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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drifter Bob" data-source="post: 1631826" data-attributes="member: 17723">Now this seems to be moving into a positive direction!No problem <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Agreed!This is a very interesting idea.  But I don't think it is the only way which could work.  I have seen so many interesting innovations in the independent RPG's that I bet there are some suave ways you could make the system itself more efficiently scalable.You have a point regarding the size of the rulebook, but lets think about that for a moment.   I don't have the 3.5 books yet, but my 3.0 Players Handbook seems to have fairly short sections on actual rules mechanics, and long sections which are just lists of various spells, feats, skills, weapons, armor, items, etc.For example, the chapter on magic goes from p 147 to p 158.  11 pages.  The lists of spells goes from 172 to 274... over 100 pages.  Now bear with me a moment.  If you had a scaled magic system, the spell entries themselves would be the same for all three systems.  For example a fireball would be listed as a level 3 spell, type 2 fire based evocation.  Damage is listed as category 3.  In the simple system, that means 6d6 damage, period (2 x damage category). In the intermediate system, category 3 means 1d6 damage per caster level, the target(s) get a reflex saving throw for half damage, and type 2 fire evocations are area effect spells with a range= to the 10 x the damage category (30'), and casting time is 1 standard action.  In the advanced system it means the caster has to make a spellcraft roll of DC 16 to cast the spell (level plus damage cateogry), the fire based damage is enhanced by casters with a fire affinity, and casting time is a function of the difficulty level (based on the spell type and damage category) and the characters fire magic rating.Or whatever.  These are just made up.  The point is, a scaled system could theoreticaly only grow the book by a small amount, in the example above by increasing the magic chapter some.  On the other hand, with more of the spell mechanics systematically handled by the system (as I've seen done in some other rpg's, like Burning Wheel) the spell descriptions themselves wouldn't have to include as many caveats and nerf proofing as they now do, and could acually be shorter.  Right now the spell descriptoins themseleves actually contain a lot of the magic rules mechanics.  It would be simpler and more efficient to have them in the centralized rules chapter which had general rules that applied to all spells.The same of course applies to the other long lists in the PhB, as well as the Monster manual, with those lists of monsters, and the magic items in the DMG.Just a thought....DB</blockquote>

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