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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6835902" data-attributes="member: 87792">The key problem here is the difference between a schtick and a spell - or more accurately that a spell is a specific type of schtick.Action Surge, to give one example familiar to almost everyone is a schtick. It shows that things are going down (and I'm calling timber) - and is very distinctive to the fighter. It's about as much a marker that things are going down and about as distinctive as a fireball spell is to a wizard. As mentioned the 1e monk's abilities are all schticks.Spells are a type of schtick. Other than in 4e they are a type of schtick with a method and some set interactions attached (such as not working in an anti-magic field). And when people are objecting to the ranger spell list they are saying "I want my ranger to be awesomely skilled rather than sprinkling some magical pixie dust and chanting Bibbity Bobbity Boo - and because they are awesomely skilled this shouldn't interact with magic". Because although the specific words aren't specified, that's only a slight exaggeration for what is specified when something is declared to be a spell - you don't just get to say "That's no longer a spell", you need to work on the entire spell choosing mechanism because it is specific to spells. If you're going to make magic distinctive this way then this is a necessary consequence.Or to bring back somehting from 3.X that should have been explored far more than it was, abilities were differentiated into normal, Extraordinary, Supernatural, Spell-like, and Spells on top of that. 4e said "These are abilities. Make them what you will" (and for some reason some people took that and in a flying leap of logic said "All abilities are therefore spells"). But when you want to churn out shovelware books the easiest way to create abilities is make them Spell-Like using pre-made parts off the shelf.So monster abilities defaulted to spells. So did everything else. (2e had been a pretty bad offender in its own time to be fair).Not all schticks are spells and not all of them should be. Not all magic is spells and not all of it should be. Some of it should just be. Why is that mountain upside down? "A wizard did it by casting Mordaniken's Mountain Mover" is possibly the least interesting and least magical answer possible.Oh, we can talk about the McDonalds Effect - remembering that McDonalds was far more popular in the 1980s than it is today. But from what you are saying you've got the reason backwards.We no longer as a general rule need to behave like the villain in The Incredibles. We no longer need to hold other people down because "when everyone is super no one is". We can instead be happy that others are special without objecting that they haven't done any tedious makework that has been made deliberately and artificially boring just because we think they should.And from this I'd go on to mention the edition wars. The idea that because the ranger can fire two shots in a round and it's called a power rather than one that means they must be using magic. No one can be special in a way the wizard isn't - except that skill with a bow is entirely different to the way the wizard does things.YMMV. That's not why I played a wizard. I do end up with characters that are pretty powerful - but gamebreaking is no fun.Where 4e and Apocalypse World are poster children for classless skill-based systems. Right.In 4e there is assumed broad competence (it was another point edition warriors hated - that all your skills levelled up as you levelled up). It's simply that only certain classes are outstanding at some skills. And we recently had a situation in the game I was running where the bard making the diplomacy checks was absolutely the wrong thing to do and it was easier for the average CHA character who'd been playing good cop than the bard who'd broken the suspect's fingers to interrogate them.This is like comparing foam-covered boffer swords to nerf-darts however.First, there's nothing wrong with class proliferation for extra experiences.Second necessity is the mother of invention. If we want the benefits of freedom and creativity let's throw out the entire 300 page rulebook that is the PHB. And the DMG. And the MM with it. On the other hand restrictions can drive creativity. Present me a blank sheet and I don't know what to do with it. Seed the water with ideas and I have dozens that build off them.</blockquote>

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