OD&D spells I have removed from my game

[Zulgyan]

Read Magic: in my game, it takes a turn per spell level and a suitable environment to decipher the contents of a scroll and one hour per spell level for a spell in a spell book.

Detect Magic: i like the line bewteen magic and mundane blurred in my campaign. I don't like a binary difference between mundane and magical. No detect magic adds more mystery to the game ("our king is acting very strangely, is he charmed?" - no detect magic to find out!). As for items, all magical items look "special" so you can intuit they are magical by their looks. I see no use for detect magic in my games. And I don't like detect magic serving as a trap finder. Interact with the environment and GUESS what is magical. Much more interesting to me.

Read Languages: I'd rather make the ability of knowing additional languages very important. ¿A spell to decipher maps and instructions? NO!! As a DM I'll make my own real map and hand it in as a player handout and have the players decipher it's riddles! When all fails, I'd rather have the players need to contact an expert or extraordinary person.

Protection from evil: I'm reworking this spells for several reasons too long to explain right now.

[Zulgyan]

Continual Light: I hates it. I really don't like the permanent thing.

[Finarvyn]

Some interesting ideas, and it will be nice to get a report as to how these changes affect your campaign. I always thought that information type spells can really kill a good adventure, since it's possible that the players can get freebie information too easily.

I'm not as certain about removing Protection from Evil, however. Must ponder this.

[Zulgyan]

My comments are from actual play.

Some more insights:

No read magic and my "spell deciphering" rules keep the game going and you don't have the situation where the mage says "guys, wait for me for a day so I can choose read magic to decipher this scrolls".

As for protection from evil, I have removed the cleric and replaced it with a sorcerer class inspired in Elric. The class is heavy on summoning, so a 1st level spell to bar all summoned monsters is way too powerful. So the problem with protection from evil is really based only on the whole context of my game. In ordinary D&D I would keep it as is.

Also, evil-good is not that clear in my campaign. Unless you read "evil" as "danger" or "foe".

The biggest effect comes from no detect magic. With no detect magic, the magic trap radar is lost and you keep players guessing what is magical and what is not. It adds more sense of wonder to the game in my experience.

[busman]

I don't know that I've had Detect Good/Magic/anything in my games in decades. Totally game breaking. When I did allow it, such as with Paladins, etc. it took the form of vague uneasiness, but it was never pinpointing and I wouldn't allow it for detecting someone of evil alignment or even evil creatures, but rather someone in the middle of committing an evil act.

[ffilz]

What I've always liked about continual light is that it removes the need to book-keep torches and lanterns for higher level PCs.

Frank

[Zulgyan]

I would only keep continual light if it would be a 4th level spell at least.