NGL, as a forever-GM, I take personal pride in "allowing" all sorts of shenanigans at char gen & beyond with a gentle disclaimer toward balance (*see: prev. post re: red=fireproof scarf*) like a sort of karmic layaway. Nothing stopping the bright-eyed folk hero fresh outta the nood fields from inheriting a Holy Avenger... *when said blade is secretly a storied artifact named in the obscure scripture of a rising cult power, et al.*

It takes a level of buy-in from players that is hard to get. I couldn't run it at my table for years due to having a few players for whom the magic system and general focus on esotericism were RPG kryptonite. The main thing I have noticed is that the game changes pretty dramatically at Gnosis 3, so I establish at the start that the entire cabal has to go from 2->3 at the same time. I had to stop due to some IRL stuff, but I am hoping to start a new campaign soon or I might try running Mummy: The Curse since I find it really interesting.

Catapult already does a specific amount of damage. Any extra damage is by the grace of the DM. They could just say no, and there is nothing in the rules that could help you.

I'm so sorry that you lost your creativity. I hooe you find it again in the future.

I need that meme where in one pane, the gymnast is like flipping over spikes and flames and stuff. Label that one "being creative in D&D". The other pane is the gymnast just walking across the mat. Label that one "Games that support creativity" or something.

Nothing about my argument goes against creativity. It just goes against players who think they can outsmart a DM by rules lawyering. Especially by some "hack" they found online that could "totally do OP damage and is completely RAW". In fact, it being at the grace of the DM is actually more creative, since you aren't bound by rules. And to top my argument off, the most important rule in the DMs guide is the first one: Page 4 of the Dungeon Master's Guide: > The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game.

Yes, definitely. The OP-ness of your players doesn't matter, as long as they are all equally OP in their own way. You can always just use higher CR creatures.

And then there is Mage, where you get kicked in the ass and fly across the mat

Heh. Oh penis. *dammit, Laura Bailey! Every time!*

I love the magic system in Genesys, with just basic spells (attack, heal, augment, curse, etc), some varying effects with suggested flavor (e.g. "Ice" adds ensnare to an attack, but mechanically it doesn't matter if it is vines, goop, whatever), and how much that effect increases spell difficulty. It lets the players go into a brainstorming session trying to come up with a spell to get out of a very specific situation, and having the game support almost anything. E.g. this create water idea could be an attack spell with the poisonous quality (making it a hard check), which requires the target to make a hard resilience check or take a bunch of extra damage and strain, which for a skilled mage against a non-boss creature (e.g. an overly ambitious bandit) is well within one-shot range. If they pass the check, they would still take damage from the attack, but would be able to cough up most of the water before it got too serious. This system sounds very cool also, and I have recently heard of Mage in another thread. I would like to play a system that gives players the ability to come up with spells that the GM doesn't know ahead of time (I seriously dislike long lists of predefined spells), but also has a little more of that hard magic-science set of rules to satisfy my inner Sanderson fanboy. I have built in some external scaffolding around the magic in my Genesys setting that does this, and it has been a ton of fun so far. My main gripe is that I wish I had more time to play RPGs (more than a couple sessions a month) so I could try out more systems.