Anyone who has borne the honorable title of Dungeon Master for
more than 2 games has quickly become aware of the overwhelming
power of those practitioners of magic. Too often, expeditions revolve
around how many Magic-Users are in the party, and tactics depend on
the amount and type of spells. While some of my best friends are
Wizards, I firmly believe that melees should not be decided by he who
casts the first Charm.

One way to lessen the influence of magic is to arbitrarily delete some
of the more powerful spells from the game. Actually, in a non-Monty
Haul universe, players will not obtain the powerful spells until they are
themselves high enough to merit the DM throwing truly lethal opposition
at them, at which time they will need the spells.

An alternate method of deleting spells is to assign types of spells to
“specialties” of magic. For instance, a Mentalist Magic-User could do
ESP or Hold Person but can’t make a Fireball rubbing two sticks together,
while a Pyronic Magic-User has Fireballs coming out of his ears
but can’t put you to Sleep with a lullaby. This is suggested more for
NPCs. As a matter of practicality, players enjoy the varied powers of
magic and it should not be denied.

Another way to lessen the power of magic is to introduce a failure
factor. There are some fantasy games that employ a percentage chance
of a Magic-User being unable to cast a spell. The systems work for those
games but not in D&D. Spells are already limited by a victim’s saving
throw, and an extra-dice-roll-in-the-middle-of-melee is to be avoided at
all costs. What can be done is to change the rule about half damage. It
does not offend game “reality” to assume that a successful saving throw
indicates that the magic employed simply did not manifest itself into our
space-time continuum. Thus, a Fireball is only a flash of light doing no
damage, a Paralysis beam is a pleasant tingle. Along with this could be a
rule that all magic directed at someone must overcome that person’s
inherent resistance. Thus, an injured person who makes a saving throw
does not get healed by a Cure Wounds Spell and the unfortunate
Fighter about to be swallowed by a Purple Worm who makes a saving
throw does not get Teleported to safety by his friendly, neighborhood
Wizard. Note that this idea does not require more than one dice roll,
which is given for saving throws in any event.

I am currently employing two factors which aid game balance immensely,
without distorting the rules beyond recognition. The Rule of
Concentration: No character can possibly concentrate enough to
cast a spell if he has been hurt. This means that even 1 point of damage
taken in a melee round forbids a spell cast in that round. If the spell has
already been cast, then the damage taken is subtracted from his dexterity
for purposes of spell casting in the next round. How does the poor
Magic-User overcome a bad guy beating him about the head and
shoulders? He has his trustworthy Fighter, Cleric, and Thief allies to
protect him, that’s how. Those in an adventure party have to work together
if the magic is going to work at all.

The Rule of Concentration avoids the phenomenon of a high hit
point Wizard blithely standing in a hail of arrow fire, firing Lightning at
his ease as if he were some sort of armored tank. Magic spells are not
bullets out of a gun.

The second limiting factor I employ, which causes weeping, wailing,
and gnashing of teeth, is
The Rule of Duration: Magic spells last no longer than 1 turn for
every level of mastery. Does this mean that a Charm spell lasts no longer
than 1 turn per level of casters? You bet your mithral underwear it does!
Sorcery is a difficult practice, with even the least conjuration straining’
the fabric of the Universe. Surely it is not outrageous to suggest that it is
all a Magic-User can manage to keep a raging opponent friendly and
helpful for 10 minutes.

The Rule of Duration does not turn Magic-Users into helpless blunderers.
It does demand that players expend magic judiciously, and not
expect the results of one spell to affect an entire game. Players can
Charm an opponent, take his goodies, and leave him under orders to
stand quietly where they found him. By the time the Charm elapses
they have defeated the foe, acquired treasure, but don't have cannon
fodder to do their fighting in the next melee. The Rule of Duration is
particularly effective in keeping players wary in the wilderness, where
you might not have as much time to hide before the Charm lifts. Bear in
mind that unlike the dungeon, each wilderness turn is a day, so that
each wilderness encounter is faced with a full battery of spells. Naturally,
each time an encounter is concluded, a check for new wandering
monsters should be made. The wilderness is full of them!

Speaking of wildernesses, they become more playable if spellcasters
obtain new spells only every week instead of every day. This brings
wilderness encounters in line with dungeon encounters, wherein a
week is presumed to have gone by from one expedition to the next.
Weekly renewal of spells also prevents players from acquiring an item in
the dungeon, escaping the dungeon, then presuming upon the weekbetween-
expeditions to declare that in the intervening time they
learned new spells on a day they weren’t in the dungeon and so were
able to Detect Evil, Detect Magic, Read Languages, whatever, on that
acquired item.

OUT ON A LIMB
'People hate M-U?'
-
Dear Editor, 
By continually running articles on "How to 
keep the Magic-User in his place" you have succeeded 
in reducing the potentially <m>ost powerful 
character in the game to the weakest character 
type available!  If one were to usse all the articles of 
this type you have printed the Magic-User would 
be: totally helpless (spell-wise) if he had taken any 
damage; unable to make a light spell last for any 
length of time; and unable to cast more than 8 or 9 
spells in one day unless he had a very high Constitution. 

With all this against him, how could the novice
M-U possibly survive for any measurable amount
of time? The people who write these articles must
subconsciously hate all Magic-Users.

What is so bad about Magic-Users that people
have to go to these lengths to make sure they
don’t survive? All one has to do to “Keep Magic-
Users in their places” is to follow the spell casting
time rule in the Players Handbook. By the time the
MU has cast his Ice storm or Fireball, the monsters
have either taken off or slaughtered half the party.
Dave Redstone—PA
 

A common misconception among readers of
The Dragon is that every single variant must be
incorporated into the game. Not so. It’s a rare
occasion that any “official” rule changes or additions
will appear in The Dragon, and such rarities
(generally errata) are clearly labeled as such.
Variants to games submitted by our readers, or
even suggestions. by the game designers themselves,
are just that—variants and suggestions—
not rules. The purpose of The Dragon, among
other things, is to provide a forum for discussion
on or about the play of various games. Many of
the articles we print will contradict each other, or
the rules of the games themselves. And the fact
that such variants appear in the pages of The
Dragon in no way implies that we, the staff, agree
with their principles or condone their use, in whole
or in part. The material is presented for use solely
at the discretion of the reader. Like it? Fine, use it.
Think it stinks? Forget it.

On to your letter specifically, you call the
Magic-User “the potentially most powerful
character” in D&D. The M-U indeed is, and therefore,
some DM’s find it necessary to find ways to
keep the M-U from running away with the game.
It’s not too much fun to play in a game where one
person is so powerful that everyone else just sits
back and watches. lf you want to be the most
powerful player in the game, don’t be a character,
be the DM.

—Jake
(The Dragon #34)