Robert Fisher
Just thinking out loud
In defense of D&D magic
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(Hmm...well, I guess this is good enough for a first draft. It could use some more work.)
The magic system that Gygax devised inspired by Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series is somewhat unusual. If you expect D&D to be a generic fantasy system, the magic system can seem to be a problem because it isn’t generic fantasy.
Side bar: One thing that has helped me to enjoy D&D more is letting D&D be D&D. D&D is not generic fantasy. There are many ways that you can make it your own, but there’s a point at which trying to get a square peg to fit in a round hole becomes more frustrating than fun.
Gygax’s own argument that a point based system would have failed where the memorize/prepare + fire-&-forget system didn’t is uncovincing. How would magic points be any more difficult to manage than hit points? Moreover, Gygax’s system is a point-based system, albeit a tiered one.
(Note that Gygax’s current system, Lejendary Adventures, uses a point-based magic system.)
The tiered system’s extra complexity over other point-based systems does have some advantages. It allows the designer to limit spells by level. Giving the mage the power to cast one, ninth-level spell does not have the side effect of allowing him to instead cast nine, first-level spells.
Possibly the best quality of the D&D magic system to me is that it is reliable. The mage has little chance to fail to cast a spell. His casting can be disrupted. His target may be allowed a saving throw. There are a few other things that can hinder him. The mage doesn’t, however, suffer the embarrasment—which mages in other systems do—of missing a die roll & failing to cast the spell at all. That almost never—if ever—happens in pre-D&D fantasy literature.
Side bar: It has been argued that D&D has had a huge impact on fantasy literature, making things common that would have been uncommon otherwise.
As for “memorizing”, people who didn’t care for that description substituted the word “preparation” in the 1980s. Likewise, people allowed casters to forego “preparation” & cast spells spontaneously (like the 3e Sorcerer) in the 1980s. It did make the casters more powerful, but it didn’t break the game.
Although a first-level mage has only a single spell, most monsters shouldn’t know that. The biggest weapon a mage has is his opponent’s ignorance of his abilities.
last updated 1 year ago #
