It’s a refrain I hear (or read) over and over again.  Magic-users are too weak, especially those first-level magic-users.  Imagine, just one spell a day… then all they do is stand around and be useless.

Except, that’s not how it works.  Let’s discuss as an example a party with four characters:  Darion the Fighter, Apoqulis the Cleric, Barthal the Thief, and Lucas the Magic-User.  They’re on their very first adventure together, investigating the Olde Island Fortress.

Darion has 1d8 hit points, and is armored in chain mail (as he could not afford plate mail for his first adventure).  Apoqulis is armored the same way, and has 1d6 hit points.  Assuming no special bonuses, with shields in hand they each have AC 16.  Barthal is in leather armor, and while he can’t use a shield, let’s assume he has a Dexterity bonus of +1 (he is a Thief, after all), making his AC 14.  Lucas is unarmored, AC 11, but of course he’ll be at the back of the party, out of reach of most monsters.  Being unarmored also means he has the fastest movement rate, 40′, so he can outrun the other party members.  Recall that when a bear is chasing you, you don’t have to outrun the bear, just your comrades…

So they enter the dungeon, and shortly they encounter a group of four goblins.  Now, goblins have 1-1 hit dice, so each of them has an average of 3.5 hit points.  Rather than deal with the details, let’s just say each has 3 hit points.  We’ll be nicer to the adventurers and round their hit points up, so Darion has 5, Apoqulis and Barthal 4 each, and Lucas 3.  The goblins do 1d6 damage, or 3.5 points on average, while Darion, Apoqulis, and Barthal average 4.5 points each.  Finally, note that goblins have an armor class of 14.

So they fight.  Without digging too deeply into the numbers, the adventurers have only a slight advantage over the goblins; the odds are in their favor, but it’s quite likely that the fight will be over in four or so rounds, with at least some of the survivors being injured.  Should the adventurers win, remember that Apoqulis does not yet have a healing spell available.

Most merciful GMs will allow a starting magic-user at least one offensive spell.  If Lucas has Magic Missile, he can probably kill exactly one goblin.  If he has Charm Person, he can take control of a goblin and at least remove him from the fight, if not actually turn him against his comrades.  If he has Sleep, it may be all over for the goblins in the first round.

If Lucas casts his one spell, and it’s anything other than Sleep, he probably removes one goblin from the fight.  His friends are still fairly likely to be injured; when the fight is over, one way or the other, they will probably need to withdraw from the dungeon to return another day.

And on that other day, Lucas will again have one spell available.

If Lucas has Sleep, well, it’s entirely possible the adventurers will breeze by the goblins without suffering any harm at all.  After Barthal trips lightly through the sleeping goblin’s ranks, slaying each in his turn, the adventurers can move on to the next encounter, and it is possible that Lucas will indeed stand around doing nothing while they fight.  Of course, the smart thing for Lucas to do is to carry some daggers for throwing, and use them to whittle down the back ranks of their next group of foes; his chance of hitting at first level is equal to all the other characters, after all, so why not?

At higher levels the comparison holds out.  For instance, assume the party is now 5th level.  Each of the adventurers has a magic weapon, and probably some form of magical protection (armor, ring, etc.)  If, in the course of gaining 5 levels, they have found any magic-user-only items such as wands, naturally Lucas has received them.  Meanwhile, the number of hits each of the “heavy hitters” can sustain has been multiplied by 5 times, so now they can fight much longer.  But still, by the time Lucas has exhausted his own magic (five spells, one of which might blow away a large monster or a group of smaller ones), the adventurers should be ready to call it a day.

If you find, in your game, that it doesn’t play out that way, ask yourself why.  Have you allowed the fighter and cleric to receive powerful magic weapons and armor, making them into walking tanks that deal death without suffering a scratch?  If you did that, did you also allow the magic-user to receive items of comparable power?

Before changing the rules to make the magic-user more powerful in an attempt to achieve parity with the other classes, you should consider whether the rules are really unbalanced, or whether you have (intentionally or otherwise) stacked the deck against the magic-user in the first place.

Adventure writing is like any other form of writing in many ways оформить займ круглосуточно.  For instance, every writer has a style, and with experience you can recognize it.  Style shows not only in the words the author chooses, but also in the concepts and philosophies he or she promotes.

Really, there’s nothing wrong with having a style, but it’s important to avoid letting your style make you too predictable, especially if it’s an adventure you’re writing.

I don’t know how many times, in discussions held in person or online, that a GM has said “I don’t use monster X because I don’t like it.”  Sometimes it’s a game mechanical thing, sometimes its more a factor of the monster’s imaginary ecology or role or backstory.  It really doesn’t matter why, though.

So the GM whose existence we are imagining creates a new adventure for his group of regular players.  They all know him, so they know his style.  And in the course of the adventure, an NPC hints at the presence of a vampire (for instance) and all the players think, nah, our GM doesn’t like vampires, and they don’t even take it seriously.

I call this “Single Creator Syndrome.”  It’s the opposite of the defect often called “Design by Committee,” but while perhaps a bit less lame, it’s still a defect.

