Give Me Three Spells ...

Last summer I expanded on all those color magic spells. This summer I'm considering stripping them down.

What's the thickest part of any D&D edition or clone? Easily the spell listings, followed by the magic item listings. Does it have to be that way? Hell no. Especially not as I gear up for the 49 Page Rules Project  ... an entire clone-like adventure game presented in modular, "one page rules" format that you can rip and plunder for your own games.

After all, we all know what the "staple" spells are at each level, the ones you keep memorizing over and over again. Then there are the "weird" specialist spells like Spider Climb and stuff ... but maybe those could be bought on scrolls, or found as treasure. After all, what you do is just hoard them up anyway.

Imagine there's only 6 spells at 1st level and 3 at each level thereafter.

And picking up a good idea from 4E, that was ridiculously overextended to character classes it shouldn't have reached: you start with one of the two weakest 1st level spells as an at-will power, then one of the next two as a power you need to rest 10 minutes to recover, then one of the two strongest as a power you need to sleep on. At 2nd level you get another 10 minute power. At 3rd you get one of the three 2nd level spells, and at 4th you get another, at 10 minute or overnight levels depending on their strength. And so on.

6 pages. For everything.

Are there other spells out there? Hell yeah. In the hands of nerd wizards with more time to do scholarship than adventure. But they will have to be found. They're in the DM's treasure section, not the players' handbook, which now has a grand total of 24 magic-user spells through 7th level, or 12 spells if you're writing a "Basic" book that only goes up to character level 5. That's just 6 pages, or 3 pages for Basic, at 4 spell descriptions a page.

So, participation time. Pick a magic-user spell level (any edition D&D, really, because I have a suspicion the answers across editions are going to look very much the same).

If it's first level, pick 6 spells. If it's any other level, pick 3. Those would be the only spells any adventuring magic-user had at that level. What would you pick for power and interest value? And are these any different from what players pick in your game, especially if it enforces pre-memorization?