Unpopular opinions go here

[Tony Vargas]

They make for some of the worst RPGing!

I'd consider updating Geas/Quest to just "you can't benefit from a long rest until you have completed the terms"

..."just"

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've said that I play it (well, GM it) in a manner inspired by Apocalypse World, and "if you do it, you do it".

But I don't know what it means to say that that is "distinctly narrative".

They make for some of the worst RPGing!

There's an active thread right now about what constitutes a narrative rule. I provide my personal definition on page 1. Any game which relies heavily on such rules is what I mean by a narrative game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Obviously, and that's kind of the point: not all Wizards are necessarily the same, and part of that difference is defined by the spells they've happened to learn over time.

That said, you'd also need to keep the idea that a failed-to-learn spell can be tried again after either your level or intelligence increases.

That's a different story; the specifics I was referring to were "You've failed to learn anything but marginally useful spells up through fifth level, but people are still expected to take you with them on adventures." Like post-Greyhawk characters who's attribute dice betrayed them and made them just substandard across the board, that's the sort of thing that just leads people to swordbushing (and GMs getting soggy about it).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you actually have a point in these sort of responses other than to say "Nah-uh!" Micah? Because its becoming progressively less obvious what that point is, if so.

People who persist in telling others that what they prefer is just an opinion not necessarily shared by others need to be aware that they're no better, is all. I'm fine with my preferences being different from others.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I was actually assuming Int bonus only. At most you'd get a +5 to your roll, and more likely lower than that, meaning there is still a small chance to not be able to grok the spells.


It depends. If losing means that the player is failing most checks due to low Int or continually bad rolls, then that's a problem and the DM could stop requiring the roll. If losing means they don't get that cool spell, I'd say that it means the player could just try being more creative with what spells they do have. There are a lot of interesting spells out there, especially if you get out of the "caster fireballs everyone all the time" mentality.

See my comment above. If you get nothing but mediocre utility spells, there can be plenty of question why the rest of the party bothers with you, and in any case ends up producing a character you have no interest in playing. If you're the guy who gets into the game to play someone who's best option is Speak Languages, that's fine for you but it doesn't seem to be something you should be requiring of other people.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Edit: Never mind, just compounding the problem.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's a different story; the specifics I was referring to were "You've failed to learn anything but marginally useful spells up through fifth level, but people are still expected to take you with them on adventures." Like post-Greyhawk characters who's attribute dice betrayed them and made them just substandard across the board, that's the sort of thing that just leads people to swordbushing (and GMs getting soggy about it).

If you don't like your character, don't play them. There are blank sheets in my bag.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you don't like your character, don't play them. There are blank sheets in my bag.

If you don't mind people discarding characters they don't want, you're one of the very few people who are big fans of random rolls I've seen who are like that; I've seen any number of people who considered it tantamount to cheating.

 

[Faolyn]

I see it that the Wizard can (try to) learn it, at cost of first dropping a spell already known (i.e. erasing it from your spellbook). The risk, of course, is that if the Wizard does this then fails to learn the new spell she's left with some blank pages in the book; though that vacancy can be filled later with something else.

No, by "cap" I mean that if you're Int is, say, 16 then you can have no more than (e.g.) 12 spells of each level in your spellbook(s), period stop end. To learn a 13th you have to drop one of the pre-existing 12. If-when your Int ever increases, your cap goes up with it.

What this means is if you come across (or better yet, invent!) a cool spell that'll put you over the cap, you've got a tough choice to make: which spell to drop before trying to learn the new shiny.

I like having tough choices like that in the game.

Yeah, I don't like that. It doesn't feel like making a tough choice to me. It feels like being arbitrarily limited for no reason. Nothing in any AD&D or D&D lore that I can think of explains why such a thing would happen. It's not like in, say, the Cypher system where you're limited to carrying three Cyphers because they're filled with strange energies that react badly to each other or that are dangerous to you if you carry more than that number. It's not like in the Discworld novels, where large concentrations of magic can cause the books to come alive and potentially eat you. Instead, the limit is purely for meta-reasons, because otherwise the wizard would be stronger than the fighter.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, its not like D&D spellcasting hasn't been pretty arbitrary from day one in how it works; that happened the moment you could only prepare X number of spells at Y levels.