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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5967036" data-attributes="member: 3400">Sure, it's highly situational. But I would argue that mechanical solutions tend to be hitting away with very large hammers when something more subtle, localized, and specific will be better. In addition, they tend to create their own problems that necessitate more mechanical solutions or mechanical elements that fight against narrative or genre elements.RPGs have conceits and ambitions to be much more than board games in which solutions are all driven by set mechanics. Part of what makes them different is they way they develop a story, not simply a sequence of events that occurred, in a broader setting rather than just on the local board. They are, by nature, open ended with players able to make wide ranging decisions, the results of which are determined with the help of an overall framework. The continual push for mechanical solutions narrows those ambitions.I concede there's always a bit of a tradeoff. No matter what mechanics or adjudication patterns a GM follows or emerge, there will be players who try to exploit them. Mechanics should include incentives that facilitate play that is enjoyable for everyone and that works with the genre of the story being developed. To that end, I think some at-will magical abilities make good sense to support vancian-style casting resources. They probably shouldn't be as effective at doing the things other, less magical classes are doing when directly compared but they shouldn't be hopelessly left behind either. Meanwhile, the vancian elements should be better than unlimited resources other character may have, but not so much better that the party needs to stop what they're doing and recover whenever one is expended. The trouble is - that there are players out there for whom any variation from maximum power is something to be avoided. That's why I'm sure there are still groups out there who nova their dailies each encounter and then hole up and rest even in 4e. Yet getting rid of powerful magic in order to removed the incentive toward that behavior tends to break or at least the weaken genre. After all, what's the point of magic when it's not very magical? I think 4e ran right up into these problems. Mechanical solutions to avoiding the 15 minute day and keeping magical powers at a level with martial powers left a lot of people wondering where the interesting magic you see in fantasy genre fiction and mythology and, more importantly considering it was a legacy product, earlier editions of D&D had gone. And that it was a shame that it was gone. Meanwhile, other frictions between the mechanical solutions and the genre arose like martial dailies (or even martial encounter powers) that give the PC some choice when to spike up his performance, but fairly arbitrarily prevented him from having full control. Granted, D&D has included some of these for a long time (like daily smite limits), but they suddenly had become pervasive and part of every class whereas before they could have been avoided entirely. The problems caused by pursuit of mechanical solutions were snowballing.So, TL, DR version: Pursuit of mechanical solutions to perceived problems often bring their own, unintended problems that may end up being thornier than the original problem.</blockquote>

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