How does magic in the Oe/1e rules really work in practice?
Definitionally, "magic" is a kind of reality hack describing a peculiar kind of cause-and-effect: specifically, one in which effects in our universe can be created via the application of forces from outside it. The dictionary gives a few different interpretations of the word, all of which are related:
- An illusion or perceptual trick of some sort, usually effected through misdirection, legerdemain, and prestidigitation.
- The creation of some sort of effect through the manipulation and control of supernatural forces: an extraordinary or mystic influence.
D&D focuses on the second definition far more than the first. Even illusion is treated as supernatural in D&D, with its own specialized character class and spell types. Later editions introduce skill levels, one of which is prestidigitation ("I take 14 levels in Three Card Monty!"), but that's for a future post.
Mystic simply means: I don't understand it. That's an epistemic statement about cause and effect, not an ontological one. It only tells us what we don't or can't know, not what the thing is.
Supernatural means beyond nature: something that exists outside of existence (never mind the inherent contradiction to that...it's a fantasy game). If the effects of an act of manipulation or control result from natural forces, we call that technology, not magic.
The sci-fi fans among you can take a moment now to quote Arthur Clarke's Third Law at me: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Maybe Excellent Prismatic Spray is just a high-powered laser pointer and Magic Users are simply applied quantum physicists with even weirder jargon and cool hats? The Blackmoor campaign setting ultimately goes down this path (viz. The "Rad"), and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks had a lot of fun with it in a contained setting.
Larry Niven, whose take on magic we'll be trying to adapt to the core D&D magic rules in the next few posts, argued (both contra and corollary to Clarke): "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
This is to say that if your magical spells, powers, and effects are predictable, reliable, and clearly understood according to logical principles and empirical validation, then what you've really got is a special kind of technology, like solid state electronics but with wands and eldritch gestures.
Any game setting must necessarily go down this latter path, even games which revolve around explicit miracles (i.e. In Nomine). If they didn't, then literally anything goes and the only sort of meaningful structure you can bring into play is a draconian limitation on access to miraculous powers (in other words, none). Every spell winds up being a Wish spell. In practice, that tends to be both boring and directionless: no fun.
The only question for game mechanics, then, is what rules govern the technologies of magic? This is a significant question, because magic is inherently a kind of cheat.
In the original D&D rules, Gygax and Arneson adapted a magic and spell casting system he found in the fictional works of Jack Vance. In Vance's stories, the technology of magic works like this (from Rhialto the Marvelous):
A spell in essence corresponds to a code, or set of instructions, inserted into the sensorium of an entity which is able and not unwilling to alter the environment in accordance with the message conveyed by the spell. These entities are not necessarily 'intelligent,' nor even 'sentient,' and their conduct, from the tyro's point of view, is unpredictable, capricious and dangerous.
The most pliable and cooperative of these creatures range from the lowly and frail elementals, through the sandestins. More fractious entities are known by the Temuchin as 'daihak,' which include 'demons' and gods.' A magicians power derives from the abilities of the entities he is able to control. Every magician of consequence employs one or more sandestins. A few arch-magicians of Grand Motholam dared to employ the force of the lesser daihaks. To recite or even to list the names of these magicians is to evoke wonder and awe
(from The Dying Earth):
The tomes which held Turjan's sorcery lay on a long table of black steel or were thrust helter-skelter into shelves. These were volumes compiled by many wizards of the past, untidy folios collected by the Sage, leather-bound librams setting forth the syllables of a hundred powerful spells, so cogent that Turjan's brain could know but four at a time.
Turjan found a musty portfolio, turned the heavy pages to the spell the Sage had shown him, the Call to the Violet Cloud. He stared down at the characters and they burned with an urgent power, pressing off the page as if frantic to leave the dark solitude of the book.
Turjan closed the book, forcing the spell back into oblivion. [...] Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.
Thus, in Vancian Magic, we have the following rules:
- Magical effects are packaged into distinct spells; each spell has one fixed purpose with one fixed effect.
- Spells represent a kind of quasi-independent "magic-bomb" which must be prepared in advance of actual use, and each prepared spell can be used only once before needing to be prepared again.
- Magicians have a finite capacity of prepared spells which is the de facto measure of their skill and/or power as magicians. A wizard using magic for combat is thus something like a living gun: he must be "loaded" with spells beforehand and can run out of magical "ammunition".
It's clear from all this that when using Vancian magic, we are dealing with powerful forces that require significant effort and discipline to control. That's good, although the spells being thrown around in Vance's books are way more powerful than anything you'll normally see in a D&D game...particularly if you're playing with old-school rules.
