I believe that WFRP rulebook simply said that a wizard can wear a plate armor if he wants (provided that he has the plate armor proficiency skill) but he want be able to cast spells in it because the steel case around his body would disrupt the flow of magical energy. Leather and cloth was ok because it was made from organic materials. Specially made magical armors were also ok, and the Chaos armor was an exception because it fused to the users body and became a piece of him.

WFRP had another no-armor profession – the Dwarf Troll Slayer. Slayers were dishonored dwarfs who were seeking glorious death in combat. They were fearsome melee fighters but customarily wore no armor because they wanted to die. In my munchkin days I played a slayer who would wear a full plate armor. When someone asked why, I would reply “Well, some could simply shoot me with a bow – that’s not a honorable death. Once I find I troll to fight with, I will take it off”. Of course I never did, because there was never any time to do it. Fortunately the GM killed off that character after a few sessions and I rolled up something less stupid next time. :P

Even back with 2nd edition D&D, once we started using miniatures, it was much easier to know who could do what and where. I like that 3.0/3.5 took miniatures much further, particularly for convention and “world module” play such as Living Greyhawk, because everyone then knows exactly what they can and can’t do instead of asking the DM to see if he happens to allow it.

I’ve only played a couple 4th edition modules, and I think it’s them trying to merge D&D with Magic: The Gathering cards. There have been special cards out for years now that you can use for one-time abilities and things, but I lol’d when during a 4th edition game someone said the rules say you are supposed to turn the card sideways after you use it to show it’s used. That’s like “tapping” a card in Magic:TG.

4th is so far way more cookie-cutter than 3.5. 3.0/3.5 is great in how you could finally play pretty much anything you wanted. Want a wizard who wears plate mail and uses a sword? You can. He may not be great at it, but he can do it. I looked at my old 2nd edition books a bit ago, and it’s like a foreign language that lacks common sense. “Why can’t I do this or that?” No real reason, you just can’t.

This is getting off the main subject of your article, but I’m probably done slightly-bashing 4th edition anyway. :)

@Ian – I didn’t even think about the fire elemental thing, but it’s an awesome idea! Put in enough “points” into control and you can shape the fire into an elemental. Put points into “power” and it becomes stronger.

@Wes – I never played D&D of any kind, but from what I read 4e combat pretty much requires pushing around miniatures on a grid, and that it refactored classes into MMO like groups like healers, tanks, dps and etc. Meh…

My point of view on miniatures is “if I wanted to play a tactical combat game with miniatures I would just pull out my Warhammer or 40K minis out of the closet”. Never used them in RPG.

@Steve Heh! House rules FTW!

Although now that I’m thinking about it, the “you can’t learn this spell unless you are level such and such” may make some sense. I’m thinking prerequisites. For example, you can’t learn to solve differential equations without solid calculus background. But again – the system Ian proposed alleviates this because progress is gradual, and casters don’t really get to grab random spells left and right.

When I played a lot of D&D (version 1 or 2 of the rules :( I am so old), and this wasn’t AD&D…we got sick of the stupid rules for mages….sooo….

We designed a “fumble table”…I can’t remember the mathematics, but essentially you would roll percentage dice against the table…which was like a grid…

So the table was probably 100 rows with 10 columns or something…nuts, eh? Anyways, the columns represented the difference between your level and the level of the spell. If you were level 1, you couldn’t cast a level 12 spell or higher…but you could cast a level 11 or lower. The greater the difference, the greater the chance that the spell would fail. Based on the number you rolled, there was also a penalty for “fumbling” or “failing”.

We had things like “You start to glow very brightly”…sounds good unless you are sneaking around…then it alerts everything that you are there. Or “you hit player x instead of your target”….we had some funny and some serious. If the difference was at the max, you could also die. That kind of thing.

So all you had to do was have a way to “learn” the spell…which could be any level, but your skill/power might not be sufficient.

We had a lot of fun with those rules…

D&D 3.5 introduced an ability on a smaller scale of what you’re talking about. As long as you have, say, a 10th-level fire spell of some kind memorized, you can cast a 5th-level fire spell as many times as you want. It’s nowhere near the power of using the actual 10th-level spell, but you never run out, either.

The new D&D 4.0 rules do this on a bigger scale, as you touched upon. All characters have “at will” powers, powers used only once an encounter, and then powers once per day. The at-will powers/spells can be used over and over again. 4th edition is definitely dumbed down, er, simplified, from 3.5. Whether that’s good or not is personal opinion.

