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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5968435" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is all great stuff. I've come very close to trying to run a magic=spells and only spells game (using Rolemaster), and it imposes very significant limits on the fantasy fiction that can be supported, and for very little payoff in play other than a certain sort of aesthetic of systematisation.One mechanic that Burning Wheel uses is "natural magic": dwarves, elves and orcs can learn skills that are just like everyone else's skills, except that they get to roll open-ended dice (ie when a die comes up max, add another die to the pool).In 4e, elves and halflings both have reroll abilities - elves for themselves (they're accurate) and halflings for their enemies (they're lucky). Is this skill or magic? The mechanics don't say, and don't need to say. When dealing with these fey(-ish) folk, there is no need to draw the distinction.I'm with SKyOdin here. It's obvious that real world physics is not a constraint on even the mundane in the D&D world (giant insects, actual giants, dragons and the like). And narrating the activity of the game, and adjudicating actions as part of that narration, doesn't rely on real world physics. It relies on whatever common sense intuitions are shard by those around the table. (The last time I pulled out a reference book to adjudicate a physics-type question in game was 10 or so years ago, to determine the flight speed of a goose in the context of a polymorph spell - and I learned what I had suspected, that flight speeds listed for birds in RPG rules are too slow, and simply there for reasons of mechanical balance or convenience.)High level fighters can become non-magically tough the same way that a hill giant is non-magically tough. There is no biological process that can explain that, because hill giants are biologically impossible. But luckily, game play can take place even in the absence of biological explanations! Just as we suspend disbelief on the hill giant for genre reasons, we can do the same for the fighter.Recently in my 4e game, the 16th level dwarven fighter-cleric helped in the reforging of his dwarven thrower artefact. The furnace was hot, and thrumming with magical energy, and the dwarven artisans could not take hold of the hammer with their tongs. The PC ended up resolving the problem by shoving his hands into the forge and holding the hammer still while the artisans grabbed hold of it. (Mechanically, a Hard Endurance check to complete a 4 successes before 3 failures skill challenge.)I don't want this sort of action - which was spontaneously narrated by the player of the PC, and easily resolved mechanically - buried under a pile of operational spellcasting rules.Yes. Over the past 15 years I've been trying to get more of this into my game, with at least some success.</blockquote>

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