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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6553523" data-attributes="member: 996">That rings a bell, yes.So, we can presume the maximum is closer to 6 or so, rather than 10.  Unless you have a quote about some magician who was able to memorize more? There's no question that we've had more examples of mage protagonists in the genre in the decades following D&D, culminating in stuff like Harry Potter.  Maybe it was already heading that way, with influences like Moorcock's Elric, or maybe D&D's profound failure to model the genre even came back and cross-contaminated it.  Maybe it's a broad, lasting change, or maybe it's just a new sub-genre.  Even in those cases, though, you don't see anything like D&D's hyper-versatile, fire-and-forget magic-users tromping around a mostly low-magic world as part of a party of other equally plot-destroying casters and supposedly co-equal, yet decidedly marginalized non-casters.  Instead, you either see a protagonist who is one among many mages including a bit of an ensemble cast of heroic mages with non-casters relegated to NPC-like support roles or victims (as in Harry Potter), or who has very limited abilities (like Skeeve) who are closer to equal with any non-casting companions, and have to use the same cleverness, luck, and perseverance (and writer fiat) to win through.Games like Ars Magica and Mage captured the former feel, with non-mages either explicitly-inferior PC options, or not PC options, at all.   Games like Fantasy Hero could be used for the latter sort - hmm, and some versions of RQ, I'd think - where there are caster and non-caster PCs, both as viable options.  But, even 4e, which did set up casters & non-casters in a sort of roughly-balanced parity, didn't quite capture anything quite like a definable, extant, fantasy sub-genre.  It has elements from many, but it still comes together into an improbable ensemble cast with far too many, and too-disruptive, abilities among them to be suitable 'heroes' in any genre.  Of course, part of it is the problem with an RPG needing to model not only what a genre says it contains, but the plot-power the author exercises.  So you have large hp totals and saving throws and the like so the RPG character can survive the 'dangers' faced by a literary hero - yet, the reality of those mechanics in essence all but erase the perceived danger for the player, if they can't suspend disbelief well enough to accept the corresponding genre conventions....</blockquote>

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