NeoGrognard

Last week I commented that I was one of those curmudgeons who believes that either magic missile is an auto hit spell or it is some named game element (to use a term from the Essentials Rules Compendium that drives me a little nuts) masquerading as magic missile. A friend of mine  called me out on this. He reminded me that the first versions of magic missile were not auto hit.  

I knew that. I did, but I tend to ignore it, because that was before my time. By the time I discovered D&D in the early 80s, that crap was long gone. And it wasn’t just me who thought this. I remember during the playtest phase of 3e there was a point that magic missile was not auto-hit, and there were so many cries of complaint in the testers reports that the designers acquiesced and changed the spells in a later iteration of the play test document, or at least that’s how it seemed to the testers.  

I’m pretty sure that the wizard in this early Dave Sutherland illustration from the inside cover page of the Blue Box Basic Set is casting magic missile. He probably should be casting sleep. Many early wizards who just didn't want to tangle with those rules

 But my friend was right. You cannot use the origin argument alone to justify magic missile’s lack of an attack roll. To explain why this is important, and why the auto hit magic missile is so good in every sense of the word, you have to get downright philosophical.  

The other day I was explaining to some of my students why the principles of iteration and collaboration are beneficial to game design (if not design in general). One of my students asked me the question, “isn’t what the designer originally intended enough?” It’s a tempting idea. The myth of the primacy of a lone designer had definitely stirred the hearts of many young game designers. Gygax did it, Meier did it, Romero did it, Garfield did it, why can’t I?. But  they didn’t actually. While the glory often seems to be theirs alone, the work to move an idea to a playable and fun application was not. The conversations, collaborations, and arguments with other designers, editors, collaborators, and early fans, all made their games better. As with any human activity, it is the conversation that propels something from interesting to great. If you take a close look at the design of D&D you can see that conversation.  

In the beginning problems—or rather solutions—seem so simple. Let’s take a look at the origin of two of my favorite rules items in low-level D&D—the magic missile and sleep spells. Both of these are from the original D&D rules published in 1974.  

Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2-16 1st level types (hit dice up to 1+1), from 2-12 2nd level types (hit dice up to 2+1), from 1-6, 3rd level types, and but 1 4th level type (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″ (Men & Magic, page 23)  

That’s the entire description of the sleep spell in its first incarnation. Sleep is one of my favorite rules items because it seems so effective and simple, but it was often a pain in the ass to adjudicate. And that was the 1e AD&D version of it. This thing is nearly unplayable. It brings up more questions than it answers. What exactly are the effects of being asleep within the game? How long does this sleep last? How do you handle mixed groups? That’s just to name a few. Lucky for early D&D players, there was some clarification in the Greyhawk supplement.  

There is no saving throw against this spell. Remember that a Sleep Spell affects but a single creature with 4 or 4+1 hit dice, and creatures above 4+1 hit dice are unaffected. Sleep does not affect undead. (Greyhawk, page 21)  

The funny thing about it is that none of the real important questions are answered, though we do learn that there is no saving throw against its effect, which made this spell awesome! At least against mooks. I imagine the reminder is there because people may have been abusing the spell (assuming the original text meant 4+1 and higher?) oh, and we find out undead are unaffected, which seems new. It’s still very incomplete, because there was a lot of “you know what I mean” coming out from TSR (and Gygax in particular). I think there was this assumed sense of fantasy axioms based on the books that D&D was based on (at least the ones that Gygax and the superhuman crew read), with little realization that the game was quickly being picked up by college kids and younger.  

But sleep is a bit of a complicated spell; let’s look at the much simpler magic missile. Here’s our first taste of this iconic blaster spell.  

Magic Missile: This is a conjured missile equivalent to a magic arrow, and it does full damage (2-7 points) to any creature it strikes. For every five levels, the magic-user has attained he may add an additional two missiles when employing this spell, so a 6th level magic-user may cast three magic missiles at his target, an 11th level magic user casts five, and so on. Range 15″. (Greyhawk, page 22)  

The funny thing is that you can only assume that there is an attack roll there. Since magic arrows have an attack roll, it seems like a pretty good bet. D&D nerds had to wait three years for the confirmation in Holmes’s Basic Set (the Blue Box):  

Magic Missile–Level 1; Range: 150 feet  

            A conjured missile equal to a magic arrow, and it does 1 die roll plus 1 point (2-7) to any creature it strikes. Roll the missile fire like a long bow arrow (Missile Fire Table). Higher level magic-users fire more than one missile. (Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set [Holmes], page 15)  

Notice also that an inch is 10 feet. This is another one of those “you know what I mean” assumptions. True proficiency (or the closest thing you could come to back then) involved not only knowledge of the correct canon of fantasy literature (a canon most of us would not see listed until the release of the Dungeon Master’s Guide) but also the conventions of miniature wargames at the time. That’s a pretty esoteric and demanding overlap of knowledge. Just being able to collect the right sources was a chore.  

It always seemed obvious to me that the spell descriptions (and in many ways the rules descriptions) of early D&D suffered from a lack of cooperation and iteration. They came from a small group of people (often as small as one) who knew what they meant, and didn’t really care to be challenged. Even clarifications made the player feel silly for things they obviously should have known or for knowledge that the player “should have had” access to. Or in other words, and to be more charitable, few who designed this game thought it would move beyond their specialized in-group audience.  

They were of course wrong and drastic changes were coming.