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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Playtest 6: Spells
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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 9062623" data-attributes="member: 58197"><p>One thing that would improve the system a lot would be to rethink the idea behind the schools, more along the lines of M:tG's color pie.</p><p></p><p>A color in Magic is not defined by a single "function" -- each color can do many different things, and most things can be done by more than one color. At the same time, each color has some things that it does better than anybody, and some things it cannot do at all (at least not directly). Colors are self-sufficient, in that you can build a deck with cards of just one color and win games with it; but such a deck will have weaknesses that it must find a way to cover for.</p><p></p><p>If the schools of D&D were built along these lines, they would be more like literal schools; each one represents a whole tradition of magic, aiming to give its practitioners a full suite of spells to pursue that tradition's goals. This would mean a lot of spells being shared between schools. For instance, the School of Divination is oriented around gathering information; the School of Illusion is oriented around deception and evasion; both of them find <em>dimension door</em> extremely useful, and so it appears on both lists. On the other hand, <em>misty step</em> is more of an escape tactic than an exploration tool, so Illusion would have it but Divination probably wouldn't.</p><p></p><p>With this approach, it would be possible to put more mechancial weight on the schools -- if each school comes with a basic toolkit built in, then you can make it a little more difficult to cherry-pick from other schools. Not <em>impossible</em>, mind you, or even particularly hard, just... non-trivial. It would also make it possible to balance the schools properly against each other. Diviners would no longer need to be compensated with bonus features for the fact that their spell list sucks.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 9062623, member: 58197"] One thing that would improve the system a lot would be to rethink the idea behind the schools, more along the lines of M:tG's color pie. A color in Magic is not defined by a single "function" -- each color can do many different things, and most things can be done by more than one color. At the same time, each color has some things that it does better than anybody, and some things it cannot do at all (at least not directly). Colors are self-sufficient, in that you can build a deck with cards of just one color and win games with it; but such a deck will have weaknesses that it must find a way to cover for. If the schools of D&D were built along these lines, they would be more like literal schools; each one represents a whole tradition of magic, aiming to give its practitioners a full suite of spells to pursue that tradition's goals. This would mean a lot of spells being shared between schools. For instance, the School of Divination is oriented around gathering information; the School of Illusion is oriented around deception and evasion; both of them find [I]dimension door[/I] extremely useful, and so it appears on both lists. On the other hand, [I]misty step[/I] is more of an escape tactic than an exploration tool, so Illusion would have it but Divination probably wouldn't. With this approach, it would be possible to put more mechancial weight on the schools -- if each school comes with a basic toolkit built in, then you can make it a little more difficult to cherry-pick from other schools. Not [I]impossible[/I], mind you, or even particularly hard, just... non-trivial. It would also make it possible to balance the schools properly against each other. Diviners would no longer need to be compensated with bonus features for the fact that their spell list sucks. [/QUOTE]
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Playtest 6: Spells
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