Page 45: Magic-User spells, 1st level to 5th level
April 30, 2008
Yes indeed, we’re prolonging the magic (section)…
1st level (cont.)
Light- Everyone gets this spell. Methinks a whole industry must have arisen from its elder sibling “continual light”. Message- A nifty little spell that wasn’t often used. Protection from Evil; Sleep- A critical spell for most low-level magic users. I know I cast it many a time… though the necessity of killing all the sleeping (insert humanoid here)s gives me pause now. Tenser’s Floating Disc- What a fun artifact of the dungeon crawl- a spell intended solely to let you haul treasure. If only Mordenkainen had finished his Invisible Wheelbarrow of Portage… Unseen Servant- “The created force has no shape, so it cannot be clothed.” Write- Once again, we have another means of separating characters from money. The ink needed for this spell (necessary to copy any spell) costs 200-500 gp and is only found 10% of the time in most locations. “You should devise whatever formula for manufacture of this substance you desire. Ichor of slithering tracker, octopus ink, and powdered gems are a fair place to start from.”
2nd level
Detect Evil-As opposed to the Phantom, who simply enjoined us to “Slam Evil“. Unlike clerics, m-us cannot determine the orientation of the evil (i.e lawful, neutral, or chaotic). Invisibility- Simply suggests “see the INVISBILITY section under THE ADVENTURE“. Now that’s suggests some complex issues, doesn’t it? Locate Object; Rope Trick: This spell was always rather odd; it let you create a dimensional pocket you could hide out in. I always thought it should perhaps be a slightly higher level, given the power of the magic. Stinking Cloud: Another classic, especially in the SSI computer games. Web- “If the spell is cast without two firm anchoring places, the webs collapse and entangle themselves, effectively negating the spell.” We never, ever, used that rule. Wizard Lock
3rd level
Dispel Magic; Feign Death; Gust of Wind- I’ve not mentioned it before, but this spell is discussed often in the other listings (cf. obscurement, wall of fog, etc.) because it neutralizes so many other spells with atmospheric effects. Not to useful otherwise, unless you need cooling breeze though. Lightning Bolt- The potential rebound effect of the spell (as seen in the “Stinking Cloud” video) was a nasty, if not often used, side-effect of the spell. Monster Summoning I- Magic spells, as seen in the world of Repo Man. You get to make use of “APPENDIX M: SUMMONED MONSTERS” though. Phantasmal Force- No, not Angus Scrimm. Realistically, you need to be familiar with the illusion you are creating. Protection from Evil, 10′ Radius
4th level
Charm Monster- Oddly enough, you aren’t given any ability to actually speak with the monsters. I guess pantomime is in order. “What’s that boy? A bunch of bugbears are coming?” Dig; Extension I- A spell I’ve never seen used or even discussed; another generically named enchantment too. Fire Trap; Minor Globe of Invulnerability- Oddly enough, you still get charged for an adult ticket if you take it to the movies. Monster Summoning II; Polymorph Other- “Henchmen and hirelings will NOT desire to be subjected to the effects of this spell.” What did Gygax’s players do to make him this paranoid. “You’ve got the job kid, just one thing- I’m going to turn you into a hill giant, okay?” Rary’s Mnemonic Enhancer- You’ve got to give AD&D ‘props’ (so to speak); I doubt most books I was reading at this age dropped the word mnemonic- I think I thought it was a typo and I sure as hell couldn’t pronounce it; that took William Gibson. Wizard Eye- Perfect for the voyeur in robes and pointed hats.
5th level
Animate Dead; Cloudkill- Unlike Monster Summoning n above, this spell has a truly evocative name. I wonder if some metal band ever used it… yep (sorta). Conjure Elemental; Contact Other Planes- “See the section on INSANITY.” Sounds like loads of fun. Extension II; Leomund’s Secret Chest- Yes, we made some rather crass jokes about bosoms because of this spell. My adult self apologies for my adolescent self. Monster Summoning III; Transmute Rock to Mud; Wall of Force- Did you realize this spell costs 10,000 gp in diamond dust to cast? Ouch.
The spells go ever, ever on…
Druid spells (cont.)
