# Would 4 spell lists work in D&D (maybe 6e)?



## MechaTarrasque (Apr 19, 2018)

I have been half-heartedly following the Pathfinder 2 playtest announcements, and I saw something about it having 4 spell lists (Material, Mental, Spiritual, and Vital) and it looks like full casters would get access to 2 lists (and maybe half casters get 1?).

It is probably too late in 5e for anything like this, but, assuming it goes over well in Pathfinder, would you want something like this for 6e (assuming there is a 6e of course)?

And, if we assumed that the 5e classes would be the starting 6e classes, how would you want this divided up?


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## jgsugden (Apr 19, 2018)

This is way too vague of a concept to give it a thumbs up or down. We'd need more details to provide an informed opinion.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 19, 2018)

MechaTarrasque said:


> I have been half-heartedly following the Pathfinder 2 playtest announcements, and I saw something about it having 4 spell lists (Material, Mental, Spiritual, and Vital)



 I've been playing D&D too long:  I have no problem with the traditional 8 schools, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around those 4.  



> and it looks like full casters would get access to 2 lists (and maybe half casters get 1?).
> It is probably too late in 5e for anything like this, but, assuming it goes over well in Pathfinder, would you want something like this for 6e (assuming there is a 6e of course)?



IDK.  Like 5e, it seems to put all the emphasis on magic.  It could, potentially, be a fairly powerful way of organizing things: you could have 6 kinds of full casters & 4 kinds of half casters, for a total of 10 relatively distinct classes, defined fairly simply from only 4 lists.



> And, if we assumed that the 5e classes would be the starting 6e classes, how would you want this divided up?



 Lessee, 5e has Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard, for full casters, and Paladin, Ranger, EK & AT for half-casters, with Monks quasi-casters, so it'd very nearly fit, maybe:

Bard: Mental/Vital
Cleric:  Spiritual/Vital
Druid: Material/Vital
Sorcerer:  Material/Spiritual
Warlock: Mental/Spiritual
Wizard: Material/Mental

EK: Material
AT: Mental
Pally: Vital
Ranger: Spiritual

?


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## MechaTarrasque (Apr 19, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> I've been playing D&D too long:  I have no problem with the traditional 8 schools, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around those 4.
> 
> IDK.  Like 5e, it seems to put all the emphasis on magic.  It could, potentially, be a fairly powerful way of organizing things: you could have 6 kinds of full casters & 4 kinds of half casters, for a total of 10 relatively distinct classes, defined fairly simply from only 4 lists.
> 
> ...




My thoughts are similar, the idea makes for a nice thought experiment (and a nice way to limit individual magic user's narrative power), but I am not sure I would be ready to use it.  It does kind of make it seem like "martial" is equal to a spell list (1/2 full caster).  Part of me wonders if that is truth in advertising or sad (or both).


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## mellored (Apr 19, 2018)

Meh. I prefer an open, flexible list. That way each class can come up with its own categories.

Invisibility because you are light wizard and can bend it around you.
Invisibility because you are an enchantment wizard and you blind others to your presence.
Invisibility because you are an air wizard, and turn yourself transparent like air.
Invisibility because you are a time wizard, and shift yourself into the future.
ect....


I mean, should healing be vitality or material? What if they took psychic damage?
Where would conjure disease fit?


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 19, 2018)

mellored said:


> I mean, should healing be vitality or material?



 I strongly suspect 'vitality.' 







> What if they took psychic damage?



 Don't see why that'd make a difference, damage reduces your overall vitality, no?  







> Where would conjure disease fit?



Do you mean cure disease?  Vitality.  The reverse, too, presumably.


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## mellored (Apr 19, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Don't see why that'd make a difference, damage reduces your overall vitality, no?



But it was mental damage.  So shouldn't you need mental spells to recover from it?



> Do you mean cure disease? Vitality. The reverse, too, presumably.



No, i mean conjure disease.
Conjuring is material, disease is vitality.  So it has 2 categories.


What if a spell has all 4 catagories?
You pull the image of the enemies greatest fear from their mind, sacrificing your own vitality, and turn your spirit into a physical creature of that shape.


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## Tony Vargas (Apr 20, 2018)

mellored said:


> But it was mental damage.  So shouldn't you need mental spells to recover from it?



 Not any more than you'd need Material spells to recover from a being hit by a sword, because it's made of a material.



