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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8546480" data-attributes="member: 7635">D&D isn't that kind of "narrative-first" driven game though. A narrative-first driven game would say "Any PC with the charm ability can charm a foe", it doesn't matter if your wizard uses a charm spell or your swashbuckler naturally talks the pants of every person they meet, as long as you expend the proper resource to use it. Lots of RPGs use this sort of system, (Mutants and Mastermind's is built entirely off this sort of effect-first, rationale-later system) but D&D has commonly put the source of power as a limit to the type of effect it can produce (with some large variance across editions). Wizard magic never heals, etc. The closest D&D ever got to it was 4e, where "magic" was basically broken into a large collection of attack + rider effects (with non-combat magic being relegated to rituals) so that a fighter swinging making his Sweeping Attack and a wizard casting "Aura of Flame" did more-or-less the same thing (damage to all creatures in an AoE) with only the type of damage and implement used changing. Which leads to the biggest problem with this divide: if a Fighter can do things currently only doable by magic and do it in a way that it itself is nonmagical (such as jumping 60 ft) then either the fighter is now "doing magic" by another name (divine blood, psionics, mutant powers, radioactive spider bite) or the magic spell is a crutch for a caster to do what a talented person can do "naturally" and isn't all that "magical" (in the sense that magic stops being things that cannot be done normally and becomes technology to enable people to do things others can do naturally). Either the fighter becomes "magical" or the wizard stops being "magical". There is no have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too option. Again, if game was more like Mutants and Masterminds, where I spend X points to acquire the "Fly" ability and decide if I do it through magical spells, superhero ability, biological wings, or a superpowered jetpack, then you could achieve caster/noncaster polarity. That would require a massive, fundamental change to how D&D is conceived and played to work though. I guess it could happen (I wouldn't have expected the change to races that have emerged in the last year if you asked me in 2015) but it would be as big a change to the system as 4e was to 3e.</blockquote>

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