The cost of magic

[NichG]

You mean, you don't like the idea of spending 20 sessions questing for the components for the Fighter's new sword?

If the fighter is going to use that new sword for 20+ sessions going forward, then this is fine. Much better than spending 20 sessions dealing with the fallout of side-effects of a spell the wizard cast to one-shot a single dragon.
Even better would be to spend 20 sessions questing for the fighter to invent a signature maneuver that they'll use for the rest of the campaign.

[NigelWalmsley]

What magic "should" cost isn't a question with a single answer, because the appropriate cost of magic is contextual.

In a book, or movie, or other single-author fiction, the cost of magic can just be whatever is appropriate for the story you're trying to tell. If you want to tell a story where magic has costs that ruin people's lives for minor effects, you can do that. If you want to tell a story where magic does incredible things without any lasting cost, you can do that instead.

But in a TTRPG, there are constraints. Whatever magic you put in the game has to make for an enjoyable game, not just an interesting story. Now, there's still a lot of flexibility in what the role of magic is. A game like Call of Cthulhu can have magic that is costly and unimpressive. But if you're talking about a game that is "like D&D", the cost of magic has to be pretty low. Half of the people in a stock D&D party contribute by "doing magic". That means "doing magic" can't result in a meaningful chance of demons showing up and eating the party.

Another thing to bear in mind is that costs that are meaningful in real life or in other media often aren't meaningful in a TTRPG. For example, AD&D had some spells cost years off your life. This was a really bad balancing mechanic, because most campaigns don't last even one in-world year, let alone enough for it to matter if you cut five years or only four off your nominal lifespan. For all but the most dedicated roleplayers, the cost may as well have not existed. Similarly, various "if you do magic, monsters come after you" setups work poorly, because the expected default of the game is that you will be fighting monsters.

Frankly, I think the best approach for a TTRPG is to make whatever "terrible price" you're thinking of largely a fluff thing. So the Necromancer gets to be all emo about how calling up the souls of the dead disturbs the natural order of things, but without there being a risk that he'll roll a natural 1 at a bad time and leave the party down a man in the middle of a dungeon.

[Cluedrew]

Several people have been hinting at this but I'm going to spell it out how I think about it: You can't figure out the cost of magic without knowing the effects of magic.

A scene level ability should probably have a scene level cost. If something has a cost that should be felt for several scenes it should probably also have an effect that is felt (directly or indirectly) for several scenes. Of course its hardly a hard line, especially with costs and effects accumulating and being situational and stuff.

Then there is thematic elements as well. Maybe healing magic could drive you insane but that would be kind of weird.

[Ravens_cry]

It really all depends on the tone you are going for, what kind of world it's set in. Something like Call of Cthulhu and similar, you want magic to have an extremely heavy cost, though you also probably want it to have some potent effects, so it's also very tempting to use as well. Otherwise anyone using it will look like a fool. "I will mutate into an unspeakable creature of chaos in order to fling this small piece of metal at you at the speed of sound! Warping my mind as much as my body!" "Um, we got guns, dude."

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I always think of magic as being physically taxing in the long term. However, D&D spellcasters don't cast all their spells every day for several years, they cast all their spells for a few days then spend at least twice as many days traveling to/from the adventure. If they were casting all their spells every day like it's a full time job, I'd think they would be worse off than someone working 60 hours a week in a coal mine. Mechanically there's nothing stopping them from casting like that, but RP-wise it should be extremely taxing to do so.

Other costs include lack of mundane capabilities like fighting with weapons, skill proficiencies, etc., as well as a lack of combat training that causes a lower HD and no ability to use armor. There are ways around some of these things without sacrificing any spellcasting ability, but that requires effort on the part of the player and another type of opportunity cost for the character.

As far as always having a failure chance when casting and other variable outcome mechanics, there's not really an elegant way to do that in D&D. I think WoW actually did a good job on this: Casting classes need to stand still to cast, but fight mechanics require a lot of movement, so you need to pay attention and prioritize survival over casting sometimes.

You could also look at the World of Darkness rules, where you measure your number of successes rolled against the target's defense to see how effective your spell is against them. In that case failure occurs if you get fewer successes than what's required to beat their defense, and there are varying degrees of success each time depending on how well you roll and how many dice you get. While d20 systems are typically all-or-nothing with misses and hits, in the d10 system a high defense always reduces an attacker's effectiveness even when their attack succeeds. This is the type of system required for a game where spells inherently don't work every time, as you'll typically get at least one or two successes, but in a d20 system it'd be a real bummer to completely whiff the spell when you're not even in combat. D&D doesn't have the varying degrees of success mechanic, so it just doesn't make sense to require a check to cast a spell.