> No, i mean conjure disease.
> Conjuring is material, disease is vitality.  So it has 2 categories.



Sounds like the hypothetical spell just doesn't need to be added.



> What if a spell has all 4 catagories?



 Then the designer arbitrarily puts it in the one he feels fits best, I suppose.


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## mellored (Apr 20, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Sounds like the hypothetical spell just doesn't need to be added.



"The spell doesn't fit in a category so it shouldn't exist" is exactly the thing I don't like.


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## AmerginLiath (Apr 20, 2018)

It sounds like someone broke out their 2nd Edition AD&D books and looked at the Spell Spheres (technically a “1.5e” system, as it appeared in an earlier form in the Dragonlance Adventures HC), just using different names since TSR stuff that didn’t carry over into 3e isn’t SRD/OGL. THey even seemingly have Major and Minor Access by another name.


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## Dausuul (Apr 20, 2018)

MechaTarrasque said:


> It is probably too late in 5e for anything like this, but, assuming it goes over well in Pathfinder, would you want something like this for 6e (assuming there is a 6e of course)?




Not the way PF2E is doing it. I don't like this kind of rigid, functional classification for spells. It takes all the magic out of magic.

I much prefer the D&D approach of classifying spells on the basis of "What kind of forces are you wielding?" It allows for functional overlap while maintaining a distinct character for each power source. Wizards and clerics can both toss out blasts of fire; but _fireball_ is two levels lower than _flame strike_ and deals the same damage, while hitting a wider area. _Flame strike_, on the other hand, deals half its damage as radiant, which is near-impossible to resist and messes up undead something fierce. So throwing a blast of fire is the wizard's go-to combat option, while the cleric uses it as a specialized weapon against certain foes.

Right now, D&D classifies spells by a combination of class and school. I do like the idea of simplifying this. Merge the paladin list with the cleric list, the ranger list with the druid list, and the sorcerer list with the wizard list. Switch arcane tricksters to the bard list, it's a better fit anyway. Get rid of spell schools altogether; they only exist to support the wizard traditions, which could be redesigned.

So you'd end up with five spell lists:


*Arcane Magic* (eldritch knights, sorcerers, wizards)
*Fey Magic* (arcanefey tricksters, bards)
*Divine Magic* (clerics, paladins)
*Pact Magic** (warlocks)
*Primal Magic* (druids, rangers)
Then there would be the subclass features, like cleric domains and warlock patrons, that can give you a few handpicked spells from other lists.

For the wizard traditions, I'd probably do them like cleric domains; each tradition has a list of 2 "tradition spells" per level. However, instead of giving you access to other spell lists, the tradition would give you bonuses when casting your tradition spells.

[SIZE=-2]*Much as I would like to put warlocks under Arcane and/or Fey, there are far too many spells that become ludicrously OP if you can cast them once per short rest. I can't see any way around giving warlocks their own list.[/SIZE]


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## Nevvur (Apr 20, 2018)

I like the idea on the surface, what little has been said about it. As jgsugden said, kinda hard to make an informed opinion.

One thought that occurs immediately is that the system may benefit from moving some spells off the core-4 spell lists and directly onto classes. Like all warlocks get e-blast and hex, all rangers get hunter's mark. Basically, each magic using class has an expanded spell list exclusive to them, but it's only a small handful of spells, similar in scope to the existing Domain/Circle/Oath spells for archetypes.


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## Raith5 (Apr 20, 2018)

Isnt the idea of discreet spell lists right out of the Rolemaster RPG? I have no idea whether that game still played these days but it was popular in 80s.

I like it as an idea but I would have see how it is implemented.


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## 77IM (Apr 20, 2018)

"Categorizing spells" is one of those unsolvable RPG problems that people have been debating for decades.

Personally, I like the way Monte Cooke's _Arcana Evolved_ did it. Instead of lists, the spells had keywords, and your class gave you access to all spells with certain keywords. A spell could have multiple keywords. For example, a cleric might have access to all [healing], [spirit], [blessing] and [curse] spells, and then if you pick the light domain you also get access to all [fire] and [radiant] spells. It made it _slightly_ harder to select spells when you level-up (or when you prepare), but it was stupidly easy to understand and also very flexible.


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## Horwath (Apr 20, 2018)

I would like to see only 1 spell list.

Then add bonus spells known/prepared depending on class/subclass and increased varios effects of spells depending on class/subclass.


