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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8132669" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I have stepped away from the thread for a bit, so this may be a little outdated now.If it is not possible to discuss good and bad design, playtesting is completely worthless as a tool for anything but advertisement. Since I think both of us agree that playtesting is useful for something more than just advertisement, it is possible to discuss design quality--it just requires certain givens, first.There is more to this conversation than the four points you offered, and more to be said than simply stating those things and being done with it. Finding common ground and addressing distinct but not-incompatible concerns is where the vast majority of fruitful discussion happens. (For example, your points 1a and 1b? Not actually contradictory. It is completely possible that a solution exists which still addresses 1a while avoiding 1b.)It's not a matter of rehashing--that, again, implies that there is nothing new to be said, nothing which could change, and that's simply false. It's a matter of exploring variations, finding what people's hard lines are, seeing what is compatible.Isn't there some excluded middle here? Context dependency matters. As I've said elsewhere on these boards, it is true that there is no such thing as an objective universal in game design: game design requires too much freedom for me to even speculate as to what form a real "universal truth of game design." However, this does not mean that there cannot be objective conditional truths in game design. For example, once you have chosen to make a specifically cooperative game, that (objectively) cuts off certain avenues of game design that simply do not fit with that goal. Likewise, if you have chosen to make a game that is purely deterministic, it behooves you to avoid mechanics that are probabilistic, and possibly mechanics that are choice-driven. (E.g. chess is a competitive deterministic game which actively pursues the maximum symmetry available, while StarCraft II is a competitive deterministic game with optional cooperative elements which actively pursues high asymmetry.)We have our given requirements: fans of the Sorcerer want some effort to address the extreme and often frustrating limitations of the class; Wizard fans want to know that their class fantasy matters. Hence my earlier suggestion, for example, to throw Wizards the option of actual spell research, so that they too gain a little versatility (permanent, notably)--something that would specifically EMPOWER the Wizard's class fantasy, in a way that the currently-existing rules pretty much objectively fail to do. (Nothing about the Wizard class actually reflects research;  Wizards in practice are a mix of "virtuoso novelist belting out a new work every now and then" and "medieval scribe copying the works of the great masters.")Whether a rule fits these requirements determines whether it is a good rule or a bad one. It is "subjective," in the sense that we have taste-based requirements (Sorcerer fans want to overcome annoying boundaries, Wizard fans don't want to feel marginalized). But it is "objective" in the sense that with those requirements already given, we can draw conclusions and attempt to refine a solution that does, in fact, meet the requirements. And that's where a useful discussion can actually happen. Hence, focusing on these rather abstract notions or things that will always land in exactly the same way as the good/bad discussion is kinda pointless, distracting from the productive discussion we could be having.Now, obviously, if there are people involved in the discussion who cannot accept anything but a hard yes or a hard no, then the discussion IS pointless in its entirety--including the "well we don't want bad rules in official text" parts. Just as democracy is predicated on the notion that it is possible for any given candidate to lose, productive discussion is predicated on the notion that it is possible for any given side to change its stance on relevant issues.Edit:Okay, but the problem is, metamagic doesn't actually manipulate magic very much. It can get you two targets (Twinned) a few times, or let you cast minor magic at the same time as basic magic (Quickened), or let you cast imperceptibly (Subtle), or let you do a little more damage (Empowered), etc....but it doesn't actually change what the spells themselves do.How can we truly say that the Sorcerer's power lies in "manipulating" her arcane spells, when all she can really do is slightly tweak their expression? The single greatest deviation a Sorcerer can make is changing damage type, and that's new to Tasha's. They can't even change the type of save a spell requires or (with the very high-limitation exception of Twinned) the number of targets it hits. Hell, Wizards are in some ways better at manipulating how spells actually WORK than Sorcerers are: Evocation lets you shape spells, Illusion can make your spells actually real for a little while, Divination recycles spell energy, Conjuration adds temporary hit points to your summons, etc. Sure, these are all relatively fixed bonuses and they go by subclass, but it's pretty clear that Wizards having significant ability to manipulate the nature of their spells is commonplace. Why is it cool for the Wizard to step on the Sorcerer's toes, but not okay for the Sorcerer to step on the Wizard's toes? Why does the Wizard get so much protection of its niche?</blockquote>

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