OD&D stats for Mordenkainen

[Zenopus]

OD&D stats for Mordenkainen, as written up by Gygax in 1974. Courtesy Jon Peterson (increment )

playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/mordenkainen-in-1974-and-today.html

[Zenopus]

Notes:
-Per Monsters & Treasure, Staves start with 200 charges. 192 is pretty close to this.

-The references to the "old" and current XP system probably (as confirmed by Jon) refer to the system in the "Guidon D&D" draft ("old") and the publication system.

In Guidon, a M-U needs 200K to achieve name-level, Wizard 11, and 200K for each level thereafter. 772K would place Mordie at level 13.
As published, a M-U needs 300K to achieve name-level, Wizard 11, and 300K for each level thereafter (inc 1,200K for 14th). 772 would only place Mordie at 12th level under the new system, but Gygax grandfathered him in as 13th level. He has a long way to go for 14th at 1,200K under the system as published (see next note).

-Gygax's note is nice confirmation that that in the LBBs, each level after name level requires as much XP as it took to get to name level. It's not mentioned in M&M, but Gronan has indicated this was used.

So we can extend the M-U XP table:
Wizard, -- 300000
Wizard, 12 -- 600000
Wizard, 13 -- 900000
Wizard, 14 -- 1200000
etc

Likewise, Lords require 240000 for each level after 9, and Clerics require only 100000 for each level after 8. The later published classes (Thieves, Rangers, Illusionists) also fit this pattern.

[increment]

Jun 6, 2018 14:05:22 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

-The references to the "old" and current XP system probably (as confirmed by Jon) refer to the system in the "Guidon D&D" draft ("old") and the publication system.

The only reason I'm all "probably" about it is in case there's some intermediate draft we haven't found yet that has a 250k XP requirement or something. Definitely what we see now is consistent with Guidon being the "old" system. Which hints that ol' Mordie may not have come out to play as often as we might have thought...

[foster1941]

Funny to think of a 13th level Wizard with only two magic items (albeit good ones) and AC 9. I assume Gary made a point never to have Mordenkainen get drawn into melee and presumably relied heavily on that 17 charisma to keep lots of allies between him and the monsters. These stats also suggest the exorbitant levels reported for Mordenkainen in later years (e.g. 20th level in Dragon #37 (May 1980), "mid-20s" in one of the ENWorld Q&As, etc.) were either exaggerated (perhaps the reason why Gary was always so reluctant to reveal his true stats?) or arbitrarily assigned once he became a de-facto NPC, since it's unlikely Gary continued playing him consistently enough after 1974 for all those levels to actually be earned. We know he played in Arneson's "City of the Gods" sometime c. 1976 and for a bit in Francois Froideval's campaign (where, Gary says, he was considered "low level"), and IIRC Gary mentioned that he last adventure took him to Jim Ward's Starship Warden, but even if we assume a few more adventures like those that we never heard about, that doesn't seem likely to have generated enough XP to take him anywhere near those reported heights.

[scottyg]

It may have been a situation where the DM limited the number of magic items allowed. Remember the City of the Gods commentary where Dave Arneson feels Mordenkainen and Robilar have too many items and only allows each to bring two or three?

[delta]

Re: "Mordenkainen enjoyed 10% experience boost that may have speeded him through the ranks". Something that might have been even more keenly felt is that pre-Greyhawk supplement, XP was likely awarded at 100 XP per hit die (something Gygax in Greyhawk calls "ridculous [sic]"). Compared to XP post-Greyhawk, that would make for much more rapid growth on a linear trajectory, at least up through Name level, where the two systems effectively are the same. (Graph analysis here.)

[grodog]

We know that Mordenkainen primarily adventured in RJK's Castle El Raja Key, and that he acquired some very large treasures therein, including some very large gem caches. From www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_castle_sources_soapbox.html:

- While adventuring in Rob Kuntz's dungeon, Mordenkainen, Bigby, and cohorts "discovered a large hexagonal chamber in the center of which was a stone plinth, with a huge, faceted diamond resting atop it"
- The gem was worth 500,000 gp, and each of the six gates in the walls released monsters that all fell to the PCs' tactics
- Mordenkainen was at least 9th level by now, since he cast cloudkill

For full details, see "Best Shots: The Folly of Predictability" in Dragon #306 (April 2003). The level described in the article was level 11 of ERK and the map in the El Raja Key Archive (see www.tlbgames.com/collections/archive) shows not only a 500K gp gem, but three others that were valued at 25K (x2) and 50K. Some palimpsest gem values previously erased can be read as either 250K gp or perhaps even 850K, and I seem to recall Rob talking about a gem worth 1M gp based on valuation rolls, so perhaps it was one of these large-value gems that caused the OD&D progression for the increase in value of gems to change in AD&D (where it's lower)---in response to shenanigans where Mordy and others gained a level or three from some gems worth oodles of gp

Allan.