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Putting The Awe Back In Magic
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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7997791" data-attributes="member: 6785785"><p>There’s no mystery to magic in D&D. It’s all been defined and codified. When a wizard casts a spell, he knows what’s going to happen. There’s no real risk for him to do so in most cases, and generally a binary result of worked/didn’t work.</p><p></p><p>I think what [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] is saying is that magic should have a potential variety of outcomes that actually impact the fiction of the game.</p><p></p><p>So to use the Fireball example, I think the point about narration is that a DM who spends 3 minutes mellifluously describing the impact of the fireball and how it sears the flesh from the orcs and how its heat is like a furnace and so on....at the end, the actual result in play is no different than the DM who simply says “you deal 28 damage to these 3 orcs that failed and they all die, and you did 14 damage to these other orc, and they all live”.</p><p></p><p>The end effect is the same. So are they really different? Is a little extra description enough to give magic the impact we’re talking about? I don’t think so, really. It’s not a bad thing to be descriptive, but there are diminishing returns. </p><p></p><p>What if the fireball spell instead was used to knock over a pillar, tipping it and sending it crashing into the second floor balcony...and now the PCs have a means to get to the second floor by running up the leaning pillar. </p><p></p><p>It’s a pretty basic example, but I personally think that’s a more dynamic use of a spell. One that might stand out in memory compared to every other time its used. </p><p></p><p>The problem, I think, isn’t that you can’t do this in D&D, it’s more that the game is set up to function as expected with magic. Any deviation of that is up to the DM. Players don’t have any real authority to use spells in ways other than how they’re described in the book. </p><p></p><p>If there was some kind of system that allowed the player to request a specific outcome with a spell and the DM then established a cost or a target skill check or something similar, then you might be heading in the right direction.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 7997791, member: 6785785"] There’s no mystery to magic in D&D. It’s all been defined and codified. When a wizard casts a spell, he knows what’s going to happen. There’s no real risk for him to do so in most cases, and generally a binary result of worked/didn’t work. I think what [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] is saying is that magic should have a potential variety of outcomes that actually impact the fiction of the game. So to use the Fireball example, I think the point about narration is that a DM who spends 3 minutes mellifluously describing the impact of the fireball and how it sears the flesh from the orcs and how its heat is like a furnace and so on....at the end, the actual result in play is no different than the DM who simply says “you deal 28 damage to these 3 orcs that failed and they all die, and you did 14 damage to these other orc, and they all live”. The end effect is the same. So are they really different? Is a little extra description enough to give magic the impact we’re talking about? I don’t think so, really. It’s not a bad thing to be descriptive, but there are diminishing returns. What if the fireball spell instead was used to knock over a pillar, tipping it and sending it crashing into the second floor balcony...and now the PCs have a means to get to the second floor by running up the leaning pillar. It’s a pretty basic example, but I personally think that’s a more dynamic use of a spell. One that might stand out in memory compared to every other time its used. The problem, I think, isn’t that you can’t do this in D&D, it’s more that the game is set up to function as expected with magic. Any deviation of that is up to the DM. Players don’t have any real authority to use spells in ways other than how they’re described in the book. If there was some kind of system that allowed the player to request a specific outcome with a spell and the DM then established a cost or a target skill check or something similar, then you might be heading in the right direction. [/QUOTE]
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