Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5053135" data-attributes="member: 3424">I'm highlighting this as a one of the key tropes of D&D which I'm happy to see changed, namely the idea that anything is possible with magic. There are two seemingly contradictory reasons why I dislike it: first, because it it's too restrictive and second, because it isn't restrictive enough. Confused? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Let me explain.The "too restrictive" bit comes in when the idea that "anything is possible with magic" becomes twisted into "some things are only possible with magic" and winds up being a statement of limitation instead of a statement of possibility. While limitations have their place in an RPG, I believe that they should always be subordinate to the central theme that nothing is impossible. In other words, limitations may make achieving a goal more challenging, but they should not make it impossible. Limitations might close off certain means, but the players should have alternate ways to achieve their ends. The "not restrictive enough" bit comes in when the basic idea gets turned into "anything is possible even with small amounts of magic". This is admittedly a greyer area. Most DMs do want to reward the creative use of spells and other abilities, but may not be happy when the originally creative solution gets used repeatedly and effectively becomes an unanticipated power-up. It's not a problem unique to magic, but magic tends to get more of a pass simply because it is magic.This is why these days, I tend to take the approach of: "Anything is possible with sufficient skill". This preserves the idea that anything is possible, but broadens it to emphasize that objectives can be achieved with a variety of skills, not just magic, and at the same time narrows it to highlight that certain effects can only be achieved with higher levels of skill.</blockquote>

Verification