2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Sixty-Nine

Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!

Today is Part 14 of my series of looks at OD&D starting with Men & Magic - Volume 1.

Today we will start off looking at the original eight 1st Level Magic-User spells:

Again we will note that there are only eight spells, which as I said before is the fewest of any level. That always struck me as rather odd, you would think that the lowest level spells would be the most numerous. But first here are the spells:

Detect Magic: A spell to determine if there has been some enchantment laid on a person, place or thing. It has a limited range and short duration. It is useful, for example, to discover if some item is magical, a door has been “held” or “wizard locked,” etc.

This is a very useful spell for making sure you do not miss something important too, but when you only get one spell per day at 1st level players tend to go for the Sleep spell which we will look at in a moment. For my group bitd with multiple magic-users in the party, the players chose to diversify and not all take the same spell some of the time. The longer we played the more they coordinated the spells they were taking.

Hold Portal: A spell to hold a door, gate or the like. It is similar to a locking spell (see below) but it is not permanent. Roll two dice to determine the duration of the spell in turns. Dispel Magic (see below) will immediately negate it, a strong antimagical creature will shatter it and a Knock (see below) will open it.

This is of great benefit if you are fleeing something in a dungeon and it can provide the time you need to make your escape.

Read Magic: The means by which the incantations on an item or scroll are read. Without such a spell or similar device magic is unintelligible to even a Magic-User. The spell is of short duration (one or two readings being the usual limit).

IMO this spell means that without casting Read Magic first, scrolls are unusable by Magic-Users and then it is of short duration. So what I did originally was to rule that this was less than a 1st Level Spell (we did not use the term Cantrip at that time, I called it a Lesser Spell) and that a Magic-User could cast this Lesser Spell twice per day at 1st Level in addition to his other regular 1st Level Spell and at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th Level a Magic-User gained an additional casting of this Lesser Spell.

Read Languages: The means by which directions and the like are read, particularly on treasure maps. It is otherwise like the Read Magic spell above.

We made no change to this one and just ran it as is.

Protection from Evil: This spell hedges the conjurer round with a magic circle to keep out attacks from enchanted monsters. It also serves as an “armor” from various evil attacks, adding a +1 to all saving throws and taking a –1 from hit dice of evil opponents. (Note that this spell is not cumulative in effect with magic armor and rings, although it will continue to keep out enchanted monsters.) Duration: 6 turns.

Our interpretation of this was more powerful that most. It lasts 6 turns and was not subject to Dispel Magic and did not prevent the character from taking offensive action. It also allowed you to, for instance, face a Medusa and not worry about being turned to stone. A Fighting-Man could advance in front of the Magic-User after the spell was cast and use a sword or other weapon to attack the Medusa if it were in reach or he could use missile weapons as long as he stayed within the circle.

Light: A spell to cast light in a circle 3” in diameter, not equal to full daylight. It lasts for a number of turns equal to 6 + the number of levels of the user; thus, a 7th-level Magic-User would cast the spell for 13 turns.

Our interpretation of this was that the spell was centered on the caster and it could not be cast onto an object instead. So no light stones with this spell. 

Also here let me make a note about duration. For combat a melee round is assumed to be 1 minute and there are 10 melee rounds to a turn or 10 minutes. We used this time frame for spell duration, but we did not use it for combat or for movement. For combat I ran 6 sec melee rounds and 1 minute (60 sec) turns. So effectively 1 spell turn is equal to 10 melee or combat turns. There will be more discussion of this when we get to Book 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. At the end of this series I will post some of the things that we used bitd and how we ran it.

Charm Person: This spell applies to all two-legged, generally mammalian figures near to or less than man-size, excluding all monsters in the “Undead” class but including Sprites, Pixies, Nixies, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and Gnolls. If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the “charm” is dispelled (Dispel Magic). Range: 12”.

If successful - so we give these monsters the same saving throw as a Fighting-Man would get.

Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2–16 1st-level types (hit dice of up to 1 + 1), from 2–12 2nd-level types (hit dice of up to 2 + 1), from 1–6 3rd-level types, and but 1 4th-level type (up to 4 + 1 hit dice). The spell always affects up to the number of creatures determined by the dice. If more than the number rolled could be affected, determine which “sleep” by random selection. Range: 24”.

Always affects - i.e. no saving throw and the players loved it, except when it happened to them. 

When casting this spell most people roll once (2-16) for the total levels affected and then apply them. For example if you rolled a 16 and there were four 1st level monsters, they go to sleep. But 16-4 is 12 so the three 2nd level monsters go to sleep. But 12-6 is 6 so the one 3rd level monster goes to sleep. But 6-3 is 3 and so it falls short of putting the one 4th level monster to sleep. 

We did not do it that way, we rolled 2-16 (2d8) to see how many 1st level monsters were affected, then we made a second roll of 2-12 (2d6) to see how many 2nd level monsters were also affected and then a third roll of 1-6 (1d6) to see how many 3rd level monsters were affected and then if there were any 4th level monsters - one of those determined at random would also go to sleep. I still run it that way and IMO that is what the text is describing. Though everyone I have ever discussed it with disagrees, I am unswayed.

We also added some of our own spells to the list, but I will look at those after we look at spells from the Supplements.

As a teaser, one Lesser Spell that I added was Light Fire, once per day (twice per day at 4th level, three times per day at 7th and four times per day at 10th) you could use it to light up to 24 candles or one campfire or as an attack for one point of damage (for which you had to roll to hit at a +4 bonus to hit).

We will move on to second level spells tomorrow.