Balancing Classes in Swords & Wizardry

I'm working on modified classes for my S&W campaign. One thing is for sure they need a little help, as written the classes in the Complete Handbook are perhaps authentic but also a bit thin and even contradictory. I am not a min/max stat head that thinks each class needs to be able to deal equal damage at all experience levels. I don't even mean power balance exactly... I mean balanced for fun.

I can tell you that a 1st level Magic-User is not that much fun to play, epically in a large party. Go ahead and cast your one spell, then watch the fighters beat on monsters for several hours until the party can be persuaded to sleep. Sure creative use of flaming oil and darts can make up for some of it. But you're always falling back on tactics anyone could use, but don't generally bother to because they can... I don't know... use a sword or a bow.

Once you get to 5th level it all changes. The DM tells the Magic-User, "You can now cast Fireball." Well, if you can find a scroll at any rate. With a decent number of 1st and 2nd level spells you are a much more survivable combatant with the ability to buff armor and damage. What does the DM tell the fighter in vanilla S&W? "You can... um... attack with a roll one better than last level." The fighter might ask if he can still chainsaw his way through minor monsters, but... well no, these are HOBgoblins and 1+1HD monsters so sorry.

Gamers may say that the Magic-User is supposed to hard to play in the begining and gets more fun later. While Fighters are great from the start and are a more equipment based class rather than skill or ability based. OK so who wants to play the not-fun class up front? Who wants to wait for whatever the DM feels like handing out later? I mean how easy is it to find a player willing to go Cleric? And at least on paper it's a viable early game power house with armor, spells and decent To Hit rolls.

Thieves are crazy too, I know the skills model isn't popular with everyone. Players like it because they can easily imagine using these actions. However, I'm not even sure I know how to DM these rules as written. One really bizzar effect is persistent bad armor class. Without the heavy Dexterity bonuses of later versions of the game a Thief is quite defenseless. Of course they are supposed to hide, but with scores like 30% at 5th level who would rely on that? It seems weird that a 1st level Thief with 13 Dex is is hit by the same roll as a 10th level Thief with 18 Dex.

I want to balance the player fun in the classes, between each other, as well as between low and high levels. Here are my basic requirements for re-designing the classes, which I'll be working on in future posts.

• Fighter: More high level benefits, extra attacks are popular, maybe even perks or abilities based on weapons.
• Magic-User: Some low level benefits, giving the player something to do besides hiding, but not making them into psuedo-warlocks which always seemed like flashy archer replacements.
• Cleric: Anything to make them more fun, perhaps holy symbols with magical effects, or sermons and prayers, which might make them more like Bards.
• Thief: Re-configure the skills to make them more consistent and usable, though maybe fewer, and do something about the armor class.
• Sub-Classes: I haven't mentioned them yet, and I don't really like most of them, and they seem over-powered, especialy at high level, but I will do something with them.

If you're interested, let me know what you think. I'll start posting my new class descriptions soon.