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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6069559" data-attributes="member: 17106">Well for one thing, if you use Fate Points or their ilk, you're going off the reservation as far as D&D is concerned. They're completely inappropriate for many people's style of D&D. If you're going to use them, they're for all players, but they certainly aren't for every campaign (and thus baking them into the core rules is a problem)Those are completely separate issues. in the hands of one player, they're fine. In the hands of one character, they break the fourth wall.One player is playing a wizard, but is attacking in melee for some reason. He thinks to himself "gee, I really need this next attack to hit". So, remembering that he prepared a true strike spell this morning, he casts it. The attack hits. The player shares the character's relief.Another player is playing a monk (as described above). He thinks to himself "gee, I really need this next attack to hit". So he...does what? Uses a power? What does that mean to the character? What does the character experience as this is happening? What does the character know about his access to this power (or lack thereof, now that he's used it)? Are you saying you don't see where this is nonsensical?They're very different. One represents the hand of god, the will of the universe, the need to have a fun game, or some other intangible concept. The other represents the learning and execution of physical skills that are absolutely real in the game world.***The appropriate use of such a metagame resource is when a player wants his attack to hit, and spends his fate points or whatever, and something happens that is clearly not understood or controlled by the character that makes the attack hit. The player is enjoying his success, but the character has no idea what happened. He's just glad to still be alive. That's pretty much what "metagame" means.Actually, even in this case, it is a big deal. Because it doesn't balance the world. Are we to assume that every character in the world, from heroes to commoners, has sufficient metagame benefits to make them "balanced"? If not, one still needs to explain the role of powerful magic in the world, i.e. why wizards don't rule everything. If so, my head just exploded.***I guess what I still haven't seen addressed is that if balance between classes is such a concern, what's wrong with fixing it in the context of the world? Why not limit spell access and use in some way? Why not make it so Haste ages you every time you use it or give wizards only a couple of spell slots a day? D&D's spellcasters are indeed supremely capable. Fixing magic is much easier than giving fighters mulligans and favors. Why is this angle ignored?If anything, all this unrestricted spell access and use is a step in the wrong direction. Why do we need everyone to have at-will spells?</blockquote>

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