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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 3767440" data-attributes="member: 1757">Interesting points, all! I hear what you're saying, and I think it's an excellent rationale. However, it is not what I would prefer to see in terms of a default playstyle, for several reasons that have borne themselves out for me in playing campaigns through 1st-3rd editions. First off, making magic "able to trump non-magic" has the undesirable effect of rendering several class abilities (especially skills, which are a core class ability of the rogue and bard) irrelevant at mid- to high-levels. Who needs Open Locks when you have Knock? Or Climb when you've got Fly? This either makes those abilities irrelevant (since "anything you can do, [the mage] can do better") or turns the skill-monkey into a second banana ("Oh, I don't want to waste a 2nd-level spell slot on Knock, so you can go ahead and open the locks"). Worse still, it usually forces the non-magical classes into decking themselves out in magic items in order to stay vaguely competent, which lessens, rather than heightens, the mystique of magic and thus (at least IMO) damages the aesthetics of the campaign.Second, making magic both more powerful AND more versatile than non-magical powers, as is currently the case in D&D (and gets worse if you go with a liberal interpretation of "creative spellcasting") has the effect of geometrically increasing the mage's power with level, while everyone else improves linearly. Fighters are better off in 3e than in 1e, but even so, they're stuck swinging swords for increased damage while the wizard summons solars, creates demiplanes, and invisibly and undetectably rains down army-slaying spells from hundreds of feet in the air. Third (and something that the 4e designers thankfully acknowledge), balancing greater power by limited uses per day doesn't really *work* from a balance perspective, because in most cases (especially at higher level, which is where the problems are anyway), the caster can force the party to conform to *his* schedule. The warrior's ability to swing his sword all day, all the time is rendered irrelevant when the wizard can call a halt to replenish his powers when they're exhausted.Fourth, I don't really think that the current model of the wizard fits the portrayal of such a character in most fantasy literature, etc. The D&D wizard isn't even Vancian except by a very loose definition of the term. Most fantasy wizards stay on the sidelines dispensing wisdom and advice; they use their powers very rarely, such powers are usually not of the "teleport anywhere in the universe" or "lay down tactical-nuclear blasts" or the like, and wizardly powers are more tightly focused and rarely step on the toes of the skill monkeys and the fighters. IMHO, several d20 rulesets do a better job of modeling the "classic" wizard than D&D does (or has) (I think of Monte's WoD, Elements of Magic, or Black Company/True Sorcery, for example), and it is my impression that 4e will be moving closer to this picture, rather than away from it.</blockquote>

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