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D&D Older Editions
Old school wizards, how do you play level 1?
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9124878" data-attributes="member: 996"><p><em>That's the idea,</em></p><p>classic Vancian memorization was meant to be actually limiting ... and could be, at least, at the lower levels.</p><p></p><p> That was not the idea. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> Rather, you were meant to develop rarefied "player skill" that would allow you to predict which more-specialized spells would be useful in the coming adventure or/and find creative uses for such spells in situations they weren't obviously perfect for.</p><p></p><p>It was with 3e that we got both spontaneous Sorcerers and scroll-scribing-from-1st-level Wizards who(respectively) had no choice but to take a slate of generally-useful known spells and prepped caster-level dependent spells while scribing infrequently-useful spells to scrolls. </p><p></p><p>(And, of course, 5e Neo-Vancian slotcasting is as unrestricted as can be short of just casting any spell from your list, every round.)</p><p></p><p>If you don't want casters to just utterly dominate in D&D outside of the lowest levels, you need either tremendous player restraint in 3.x/PF/5e, or an experienced/genius/fiendish DM in TSR/OSR (both is good in either case, too). [spoiler](Technically, briefly, you could have played 4e and had natively balanced martials and casters, but that's just the exception that proves the rule.)[/spoiler]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 9124878, member: 996"] [I]That's the idea,[/I] classic Vancian memorization was meant to be actually limiting ... and could be, at least, at the lower levels. That was not the idea. ;) Rather, you were meant to develop rarefied "player skill" that would allow you to predict which more-specialized spells would be useful in the coming adventure or/and find creative uses for such spells in situations they weren't obviously perfect for. It was with 3e that we got both spontaneous Sorcerers and scroll-scribing-from-1st-level Wizards who(respectively) had no choice but to take a slate of generally-useful known spells and prepped caster-level dependent spells while scribing infrequently-useful spells to scrolls. (And, of course, 5e Neo-Vancian slotcasting is as unrestricted as can be short of just casting any spell from your list, every round.) If you don't want casters to just utterly dominate in D&D outside of the lowest levels, you need either tremendous player restraint in 3.x/PF/5e, or an experienced/genius/fiendish DM in TSR/OSR (both is good in either case, too). [spoiler](Technically, briefly, you could have played 4e and had natively balanced martials and casters, but that's just the exception that proves the rule.)[/spoiler] [/QUOTE]
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Old school wizards, how do you play level 1?
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