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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6240001" data-attributes="member: 6681948">There is a clear hangup about spellcasters being overpowered (although your recent posts seem to restrict this to a much smaller subset of spellcasters).  That seems to go beyond "making it happen faster without needing help or equipment".  Your comments seem much more in line with the theory that the wizard has certain advantages in some areas (different areas than other PC's), which does  not imply the balance concerns otherwise expressed.I'll leave aside the 4e ability since I am not familiar with 4e (although my quick look suggests this does far more than cause the enemy to make a bad move leaving him at a momentary disadvantage).  It does seem reasonable that a skilled combatant will feint and maneuver in an effort to cause his opponent to place themselves at a disadvantageous position (a feint for a head shot, say, causing the opponent to raise his shield, so its not blocking the actual intended attack on his legs).  That contributes to the fact that the highly skilled warrior is more likely to strike a blow past the defenses of the target.  What D&D largely lacks is the opposite, a skilled fighter being more skilled at avoiding those blunders, as AC does not rise with combat skill.  Special skill at aviing being hit comes from some feats instead, but to a more limited extent.I would suggest the snow increases the DC of getting through the mountains, which may restrict those with any chance of success to those with higher, perhaps even epic, skill levels.  The likelihood the pass is snowed under is not affected by the PC's survival skill.And, again, I do not believe any amount of character skill can cause the Wizard to not be out of town after all.  It might enable the character to locate him, communicate with him and persuade him to return earlier than he otherwise would have.  It will not cause the wizard to be home instead of away. None in particular.  I can simply buy the logic, in a given game milieu, that high level encompasses favour by the Gods, random chance or the blind mad god Azathoth which makes things the character cannot directly influence more likely to fall the way the character would like.  That would not sit well if the player wants a game where characters succeed or fail entirely on their own merits, rather than by chance or the Gods favouring them, but it would be a perfectly valid approach to a game structure.  But the odds of the mountain pass being snowed in when the character would prefer it not be would then be influenced by level (or this luck/favour mechanic, however implemented) and not by his own skills at tracking or wilderness survival.  The city slicker rogue who is favoured by the gods would be more likely to have the snow fall late this year.  The less favoured tracker may have to deal with the snow,  but may have the skill to do so.There are two different issues here.  The character with a high skill is more likely to succeed on his own merits.  But he must be able to bring that skill to bear.  For one who is "favoured by fortune", it is more likely the King is in the Palace, and less likely he is indisposed to receive visitors at all.  The persuasive Diplomacy character is more likely to persuade the Chamberlain that he does indeed have legitimate and urgent business mandating an immediate audience with the King (but that cannot overcome the King's absence from the Royal Court).  The fortune-favoured character may not be persuasive, but fortune is more likely to smile upon him, meaning the King is in close proximity, and perhaps chooses that moment to emerge from his chambers for some reason, granting the character an opportunity to quickly  make his case and attract His Majesty's attention.This, to me, is not "weather sense".  It is "the weather favours your character".  A character with weather sense would not decide whether the day of the upcoming battle will be overcast or clear, but would have that information (randomly determined) in advance, able to take advantage of it ("If we come out of the east at daybreak, the sun will be in their eyes - it will be a clear day" or "They will  not expect us to attack from the west, but the clouds will mean we are not staring into the sun, so we can surprise them by doing so without placing ourselves at a disadvantage").  A character who is just lucky about the weather (or can manipulate it - either could be simulated with the "Dictate Weather" skill Burning Wheel seems to substitute for the "Predict Weather " skill suggested by the nomenclature) would instead trust to luck (or manipulation) to ensure the desired cloud cover, using his skill to make the desired tactic more effective.It also feels "off" to me that my character ALWAYS succeeds in predicting the weather he desires, failing only if the weather will be other than what he desires.  Or perhaps "Sense Weather" is 100% accurate in BW, with the roll determining only whether I get the weather I want.  How do we determine the weather when my roll fails?  Does my character know what the weather will actually be (which still allows him to use this weather to best effect), or does he miss his prediction, or just not know what the weather will be like?To me, that is not a "survival skill", but a "persuade the nature spirits" skill.  It is not governed by the character's own knowledge and skill at woodcraft, but by some ability to actually influence the weather itself.  This would certainly be workable, but it is a different skill or ability which adds a quasi-supernatural element, not just personal skill.  We also get the question of which abilities trump.  The Ranger has used his Survival skill to "predict" the weather he wants.  An opposing Druid has cast a Weather Control spell to impose the desired weather for his side of the battle.  Who wins?  With the Ranger relying on mundane prediction, I have to give the nod to the Druid, who has overridden the natural weather than the Ranger correctly predicted.  