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Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8440417" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>See below, its a hill of mush.</p><p></p><p>Well, no, not really. The premise is simple and works. There are certain 'rules of magic' and mastery of each rule gives you access to certain abilities. I don't even recall all the details of the five now, but they were each based on a rule, like 'sympathy', 'contagion', the 'rule of threes', etc. In some cases you could probably achieve similar effects with different rules, but the actual outcomes would be a bit different, etc. They didn't feel like different CLASSES in the story, not as I remember it. It was all basically academic wizardry.</p><p></p><p>It isn't just that they weren't clever, they are basically ARBITRARY, and which spell logically goes into each one is, well, they don't logically fit in the schools! The fact is the spells came first, and then Gary or someone made up these schools and shoehorned them in, virtually arbitrarily moving some around so that each school had similar numbers and types of effects (this happened mostly in 2e since 1e didn't assign any mechanical significance to school, it was more of a 'keyword' and nothing keyed off it). Its been the same since, those arbitrary assignments have been mostly traditionally stuck to (because heck, everything in D&D has to honor tradition no matter what). lol. </p><p></p><p>Now, MAYBE if 4e had done it from the start, and maybe associated each type of spell with an implement and maybe some more detailed (ala Master of Five Magicks) tradition, and THEN devised the powers to reflect that, purely, maybe it would have contributed something. As it is, its not really doing that, and 4e's Mage schools were again something tacked on, so they lost the chance, though at least they did have SOME mechanics to them, which wasn't bad (except pyromancy merely stepped on the sorcerer's toes, but that's a different issue).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8440417, member: 82106"] See below, its a hill of mush. Well, no, not really. The premise is simple and works. There are certain 'rules of magic' and mastery of each rule gives you access to certain abilities. I don't even recall all the details of the five now, but they were each based on a rule, like 'sympathy', 'contagion', the 'rule of threes', etc. In some cases you could probably achieve similar effects with different rules, but the actual outcomes would be a bit different, etc. They didn't feel like different CLASSES in the story, not as I remember it. It was all basically academic wizardry. It isn't just that they weren't clever, they are basically ARBITRARY, and which spell logically goes into each one is, well, they don't logically fit in the schools! The fact is the spells came first, and then Gary or someone made up these schools and shoehorned them in, virtually arbitrarily moving some around so that each school had similar numbers and types of effects (this happened mostly in 2e since 1e didn't assign any mechanical significance to school, it was more of a 'keyword' and nothing keyed off it). Its been the same since, those arbitrary assignments have been mostly traditionally stuck to (because heck, everything in D&D has to honor tradition no matter what). lol. Now, MAYBE if 4e had done it from the start, and maybe associated each type of spell with an implement and maybe some more detailed (ala Master of Five Magicks) tradition, and THEN devised the powers to reflect that, purely, maybe it would have contributed something. As it is, its not really doing that, and 4e's Mage schools were again something tacked on, so they lost the chance, though at least they did have SOME mechanics to them, which wasn't bad (except pyromancy merely stepped on the sorcerer's toes, but that's a different issue). [/QUOTE]
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Inquiry: How do 4E fans feel about 4E Essentials?
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