I’ll digress a bit, into the world of fiction.  One of my favorite science fiction shows was Babylon 5, and anyone who is a true fan of the show knows that many of the episodes, including basically the entire last season, were written by one man, J. Michael Straczynski.  He’s one of my favorite all-around writers, and the show was a masterpiece.  But in the final episodes, wrapping up the aftermath of the Shadow War, I noticed that the main characters all seemed to hold the same beliefs.  Not just similar beliefs… they all believed exactly alike, to the point that I couldn’t have reliably told you whether any particular quote was from G’Kar or Captain Sheridan or Delenn.  The reason is simple… they all shared Straczynski’s beliefs.  Single creator syndrome.

Back on topic.  I’ve also heard many GMs say that they never use adventure modules.  That’s too bad, really, because using an adventure module written by another author is one of the easiest ways to escape from Single Creator Syndrome.  Oh, sure, you may still go through and change some things you really don’t like, but the overall adventure will still be in the author’s style instead of in yours.

Another, harder, way is to create NPCs who hold beliefs that disagree with yours, and then don’t let them be just cardboard cutouts.  Do some reading.  Read things written by people you don’t agree with, and remember that, in any reasonably large and expansive fantasy world, there should be at least a few people (or dragons, or whatever) who believe just like that.

Stretch a bit.  Use the monsters you usually don’t like, or which for some reason you’ve just omitted.  I hardly ever use giants, a weakness I’m trying to overcome.  It’s not that I dislike giants, I just never think of them when I’m choosing monsters.  So I’m strongly considering running J.D. Neal’s Saga of the Giants adventures (found on our Downloads page) as a way to overcome that weak point and surprise my players.

The point is, don’t let yourself fall into a rut.  Whether it’s a matter of running an adventure module, or changing things up in your dungeon design, don’t let Single Creator Syndrome take the fire out of your game.

EDIT 1/26/2020:  This was originally posted in 2013; in the years since then, the meaning of “snowflake” as an epithet has changed, at least in the USA.  I’m not going to edit the post, but I do want to make sure that everyone understands that, in this article, “snowflake” is not intended to point a finger at people who believe in either liberal or conservative politics.  Rather, snowflake is used in the original sense, i.e. someone who wants to be “special” or “unique.”

While talking with a GM who is trying to bring his modern players into Basic Fantasy RPG, he mentioned how his players complain about the lack of class and race options in the game.  I won’t quote the player, as I don’t have his permission to do so, but in effect he said he didn’t feel his character was unique; he even indicated envy of another player who was apparently allowed to play a bugbear crusader.

This is, to me, an indication of something called “Special Snowflake Syndrome,” and sadly it happens in the real world almost as often as in games and fiction.  I visited the TV Tropes page on the subject and found this little tidbit:

Whether a character is interesting has nothing to do with how esoteric his background is and everything to do with how well he’s played.

I’ve mentioned in another post that, in the Old School, we (GMs) don’t write story.  Story is what happens when the players take up their dice and walk into our world.  Well, that sword has two edges… in the Old School, player characters don’t begin as special snowflakes, all unique.  They become that way by being played.

I am in no way saying you shouldn’t allow players to have characters of supplementary classes or races in your game.  What I’m saying is that you, as the GM, set the tone for your world.  Don’t allow a player to bring in a half-dragon shaman/acrobat just because he or she wants to be special and unique.  If you have many half-dragons in your world, and you allow shamans and acrobats (and you allow them as a combination), then yeah, you should expect your players to want to try that combo.  But don’t allow them just because the players beg and complain.

I played a character once, in a different game system, who was a human fighter.  He was the first character I played for any length of time, and to begin with, other than some decent ability rolls, he was hardly anything special.  But as time wore on, he became that way.  He did a service for the elves, and they gave him an uncommonly intelligent horse; he was fool enough to eat the heart of a strange creature that was half dragon, half basilisk, and upon surviving (one saving throw, at a penalty, and I was sweating bullets) he gained an extra measure of strength and an aura of power that awed ordinary people.  He could force a morale check by frowning, if his opponents had only a couple of hit dice or less.

He didn’t start out special.  He earned it, and by extension, I earned it.  It’s a far more interesting story than anything you can apply to a beginning character in your favorite modern game, because it actually happened (in the fictional sense, anyway).

What’s the difference, you ask?  If I had brought him in with those features already, and I tried to read the background to the GM or the other players, they’d be like, yada yada.  But the other players were there when we saved that elven village (they all got something too) and they were there when he foolishly ate the monster’s heart (and they were almost as interested as I was in the result of my saving throw).

We, that is, my group and I, all remember that classic adventure from the old days where everyone has the option to sit down and eat at the ghostly banquet.  You choose to eat each food, or drink each drink, as you see fit; each thing you eat or drink has some effect on you.  Some were good, some were bad, some were good if you made your save and bad if you didn’t, and if I remember right one was good if you failed your save, and neutral if you succeeded.  Some of the characters who went through that adventure (when I ran it for my “new” group a year or so back) are still around; one never needs to eat (but may if he wants to), while another can use ESP once per week.  Those characters, and their players, earned their dose of awesomeness in actual play.

Special snowflake syndrome is irritating enough in real life; why should we encode it in the rules of our games as well?