In AD&D you only need a 9 INT -- everything else can be 3s.  I've ran as GM many a character who only rolled a 1 HP, and they still adventured.  For I am the hardest of cores!    It's a game of pretend, what's the worst that can happen?

Also wizards can't wear armor because they have to old style vogue to cast spells. 

Low stats in AD&D have to be real low to be truly painful, in my experience. Even a few 6 & 7 are often not penalized in the stat mods. Low CON seems like the real serious one but the minimum gain keeps it fine -- and you only need 1 HP to adventure!  What I have found is a real serious low stat is oddly CHA if your GM rolls Reactions rolls.  However that just means roleplaying effort to bribe and parley up through encounters. Hint, bring lots of yummy food stuffs and low value coinage. It's amazing what some roasted meat on a fire can befriend!

The big secret is try not to go it alone.  That's hard for just about everybody starting out.  Hirelings and buddy NPCs are your friends.  And you quickly learn how to bluff a pair of twos into a winning hand as a wizard with some janky spell choices. Even the rest of the party can play off it! 

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 29, 2024, 09:02:04 AM

Quote from: JeremyR on March 29, 2024, 03:12:06 AM
Yes and no. If you use the modern 4 person adventuring party, one is probably going to be useless except for that one fight where he uses sleep.

But back in the day if you had 6 to 12 people in the party, he could hide in the back throwing darts or whatnot until sleep was needed.

Agree in spades.  Then add light sources.  Sure, that 12 person party probably has the "link boy" to handle that, but as the hired help goes down, someone has to hold a torch or lantern.  Is it the thief trying to sneak, the fighter with sword & board or a 2-handed weapon or a ranger with a bow?  Nope.  Sure don't want your cleric to do it when he could be using a shield and staying up.  Heck, that's even true when you have a 5-person party, which was more typical of the "small" group.  Hand-wave all the light source stuff, and that all goes out the window.

Then as mentioned, there's the wand of magic missiles.  But you don't even need to go that far.  The GM can just use the treasure tables, where the majority of early magic is going to be magic arrows, potions, and scrolls--most of the latter being wizard scrolls.  By third or fourth level, the wizard has not only picked up a few more spells, he's also likely got several consumable things that might come in really handy.

However, I think the biggest roadblock to that kind of play is not embracing the style--whether because can't or won't doesn't really matter.  It can suck to be the wizard until about 5th level in that kind of game.  OTOH, giving a few hired NPC body guards to keep him out of the front line and playing smart, the wizard player gets a little dopamine hit every time they get a new spell, wand, or scroll.  What really sets it apart is the playing smart part, though.  If you stay at levels 1-3 perpetually, because the party keeps getting wiped out, then there's not enough payoff.

It's been very eye-opening for some of my moderately experienced but younger players in one of my new groups.  Even with my system allowing multiple charges of spells, having random cantrips to lead off is not what they are used to in a caster.  (Also, not being able to heal certain kinds of damage easily.)  Just last session I had a lightly-armored healer volunteer to hold the torch in a desperate running night fight, and he was reveling in it.  His decisions probably made the difference in the party not losing anyone.  And he knew it.  His announced reasoning was the was position in the middle so that everyone could see, he had a hand free, and the torch was a beacon for anyone hurt to make their way to him (or be dragged by someone else or for him to see to go to them).  That's in a party of 10 players, no one able to see in the dark.  He never even tried to attack, but did use tactical movement to stay out of melee until the last few rounds, where upon a couple of other PC's immediately converged on him to get him out of melee again.

Comment after the game, immediately echoed by several other players:  "This is so much more tactically rich than 5E".  None of them had ever played AD&D before.

This, this this! 

I am usually generous with hirelings and NPCs with my smaller parties and make it a point that -- though useful -- the spotlight is on my players leading through their PCs. So sacrificial losses can feel agonizing and stressful. But too helping hands of even mundane acts being clutch in the chaos leave as deeply memorable moments.

I too had a few moments like the torchbearer above, where the NPCs are cooperating for their lives with the PCs, and the players leave feeling AD&D is so much more intense and rich. I think the fragility of needing others makes the magic happen. Perhaps something about the immediacy in desperation breathes life into the fiction.

For everyone it's not the only way, or best way, but for my immersive itch it's been my favorite way. 

"The premise is that each player character is above average—at least in some respects—and has superior potential.  Furthermore, it is usually essential to the character's survival to be exceptional (with a rating of 15 or above) in no less than two ability scores." —Gary Gygax, AD&D Player's Handbook, 1978

And don't forget about TIMEKEEPING, too!  Damn heathens!

