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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 3931743" data-attributes="member: 32536">Well, I don't see how you can possibly avoid any kind of fluff whenever you name something.Even the "descriptive" name mentioned here has its own quality as fluff. "Spellshaper" is just as much a piece of fluff as "Golden Wyvern", it is just a different sort of fluff. To compare, Feat names like "Trip" is a purely fluff name for the ability to force a character to become prone. Something like "Knock Prone" is another way of adding fluff to the same concept, and has different implications for the way it is perceived, making it seem like a blow to knock the opponent off balance, rather than a trip with the foot or a weapon. As we have seen, "Dragon's Tail Cut" is another way of re-imagining the exact same mechanic, turning into inflicting a minor leg injury. Another example, the terms "Stormwalker" and "Lightning Mage" both have the same flavor impact on the game, except they are just different kinds of flavor.The only difference between "Golden Wyvern" and "Spellshaper" is that the first one has a net benefit for the creative potential for the DM and his world, and the latter has a net detriment to the DM's creative potential. I know this may not be easy to believe, so let me explain.If they choose purely dry and categorical names for magical schools, like "Spellshaping" or "Conjuration", then the existence of those schools tends to fade. A feat like "Trip" is not regarded as something that exists in the game world, it is regarded as being a pure mechanic. It is easy for players and DMs assume that the 3E schools, like Conjuration, are similarly removed from the game world, and are purely mechanics. This occurs quite a bit because of the dry name. Another probable result is that these dry mechanical terms will be used in the game, and as a result all magic in the game is peppered with dry, categorical names that do not evoke anything or sound impressive or magical. Making a magical school stand out and have a personality of its own is made a lot harder when this happens, and most mages start sounding like rulebooks in game, and worse, all the different traditions start to blend in as merely alternative wizards, and arcane magic becomes homogenized.I guess another way of phrasing this is that I want there to be interesting, flavorful groups and traditions of mages in my own game. When D&D uses strictly mechanical and categorical names for everything, then the flavor of those names is just as permeating and damaging to that effort as the anti-Golden Wyvern group is claiming the GWA feat to be. I can always change the name of the magical tradition Golden Wyvern, but if no one in the game expects magical traditions like Golden Wyvern to exist in the first place, then adding them in a meaningful way is a lot harder.Argh, this is where having a single unified thread on this topic would come in handy. I posted my feelings on the new names a lot more clearly <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3930496&postcount=15" target="_blank">here</a>.</blockquote>

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