So, why is magic usually limited to puny predefined spells?

So, why is magic usually limited to puny predefined spells?

Why can't they do just any fucking thing?

They are fucking wizards

Do you ever play a wizard that can do whatever he wants?

I see you've never played World of Darkness before.

... The two mage systems are kinda about this.

... Implementation can be wonky, particularly if you fail every spellcasting check.

people say they were OP enough in 3.0

There are ways of guaranteeing successes when you get to a certain level of competence. At least that's the case in Awakening, I haven't played Ascension.

.... Games can often not run long enough to get to that point...

depends on the setting, but the usual justification is that magic has rules that aren't entirely well understood, and the spells are so chaotic even the slightest variation could break it unless you know what you're doing
also just cause i like my dumb flavor, in my 5e world, evocation mages are considered the brainlets of the mage world
>sacred fuck I fucking hated my first year elements class. half the class were evoker-school blasty blasties that thought they were the next Arxa for being able to cast a shit fireball from a scroll

but yeah heavy magic focus games (ars magica, world of darkness, the like) tend to be closer to "do what you like"

Adept-level is where the power starts to ramp up pretty heavily, and you can reach Gnosis 3 at chargen.

Obviously you can still fail, but my point was that you can generally do the things you want at that level so long as no other supernatural creature is opposing you.

even 3.5/pf metamagic at the most powerful level gets to "do what you want" levels

lovely digits

>So, why is magic usually limited to puny predefined spells?
To put them on par with everyone else.

That is why wild mages are so fun

I don't really like Mage for this reason. Goes too far in the other direction, IMO. Call me picky but it seems like there's little you can't do depending on how pliable your Storyteller is/ how creative you are.

I'd rather play a game with more narrowly interpretable magic, but without limiting it to weird niche lists of things like Grease and Color Spray etc.
I'll always enjoy D&D for those specific and campy spells but sometimes you wanna play a straight up pyromancer or some shit, you feel me?

Why would you ever need anything but slip

...stop doing this...
it's.... stupid....

Witnessed.

In pertinence to the topic, I love wizards. My bosses are wizards, my dreams are in wizard, I am a wizard. My current character, Tiluna, is a sixteen year old girl in 3.5 Alienist and Master Transmogrofist, whom I've structured as a contingency wizard and utterly inaffectionate madwoman. Prepared to be attacked and be teleported, or cast reflexive spells, or daze. Capable of flight and not requiring sustenance. Prepared against antimagic falling, death, ally domination, petrification, blindness, plenty else. Wickedly smart and minmaxed af.

>sixteen year old girl
> mary sue


Dropped

I think it was satire of typical 3.PF waifu faggotry.

I have rotes that have a dicepool of 8 and I've yet to spend any EXP on bolstering my spell list or my gnosis.

As long as you have your bread and butter shit at 3 dots or so, you can easily be rolling more than enough dice to offset any potential failure.

>Why can't they do just any fucking thing?
Because that would make for a terrible game.

Calvinball

GURPS gots you covered, OP. Ritual Path Magic is the king of improvisational spell systems!

In my homebrew, wizards can do pretty much anything they want, because, well, they are wizards.
It comes with a massive drawback in charisma, and the limit of their power is pre-set for each character (in one game, I had two wizards who, in terms of raw power, had about the same difference as there would be between a level 3 Vs level 11 wizard).
But since my games are mostly story-based, the martial-caster gap has never been a problem.

So, any examples of wizards doing free wizard stuff?

>magic works like /r9k/
>can never cast the same spell twice
I'm gonna do it

Oh believe me, I have.
And it was fucking awful.

It's put me off Mage the Awakening for a long while.

that's a very attractive young man

Is there more of this

Engineering a spell to be half-asleep, and still be standing on a horse whose instructions were to follow the road.

Make someone in particular burst in laughter despite him being in horror and shock.

Creating a zombie horse with an emptied ribcage for storage, in which a spell could be set to explode in case of irreparable mutilation of said horse

fuck off with that gay shit, its a she(female). stop killing my boner by pushing ambiguous sexuality all over the place
lywi.gr on Instagram from. 18yo Russian or Romanian or possibly Swedish or Norwegian, preliminary research indicates she's all over the fucking place

pic related is not her just visually similar

>Why is language limited to puny predefined words?
>Why can't you just make any noise and have it mean something?
You can always invent random bullshit but if it's not sensibly structured there's no fucking way to teach someone else or in some cases to even remember how you did it to replicate it yourself. They can in fact do anything, but it's retarded to think they'd just go around ADHD spamming magic all the fucking time.

.....goddamn, I hope she's gay.

Gurps RPM is good it lets you spent points from a pool and change effects.

You could deal with enemies just through improv.

