| Indi523 |
Ok
So ever since 3rd edition they went to this prepared spells every day business that streamlined how spells worked. This changed some of the dynamics of being a wizard greatly, specifically the need to guard your spell books.
In first edition based on your intelligence you had a minimum number of spells and a max. This was the spells you could know well enough to cast. IF you wanted to learn a new spell you had a percentage die roll which allowed you to learn a spell from a scroll. If you failed you had to wait until you leveled up to try again. IF you however were at your maximum int4elligence you had to unlearn a spell in order to get the new one. Once you were above 18 intelligence (bsck then only through a tome magic item) you had no more maximums.
You still had to have the spells in your spell book and you had to have access to your spell book to prepare them.
At the time different gaming groups played the rules two different ways. Either the spells per day was the spell slots you could learn and the spell range was the minimum spells you learned automatically on getting access to that level of spells and the max the number you knew. Option A
OR..... The Spells per day was the spells you learned in your book automatically as you leveled and the range say 9 to 18 for wizards was the number of spells you cast every level. This method however was not how it read in the book but many people where I gamed played it as if it was. Option B
Any rate the game made you spend I believe 15 minutes per level of the spell memorizing it and you had to be in a period at rest when you did it.
Once you cast a spell you had to spend that time to memorize a slot. You could do multiple memorizations of the same spell but had to spend the time in game.
This meant that a wizard that had cast all his spells who was at say 7th level or greater could take a full day of memorizing to a week to get maximum spells depending on whether the GM used option A or B.
This made casting a spell a hard choice for a wizard especially if several encounters were going to be played out in a dungeon where there would not be appropriate setting to comfortably rest and thus would not be able to regain spells. If he cast every spell he knew then it could take weeks to reup all his spells and get them back. This is why option B was not overpowered.
The other thing was that it was much easier to lose spells. IF you took damage in combat in the segment range you were casting the spell I.e. as you were casting you lost the spell, period. IT did not go off and you lost the spell slot. So If the wizard got a 4 in the initiative (a d10 roll because there were 10 segments in a round) then on segment 4, 5, 6 or 7 if they were hit they would lose the fireball spell that took 3 segments to cast. This is why wands and staves were prized, the charge went off immediately.
The other thing was that a loss of a spell book was devastating. The wizard no longer could memorize the spells he knew without a copy of it. He could write down a copy of a spell he knew to a scroll or another spell book and use that to rememorize so there were ways to recover from the loss however if he did not have a spell memorized at the time it was lost until he could get another copy of the spell. Since he knew it he did not have to make the percentage roll to cast it.
This meant that if you captured a wizard and did not bind his hands and mouth he was dangerous as there were spells with no components. Essentially the captors would spend all day torturing the wizard demanding he speak a spell component then punching him as he was doing this to force the loss of a spell. A tedious and not usually effective tactic but it was tried.
So while there are benefits to adjudicating this the easy way there is a loss in how wizards are supposed to be in the spirit of true original ADnD and I was wondering how some of that could be restored.
Back then wizards spent a lot of money on their spell books placing magical protections guarding it from being opened, making it resistant to damage. and hiding it. (One method was a Mordencain's Pocket creating a dimensional space tied to an innocuous object.) They other thing was there were multiple copies of books. Players would have a travelling copy of there spell book and a traditional one that stayed in his domicile and many wizards had 3rd or even 4th secret spell books stashed as back ups just in case.
I believe signature spells was first given in 2nd which allowed one to know a spell and memorize it without a spell book. This way the wizard always had access to the spell.
Despite the problems the prepare your spells every day thing solved there was a lot of great roleplaying regarding this method back in the day. If faced with a powerful wizard (called mages then) you had to not only defeat the wizard but many times find and destroy his spell books as well. If you managed to get hold of an enemy wizards spell book that was a real jackpot worth more sometimes than any magic item.
In the system as the rules define it now spell books are an after thought. Something you give the wizard after the adventure to see if any spells in it are useful and then discarded. Certainly the party would never consider the second and other copies and hunt them down.
To me this is a loss but I don't see an easy way to tweak the current rules to make it feel more like this. I don't know!