Hmm, I like those ideas. With fire, the mage/wizard could start out just being able to create a small flame, which would light a candle, lamp, etc. Then he becomes better and better at it, but after a point, he can start to specialize. The choices could be something like more control, larger size, more intensity, etc. More control could ultimately lead to creating a fire elemental. Larger size could create a huge fireball that slams into a whole group of enemies. More intensity makes it burn hotter and longer, doing more damage to a single enemy (and maybe melting metal doors). You would have degrees in between those sort of end result spells and the beginning tiny flame and you would not necessarily have to specialize in just one area. There could be multiple elements and then multiple specialties within those elements (and, provided the caster has adequate ability, elements could be combined). Even the cracking example could start out weak as you described, building up so that it can weaken and break armor and eventually cause earthquakes and bring down walls. Even a small earthquake could shake the ground enough to prevent an enemy from dodging a large, slow fireball.

I think all of that could bring in a level of complexity that Leonov might appreciate (“Okay, exactly how much do I need to train with wind and ice to learn to create a hailstorm?”), while still being quite usable by people who don’t want to study what spells they should specifically train for.

Well, the Ninjas are not that cool in the game (they are linked to evil stuff for various reasons). But I’d say that the proportion shugenja vs samurai is about 30% to 70%. The Shugenjas are really cool to play too, actually and quite powerfull.

@Ian – good point – casting time might be another way to keep things balanced.

Also I like the idea of the spells increasing in power as you train it. I like the aspect of specialization of such system. You can either be a jack of all trades, but master of none, or the ultimate grand master of fireball tossing and nothing else.

I read an article once about treating magic like superpowers of sort. A sorcerer gets one spell either picked from a list, or randomly generated. Then the players can train these abilities, and have some influence on how they develop.

An example of straightforward escalation of power would be someone who rolled a “Crack” spell which at it’s lowest level could be used to break glass objects, crack windows or mirrors. As the time passes the character would learn to use this spell to break swords, crack open plate armor, and finally would be able to bust open castle walls just by looking at them. It’s still the same exact spell – just more powerful.

There could be some non-linear progression in this system too. For example, the character starts with a spell “Conjure Flame” which allows him to generate a small flame that is enough to light a small cooking fire without any flint and tinder. He could then choose to improve on this spell learning how to generate bigger bursts of flame that. Alternatively he could concentrate on controlling the flame and it’s shape and learn how to form it into a fireball like projectile. Or he could concentrate on temperature control and develop some sort of scorching heat ray spell. Or he could do all of that gaining a small repertoire of fire based spells.

@Steve – ah, yes – I forgot about the Rogue thing. They also have the Combo points that no one else has. I actually rolled an Undead Rogue, but I’ve been to busy leveling my Troll Hunter to play him.

@Leonov – ok, good point. The complexity adds some geek factor to the wizard characters – that’s true. If you want to play one you have to read that chapter about magic rules, figure out which stats are important for casters, then look through available spells, and pick the ones you like. A Warrior will evenly distribute his high stats between strength, construction and agility, while Ranger or a Rogue type characters will dump into dexterity/agility type stuff and will be on their way.

But then again, complexity doesn’t always translate into depth – and making wizard classes more streamlined could be beneficial. Or not.

@Alphast – I never played L5R, but I heard about it. Do people actually play wizard type characters in that though? It would seem to me that most folks would rather play a Samurai or a Ninja (you know, because of the cool factor) rather than some kind of monk/mystic with supernatural abilities.

For paper and pen games, I like AEG solution for L5R Rokugan. There is no mana limit and spells are essentially skills. But (to avoid making mages, called shugenja in the game) more broken than they already are, they have added the element aspect to it. Spells and magic are linked to spirits (kamis) of the 5 elements and casting spells uses a service from a kami of a given element. So if you have more affinity with one element, you can draw on kamis of that element more often than others. In other words, you are not more tired or anything. Simply, you have asked enough services to the kamis today and they don’t want to speak to you any more. By the way, kamis usually request little (or big) services in exchange.

But in a sense it is a bit of fatigue – both mentally and physically. I mean, when you ask “How do you role-play that” it really is quite simple. Just think to any powerful spell that you’ve seen in any movie of sorts – such as Yoda using the force – he gets tired when trying to move big ships out of swamps. And much like WoW, using powerful spells, or spells that take more mana than you have, use much more energy (of sorts) than you have. So, no, you don’t just say “Hey… let me wait and get mana.” It’s more like “I don’t have enough energy, stall them while I catch my breath.”

I mean, if we think about it. A caster, like a wizard, is someone who uses their brain. Who does something a bit different and is quite powerful – so the player, the person playing the caster, must use their brain as well. “Will this be mana efficient? Did I pick the right spells for the day ahead?” All these things need to be thought out. So, much like the wizard – it’s a more complex character to play and in all reality, I’m sure plenty of people like the complex mechanics of such characters – unlike the “I’m going to hit it till it dies” mentality of any warrior or barbarian.

@Steve: Rogues, in WoW, always have 100 base energy. It won’t go up with levels. (However, there are a few items – very very few – that give you one or two more energy, if memory serves me correctly.)