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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormonu" data-source="post: 5725639" data-attributes="member: 52734">A night or two ago, I watched the Tales of Earthsea video and it reminded me of something that has dramatically changed over the course of editions in the game.Back in the days I played of BECM, 1E and part of 2E, the magicks of mages was infrequent and deadly.  When a wizard stepped up to cast a spell, it was a thing to fear, but it often took great danger for the wizard to step forward in the first place.  While the use of magic was certainly powerful, it was exercised with restraint.  In these earlier games, a starting wizard had one spell - no others due to high intelligence and you couldn't scribe scrolls until 8th-9th level.  A DM would sneer at his players should they request to buy or be given scrolls, wands or other items to enhance the number of spells they could unleash upon their foes.  Magic resources had to be very carefully doled out; even a 5th level wizard could only hope to unleash a measly 6 spells in a given day and yet be expected with his companions to face dozens of encounters in a given adventure.That seemed to change somewhere about the time of 2E's Skills & Powers - with rules for "mana", bonus spells for high intellegence and more generous systems for regaining spells.  Magic became even more commonplace in 3E with bonus spells for high intelligence, the scribing of scrolls and more generous access to crafted or acquired magic items such as scrolls, wands and the like.  Late 3E (or early pre-4E) even introduced Reserve feats that gave near unlimited magical ability to spellcasters, as long as they were slightly conservative with their spells.It seems that by the time of 4E, wizard players were arguing that they weren't worth anything if they weren't using magic for every little thing they did.  At-will spells became the meat of the wizard's arsenal; while the top end of magic was lopped off, the low end became even more common than the local thug on the street with a 9mm - at least the thug will run out of ammo at some point!What prompted this change?  Was it something in media, was it an aspect of video games, books, anime or certain movies or just the evolving mindset of gamers?  Where did this "entitlement" of mundane magic come from?And of course, has it helped to remove the "mystery" of magic and ruined some of the fun or has it made the game better for players (and DMs)?</blockquote>

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