Alright, I suppose I should put actual work into this, at some point. So, here goes!
The reason behind limiting the number of spells that a Magic User could take down into the Dungeon was simply that many of the ingredients had to be prepared ahead of time, and of course, once used were then powerless.
This is interesting. It is explaining the rationale for spells per day, but doing so while also talking about a system that would have been in place instead of the spells/day system. I will ignore it for now, because the limit is implied to be an end result, not somethign to engineer from.
Since there was always the chance of failure in spells (unless they were practiced) and materials for some spells were limited (determined simply by a die roll) the Magic User did not just go around practicing all the time
Limits.
Spells (and thus, magic-users) are limited by availability of components, chance of failure, constitution, and practice level.
I find the idea of being limited by a die roll one that is board-gamey on it’s face, but that’s a knee jerk reaction. If we move where the die roll occurs, it magically becomes okay! If at the start of the session, the DM says “Okay, Hrafn, you’ve got *dice clatter* Enough components for only two spells” or more likely, “you’ve got components for two fireballs, a charm, but no sleep or web today”, well, that sucks! Especially if I already handed in my “spells memorized” list. But, if we shift it over to say, “Okay, you all arrive in town to restock. WHile browsing, you only find reagents for *dice clatter* two fireballs, a charm and a magic missile” then I’m okay with it. Which makes me immediately think that the dice roll for spell randomization is fine, and any problems with it are people-level problems. Some clarity of expectation would be nice though.
So to progress to a new level, one first learned the spells, and then got to use that spell. There was no automatic progression, rather it was a slow step by step, spell by spell progression.
This, to me, is the most interesting part. It actually plays out that way in a lot of games I’ve seen, too; The magic-user finds a scroll of a level higher than he can cast, he can still learn it, just not use it (except, you know, as a scroll
). This means there is a difference between known, unknown, and well-known sells though, and suddenly we have to decide, what is well-known? At what point do we end up with not having to risk failure, not having to consider this a limit?
The answer later on becomes clear; “when you are high enough level to cast that spell”, but that’s not a very clear rubric, is it? You end up either using this as background fluff for the existing daily spel system, or allowing magic users more power by trying higher level spells sooner (admittedly, with risk. Probably catastrophic risk.) and that seems counter to the feel presented by the quotes. Also, this one here;
The Magic User could practice low level spells all the time, cheaply and safely, but his Constitution determined how often he could practice without rest. Thus, the adventurers might want a Magic User to come with them only to find him lying exhausted.
Changes the spells/day expectation. I get the feeling that while higher level spells may be “harder”, the lower ones aren’t easier sufficiently to break them into slots as we currently have it; You could choose, seemingly, from two high level spells or three low level ones, not prep an array (though the numbers seem rather low, the example still stands, aye?), making higher level magic more worthwhile because you get more bang for your limited, budgeted buck.
A magic user also practices his magic, to advance. Not just to get better at magic, I reckon, but also to get better in general. Or, well, no, that doesn’t seem right at all. The article talks pretty strictly about magic use being practiced for itself, but I find decoupling a magic user’s level in hit dice and attack matrix form his spell skill to be undesirable. So I would have to figure out how not only to go from knowing to grokking a spell, but also how that gives you experience, and how that relates to other experience mechanisms...
I think a good place to start, despite my prior statements, is the book. What were the end expectations for a magic user? It looks like, in the end, a Wizard (11th level) needs a total of 300,000 XP and 18 spells known, three of which are fifth level. The chart seems inconsistent at first glance; at some levels, a magic user gains two spells, each at a different level, but some levels they only gain one. The last two levels have also only required 100,000 XP, which means that has already flattened out it’s growth...
From this, we could reverse engineer a little bit, and then take off forward again, extrapolating in a wildly divergent direction! A magic user character begins with one spell known. In order to advance to second level, he must find another spell, and master both of them (a 2nd level M-U has 2 spells known, after all, in the LBB)! The attempts to master the spells should result in experience however, because in theory a magic user could (rather slowly...) advance in level purely by staying home and throwing spells at his wall, and this is precisely what a king’s vizier seems to do, isn’t it? Use kingdom funds to practice, at the cost of being on call for the kingdom?
So the things that really need to be looked at are:
— Determine exactly
how one goes about going from practicing a spell, to mastering it.
— determine how this advances the magic user in level.
— Determine how much practice of lower magnitude magicks would be needed to move on to higher magics, if any.
What do y’all think so far?