OSR Old school wizards, how do you play level 1?

cbwjm said:

That's cool that you can be any class. Back in the day we still followed class restrictions but we didn't bother with level limits. Mind you, I don't think the level limits would have even been an issue since they were quite generous in 2e and I don't think we would have ever hit them.

Wasn't there a rule where the spell took up a variable number of pages, spell level +1d6 or something? I might be misremembering. You'll have to have a homebase with a spellbook library, load up on spells, and then take a travelling spellbook with some generally useful spells with you. I can't recall what we did in the case of spellbooks and page count.

Starting at level 6, I probably wouldn't specialize either, by that level the bonus spell slots, while still good, are less noticeable than when your wizard is level 1 and 2.

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Foodgeek said:

I will say that really knowing your options helps. I'm in a b/x osr and upon reading the rules for that particular one, I realized I could wear leather armor and carry a short bow. Yeah, I couldn't cast spells while holding the short bow but since I only had one spell at first level, I would use that spell first, which was enlarge/reduce and then switch to the bow. Three out of the four of us did get knocked out at level 1 but we still made it through.

I saw that somebody mentioned taking an elf in B/X but my DM does not allow them a humans because he says they're more powerful and really he's against bills that differ in power. He's not wrong that the added hit points, weapon use with one hand while being able to cast spells, and a few Marshall actions would help, and that only starting with read magic wouldn't make much of a difference, but the worst saving throws and experience progression probably would have messed me up if I was an elf.

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Mannahnin said:

Sounds like a goodly amount of house rules in play there, or it's some other game than B/X.

In 1981 Basic/Expert Magic-Users cannot wear any kind of armor or use any weapons other than a dagger.

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Voadam said:

"I'm in a b/x osr"

I would think a B/X based variant OSR game that has some different rules. Not sure which one.

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Foodgeek said:

It's B/X, LotFP. The only house rules we've done are no 6 page first level summoning spell (I think he said he was going to replace it with find familiar which is not in this version of the game but I never rolled it) and instead of one random roll for a levelup spell, I roll five times and choose one, which is good, because some of the spells aren't very useful and some of them I have already (or theoretically I could roll the same number twice which has not happened) so sometimes I wind up choosing between two spells.

This game is very hard on wizards but better with clerics although for them, turn undead is the first level spell. Yeah, I know that MUs being able to wear leather armor and clerics being able to use weapons that are not blunt, are not in the original basic. Clerics can only use one handed weapons because they need to have their holy symbol in one hand in LotFP

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Voadam said:

I was looking in my copy of the Grindhouse edition earlier and did not see the weapon and armor restrictions or allowances. Do you know the page number for the rule?

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