Regarding how new spells are learned, i.e. automatically gaining them on level-up, I think that's mostly to keep the game fun for everyone. Nobody wants to finally get 3rd level spell slots but still need to spend several sessions and/or a pile of gold to learn fireball. In previous editions spells were too powerful but they were balanced against being difficult to obtain, it's more fun for the person playing the character to just get the spells automatically, and it's more fun for everyone else that the spells are no longer overpowered*.


*I'm sure some spells are still too powerful, but it's not as extreme as previous editions.

[ezekielraiden]

Consider this: If there is a free feature that anybody may choose to pick up without character-building cost that lets you throw a fireball, but it costs you a permanent stat point every time you do, wouldn't every character pick up this feature unless his player was conceptually opposed to it for that character? Wouldn't every character who picked up that feature be more powerful? Yes, they would, because options to expend resources for effects are an increase in overall power.

As usual, you have many good points, but this made me want to respond for very specific reasons. Your (intentionally "toy") example made three assumptions that I think weaken it severely as an approach. To whit:

1. You pay nothing, in terms of "character" investment, to acquire the ability in the first place;
2. You pay a permanent and visible cost to do the magic thing in question;
3. You only get one magic thing to do.

These are...generally not how anyone would WANT to make such a system. And I know of a system that, IMO, inverted all of these and made magic really work. It was only unpopular because it DID work to balance magic, and thus made people who expected Phenomenal Cosmic Power upset at feeling "nerfed." I am, of course, referring to 4e Rituals.

To cast ritual spells in 4e, you need only acquire the Ritual Caster feat, spend money to learn the ritual, pay any associated ritual component costs, and sometimes make a skill roll to determine how much the ritual does for you. The vast majority of potent utility magic, including stuff like raising the dead, summoning mounts, understanding languages, and changing the weather, got ported into 4e's Ritual system. In general, only the most ridiculously niche or insanely powerful abilities were off-limits, like wishes or creating demiplanes. (More or less, those were tacitly treated the same way as RP: Impossible to make a general-use structure, so best left to DM discretion, as the DM will know better what costs and benefits such should have than the designers ever could.)

By your metrics, this should barely qualify as "restrictive" at all, and literally every character that isn't starved for feats should be picking up rituals left and right. Except...that didn't happen. In fact, rather the opposite: most characters that didn't get the feat for free avoided them, and despite gold (and residuum) being a river, players were often extremely reluctant to spend even a single coin on ritual magic, even when it would be extremely useful. It was seen as sacrificing permanent benefits (magic items) to get temporary and circumstantial ones, with the only major exceptions being item-enchantment-related, or Raise Dead.

I think this is very instructive. It shows us that non-"hard" limits CAN still work, if they hit the part of player psychology that causes the same issues as "Too Awesome to Use" (as TVTropes puts it). Further, it shows that a small but meaningful hurdle to get in, as long as the benefits aren't unambiguously amazing for everyone, can be an excellent deterrent for the "everyone takes it" problem without also deterring people who seek it out for flavor reasons.

Thoughts?

[Segev]

As usual, you have many good points, but this made me want to respond for very specific reasons. Your (intentionally "toy") example made three assumptions that I think weaken it severely as an approach. To whit:

1. You pay nothing, in terms of "character" investment, to acquire the ability in the first place;
2. You pay a permanent and visible cost to do the magic thing in question;
3. You only get one magic thing to do.

These are...generally not how anyone would WANT to make such a system. And I know of a system that, IMO, inverted all of these and made magic really work. It was only unpopular because it DID work to balance magic, and thus made people who expected Phenomenal Cosmic Power upset at feeling "nerfed." I am, of course, referring to 4e Rituals.

To cast ritual spells in 4e, you need only acquire the Ritual Caster feat, spend money to learn the ritual, pay any associated ritual component costs, and sometimes make a skill roll to determine how much the ritual does for you. The vast majority of potent utility magic, including stuff like raising the dead, summoning mounts, understanding languages, and changing the weather, got ported into 4e's Ritual system. In general, only the most ridiculously niche or insanely powerful abilities were off-limits, like wishes or creating demiplanes. (More or less, those were tacitly treated the same way as RP: Impossible to make a general-use structure, so best left to DM discretion, as the DM will know better what costs and benefits such should have than the designers ever could.)

