First edition oddities

One of the interesting discoveries I've made is the rather grassroots nature of the early Dungeons and Dragons editions.  I've never had long term access to the original rules.  My experience is in the 1st edition.  And what an experience it is!  I much prefer the style, the production, the overall 'feel' of those rules to the more clean and synthetic 3rd and later editions.  Nonetheless, I admit there are some quirks, some ideas that were never developed, other ideas that come and go.  In some ways, that adds to the whole organic nature of the game.  It was not the product of paid think tanks and bean counters.  It was, in many ways, a labor of love.  And like all things associated with that emotion, it both soars and, at times, crashes.

For instance.  In the DMG, in the magic items catalogue, a Necklace of Prayer Beads makes it 25% more likely that your petition for spells will be successful.  25% more likely than what?  Would someone please tell me where else in the first edition rules that there is a chart or matrix unpacking the percentage chance of higher level Cleric spells being heard?  I'll get to what I've done with that rule somewhere down the road.  But for now, it stands next to such things as Orcus's wand and its impact on Saints, and other such anomalies.  They appear, they're mentioned, and then they fade. 

I'm not counting articles in Dragon or Dungeon by the way.  A rule shouldn't refer to the possibility of a future article in a periodical to which most players will never subscribe.  It ought to be in a rulebook somewhere.  Perhaps I've just not found the references.  But I have a feeling these, like others, were ideas that came out at the moment during which the books were being written, only to be dropped as the game and its players moved into different directions.  Such appears to be the context out of which the original rules were published.