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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3895483" data-attributes="member: 32164">Precisely. On the other hand, some of our fellow ENworlders, Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock and Russell Morrissey, have come up with a game supplement for d20 called Four Color to Fantasy which overlays a system for superpowers on to D&D. One of the suggestions is to award the character "hero points" that they can use to buy powers in lieu of giving them extra gold. They've done a pretty good job of coming up with a way to give superpowers to characters.Why isn't a similar system built into D&D? If a 5th-level fighter is supposed to have a +1 sword, why not just state that the 5th-level figher gains an extra +1 to attack? If you eliminate the number bloat, the character just needs his attacks to be magical. If the numbers are necessary, why should they be wrapped up in the weapon and not the character?The problem with Weapons of Legacy is that you had to sacrifice development to make the weapon "better." In my opinion, that should be a natural part of the character getting more powerful. Perhaps if you slay a Red Dragon (and you're the appropriate level), you can imbue your sword with the "flaming" characteristic. Magic items are to give the character mini power-ups between the "goodies" that come from levelling. When those goodies were less frequent, magic items were more necessary. Now that each level has something, and levelling up occurs relatively frequently, we don't need quite as many magic items that give the characters more power. Sorry if this is a derail, but I need to address this. People are always talking about how "D&D is its own brand of fantasy." In my opinion, the game's idiosyncracies are a large part of why so many people just start laughing at the words Dungeons & Dragons. That's why Dragonlance doesn't get the same treatment as The Lord of the Rings or even Eragon. Even people who read fantasy or play WoW often can't relate to it. And in my opinion, that's a bug, not a feature.And 3e does have "one approach" that it "force(s) everyone into." It's called "over-the-top high fantasy." 3e D&D doesn't do anything else well. It can't be refined into "whatever feel people want" without MASSIVE houseruling. The opposite end of the fantasy scale is nearly impossible to do without rewriting classes, the magic system, the challenge system and nearly everything else. To my way of thinking, 4e should slide its default closer to the middle of the scale, so that the "wahoo" dial could be more easily turned "up" or "down" as people wanted.And I still don't think any fantasy world should treat magic as technology. Magic as technology just doesn't feel magical anymore. And that's boring. And before you bring it up, IMO, the things that make Eberron work as a setting are the areas where magic isn't "ordinary," not the ones where it is.</blockquote>

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