By your metrics, this should barely qualify as "restrictive" at all, and literally every character that isn't starved for feats should be picking up rituals left and right. Except...that didn't happen. In fact, rather the opposite: most characters that didn't get the feat for free avoided them, and despite gold (and residuum) being a river, players were often extremely reluctant to spend even a single coin on ritual magic, even when it would be extremely useful. It was seen as sacrificing permanent benefits (magic items) to get temporary and circumstantial ones, with the only major exceptions being item-enchantment-related, or Raise Dead.

I think this is very instructive. It shows us that non-"hard" limits CAN still work, if they hit the part of player psychology that causes the same issues as "Too Awesome to Use" (as TVTropes puts it). Further, it shows that a small but meaningful hurdle to get in, as long as the benefits aren't unambiguously amazing for everyone, can be an excellent deterrent for the "everyone takes it" problem without also deterring people who seek it out for flavor reasons.

Thoughts?

I find it hard to take your comments on its balance and reception seriously, because it assumes beliefs and preferences that do not align with why I despise 4e casting. I despise 4e casting because it's not functionally different from 4e martial or 4e skill or 4e ... anything else. They're all martial adepts.

I never got so far as the ritual casting rules, because 4e's problems were that magic wasn't any different than anything else. This is a flaw in literally every aspect of it. The fact that any disagreement with this paradigm seems to be dismissed as "wanting phenomenal cosmic power" rather than considering the actual reasons they express for their preferences.

That said, by my metrics, a feat is a cost. Therefore, if people didn't want rituals, they wouldn't spend the feat. My toy problem was very specific. No, nobody is designing systems in that precise fashion, but the statement is important to make because people WERE asserting that having a really high cost of using magic would keep people from choosing to have the option.

[ezekielraiden]

I find it hard to take your comments on its balance and reception seriously, because it assumes beliefs and preferences that do not align with why I despise 4e casting. I despise 4e casting because it's not functionally different from 4e martial or 4e skill or 4e ... anything else. They're all martial adepts.

I never got so far as the ritual casting rules, because 4e's problems were that magic wasn't any different than anything else. This is a flaw in literally every aspect of it. The fact that any disagreement with this paradigm seems to be dismissed as "wanting phenomenal cosmic power" rather than considering the actual reasons they express for their preferences.

That said, by my metrics, a feat is a cost. Therefore, if people didn't want rituals, they wouldn't spend the feat. My toy problem was very specific. No, nobody is designing systems in that precise fashion, but the statement is important to make because people WERE asserting that having a really high cost of using magic would keep people from choosing to have the option.

Well, if you hate it, you hate it, I can't really argue with that. If you don't wish to engage any further than that, I can accept that.

However, if you do wish to engage further...

Spoiler

Show

I think that ignoring Rituals and decrying 4e magic as "no different from combat" is...a bit odd. That is, it sounds like the things you wanted from magic were specifically moved over to Rituals, meaning you cut out right before getting (some of) the stuff you were looking for. "Magic" in 4e includes both combat actions, which are comparable to non-magic combat actions, and non-combat ritual spells, which...covers everything else magic does in 4e (well, other than magic items I guess, since those can have more varied function).

Now, if what you mean is "I want the process of doing magical things to be simply, fundamentally different from the process of doing non-magical things, such that it is never possible even in principle to conflate the two," then yes, anything like 4e's approach will never be your cup of tea, and its rituals will be at best a bandaid over a bullet wound.

[Satinavian]

I have not played 4E much and don't like it for other reasons.

But i would have bought rituals for every character. And i found it a bit strange that they still had caster classes when basically all relevant magic of the game is now behind a specific feat.

[ezekielraiden]

I have not played 4E much and don't like it for other reasons.

But i would have bought rituals for every character. And i found it a bit strange that they still had caster classes when basically all relevant magic of the game is now behind a specific feat.

It is worth noting that there were many rituals that were class-specific.

[Anymage]

I have not played 4E much and don't like it for other reasons.

But i would have bought rituals for every character. And i found it a bit strange that they still had caster classes when basically all relevant magic of the game is now behind a specific feat.

Dropping the 4e issues, 5e also allows a character to learn a sizable chunk of spells at just the cost of a feat. Very few builds I've seen prioritize taking vhuman/custom lineage for Ritual Caster right out the gate, or even making it a mandatory fourth level pick.

That said, I do think that the reasons people had for disliking 4e in the first place are kind of tangential to ezekielraiden's main point. For the people who did like and understand the system, there are reasons why rituals were something that were largely avoided even by people who got Ritual Caster as a free bonus feat.