4th level- Call Woodland Being- One of the few spells with its own table. Dispel Magic; Hallucinatory Forest- “Touching the illusory growth will neither inform the individual as to its nature nor will it affect the magic.
5th level- Transmute Rock to Mud; Wall of Fire- Remember that the wall can be made to form a ring, a favorite spell of the Black Wizard Dja Nikash.
6th level- Anti-Animal Shell; Conjure Fire Elemental- I was always fond of fire elementals, probably because of the AD&D ‘action figure‘ of one I had and not due to some latent pyromania, I swear. Fire Seeds- This is one of several neat druid spells I totally overlooked when I played AD&D and focused on the magic-user class. One of several spells that remind me of Gandalf’s battle with the wolves in The Hobbit. Turn Wood; Wall of Thorns
7th level- Chariot of Sustarre- Am I the only one who wants to sing a filk about this spell to the tune of “Volare“? Conjure Earth Elemental- Earth elementals just don’t have the same caché for me as the fire elementals. Sorry, my stony chums. Fire Storm- I never knew that the reverse of this spell, fire quench, could permanently extinguish a flame tongue sword. Keen. Why Gygax put the applicable save in all caps (“CRUSHING BLOW”), I haven’t a clue. Reincarnation- When you can’t raise dead, you take a spin on the wheel of reincarnation. Apparently, if you are reincarnated as a badger, you “could grow to giant size, have maximum hit points, plus bonus points for a high constitution, and the intelligence level of its former character.” Yet, you’d still lack thumbs, be covered in fur, and be a freaking badger! Lichdom seems preferable.
Magic-User spells
1st level- Charm Person; Comprehend Languages- One of the few spells I ever really wished I could cast; sure, everybody talks a big game about delayed blast fireball, but this would make international travel a breeze. Detect Magic- I always imagined that this spell was like a Geiger counter for magic. Enlarge- in Pool of Radiance, this spell gave a combat bonus; here, in actual AD&D, the spell is of minimal use at best unless you need novelty giant cowboy hats or a roadside attraction- “World’s largest glaive! Amaze your friends!” Erase- “This spell might be useful against a glyph of warding.” Might? Shouldn’t the DMG be a bit clearer here and not make you flip back a page? Find Familiar- Familiars always seemed to be more trouble than they were worth, though perhaps I am biased as I tended to end up with toads. The note here is all about punishing players who kill off an undesirable familiar in hopes of summoning a superior replacement. When wizards have mid-life crises, do they dump their familiars for a younger, more stat-improving bimbo?
Art: Another cartoon by Will Maclean, this one shows a wizard at the left side, stepping backwards as if startled, with his hands held partially up and little beads of sweat shooting from his head. Two armored fighters stand across from him; one is holding a rather enormous tiger-striped cat by the next, hands gripped around its throat. The caption says “One false move, wizard, and your familiar gets it!” Judging by the detailing in the piece, this one looks to have been reduced to the same degree that Darlene described as happening to some of her work.
New words: sylvan, abjuration
We conclude the section on Clerical magic today as well as make a significant dent in the Druid’s magical repertoire.
7th level- Gate; I must confess I had to look this spell up in the players book since I didn’t recall what the hell it did… ironically, the example given is of Asmodeus, so I wasn’t too far off. Anyway, why would anyone cast this spell and summon up some being opposed to them or their alignment? “Hmmm… we need to get through that door. Maybe we should summon Juiblex, he’s fun!” The guidance given here about the odds a summoned creature (and by creature I mean Demon Lord or Demi-God, not a giant tick) seem obvious at best. While I can see a good deal of roleplaying possibilities, I can’t imagine that this sort of bargaining would ever be common place in a campaign. (Plus, as was mentioned earlier, casting this spell ages you 5 years…) Holy/Unholy Word; Restoration; At last, a spell that will “cure any and all forms of madness.”
I suppose I should say a few words about the “druids” (since the AD&D druid has about as much to do with ‘real’ druids as the Greek system has to do with the League of Athens); in rereading the original materials, I have to say I have a new respect for the class. The spell list is more limited in size than magic-users’ but is slightly bigger than the clerics’ and has a more interesting range of options than I recalled. With a better equipment selection than the cleric (though worse armor) and a wider range of skills, I think that if I was somehow to ever play AD&D (never say never my friends), I think I might give the druid a shot.
