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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7587468" data-attributes="member: 4937">Funny to watch the younger professionals fan boying over the older professionals, though I will second [MENTION=6984451]ParanoydStyle[/MENTION]'s comment and say that 3e D&D was and is my favorite RPG game system ever.D&D spells are in and of themselves what takes a D&D game from more rules medium to rules heavy (though the introduction of feats goes a long way toward that as well).  By page count half of a given players guide will be spells in any edition of the game, and over the long run spells tend to cause the most bloat and the most opportunities for breaking the games balance.In 1e Haste was really good, but technically had to put up with it aging you by 2 years every time you cast it.  If I had to make any criticism of the work the 3e team did, it was failing to appreciate how many spells in 1e were good, but had horrific side effects to balance them sometimes hidden away in the text of the DMG, or which were good but tactically suppressed because spells like Fireball and Lightning bolt were so over powered in 1e/2e.  I think the team did an excellent job of balancing direct damage, which had been such a go to thing for M-U's in earlier editions, but failed to recognize just how much they were opening up alternatives like save or suck and buffing strategies (particularly around shapechanging spells).  I think it's the sort of thing that would have likely escaped play testing, in part because groups of experienced gamers would have tended to glom onto existing known spells, spell selections, and strategies.  But what I've learned in going on 40 years of playing RPGs, is that the weakness of an enduring system is often the same as its strengths.   Systems that try to systematize magic or fit it into some other neat box tend to produce colorless magic compared to the esoteric and often weirdness that is each distinctive D&D spell.  They also tend to produce casters that have single knacks and largely stick to just a few big hammers that they use to solve every problem, where as the structure of fire and forget spell slots holding highly distinctive spells tends to force variety on the caster.   Ars Magicka is extremely evocative, but I'm not sure that actually outdoes D&D in terms of capacity for making magic odd.  And to the extent that it does, it would do so through the same sort of bloat that you'd find in a long list of D&D spells, as the abstract mechanics and creative ideas were reified into specific effects.  (I guess while I'm at it, I'll say Ars Magicka is really great work as well.)</blockquote>

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