As applied to the game mechanics of Oe/1e Dungeons & Dragons, the essence of Vancian magic is expressed in the following core rules:
- Spells must be somehow installed in a caster's brain in order to be used (via memorization or dedicated prayer)...akin to loading bombs and missiles onto a fighter plane prior to taking off.
- The number of spells a caster can have installed in his brain is limited by how experienced and skillful he is (by class level) and either how smart or wise he is (INT or WIS stat bonuses and penalties).
- More advanced and powerful spells require more experience and discipline to learn and use, and are therefore only available to be cast by higher-level characters.
- Once a spell is used, it leaves the caster's brain and has to be re-installed. This takes time and effort.
- Because it takes time and effort to get these spells into a caster's head, available spells have to be memorized or prayed for prior when you might need them. Choosing spells therefore becomes a major strategic and tactical issue.
This makes for a very simple and easy-to-administer spell-casting system in a game setting. In fact, despite my earlier critique and desire to refine it, I don't have any fundamental objection to any of these core provisions. I like them (for the most part). They work well, and I intend to keep all of them except the first part of number 4 (forgetting spells). All I'm going to change how they are implemented in such a way as to add a little flexibility, flavor, and diversity while balancing out the whole magic part of the game a bit more.
How are these rules applied to the various spell-casting classes and what sort of power does it give casters?
Looking at the effects of standard spells at various levels, we start to see that most of them increase in power with level in a linear progression (as opposed to a logarithmic or exponential progression). While 2nd Level spells are often twice as powerful as 1st Level spells, 3rd Level spells do not typically double the power again. Most 9th Level spells (excluding Wish, which gets its very own category as truly miraculous Magic, not any sort of magical technology), are not 256 times more powerful than 1st Level spells. Power Word: Kill is nasty, but it isn't a 256d6 Magic Missile, either.
Without parsing each individual spell, we're going to operate with the intuitive assumption that spell power follows a one-level step progression along with the level of the spells. 9th Level spells will be, on average, nine times more powerful than 1st Level spells. Therefore, we can sum up the available spell levels for any character class and have a rough quantitative approximation of that character's magical power. A comparative chart of cumulative spell levels for the major casting classes in Oe/1e looks like this (without Bards, because...WTF Bards?):
| Level | Magic User | Cleric | Druid | Illusionist | Paladin | Ranger |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | ||
2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 2 | ||
3 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 4 | ||
4 | 6 | 7 | 11 | 6 | ||
5 | 9 | 10 | 14 | 9 | ||
6 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 12 | ||
7 | 17 | 20 | 21 | 13 | ||
8 | 23 | 27 | 27 | 19 | 1 | |
9 | 31 | 34 | 32 | 26 | 1 | 2 |
10 | 40 | 44 | 42 | 31 | 2 | 3 |
11 | 47 | 53 | 53 | 41 | 4 | 6 |
12 | 55 | 66 | 68 | 49 | 6 | 6 |
13 | 65 | 71 | 94 | 58 | 9 | 10 |
14 | 76 | 78 | 121 | 69 | 9 | 10 |
15 | 90 | 93 | 88 | 14 | 12 | |
16 | 113 | 104 | 90 | 16 | 15 | |
17 | 140 | 116 | 106 | 19 | 18 | |
18 | 161 | 128 | 110 | 22 | 18 | |
19 | 176 | 138 | 123 | 26 | 18 | |
20 | 192 | 144 | 138 | 30 | 18 |
A few things immediately jump out from this chart (other than the fact that I'm way over-thinking this):
- Clerics have marginally more spell-casting power than Magic Users until 15th level, at which point Magic User casting power increases dramatically.
- Druids have more casting power at comparative level to any other class, though they top out early. This shows why 1e Druids have a reputation for being over-powered at their level (whether they are or not...though being able to change into a Cave Bear and still cast spells is kind of an advantage.).
- Illusionists tend to be under-powered in comparison to other pure-casting classes, and still have all the armor & weapon limitations of Magic Users. This may partially explain why they're not a popular character class in 1e games.
- Pure-caster classes have much higher cumulative spell ratings than mixed casting classes do. This is very appropriate, since fighting classes have all sorts of powers of their own.
Note also that I have not included caster level effects in these spell level calculations. A Magic Missile cast by a 5th Level Magic User is three times as powerful (3d6) as that cast by a 1st through 4th Level Magic User (1d6). There's a reason I haven't included that (apart from the difficulty of doing it for every spell - which a caster may or may not have available - and averaging the different effects all out...so much for D&D magic system simplicity, eh?). That will become relevant later on.
These numbers give us a baseline comparison for any magic system rule tweaks I might be contemplating. Whatever changes I make, the net effect should result in a magical power level comparable or just slightly less than the cumulative spell levels seen above for each class.
As we'll see, this is easier said than done.
