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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8846876" data-attributes="member: 6790260">So. What does it mean for "magic [to] feel magical"?The statement is too ambiguous to discuss, and thus prone to generating frustration and difficulty rather than productive talk. Hence: what does it take for "magic [to] feel magical"? Why is it that being able to shoot fire from your fingertips several times a day is "magical," but being able to do it most of the time is not "magical"?My tone is somewhat harsh here, and for that I apologize. But without really drilling down and getting specific answers on this, it's worse than a dead end for discussion, it specifically pushes things toward being at one another's throats. I'd rather be blunt and try to cut such problems off well in advance.What, exactly, is the benefit here? Don't spellcasters already rule the roost for dealing with these problems anyway?If you could hit with them. Wizard AC might not have been very low, but Wizard attack tables/THAC0 values weren't that good either. Which was part of my point above. The outright design intent of the 1e/2e Magic-User/Wizard was that it would be incredibly powerful when it had a useful spell, but spells were supposed to be narrow in utility and rare in supply so the Wizard would have to ration out their phenomenal cosmic power. In practice, this just created incentives to (a) develop new spells that were generally useful or acquire already existing powerful and near-universal spells like fly, haste, and invisibility; and to (b) minimize as much as possible any time spent firing crossbows, aka the 5MWD and spending a spell or two to obviate problems long before they could show up (e.g. food/water, shelter, transportation, communication, etc.)In other words, the Magic-User/Wizard is taught, by the rules of the game, to reject the two intended constraints on the Wizard: do everything you can to get the most broadly-applicable spells you can find, so that you will never be in a situation where you have spells prepared but none of them are useful, and do everything you can to regain your spells as frequently as possible, so that your spells are not a rare resource but instead a reliable one. (The two also synergize: if you do get caught with a prepared spell you have no use for, resting is how you switch to a spell that would be useful.)The Wizard is rewarded for playing in a selfish, do-it-my-way manner. The non-Wizard is indirectly punished for failing to go along with the Wizard's selfish interests.But "on the fly" is exactly the thing being discussed. Everyone has always had the ability to tweak the rules openly and outside of play. That benefit has never, not once, in all of TTRPG history, ever been denied, nor could it be, short of outright mind control or violent coercion (aka "putting a gun to someone's head.")Hence, if something differs, it can only be in the secret sense. I called it "rug pull" and "illusionism" for a very good reason. 5e encourages the DM to change both the rules and the world whenever and however they feel like it. And because it is the "DM empowerment" edition, if the players don't like it, tough crap, they should have had the prescience to know that this would be a bad game and that no gaming is better than bad gaming!</blockquote>

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