Dark Sun announced as new D&D4e setting for 2010!!

[dolio]

The only valid argument I'll allow to exist is that somehow you prepare those spells while resting which lets you cast them after that without exhausting yourself in any real way. But even then, why can't I prepare 26 lvl 2 spells instead of 3 lvl 7, 4 lvl6, etc.?

You can sort of do this in 3rd edition, in that you can prepare any spell of a lower level in a higher level slot (with no actual benefits when you cast the spell; it doesn't count as a higher level spell for save DCs or anything, as that requires a feat). Of course, it doesn't give you the kind of trade off you describe above (multiple lower-level slots for a single high level slot), or work in reverse (sacrifice multiple lower level slots for a higher level slot).

Not sure about any prior editions.

 

[WholesaleGenocide]

I fucking hate rituals. Yeah, they made it so you can do all that non-combat shit that Wizards used to be able to do in 3.5 (to an extent), except it takes forever to do (often 10 mins per cast, or more) and takes a hefty amount of gold every cast. If you want to, for example, cast water walking on your party, prepare to expend 20 gold and 10 minutes per cast. Your average party is 4-5 people, so there goes 80-100 gold and 40-50 minutes, meaning most people are going to be running low on time by the time you finish casting it on the entire party. This isn't *always* the case, because some improve with your arcana/religion/etc check, but for fucks sake, the time required to cast these severely limits how useful they are.

In my 4.0 adventures (only levels 1-5), I have never found a time or place where casting a ritual would be more beneficial than doing anything else out of combat, while in 3.5 I was the Wizard that banned evocation and just focused on divination and some control spells. It's quite the kick in the balls.

And I know, J1M will raise his blood pressure and roar "YOU JUST WANT TO PLAY AN OVERPOWERED CLASS" but the problem is that 4th edition makes every damn class boring, instead of 3.5's vast majority of them.

A lot of the martial problems were actually addressed in Tome of Battle, one of the late late splat books. Wizard/Druid/Etc overpoweredness only becomes incredibly apparent when polymorph and other such stupidity becomes available.

 

[LeStryfe79]

If your DM allows you to rest 8 hours after each encounter, then you have a shitty DM..

The point isn't whether or not a DM allows it, but that players will want to try it. A major design goal of 4E was to do away with this, but instead WotC made it worse. = Fail

You exert yourself to get extra-ordinary results. This tires you out and you are reduced to a smaller subset of abilities until you rest up. How is this hard to understand?.

Except that many daily abilities have nothing to do with exertion. It's all about the numbers my friend. Dailies, Encounters, and At-Wills is another way of saying "RECHARGE TIME", Which is exactly what you'd expect from a game trying to emulate a MMORPG. = FAIL

Real life parallel: I bet you could run a mile in real life if you had to. I highly doubt you could repeat this every ten minutes for 16 hours. But no matter how many miles you run in a day, I bet you would always be capable of posting dumb shit on this message board.

Well you fucking have me there. The most I've ever run in 16 hrs is 26.2 miles (3hr 19min) which is the classic marathon. However, there are plenty of crazy fuckers who do run 96 miles in 16 hours. http://www.run100s.com/ultra.htm

But I guess you're a little too out of touch with reality to know what humans are capable of...

= W.I.N. :D

 

[Lord Sudaca]

Are people comparing the abilities in darksun and real life?? MMMM do we live ina desert world? Do a Mul fighter level 6 post comments on Rpg forums??? In darksbusun they dont have busses or subways, computers and Tv, so MAYBE they are in better shape than most of the people in this particular planet. Also, if you way of living is killing stuff and escaping for sorcerer kings....

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

It just does not work well.

It is like going to a poetry recital and having to memorize a specific number of Frost's "The Road Not Taken" or Henley's "Invictus" and forgetting them as you recite them. It is a lazy, poorly thought out design that even the designers working for TSR hated but felt forced to not change because of threats from the "Any change is bad!" crowd of letter writers who largely had no familiarity with the genre of heroic fantasy beyond AD&D.

