more spellcasting malarkey

By: Unknown on 06:50

So the chart below combines two charts from Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed.  Well, only part of two charts.  Actually, four charts.  Part of four charts.  Let me explain.

The "part of" is because most days I don't give a crap about 0-level spells or what people above 14th (the BX upper limit) can cast.  So I saved myself a little work by chopping the combined chart down a bit.

The two charts combined are the Spells Prepared and Spells Cast charts for the Magister, Monte's alt-Wizard.  Turns out the Greenbond, the alt-Druid use the exact same numbers, that's why I say this chart sums up the relevant part of four charts.  Why Cook needed to put the same pair of charts in the book twice I don't know.  The Runethane, Mageblade and Witch classes (who constitue the "semi-spell casters" if you sprechen ze RoleMaster)  have redundant spell charts as well.  If you've got a copy of Arcana Unearthed, please feel free to double check this.  Maybe I'm missing something.  Otherwise this books seems to be wasting space for no good reason with all these charts.

(I'm moving the chart to behind a break because the CSS I'm using is causing problems with the headers on the rest of the page.)

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th
1	3/1	-	-	-	-	-	-
2	3/2	-	-	-	-	-	-
3	4/2	3/1	-	-	-	-	-
4	4/3	3/2	-	-	-	-	-
5	5/3	4/2	3/1	-	-	-	-
6	5/3	4/3	3/2	-	-	-	-
7	6/4	5/3	4/2	3/1	-	-	-
8	6/4	5/3	4/3	3/2	-	-	-
9	7/4	6/4	5/3	4/2	3/1	-	-
10	7/4	6/4	5/3	4/3	3/2	-	-
11	8/5	7/4	6/4	5/3	4/2	3/1	-
12	8/5	7/4	6/4	5/3	4/3	3/2	-
13	9/5	8/5	7/4	6/4	5/3	4/2	3/1
14	9/5	8/5	7/4	6/4	5/3	4/3	3/2

One of the things that makes starting a campaign of AE so hard for me is that everybody has a huge-ass spell list.  It's like every class is the cleric or druid, with a bunch of spells available.  Only unlike the BX version of the cleric, you can cast at first level.  This is one of the secret strengths of the dumb "no spell for you, level 1 cleric!" rule.  It allows newbies to play clerics without being overwhelmed by spell selection.  In Monte Cook's world, pretty much every spellcaster has to deal with umpteen spells right out of the gate.  And I'm not sure getting to pick three of them instead of one makes life any easier for the players.  And the friggin' spell section of AU is laid out like a murder scene.  Am I the only one who thinks AD&D1 and BX are much more player friendly with "Here's my class list by level, now here are my spells by level"?  Newbies only have to puzzle over the section labeled as first level.

But I think the numbers here could work for some other applications.  Like maybe a pre-3e Sorcerer class, where the number to the left is the total spells known for each level and the number to the right is castings per day.  If I used such a class then I would further differentiate the Sorcerer and MU by allowing one class to pick all their new spells and forcing the other to roll randomly.  Though I can't make up my mind which should roll and which should pick.

Part of me really wants to figure out a good way to re-design Arcana Unearthed into something more like BX D&D.  Squint for a minute and pretend that Cook's tome was AD&D, then build a BX off of it.  That's the idea that lead to me making this chart.