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Message: <blockquote data-quote="azabaro" data-source="post: 9374816" data-attributes="member: 14006">Many years ago, I encountered Ars Magica and found a lot of things I liked about its magic system. Some people will of course cite its ability to handle spontaneous magic, or its noun+verb ability to define groups of magical effects, or the way it lets you give characters affinities with certain types of magical ability. But one of the other things I liked about it was the way it put limits on magic and how that made it easier to define its world.The D&D I started with placed limits on its magic as well, but it didn’t exactly call them out and I’ve only really started to see them by contrast with newer editions that do away with a lot of those limitations. I believe overgeeked called several of those out earlier in the thread, but for me a key combination was the lack of at-will casting combined with requiring characters to decide what spell they were going to cast with each spell slot in advance. That meant a magic-user might go into a session with 2 Light spells and a single Knock at hand, but they didn’t have any more of those in the tank and therefore they shouldn’t blow them unnecessarily - it was better to rely on the party’s at-will (and thus non-magical) capabilities in most cases. I think that did a better job of giving non-magical characters room to shine, while still letting the magic-use have their spotlight when they did spend their limited resources.All that is to explain why I’d rather not have at-will abilities which displace mundane abilities. Attack magic of any consequence is mostly an issue (with maybe an exception for the Warlock, which was originally conceived as an at-will magic character and who I’d like to see go further back towards that niche). Light, Mage Hand, Message, Dancing Lights, Minor Illusion, and Mending are all cantrips I’d like to see be pushed up to 1st level to help give non-magical characters more opportunities to be significant, although I could see tying certain at-will abilities to some subclasses - the Conjurer’s ability to produce an object they’ve seen before might well justify giving an Illusionist at-will Minor Illusion, or a Bard at-will Guidance.</blockquote>

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