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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 6262735" data-attributes="member: 58416">Your idea makes sense, but then it's still also hard to tell what the intent is because -in previous editions- if I were to say walk through multiple squares containing a wall of fire, I would take damage each time (or so I believe.)I do plan to try a mage in the newest season so that I can see the differences.  I think, overall, there were a lot of different conversations going on here that kind of crossed over each other, but may not have been directly intended to be about each other.  I cannot presume to know what exactly other posters had in mind, but I would like to try to explain what my outlook was, and why I posted some of what I did.First, while I do think web is a very good spell, I was not posting it to showcase that I felt it was broken per se.  I was posting to showcase that (in my opinion) a better measure of what a wizard can do is looking at many spells which do not directly damage the enemy.  I see a lot of direct number comparisons.  "Well the fighter can do ## damage versus the wizard doing ## damage."  I feel that is a very poor measurement of a caster's capabilities.  If I can warp reality, there's far more I can do than simply damage.Second, while I wasn't exactly saying I felt web is broken, I did want to illustrate what a wizard can do because those spells were some of the most problematic spells in previous editions.  As said above, I feel that direct damage comparisons are a very poor measurement.  When wizards are said to be overpowered in 3.5, I don't believe most people focus on things like fireball or lightning bolt; instead, things like polymorph, evard's black tentacles, haste, and choking clouds of gas (forget the spell name for that one) are in the minds of those saying that the wizard is so good.Thirdly, I do not necessarily have a problem with the effects that casters in D&D can produce.  The issue I have is that casters can (traditionally) create those effects without really much of anything in the way of drawbacks.  I think a lot of spells -even ones which I feel produce 'broken' effects- would be more manageable if costs or casting times were a little tougher.  Doing so would, in my opinion, make the game more balanced without needing to nerf every spell; I also believe that doing so would make the game mechanics line up with the fluff of the game far better.  Supposedly, magic is hard to learn and hard to control, but there is seemingly no difficulty in actually doing it when playing the actual game.  In one of the other rpgs I play, there is a concept of Fatigue points which measure how tired fatigued a character is and the threshold they have for pushing themselves further (much in the same way HP measure life and death.)  With the default magic options, casters need to spend FP (Fatigue Points.)  Mechanically, this allows them to produce effects like you'd expect from a wizard, but acts as a limiting mechanism for how often they can warp reality in an encounter.  Some of the most powerful spells also require extra time to cast.  I'm not saying D&D should do this; I don't feel D&D should, but I am mentioning it so as to illustrate how other games handle magic.  For what it's worth, in the same rpg, FP can also be spent by characters to do things like exert more force to hit harder; run/hike for longer; etc., so non-casters can use them to push their limits as well; just in different ways.  Again,  I'm not saying D&D should do this; I don't feel D&D should, but  I am mentioning it so as to illustrate how other games handle magic; both in trying to make magic less of an "I win" button for every encounter, and in trying to make the actual mechanics of the game fit the fiction of the game.  I understand that the finished product of 5th edition will very likely be different than the playtest rules.  However, that doesn't prevent me from having concerns about the game; in some ways, it makes me more concerned about the game.  I thought early 4E pre-release discussions would produce a game I would love; the finished product was vastly different than I expected.  In the case of 5th, I worry about the end product being vastly different than expected for two reasons: 1) 4E Deja Vu, 2) a lot of the things which appear to be design decisions and directions in the playtest and preview materials don't seem to mesh with the language being used to describe the game.  Though, on the other hand, I see how some of the polls are slanted via language chosen for answers (as well as how others answer those polls,) and I feel as though I'm pretty far outside of the target audience... which is surprising because the very early (like first and second packet) previews of the game seemed to share a lot of my views; as time has gone on, the design direction of 5th appears to be moving in a much different direction.</blockquote>

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