Spell & Ability descriptions

[MerricB]

G'day, all!

Just wondering what people thought about the following issue:

In 1st edition, spell descriptions were often quite vague, allowing quite a bit of wriggle room for DM adjudication.

In 3rd edition, spell descriptions are a lot more precise, describing exactly what the spell can do.

In a game like Magic: the Gathering, there's no wriggle room at all. Spell cards do *exactly* what they say they do.

I've noticed that in 1e, you could do things with spells and things that would blind-side the DM.

I've also noticed that this happened in 3rd edition, with unexpected uses of these quite defined powers. Often in combinations with other abilities (feats, racial, etc.)

In Magic, it's all about finding the interesting combinations of abilities.

However, where do you stand on this issue? Do you prefer things being precisely defined? Or do you prefer more room for the DM and players to expand the boundaries of a spell or ability?

Cheers!

 

[clone0139]

From an RPGA game/campaign perspective, I'd like less wriggle room. There were to many rule interpretations for my taste in LG, Xendrick etc.

 

[Hjorimir]

I can go with a little wiggle room, but not too much. I hope they keep material components and I'd love to see some solid descriptions of what the casting is like (e.g. rubbing a patch of fur or wool on a glass rod for lightning bolt).

 

[Pygon]

If you want to cast cone of cold at an angle upwards over the halfling 15' in front of you at the 50' tall flaming humanoid, I allow it, even though the cone layouts assume you can only fire them horizontally north, south, west, east, or diagonally.

I also allow casting dispel magic at specific known effects in addition to casting it on an area and on an individual.

In most cases, I'd prefer less wriggle room as well, except for situations that are easily adjudicated (that is, strongly dictated by common sense, but even if I was on the crack team designing 4e, I would highly doubt my capacity to estimate what common sense is to the mass audience).

 

[Riley]

I really like flexible, multi-purpose spells, but it's a tough balance. Wiggle room for creative uses of a spell in special situations (shooting a cone of cold up and over the halfling's head at a flying or verry tall creature, as mentioned) is good, but wiggle room which can be used all the time to make a spell consistently more effective than others of its level is bad.

 

[Clavis]

I prefer a lighter ruleset that allows for a faster, more thrilling game experience. I prefer DM and player creativity to be able to show without worrying about contradicting over-written rules. So, 1st edition (or even better yet BECM or Rules Cyclopedia D&D) style spells for me!

 

[howandwhy99]

I'm something of a mix.

I like players to have a few broad sentences or paragraph description on each spell their PCs learn. Something that can easily be summarized in character during the game.

But I prefer highly detailed rules for the DM to adjudicate spells with. Now these almost certainly shouldn't be absolute, rather campaign/DM specific, but precision rule examples in the DMG would aid DMs in determining spell mechanics for themselves. Just like all the spell suggestions inadvertently put in the PHB.