[NigelWalmsley]

I suspect when Segev complains that "magic is the same as non-magic", he's talking about the fact that they are the same in combat. It's not that rituals are "a bandaid over a bullet hole", it's that they're fundamentally irrelevant to the issue. Rituals are basically what would happen if you added a feat to 3e that let people who couldn't cast spells natively activate scrolls. The issue with classes is that every class uses the same resource management mechanics, while in 3e you had this huge variety of classes that ranged from the Druid to the Binder to the Warblade to the Incarnate to the Warlock.

[Telok]

I have not played 4E much and don't like it for other reasons.

But i would have bought rituals for every character. And i found it a bit strange that they still had caster classes when basically all relevant magic of the game is now behind a specific feat.

Eh. My group played 4e D&D for a year (40 to 45-ish sessions). Very unimpressed. Rituals were... sad. I think I was the only person who ever used them across 3 characters, got to use them like 4 times, and they only did anything once. That was a weird light/not light torch ritual that let a no-darkvision human rogue do a solo scouting thing. Every other ritual had no effect except waste time and money.

The biggest issue I think was that 4e didn't really just push all the non-combat magic to rituals, but they did that while cutting down the magic to "cannot disrupt DM plot/railroad" levels. But that was sort of our experience with 4e all over. Great for the DM but lots of "you only have actual abilities in combat" for the PCs. I'm sure someone will disagree with details or specifics, but that was our experience.

[Segev]

I think that ignoring Rituals and decrying 4e magic as "no different from combat" is...a bit odd. That is, it sounds like the things you wanted from magic were specifically moved over to Rituals, meaning you cut out right before getting (some of) the stuff you were looking for. "Magic" in 4e includes both combat actions, which are comparable to non-magic combat actions, and non-combat ritual spells, which...covers everything else magic does in 4e (well, other than magic items I guess, since those can have more varied function).

Now, if what you mean is "I want the process of doing magical things to be simply, fundamentally different from the process of doing non-magical things, such that it is never possible even in principle to conflate the two," then yes, anything like 4e's approach will never be your cup of tea, and its rituals will be at best a bandaid over a bullet wound.

I want playing a spellcaster to be fundamentally different from playing a non-spellcaster, and playing a psion to be fundamentally different from both, yes. I do not mind - and in fact like - subsystems that casters can't/don't use being available to non-casters, as well. Bo9S was good and welcome, and PF's Path of War increasing that further is great. 4e making every class a Bo9S martial adept and just calling some of it "magic" and some of it "not magic" was...disappointing, to put it mildly.

I don't mind the concept of rituals. I don't even mind them being open to anybody who takes a feat. 5e handles it quite decently.

I have not played 4E much and don't like it for other reasons.

But i would have bought rituals for every character.

I believe I did in the two games I played (I played a caster and a non-caster, but I can't even remember what specific classes. Probably rogue and wizard, but I don't know for sure at this point.)

And i found it a bit strange that they still had caster classes when basically all relevant magic of the game is now behind a specific feat.

It is worth noting that there were many rituals that were class-specific.

But still lock it behind a feat.

This kind-of leads to my biggest issue with 4e: what's the point of playing a caster if there's no difference than playing a non-caster? What's the point of playing any particular class? They're all the same! (I know, technically, they have distinct features, but in practice, the features are just variants on the same mechanic. The experience of playing one class over another varies as little as playing one champion over another in a MOBA. There is variety there, but it's not extensive enough to build interesting characters around, just slightly different roles in combat.)

I suspect when Segev complains that "magic is the same as non-magic", he's talking about the fact that they are the same in combat. It's not that rituals are "a bandaid over a bullet hole", it's that they're fundamentally irrelevant to the issue. Rituals are basically what would happen if you added a feat to 3e that let people who couldn't cast spells natively activate scrolls. The issue with classes is that every class uses the same resource management mechanics, while in 3e you had this huge variety of classes that ranged from the Druid to the Binder to the Warblade to the Incarnate to the Warlock.

I am mostly complaining that 4e made everything a martial adept. I like having different subsystems for different Things.

[Satinavian]

I suspect when Segev complains that "magic is the same as non-magic", he's talking about the fact that they are the same in combat. It's not that rituals are "a bandaid over a bullet hole", it's that they're fundamentally irrelevant to the issue. Rituals are basically what would happen if you added a feat to 3e that let people who couldn't cast spells natively activate scrolls. The issue with classes is that every class uses the same resource management mechanics, while in 3e you had this huge variety of classes that ranged from the Druid to the Binder to the Warblade to the Incarnate to the Warlock.

