Magic-User

The Magic-User was a character class in the popular role playing game, Dungeons and Dragons. The Magic-User represented the wizards or sorcerors common in modern fantasy literature. The Magic-User was physically weak and vulnerable, but was compensated with the potential to develop powerful spellcasting abilities. In practice a mid- to high-level Magic-User was a combination intelligence gathering device and walking field artillery piece, 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.

An awkward term, "Magic-User" was invented for the original Dungeons and Dragons rules set developed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. It continued to be used in the first edition "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" rules and in the simplified "Dungeons and Dragons" rules set. The second edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons discarded the term in favor of "mage". The third edition of the game (dropping the word "Advanced" and now just called "Dungeons and Dragons") renamed the mage to "Wizard".