Meh, all that powergaming Montey Haul stuff was dropped for the onetrueway of AD&D 2e, Method I: 3d6 down the line (Methods II through IX allowed for the fragile of ego ).  The hardest of cores. 

Quote from: Exploderwizard on March 29, 2024, 08:21:38 AM
With regard to magic users, we need to take a look at how they started out. In original pre-supplement OD&D there were only three classes. The fighting man got 1d6+1 hit points and the magic user and clerics each got 1d6, not exactly a huge disparity there. ....

So I firmly blame AD&D for making the magic user into the ultimate pussy.

In my opinion; AD&D and B/X both...

In the AD&D MM, the basic bitch human has 1-6 HP.  Even in AD&D giving the MU 1-4HP is a fuck you.
(The AD&D MM is janky as it sets humans apart from humanoids like orcs...)

In B/X the basic bitch human get a full HD. 1HD=1d8...  So in B/X the 1-4HP for the MU is a capitalized Fuck You.

Anything less that the standard Hit Die (1d8 B/X) basically goes against the guidelines for human NPC's.


0e got it right the first time with all the PC's having the same HD, with a discreet bonus for the Fighter.

Massively Nerfing hit points for the non-fighter classes is not a good way to "balance" the game. Even ACKSII falls short on this.

It should be done by carefully curating the class abilities and spell lists.

But people are used to the way things have been done, so don't hold your breath.

I don't like unlimited "cantrips" for world-building reasons. It's rare in fiction, and raises a lot of questions about how the world works. I think it's okay for "warlocks" and archmages, but your average mage should conserve their power.

To me, it's implausible that a professional adventurer, "wizard" or no, can can tramping around for months out of the year with professional warriors, no, legendary swordsmen, and not pick up enough in sparring to take out a bandit with a sword. If you look at wizards in fiction, Harry Potter, Elric, Gandalf, the bad guy in Jason and the Argonauts, Darth Vader, Belgarath, and solidly half the wizards you can think of use swords. And even the ones who aren't fencers, tend to be agile, quick, brave, and least able to brawl a little. The magicians who aren't fighters in fiction tend to be thieves; the Grey Mouser is all three.

The idea of dragging a PhD student along to fight dragons, and they never learn to camp, or to wield a sword, or to swim, and they never get tough, is a peculiar conceit of D&D and its imitators.

I think it's part of the world building of your world.  I'm running AD&D in Greyhawk.  One of the PCs is a half-elf Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric and has been playing her from 1st level (and is now Fighter 2/Magic-User 2/Cleric 3).   Takes forever to level her (some of the other PCs are 5th) but it's been working out and she has a lot of flexibility, can wear armor and cast a good deal of magic now, and swing a bastard sword when need be- usually only against weak foes.   She's the only wizard in the group. 

I like the weaker magic of AD&D.  No spamming cantrips.  Eventually the magic will run out if you don't conserve it.  And big magic usually has some side effect (often aging- which has a chance to kill the PC or NPC through system shock).   Which is awesome.   

Though, if I were running a more "gonzo" setting, I might opt for a different system.  This... it feels more like a fantasy novel to me. 

So, to answer the OP's question- yeah, a 1st level mage was totally viable.  Though the one in my game was multi-classed, a single classed wizard would have lived (though I let PCs start off with max hp, and use 4d6, drop lowest, re-roll "1's" for character creation, so they are a little beefer, than 3d6 down the line.  But even Gygax didn't do that, apparently...)

Quote from: SHARK on March 28, 2024, 05:03:18 PMArmy Infantry demand everyone in the squad are able to perform -

Fighters are the infantry, they fight. Thieves are recce teams - if they get into a fight, they fucked up. Clerics fight, they're infantry who are medics. Magic-users are forward observers, or the nerdy airforce guys who sit in a shipping container in Iowa controlling a drone in Afghanistan - toss those guys in a shitfight and don't expect anything good out of it.

Plus, in the real world you get your skills, you might improve them slightly over time, but not a heap. Real people get shot 1-2 times and fall over, they don't have any prospect of getting up to 5th level and being able to be shot 5-10 times before they fall over.

It's a game. All these complaints come from people who are bad at playing the game.

I like realistic-themed games, that's why I wrote Conflict - see sig. But despite all your whinging, none of you actually want a realistic-themed game, or you'd all have bought this - or Twilight 2000 2nd edition, or Aftermath, or Millenium's End, or GURPS with all the realism options turned on, or Basic Roleplaying, or whatever. Instead you bought D&D, but are still bitching about "realism". Which means you don't actually care about realism, you just want to be able to play without using your brains and power-game blast your way through shit without any danger to your character. Go ahead, play a computer game with all the cheat codes on.

