Hidden in Shadows

Tucked in the back of TSR's Supplement II Blackmoor is a curious expansion on the sage NPC.  It's curious because this section contains quite a bit of detailed information about an NPC type who's only function would be as a one off hire to research an answer to some obscure question the PC's might have once or twice in a campaign.  None of the other specialist hirelings are treated this way, and there really is no practical reason any of them should be. 

This detailed expansion of the Sage NPC is unusual, and seems even stranger when you consider that the sage's main function, researching obscure questions, is also well within the purview of Magic-users.  Use of a sage must surely be rare in most campaigns, so why is the sage, and only the sage, singled out for a detailed write-up in the Blackmoor Supplement?

When discussing his work on Supplement II Blackmoor in his Dragonsfoote Q & A forum, editor Tim Kask reveals that he cut sections of the material Arneson had written ("I said to hell with that and threw most of the crap away").  Kask considered the discarded material to be redundant or non-conforming to the rules of D&D.  Some other portions of Arneson's manuscript weren't discarded, but were reworked by Kask for the same reason. In particular, Kask has pointed to the Assassin and the Sage as being reworked in this regard.

Kask thought the Assassin was "more suited to be an NPC, but was overruled."  With the Sage in Supplement II, however, he appears to have not been overruled.

Arneson considered "sage" to be a player character class, not just an NPC, at least in the case of the Special Interests section of the FFC.  Notice the class list Arneson gives in th SI section:

Fighting-Man 
Clerical 
Magic-User 
Ranger 
Paladin 
Assassin 
Merchant 
Sage

This list is particularly interesting regarding the dating of the Special Interests section.  It is abundantly evident from the content throughout the piece that the section was written after the January 1974 publication of D&D, but exactly when is more difficult to ascertain.  The class list however provides some solid ground to reason from.  In addition to the three original classes, the list contains the Paladin from, Supplement I Greyhawk, (January 1975) and the Ranger (Strategic Review #2, Summer 1975).  Tacked on to the end are the 3 "classes" associated with Blackmoor.  

Setting those last 3 aside for the moment and looking specifically at Fighting man to Paladin in the SI list, we find what would be an up to date player character class list for the summer/fall of '75, except that the "Thief" from Supplement I is missing.

In his Corner of the Table newsletter for August of 1975, Arneson informs the readers that he has just completed months of work on Supplement II.  Supplement II, of course contains 2 of the 3 "Blackmoor" classes on the end of the SI list - the Assassin and Sage - so only Merchant is missing from the material TSR published up to that time.

It seems quite probable, therefore, that the section containing the Special Interests piece was originally part of the material Arneson wrote that summer, which Kask subsequently considered unfit for publication in Supplement II.  This isn't so surprising, as the SI section substantially changes the rules for experience points.  Kask may well have thought it too rule-bending to be published as official material.  It's unclear if Arneson had also submitted a piece on the Merchant class, but if so it seems to have likewise fallen victim to Kask's editorial process.  

The fact that Thief is missing from Arneson's SI class list suggest that Arneson may have considered Thieves and Assassins to be equivalents, or perhaps he considered Theives to be a subclass of Assassin (instead of the reverse) or perhaps a replacement. 

Whatever the case with Assassin and Merchant, the reason the Sage gets such oddly detailed treatment in Supplement II would seem to be that Kask took what was intended to be a class and turned it into an NPC because he didn't think it was a suitable class.

That means that, theoretically, one could cut away all the text specifically discussing the details of hiring a Sage, and be left, more or less, with the specifics unique to the class, to a greater or lesser degree as Arneson originally wrote it.

Before we begin this exercise, we should ask why Arneson created a sage class in the first place.  The adventuring "Sage" isn't exactly an obvious  literary archetype, unlike the Assassin (hello Assassins of Gor ) but, just as with the Cleric and the Merchant, we do have a well established character in play in pre D&D Blackmoor who could well have served as the model for a Sage character class.  That character would be David Megarry's Scholaress.  

The "Earl's Scholaress" began life as a pre-D&D character of what we would now think of as the Fighter class, being neither Priest or Wizard and being well armed.  In one particular adventure the "Scholar" character used a magical bracelet to change into a basilisk (female), and much to his chagrin, found himself a herself upon changing back to human.  Thereafter, the Scholaress increasingly researched and used magic.  

At one point after the rules of D&D were available, Dave Arneson had the Scholaress progress as a Magic user for XP purposes, and allowed her use what David Megarry characterized as "non-weapon" spells, as shown in the illustration below from Mr. Megarry's chemistry notebook.