Fighting man, Wizard experience

[bestialwarlust]

As I've been re reading these books much more closely one thing that grabbed my attention. In the later levels a fighter is required to gain more exp per level than the magic user.

Where as later editions the MU always had one of the highest requirements.

[Stormcrow]

The general consensus at the time was the magic-users had it too easy at high levels, so Gary beefed up fighting-men and gave magic-users more hurdles to compensate.

[Aplus]

Yeah, it's one of those weird idiosyncrasies. It makes a weird sort of sense though if you remember that the fighter reaches name level (Lord) at 240,000 xp/9th, while the magic-user reaches name level (Wizard) at 300,000 xp/11th. It helps in that the wizard is on his third set of saves and attacks when reaching name level, and has a bit more hit dice.

One interesting thing to do is to look at B/X D&D to see the things there were "fixed", and check for the unintended consequences of the changes, like the fact that a name level wizard in B/X has crappier saves. In the grand scheme of things, these minor differences don't matter, since the vast majority of games are probably in the 1st-5th level ranges, and the player matters so much more than the nickel-and-dime numerical differences anyways.

[bestialwarlust]

Good catch I didn't even think of the "name" level. In that case it makes much more sense as Alpus pointed out that at that level the fighter, using the CM system for combat, also attacks as a superhero.