1st level- Detect Magic; Locate Animals; Lost viewers note: “there is a 0% chance of locating a polar bear in the jungle.” Speak with Animals; As with the clerical spell, animals aren’t automatically friendly. Oddly enough, Druids never gain automatic animal friendship, though I suppose the strictures on the class’ interaction with nature combined with this spell go a long way.
2nd level- Animal Friendship; Hmmm… this will only work if the druid doesn’t wish the animal harm Charm Person or Mammal; The guidelines here invalidate much of what my gaming groups did with this spell over the years. I recall a goblin or kobold who was charmed so long he became a retainer. Create Water; Now that I’m older I understand why it wasn’t called “make water”. Feign Death; As a side effect, this spell can be used to keep poisoned/injured characters alive. Who knew? Fire Trap; Heat Metal; Useful for pressing your best robes, no doubt. Locate Plants; “If you have not heard of the plant, assume it is rare or very rare, and give appropriate [chance to find].” Hopefully Marge Simpson isn’t your DM- “Ore-GAH-no? What the hell?” Obscurement; Produce Flame; Warp Wood; A druid can break down a magically sealed door… good to know.
3rd level- Call Lightning; Make sure to have a djinn or air elemental on hand- you can call lightning (1/2 strength sadly) out of them. Snare; Summon Insects; If I recall correctly the material component was a picnic basket… Tree
4th level- Animal Summoning I; Oddly enough you can summon baboons, giant lynxes, and wolverines. Did I mention that druids sound more appealing all the time?
New words: feign, q.v. (I really should talk about all the Latin abbreviations at some point) , ulterior
Extra: Someone else doing the same thing
April 27, 2008
Jason Vey (aka ‘The Grey Elf’) started a topic a few weeks back in the forums at RPG.net, the topic of which is rereading the DMG (and other 1st Edition material) and reacting to it. The discussion is much more broad in scope and at times contentious than Reading The DMG has been; I found it an interesting comparative read (though I mostly skimmed the other posters).
Bear with me folks, it is going to be like this for a couple of days…
3rd Level (cont.)- Locate Object; Piety means never having to lose your keys. Prayer; Obviously this spell’s name is far too generic. it is cumulative with chant (another great name) if both clerics worship the same deity. Speak with Dead; The description provides the useful reminder that creatures hostile in life won’t be particularly helpful in death. I imagine a very different take on Act 5, Scene 1 of Hamlet, with a goblin skull and a cleric:
Brother Homlet: Alas, poor Gritzak, I slew him, Horat-Io; a creature of minimal hit points and most paltry treasure. We have slain his kin a thousand times, and now, in this game, how boring it is. I yawn at it. Here glowered those eyes I blinded with a light spell. Where are you gems now? Your coffers? Your jewelry? Your stashes of loot that were plundered from the good village yon?
Skull of Gritzak:Bite me, human.
4th Level- Detect Lie; “…nor will it necessarily reveal evasions of the truth; it empowers the caster to detect a lie.”
5th Level- Atonement; I wonder what god would demand, as in the description here, of the human sacrifice of Osiris’ high priest. Set? Doesn’t sound like a very pleasant god… Commune; (Sorry, no hippie jokes.) “Most deities are not omniscient.” And we worship them why? Oh yes, the spells. Plane Shift; Here Gygax proposes having different planes connected to different notes (the spell uses a tuning fork). F# minor is the 9th Plane of Hell, FYI. Quest; When in doubt, force the players to do something via a spell.
6th Level- Aerial Servant; Anyone ever have to specify the type of magical circle used (see Art below)? I thought no. Blade Barrier; Its like taking a Cuisinart to your foes. Conjure Animals; Find the Path; Heal; For some reason this doesn’t ‘heal’ “serious forms of mental disorders not related to spells or inflicted injury to the brain.” Word of Recall; The non-Union Mexican equivalent of Teleport.