Like that time my character was being chased by a dire wolf and I summoned a bunch of broken glass tacks and d4's for it to walk on.

It was great for my doctor strange character

>the reason that spells often have lots of flashy spells and gubbins is because that's how Wizards ensure it's "sufficiently different"

>So, why are melee attacks usually limited to puny predefined feats?
>Why can't they do just any fucking thing?
>They are fucking fighters
>Do you ever play a fighter that can do whatever he wants?

You sound like a fag who wants to pick a class with a "win everything" button by whatever bullshit you can come up with.

>The Lich appears in front of you
>LOL NO I UNEXIST HIM WITH MAGIC

Go play pretend with 8 year olds if you want games with no structure, then get into back and forth arguments that don't end until one of you gets tired of it.

>I'm too retarded to play anything but a fighter

Oh god. Your wank rag must scream itself to sleep.

MY gm was running
>tunnels and trolls ?
>pladium?
>AFF?
>somthing somthing not DnD

Anyway I picked a runemaster who worked alot like a "fullmetal alchemist " alchemist . I got a whole bunch of keywords and was allowed to just run wild. Had so much MP that I could use a day.
I did things like mix
>Lovers
>Water
>Grey
>3
>tIme

To make a time delayed sleep bomb that I used to knock out a bear
OR
>Self
>blood
>metal
>Life
>moment
>shock

To turn the fighters skin into iron for the moment he hit a surface. We lunched him via a catapult into a !super giant! wasp nest.

But really Op, open d6 lets you make your own spells and has a massive section in the book. Once you know what your doing you can do them on the fly.
Or fate, but thats kinda cheating.

>3.5 Alienist and Master Transmogrofist
this is why i play 5e and restrict everyone to PHB

I can't believe no one has brought up Ars Magica. I had a ton of fun playing and running it. All players are mages, and mages are explicitly more powerful than any other "class". They have some pre-made spells they know, but also broad schools of magic they can improvise spells on the fly from.

The drawback is that having the magical Gift turns people off to your personality, so wizards tend to be recluses. They rely on knights, mercenaries, thieves, and priests to act as their go-betweens and bodyguards with the rest of the world.

It also has a more believable timeframe, in that something interesting happens once or twice a year, and wizards spend seasons or years at a time in their towers researching new spells and items.

This is one of the reasons I liked PTA elemental-psychic classes. The first thing you get as a Rain Dancer is "Can control/freeze up to X amount of water" and "Can use watergun despite being human" or something. Fire Breather gives you "Can control up to X amount of water, and distort light in X area." That kind of limited and defined, but not restricted power set feels like a nice middle ground, with room for improvements as characters level, and also gives the freedom in its use.

>Fire Breather gives you "Can control up to X amount of water
Excuse me?

Woops, meant fire. But I mean, I'm sure there's a physicist out there who could come up with a way to manipulate water by carefully applying fire.

Boiling the water

ArM is pretty great. It's got enough structure that your character feels like a specific kind of magus, so "pyromancer" or "illusionist" or "magical blacksmith" are all valid concepts, but it's flexible enough that there's room it get pretty creative with inventing spells, and you can always make something up. You might not be able to cast the thing you're after making up, but you can try.

You have drawn a primal hatred within me by your form of communicating. Cease with the ellipses or I will eviscerate your shit hole

Because they're fucking wizards, not fucking gods.

LotFP lets players create new spells, as long as the GM approves.

Go ahead and do it in your game. Let us know how it goes.

Have you tried not playing D&D?

I'm so fucking angry right now

Our DM likes to run Monty Hall style campaigns, but is as capricious in taking as he is in giving. group has a player that only seems to show up every three sessions. group has a player that only seems to show up every three sessions. Our group has a player that only seems to show up every three sessions, and when he does, he usually has taken possession of something that was taken from us some time ago. It's the same goddamned character, across four campaigns.

>5e DnD
>Raid a dungeon and loot some solid silver doors
>Load them up in a wagon we had the foresight to bring
>On the way back, pick a fight with an ent because no one's balls are bigger than our fighter's
>Start getting our shit kicked in and decide to run away, leaving the wagon behind
>Later, meet This Fucking Guy for the first time, whose character is a human mystic
>He's got some fancy equipment and a lot of spending money, pays for our night at the inn because he can tell we've had a rough time of it
>Says fortune favored him with a couple of slabs of silver after helping an ent recover from some axe wounds
>Sticks around for a session, then parts ways, saying he's got some things to take care of