My argument was more along the lines that for me the interesting magic is near esclusively the noncombat portion.

Combat magic only provides alternative options to things that are already possible. Its presence or absence doesn't really change anything fundamentally. It is the utility side of things where magic is actually important.
To distinguish between caster and noncaster based on how to kill things and neglecting all the actual word changing magic is laughable. How they fight is one of the least interesting/important aspects a character can have. At least, when you play an RPG, not some skirmish wargame.

[Anymage]

I want playing a spellcaster to be fundamentally different from playing a non-spellcaster, and playing a psion to be fundamentally different from both, yes. I do not mind - and in fact like - subsystems that casters can't/don't use being available to non-casters, as well. Bo9S was good and welcome, and PF's Path of War increasing that further is great. 4e making every class a Bo9S martial adept and just calling some of it "magic" and some of it "not magic" was...disappointing, to put it mildly.
...
I am mostly complaining that 4e made everything a martial adept. I like having different subsystems for different Things.

I find this "different power sources should have different resolution mechanics" to be an odd insistence. Not only do most games tend to have a unified underlying mechanic that various powers tend to engage similarly with, but even in D&D I find it telling that academic laboratory magic, the innate powers of a bloodline, the primal forces of nature and channeling the power of the gods all run on the exact same system and nobody complains. I mean yes, 4e is at its heart a miniatures skirmish game and I get how that isn't some people's cup of tea. But in that context the pieces absolutely feel distinct. And brushing them off as all being the same thing because they run under the AEDU system is like saying that sorcerers and druids are both exactly the same because they both have the same spellcasting progression.

Also, since this is about the cost of magic and Ritual Caster as a concept (and its implementation in 4e instead of 4e as a whole), I'll repeat again that Ritual Caster in 5e is rather similar and I don't see that being a must take for every character.

[Anonymouswizard]

I have not played 4E much and don't like it for other reasons.

But i would have bought rituals for every character. And i found it a bit strange that they still had caster classes when basically all relevant magic of the game is now behind a specific feat.

In a class-based game there are arguable advantages and disadvantages to having class-agnostic powers for the taking, and rituals were a specific form of that alongside feats. There are also advantages and disadvantages to an explicit divide btween combat an noncombat magic, a split which in D&D only appears in one edition.

But rituals themselves are of questionable value, and there are one or two that depending on world-building are either necessary or redundant. They can also scale weirdly, the affordability of Raise Dead is based on character tier, which means there's a noticeable drop in affordability at levels 11 and 21 (not enough to put them out of reach, but it is noticeable).

That said, I don't think it's inherently a bad idea to have ritual magic. It's just that in the fantasy system I'm writing magic rituals are about sidestepping costs, for some relatively cheap chalk, incense, candles, and other b=gubbins you can do a ritual lasting ten minutes per point of fatifgue the spell costs to cast the spell for free. Useful for some, but fire-mages never bother.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think, personally (and depending on the implementation details), that I would prefer sort of a hybrid of 4e and 5e's rituals.

Move 99% of the non-combat stuff into Rituals. By default these cost one or both of expensive components and/or time. Anyone can use these. At most you could "level lock" them by putting them in tiers or levels like spell levels. No feat, just need to have acquired the knowledge from somewhere.

Then give casters bonuses to casting Rituals from a class-defined list. Or based on tags. Things like
* Can cast using spell slot, dropping the time cost to <smaller number like 1 action>. So anyone can cast dispel magic, but a wizard can do it fast (at the cost of a slot).
* Reduced prices on expensive components. So anyone can cast raise dead, but clerics can do it paying less than <umpteen billion gold>.
* Improved effectiveness. Anyone can cast speak with animals, but druids can push it to animal friendship.

You could make a Ritual Caster <Class> feat that emulates some of those bonuses while not being of that class. So a rogue with Ritual Caster <Wizard> could cast <Wizard> Rituals with some or all of the perks a real wizard could. Not the "use spell slots for very fast casting" unless they had spell slots from another class, but maybe "cast this fast X times per day".

Now everyone has access to utility magic, but casters do it better/faster/cheaper. While leaving combat room for casters and non-casters to use different resource structures.

[Democratus]

I don't think there is a cost that could be high enough in any publishable RPG.

