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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9610913" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The problem isn't that magic doesn't have costs. It's that it's trying to satisfy two radically different camps' desires, and the compromise between them essentially always leads to "magic is just the best"...which isn't helped by the fact that there are subsets of both groups who WANT magic to be just better than everything else.The first group is like you, except they don't necessarily require that magic have steep costs. They want magic to be powerful, usually justified with naturalistic explanations like "why would anyone ever learn to be a Wizard if you can be just as powerful doing anything else" (a flawed argument, but not the point of discussion at present). They want that "powerful artillery" feel, but don't necessarily associate it with "being extremely fragile" etc. Their position is reasonable; they want magic to be a potent tool, since that justifies calling it "magic" in the first place.The second group wants magic to be their whole bag. They see it as, more or less, the promise the game is making them by even offering a Wizard class, a "I have magic and magic and also magic and then some more magic, and finally a bit of recharge for my magic on top." They--quite reasonably--want to be doing fun, productive, engaging things most of the time. They aren't really attached to magic being powerful or not, they just want it accessible and useful: "I signed up for the class fantasy of being someone who uses magic to manipulate the world. Why should I be spending half or more of my time doing things that have nothing at all to do with that class fantasy?"The problem is...when one side wants widely-accessible magic and doesn't really care that much whether it's strong or weak, and another side wants magic that is very powerful and doesn't really care that much whether it's incredibly rare or quite prolific...the only way to please both of them is to give magic that is both powerful and prolific. Further, neither side has any reason to accept a sacrifice: If the accessible-magic crowd accepts the steep costs, they're getting nothing they actually care about, and if the powerful-magic crowd accepts the reduced power, they're in the same boat.IMO, at some point, D&D is going to have to embrace one of the two paths. It's going to have to decide once and for all that magic really is ridiculously good, but harshly punishing or restrictive in its use, thus turning off the sizable plurality (or even majority) who prefer accessible magic. Or, it's going to have to decide once and for all that magic is accessible, but only rarely achieves incredible power and influence...thus turning off the heavily vocal, and more importantly highly invested, minority who prefer the older way with its punishments, costs, or limitations.They can't keep pushing this appeasement of both sides. It's going to bite them, sooner or later.</blockquote>

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