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Message: <blockquote data-quote="italianranma" data-source="post: 3770962" data-attributes="member: 15788">Ah, see you're right on one count and wrong on the other.  It does become repetitive to eat the same thing over and over again.  But in this case repetition adds to the experience.  Not only do the players get sick of me telling them the same boring foods they eat, but they get sick of eating the same boring foods.  I believe immersion is a very handy tool at the game table; otherwise we'd set down and play Descent. And I want to make it clear that there is a time and place for details:  If the PCs have had a long day with lots of events then I don't describe the menutia.  It's those days on the road, long, boring, and repetitive that need that kind of attention.  Telling my players, "You travel on the road for 3 days before you reach your destination.  There were no random encounters." breaks the immersion feeling, and trivializing something that is inherent to all fantasy adventure: travel.I have a player like that. We roll our eyes when he describes things sometimes because he uses the same phrases too much.  One time he started in with one of his tirades but petered off halfway through saying "...uh..you know."  That was hilarious!  In any case it's about keeping game descriptions interesting and varied.  Sometimes you need the boring to make the exciting stand out that much more:  Contrast more than quality will be better received by your players, believe me on that one.  Sure, if a player says "I reach into my belt pouch, pinching bat guano between my fingertips." twenty times in a 4 hour session, then he's going to have us all pull out hairs from our heads.  But when he does it just once or twice, for dramatic effect, then it really adds to the experience.  When I descibe combat, I try to make it sound like an action movie:  Time slows down when that wizard reaches into his belt pouch, but at the same time things just happen too fast for the cleric to take in all the events.  When I have 20 zombies shamble after my party, I don't say "20 zombies" I call it the zombie hoard because it sounds more terrifying.  But I'm really derailing the thread here I think...Back on trackI don't even recognize what Spell Mastery is, heh.  But then again I haven't DM'd a 3.5 game in almost 2 years.  I'm not in the habit of permanently destroying magic items, I find that it's just not fun.  I like temporarily releaving (sp?) the PCs of some of their favorite toys, but that's usually as far as I'll go.  I just don't think that anyone will be able to convince me that a spellbook's cost is too much for a wizard to handle.  Fighters need to spend a hell of a lot of gold on magic items to stay balanced for play.  True, Wizards need scrolls and wands and Staves, etc. but overall I see a good balance in costs.  I've seen some of my players with fighters keep a back-up magic weapon when they could have sold that to help upgrade their primary one, if a Wizard wanted the insurance of a backup spellbook he should have to spend the resources on it.But then again, we're creative people right?  There are other ways to backup your spells.  Having apprentices and teaching them is a cost free way of making sure that you've got a spare copy.  How about being a member of a Wizarding College?  There are other solutions.That being said, I only enforced the rules on that because I hadn't seen anyone else do so, and thought it would make for a good experience.  In fact that player (who has been DMing longer than I have) never even read the rules on scribing spells before, and I believe that overall it really added to his game.But in any case there is at least one person who is as frustrated as you with the <a href="http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0306.html" target="_blank">scribing rules</a></blockquote>

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