Quote:
Originally Posted by Shostak
Not at all, if having different mechanics for different types of magic makes playing a given system really satisfying. Having different mechanics does lead to a sort of cosmological issue for the GM: are there different types of magic, or just one type that is misunderstood (yet somehow successfully utilized) by some/most/all practitioners? It could be cool whether the answer is yea or nay. That probably is subject for an separate thread.
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...dunno. I reckon it would make for a really good magic system if you had, say, (
Runequest style) shamanism, sorcery and theurgy, each with different mechanics and a different range of effects so that they actually felt different ... as opposed to being the same thing with different hats on.
The (A)D&D magic system always seemed to me an example of how
not to do it ... leaving aside any hate for Vancian magic, and acknowledging that the fireball flinging flavour is fine for the genre, they managed to establish a way for "divine" and "arcane" magic to be tediously similar ... and in later editions made psionics (which always seemed sort of out of place in a setting with magic) just another version of the same thing. (Fair play, in old style AD&D psionics was fearsomely wierd as well as sort of out of place and so didn't used to be such a big offender).