Huh...so your problem is with the fluff? That it's called "memorization"? What if it was called "preparing" and was explained a different way?

Yeah...I agree it's pretty artificial feeling, but I think in the context of game mechanics, it works well enough. The artificiality doesn't bother me because it is applied to an already artificial concept (magic). I honestly don't mind it because it plays well, and I've never seen many other systems in CRPGs that play decently.

I guess I'm more of a gamist than anything.

 

[J1M]

The point isn't whether or not a DM allows it, but that players will want to try it. A major design goal of 4E was to do away with this, but instead WotC made it worse. = Fail

Well you fucking have me there. The most I've ever run in 16 hrs is 26.2 miles (3hr 19min) which is the classic marathon. However, there are plenty of crazy fuckers who do run 96 miles in 16 hours. http://www.run100s.com/ultra.htm

But I guess you're a little too out of touch with reality to know what humans are capable of...

After a group of players is attacked in the middle of resting in a dungeon a few times they will learn not to try it. This is no different than 3.5.

I am aware that some people are in crazy-good shape. They also aren't posting on this message board. You are.

 

[LeStryfe79]

The point isn't whether or not a DM allows it, but that players will want to try it. A major design goal of 4E was to do away with this, but instead WotC made it worse. = Fail

Well you fucking have me there. The most I've ever run in 16 hrs is 26.2 miles (3hr 19min) which is the classic marathon. However, there are plenty of crazy fuckers who do run 96 miles in 16 hours. http://www.run100s.com/ultra.htm

But I guess you're a little too out of touch with reality to know what humans are capable of...

After a group of players is attacked in the middle of resting in a dungeon a few times they will learn not to try it. This is no different than 3.5.

I am aware that some people are in crazy-good shape. They also aren't posting on this message board. You are.

Actually, running 100 mile marathons is extremely unforgiving to the human body. When I was running 15 miles a day, the calorie burn was taking a bigger toll on my heart than a daily dose of crack(which I've done). Now I spend about 35 min a day running a 10k(6mi). That's pretty good IMO. Just because I like RPGs doesn't make me a slug. If it makes you feel any better though, I am a big nerd and didn't get laid until I was 22.

 

[SkeleTony]

It just does not work well.

It is like going to a poetry recital and having to memorize a specific number of Frost's "The Road Not Taken" or Henley's "Invictus" and forgetting them as you recite them. It is a lazy, poorly thought out design that even the designers working for TSR hated but felt forced to not change because of threats from the "Any change is bad!" crowd of letter writers who largely had no familiarity with the genre of heroic fantasy beyond AD&D.

Huh...so your problem is with the fluff?

No, not at all. "Fluff" is stuff like character portraits, color schemes/palettes and what not. My problem is with the game DESIGN and how successful(or not) it is in reflecting the genre it attempts to...reflect.

That it's called "memorization"?

No. If they used a spell-point system but for some inexplicable reason called it a "Vancian Memorization scheme" or some such then I would have a problem with that "fluff"(because there is no good reason for it) but that is not my issue here since the game mechanics themselves work far differently than how they should.

What if it was called "preparing" and was explained a different way?

If by "explained a different way" you mean to say that they completely changed the game mechanics themselves to better reflect those of fantasy fiction as a genre, then yeah...that would be exactly what I was calling for.

Yeah...I agree it's pretty artificial feeling, but I think in the context of game mechanics, it works well enough.

The fuck it does! When have you EVER read a fantasy book(and by that I mean a REAL fantasy book, not one based on the D&D game ala "Dragonlance" and such crap) where a wizard said "I would love to help you guys out with these orcs. I am not spent or anything like that. But I did not bother to memorize any castings of "fireball" and instead memorized four castings of "Bewilder Pixies"...sorry about that."?!

