I am having issues navigating the spell book in Pool of Radiance. I am currently running PoR using DoxBox and Gold Box Companion, if that makes a difference.

My magic user is a level 3. I can see level 2 spells in the Gold Box Companion editor and when I try to memorize spells, I have two numbers next to the phrase "Magic-User Spells" (see attached screenshot). I assume that the second number refers to my level 2 spells, but I cannot find any way to advance the page in my spell book past the first level spells to see additional spells.

If that second number does not refer to level 2 spells, what does it refer to? And if I cannot cast level 2 spells, why can I see them in the editor?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

-Jerry

IIRC you simply move down the list of spells and it will continue to the next level once you are past the bottom spell, which is Sleep in this case. However you may not know any 2nd level spells yet. When you level up you can choose a new spell to learn, which may be 2nd level spells. Stinking Cloud for example.

If you find a MU scroll you can also scribe the spells into your spellbook by casting Read Magic first.

Thanks! That helps.

Based on what you said, I think my problem was that I didn't know any level 2 spells yet. About five minutes ago, using Gold Box Companion, I chose "learn all" which added all of the level 2 spells to my spell book and I was able to go from page to page.

So, let me see if I have this correct.

(I never played D&D with friends growing up, although I played some of these Gold Box Games on my old C64. I have played all of the Raveloft/Ashardalon/etc board games, but my knowledge of the magic system in the traditional system is a bit foggy).

1. Character Level and Spell Level are not the same.
2. When my magic users advance far enough to gain a new spell level, they do not gain access to all of those spells, only a certain few that I choose for them to learn.
3. When I advance, I choose which spells from the new level I want to learn. I can also add new spells from older levels.
4. I cannot scribe a spell from a scroll that is too high of a level for my caster.

Does all that seem right?

Apparently, Gold Box Companion allows me to cheat through this process by learning all of the spells from the level I've reached. Since I'm not increasing the number of spells I can memorize, just the ones I have access to, I don't mind using this cheat. It makes it work a bit more like The Bard's Tale.

Yes, you are correct on all accounts. At level 3, magic-users gain the ability to memorize 2nd level spells, at 5th level they gain the ability to learn 3rd level spells and at 7th level they gain the ability to learn 4th level spells. In later games you can eventually learn 9th level spells if you have 18 Intelligence.

It's a crazy system! They needed whatever the magical version of the metric system would be.

Thanks for your help! I really appreciate it. It's nice to have a forum like this where questions about a 30-year-old game can get answered so quickly.

Glad to help!