Magic : How streamlined do we want it?

[Gundark]

My wife and I were talking about the new edition of D&D (yeah she plays , however she's definetly not into it as much as I am ). My wife was mentioning she hated how you had to look things up all the time, espically with regards to magic and spells. The game designers have talked about cutting the look up time with lots of different rules (grappling, AoO, etc). I havn't heard anything regarding the streamling of the magic system. I'm sure that WotC is working on this.

The question is: How much streamlining would you want with magic? She stated she hated the spells that took more than a few paragraphs to describe their effects. Pause game and read the long description of spell x to try to find the answer you're looking for.

Now yes, reading ahead when it's not your turn is helpful, but it's not always the solution to the problem.

Currently we're playing Warhammer roleplay. Casters are limited to about 15 spells depending on the lore they're using. Spells in Warhammer are only a few paragraphs in length at the most. And because their simple, they're quick to remember and understand.
Now this system works well for Warhammer, but I imagine we would want more substance with 4e.

So what would your ideal 4e spells look like?

 

[Sun Knight]

I like the Arcana Evolved system. Best d20 System Magic rules out there. That is the limit of how streamline I would want 4e magic.

 

[Gundark]

The AE system isn't bad. While most spells are short in their descriptions, there are the different effects of the spells (least,most, etc) depending on how you cast it. Problem is you're back to looking up constantly.

 

[Sun Knight]

The AE system isn't bad. While most spells are short in their descriptions, there are the different effects of the spells (least,most, etc) depending on how you cast it. Problem is you're back to looking up constantly.

You are? Why?

 

[Gundark]

Like I said, I appreciate that the spell description are shorter than 3e. There still is the checking of the heightened and diminished effects of spells. True it's still faster than 3e, but not the solution IMHO that D&D needs.

 

[Sun Knight]

Like I said, I appreciate that the spell description are shorter than 3e. There still is the checking of the heightened and diminished effects of spells. True it's still faster than 3e, but not the solution IMHO that D&D needs.

I think the diminished and heightened effects allow greater flexibility and versitility of the spell casting classes and worth the time looking up if one needs to. I rather have flexibility than have magic too simplified to be even fun to use.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

sorry. posted twice. carry on.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

it would be interesting to see a magic system were spells are leveless and gain more options as one levels up. So you have water. and at first level it acts like produce water, but at level 10, you could create a water elemental, or part a sea, or flood a city.

Perhaps you would limit yourself to 2 or 3 magics, with their being 9 or so.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

it would be interesting to see a magic system were spells are leveless and gain more options as one levels up. So you have water. and at first level it acts like produce water, but at level 10, you could create a water elemental, or part a sea, or flood a city.

Perhaps you would limit yourself to 2 or 3 magics, with their being 9 or so.

I think that might effectively be a free-form magic system.
If not, you might run into the problem that you will often come up with interesting ideas fitting the "theme" of one of your magics, but no place in the levels that they fit in. (Unless you give multiple abilities per level - but what if you have more good ideas for, say "Fire" then for "Air" - is this fair or balanced?)

 

[Greg K]

I want magic to work as it does in either Elements of Magic: Mythic Earth or True20.