Alternately, stop being a lazy pussy and learn to play D&D well.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on March 31, 2024, 11:48:40 PM

Quote from: SHARK on March 28, 2024, 05:03:18 PMArmy Infantry demand everyone in the squad are able to perform -

Fighters are the infantry, they fight. Thieves are recce teams - if they get into a fight, they fucked up. Clerics fight, they're infantry who are medics. Magic-users are forward observers, or the nerdy airforce guys who sit in a shipping container in Iowa controlling a drone in Afghanistan - toss those guys in a shitfight and don't expect anything good out of it.

Plus, in the real world you get your skills, you might improve them slightly over time, but not a heap. Real people get shot 1-2 times and fall over, they don't have any prospect of getting up to 5th level and being able to be shot 5-10 times before they fall over.

It's a game. All these complaints come from people who are bad at playing the game.

I like realistic-themed games, that's why I wrote Conflict - see sig. But despite all your whinging, none of you actually want a realistic-themed game, or you'd all have bought this - or Twilight 2000 2nd edition, or Aftermath, or Millenium's End, or GURPS with all the realism options turned on, or Basic Roleplaying, or whatever. Instead you bought D&D, but are still bitching about "realism". Which means you don't actually care about realism, you just want to be able to play without using your brains and power-game blast your way through shit without any danger to your character. Go ahead, play a computer game with all the cheat codes on.

Alternately, stop being a lazy pussy and learn to play D&D well.

Greetings!

*Laughing* I think it is ok if people want varying degrees of realism in whatever game they are playing, whether that is D&D or something else.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on March 31, 2024, 11:48:40 PM
Magic-users are forward observers, or the nerdy airforce guys who sit in a shipping container in Iowa controlling a drone in Afghanistan - toss those guys in a shitfight and don't expect anything good out of it.

Definitely not. They are walking into the same dungeons as the fighters. Most of them have been stabbed at by a goblin at one point or another. If someone yells a formation, they better know exactly where to stand. I'd say they are more comparable to a flamethrower guy, or a designated rifleman.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on March 31, 2024, 11:48:40 PM
Fighters are the infantry, they fight. Thieves are recce teams - if they get into a fight, they fucked up. Clerics fight, they're infantry who are medics. Magic-users are forward observers, or the nerdy airforce guys who sit in a shipping container in Iowa controlling a drone in Afghanistan - toss those guys in a shitfight and don't expect anything good out of it.

Monks are the drifter who signs on as the tavern bouncer, sleeps in a nearby barn, falls in love with the cleric, and rips the throat out of the crimelord at the end of the adventure.

  Roadhouse 

Family Guy meme. 

See?! I'm old yet hip & with it... a legend in my mind! 

Since MUs are physically weaker than other classes, I've made a house rule to compensate by MUs having bonus spells based upon INT, just like clerics. I even use the same table. So far it's worked pretty well.

I'm in an OD&D campaign. We have two mages who just reached 5th level out of probably 20 PCs who've been in the campaign over the year.

In most OSR campaigns, adventurers are nutters who band together to go places sane people never go. They aren't society's best and brightest - just greedier and more daring than the average bear.

You bring along a 1st level Wizard because he has ONE magic spell.

And THAT is freaking amazing to have at the right moment, because without that Wizard, your crew would have ZERO magic spells.

As for Weak vs. Strong, that's not a big issue in OSR games. Most OSR games have a stat range of -3 to +3 and the vast majority have +0 in most stats. If your mage has a -1 STR, then so what? He just went from rolling D20 to D20-1, aka 5% penalty.

In actual play, the mage is going to flank and stab when he's out of spells only SLIGHTLY worse than your hirelings and men-at-arms.

If the party is smart, they fund that mage so on the NEXT adventure, he has 1 spell and maybe 2 scrolls!! Now we're cooking with gas!

I love making a few Magic User hirelings who typically work elsewhere for a living. Gives you a sense of a living, breathing world  -- and they love otherwise charging the going DMG price for magical services! (I typically reduce it by a decimal place for my smaller economy.) Sure you could hire the tour guide linguist in the big city to help you, even possibly pay for their Comprehend Languages spell once and then beeline into enemy territory, or you could befriend them as a party member and give them a cut (a player runs them as their PC later). 

It's fun making NPCs that'd otherwise be considered gimped PCs but end up offering useful services for special one-shot occasions: MUer with Alarm along with camp guardians, another firefighter with Affect Normal Fires on a boat, Ventriloquist NWP with Ventriloquism spell helping you avoid or cause trouble in catacombs/sewers, etc. It costs a half share, but it's fun to watch players build attachment to hirelings from a stable of them.