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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5991087" data-attributes="member: 54877">Well, part of what we run into here is why they've kind of gotten away with squashing the categories over the years.&nbsp; There is certainly &quot;technique&quot; required to handle lots of power, and it is easy to start thinking about &quot;technique&quot; as &quot;complexity&quot;--if you don't look at it too hard.&nbsp;Think of it in sports as throwing a ball a long distance or fast versus putting it exactly where you want versus making the ball behave in a certain way (e.g. a particular spin on the ball).&nbsp; It's not like &quot;power&quot; is just raw strength that doesn't spring from proper technique.&nbsp; There's a correct way to throw or hit a baseball, throw a football, hit a tennis ball, etc. for speed and/or distance.&nbsp; You can learn that somewhat independent of placement.&nbsp; And then you can certainly add the particular behaviors on later.&nbsp; But we tend to mush them together, because in sports you typically need at least some of each thing to succeed.&nbsp; &nbsp;It's plausible to have a game that mirrors that, where no one ever really learns this stuff independently. In that game, there's no way to get to 3rd or 5th or whatever spells without developing more ability to handle complex magic.&nbsp; And of course the D&amp;D wizard flavor has nearly always assumed as certain minimum floor on wrestling with the arcane.&nbsp; Yet, in the fiction it's not at all uncommon to have the &quot;powerful wizard with poor control&quot; or any number of such variations.&nbsp; &nbsp;In the scheme I proposed, I would expect that each class would use a subset of the grid provided by those three dimensions.&nbsp; So you could certainly have classes that only got more powerful by learning more complex things.&nbsp; But you wouldn't be stuck with those by the collapsing of the dimensions into a single scale.&nbsp; If a warlock class does nothing but simple spells that increase in level, that would certainly make it stand out from the wizard.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5991087, member: 54877"] Well, part of what we run into here is why they've kind of gotten away with squashing the categories over the years. There is certainly "technique" required to handle lots of power, and it is easy to start thinking about "technique" as "complexity"--if you don't look at it too hard. Think of it in sports as throwing a ball a long distance or fast versus putting it exactly where you want versus making the ball behave in a certain way (e.g. a particular spin on the ball). It's not like "power" is just raw strength that doesn't spring from proper technique. There's a correct way to throw or hit a baseball, throw a football, hit a tennis ball, etc. for speed and/or distance. You can learn that somewhat independent of placement. And then you can certainly add the particular behaviors on later. But we tend to mush them together, because in sports you typically need at least some of each thing to succeed. It's plausible to have a game that mirrors that, where no one ever really learns this stuff independently. In that game, there's no way to get to 3rd or 5th or whatever spells without developing more ability to handle complex magic. And of course the D&D wizard flavor has nearly always assumed as certain minimum floor on wrestling with the arcane. Yet, in the fiction it's not at all uncommon to have the "powerful wizard with poor control" or any number of such variations. In the scheme I proposed, I would expect that each class would use a subset of the grid provided by those three dimensions. So you could certainly have classes that only got more powerful by learning more complex things. But you wouldn't be stuck with those by the collapsing of the dimensions into a single scale. If a warlock class does nothing but simple spells that increase in level, that would certainly make it stand out from the wizard. [/QUOTE]

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