the class better at combat. It's something I've spent some developing in the MU Options supplement.

I see the classes as balanced so none of them should be given bonus abilities/skills without the others getting something as well. Not to mention the fact that I have never seen MU being the last class picked when starting a game. Heck, they are usually picked 1st or 2nd. If you want to give any class a bonus to get people to play it it should be the cleric. They are almost the last class chosen. Everyone class has their role and they all have nuances that when used make the role playing experience more enjoyable. The MU is only harder to play for newbies because we all already know how to play fighters and rogues. We've been doing that since the first time we played cowboys and indians. Very few kids ever played the weakling that would one day be powerful since our playground or backyard games didn't build on themselves like they do when we play D&D.

I think my problem with strengthening the MU in lower levels comes from my experience with 4.0 when it came out. I'd never played anything in between B/X and 4.0 and seeing the 1st level MU being able to cast powerful combat spells every round just seemed so wrong. I didn't see any difference in playing a MU and fighter. They both only saw obsticals as something to be destroyed as ruthlessly as possible. So I shudder at seeing every little change in BFRPG MUs and see them as the first baby steps to 4.0.

[Solomoriah]

My solution is simple: Throw the M-U some scrolls. Give 'em one or two to start with, a gift from their master, then add one to a treasure here and there in the dungeon. The advantage of this is the one-shot nature of the magic... it's hard to unbalance things too much this way.

BTW: By the book, you can't learn a spell from a scroll. Of course, you the GM may allow it if you wish, but not letting them learn a spell that way avoids the whole "hang on to it until you can learn it" effect, where scrolls you give them expecting them to be used are not, in fact, used.

[Sir Bedivere]

I'm curious, why would you also give the F/C/T extras? We don't have these kind of "What do I do with my first level Fighter / Cleric / Thief character?" threads nearly as often, either here or in other forums I read, because there's no need for them. Those three classes can stand on their own from 1st level on. Only the MU has problems at low levels.

I see the classes as balanced so none of them should be given bonus abilities/skills without the others getting something as well. Not to mention the fact that I have never seen MU being the last class picked when starting a game. Heck, they are usually picked 1st or 2nd.

Yeah, after I asked the question I realized you have to think the classes are balanced in some way, even though I can't see how. Difference of definitions, I guess.

I can't pay players to play a straight MU. Those who play them always double-class, and the last game I ran I had to run an MU NPC or not have one in the group at all.

I think my problem with strengthening the MU in lower levels comes from my experience with 4.0 when it came out. I'd never played anything in between B/X and 4.0 and seeing the 1st level MU being able to cast powerful combat spells every round just seemed so wrong. I didn't see any difference in playing a MU and fighter. They both only saw obsticals as something to be destroyed as ruthlessly as possible. So I shudder at seeing every little change in BFRPG MUs and see them as the first baby steps to 4.0.

I have a lot of problems with 4.0, but the first time I ever had fun playing a straight MU was with 4.0. I think you're right, though, when you talk about playing an MU and Fighter being the same; I think the 4.0 classes were so completely balanced that they all became different flavors of the same class, and that became boring.

Overall, I much prefer BF. But the MU class in old D&D, inherited by BF, never made any sense to me. I've read quite a bit on forums and blogs about how the MU should be played when going BTB but it still doesn't make any sense.

[Hywaywolf]

If you want to power up the MU just start all your players at 10,000 xp.

[Solomoriah]

There are three common mistakes made when trying to "fix" the magic-user.

The first is obvious: Giving bonus spells for high intelligence. There is a reason Gary didn't put a bonus spell table in HIS game for magic-users... handing out extra magic missile spells makes magic-users more powerful at high level than you might think.

The second is to use some form of spell points system. This doesn't work, and for the same reason.

The third is to create a different class of magic-users (sorcerers, anyone?) with different spell casting rules, and using them in the game side-by-side with the classic magic-user types. This is jarring, first of all... it doesn't fit. Second, the result tends to be that the new class gets all the "love" while the classic class becomes largely NPCs.

Spell points and bonus spells both cause problems because the spells in BFRPG, and in practically all the other old-school games we're all fans of, are not engineered to balance properly with any other rate of spell acquisition and use. My favorite counter-example is Bard Games' Arcanum, a very similar class-and-level system with a very different spell casting rule. You could cast two spells plus one per level every day, and you could choose from any spells you knew, regardless of level. Yup. At 9th level, you could cast either 10 or 11 spells (depending on how the GM interpreted the rule) and they could ALL be 5th level. But that game had spells carefully engineered so that the overall utility of every spell remained good at all levels. Higher level spells allowed effects not available at lower levels, but higher level casters were still fairly likely to use lower level spells. Try that spellcasting rule in BFRPG and you may see a few problems, like machine-gun magic-users...

The different class issue can be dealt with easily enough, actually. Make your new "magic-user" THE magic-user in your game; design them so that they can be dropped in as replacements for any and all magic-user characters in the game. Little as I like the sorcerer, I can see the attraction of a game where all arcane spellcasters were effectively sorcerers.