But if the Ranger is persuading the nature spirits, now we have a challenge to the Druid's domination of the weather.Similarly, if the Ranger and Barbarian have opposing desires for the weather, who gets the weather they want?  Does the other know what that weather will be, or did he predict incorrectly?Sure, we could play the game in this manner.  For me, however, it breaks the suspension of disbelief that a character who is said to "predict" the weather can actually dictate it.  Give me the choice of an ability that predicts the weather, as it naturally occurs, and one which influences the weather to my desired outcome, and be clear that they are different abilities.  One might be a PC skill, and the other an authorial power granted to the player.  Perhaps I, the player, can select the weather, but my character can't even predict it - he's just happy he lucked out and the weather favoured his success.I think it can do a lot of things.  I don't think it can do all of them at the same time, and I think there are a lot of things it is poor at doing.  Generally, I find more specific systems are better at their specific target areas, but less suited to broader application.  I think 3e is a narrower application of the more versatile d20 system, which I understand does a very good job with the low magic sword & sorcery sub-genre in the Conan RPG.  But that RPG does not, if I am correct in my understanding, feature flashy combat mages blasting their foes with fireballs and lightning bolts.  Those spells are not appropriate to that setting or subgenre, so they are not present.  I believe part of the tradeoff is that, here, magic is much more rare.  Characters aren't laden with a dozen magical items, enchanted swords are not purchased wholesale, and the workings of magic are much less widely known.  Here, I would expect a Charm Person spell to be one which can be cast surreptitiously, influencing the Chamberlain without the need for hand gestures and forceful speaking of arcane phrases.  But it might also have to be cast over a period of days, and require some token to link to the Chamberlain (such as a hair, or a personal belonging).Can we simulate Middle Earth, Hyperborea or the Forgotten Realms?  Sure.  But we cannot simulate all three at the same time - they are very different settings, with very different campaign assumptions.  How much trouble would Sauron give Elminster?  Would Conan need to sneak across Mordor surreptitiously to destroy the One Ring?  How would Conan's munane forces fare against the Red Wizards of Thay?  Different setting assumptions create a different game with a different feel.I think it can simulate any of them.  I also think they are very different settings, and I would not expect a great story where Conan, Gandalf and Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunson work together to come off consistent with the character of all three characters, and the tone of all three settings, intact.  It could work juxtaposing each character against an unfamiliar backdrop in a multi-worlds structure, but dropping Middle Earth and Hyperborea into the Realms and expecting all three to co-exist seems extremely unlikely.1% is a lot.  If 1% of our population had the casting abilities of a L1 Adept, how different would our world be?  Now assume, say, 1/5 of those adepts are L2 or higher, 1/5 of those L3 or higher, and so on?  How different would it have been 100, or 500, years ago, as we roll back modern technology?  What percentage of the population needs to own a firearm before we have airport and similar security, and arm peace officers similarly?Emphasis added.  I agree with the other two points,  but not that one.  If we want a low magic setting, PC's become a part of that low magic setting.  Spellbooks and magic weapons don't fall at their feet, any more than Conan had gear equivalent to a typical 5th level D&D character.  The baseline assumption of the PHB is that there are enough arcane spellcasters out there that any Wizard can easily locate the spells of his choice, and there is a marketplace for the purchase and sale of magical items.  Take a 12th level group of characters, strip out the flashy magic (no wizards, clerics, etc.) and remove access to magic items, or perhaps allow each a single item, perhaps two, of modest power (say, a magic shortsword that glows in the presence of Orcs and a shirt of mail so light it may be worn under normal clothing).  How will they do against a typical CR 12 encounter?  That's Conan (with an adventuring party) or the Fellowship of the Ring sans Gandalf.  The baseline assumptions are different, so we have a very different game,  but one with the same basic game system.  Actually, if we want to mirror most fantasy literature, the combat system needs a lot more opportunity for a knockout (rather than a near death bleeding out) result.  Characters (not mooks, significant characters) seem to be KO'd a lot more than killed in most fiction, but D&D characters seldom experience a state other than "combatant" or "bleeding out and needs a medic".  For that matter, how frequent is magical healing, much less raising the dead, in most fantasy fiction?  Many have commented on D&D becoming a genre unto itself, which is probably a fair assessment.The d20 system can handle it.  The basic 3.5 engine can handle it.  But the assumptions, and thus the game itself, are very different from those implied by the setting incorporated in the 3.5 rules.  We often forget that 3.5 is both a game system and a setting, wrapped together.  We can use the same game system with a different setting to very much alter the game itself.  But the D&D setting (its gods, spells and frequency of magic) is not Middle Earth or Hyperborea, despite a few elements inspired by each.Pemerton's approach, to me, also can be effected by a change to the setting, and a more subtle one, that the world bends to the will of more powerful characters.  Their actions and desires influence the world around them (whether they know it or not), so a character believing he is predicting the weather may actually be dictating it.</blockquote>

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