NEVER is the correct answer. Save for the POSSIBLE citing of a single science fiction book by Jack Vance that I seem to remember him saying was intended as a spoof of some other aspect of fantasy fiction or some such and even then I am thinking that Vance's system was not as dumb as D&D's.

The artificiality doesn't bother me because it is applied to an already artificial concept (magic). I honestly don't mind it because it plays well, and I've never seen many other systems in CRPGs that play decently.

I guess I'm more of a gamist than anything.

AGAIN, the argument "Well fantasy itself is unrealistic so we cannot rightfully argue that game mechanics should be logically consistent..." is a dumb argument. NO ONE ANYWHERE is arguing that we should have an RPG called "Paycheck to paycheck" about the daily grind of being a middle class citizen in America or some such.

I am arguing for two things that are strongly tied togetehr:

1)That a game which bills itself as a GENERIC(in the sense that it is not tied exclusively to a specific world setting) FANTASY RPG is able to reflect the conventions of said genre ACCURATELY.

2)That the game mechanics(not "fluff" or "artificiallarities") are logically consistent in regards to #1 above.

 

[SkeleTony]

Actually everyone in 4E uses Vancian magic. They have been renamed "DAILIES".

False. "Dailies" do not employ a system where you must memorize the specific number of powers you are going to use in a day and then forget them as you use them. According to the WoTC designers they did away with the Vancian system and replaced it with a spell point system(which the original designers intended to do with AD&D 2nd edition way back in the 80s).

Replaced with spell points? Someone better tell that to the publisher and reprint all of the 4e books then! The only D&D products that use spell points that I know of are psionics and DDO, both of which are 3.5 based. You really appear to have no idea what you are talking about.

I have no idea what changes were made immediately prior to the release of 4th edition. I was going by the press releases they themselves put out a few months or so before 4th ed. was released in which they said they were replacing the Vancian system with a spell-point based system that better reflected the genre.

Also the new "Unearthed Arcana" for 3.5 also gave us a spell-point system.

Wizards are different, they get to learn double the number of daily/encounter spells as other classes and at the start of each day pick which ones to prepare for that day. This gives them double the versatility of other classes. They still have at-will abilities like every other class for mundane spells like magic missile, but they use a Vancian system for encounter and daily powers.

Then 4th ed. is an even more monumental failure than I suspected.

Perhaps you dislike this because the number to choose from is smaller?

Not at all. You would not need to speculate on why I might dislike something if you simply READ WHAT I WROTE(and ask questions if you are confused by something).

(Until more books come out) Perhaps you didn't see that all of the out of combat spells are now called rituals and in the back of the book where the spell list used to be? Regardless, they sure as fuck don't have spell points.

See above point about "monumental failure".

For example, contrary to what JIM said, there is NEVER any good reason to consolidate skills like "climbing", jumping, stealth, etc. into catch-all skills like "Athletics". And there is never a good reason to make races all quantitatively the same.

Sorry, but you are wrong. In 3.5 the knowledge skill is absolutely retarded.
There are Knowledge: Religion, Knowledge: Arcana, etc for over 10 different categories just on the standard player sheets and additional Knowledge checks for special locations such as certain cities, etc.

Consolidating them into broad categories such as Religion, Nature, Dungeoneering, and Arcana is a good thing.

Having broader generalized categories, along WITH the more specialized sub-categories is a good thing. But my point remains that consolidating ALL knowledge skills into a singular "Knowledge" skill would be stupid! Just as consolidating a bunch of 'athletic' skills of varying degrees of relation to one another under a singular skill of "athletics" is stupid. And consolidating a bunch of dissimilar "thieving" skills such as "Disarm traps", "Stealth", "Pick Locks", "Pick Pockets" etc. under a singular "Thieving" skill would be stupid!

It also doesn't make sense to detach a Knowledege: Nature skill from Tracking or whatever because the characters we are talking about are adventurers. Adventurers who know about the wilderness are going to know how to apply that knowledge to practical situations.

