I would like to clarify, because I appear to have confused.
I am not saying that any specific rule is unneeded, but that given the chance to review it would seem valuable to me to start by asking the question could this rule be dropped in favour of the universal mechanic where the criteria for doing so is the trade-off between complexity vs. authenticity to the source material. Everything might pass that test, but some things might not.
As an example some folks don't like using bonuses for armor and weapons and would prefer it to be just another ability; one way to resolve the debate is to ask if weapons or armor are important in the source material in a way that makes them inappropriate to represent as an ability i.e. the technology of weapons and armour and their various strengths and weaknesses is something the genre focuses on instead of mentioning them as color (no mechanical effect) or as oneoffs like Bilbo's mithril coat in LoTR.
So for magic the question becomes: is how the magic works and its differing charecterstics important in the stories or color.
Powered by hypermail