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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 3168730" data-attributes="member: 40522">I'm of the opinion that a build-it-yourself magic system is really something that should be behind the scenes for the game designers when they do 4E, but released as a sourcebook.Asa DM, I'd hate to have to read through someone's stack of customized spells before that character joined the campaign. I rather like the idea that I can ballpark the damage of a spellcaster's fireball at a given level, for instance. Can you imagine trying to run characters with customized spells at a convention? What if someone handed you a premade spellcaster for a game like that? Would you really want to sit there and read a stack of spells before playing a character you're going to run for maybe three or four hours? There are alot of reasons why magic is a fixed sort of thing in D&D.It's theoretically possible for characters to make their own weapons using the Craft skill, right? But the Craft skill doesn't let you design new weapons or armor, just make new copies of existing ones. I think the same logic follows through on D&D's magic system, which is very cut and dried. It really has to be for the game to move fast. Players and DM's can still design new spells for characters if they want to, nothing in the rules prevents them from doing this. But I really feel like a do-it-yourself menu of spell traits that you have to calculate would slow the game down to a crawl. Ever played Mage: the Ascension? The magic system is awesome, I honestly feel like Mage is one of the best conceived, best executed RPGs in history. But once the characters star racking up XP, the game slows down as players and storytellers argue the minutiae of what it says on page 39 versus what it implies on page 126, why my Akashic mage can't express his magical paradigm through technology, why can't someone's Dreamspeaker use a sound file of a rattle shaking for a focus instead of a rattle, ad nauseam... You really have to have some serious gamers that can accept ad hoc calls on the fly to run Mage.But like I said, it's the kind of thing that's just the right thing for a sourcebook for the groups that do want it in their games. A whole chapter on spell design philosphy alone (both in-game and metagame) would be something worth checking out. After all, there's a system for designing new magic items, so why not a more concrete system for designing new spells?</blockquote>

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