Even if you had a system where every wizard could cast only 10 spells, and the 10th one would kill them. I could just create a wizard, cast 10 spells, and then create a new wizard.

Rather than look for something to make spellcasting costly. I would rather see something that makes spellcasting interesting.

[NigelWalmsley]

Having played 4e extensively, I can assure you this is not the case. They feel significantly different. Even classes within the same Role feel very different.

I think you would be hard-pressed to defend the claim that classes feel different compared to 3e.

My argument was more along the lines that for me the interesting magic is near esclusively the noncombat portion.

I just don't think that's true at all. The combat minigame is the most detailed part of the game (there are not, for better or for worse, five books worth of social or exploration challenges), and the differences in how characters perform in that environment are quite meaningful. I don't think my experience (where combat has been the majority of the majority of D&D sessions I've played) is atypical.

That's not to say that non-combat magic is boring or anything, but frankly if you gave me the choice between "characters work basically the same in combat, but differently outside it" and "characters work differently in combat, but basically the same outside it" I would choose the latter in a heartbeat (at least for a D&D-like game). Having those abilities is important, but they don't need to be as different as combat abilities (as those take more screen time).

I find this "different power sources should have different resolution mechanics" to be an odd insistence. Not only do most games tend to have a unified underlying mechanic that various powers tend to engage similarly with

I don't think that's actually true. I mean, yeah, games mostly have a single RNG, but if you look at, say, Shadowrun, shooting a guy with a gun, hacking a computer network, calling up some spirits, and casting a spell all work pretty differently. It's not unusual for different characters to use different minigames.

but even in D&D I find it telling that academic laboratory magic, the innate powers of a bloodline, the primal forces of nature and channeling the power of the gods all run on the exact same system and nobody complains.

I mean they don't do that? Only Clerics and Druids use the same set of mechanics for casting, and even then there are clear differences between the classes.

Even if you had a system where every wizard could cast only 10 spells, and the 10th one would kill them. I could just create a wizard, cast 10 spells, and then create a new wizard.

That only makes certain kinds of costs unworkable. If backlash happens every time you cast a spell, but is generally survivable, you could have a cost to magic that people couldn't cheat (this is basically Shadowrun's Drain mechanic). It's certainly possible for magic to have a cost, it's just not clear to me that it's necessary.

[Satinavian]

I just don't think that's true at all. The combat minigame is the most detailed part of the game (there are not, for better or for worse, five books worth of social or exploration challenges), and the differences in how characters perform in that environment are quite meaningful. I don't think my experience (where combat has been the majority of the majority of D&D sessions I've played) is atypical.

See, that is one of the main reasons i don't actually play D&D. Way too much emphasis on combat, way too litttle for everything else for what i consider ideal for a fantasy RPG.

At the moment i am active in 4 different groups using different systems for regular heroic fantasy settings. On average we get slightly less than one fight per session.

[Segev]

Nope. They feel just as different from each other as 3e or 5e classes do. Just in different ways.

What I won't try to "defend" is that 4e classes are all configured for tactical battlemat play with tokens. It's within that context that they feel different. More than any other edition of D&D, it was optimized as a combat rule set. And a very specific way of playing combat at that.

OTOH that was the direction D&D had been going since 2e combat & tactics, so it's hardly surprising that Heinsoo would double down on it and try to make it work properly. What he didn't reckon with is grognard and sacred cow power.

I get annoyed when "it doesn't actually feel like D&D" is dismissed as "grognard and sacred cow power." If you're going to dismiss any criticism based on how the new system or settings are designed that way, they could make "D&D" be a collectable card game that exactly mimics Magic: the Gathering's mechanics, and anybody who complains that it's "not D&D" would be equally dismissed as "grognards" who are wedded to "sacred cows" like being able to play characters, or having character classes, or the game having a DM.

Or you could have made 4e to be what Gloomhaven is, and claimed that anybody who doesn't like it is just a grognard wedded to sacred cows.

4e is a well-balanced tactical game. I imagine it does invite differing tactics. It doesn't invite much in the way of characters who feel like they do different things, to my experience. I feel like I'm playing the same class, just with different choices made about which features I'll pick up. More like playing different Vigilante archetypes in PF than like playing a cleric vs. a ranger vs. a monk.

I will agree that 4e would be easily recognized as a fantasy RPG, and that it could even get criticized, if made by a third party, as "a D&D-clone," but most of its defenders then would be rabidly denying that it's a D&D clone on the basis of how radically the system was altered and how the class design is so much better balanced for the combat/tactical game. I think it a fair criticism or comment that "4e is a very well-balanced and perfectly fine fantasy combat simulator that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike D&D."