While I would agree that a professional tracker would probably also have at least SOME (perhaps very specific) knowledge of Nature(and the most successful probably have a very GOOD knowledge of Nature) and vice versa, I disagree that someone being an "adventurer" should somehow automatically be able to apply their knowledge of nature to tracking a fleeing and wounded Bugbear through a swamp. For starters a woodlands druid will probably have a great knowledge of nature as it applies to woodlands(but not swamps). And on top of that tracking is a very specialized skill that involves a lot more than simply knowledge of nature.

Furthermore, it makes no sense that your fighter gets 2 skill points a level and so this male fantasy character in peak physical condition cannot manage to be good at climbing, riding a horse, jumping, and running because that is 4 skills and you only have 2 skill points. Meanwhile, a wizard getting 8 skill points a level could have twice the skill level (even at 50% buy penalty) as the fighter because his primary stat is intellect.

Agreed! You seem to have mistaken me as someone who thinks that D&D was EVER a well designed game system.

There are actual real people who do not devote their lives to adventuring that are good at riding a horse, climbing a rope, AND jumping (omg). 3.5 knows how stupid this is and attempts to correct it with a bunch of arbitrary skill synergies. An admission of the problem, but not a proper solution because it results in situations like this:

"Oh I'm sorry you fail your skill check to know where the bazaar is in this city, because you rolled a 7 and you don't have any points in Knowledge: Gehenna: Trias City. Your +20 ranks in Knowledge: Planes only gives you a +2 synergy bonus."

See above.

 

[Shannow]

AGAIN, the argument "Well fantasy itself is unrealistic so we cannot rightfully argue that game mechanics should be logically consistent..." is a dumb argument. NO ONE ANYWHERE is arguing that we should have an RPG called "Paycheck to paycheck" about the daily grind of being a middle class citizen in America or some such.

For crying out loud. It's a game. If you don't like the mechanics, fine. But stop trying to apply realism or sense to D&D. Almost every aspect of its rules is non-sensical:
You killed 3 orcs a brought a few letters from A to B. Suddenly you are twice as tough to kill. The basic concept of "level" is unrealistic, but the first 2-3 levels you make are the worst when keeping an eye on hit points. Which leads us to hit points: unrealistic. Strength modifies your to-hit-chance in melee although hand-eye-coordination (dex) should be needed. Wearing 30 kilos of platemail makes you more difficult to hit than if you were jumping around naked. You constantly learn how to hit stuff better with level ups but your defense requires a skill (if parry is present in PnP). Etc.
And it was worse with 2nd ed. At least ability modifiers, saves, spell DCs, bab make more sense in 3(.5) ed than their equivalents in 2nd ed did.

 

[WholesaleGenocide]

AGAIN, the argument "Well fantasy itself is unrealistic so we cannot rightfully argue that game mechanics should be logically consistent..." is a dumb argument. NO ONE ANYWHERE is arguing that we should have an RPG called "Paycheck to paycheck" about the daily grind of being a middle class citizen in America or some such.

For crying out loud. It's a game. If you don't like the mechanics, fine. But stop trying to apply realism or sense to D&D. Almost every aspect of its rules is non-sensical:
You killed 3 orcs a brought a few letters from A to B. Suddenly you are twice as tough to kill. The basic concept of "level" is unrealistic, but the first 2-3 levels you make are the worst when keeping an eye on hit points. Which leads us to hit points: unrealistic. Strength modifies your to-hit-chance in melee although hand-eye-coordination (dex) should be needed. Wearing 30 kilos of platemail makes you more difficult to hit than if you were jumping around naked. You constantly learn how to hit stuff better with level ups but your defense requires a skill (if parry is present in PnP). Etc.
And it was worse with 2nd ed. At least ability modifiers, saves, spell DCs, bab make more sense in 3(.5) ed than their equivalents in 2nd ed did.

