Which is better Veeky Forums?

Which is better Veeky Forums?

A game where spellcasters have access to shitload of spells that generally have their own unique purpose or a game in which spell casting gives you access to a handful of magical powers that cover an umbrella of unique magical effects?

Assume the former is similar to 5e's magic system and the latter is similar to Mage: the Awakening's magic system.

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Spell effects should be broad enough to require arbitration.
Spell options should be narrow enough to ask for clever thought.

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>Assume the former is similar to 5e's magic system and the latter is similar to Mage: the Awakening's magic system.
HOLY SHIT YOU ACTUALLY GAVE CONTEXT! WELL DONE!

My personal preference is the latter, in fact D&D magic does everything I don't like about magic.
I can't answer your actual question "which is better", since I don't believe either one is *objectively* better.

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>HOLY SHIT YOU ACTUALLY GAVE CONTEXT! WELL DONE!
Do I know you?

>My personal preference is the latter, in fact D&D magic does everything I don't like about magic.
What's wrong with it?

I personally like how spell slots can be used to buff lower level spells in 5e, it makes the whole thing much more ad-hoc than in earlier editions where power was mainly determined by your caster level.

Spells should be able to do everything, they're magic. They should be able to explicitly cover all situations if there is time to prepare for them.

Spell slots are only good if resource management is one of the most important parts of the game.
By all accounts, they should have died when dungeon crawling did.

Different user, but for me the problem with D&D magic is that every situation can be resolved with a spell, every problem can be circumvented with a spell.
Spell is the answer to everything. Spell can't fail or provoke any disaster, so they don't create conflict and it's free to use them.

The only thing creating conflict is an opposing spellcaster.

I don't think it's interesting at all. And I think it's also this view of magic that make completely unbalanced game where designers or players go like "Well, it's not balanced... But it's magic! It should do everything!"

There's 3 main kinds of magic I like.

>1. Superpower magic.
Your power does one thing. Fireballs. Running fast. Flight. Shapeshifting. Think like a Barbarian in 5e getting access to rages.

>2. Batman Wizards
Wizards can do basically anything, but need to prepare spells/wands/potions in advance. Off-the-cuff they're untrained martials.

>3. Equivalent Exchange
Wizards can do a lot but pay dearly for it. Think like a CoC campaign, where you can summon a Shoggoth to kill your foes but then have to deal with there being a Shoggoth in the cultist lair that you need to loot.

A sall selection of basic abilities, but as you gain more experience and knowledge those basic abilities you gain more capability in using them in more varied means and tactics depending on which basic magical field you specialize in.

Sadly, I don't know much about M:tA's magic system, so I can't make a comment one way or the other regarding your two choices, though personally what I'm looking for is something akin to the Spheres of Magic 3pp alternate magic system for Pathfinder, except without something as busted as the Weather Sphere

Jason Bhulman pls go and stay go. If magic can do anything and everything for no other reason that "majik nyigguh!", then its impossible to make a coherant game or campaign story, as it would be impossible to justify there being conflict or any propblems existing at all since you can just wave your hands and magic all the problems away. That type of magic eiter shouldn't exist, or should only exist solely in the hands of important/deific NPCs who have a reason not to just solve all the problems forever.

Also, because it makes the game boring, and too heavily punishes people who want to play as other fantasy archetypes such as Conan-esque warriors and the like, as it makes their entire existence redundant.
>inb4 a shitposting/bait response because you're thirsty for (You)s

Yeah I found, as a 5e warlock (2 spell slots) I could completely negate most challenges RAW. I had detect magic at will, Identify as a ritual, alarm, tiny hut, speak with dead, detect thoughts...

I wasn't powerful, per-se, but I provided way more utility than any other class.

And it's always utility that is the probem in the D&D system.

Having a wizard casting a fireball is not that big of a problem.
Having him casting Fly, Scrying, Detect Thoughts or Passwall is a very big one.

The issue for me isn't that the spells exist so much as how available they are. Knock makes lockpicking basically useless and can be picked up by a class 100% focused on damage spells otherwise.

The latter allows for more creative BUT said creativity is subjective which means there will be more arguments between players and the GM about exactly what a Spell of Transformation can do, how and when.

I find having loads of specific spells only works well if each spell is relatively simple in terms of what it does and how it doesn't. No spell should be much more than a paragraph long. Otherwise the game becomes a bog for spellcasters having to flip through each spell to figure out it's minute set of mechanics which may or may not effect this particular situation.

I find the broad spells have a little less flavour to them but are a little easier to track as a player and a GM. It's one set of sub-mechanics for everyone to learn instead of ten.

Most days I'd go for a system with a few broad spells because I have confidence the writes could pull it off to a degree. I'd be very open to a many-spell system but it would take someone who really knows what their doing.

The first option limits your selection by giving you a capped number of spells. This requires you to take the spells that are generally the most useful ones the most of the time, rather than the ones that can be super creative in certain specific instances.

Say you're trying to lead some orc prisoners out of a cave, but the bridge out has been cut and you're left with a wide chasm. There's too many people for Fly to be viable. What can you do? You've never needed a stonepath-type spell before, especially because of fly, so why would you have it on? The best you can hope for is your DM allowing you to cast Stone Wall horizontally

To be fair, Knock is very loud and is basically useless for infiltration-based lockpicking

>that type of magic shouldn't exist or should only be for NPCs

So what's the point of being a spellcaster then? If magic has hard limits to not overshadow mundanes, then why wouldn't you just be mundane?

