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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 6259992" data-attributes="member: 50304">Problem is, the world is also rarely impacted by the magical power of just one person either. Unless you're reading a fantasy paperback banked upon an over-done Chosen One or One True Evil you don't get that happening - and neither of those archetypes are appropriate design space for a party-based RPG.More typically, a great Magician either changes the course of human events through judicious application of knowledge and influence (like Merlin or Gandalf) or has a massive impact on a small stage that then ripples forward into the world through social change.Wahoo levels of world-changing magic like blocking out the sun, sinking the Imperial Capital into the ocean, creating a massive horde of rampaging kill-bots are not "Spells" that a "Wizard" simply pulls out of a spell-book. They are plot-device super-weapons the likes of which are conceived by Bond Villains and require massive infrastructure and borrowed power to bring about. You need stuff like conduits, human sacrifices, demonic pacts, artifacts, and a celestial convergence at the exact right moment (conveniently the exact moment the PCs show up to murder you, or the BBEG's emerges to murder your party depending on whether you're trying to take over the world or save it).One of the real problems with some editions of D&D and variants is that it seemed like every time someone thought up a magical effect that was good to put on an non-playable Antagonist someone eventually said, "Better put it onto the Spell List and sell a splat-book." Because everything Elminster, Gandalf, or the Arch-Heretic of Asmodeus could possibly do has to be accessibly daily by a 17th level Wizard or the game's just not complete, right? <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />Heck, 13th Age has an Archmage Icon. He's basically a demi-god wizard-lord who is in charge of keeping the empire in one piece by managing a massive system of magical infrastructure that keeps the weather mild; wards the kaiju monsters from invading the inland sea; suspends a floating city or two in the atmosphere; and stops demons, living dungeons, and undead hordes from just boiling out of the ground indiscriminately and eating everybody. Even he's so busy in conducting maintenance on all that infrastructure that's been put together by his predecessors and subordinates he can't just go out and pull reality-warping stunts out of his butt to show how much more awesome he is that everyone else. The feat requires massive support of non-magicians in the Empire via economy, labor, information, and bureaucratic function. In the grand scheme of things he's probably about as important and powerful at shaping the world as the Emperor. If either one screws up badly enough the other one won't be able to hold things together.Changing the world isn't about waking up in the morning, grabbing your spell-book, and summoning brute force to bludgeon reality into submission. It's about some building some sort of physical, social, military, and/or magical infrastructure at great cost.Likewise, the greatest thief in the world isn't going to get to be the wealthiest man ever by being the best pick-pocket and assassin and taking things through personal force. He's going to get their by engineering massive boondoggles that would make a modern politician blush. ;More to the Encounter side of things, "save or die" magic should never circumvent hit-points the way it did in some editions. Hit points should make you harder to defeat. It shouldn't be significantly faster / easier / more convenient to perma-frog someone (or frog + squish) with a Baleful Polymorph or Flesh to Stone than a focused damage attack of the same level. If you fail the save and have greater than X HP you should be able to lose the HP instead of suffering the other ill effect. If you don't have that many HP available and fail your save, well, sucks to be you frog-boy. Likewise I'm pretty happy with how Concentration is working in D&DNext. I think Concentration-based Buff / Debuff spells should scale with Spell Slots in almost all cases, though. If you cast a spell in a higher level slot you should be able to add more targets, have it last a few rounds after concentration breaks, or generate a larger effect. 13th Age really got a lot of good concepts down in this department including "cast for power" vs "cast for wide effect" and having almost every lower-level spell have higher-slot casting options.- Marty Lund</blockquote>

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