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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9617624" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Oh, that one's easy: skywrite. Level 2 spell. Puts up to 10 words per casting in the sky, concentration, 1 hour duration. Vulnerable to strong winds.If you merely want a signal of any kind and don't care if it's counted as words or not, it's really not much of an extension to let the pyrotechnics spell produce a firework that could be seen from a moderate distance, though skywrite is still the spell that primarily serves that function.Alternatively: Don't. Just...literally don't do that. Don't make bazillions of spells. Allow magic to be tricksy and weird and have some things it does AMAZINGLY well and other things it just...doesn't do. That, I should think, would make magic feel much more magical--obscure rules for what is and isn't possible--than merely pumping out spell after spell after spell after spell so that magic can still do everything, just in tiny pieces.No, that's only if we do as you described and then also give spellcasters a zillion spell slots as well. Why not...not? Why not make magic weird and tricksy and require cleverness to use?This highlights a major cognitive dissonance I see within the OSR community. There is an intense, even burning antipathy for "playing from the character sheet"--except when one is playing from the spell list. Playing from one's spell list is perfectly acceptable, and expanding the breadth and utility of that spell list is never meaningfully criticized. Yet the exact same people who do that so strenuously dislike "playing from the character sheet" or other such phrases when it comes to skills, or feats, or whatever else.Why does magic get the go-ahead to be able to do a zillion things and never be left without a thing to do, but not non-magic?The problem is not "minor" creativity. It's that the creativity is relentless. Every spell is pushed. And, once those new boundaries are established, they're pushed again. And then, once those boundaries are established, they're pushed again.It's all well and good to say "well just don't let that happen 4head", but that is much, much more easily said than done. It's a never-ending battle. It's--as I have said to you before--constantly pitting DM against player and vice-versa, the former having to be ever more punitive and draconian to prevent abuse, the latter eternally hounding for whatever scrap of advantage they can wrest from the DM's inattention or bargain out of the DM's jealous clutches.Perhaps, for you, that eternal battle is enjoyable. For a lot of people, it isn't. They would much rather just play/run the game, instead of needing to play Spell Nanny for the spellcaster PCs.No, see, the problem is, this ALREADY IS applied to martials. Skill usage is run in 5e the way it was in 3e, and I have no idea why it is. Martial characters ARE told that the only thing they can do is a regular attack, unless they have some special feature: you can't cleave unless you have a thing that says you can cleave. You can't decapitate unless you have a thing that says you can. You can't do anything but ordinary, run-of-the-mill attacks unless told otherwise.Martials ALREADY live in that box.</blockquote>

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