Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck
My point is only that before ITL, we treated all our PCs equally when it came to these things. A DX 11 wizard had the same odds of succeeding at a saving roll as the DX 11 fighter when it came to staying on a frightened horse or scaling a slippery slope. A DX 11 wizard had the same chance of scoring a hit with a thrown dagger or axe as a DX 11 fighter, because they both rolled on 3 dice, no explicit talents required.
That changed dramatically when ITL supplanted the earlier Melee/Wizard rules. The fighters, even at the default IQ of 8, could afford the talents now required to do these basic things -- they didn't have to give up anything. Wizards on the other hand lost these privileges unless they gave up at least half their spells. And even if they did that, and although most had IQs above 8, they still couldn't afford all of those basic talents, much less all the fancier talents now available to the fighters. Even giving up all but one spell, they could still only afford half as many talents as the fighters because of the doubled-for-wizards cost difference.
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Coming in late here. I no longer have a copy of the original Wizard but as I recall the original rules for Wizard included notes for use with Melee (like the current edition) and gave wizards a -4 DX penalty when using weapons other than a wizard's staff. Which seems only reasonable. Giving wizards all the abilities of fighters from Melee on top of their spells seems a bit impractical. Why make your character a Hero when a Wizard has all the same abilities plus magic? In other words, wizards already were implicitly limited in mundane skills. Also note that for most routine adventuring skills, Talents aren't essential - they just boost your odds. The descriptions are pretty explicit in that regard.
You could certainly tweak the rules so there's less of a clear Hero/Wizard division but I would argue the mechanical difference was built into the system from the start. Adding Talents gave more options to Heroes than Wizards in non-combat situations but a Wizard could also use spells to deal with non-combat problems. So I don't think ITL hindered Wizards vs Heroes. Possibly just erase the distinction so any character could learn Spells or Talents at the same cost though that might change the feel of the game.
If anyone has a copy of the original Wizard rules, please check what they say about using them with Melee. It's been long enough I don't trust my memory.