NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5536926" data-attributes="member: 2067">I like a high-level spellcaster with world-shaking powers.I also like a high level warrior with world-shaking powers. You can have both, or you can have neither, but picking one or the other leads the un-picked archetype a clear second banana at best (with an Ars Magica scenario, for instance). If I zoom out from that a little, to look at the idea of a "fire ray" as a game mechanic, this is what I see: you want a spell to be a tool, not an effect. This is something that 4e abandoned (attacks damage creatures and doors are not creatures!), but something every other edition has had. 3e said "Your fire deals X damage against a target. Shoot it at a wall, it deals X damage to the wall." I'd actually agree that tools are more fun than effects in a tabletop RPG. Tools, by their nature, are useful for more than one thing. They encourage creativity. If my ability is "I shoot fire rays," then I will use that ability to overcome whatever problem my party faces, from the charging ogre to the locked door to detecting the sneaking assassin to winning over the noble who controls the roads in town. The thing is, this can create an imbalance. If a wizard can both kill an ogre and open the trapped door, what does the thief do? If the wizard can also detect an assassin, what's the fighter do? If the wizard can also win over the noble, what's the cleric do? This is part of why 4e describes effects. "Your ray of fire can kill an ogre, but it can't do anything else unless the DM makes a special exception, since the DM knows best!" It lets DMs do things like say "No, you can't light the forest on fire with your fire ray," rather than having to deal with the consequences of a player that gets too creative. It also MAKES a DM do this, which is something that cramps my personal style. I really want my players to be able to be powerful enough to make plots happen. Makes DMing much easier. <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=":)" />I'm not personally a fan of the "balance by strict definition" approach, but it does balance things, by rigidly defining what they're capable of. Your ray of fire can't melt that lock. You'll need someone with Thievery (or a high Dex anyway) to do it.</blockquote>

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