Actually, armor class takes into consideration that you may have been hit, but whatever you're wearing ended up protecting you completely. That's why treants have high AC, for example. 3.5 accounts for this by giving you different types of AC, namely touch AC and actual AC. Touch means all the opponent needs to do is touch you, which heavy armor does not protect against, while your dexterity will protect against because you can avoid being touched.

 

[SkeleTony]

AGAIN, the argument "Well fantasy itself is unrealistic so we cannot rightfully argue that game mechanics should be logically consistent..." is a dumb argument. NO ONE ANYWHERE is arguing that we should have an RPG called "Paycheck to paycheck" about the daily grind of being a middle class citizen in America or some such.

For crying out loud. It's a game. If you don't like the mechanics, fine. But stop trying to apply realism or sense to D&D. Almost every aspect of its rules is non-sensical:
You killed 3 orcs a brought a few letters from A to B. Suddenly you are twice as tough to kill. The basic concept of "level" is unrealistic, but the first 2-3 levels you make are the worst when keeping an eye on hit points. Which leads us to hit points: unrealistic. Strength modifies your to-hit-chance in melee although hand-eye-coordination (dex) should be needed. Wearing 30 kilos of platemail makes you more difficult to hit than if you were jumping around naked. You constantly learn how to hit stuff better with level ups but your defense requires a skill (if parry is present in PnP). Etc.
And it was worse with 2nd ed. At least ability modifiers, saves, spell DCs, bab make more sense in 3(.5) ed than their equivalents in 2nd ed did.

Great points! I only wonder why they were directed at ME?! That m,akes no sense. AGAIN, I am not someone who thinks that ANY edition of D&D was well designed and AGAIN, having "unrealistic concepts" is not the issue here and has nothing to do with arguing for logical consistency in game mechanics.

 

[J1M]

Yes Tony, using (imaginary) press releases as a source of FACTS AND INFORMATION is a wonderful idea. You were speaking out of your ass, don't try and blame someone else for that.

Let me see if I can understand this. You think there are people out there who built a character that had a really high pick lock skill, but didn't bother with disarm traps? People that took lots of points in hide but none in move silently? The 0.2% of the player base you want to cater to can roleplay being bad at half of "Burglary" or "Stealth" if it means that much to them.

Nobody is advocating a single skill or even a single knowledge skill. There is just no point to having a different knowledge skill for every religion. Aside from being stupid game design it has the practical effect of switching the character's knowledge check into a test of what the player knows. Because the player will have to be assigning knowledge points in areas he knows he will need ahead of time in order to be effective.

TLDR version: It's an RPG, not an attempt at simulacrum.

 

[thesheeep]

Basically, you are right.
Having single knowledge skill for every religion is pretty much nonsense.
But having one religion skill for every religion seems pretty uber to me, too.
I'd suggest religion group skills, like eastern religions, western religions, etc. or bound to continents. You get the idea.
And then, probably, a single religion skill that combines them all, but also is more expensive.

That's basically the Shadowrun way. There are (or at least in the 2nd edition were) skills like climbing, etc. and one athletics skill that combined them all but was also much more expensive (though not as expensive as if you would buy each single skill).

 

[Elwro]

Yeah, the synergy table of Shadowrun was great. BTW, I bet the game suffered commercially because the core rulebook was so extensive... I just didn't feel the incentive to buy any add-ons (save for the Grimoire) because everything was already in the first book. Great design for a not-so-rich Polish kid :D

 

[thesheeep]

Aren't those books always very expensive?
Not that they are not worth it, but still

Then again, I never bought a Shadowrun book, I was always using the ones of friends, so I don't know about all prices.

 

[J1M]

Basically, you are right.
Having single knowledge skill for every religion is pretty much nonsense.
But having one religion skill for every religion seems pretty uber to me, too.
I'd suggest religion group skills, like eastern religions, western religions, etc. or bound to continents. You get the idea.
And then, probably, a single religion skill that combines them all, but also is more expensive.

