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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Robert Ranting" data-source="post: 3985204" data-attributes="member: 28906">The idea of giving powers to the fighter, rogue, ranger, and barbarian is not a bad one.  I have no problem with a fighter slamming the ground with a hammer so hard it knocks everyone in a radius prone around him, or firing a volley of a half dozen arrows with a single shot, or even picking up the halfling rogue and serving up a fastball special against the BBEG who stands beyond a horde of minions.  While extreme and perhaps unrealistic these are all physical acts, borne of supreme power, determination and skill, which are at the heart of a martial character. What I don't want is for Fighters and other Martial characters to project visible crackling fire, electricity and windgusts without magic items that specifically generate those effects.I don't want every one of these powers to have a three word name that includes references to colors, animals, or other random unrelated nouns and adjectives.  This is unnecessary fluff that would be easy enough to add if you wanted it for your game's cinematic effect.  For me, it is wasted word-count which could be used to give me a few more powers, feats, or DM tools.As for spellcasting, I think that Wizards really need to be penalized in terms of time and effort, and it should generally be flashy and impressive.  For example, teleportation should not be something you do willy-nilly.  It should take time and materials to perform a ritual that can move people safely across vast distances, perhaps an hour of work and materials costing in excess of  the horses, feed, and supplies necessary to make the journey overland.  Once completed, teleportation effects would take the form of semi-permanent geographically anchored two-way door between one location and another, usually a bright shiny portal that causes a loud, sucking, howling wind that any being with a sense of sight or hearing could detect.Instead of silently teleporting into the Dragon's sleeping lair and delivering a coup de grace, such a teleport spell would require that the PCs create a portal near the lair, but far enough away so as not to wake the dragon, and then sneak in the old fashioned way.  Once they defeated the dragon, they would then have to return to the portal before it closes at the end of it's duration, which gives them a time limit and a sense of urgency (otherwise, they will have to perform the ritual all over again).  Furthermore, there is a risk that something else stumbled across their portal and used it in the meantime, meaning that there could be a monster back in their base, or one of their NPC allies might have wandered through to the dragon's territory, which provides a hook for further adventures.Examples of other likely teleport spells and their limitations:*Dimension Door creating either a shiny portal which shows a view of the other side (allowing a canny creature to notice where the caster is going) or else is accompanied by a puff of smoke on both sides (like the Cape of the Mountebank does), and then denying the caster any other action for that round.  *A portal ritual which can, for a cost, allow the caster to set a password that will open and shut the portal, preventing unwanted persons from passing through without it.*A variation on the permanent portal which only allows certain people to come through, requiring the blood or truenames of anyone who is going to use it, effectively keying the spell to only those persons, and doing damage/knocking prone anyone else who tries.*A one-way teleport ritual wherein everyone who is going must stand in the ritual circle with the caster, and all suffer some sort of status effect or delayed reaction while on the other side.*A quick and dirty teleportation spell that has a chance of putting you into a wall, dropping you from a great height, placing you at the bottom of a body of water, etc.*A spell that allows you to stabilize a portal between two locales, often made into a magic item in the form of a ring of metal, standing stones, or even plantlife, thus making it a permanent doorway.As to Fly, I think that it should be a slow and ponderous flight, not unlike levitation except with self-propulsion, at least until very high levels, where the idea of epic characters zooming around like Superman is the least of our worries regarding "realism".  Also, enough of this "lowering softly to the ground" bull.  If you get hit with a dispel magic that ends your fly spell, you plummet and take the falling damage.  Even creatures with Perfect flight still drop like a stone when they stall-out.  I also prefer that this spell be personal or single target, or else be 1/encounter so that we do not have the situation where all the players are flying all the time.Invisibility really is pretty balanced if you consider the fact that Listen checks and the Scent ability can pierce it, and so long as we are talking the lesser versions where it drops upon taking a hostile action.  Making it a full-round action to cast would also prevent some of the more egregious abuses of it.  Combining it with etherealness, so that you are visible on another plane full of potential hostiles (Ring Wraiths anyone?) could also mitigate permanent invisibility's uses.As for instant death effects, I think it is pretty safe to remove them.  I have been playing with Arcana Evolved's magic system for three years now, and from that experience, I can tell you that spells which render you helpless so that the fighter and rogue can coup de grace the bad guy are both better for involving the whole party in a villain's defeat, and also far more brutal and just as anticlimactic as fizzling him out of existance with a Disintegrate.I say all of this to illustrate the point that magic in D&D is too easy, it has no costs, and the benefits it provides are far in excess of what they need to be.  Teleport should let you cut down on travel time, Fly should help the wizard scale a cliff or scout above the trees, Invisibility should help you sneak by people.  These spells should not, however, allow you to instantaneously appear in the guarded bedroom of the BBEG and stab him in the heart while floating invisibly in the air above him, nor should they invalidate a rogue or fighter's athletic ability to get past mundane obstacles like walls and pits.The one exception I wil extend is that perhaps the current power of D&D magic over level 10 should be moved up into Epic Play.  Even so, there should still be a bit of challenge to taking on Asmodeus beyond figuring out which spells you need to cast in what order to kill him in one round (not because you need to kill him that quickly, but because you can brag about it later.)  While I admit that I am biased against magic users, and since I have an English degree, my focus is mostly on telling a story, this is not just playstyle issue.  Most games, from Chess to Final Fantasy # do not just let you teleport to the BBEG and kill him in his sleep without a fight, so why should D&D?   Honestly, I view D&D as being very much like Tetris, a game which has no real "ending" except when you decide to stop playing it or have to start over.  It is the act of playing the game, of making the enjoyment last as long as possible that matters, and the "I Win Button" effect of magic just makes it impossible to do that for anyone but the spellcaster pressing it, IMHO.Robert "Sorry I Rambled A Bit" Ranting</blockquote>

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