Ranting on 4e aside, though, it definitely does exemplify that you don't need a "cost of magic" beyond opportunity cost and resource management to have a well-balanced magic system that stands next to its non-magical counterparts. But it kind-of fails on the other front because, in order to do this, it mostly just eliminates all difference between using magic and not using magic. This doesn't mean magic can't be balanced with non-magic, but it does mean it's harder if you don't take the cop-out of saying that whether you pick the lock or cast the knock spell, you do it by using an Encounter power to pick locks.

[Pex]

I'm not dismissing it. It absolutely didn't feel like D&D. Because it didn't have the sacred cows any good grognard wants. It's an explanation, not a dismissal.

It didn't feel like D&D to me at all but I loved some of the innovations so I tried it, and found I loved it. Then I burnt out on the super heavy mechanical battlemat play. And then along came 5e. Which had some innovations I loved, so I tried it, and found I loved it. Story of a new edition for me.

But long story short, it's not just not having sacred cows and that grognard feeling that is a totally fair objection point to 4e. Its tactical battlemat focus is also something that's not going to be for everyone. But classes were most definitely not all the same.

Ana analogy would be previously having a bunch of vegetables, then someone comes along with a bunch of fruits, and objecting that they're all the same. They're just a different kind of different, with a different set of common traits.

4E is one person has a green grape. Another has a red grape. That person has a white grape. Over here is a red grape with seeds. The 4E fans say, see? all different. The 4E critics say, see? they all have grapes. The critics have the better claim.

[Segev]

I'm not dismissing it. It absolutely didn't feel like D&D. Because it didn't have the sacred cows any good grognard wants. It's an explanation, not a dismissal.

It didn't feel like D&D to me at all but I loved some of the innovations so I tried it, and found I loved it. Then I burnt out on the super heavy mechanical battlemat play. And then along came 5e. Which had some innovations I loved, so I tried it, and found I loved it. Story of a new edition for me.

Fair enough.

But long story short, it's not just not having sacred cows and that grognard feeling that is a totally fair objection point to 4e. Its tactical battlemat focus is also something that's not going to be for everyone. But classes were most definitely not all the same.

Ana analogy would be previously having a bunch of vegetables, then someone comes along with a bunch of fruits, and objecting that they're all the same. They're just a different kind of different, with a different set of common traits.

I'd say that 3e had fruits, vegetables, and candies, and 4e came along and just had fruits, then swore up and down that it still had candies and vegetables, too. You can make a perfectly fine dish with naught but fruits, but that doesn't replace the lack of vegetables and candies.

[jjordan]

What is and what should be the cost of magic?

In my opinion magic ought to be organized differently and more skill-based. I've argued that here. But I also concluded that the magic system was too deeply embedded in the game, too many changes were needed.

[Anonymouswizard]

4E is one person has a green grape. Another has a red grape. That person has a white grape. Over here is a red grape with seeds. The 4E fans say, see? all different. The 4E critics say, see? they all have grapes. The critics have the better claim.

Eh, it's closer to 'everybody has a fruit salad', there's likely grapes in there but not everybody's got apple or kiwifruit. Mine has guava, because I'm the weird guy who bought the 'American Plants' supplement.

Honestly? The difference between 4e classes is similar to the difference in spell lusts in 3e. People like to claim that 4e classes are the same, but if that's true the same can be said of the Cleric and Wizard spell lists. They even get a lot of spells that do the same things!


Honestly, 4e's problems are less to do with homogeny and more to do with crunchiness. Not to dsay that crunch is bad, but D&D4e made it next to impossible to build a mechanically simple character for much of it's run. And when it did it caused balance problems. Which isn't a massive problem if and of itself, but it turned away a certain kind of player.

Oh, and issues with a fast release schedule limiting playtesting, but we're getting further away from your complaint there.

I love Shadowrun, including the shopping step. But others don't. So I don't run Shadowrun 5e or 3e anymore, I run Shadiowrun Anarchy, where instead of buying individual pieces of cyberware I just buy a handful of 'amps' with a DIY sysrem.

[NigelWalmsley]

Honestly? The difference between 4e classes is similar to the difference in spell lusts in 3e. People like to claim that 4e classes are the same, but if that's true the same can be said of the Cleric and Wizard spell lists. They even get a lot of spells that do the same things!

