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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elf Witch" data-source="post: 5743691" data-attributes="member: 9037">Here is my issue with what a lot of you are saying about penalizing magic users. You may be making the game more interesting but are you making the game more fun for the person playing the caster?If you start adding penalties that seriously effect the caster then people are not going to want to play them and if they do they are going to be hesitant to cast spells which makes them next to useless in combat other then firing crossbolts in melee. Or they can be like first level wizards from old school fire your one spell then hide and maybe bolt out to drag your fallen party members to safety. If the magic effects the whole party and the caster causes the death of another party member that could lead to some hard feelings.I am a huge Shadowrun fan and they have a system for penalizing casters that works and is fair magic puts a drain on the caster's body every time you cast a spell you have to make a roll to resist drain if you don't stage the roll down you start taking penalties to everything and if you go to far then you can go unconscious or even kill yourself. But if you resist the drain you can keep throwing spells all day long if you want you also always know your spells. Also casters in Shadowrun can be as good as a street sam in using a weapon or they can be a great get away driver they are not just limited to throwing magic and then basically suck at everything else. The only difference is that most casters don't choose to have cyberware implanted in their body because it messes with magic so they don't have wired reflexes which means they don't get to go more than once in a round and the fighters go three or four times. Also everyone has the same amount of damage they can take before death the difference is how many dice you get to stage that damage roll down. But DnD is not like this first you have niche protection so casters are good at magic, fighters at swinging a weapon and absorbing damage. A full caster class like wizard or sorcerer only get 4 hit die and they for the most part are not made to go toe to toe in melee. Their weapon of choice is magic. And if you start messing with that and putting in penalties that are not built into the game then you start handicapping their ability to be effective. So if you do this what are you giving the casters in return for this? What makes it worth playing a caster?  In Shadowrun it is knowing that as a mage I can bind elementals to me and unleash them instead of magic. Now binding them is dangerous and can kill the caster or if I am a shaman I can call friendly spirits to help. It is also knowing that I am not totally dependent on magic to be effective.I can understand wanting magic to be more interesting and it is something I love in stories the cost mages pay for their abilities. I am just not sure that in a game that would lead to more fun for the players. People already complain about the 15 minute adventure day well if your caster has now been blinded by a migraine rendering them useless do you keep going or do you stop and let him sleep it off.</blockquote>

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