One more question! (Man I am burying this thread in them.)
Magic Users could research their own spells. Was there a level requirement to this or could you start making your own spells all the way back at level 1? Is it only stuff you get on level up?
This is one thing that took me a long time to actually find and use, ...good magic research rules. In the original books it went something like this:
"Wizard's and above (8th level) may manufacture for their own use (or for sale) such items as potions, scrolls, and just about anything else magical. Costs are commensurate with the value of the item, as is the amount of game time required to enchant it."So first, your Wizard had to make it to 8th level. I never liked that rule much, because that could easily take six months of play time, playing a once-a-week game before your Wizard even became qualified to start making magic items.
Examples of Costs are:Item - Cost
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Scroll of Spells - 100GP/Spell/Spell Lvl, Level/Week. (a scroll containing a 5th level spell would cost 500 Gp and take five weeks to prepare.
Potion of Healing - 250 GP + 1 week
Potion of Giant Strength - 1,000 Gp + 4 Weeks
Enchanting 20 arrows - 1,000 Gp + 4 weeks
Enchanting Armor to +1 - 2,000 Gp + 2 months
Wand of Cold - 10,000 Gp + 6 Months
X-ray vision Ring - 50,000 Gp + 1 year.
Research by magical types can be done at any level of experience, but the level of magic involved dictates the possibility of success, as well as the amount of money necessary to invest. Assume that a Magic-user can use a 4th level spell (Explained later), therefore could develop a new spell provided it was equal to or less than 4th level. All this will be explained fully in the section dealing with SPELLS. So, here was the first contradiction in the rules... do you have to be a Wizard 8th level, ...or can you be any level to conduct magic research? Also note here spell casters could only manufacture magic items with spells that they already knew how to cast! If they didn't know it, or it was too high level for them to cast, they couldn't make a magic item including the spell. Anyway, on to the SPELLS section...
Magical ResearchBoth Magic-Users and Clerics may attempt to expand on the spells listed (as applicable by class). This is a matter of time and investment. The level of magic required to operate the spell (determination by the referee) dictates the initial investment. Investment for 1st level is 2,000 GP, 2nd lvl, 4,000 Gp, 3rd 8,000 Gp, etc. et al.
The time required is one week per spell level. for every amount equal to the basic investment there is a 20% chance of success, cumulative, An investment of 10,000 GP in order to develop a new 1st-level spell, for example has a 100% chance after one game week.So you could create completely new spells in the original game. It was simply a matter of investing money and time. The caveats of course, are the GM decided what level the spell would be considered. In fact, almost everything was left up to the discretion of the GM, so the result was a set of wildly conflicting magic-item design rules that varied from GM to GM and campaign to campaign. This has never been fully resolved with any edition of D&D, however there was one really good article in Dragon Magazine #242
"The Laws of Spell Design" which offered a consistent set of guidelines for spell design that I eventually adopted for my games.
Judges Guild had some good guidelines for creating magic items that were included in the Wizard's Guide / ready ref Sheets. I adopted these for use in creating unique player magic items very early, in late 1977 early 1978... So they had to be 8th level to create magic items, but could design new spells starting right at the first level... That's how I understood the original magic design rules.
One other note I have is that Magic-users could not adventure while they were busy creating magic items, or designing new spells.
My feeling was that after AD&D 1e came out TSR wanted to exclusively design new magic items and spells, and didn't want players or GMs doing that anymore, so never focused on improving this part of the D&D rules. I ...of course, made my home games better.