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 Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:36 pm
I would have to agree with Feral Knight. I mean any game requires a set of rules to provide balance and consistency. People might compare magic to guns, but the simple fact is guns are governed by real world physics. Magic might be considerably more difficult to arbitrate function but WotC invested countless hours of thought and writing to create a cohesive system. They spent around 30+ years if I remember correctly. It's the most complex yet consistent system I've seen so far. It leaves enough room for additional house rules, but has enough limitation to avoid occasional a**-pulls by players who think magic really can do literally anything all at once.
I wouldn't say copy-pasting pre-existing magic rules is the only way to go either, but people are going to have to put some serious thought into the role, function, and abilities of magic in their RPs if they want to cover their bases and avoid conflicts. I really don't see how the 7 schools of arcane, and Divine magic is limiting. It's really just there for an easy way to determine types of spells and help shape caster boundaries.
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 3:17 am
Phaeton 2 I would have to agree with Feral Knight. I mean any game requires a set of rules to provide balance and consistency. People might compare magic to guns, but the simple fact is guns are governed by real world physics. Magic might be considerably more difficult to arbitrate function but WotC invested countless hours of thought and writing to create a cohesive system. They spent around 30+ years if I remember correctly. It's the most complex yet consistent system I've seen so far. It leaves enough room for additional house rules, but has enough limitation to avoid occasional a**-pulls by players who think magic really can do literally anything all at once. I wouldn't say copy-pasting pre-existing magic rules is the only way to go either, but people are going to have to put some serious thought into the role, function, and abilities of magic in their RPs if they want to cover their bases and avoid conflicts. I really don't see how the 7 schools of arcane, and Divine magic is limiting. It's really just there for an easy way to determine types of spells and help shape caster boundaries. I've never seen such an articulate statement so out of actual touch with actual D&D. So I'm going to have to ask you to slow your roll their killer and stop fan boying over D&D. D&D has possibly one of the most broken magical systems I've ever ever seen. Paladins and Clerics alone, lest I even step mages; they out strip their mundane cousins by usually around 7th level. Especially when they get their hands on wands. That's before we get into actual splats with all the extra ******** there are whole forums that are dedicated to making D&D magic as broken as possible. I once made a 13th level character solo a 26th level encounter and did over kill damage something on par of like 600 dmg before initiative was even rolled; as in the spell that allowed me to do this reacts as an interrupt to rolling initiative. (the total was well over a thousand. I'm not sharing the secret recipe.). However despite all this there are still D&D games that don't devolve into whole parties of clerics; even though that's completely viable. The long and short of it is the best gun control is your trigger finger. The DM has the final say so on what is or isn't broken, it is in fact in spite of WotC and gygaxian ******** that D&D games generally remain playable.
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:26 pm
You give me far too much credit. I'm not really a fanboy of D&D. I'll admit the numbers and rule construction stand heavily against me but the classification for magic types and availability to classes providded did make the most sense to me. It could get a little bizarre if you had a necromancer passing out a few druid spells right? I'm not oblivious to the infamous CoDzilla builds, Target popping spells, Pun Pun, or the optimization shenanigans at the Gaming Den. There was a trope named for this though: Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards. I think Gygax had a distinct distaste for brawny types over the course of his career. It sorta figures that 4.0 exists after his death and gets a total reworking. My friend complained incessantly about that game's system before even trying it.
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 6:38 pm
4.0 is D20 training wheels. It's really hard to actually use it's core system for really fleshing a character out. Don't give me that crap about needing the expansions, if the core system can't really get there why would you bother trying to make a pile of s**t better, because at the end of the day, you're still playing in s**t. 4.0 is worse yet watered down over balanced s**t. Most of the classes are so viable in different situations it feels like your decisions have less meaningful impact.
Tank, dps, and healer. That's about it... I know it's the same rock paper scissors of every game but at least there is meaningful differences between one pair of scissors to the next.
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Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 12:34 am
Feral Knight @Sioga: Druids are a type of caster that draws their magic from their relationship with the forces of nature rather than a deity or study. Weather, trees, animals, even the land itself. Druids are kind of an amalgamation of the other caster types. They have access to healing spells, damage spells, crowd control, and so on, as well as the ability to adopt animal forms in many games. Druids tend to be a secretive bunch, often living by themselves out in the wilds far from civilization and other people. Druids also tend to be of a neutral alignment, believing that good, evil, law, and chaos are either aberrations or outright diversions from the true state of the world. Here's the kicker: True druids in most genres are rather fanatical about the destruction of any and all sentient creatures that do not follow a tribal form of lifestyle that stresses living in harmony with nature. In other words, eco terrorists. As for druidism, well, that is simply a term for the philosophy of druids as well as the form of magic that they have access to. Hope it helped. Thank you! This actually explains a lot for me. My only knowledge of them comes from some simple online information (generally Wikipedia). Both are obviously not very in-depth or useful when thinking in an RP sense.
I really do like this guide, it is a great deal of help for me when it comes to my character creation, in the sense of magic and it's uses. I can guarantee that it will be referenced by me many times more. Again, thank you for making this.
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