7th Level- Astral Spell; Control Weather; To paraphrase- you must know the weather conditions in order to tell the players what the current weather conditions are. Wow. Earthquake; Earth Elementals can counter-act this spell. Too bad they can’t cause earthquakes…
Art: Again, I’m stretching things, but I don’t want a competing “illustration” category. This time, under the listing for Astral Servant, we have three “protective inscriptions”, the magic circle, pentagram (technically it is a circumscribed pentagram), and thaumaturgic triangle. The ‘runes’ in the magic circle are gibberish (though I do see a π and maybe an esh), just in case you want to use the DMG for your personal necromantic rites at home.
New word: omniscient, thaumaturgic
Page 41: Spell Explanations (Cleric spells 1st to 3rd)
April 25, 2008
(Apropos of nothing in particular- here are the Kinks, for your listening pleasure.)
The section on spell explanation starts with a little vaporware (so to speak) promise from Gygax- “a playing aid” containing a “concise list of each spell herein, with name, level, range, duration, area of effect, and so forth tabulated and then special notes appended”. I’m sure more than one database of this sort was cooked up by assorted DMs over the years, but TSR never put one out (for AD&D at least, I can’t speak to 3rd and 4th ed. games). I’m amused at the suggestion that the DM always have this section at hand when spells are cast. Sure…
I’ll list the spells, but only comment on the ones that strike me…
1st level- Detect Evil; This sort of thing always bugged me. What if the Neutral Evil cleric was willing to parlay the release of prisoners? How about the Chaotic Neutral bandit who is about to ambush us. I guess trials in Good aligned kingdoms were easy, since intent doesn’t matter at all. Detect Magic; Light; This spell, because you could cast it on someone’s eyes, was always a cheap means of incapacitating a foe. I recall a rather dangerous stone giant who was rendered (relatively) harmless after failing his save. Poor bastard. Protection from Evil; The description makes it sound like no evil creature can touch the caster but the actual penalties imposed by the spell contradict this notion.
2nd level- Augury; The description suggests that people who find 10,000 sp and a +1 shield would be counted as rich, which belies everything else the DMG has taught us about character cash requirements. Detect Charm; Find Traps; With a duration of 30 minutes, this spell must annoy thieves. Silence, 15′ Radius; Another oft-used spell, this one tended to incapacitate spell casters (though there are a few spells that don’t require verbal components. Snake Charm; I never realized that you could charm magical creature like the couatl. Speak with Animals; “The more stupid [animals] will make inane comments too!” Sounds fun.
3rd level- Animate Dead; One of the more potent permanent spell at low levels; you get to make yourself an undead chum. There are some rules about making skeletons and zombies out of creatures over one hit die as well. Of course, good clerics aren’t supposed to cast this spell. Spoil-sports. Continual Light; I always thought the continual light lantern or coin was an ad-hoc creation of players, Gygax suggests it here in the text. Cure Blindness; Apparently you can’t heal someone who has lost their eyes, just the magically blinded and “conditions such as cataracts and glaucoma” as well as bad vision. I guess that is why you never see characters with glasses. Dispel Magic; Another interesting trinket- this spell causes magic items to be “non-operational for 1 round”. That would have come in handy in certain battles. Glyph of Warding; see below…
Art: (This might be cheating, but it is an image.)
There are images of the seven sample glyphs on the page. No source is given, but I’d have to assume Gygax since they are said to be from Greyhawk. They are in order Fire (fah), sort of like the two crossed swords symbol on a map indicating a battlefield; Lightning (leh), Cousin It on a skateboard, in profile; Cold (cuh), a snake making a capital U; Blind (beh) like this Cyrillic letter Щ and an L had a child; Paralysis (peh- anyone else see the glyph name pattern? I assumed as much.), another Cyrillic letter, Г, this one made from cuh’s snake; Energy (eha), in inverted C, but with curlicues on the end and two marks in the middle, (sort of like Э); and finally Drain (doh), which is an omega Ω mixed with a cartoon of a flip ‘do. Yeah, I wish I could have found a picture too.
