RPG Design: The Magic-User Class

First of all, I'd like to say this blog is now a year old, so yay!

Next, last year, I discussed two of the Core Four Classes of tabletop role-playing, the Thief and the Cleric.  Today, I wanted to give a shout out to probably the most challenging and the most unbalanced of the Core Four Classes, the Magic-User:

Magic is fundamental to much of fantasy literature and Magicians are some of the most iconic and archetypal characters of the genre (e.g., Merlin, Gandalf, Circe, etc.).  However, "Magic-User" as used in Dungeons & Dragons (and similar games), has a specific meaning: someone with a specialized ability to cast certain kinds of magic while at the same time being relatively weak at combat (e.g., low hit points, poor weapon choices, no armor, etc.).  So, other games, such as Exalted  (2001) or REIGN (2006), don't really have "Magic-Users" per se since all PCs use or have the potential to use magic.

Magic-Users in Old School D&D (and similar games) start out significantly underpowered at low levels compared to other classes (with only a single Level 1 spell per day at 1st level- no cantrips or at-will powers!) and become significantly overpowered at high levels.  As an example of the former, there's the classic meme of 1st level Magic-Users being killed by house cats.

However, as they level up, D&D-style Magic-Users'  spells become ever more powerful, up to and including altering reality itself, and more numerous (an 18th level Magic-User can cast 34 spells, including Wish).  As a result, their magical strength starts to eclipse their physical weakness around 5th level, particularly with the introduction of spells like Fireball and Lighting Bolt.

Indeed, past a certain point, high level Magic-Users can make the rest of the party (in their specialized roles) redundant.

From early on in RPG history, it was clear that linear fighter-quadratic wizard was an issue.  For example, Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975), published only a year after OD&D, introduces Exceptional Strength for Fighters, which is effectively a patch to help balance the two classes.

IMHO, this was a poor design decision that led to increasing stat inflation.  For example, in AD&D1, many people really didn't want to play a Fighter with less than Strength 18.  However, if you use 4d6 Drop Lowest, arrange to suit, to roll your ability scores, there's only a 9.34% chance to get at least one 18 out of six rolls.

And yet there was a striking number of Fighters with 18 Exceptional Strength...

Of course, by AD&D1, there's also stat inflation for Magic-Users:

Like Fighter players, many, many Magic-User players did not want to play gimped characters.  Consequently there was a striking number of Magic-Users with high Intelligence scores...

However, regardless of the drawbacks of low level Magic-Users, they are still quite fun to play.  It's super cool to be able to ignore the laws of physics.  Low level Magic-Users can also really push you to up your player skill, as you figure out ways to contribute to the party outside of your spells.

If you are interested playing a Magic-User, you should check first with your DM as house rules can have a huge impact.  For example, a fairly common AD&D1 house rule is to give Magic-Users with high Intelligence bonus spells, like Clerics with high Wisdom.