I respect your opinions and see what you mean, but I've just not seen a lot of people take most of the spells in the game, and I don't use them myself.

With a limited size spell book and a lot of uncertainty, I think it is important to get the most bang for your buck. I haven't seen to many people pick Mount over Sleep, and I've only ever used it for high level wizards I wanted to look "magical."

I prefer magic systems with a more limited number of really good spells than D&D's huge list of suspect spells.

Admittedly sleep is a more useful spell than jump, but in a game where player characters need to find spell scrolls as treasure before they can use them, the fact that some spells are more popular than others is a feature rather than a bug.

Quote from: Cranewings;412260That's about it. Almost all of the other spells are just window dressing. Who takes Mount? Ventriloquism? Animate Rope? Endure Elements?

Over half the spells for every spell level are things no one would ever pick, and only get used when you want an NPC with an odd spell list.

Hhhheeeeeyyyyyy! That's just about all the time.I like mahz spellcaster! I never did prefer playing a war mage over any other kind of wizard. I liked my spellcasters to have a surprising, nay, even eye-popping selection of wizardry, becuase you know, there's always that Wow! factor I enjoyed laying at the feet of the GM and the other players.

As a GM, I wanted my NPC wizards to be mysterious, evocative, and  enigmatic. Knowing what the wizard likes to cast means the others at the table can devise or develop strategies to minimize the impact of wizards in a campaign or session, and I often sought to derail that.

Some of my favorite spells include researched homebrew spells, Evard's Black Tentacles, Massmorph, Mount... Yeah that was a good one. I never summoned horses, just outlandish beasts to serve as mounts. Silence is an awesome spell, darkness as well. Slow, Shield Other, Goodberry, all phenom!enal! Don't even get me started on Glyph of Warding, that had to be one of my favorite spells of all time.

Let your enemies come to you, and watch them die or suffer for their combat vanity.  

Alarm. Worth more than it's weight in gold...

Dispel Magic. The various protection spells...

Dismissal. Raise Dead.

Animate Objects.

Create Undead.

Fly.

Wind Walking.

Magic Circle.

Elemental Swarm.

Summon Monster.

Wall of Fire.

Ice Storm.

Create Undead...

Sanctuary...

Repel Wood.

Wall of Stone.

Animal Shape

Shapechange.

Teleport.

Sunburst...

Arcane mark...

and you know... Even for being nerfed, there is a great selection of impressive new spells in Spell Compendium and Unearthed Arcana.

Playing just a combat mage really just nerfs Wizards and Sorcerors in a manner the GM would never even dream of doing, lest he be accused of
railroading, why do it to yourself as a player?

Another pair I really liked! Divination... and Legend Lore.

Ooooh. Ooooh! Hold Portal! Quite useful when the party has extended it's stay a bit too long in the dungeon...

Flame STrike!

Know Direction....

Invisibility...

Light...

Lightning Bolt...

...Permanency. Frigging SWEEEEEET!

There was that time the whole party got trapped in a volcanic subterranean cenote, and the mage simply used animate rope to have the rope pull him up and out of the cavern where he then secured the rope and rescued the entire party from certain doom.

Systems that show a player how to create spells of thier own and list a few examples/"common" spells are gold IMO.

'Riddle of Steel' (I heard that line in the 1st. Conan movie the other day!),'Lands of Adventure' and 'Fantasy Wargaming' are some of the games that take this approach. Lots of folk don't like this style of magic system as it requires a bit of "work" from the player and GM.

I have no problem with a supplement having an exhaustive listing spells so those who want the paint by number style of game can do so.

I also like the short spell list in T&T.

A rulebook with 4 or 5 base classes, followed immediately by the "player's companion" with 20 or so cool classes.

Text over art or over grey background.

Over-complicated "innovative" rules. (Use Tarot cards/poker hands/weird formulas to run combat instead of just rolling dice.)

Quote from: danbuter;412302Over-complicated "innovative" rules. (Use Tarot cards/poker hands/weird formulas to run combat instead of just rolling dice.)

This this sweet mother magee THIS.

Shove your poker chips, playing cards, little glass doodads and everything else you dug off of the craft store shelf where the sun shines NOT.  I no more wanna clutter up the table with yet more stuff to keep track of than I want to dump all the bags of chips out on the table during the game.

I agree with the 200 page max.

Look, if you fall in love with a particular topic, like spells, that's fine.  Make a supplement out of it.  But, you don't NEED 70 pages of spells in a core book.  Similarly, you don't need 50 pages of magic items in a core book either.  