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## CapnZapp (Apr 20, 2018)

PF2 needs to proceed carefully. 

It's always tempting to structure, rationalize and make orderly the chaos that is legacy D&D features. 

That forgets that it is exactly the details, inconsistencies and exceptions that *make* D&D.

So many retroclones that get rid of the fighter, cleric, thief, mage classes (renaming or streamlining them) and don't get that throws the baby out with the bathwater. 

I hope further playtesting reveals to them there is value in the quirky, the idiosyncratic.


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## Li Shenron (Apr 20, 2018)

MechaTarrasque said:


> I have been half-heartedly following the Pathfinder 2 playtest announcements, and I saw something about it having 4 spell lists (Material, Mental, Spiritual, and Vital) and it looks like full casters would get access to 2 lists (and maybe half casters get 1?).
> 
> It is probably too late in 5e for anything like this, but, assuming it goes over well in Pathfinder, would you want something like this for 6e (assuming there is a 6e of course)?
> 
> And, if we assumed that the 5e classes would be the starting 6e classes, how would you want this divided up?




Something like this would work mechanically in a RPG, but honestly I wouldn't like it in D&D, where I am quite fond of the traditional schools of magic with all their imperfections and overlapping. There is a certain set of iconic traditional features of D&D, which gets thinner at every edition (in 5e we lost "true" vancian spellcasting), so I'd rather not accelerate the process.


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## PrimevalSeeker (Apr 20, 2018)

I wouldn't mind it if magic was divided into four lists, though I would prefer if those were arcane, divine, primal and psychic, instead of arcane/divine. Classes would get access only to one list, with the exception of bard that gets partial access to all lists and maybe sorcerer/warlock (list depends on the bloodline/patron). This way classes become more unique even before you factor in the mechanics.


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## Coroc (Apr 20, 2018)

We got overlaps on the 5E spell lists and we had them in Prior Editions allthough back then sometimes the sorting was different, and there were minor and Major Access etc. They made at least so spells would not have different Levels for different classes like they used to do.

I cannot see any gain or better logic association by using 4 classes for the spells, you still would have the overlaps, so that would mean a lot of exceptions and maybe extra rules. And both is not the idea of 5th ed.


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## houser2112 (Apr 20, 2018)

As I mentioned in the thread where this was announced, I think the idea is very elegant, and facilitates future extensibility very well. You can still keep the school associations if that's important to you, but decoupling spells from classes make it so every new spellcasting class that comes along doesn't need to know about every spell to build its spell list.


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## TwoSix (Apr 20, 2018)

No.  Not because I don't think it's a great idea (I really like it!), but if I already have it in PF2, why would I need to see it again in 6e?  It's not an _evolutionary_ idea, it's simply one way to organize and present spells among many.


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## MechaTarrasque (Apr 20, 2018)

Nevvur said:


> I like the idea on the surface, what little has been said about it. As jgsugden said, kinda hard to make an informed opinion.
> 
> One thought that occurs immediately is that the system may benefit from moving some spells off the core-4 spell lists and directly onto classes. Like all warlocks get e-blast and hex, all rangers get hunter's mark. Basically, each magic using class has an expanded spell list exclusive to them, but it's only a small handful of spells, similar in scope to the existing Domain/Circle/Oath spells for archetypes.




I think Paizo said they were going to do something like that.  I tend to zone out when anyone mentions spell points, but I think class-specific magic was going to be on a point system, while magic from the lists would be spell slots.


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## MechaTarrasque (Apr 20, 2018)

If they were going to do it, I would probably base it on the idea that magic comes from different planes:  so primal (material), transitory (feywild, shadowfell, ethereal), elemental, spiritual (outer planes), and mental (astral, far realm) lists.  It seems like that could be a good set up for subclasses--every caster class gets a main list and their subclasses determine the secondary list.

Druid:  primary is primal, subclasses for transitory (like those fey) and elemental

Cleric:  primary is spiritual, nature gets primal, trickery gets transitory, community gets mental, dwarves get elemental

etc.


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## steeldragons (Apr 20, 2018)

I divided magics in my homebrew world/system into 4 (base) categories. It works pretty well.

Mine are not as broadly titled/spanning as teh PF2 categories. It seems these would be significantly more useful and easily combined for various classes.

"Material & Vital," for instance, seems like they would probably give you a decent Necromancer. "Spiritual & Material" could give you a workable Shaman or potentially some flavor of Witch. etc...

