Okay, who here LIKES the magic items and magic system in D&D?

[kigmatzomat]

Well, your game and players are remarkable then. In shadowrun, I've yet to see anyone with the slightest grasp of the magic system create a mage who didn't stand a very good chance of taking no drain whatsoever from even the most demanding of spells.

That's a matter of spell selection, though admittedly most people rarely know spells at a force that causes physical damage. SR1 far more encouraged casters to know high drain spells just to get that wonderfully fatal D4 staging. Regardless of edition, summoning is the real killer, especially amoung shaman. Summoning massive spirits far more powerful than the caster is very, very dangerous but when it works you can decimate small armies.

And earthdawn's magic system (let alone the obviously hastily constructed and never-edited summoning rules) was hardly the pillar of sanity. I never did work out quite how they assigned spells to circles - random draw perhaps?

ED magic worked quite well IMO once you finally used the whole thing. True summonings were rare, given the utility of the summon-type spells, but they were incredibly useful once you bothered. It had a very steep learning curve that tended to toss most people off the side. The first time I thought the rules were badly written then I realized the page layout completely destroyed the flow of the text. Once I managed to ignore all the poorly placed tables it proved much easier than I expected.

And yeah, there's some idiosyncracies to the ED spell assignments but no more than in D&D. Generally the spells had a three-way balancing act between threads, DC, and circle. The problem in spells tended to be more class-based than circle-based; I really think the wizard and illusionists were implemented during a sleep-deprived period.

The amazing mixtures of magical concepts was what makes ED magic so appealing. True names and patterns provide a lot of options when the basis of the magic system especially combined with strain. Named spells for permanent effects, blood-magic and bloodcharms that feed off the user. With the use of threads vs. raw casting you get into the speed of casting vs. risk of casting. When you factor in the spell matrices, spell matrix objects, spell items, grimoire casting, and raw casting the variances are staggering but the appeal of each is apparent for the time they were developed.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I would be careful about how you use the word "obvious". I'm listed in the Shadowrun thread as a runner.

So I take it you think the SR magic system doesn't work since you say unsafe magic systems never work and SR casting tends to be a bit chancy in life-or-death situations. Sure, when the mage is safe they can burn off spells left and right but when the drek hits the fan the mage tends to hit the floor.

SR casters run a statistical balancing act between casting and defense. The use of the fiber-optic links for casting was common though summoned creatures tended to be the bulk of active magical defenses (shamans summon for 12-hours at a time, summoner mages just need to be contacted by phone). We always had to keep a couple of dice pulled back for Spell Defense/Shielding since any wall sconce could erupt in astral brutality.