New words: charmee, ophidian (and ophidianoid)
Recovery of Spells:
If nothing else was ground into my head playing Pool of Radiance (aside from, when replaying it in 1997 at my tech support job, the fact that the spell sounds annoyed my co-workers) is that you need to rest 4 hours to recover 1st and 2nd level spells and 6 hours for 3rd and 4th level ones. Well, now I’ve seen the rule in the DMG. Looking more closely, I note that 15 minutes per spell per level is additionally needed in “study/prayer” for each spell to be memorized. This means that certain high level magic users would need more than a day to recoup their spells, if they cast them all.
Example: Bongo (now Lord of the Arcane Tower of Fzonk), used up all his spells defeating an army of ettin-zombies (twice as hard to kill, you know). As a 14th level magic users, he needs to recover 5 1st, 5 2nd, 5 3rd, 4 4th, 4 5th, 2 6th, and 1 7th level spells. He first must rest at least 10 hours (for the 7th level spells) plus 21 hours, 15 minutes to learn all those other spell, for a total of 31 hours, 15 minutes, simply to re-learn his spells. ( I also notice that the spell table goes up to 29th level- A) who has a 29th level m-u? B) it would take 7.5 million experience points to reach 29th level; Demogorgon is only worth 74,000 xp.)
Spell Casting:
Here’s some information that I never knew:
“All magics and cleric spells are similar in that the word sounds, when combined into whatever patterns are applicable, are charged with energy from the Positive or Negative Material Plane. When uttered, these sounds cause the release of this energy, which in turn triggers a set reaction. The release of the energy contained in these words is what causes the spell to be forgotten or the writing to disappear from the surface upon which it is written…
“To replace [energy from the Positive/Negative Planes] something must flow back in reverse. The dissolution and destruction of material components provides the energy that balances out this flow, through the principle of similarity… Those spells without apparent material components are actually utilizing the air exhaled by the magic-user in the utterance of the spell.”
Wow- that’s not how I envisioned it at all (as much as I ever envisioned how ‘magic’ worked). I guess I always thought it was somehow connected to the astral or ethereal plane, and that magic was some sort of ether in the world, not that spell-casters were some sort of, as Gygax puts it, an “electrical heater” (the metaphor being that the energy comes from elsewhere). At the end he recommends Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld, as well as The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs; I’ve read neither, but know that AD&D’s magic system is directly derived from Vance’s work. I suspect I wouldn’t be a fan…
Tribal Spell Casters:
I must say, I was always fond of including these guys in my dungeons (sure, I designed them, but never ran them) and I have happy memories of a magic-user of mine going toe-to-toe with a nasty orc shaman and living to tell the tale. Some humanoid races (bugbears, cavemen[?], ettins, giants, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizard men, ogres, orcs, troglodytes, and trolls) are allowed to have some magic-using individuals. These are of two types- shaman (i.e. clerics) and witch-doctors (i.e. magic users). These spell casters are really not all that powerful (max level of 7 for ’shaman’ and 4 for witchdoctors of selected races) but they do add a bit of flavor. Unfortunately their spell selection is rather limited, sometimes inexplicably so. For example, while shaman can cast cure light wounds, they lack cure serious wounds, even though they can cast 4th level spells; witch-doctors lack even a single offensive spell (unless you count ’scare’).
I always thought the humanoids should get an even break, so to speak (I love the notion of Tucker’s Kobolds, for example) and I think giving them some magic capabilities is only fair. How these unaccredited 2 year community college equivalent clerics and magic users could create the various nasty magic items orcs and goblins seem to have is beyond me though.
(This is one of the few places I seem to have written in my book as well; I penciled “/good” onto the spell “protection from evil”.)
Art: The bottom left corner of the page is an illustration by long-time AD&D (and beyond) illustrator Erol Otus (I may have used that link before). It shows a bit of close-range magical combat between a wizard (or a be-robed and hatted fellow) and a cloak-wearing skeleton (a lich perhaps?). The wizard is shooting a lightning-bolt (or some such) which is striking the chest of the skeleton while the skeleton is blasting the wizard in the face. My assumption is that the skeleton is winning.
Extra: Link to Will McLean’s homepage
April 24, 2008
As some folks may have noticed in the comments a few days ago, DMG artist Will McLean has popped by Reading the DMG (though unfortunately it was to correct a factual error on my part; again, my apologies!). I’ve added a link to his homepage in the blogroll on the right side of the page. Apparently, beyond his work for the DMG, he’s a long-term member of the SCA (no, not that SCA) and the author of Daily Life in Chaucer’s England.