If you have trouble making the cuts, go through each individual spell and magic item, and rank each one with a percentage chance that a play group will use that thing often, and put it in order from most used to least.  When you're done, cut the bottom half of that list.  It will hurt, there will be things you personally love in there or think of as iconic, but just be brutal and make the cut anyway.  

You'll end up with a better, more usable product in the end if you do this.  Which means your sales are more likely to justify a supplement book, which can be used for all those things you really wanted to put in the first book and just couldn't find the room for it.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;412303This this sweet mother magee THIS.

Shove your poker chips, playing cards, little glass doodads and everything else you dug off of the craft store shelf where the sun shines NOT.  I no more wanna clutter up the table with yet more stuff to keep track of than I want to dump all the bags of chips out on the table during the game.

:rant:  :rotfl:

I concur...after years of fruitless doodading I conclude that d. pretty much rock as far as random generators are concerned (though reg. cards #1-10 can be used for simple % # too)!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;412227Time to take Stormbringer to school.

Sherman, set the Wayback machine to 1985.

TSR was in the throes of a power struggle; the hated Blume Brothers, whom Gary had ousted, had backdoored their way in under the cloak of fatLorraine fatWilliamsfat.  Those cheap bastards were determined to save $.02 per book if it killed them.

Over Gary's objections, the Easley cover books (including Unearthed Arcana) were cheaply bound, as opposed to the school textbook bindings that the original core AD&D books had.  So if Gary had his way, our UAs would be as bulletproof as the DMG, etc.

 Ok, I know it was the Blume Bastards.  Doesn't have the same ring to it, though.  

I still think it had to actually cost them extra to get that level of shoddy out of the binding; even laziness can't explain the sheer magnitude of fail.  You really have to put effort into making something that shitty.

Quote from: pspahn;412237I know I'll get gigged for this but I prefer seeing the male pronoun used. He, him, his. I wont pass on a good game because of this of course, but anything else is jarring enough to take me out of the read. It's just what I'm used to after almost forty years of reading.

Oh, man, do I ever agree with this.  I still see he/him/his as being either masculine or gender neutral/unspecified.  Readers aren't idiots; they can tell if "his" is being used in its masculine sense or its gender-neutral sense from context.

Quote from: pspahn;412237I know I'll get gigged for this but I prefer seeing the male pronoun used. He, him, his. I wont pass on a good game because of this of course, but anything else is jarring enough to take me out of the read. It's just what I'm used to after almost forty years of reading.

Pete

Ah Pete you seem to be yet another victim of our joke of an education system.  There has never been any reason at all for the whole he/she pronoun argument.  "They" is, and always has been, the proper gender neutral singular pronoun to use.  Example: If someone wants to write a rulebook, I think THEY should keep it to 150 pages or less."

Quote from: Aldarron;412349Ah Pete you seem to be yet another victim of our joke of an education system.  There has never been any reason at all for the whole he/she pronoun argument.  "They" is, and always has been, the proper gender neutral singular pronoun to use.  Example: If someone wants to write a rulebook, I think THEY should keep it to 150 pages or less."

You win.  I always use 'they' as the gender neutral pronoun.

While I generally use he/him/his, they use of they as a singular pronoun usually doesn't jar me.  I'd rather see that than most of the other options.

Quote from: Aldarron;412349Ah Pete you seem to be yet another victim of our joke of an education system.  There has never been any reason at all for the whole he/she pronoun argument.  "They" is, and always has been, the proper gender neutral singular pronoun to use.  Example: If someone wants to write a rulebook, I think THEY should keep it to 150 pages or less."

It's not proper.  That's casual cultural acceptance -- education systems still don't recognize the use of the 'singular they' because it's improper.  Professional writing/academic papers still require proper use of pronouns.

So it's not our education system, English is just a fucked up language, and doesn't get revised the same way other languages do every so many years (I believe Spanish goes through grammatical revisions once in a while, but I could be wrong).

Quote from: Peregrin;412413It's not proper.  That's casual cultural acceptance -- education systems still don't recognize the use of the 'singular they' because it's improper.  Professional writing/academic papers still require proper use of pronouns.

So it's not our education system, English is just a fucked up language, and doesn't get revised the same way other languages do every so many years (I believe Spanish goes through grammatical revisions once in a while, but I could be wrong).

Thanks for this.  The use of "they" in that context makes my ears/eyes bleed, even thought it's the most commonly used solution, at least in an informal context.  Most people are going to understand what you're getting at.

I personally find the use of the female singular pronoun far less jarring (as it isn't grammatically incorrect).  Obviously that's just personal preference, but some of you railing against "she" might want to consider that that is all your dislike amounts to.