I take it you are expressing displeasure at the implied promise of a new strip, and its failure to materialize?
You forgot the final M. 
Anyway, it’s interesting to note that V went nova against Laurin.
I wish to make known my annoyance at your premature addition to this series of messages in total disregard of the expectation that said addition would herald a new strip, thereby falsely raising my expectations of enabling me to consume said new strip.
Offensive telegram follows.
And to expand on that, novaing is one thing that psions are better at than wizards. Wizards use discrete spell slots, so many of each level. A novaing wizard will use up all of es highest-level spell slots, then use up the next-highest, and so on. Psions, however, have a set of points that they can spend on all of their known powers. A psion can therefore use her entire supply of mojo on her highest-level powers (or lower-level ones juiced up to be equivalent to high-level ones). The drawback to this is that by doing so, you use up your mojo more quickly, and once it’s gone, it’s gone, while a wizard who’s used up all of es highest-level slots will still have the lower-level slots available-- The hope is that your enemy is already dead by the time this happens, and that you don’t face any other significant challenges until you’ve had a chance to rest and replenish.
It’s worse than that - as Xykon made quite clear in Start of Darkness, a wizard’s spell slots are already devoted to specific spells. If you thought you might need a Teleport spell today, you can’t turn around and use that spell slot to burn someone’s face off. A sorcerer or psion can.
I don’t have much experience playing D&D, and then it was never as a magic user, but what little I’ve read about the rules for wizards suggests that the player would have to consult frequently with the DM to establish which spells his wizard could use during a sesson.
This strikes me as being a huge PITA, and would probably dissuade me from ever rolling a caster or trying to run a dungeon, if that is how the rules are set up. Could someone clarify if my impressions are accurate, and, if not, how DOES a player run a wizard without the temptation to scam the DM being a constant factor?
Entirely incorrect. No consultation is required. At the start of the game day a wizard chooses which spells to memorise from their spellbook, and thereafter can cast the memorised spells at any time. That’s it. Clerics have similar rules (e.g. Durkon chooses at dusk). Clerics and Wizards are known as ‘prepared spellcasters’. Elan is a Bard which is a ‘spontaneous caster’ class: he doesn’t have a spellbook but has a permanent, very restricted set of spells which refresh daily, and again can be cast at any time during the day and refresh overnight.
Typically though a DM was very careful about what spells were available for the wizard to learn into their spellbook. Typically nothing past level three was available to just buy. You would need to find it in the dungeon, or earn a favor from a master wizard who would teach you, and which exact spell it was, was at DM discretion.
Nope. You get to choose any two spells at each character level to learn, and the DM only interferes to the extent that certain non-core-rulebook spells might not be allowed, or peculiar campaigns might not allow particular spells. Beyond that, I’ve never had a DM make it difficult to learn a spell I wanted to learn, unless a very particular third-party spell were deemed overpowered.
To make it a little clearer, mages have actual spellbooks in which the spells they know (i.e., which they’ve either been specifically taught, have found somewhere, or have researched themselves) are written. A mage can only memorize the spells in their spellbook(s). A priest is a little more flexible, as they can memorize any spell in their god’s domain lists. But they both have to memorize ahead of time.
1st and 2nd Ed had all kinds of fiddly rules about how big spellbooks were and how much they weighed and traveling spellbooks and all of that kind of thing. Remembering things like that reminds me of how an awful lot of 1st Ed nostalgia is fueled by selective amnesia…
In practice, a wizard’s player keeps track themselves of what spells they have available, and if the player says “I cast a fireball on the enemies.”, the DM just says “OK, roll your damage.”. The DM is within his rights to say “Wait, you prepared that today? Let me see your character sheet.”, but if that happens very often, you’re probably not playing with the right group of people.
During the sole 2nd (1st? ADD?) ed game I participated in, the DM annoyed the magic user by giving him the option of only 2 1st level spells to learn, picked at random. The player wanted something that might help during a fight. This was after the PC had learned Sleep and the basic read/write spell though. I am not a DM, but it seems reasonable to me to assume that all 1st level spells are common knowledge among experts in the campaign. Yeah- yeah spell classes, cantrips, whatever.