As he describes his blog:
This blog is mostly a platform for my other writing about the Middle Ages, and whatever else moves me: other history, movies, SF, space exploration, contemporary politics and economics.
I think there was a fundamental difference between how most people played AD&D and how Gygax described the system in a number of ways, not the least of which was spell memorization and acquisition. Tomorrow I’ll discuss spell memorization; today we’ll cover initial spells and gaining new spells.
In most games I played, you had your choice of the whole list of magic-user (and illusionist) spells; this provided a wide-range of freedom for spell casters but goes distinctly against the hermetic ideal that Gygax seems to aspire to. For him, spell-casters should have a very limited pool of spells at start and should only acquire new spells at great difficulty. In this framework, new spells become a particular and unique treasures eagerly sought by players and the magic-users’ guild has some use.
For once, I think Gygax’s approach is preferable to the de facto system used by the groups I played with. I preferred what are called ‘magic-poor‘ worlds (as opposed to magic-rich one in which magic is commonplace and used as a replacement for our technology. Cities with continual light spells as streetlights and shops laden with magic items (all DMG standard) always bothered me. I think Gygax is unnecessarily parsimonious approach to spells (you start with 4; one is ‘read magic’ and the others are determined randomly) but I think with slight modification, his system is a richer one than the buffet approach others employ. The percentage chance to learn spells and the maximum number of known spells is also sound if somewhat problematic- I think an idea system would allow a new chance to learn a spell with each gain of level as well as a potential increase in spells knowable.
(Speaking of ‘read magic’, I always thought this was problematic. How can you learn this spell, if all spells require the casting of ‘read magic’?)
Perhaps my opinions on this issue are colored by the various “Pages from the Mages” articles by Ed Greenwood in Dragon over the years. This occasional series presented spell books from his Forgotten Realms setting, each with their own history and unique properties (and spells). I always enjoyed these pieces (and found them as inspiration when I started running Call of Cthulhu, making up lengthy handouts about various discovered tomes) and found they meshed well with my own notions of what magic should be, i.e. not mundane and commonplace.
Of course, I think the reasoning behind the general overlooking of this rule has something to do with how remarkably weak low-level magic users are. At first level, they are like a one-charge item; in the strictest use of the rules, they are also hopelessly inflexible as well. “Sorry you memorized Charm Person and we fought all those skeletons and giant spiders!” You really need a good deal of luck to survive the average encounter when running a magic-users (or illusionist). Consider that a goblin has, on average, more hit points, does more damage, and a better chance to hit than you do… and they’re considered cannon fodder in most games. I understand the impulse to boost magic users (and I think there are good ways to do it), but I don’t think giving away the store when it comes to spells is a good idea.
As for illusionists, I must confess I never knew that “illusionists do no need the spell read magic… [their] spell books are written in a secret tongue which every apprentice learns”. I always liked illusionists and ran a few on occasion (Morlus of Gar, how we hardly knew ye) but I for some reason always envisioned them simply being a specialist type of magic-users. Like M-Us, illusionists are supposed to have a paltry number of spells at start: 3 randomly rolled (on the rarely used d12).
For the sake of curiosity, I’ll roll up the starting spells of two characters: Bongo the Magic-User and Ognob the Illusionist.
Bongo has read magic automatically. For his spells, I roll once on each table (offensive, defensive, and misc). My results are 9,2, and 5 sleep, dancing lights, and identify. Not bad results, over-all. As for Ognob, I roll 3, 6, and 11: color spray, detect illusion, and phantasmal fog. Again, not that bad a set of rolls. I do pity the folks who ended up with gaze reflection. How useful is that?
If, somehow, your character with the offensive and defensive capabilities of a krill (not to be confused with a ‘Krull‘) survives long enough to somehow be in need of new spells, Gygax goes out of his way to explain what a difficult process. In the example given (once again the assumption is that players will exploit their hirelings, as usual) Halfdan the Necromancer wants to buy a copy of suggestion from Thigru Thorkisen, a magician employed by Halfdan’s friend Olaf Bluecheeks. What does Thigru want for this 3rd level spell? Two spells of equal level plus a ‘bonus’ of a magic item (“a set of three potions, a scroll of three spells, or perhaps a ring of invisibility“. If they had less than friendly relations, the price would be higher, but even in the event that Thigru’s life had been saved by Halfdon, the minimum price would be at least a potion or a scroll.
