Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
There is annoyance, cost and permanent cost.
We already had that in the sister thread about muggles.

I can only accept your stance under the premisses that
a) you're entitled to use certain stuff
b) certain stuff is expected to be used to play the game

Most game systems I know that handle magic as something dangerous keep the layers of mundane reality and magical reality clearly apart and offer the option to use power at a price, but don't necessarily enforce the use of power. The choice is yours.

IŽll echo what another use just wrote: There's a stark difference between the concepts of a zero to hero story and a heroic sacrifice story.

We talk 3E, more specifically PF, I'm absolutely with you, no question. The interplay between a hardcoded difficulty, as expressed in CR/EL, classes and buff/debuff spells is a thing and adding additional costs beyond acquiring enough system mastery to know and understand this interaction would be weird.

The core game experience of systems like L5R 4th, CoC (especially the german version, which you should know), the Dark Heresy family or Warhammer Fantasy 2nd or Shadow of the Demon Lord is quite different and this difference has to be understood and accepted. A character is not expected to last and the question is what risks he/she/it is willing to take to last a little longer before succumbing.

I hope you can accept that there are different appeals to why we play what we play and accept that difference.