Quote Originally Posted by Theodoxus View Post
Sure, but it's just pushing what 'magic' means. It's like the origin of life. If life originated somewhere else in the universe, and life on earth was seeded by a rogue comet - that doesn't actually answer the question on the origin of life.
Well, my two thoughts on this are I don't think "magic" is a bad thing that shouldn't be a part of the equation, and maybe we need to push the concept of what "magic" is in the game. I tend to agree with you that it's simply too easy and without real cost. Maybe widening that access to magic is one step in the right direction. Third edition had locations that, if you did something while there, would grant you some extraordinary or supernatural ability.

I just don't really see the difference between an action hero using a gun, getting a better gun, riding a car, etc. and a fantasy knight using a magic sword and riding a fantasy mount.

Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
Giving other archetypes strong out of combat options that are as definite and determined as spells would be a great idea (IMO), and would definitely make it not be the case that spells are so central to out of combat agency.

5e D&D didn't really do it though...

Also, there is a contingent of people who, when this comes up, insist that 'no, Fighters should basically be Bruce Willis in Die Hard, that's the class fantasy' which means that things like 'Well, what if high level Fighters have the built-in ability to requisition gear from a country's military? Deploy squads of engineers? Gain access to national installations that would let them do these things?' end up being refused. Or things where 'spells' are only a subset of the fantastical things that can be done again tend to trigger the 'but a mundane guy can't do something like chase their quarry through any terrain, planar boundaries, conceptual spaces, or time itself just because they're that good of a hunter!'.
I think expanding out of combat options would be great. I don't see anything wrong with high level fighters having tremendous social/political/military pull in game, that makes sense to me.

The "hunt across space and time" stuff is not a foregone conclusion for me, so I wouldn't mind it as an option for people, as opposed to the end state for all hunters, as an example. Honestly, the point for me is that we just need more options, and let people choose what they want to play. Fourth edition had a great Epic Destiny in which you knew the shortest route to your quarry, and could travel across space/time to reach them within 24 hours, no matter where they were, even on other planes (IIRC). Pretty sweet concept. But it was a choice. We need more options to choose from.
So I think there's a bit of a deeper, and honestly somewhat irreconcilable issue here. Different people at the table may want the game to be about fundamentally different scopes. There are character options - largely, but not exclusively spells - which let a player unilaterally choose to expand the scope (as long as the DM does not aggressively quash this, which is generally bad form anyhow). But there are not character options which let someone unilaterally narrow the scope or fix it on a specific thing. E.g. if someone doesn't want the game to be about combat they have lots of ways within the system to bypass combats; if someone doesn't want the game to be about roleplay they have lots of ways within the system to bypass roleplay; etc - but its harder to say 'I'm going to force combat to be the way we solve this drought!'.
Yeah this sounds about right. That said... I always just wonder about stuff like this.

How do you solve for a drought with spells that isn't simply "I cast this spell"? I suppose that using combinations of spells to do stuff that will solve for the drought in a way that isn't merely "I pushed the button and solved this problem" is going to require DM buy in. In which case, anyone can do it. Unless it requires magic.