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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9140676" data-attributes="member: 996">Vance was very nearly the only one to give his magicians the weird &quot;memorization&quot; limitation.&nbsp; He gave them very flambouyant spells, tho, which I guess is something, too. Gandalf, we're told, has many and vast powers, like &quot;hundreds of spells of opening&quot; (ie a password dictionary), but he conveniently rarely displays them, and even then, keeps it restrained, because Sauron would catch on.&nbsp; He does kill a Balrog, a large, scarry, reputedly uberpowerful being... offscreen.&nbsp; Tolkien did an interesting job evoking and using magic, without letting it overshadow his plot or themes.Magic in fiction, like magic IRL, is often talked up quite a bit, and has ready, if not necessarily all that plausible, excuses for not delivering (not derailing the plot in fiction).&nbsp; Magic in D&amp;D, is hard-coded mechanics, like player-agency grenades, that get more potent and varied as you level, and that you get more of as you level (actually the grenade analogy is out of date, since slots can be anything until you pull the pin).&nbsp; It's almost the point of D&amp;D magic to derail any plot that might otherwise have arisen in play. Cartoonish?&nbsp; No, cartoons don't have the time to establish a dozen different spells a magic-user might have and how many times he can use them.&nbsp; Like everything else in cartoons, magic does whatever's funny in the moment.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 9140676, member: 996"] Vance was very nearly the only one to give his magicians the weird "memorization" limitation. He gave them very flambouyant spells, tho, which I guess is something, too. Gandalf, we're told, has many and vast powers, like "hundreds of spells of opening" (ie a password dictionary), but he conveniently rarely displays them, and even then, keeps it restrained, because Sauron would catch on. He does kill a Balrog, a large, scarry, reputedly uberpowerful being... offscreen. Tolkien did an interesting job evoking and using magic, without letting it overshadow his plot or themes. Magic in fiction, like magic IRL, is often talked up quite a bit, and has ready, if not necessarily all that plausible, excuses for not delivering (not derailing the plot in fiction). Magic in D&D, is hard-coded mechanics, like player-agency grenades, that get more potent and varied as you level, and that you get more of as you level (actually the grenade analogy is out of date, since slots can be anything until you pull the pin). It's almost the point of D&D magic to derail any plot that might otherwise have arisen in play. Cartoonish? No, cartoons don't have the time to establish a dozen different spells a magic-user might have and how many times he can use them. Like everything else in cartoons, magic does whatever's funny in the moment. [/QUOTE]

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