4e classes are vastly more similar than 3e class lists. Like, it's not even close. A third-string 3e caster like a Dread Necromancer or Wu Jen has a wider range of powers than anything in 4e.

I honestly don't get the insistence that 4e classes are actually super different. They just... aren't. You can build two Wizards who are more different from each other in 3e than it is possible for two 4e characters to be. That doesn't necessarily mean 4e's a bad game! Preferring simplicity is a reasonable stance. If you wanted to say that a centralized resource management mechanic is good, there are arguments for that. But the argument that ever single character using the same resource management system does not result in characters being more similar than not doing that is just facially absurd.

[JNAProductions]

4e classes are vastly more similar than 3e class lists. Like, it's not even close. A third-string 3e caster like a Dread Necromancer or Wu Jen has a wider range of powers than anything in 4e.

I honestly don't get the insistence that 4e classes are actually super different. They just... aren't. You can build two Wizards who are more different from each other in 3e than it is possible for two 4e characters to be. That doesn't necessarily mean 4e's a bad game! Preferring simplicity is a reasonable stance. If you wanted to say that a centralized resource management mechanic is good, there are arguments for that. But the argument that ever single character using the same resource management system does not result in characters being more similar than not doing that is just facially absurd.

But no one claimed that...

People HAVE claimed that 4E characters are basically identical, even across classes. Which is false. You can get a bigger spread in 3.5, sure, but that comes at a pretty considerable cost in both complexity and balance.

You're not wrong to prefer 3.5 to 4E, or to dislike 4E entirely, or anything like that. But to say that 4E classes are basically identical is, at best, misguided.

[Anonymouswizard]

I never said that the classes don't all use the same resource mechanic (although they don't, three out of four psionic classes use a slightly more flexible system, and essentials classes use a completely different system). I never said that 4e classes have more inherent diversity than 3.X classes. I said that there is as much overlap in the 3.5 spell lists as there are in the 4e power lists. Honestly there's probably a bit more overlap, but not enough that I'd casually notice.

Now there is less variety in 4e, bit not to the absurd degree that people claim. The four roles all benefit from different combat playstyles, each class throws some twists on how it executes it's role, and selecting different powers can make two characters of the same class feel different. Now 4e does focus on combat, and you can make arguments for and against that, but that's not the point I was arguing against. Oh, and skill challenges are a separate issue, b because apparently that one mechanic makes 4e more broken then Scion 1e.

The argument was that all variety in 4e is basically minor flavour. Which isn't true, it's just a bad reaction to 1) 4e not providing as much diversity as 3.X, and 2) an unfortunately aggressive marketing campaign. Which is the reason for the fruit salad analogy, yes there's a lot of similarities between one fruit salad and another, but if I make two fruit salads with different fruits eating them is going to be two different experiences.

[Mechalich]

The argument regarding variety of abilities and resource management is only marginally relevant to the idea of the cost of magic.

It does matter in the sense that if you have different forms of magic they can have different costs in addition to working differently. This is actually quite common, settings often have a form of magic that is difficult to master but ultimately without cost, and form of magic that is easy, but will ultimately cost you everything (commonly, your soul). Star Wars is probably the most familiar example of this, but the idea of 'dark magic' appears in all sorts of sources.

Unfortunately this sort of thing is very tricky in games. For one, morality-based costs of magic are tricky generally because they rely on at least some moral consensus among the audience in order to function (the aforementioned Star Wars has fought fandom wars about this for decades). They also often rely on a very religious idea that what happens in this life is really only a test for the afterlife, which allows for systems where doing evil = increased power = increased suffering for the innocent and that's somehow okay because it's only the next life that matters. This is arguably even true in a setting like D&D, where an given person is likely to exist for far longer as a petitioner than they were alive, but it allows for a lot of really weird thinking that can get very disturbing (the Euthanatos, from Mage: the Ascension, possess a worldview whereby killing people can actually serve as salvation for the people you just murdered and well...that book has a lot of disclaimers in it for a reason).

Beyond that, it can be very difficult to manifest moral consequences in a game scenario. For one, many players simply don't care if bargaining for power makes their character horribly evil or that Asmodeus now owns the character's soul because they don't intend on that debt ever coming due during a campaign. For another, having a system where the GM is obligated to say 'doing X makes your character more evil' may be rather meaningless because the GM's ability to induce a player to active role-player character degradation is highly limited. This leads to scenarios wherein PCs accumulate an ever-growing number of dark side points or some other evil counters without changing their portrayal one iota until they cross some arbitrary numeric threshold and are suddenly turned into a NPC.