So… who gets the Ione stone? Blackwing or V? Or someone else? Somehow a crow with a floating Ione stone amuses me.
Back in the 1st Ed DMG there was a set of tables to consult; 1st level m-u’s started out with one attack spell, one defence spell and one miscellaneous spell, and some of the so-called “attack” spells were things like “Push” or “Friends” which both strain the definition to breaking point. The existence of the various 1st-level spells probably would be common knowledge to all magicians, but no-one could possibly know them all unless his intelligence were god-like (which no beginning character’s could be). And when you did find a previously unknown spell in a book or on a scroll, it was perfectly possible that you would find it incomprehensible, which would mean you could never learn that spell unless you got a stat increase.
Rulebooks and magazine articles periodically moaned about players’ preoccupation with high ability scores, but the game was set up to royally screw many characters and classes without them, and a mage with mediocre Intelligence who blew his chance to learn the must-have spells was among the most royally screwed of them all. Been playing for six months and finally reached fifth level? Studied that carefully-hoarded Fireball scroll? Oops, you rolled a 76 and it’s too hard for you. What a shame.
Yup. In the 1st/2nd Ed games I played, we always houseruled this away: magic-users got to choose which spells they wanted, despite the rules foolishness, because to do otherwise was to risk making an unfun character. This change in 3rd Ed was one of many obvious-but-brilliant changes, shifting the game from a randomly punitive model to a fun model.
If I played with a DM who said, “This splatbook [non-core-rulebook] spell that lets you nauseate all opponents within 30’ at second level is more powerful than the third-level stinking cloud, I don’t consider it well-thought-out, let’s figure out how to nerf it or else choose a different spell,” I’d be fine with that. If I played with a DM who said, “Meh, I hate save-or-die spells, so if you choose Baleful Polymorph, be aware that you might be facing a lot more save-or-die spells from your opponents as well,” I’d be slightly irked but would be fine with that too. But if I played with a DM who said, “Naw, don’t choose any debuff spells for your list, I hate having my bad guys have to miss turns, just pick damage spells,” I’d do my best to sweetly persuade the DM to reconsider.
And talking of unfun characters, 1st Ed m-u’s had a casting limit of one spell at first level. No cantrips, no bonuses for high Int, no specialisation bonuses. In the campaigns I used to play in thirty years ago, low-level magicians typically toted around a lot of oil flasks as they made much better grenadiers than blastermages.
One of our players made up a big pack of index cards with the spell names on them in florid writing, so you could pick your set of spells for the day and have easily accessible evidence for them. Still a faff, but many players prepared spell lists ahead of time so they had “Spells for dungeon mode”, “Spells for city mode”, “Spells for outdoor mode” and so on. The same players, a few years on, had basically opted for a sorcerer-type set-up except for the part about having to build a spell book; I don’t think they’ve ever bothered with 3rd Ed to any meaningful extent.
Well, once UNEARTHED ARCANA came out for 1st Ed, you had your daily choice, right? One spell or four cantrips?
It’s orange, right? That’s +1 caster level. I could see situations where that might be a game changer.
Yes indeed, but then you have to remember that UA also introduced cavaliers :smack:, barbarians :smack:, drow PCs :smack: and a whole bunch of other stuff that seemed a good idea at the time.
I’m dying laughing here after UA came out, as a 15 year old back in 1980 something ahem I played a Drow Elf Cavalier/Magic User. Seemed like a good idea at the time but leveling was at a glacier like pace. A lot more complicated than a pure 1st ed. meat-shield like Roy that I last played, he banged through levels like no tomorrow.
Then the Drizzet books came out and everybody and their brother wanted to be a Drow and it wasn’t fun anymore. I had the idea first dammit, I really did! 
The simitars in the book were way cool though, I would have never though of that…
Just a straight Drow cavalier was fine, I found. You get a whole bunch of innate spell-like abilities and you can dual-wield with no penalties, and all the over-the-top cavalier abilities with no counterbalancing penalty apart from “Must showboat at every opportunity”. The miracle was that anyone else thought anything else worth bothering with. 