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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7932250" data-attributes="member: 177">I think I understand what you are talking about.&nbsp; I think what you are asking for is pretty rare for a variety of reasons.&nbsp; Most games and game worlds do not have a lot of space for characters to be making up entirely novel effects to begin with.From a game world perspective, if you have a fantasy world that's had magic in it for centuries or millennia... you would expect people in the past to have rather solidly covered the ground of what magic can do.&nbsp; Your character is standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.From a game design perspective, truly novel effects are hard to adjudicate in a balanced manner, so the game designers do that work for you, and address what magic can accomplish for you before play begins.Edit... also, coming up with an internally consistent magical system is very hard.&nbsp; Pretty much any system you come up with will likely have a major exploitable hole in it, and if you allow players to use the logic of the magic system to justify new magical effects, they will find the unbalanced ones.(See canonical example of a White Wolf Mage turning a powerful Vampire into a lawn chair, arguing that since the vampire is not living, it is mere &quot;matter&quot;, and converting some base matter into other base matter is well-accepted magic in the system).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 7932250, member: 177"] I think I understand what you are talking about. I think what you are asking for is pretty rare for a variety of reasons. Most games and game worlds do not have a lot of space for characters to be making up entirely novel effects to begin with. From a game world perspective, if you have a fantasy world that's had magic in it for centuries or millennia... you would expect people in the past to have rather solidly covered the ground of what magic can do. Your character is standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that. From a game design perspective, truly novel effects are hard to adjudicate in a balanced manner, so the game designers do that work for you, and address what magic can accomplish for you before play begins. Edit... also, coming up with an [I]internally consistent[/I] magical system is very hard. Pretty much any system you come up with will likely have a major exploitable hole in it, and if you allow players to use the logic of the magic system to justify new magical effects, they [I]will[/I] find the unbalanced ones. (See canonical example of a White Wolf Mage turning a powerful Vampire into a lawn chair, arguing that since the vampire is not living, it is mere "matter", and converting some base matter into other base matter is well-accepted magic in the system). [/QUOTE]

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