Ridley's Cohort
First Post
Blacksmithking said:Why do we need ASF, again?
It is a sacred cow flavor issue IMO. A vanilla unbuffed Wizard should has the worst AC in the party.
Blacksmithking said:Why do we need ASF, again?
Arcane casters, once beyond the earliest levels, are the ones most capable of inflicting the most damage to the most creatures in the shortest amount of time
Their low hit points and inability to wear armor are designed to be their primary weaknesses, making them "glass cannons" and forcing them to rely on their party for protection.
I think Arcane Spell Failure is at least moderately necessary to balance Wizards and Sorcerors
fuindordm said:I'm not sure what you mean by that last comment. Unearthed Arcana has the concept of a 'base magic bonus' that would give multiclassers a higher caster level even for fighter levels, and the Practiced Spellcaster feat can also be considered a way around this sort of thing. I'm OK with both of these systems, personally.
On the other hand, a fighter can take a feat to make Use Magic Device a class skill, then invest skill points in it to read from scrolls pretty reliably. Isn't that OK?
As a DM, I'd rather enable interesting PC ideas than place poorly founded restrictions in the name of 'flavor'. I think flavor should come from the setting you play in, not from the game mechanics--although you can never really get away from the latter.
From the above, I am not sure whether you think "flavour" should restrict choices or not. In any event, game rules always restrict on the basis of flavour, as even the most cursory examination of various games will show. For example, if you were playing in a world based off of Tolkein & other classic fantasy authors/mythologies (i.e., D&D), and I had a really good idea for a superhero, should the rules allow me to gain intrinsic super-strength, hypersonic speed, and X-ray vision? At any point in the game? Should Monopoly allow the Shoe and the Hat to get married in order to raise a family? Should d20 Conan support PCs carrying automatic weapons?
fuindordm said:Oh--and so can divine spellcasters, because their deities don't care if you screw up the somatic components.
Cheers!
Ben
Raven Crowking said:Well, as soon as we admit that the rules are going to be restrictive on the basis of flavour, the remaining questions relate to what types of restrictions and what types of flavour.
RC
fuindordm said:Well, exactly. And if you want flavor then there are better ways to get it than tacking an inconsistent and poorly thought-out mechanic onto the game.
Raven Crowking said:Further, your second example doesn't really change ASF mechanically in any appreciable way; it merely changes the descriptive reason for it. Does beseeching an "on high" power have fundamentally different gestures than casting a spell yourself? I would guess that it does (and I would not be the first person on this thread to point that out). However, changing the descriptive reason alters the (admittedly abhorrent) core idea that divine spellcasters don't actually need any "on high" power to gain their spell abilities.
RC