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<blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 1557639" data-attributes="member: 18280">There's a world of difference between &quot;destroying the spell casting system&quot; and &quot;altering the spell-casting system to make it work the way I want to in my world.&quot;&nbsp; Wanting to write your own adventure doesn't imply that you hated Keep on the Borderlands.&nbsp; Clearly, a poster who thinks the current unmodified system &quot;maps less to fiction&quot; either A) prefers different fiction than that you prefer, or B) takes a different reading position on the same fiction that you both read.&nbsp; Neither are &quot;silly&quot; and neither makes a poster's position a &quot;silly argument.&quot;If the poster suggested that his or her preferred magical system (or Franken-system) be used by everyone, like it or not...well, that would be silly.&nbsp; To put it nicely.&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid&nbsp; &nbsp; :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /> The way I understand it, Gandalf was one of the Maia, servants of the Valar.&nbsp; His magical ability wasn't resident in himself; it came from beyond.&nbsp; Sure, his fireworks were due to his understanding of how the world worked (including the pine cones and &quot;flash that killed several goblins&quot; in The Hobbit), but anything larger was based upon his relationship with the Valar.&nbsp; And, even so, magic has unexpected consequences.&nbsp; The door Gandalf is trying to hold is burst asunder, and there is a cave in.&nbsp; He has obviously overdone himself, and he is more tired than he ever remembers being.&nbsp; Maybe these are not &quot;gee whiz&quot; effects, but they do occur.&nbsp; They would not occur using the straight D&amp;D magic system.Also, it's tough to say that Gandalf was an NPC in the story.&nbsp; He was clearly one of the protagonists.While I agree that there are many things that don't map to D&amp;D, I have noticed that there is a lot of &quot;rules gerrymandering&quot; on the EnWorld forums about feats, monsters, combat, character classes, and even cows&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!&nbsp; &nbsp; :eek:"&nbsp; data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> , fergoshsakes.&nbsp; So, if that's where you're getting your &quot;base line bias&quot; I doubt you'll convince very many readers....?Um...I'm not sure where you read the argument you're arguing against in the quotation above, but I'm pretty sure nothing remotely like that was said on this thread.Correct me if I am wrong, but a poster described personal feelings about how the D&amp;D magic system interacted with said poster's expectations of how a magic system should &quot;feel&quot; within a personal campaign world.&nbsp; Said poster didn't say, &quot;How do we force WotC to change everything to my perspective for version 4.0?&quot;The really cool thing about d20 is its level of customization.&nbsp; With the OGL, there's a lot of material out there to select from, so DMs can have the world they really want with less &quot;background&quot; work and more &quot;foreground&quot; (ie, adventure design &amp; gaming) time.&nbsp; There is so much d20 material out there that it makes sense to ask &quot;Given that I want effect A, what should I consider?&quot;&nbsp; There's a pretty good chance that someone on these forums wanted effect A also, or read something relating to effect A.&nbsp; Heck, I asked for pointers on effect H not so long ago myself.For the record, none of these &quot;feel&quot; questions actually relates to whether or not huge magical effects exist.&nbsp; They relate to how common they are, what their costs are, and whether or not they should be perfectly reliable.&nbsp; It's pretty easy to come up with a campaign world where magic &quot;feels&quot; mythic/folkloric, but a Necromancer or Iron Lich can arise.&nbsp; Both myth and folklore contain many examples of &quot;high effect, high cost&quot; magic.&nbsp; What seems to be rather rarer is &quot;high effect, no cost&quot; magic.Raven Crowking</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Raven Crowking, post: 1557639, member: 18280"] There's a world of difference between "destroying the spell casting system" and "altering the spell-casting system to make it work the way I want to in my world." Wanting to write your own adventure doesn't imply that you hated Keep on the Borderlands. Clearly, a poster who thinks the current unmodified system "maps less to fiction" either A) prefers different fiction than that you prefer, or B) takes a different reading position on the same fiction that you both read. Neither are "silly" and neither makes a poster's position a "silly argument." If the poster suggested that his or her preferred magical system (or Franken-system) be used by everyone, like it or not...well, that [I]would [/I] be silly. To put it nicely. :uhoh: The way I understand it, Gandalf was one of the Maia, servants of the Valar. His magical ability wasn't resident in himself; it came from beyond. Sure, his fireworks were due to his understanding of how the world worked (including the pine cones and "flash that killed several goblins" in [I]The Hobbit[/I]), but anything larger was based upon his relationship with the Valar. And, even so, magic has unexpected consequences. The door Gandalf is trying to hold is burst asunder, and there is a cave in. He has obviously overdone himself, and he is more tired than he ever remembers being. Maybe these are not "gee whiz" effects, but they do occur. They would not occur using the straight D&D magic system. Also, it's tough to say that Gandalf was an NPC in the story. He was clearly one of the protagonists. While I agree that there are many things that don't map to D&D, I have noticed that there is a lot of "rules gerrymandering" on the EnWorld forums about feats, monsters, combat, character classes, and even cows :eek: , fergoshsakes. So, if that's where you're getting your "base line bias" I doubt you'll convince very many readers....? Um...I'm not sure where you read the argument you're arguing against in the quotation above, but I'm pretty sure nothing remotely like that was said on this thread. Correct me if I am wrong, but a poster described personal feelings about how the D&D magic system interacted with said poster's expectations of how a magic system should "feel" within a personal campaign world. Said poster didn't say, "How do we force WotC to change everything to my perspective for version 4.0?" The really cool thing about d20 is its level of customization. With the OGL, there's a lot of material out there to select from, so DMs can have the world they really want with less "background" work and more "foreground" (ie, adventure design & gaming) time. There is so much d20 material out there that it makes sense to ask "Given that I want effect A, what should I consider?" There's a pretty good chance that someone on these forums wanted effect A also, or read something relating to effect A. Heck, I asked for pointers on effect H not so long ago myself. For the record, none of these "feel" questions actually relates to whether or not huge magical effects exist. They relate to how common they are, what their costs are, and whether or not they should be perfectly reliable. It's pretty easy to come up with a campaign world where magic "feels" mythic/folkloric, but a Necromancer or Iron Lich can arise. Both myth and folklore contain many examples of "high effect, high cost" magic. What seems to be rather rarer is "high effect, no cost" magic. Raven Crowking [/QUOTE]

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