The Campaign Builder's Guild

QuoteA high-level mage may be a fantasy world's equivalent of an air strike, but its worth noting that that an air strike still relies on forward-deployed troops (rogues and scouts in a fantasy world) to provide the intelligence necessary to make targeting decisions, and on ground forces (fighters and warriors) to mop up isolated and sneaky opponents who have managed to avoid the brunt of the aerial barrage.

Quite a good point.  There is no game balance between class types.  There never can be, only relative strengths versus relative weaknesses.

I feel magic should be dangerous. Dark Art, that when botched would realase deamons of the void to careless caster. Dangerous to soul, corrosive or something along those lines. Anything that would get people to take step back even hearing the word; Magic. As it is now, it is just a tool-kit, used as carelesly as fighter uses his sword.

Yes, and with more power than a fighter's sword will ever have, in some cases...

This is why I design new, restrictive magic systems, or more dangerous ones. 'Weaves' aren't exactly restrictive, in fact, they're very open and malleable, allowing you to create a new spell every time you use them, but... well... Wild Magic comes at a different cost.

My favourite magic system is the one I'm working on at the moment. It turns everything around and makes Sorceror the main casting class. Basically the sorceror must use his own life force to channel many spells, and although he can apply metamagic at will without it having any effect on the casting, it can harm him a lot. As well as this, the mage has a chance of opening the vortex or, if he overchannels (rather different to standard overchanneling) the Wild Magic rules for planes come into effect.

So much to say, so little time. So here's a link to stuff on my home wiki. Leave comments here or there...click on D20SpellWeaknesses to find my rant.

lovely, lovely rant...

What I hate about magic?  Well, it would have to be that I never seem to able to say the third syllable correctly!  Oh how many apprentices I have turned into frogs.   :D

Seriously though, the biggest issue I have with the magic system is there are no penalties for using it. As a result I would be interested in hearing more about this:

[blockquote=Golem011]My favourite magic system is the one I'm working on at the moment. It turns everything around and makes Sorceror the main casting class. Basically the sorceror must use his own life force to channel many spells, and although he can apply metamagic at will without it having any effect on the casting, it can harm him a lot. As well as this, the mage has a chance of opening the vortex or, if he overchannels (rather different to standard overchanneling) the Wild Magic rules for planes come into effect.[/blockquote]

As previous posters have mentioned in a world with limited magic items the magic users will far surpass the melee combatants.  IMHO, in order to keep it fair at higher levels there needs to be a penalty to the caster.  Used up life force, chance of random demon, wracking pain or something like that.

Like has been said before, make there be a penalty to using the magic, strip or bump up in level the damage dealers and powerful spells, and magic becomes something alot more contendable at high levels.

I have quite a few gripes with D&D magic

1. Vancian casting, fire and forget magic or whatever you wish to call it is just awful from a flavor stand point. While much easier to regulate than free form systems, mana point systems, and other options, the whole concept turns my gut.

2. The bell curve power level is terrible. The mechanics of the game dictate that warriors get the spot light at low levels, and spell casters get the spot light at high levels. In my games I would much prefer if I had more say over which characters get be focal and when they get to shine. I want equal opportunity for all the classes to contribute at all levels.

3. Role cross-over. Spells that duplicate the abilities of rogues and skills in general really piss me off. That's what the rogue is there for, and if spells trump his search skill, his diplomacy skill, his gather information skill, his open lock skill, his hide skill, and so on so forth, the rogue turns into nothing more than a crappy warrior with sneak attack.

4. The pervasive nature of magical items really kills me. Wizards must be mass producing these things in such number that they lose track of how many they have made. Every single character of say 3rd level or greater has magic items in abundance. Funny thing is, that the characters that rely on them most, are the ones who cannot produce them...

5. Certain spells that just make things too easy or too complicated...polymorph, forcecage, most scry and die combos (scry/buff/teleport, you know the drill). Most us already know the real offenders, so there is no need to list them all.

A toned down power, unlimitted use system, with no skill duplicating spells, and less pervasive magical items, and I'd be happy as a clam. Maybe someday instead of complaining, I'll list the things I do like...naaa

-Peace-

QuoteLike has been said before, make there be a penalty to using the magic,

Too Faustian for my taste.

QuoteSpells that duplicate the abilities of rogues and skills in general really piss me off.

Yay and verily!

Quote from: CYMRO of the TRUE Cabbage Cabal

QuoteLike has been said before, make there be a penalty to using the magic,

Too Faustian for my taste.

I, on the other hand, have often thought a little Faust is exactly what a magic system should have, and have tried to create it in my new magic system for Kishar (see the Mechanics thread), by offering incredible power with great risk.  Great innovations, great strides forward can only be achieved by taking risks.  It also fits well with the flavor of magic in the dark ages - one has made a pact with something dark for power.

mmph. with fewer magic items in a setting... what about guns? I mean... to a greater extent even than I've got. And rather than relying on extra damage per attack... how abot extra attacks, stunning, and more powerful crits? a modification in combat might balance the system... rather than curtail magic and piss off the mages, why not give the fighters a good reason to get smug?

Well, it's kind of off-topic, but damage should probably scale a little with level for physical attacks the way it does for supernatural ones.  It certainly wouldn't scale on-par with hit points, but if you got say +1 per level or per 2 levels, it would at least make weapons (even non-magical ones) respectible.

Quote from: Phoenix KnightWell, it's kind of off-topic, but damage should probably scale a little with level for physical attacks the way it does for supernatural ones.  It certainly wouldn't scale on-par with hit points, but if you got say +1 per level or per 2 levels, it would at least make weapons (even non-magical ones) respectible.

Maybe fighter/warrior types should get SR.

With spells like Otto's stupid dance, everyone should get SR ;)

I think what D&D suffers from is the lack of an all-controlling narrator.  In any story in which we see magic it gets defeated because of cleverness or pure force of will, because it can't fight the narrator.  But in a cooperative game there is no way to ensure that these things can bring magic down.

Magic always has been, and always will be, more powerful than the guy with the sword or the guy with the brain.  The only reason anyone defeats magic without magic is that thinking can potentially defeat everyone, or the person's will is just plain stronger than anything that can be thrown at them.  The first is impossible to represent mechanically, the second you might but it would never work how you want it.

D&D erroniously assumes that you can recreate the defeat of magic without someone pulling all the strings.

Quote from: CYMRO of the TRUE Cabbage Cabal

Quote from: Phoenix KnightWell, it's kind of off-topic, but damage should probably scale a little with level for physical attacks the way it does for supernatural ones.  It certainly wouldn't scale on-par with hit points, but if you got say +1 per level or per 2 levels, it would at least make weapons (even non-magical ones) respectible.

Maybe fighter/warrior types should get SR.

I was DMing a campaign for newbie players a while ago and when the party first encountered an enemy spellcaster the melee-types asked me if their shields stopped the magic in any way, I told them no, and we started to debate whether or not this was logical (Note these people had never played D&D or any roleplaying game for that matter, they didn't know many of the rules and were in no way powergamers). After discussing it I decided to house-rule that shields did give SR (With a feat and depending on the type of shield). Weapon/Shield, opposed to TWF or 2HWs, are known to be a weaker combo... so I figured it would be a nice addition to the system.