Having a high religion skill doesn't mean you know everything about every religion. It means you know a lot about religion. The die roll is there to facilitate knowing more about one topic than another.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Let me see if I can understand this. You think there are people out there who built a character that had a really high pick lock skill, but didn't bother with disarm traps? People that took lots of points in hide but none in move silently? The 0.2% of the player base you want to cater to can roleplay being bad at half of "Burglary" or "Stealth" if it means that much to them.
TLDR version: It's an RPG, not an attempt at simulacrum.

Why not have them broken up? Waiting in ambush only requires hiding, not move silently. Wearing cumbersome noisy armor shouldn't impair your ability to sit still in the shadows while the mooks run past. Why not have disarm traps without lockpicks if you can just bash all the doors and chests open anyways? Why not have lockpicking without disarm traps? Locks are a lot cheaper than traps, and safer whether or not you have the appropriate skill.

Lumping more and more details together just makes every character and indistinct general cut-out of their class. Converting the fucked up % stuff into a standard d20 roll was a good move. Converting all the skills down into the same few that EVERY character will have is retarded. And this isn't the kind of thing you can house rule out of easily. If you split up the burglary skills, rogues need more skill points. But if they have more skill points, you should probably split up other skills too. At which point everyone needs more skillpoints.

You know what would have been a good change? Making individual skills or groups of skills have different rates for being modified by your stats. Being a healthy guy helps running out a lot more than something very skill oriented like horseback riding or a profession should be affected by their stats. How the hell can skill make you jump twice as far as someone else in far better physical condition? Balance works fine though. Just because you can juggle doesn't mean you can walk a tightrope.

But that'd be too complicated so it needs to be dumbed down, and instead we now have MMO skill sets in 4th edition, where every rogue is exactly as skilled at lockpicking, disarming traps, hiding and sneaking as every other fucking rogue.

 

[dolio]

Lumping more and more details together just makes every character and indistinct general cut-out of their class. Converting the fucked up % stuff into a standard d20 roll was a good move. Converting all the skills down into the same few that EVERY character will have is retarded. And this isn't the kind of thing you can house rule out of easily. If you split up the burglary skills, rogues need more skill points. But if they have more skill points, you should probably split up other skills too. At which point everyone needs more skillpoints.

4th edition doesn't have skill points at all, unless my memory is failing me. Instead, everyone's skill in everything increases at a rate of something like 1/2 their level, and each character gets to choose to be "trained" in a certain number of skills (which is, I guess, what you'd have to increase), which gives a flat bonus to those skills (+4 maybe?). So a character with training will always be better at a certain skill than a character without training (which specifically means something like: if an untrained character has an X% chance of success, then a trained character has an (X + 20)% chance, excepting extreme situations), but everyone ends up with moderate ability in every skill, I think.

 

[J1M]

Lumping more and more details together just makes every character and indistinct general cut-out of their class. Converting the fucked up % stuff into a standard d20 roll was a good move. Converting all the skills down into the same few that EVERY character will have is retarded. And this isn't the kind of thing you can house rule out of easily. If you split up the burglary skills, rogues need more skill points. But if they have more skill points, you should probably split up other skills too. At which point everyone needs more skillpoints.

4th edition doesn't have skill points at all, unless my memory is failing me. Instead, everyone's skill in everything increases at a rate of something like 1/2 their level, and each character gets to choose to be "trained" in a certain number of skills (which is, I guess, what you'd have to increase), which gives a flat bonus to those skills (+4 maybe?). So a character with training will always be better at a certain skill than a character without training (which specifically means something like: if an untrained character has an X% chance of success, then a trained character has an (X + 20)% chance, excepting extreme situations), but everyone ends up with moderate ability in every skill, I think.

This is basically correct. When you level up you can swap one trained skill to another and certain feats/class abilities provide boosts or the ability to have a new trained skill, but you don't allocate skill points like in 3rd edition.