My own adheres more to D&D traditions and are simply carved up into: Divine, Nature/Natural, Arcane, and Illusion [which is still/a subset of Arcane magic).
So you can easily see how things work out:
Cleric = Divine - protections, divinations, healings, some (both material and spiritual) travel/movement, some effecting/changing the material world.

Druid = Nature - anything to do with plants, animals, the weather & cardinal elements, some protections, some divinations, some healing, some spiritual/otherworldly connections (traveling to, conjuring from, etc...)

Mage["wizard"] = Arcane - all the usual suspects, effecting/altering the existing material world, effecting/altering the mind, generating/controlling/and/or undoing energies, some travel/movement 

Illusionist = Illusion - effecting/altering the mind and perceptions, light/color/shadow/darkness generation/control/undoing, some energy generation/control, some conjurations. Roughly 1/2 the spell list can be found on [full] Arcane list and the other 1/2 are specific to the archetype.

Paladin = limited Divine
Ranger = limited Nature
Bard = limited choose between Nature & Illusion

Witch =choose between Nature &  Illusion (class features allow limited spell selection from other lists)

This, of course, ignores (in the "Base" of my homebrew game) other specialist wizards. Given the precedent set by "Illusion[arcane]" magic, Necromancers would need a "Necromancy" spell list consisting of roughly 1/2 things from the Arcane list and 1/2 specific necromantic-themed /necrotic spell effects, Conjurers would need a "Conjuration" spell list, et al. 

So it does make things a bit "neater" to be able to categorize things in distinct segments. Perhaps a bit more symmetrical (at first), easier (I feel) for players to wrap their heads around..."What spells am I choosing?"<looks at pages and pages and pages of lists and alphabetized spell descriptions in dismay>"This list here. These are the spells you can choose."

I mean, Pathfinder being Pathfinder, I fully expect that if they begin the new edition with these 4, you'll have 20 magic categories by the end of the following year and be right back, essentially, to where you've started. That being the case, I would advocate to just keep the individual class lists they use now. Draw from whatever "Type" of magic you need, if there's a spell that's thematic to the class/archetype, then just put it on the class list.


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## Satyrn (Apr 20, 2018)

MechaTarrasque said:


> If they were going to do it, I would probably base it on the idea that magic comes from different planes:  so primal (material), transitory (feywild, shadowfell, ethereal), elemental, spiritual (outer planes), and mental (astral, far realm) lists.  It seems like that could be a good set up for subclasses--every caster class gets a main list and their subclasses determine the secondary list.
> 
> Druid:  primary is primal, subclasses for transitory (like those fey) and elemental
> 
> ...




I like this. Very flavorful!

I might prefer it if each plane got it's own list. Shadowfell magic could easily be separate from Feywild magic, although giving each outer plane a distinct list might be a hassle (although they would make a neat replacement for domain spells).

Ooh, and on top of that, the "basic" spell list could be the Weave.


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## MechaTarrasque (Apr 20, 2018)

Satyrn said:


> I like this. Very flavorful!
> 
> I might prefer it if each plane got it's own list. Shadowfell magic could easily be separate from Feywild magic, although giving each outer plane a distinct list might be a hassle (although they would make a neat replacement for domain spells).
> 
> Ooh, and on top of that, the "basic" spell list could be the Weave.




That reminds me of magic in the Malazan books, where there were a bunch of things that any sufficiently-powerful magic user could do no matter which warren they tapped.  

I would love each plane getting its own spell list, but 17 outer planes might be a bit much (as would all the paraelemental planes).  Maybe limiting it to Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos, Planes of Good, Planes of Evil, and maybe neutrality (and the elemental chaos for the paraelemental planes) would be a good starting point.  If a full caster could grab two lists of spells, I could see the devil-loving LE type getting Planes of Evil and Planes of Law....


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## the Jester (Apr 21, 2018)

Here's the thing- this doesn't sound like it would actually improve the game in any way. So, no, thank you.


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## The Grassy Gnoll (Apr 23, 2018)

Dragon Warriors from the 80s had a nice thematic setup for Elementalists which could be adapted to be schools of magic:


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## gyor (Apr 23, 2018)

If D&D did lists it would do its own, not based on Pathfinder 2e's.

 Tie it to power source like in 4e and make it 6 lists. Like Arcane, Divine, Psionic, Primal, Shadow, Elemental.

