The wizard is one of the standard character class in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. A wizard uses arcane magic, and is considered less effective in melee combat than other classes.
Publication history
Creative origins
The Magic-User class was inspired by the spell-casting magicians common in folklore and modern fantasy literature, particularly as portrayed in Jack Vance's The Dying Earth short stories, and John Bellairs's novel The Face in the Frost. Gandalf and Saruman from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Merlin of King Arthur fame also influenced this class.
Wizards memorize their spells, then forget them when cast in the fashion of magicians from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series of novels.
Dungeons & Dragons
In the original version of the game, 'magic-user was one of the base character classes. Magic-User was one of the three original classes, the other two being Fighting Man (renamed Fighter in later editions) and Cleric.
The Magic-User was physically weak and vulnerable but compensated for this with the potential to develop powerful spellcasting abilities. In practice a mid- to high-level Magic-User was a combination intelligence gatherer and walking artillery, gathering information about possible dangers not yet seen and augmenting the physical combat abilities of the other classes with potentially devastating long-range and area attacks.
The term "Magic-User" was invented for the original Dungeons & Dragons rules developed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (in order to avoid cultural connotations of terms such as "wizard" or "warlock").
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition
The magic-user was one of the standard character classes available in the original Player's Handbook. The magic-user was presented as one of the five core classes in the original Players Handbook. "Magic-User" continued to be used in the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) rules.
The 1st Edition of AD&D also included a subclass of the magic-user called the illusionist, which had different spell lists, different experience level tables, and slightly fewer maximum hit dice (10 instead of 11). Gnomes were also able to become illusionists, even though only humans, elves, and half-elves could become magic-users. Magic-user spells and illusionist spells were for the most part separated and had little overlap. Of all the AD&D classes, only the magic-user had spells of the 8th and 9th levels; all other spell-casting classes were limited to spells of up to the 7th level.
Dungeons & Dragons
"Magic-User" continued to be used in the basic Dungeons & Dragons rules set.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition
The mage, as part of the "wizard" group, was one of the standard character classes available in the second edition Player's Handbook. The second edition of AD&D discarded the term "Magic-User" in favor of "mage".
The second edition Player's Handbook gives a few examples of mages from legend and myth: Merlin, Circe and Medea.
In this edition, the mage became an all-purpose wizard who could cast any wizardly spell, including many only available to illusionists in the first edition, like color spray and chromatic orb. The wizard spell list was unified, and illusionists became one of many specialist wizard types who focussed on a specific "school" of magic. The other specialists were abjurers, conjurers, diviners, enchanters, invokers, necromancers and transmuters. As a trade-off for various bonuses with magic from their chosen school, specialists became unable to cast spells from one or more "opposition" schools. Aside from school restrictions, all wizards could cast spells from up to 9th level, assuming they had the required intelligence.
The Complete Wizard's Handbook was published in 1990, written by Rick Swan. It detailed the schools of magic (illusion, necromancy etc.) and the careers a wizard might have (such as alchemist or treasure-hunter), added new spells to the wizard list, and introduced rules for spell research, adjudicating illusions, and casting spells in unusual conditions. The book also introduced wizard "kits": character packages with role-playing hooks linked to game benefits and limitations. Examples of wizard kits include the Academician, the Anagokok, the Amazon Sorceress and the Witch.
The Tome of Magic (1991) introduced elementalists, specialist wizards who focussed on spells related to one of the classical elements of air, earth, fire or water, and wild magic, which promised greater power at the cost of a built-in chance of backfire and other side effects.