Posted January 25, 2022
low rated
Each percentile category was essentially worth another full point in another stat and races that had +1 to strength could jump straight to 19 and pwn fighting types up of 3-4 levels above them. They were really going for that Conan vibe I guess.
And yes, the 8-14 range was the dead zone.
It wasn't balanced at all, but it was kind of fun though.
The MP by spell level mechanic (often termed "spell slots") has never made sense to me. Suppose you have the spells Cure Light Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, and Bless. What I would expect, in terms of which spells share resources, would be one of the following:
* All three spells share the same resource (with CSW more expensive than CLW).
* CLW and CSW share the same resources (with CSW more expensive than CLW, of course), but Bless has its own resource.
* Each spell has a different resource (though that can lead to the situation where you can run out of CLW but still be able to cast CSW, which makes less sense).
What actually happens, in D&D and other games that adopt MP by spell level is:
* CLW and Bless share the same resource.
* CSW, rather than using more of the resource, uses an entirely different resource.
Another archaic aspect is healing balance. What we see, in AD&D, is the following:
* 1st level has a weak healing spell. Seems reasonable so far.
* 2nd and 3rd level both lack healing spells, so you're stuck with the weak healing spell for too long.
* 4th and 5th level each have an upgraded healing spell, though these spells are still extremely weak. (Why couldn't they have made CSW 3rd level so they'd be distributed a bit more evenly?)
* 6th level has Heal, which is a full heal, and as a result is much stronger than even the 5th level Cure Critical wounds.
In other words, healing is extremely weak until it isn't.
Thing is, we see many early CRPGs copying many of these strange aspects of AD&D. We see these in Wizardry, all but MP-by-level in Bard's Tale (only the full heal heals the entire party and is given to a class that doesn't get any weaker healing spells), and both MP-by-level and weak-healing-until-it-isn't in Final Fantasy 1 and 3 (though FF3 at least makes most healing not feel too weak until the endgame). (Also note that I'm talking about original FF3; the 3D remakes and the pixel remaster are different balance-wise in regards to healing. Also, only talking about pre-GBA FF1.)
Incidentally, the one AD&D mechanic that I haven't seen outside D&D or Pathfinder is prepared Vancian casting, where you have to allocate your magic resources to specific spells in advance, rather than having pools to cast from. (Note that this is not the same as MP-by-level; the two are orthogonal concepts.)
