Magic-User
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The Magic-User was a character class in early versions of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. As a spellcasting class, it was one of the three original classes (the other two being Fighting Man and Cleric). The Magic-User was renamed to "mage" and then "wizard" in later editions.
The Magic-User represented the wizards or sorcerers 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 gatherer and walking artillery, 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 & Dragons rules developed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (in order to avoid cultural connotations of terms such as "wizard" or "warlock"). It continued to be used in the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) rules and in the simplified Dungeons & Dragons rules set. The second edition of AD&D discarded the term in favor of "mage". The third edition of the game (dropping the word Advanced and now just called Dungeons & Dragons) renamed the mage to "Wizard".