Seriously, stop trolling, it's pathetic.

>54456995
Gee, I fucking wonder.

Could you stop baiting? Seriously, this shit stopped being funny around 2 months ago. You disgust me so much, I'm not even going to quote you from just to deny you the satisfaction of getting a (You)

>2 months ago
you'll find that it's a tad older meme than that

Yeah, but it increased in frequency and obnoxiousness considerably in the recent months

If every class is relatively equal over all then the class that appeals to you, or build that appeals to you is viable. Opening up to more builds is a good thing. It means I don't have to play a wizard in the high level campaign I'm joining in on. I can play a guy who throws greataxes at his enemies instead.

Nobody likes being shafted into playing certain characters, especially if they have been forced to play the same role because it's one of three viable builds.

tldr, you can pick a class that appeals to you.

>Responding to bait
I miss when I was so innocent

Yeah, but, in a lot of settings the spells have to be created. So, it is possible to be able to cover anything, with enough research.

But some random sorcerer shouldn't be able to do fireballs before humans have discovered fire.

Where would you rank Shadowrun/Warhammer? Cause I like them the most

>broad enough to require arbitration
Why?
It seems to me that being able to judge whether something works without GM intervention might be an advantage.

>spellcasters have access to shitload of spells that summons demons and other planar beings to slave for them but at a terrible personal cost for he spellcaster

This is a good rule of thumb imo.

My own rule would be: it's okay for spells to cover everything, as long as any single character only has access to a limited scope of spells.

The former, BUT: the spells in question should not already be covered by other classes. Artillery attacks are fine. Scrying is fine. Magical detect traps, though, fuck no, that's a Rogue thing and wizards should be inferior to Rogues at Rogue things.

I think he means you should be able to, say, use a fire spell to make smoke signals, instead of the spell having one specific usage.

Alright, that makes sense.
The phrasing sounded more like it was about complexity than about options.

I prefer the latter, though because I'm a gigantic GURPS-tard I prefer the way it does it, which is called Ritual Path Magic aka RPM.

I'll talk about what mentioned. With RPM, you could make a detect traps spell, by making a spell that detects metal and poison in walls. Maybe springs too. But casting that would be quite slow, or you'd have to have pre-prepared the specific spell. A rogue could do it much, much faster. That's what I like about RPM, and I think it's good design. Yeah, you can do a LOT with magic, but it's either slow, or you've got to have prepared it earlier (Which is even slower). You trade time efficiency for versatility (with the chance for some spectacular critical failures, especially if you have an evil GM). Oh yeah, I'm mostly a GM. GMs get to design critical failures with RPM. It's fun. Anyway, I think it's good game design. The mage can do a lot, but he can't do it ALL at once, unless the party want to sit around for (in character) hours and also possibly watch their wizard accidentally cover them all in painful, oozing boils for the rest of the day. Or just explode.

But every utility spell used means one less fireball.

In other words, if a spell caster wants to dominate the party's out-of-combat utility, it comes at the cost of their in-combat effectiveness. This isn't the case for martial classes who can track footprints and pick locks all day.

I like schools and specialists. Specific types of magic, ways of casting, things they do less well than others and things they just can't do at all.

>Spell can't fail or provoke any disaster, so they don't create conflict and it's free to use them.

Not quite free to use. Some spells consume materials, and almost all spells use up a caster's limited supply of magic.

I'm not aware if D&D has variant rules for spell failure, but Pathfinder introduced some: d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/wild-magic-optional-rules/
Just need to treat the entire world as an unstable magic zone

>In other words, if a spell caster wants to dominate the party's out-of-combat utility, it comes at the cost of their in-combat effectiveness.

Depends on the edition you are playing, as well as the playstyle.

If you don't have at least 6 fights a day in 5e (and that's 6 average fights, not "you surprize a group of goblins and the wizard can just shoot cantrips because the fight is over by turn 2 anyway" fights), for example, your wizard will be swimming in spare slots to do shit with, even if you don't count rituals.

> This isn't the case for martial classes who can track footprints and pick locks all day.

How many times do you need to do that though? Like, how many locked doors that must be picked (can't be broken/acid splash'd down) do you expect to find? Is it less than the wizard has slots? Then you'd have been better off with another wizard in the party instead of the rogue, since he'd have had spell slots left over.

Not to mention that nothing is stopping the wizard from actually having dex and being proficient in lock picking.

Same argument can be made for tracking.

>wizards should be inferior to Rogues at Rogue things.
Yes, and conversely Rogues should be able to do some Rogue Magic that no wizard or necromancer could ever learn.

A game where a person has to MAKE their own magic spells based on a list of suggestions with multiple requirements relating to alingment, ability scores and other such features, so it creates the effect of the wizard becoming one through his own research.

There are some spells out in the open, known as common spells, but many spellcasters work on their own unique spells to further and study. A lot of it is determined by will of the device, and it's flexible for campaigns where stuff like that is required.

This is always an interesting approach, but how do you write up spell lists and help beginner characters and players?