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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 5727637" data-attributes="member: 23240">That's completely dependent on how the game is designed to be played and how the magic system is built. Replacing skills with magic is problematic in D&D. It is not in M:tA, Sorcerer, Nobilis, Unknown Armies, Exalted or even WFRP.In general, utility magic is not a problem if at least one of the following criteria is satisfied:- Everybody plays a spellcaster (or an equivalent)- Magic is risky enough that using it for something that's not a life-and-death and may be solved without it is probably a bad idea (where risk should not mean losing the character, rather some significant problems and complications).- Magic has a meaningful price or side effects that a caster typically won't be willing to bear with unless necessary (like an increasing corruption, having to offer more and more in demonic bargains, sacrificing own life force in a way that can't be easily recovered, sacrificing other people etc.)- Magic use is limited in a meaningful way within the story structure of the game (eg. daily limit is not meaningful if you allow 15MAD while a per-adventure or per-session limit is more universally useful; long casting time is a meaningful limit in a high-paced game etc.)- Flexibility of magic as a whole is very high, but flexibility of any given spellcaster is not (eg. they only know a handful of spells out of several hundred), so you can have a party consisting of a craft-mage, a combat-mage, a scout-mage and a talky-mage, but not a single caster character that does everything.Also, a well-designed magic system never replaces role playing (and the same should hold for any other subsystem within a game). It should rather change how and when it happens. A simple example may be a charm that is easy to use, but affects you in the same way as your target - you need to plan well how to use it and you have to roleplay yourself fascinated with the other person as they are with you. Another example is a mind control magic in a game that does not handwave moral issues away but focuses on them. You may easily get people to do what you want, the real question is if it is worth it.</blockquote>

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