 

[SkeleTony]

JIM, the pre-release press releases detailing the new spell-point system were real. There were huge threads discussing them over at the "Boards of Magic"(forums for the "Sorcerer's Apprentice"/ D&D based CRPGS site), full of back and forth debate between the Vancian lovers and the rest of us(which was mostly ME actually).

Unfortunately their search functions at those forums are lacking to say the least so finding the right keywords to pull up those threads is proving difficult.

You act like I just made this shit up or some such nonsense!? You can say what you want about my views but I don't think anyone here or anywhere else would say with a straight face that I lie about shit or make shit up like that.

 

[SkeleTony]

Yes Tony, using (imaginary)
Let me see if I can understand this. You think there are people out there who built a character that had a really high pick lock skill, but didn't bother with disarm traps? People that took lots of points in hide but none in move silently? The 0.2% of the player base you want to cater to can roleplay being bad at half of "Burglary" or "Stealth" if it means that much to them.

Nice straw man kiddo. If you had read my earlier post you would notice that I linked the 'sneak' and 'hide' type functions under a single skill called(*drumroll*) STEALTH! You might as well have been accusing me of wanting to split 'sword' skill up into 'Polish sword', 'Sword overhand swing', 'sword right-to-left cleave' etc.

Don't be an imbecile.

Pick locks adn disarm trap SHOULD be seperate skills, not because many thieves would not build them both, but because they are different ACTIONS altogether and ideally a game system should allow for characters of ANY class to be able to learn skills like lock picking. If your swashbuckling fighter has taken up lockpicking enough to get through the game then that frees the thief up to concentrate on trap disarming and/or stealth or what have you. And that is just one off the top of my head good reason!

Nobody is advocating a single skill or even a single knowledge skill. There is just no point to having a different knowledge skill for every religion.

I would disagree. It is just stupid to think that a guy with masterful knowledge of Asatru should also be automatically well versed in Hinduism or Shinto or Judaism for example.

I would agree(as I have said before) in having an over-arching 'general religion' skill that applies to general, common features of religions(like the tendency of ancient polytheistic religions to have a sun or sky god at the head of the pantheon).

Aside from being stupid game design it has the practical effect of switching the character's knowledge check into a test of what the player knows.

How is it "stupid game design"?! How the fuck does citing another broken aspect of D&D design help your case here?!

Because the player will have to be assigning knowledge points in areas he knows he will need ahead of time in order to be effective.

OR he just develops his character according to his concept of such and he has a DM that is not so incompetent as to design adventures around obscire skills he knows the player characters do not have!

It is fine for adventures top conctain aspects/bonuses/etc. that reward PCs who DO have certain knowledge skills(to great extent even) but if a DM designs an adventure that ultimately cannot be solved without a PC who has uber knowledge of Cthulhu-worship and he knows none of the PCs have such then he is incompetent.

TLDR version: It's an RPG, not an attempt at simulacrum.

RPGs ARE by definition simulation games. They are tactical squad-based simulators which ideally attempt to simulate the existence of heroes/villains in fantastic/not real settings. The "realism"(which seems to obviously be a misleading term since none of you guys are able to grasp it) refers to how well the game system achieves the simulation of such heroism as depicted in books, comics and movies and TV.

John Woo's movies are not "realistic" in terms of conforming to what happens in real life gun fights but a RPG based on John Woo movies(re: Hong Kong Cinema) should be designed as to do a good job of simulating THAT 'un-reality'.

Just as a good FANTASY RPG should simulate the magic systems and such that are found in heroic fantasy FICTION, comics and movie(re: not use a Vancian system that is as foreign and out of place to heroic fantasy as using 'Strength' to figure out the answer to a riddle would be or using intelligence to 'bend bars/lift gates'.

Likewise, unless you are going for a TWERPS type system(Jeff Dee's "The World's Easiest Role Playing System"), skill should be differentiated according to their archetypical use and presence in fantasy fiction.

 

[LeStryfe79]

What magic system would you use, SkeleTony, and why?