Part 39, covering Wands and Staves. Holmes originally had a slightly scaled back Staff of Power in the Basic list. Good for taking on those high HD monsters in his Monster List.
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2014/10/part-39-wand-produces-fire-ball-which.html
Funny you mention the "taking on higher HD monsters" thing.. A lot of people remark (complain, criticize) the "fragility" of magic users in OD&D through AD&D 2e.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the wand and staff list, it's really not necessarily the case. Among the many things that have been lost in translation through successive editions, I think a major one is the role of magic items in a campaign.
Later editions presume that all character abilities need to be baked in as innate skills / class abilities / etc. Older editions however assumed that magic items were an important and defining feature of a PC. A 2nd lvl Magic User with just his memorized spells? Yeah, not too hard to knock over. A 2nd lvl Magic User with a Wand of Fireballs and 100 charges? So long as he can stay out of melee, he's (or she's) a major force to be reckoned with.
Good post, thanks for sharing : )
Great point. Holmes may have just included these more powerful items because he thought they were iconic (which is what he said about the poweful monsters), but it definitely contributes to the play & tone of the game. We can see this influence in the Holmes Basic module, The Chapel of Silence by Mollie Plants, published in Dragon magazine which includes both a Vampire and a Ring of Wishes. You wouldn't see these in a Basic level module by the time of B/X.
ReplyDeleteHuh, I don't remembering seeing that adventure - do you remember which issue it was in?
ReplyDeleteI agree, this probably wasn't something Holmes consciously thought about in putting together the treasure list - like including iconic but higher level monsters, including more powerful iconic magic items was probably more to give the flavor of the rules.
But it bucks the trends of later editions as they progressively made each set level-balanced (starting with Moldvay, where the more powerful critters and treasure were bumped to the Expert Set).
Years ago, I was all about balancing encounters (going back to Frank Mentzer's system for doing so), but now I see the cool factor of low level guys facing higher level critters and making the choice to fight, parlay or flee; and likewise surprising players used to everything being balanced by having them find something very powerful early on. Kinda goes back to the idea of Holmes-only play, capping levels at 3rd for a sword & sorcery feel with more fragile PCs, or going slightly higher and capping at 6th or 9th lvl for a similar feel.
See this page for more info on the Chapel of Silence:
ReplyDeletethe chapel of silence | zenopusarchives