>Shenanigans ensue, we end up with an airship
>We travel the world, end up pissing off a lich
>Lich steals the airship
>Bombs the shit out of a nearby kingdom that exiled him two centuries ago
>We catch the blame for it, have to lay low while we try to catch and kill the lich
>End up cornering him, but he's kicking our shit in
>Out of ideas, I slap a bag of holding into a portable hole to get us out of there
>Forgot that the Astral Plane has no air
>Also forgot that it takes a DC 12 Charisma check to dream some up to breathe
>No one in the group is capable of getting above an eight before we pass out

>Next session, This Fucking Guy is back
>He's the same character, with our airship and enough air to breathe for all of us
>Is super glad to see us, because he's been having a hell of a time trying to fly this thing alone
>The airship's been upgraded to do planar travel
>He claims it came that way, and he won it in a card game with a lich who matches the BBEG's description
>Said he bet his psychic powers against the lich's ship, and knew there was no way his royal flush was going to be beaten
>Agrees to get us out of this endless white void if we'll crew the ship so he can make that happen
>We make it back to the Prime Material Plane...
>... But we're on a collision course with a mountainside
>Long story short, we scrape part of the hull off and end up in a battle with storm giants
>Beat a few unconscious
>Hijack one of their shields, and surf it down the mountainside
>Session gets cut short by every day life...
>... And This Fucking Guy's character goes missing in the chaos

>At one point, we sort of did the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure
>We knew where the Forge of Spells was, but basically forgot about it
>We start engineering our revenge against the lich, tracking down magic items we'll need to take him on
>Nearly ready, we spot the ship outside of a city and hope it's not the lich
>Next time we see This Fucking Guy, the airship is crudely patched up and crewed by storm giants, with him as the captain
>He apparently hid and started psychically charming giants after we took off without him
>He spots us at the same time, is delighted to see us again
>Explains that his ship can't do planar travel right now without some extra magical juice to repair that part of it
>Realize we could probably use the Forge Of Spells' last remaining embers to fix it
>DM apparently had other plans, but says this will probably work, too

>Offer to show him where Wave Echo Cave is if he'll let us borrow his ship to wreck the lich's shit
>Along the way, get locked in a battle with harpies, the henchbirds of the lich
>Arrive
>Next session, DM just says that This Fucking Guy's chracter is fascinated by the green flame
>Tells us to bring the ship back after dealing with the lich
>Finally fucking kill this lich after a long, drawn-out battle
>Our airship and storm giant crew pitted against naval ships with skeletal crews
>The rogue manages the first and only sneak attack with a cannon the world has ever seen, because Rule Of Cool
>Nobody in the party speaks Giant, so we're basically hooting and pointing at storm giants to direct the ship
>End up crashing into the seaside fort the lich had taken over
>Have a minute to battle before the building collapses
>It's not enough time, but the fighter's balls are still incredibly massive
>He identifies the weakest part of the roof and starts supporting it to buy us more time
>Good times were had by all
>Long story short, we forgot to bring the airship's wreckage back to the psychic fucker
>No big deal, apparently
>He managed to find a way to transport the Forge of Souls, salvaged the airship, and got it all fixed back up with some improvements
>So now he has an engine that's powered by an undying magic flame that can enchant the cannons for 1d12 hours and travel through the planes, in addition to psychic powers and STILL HAS ONE OF THE SILVER DOORS WE RIGHTFULLY STOLE BEFORE HE TOOK THEM FROM US

Seriously, fuck DM pet PCs.

Ok so turn one i cast a uncounterable /split second spell that says i win the game. Good game

This is why I love gurps free form magic.

Sure you can cast a death stare but you have to pay for your magic. If you want something ridiculous you have to spend ridiculous money,

And the money is fatigue points which IF YOU RUN OUT YOU FAINT TAKING YOU OUT OF THE FIGHT

So, why is science usually limited to puny predefined applications?

Why can't they just do any fucking thing?

They are fucking scientists

Do you ever play a scientist that can do whatever he wants?

Ars Magica does a really good job of this.

I also like Shadowrun's inclusion of astral projection and spirit summoning as well as spells. Now that feels mystical!

Depends on the game, desu. In FATE, a good way of doing mages is giving them lots of lore and then letting them spend a Fate Point on using their lore for literally any type of role, fluffed as them knowing a spell for the situation. This is fun because it means that they can really do anything, but they're still limited by Fate Point economy.

Literally why compare apples and oranges?

If anything it kinda makes more sense for fighters to be able to do "anything" as far as fighting go, rather than how they can swing a sword or trip people being feat-dependant.

t. pathetic obese shut-in who only ever plays their sad power-fantasy where nerds like them can magically beat up the jocks and normies that trigger them irl

Because they're both fruit, you double-chinned, Tiefling-ass-worshipping, sorcerer-snubbing, paladin-tripping half-a-mongoloid.

Because weaving magic into defineable spells on the fly requires extreme levels of processing power; you might as well be Divine at that point.