At least party members can swap spells if they want. I can only imagine the sort of horse-trading that goes on there…
New words: benison
Tomorrow: Spell recovery, spell casting, and (a personal favorite) tribal spell casters!
Page 38: More time; Acquiring Clerical Spells
April 21, 2008
The discussion of game time continues much as it did on page 37- encouraging a zealous monitoring of time used in order to keep players honest, offer them another sort of character-defining choice, adding a layer of realism, etc. It is clear that, at least in the hypothetical, Gygax ran a very different sort of AD&D campaign than I was ever a part of.
By my recollection, I played in at least three long-term campaigns using AD&D (2 1st ed, 1 2nd) as well as a good number of related games- a now-embarrassing Monty Haul game of basic (I only had one player and I mistakenly thought treasure was the best way to keep it fun), a weird Rolemaster/AD&D homebrew, some one off- you probably get the picture. Our parties tended to be highly cohesive, goal-oriented groups that rarely broke into smaller sub-groups. Aside from the usual ‘hit town and go shopping’ or the occasional person side-adventure (I distinctly remember a DM controlled PC whose story-arc was so close to Mr. Worf’s on Star Trek that we called him that privately) we almost always stayed together, working towards a common goal.
If I had to come up with some arbitrary adjectives to use to compare these styles of play, I would say Mr. Gygax’s (no school ever gave him an honorary degree?) style was more Arthurian- folks wandering off constantly and flowing back together in new configurations; my style of play was more… fantasy novel? Buffian? (in the sense there was a core group with a common goal, not that one dominant character). Perhaps his games were more character driven, ours more plot-based?
I suppose in the end, the point (being that a fair chronicling of time’s passage prevents chronological paradoxes and potential player abuse) is a reasonable one, but it was somewhat garbled in transmission.
Turning to “Time In The Dungeon” (which does sound like either the tell-all memoir of a reformed dominatrix or news magazine in Order of the Stick…), there is both reasonable (“the average party packs a lot of equipment”) and sublimely arbitrary (“a party should be required to rest at least one turn in six”) discussion. I’m a bit rusty on the encumbrance system, but the various rest requirements set out here seem like a work around having to use a stamina point system or some-such method to prevent characters from being perpetual motion machines. I’m also reminded of certain tournament scenarios, especially “The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan” in which you had a specific number of turns to escape the dungeon before a cloud of poison gas killed you.
Moving, as the gentleman says, swiftly on- we reach the spell section of the DMG. We’re going to be here for ten pages, so get comfortable…
Clerical Acquisition of Spells: Hopefully unsurprisingly, clerics gain their magical powers from the deity they worship. My impression that much of the cleric class in AD&D is drawn from Catholicism seems reinforced here here- young clerics start as novitiates, the religion is a strict hierarchy, the prohibition about ’spilling blood’ (a.k.a. no swords- have you ever seen someone beaten to death with a blunt object? There is blood), some prayers beings directed specifically to the god’s minions, etc. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this due to the ostensibly medieval setting, but aside from the universality of polytheism- on which I will say more at some later date.
Clerical magic, beyond level 2, requires direct communication with some super-human power, be in angel, deity, demi-gods, whatever. Fifth level and above come only from the cleric’s deity itself- which seems like a real advantage for a 9th level cleric versus most other characters, as how many of them have a daily chit-chat with a god? I do find it odd that a god’s special representative still has to ask for their spells in advance at the start of each day.
(Straying onto page 39…) Clerics, as readers will hopefully assume, are in very deep trouble if they stray from the teachings of their faith. Higher level spells are lost and some sort of serious atonement is required. Trying to switch gods is even more risky- your old god will be ‘gunning’ for you and your new god won’t trust you for a good long time. Here’s a little gem- “There is no salvation for a thrice-changed cleric; her or she is instantly killed.” Ouch.
New words: geas, servitor
