Saturday, October 30, 2010

Limited Clerical Spellcasting: Feature, not Bug

A recent post at BX Blackrazor reminded me of one of the things I think is an important feature of TSR D&D, in all its forms, that was turned on its head in WotC D&D.

Clerics can wear armor, fight, and use spells (as can the Elf class in Classic).  Yet the Cleric has (again, in Classic) 8 spells per level, while the M-U gets 12 spells per level.

In BX, the Cleric gets up to 5th level spells (again, so does the Elf), while the M-U gets 6th level spells.  AD&D and BECMI allow up to 9th level spells for M-Us, but only 7th level spells for Clerics.

That's a bit of balance that I think is important.  Clerics (and Elves) can do both fight and cast spells, but they don't get to fight as well as the Fighter (with a lower Hit Die type, and limited weaponry for the Cleric and level limits and a high XP cost for the Elf), nor have as much spell casting oomph as the Magic-User (again, with the level limit blocking Elves, and with the generally smaller list, lower ceiling, and in Classic not getting a spell at 1st level for Clerics).

That's the sort of simple and intuitive trade-off I like.

6 comments:

  1. But is it BALANCED!?

    :P

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  2. Oh, and if you say yes, you are committed to provide mathematical evidence of said claim across levels...as all good old-schoolers are fond of doing.

    :P

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  3. I really don't care if it's 'balanced.' This is another post in its own right, but trying to prove that every class is equal to every other class in a game where ANYTHING can happen is a fool's task.

    It's fun, that's all that matters (and I've seen way more new schoolers going on and on about class balance, with tables and charts and Power Point presentations to 'prove' their point).

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  4. Judging from the ":p" I imagine he or she is being sarcastic, though I can't say that for sure.

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  5. Evan, I would have thought so if it had only been the one comment. But two? Well, OK, it still seems fairly sarcastic.

    But what constitutes 'balance' is a good topic for a blog.

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