 Wizards get Arcane, but schools like evocation might grant access to Elemental, and Illusion Shadow, Enchantment Psionic, while other Schools like Abjuration offer something different.

 Just a brain storm, because D&D 6e might be influenced by Pathfinder 2e (heck so might 5e still), but it would just copy paste Pathfinder 2e's 4 spells lists including the names.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Apr 23, 2018)

Having a bunch of spell lists and each class having access to just a couple of them reminds me of Rolemaster, except that system had a ton of spell lists to choose from.

As for spells broken down into lists, I am fine with the two we have: Arcane and Divine. Or Internal and External. Internal for all the magic powered by the caster and External for all the casters who get their power from another source.


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## Raith5 (Apr 23, 2018)

mellored said:


> "The spell doesn't fit in a category so it shouldn't exist" is exactly the thing I don't like.




I get this sentiment but there is the issue that it makes sense for magic to have some system or logic. I think other RPGs often have magic systems that seem less haphazard than D&D because they follow a spell list type of system. In D&D you can learn to cast metor swarm without learning fireball (or firebolt). That doesnt make much sense to me.


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## CapnZapp (Apr 23, 2018)

It's not a great idea. In fact, I predict PF2 will fail if they forget that the allure of D&D is the texture - the incongruities, the exceptions, the oddities.

Nobody want a generic game with abstract classes and fully streamlined rules.

There are already retroclones and heartbreakers a plenty. What does PF2 bring to the table if not the D&D experience? 

Remember, Paizo succeeded because PF did D&D better than 4E.

Let's hope they don't have hubris. Let's hope they don't delude themselves there's a "Pathfinder market" for a generic D&D product that's Pathfinder in name only.


Based on the play tests, I fear the worst. That they think they have a mandate to do whatever game they want, and that somehow us customers will like it just because it's called Pathfinder. Even if it turns out to be something else than a compatible D&D clone.

Instead they should have made what they did for Pathfinder. Identify a niche not served by WotC and exploiting that. They should have striped for a game that is recognizably 5e:ish, only more complex and deeper.

TLDR the niche under-served by WotC is "advanced" D&D. Thats what they should be creating. D&D only crunchier. Not an unrecognizable rules engine that mostly resembles a random collection of heartbreaker rules.

Thank you for reading.


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## Yaarel (Apr 23, 2018)

MechaTarrasque said:


> I have been half-heartedly following the Pathfinder 2 playtest announcements, and I saw something about it having 4 spell lists (Material, Mental, Spiritual, and Vital) and it looks like full casters would get access to 2 lists (and maybe half casters get 1?).
> 
> It is probably too late in 5e for anything like this, but, assuming it goes over well in Pathfinder, would you want something like this for 6e (assuming there is a 6e of course)?
> 
> And, if we assumed that the 5e classes would be the starting 6e classes, how would you want this divided up?




The four spell themes that PF2 is implementing is extremely powerful. I have been using it myself for a number of years now, for 4e and 5e.

It is doable, useful, flexible, and flavorful.

I developed these four when organizing all the official spells by theme, and found that *every* spell organizes into one of these four themes.

• Psionic/Charm/Divination/Telekinesis/Force/Mental
• Elemental/Material
• Healing/Nature/Vital
• Spirtual/Ether/Resurrection/Planar/Teleport

In modern settings, I call these four: Psi, Mecha, Bio, and Quantum.


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## Yaarel (Apr 23, 2018)

The Grassy Gnoll said:


> Dragon Warriors from the 80s had a nice thematic setup for Elementalists which could be adapted to be schools of magic:




Regarding the Elemental/Material theme.

I ended up going with the Magic: The Gathering split that often shows up in D&D.

• Air-Water
• Fire-Earth

Pairing the elements this way ends up more useful. Fire makes inert Earth more dynamic, and using Fire to ‘melt’ and ‘reshape’ or ‘animate’ Earth makes thematic sense. Clustering Earth with Fire also makes the emphasis on fire less of a one-trick pony.

Meanwhile, weather magic from Ray of Frost to Ice Storm to Wind Walk makes Air-Water inseparable anyway.

Note, the Fifth Element is Spirit (called Ether, Etherealness, Idea, etcetera) and it forms its own ‘Spiritual’ theme. Spirit includes light and void and space-time. Spirit is the stuff that the eternal soul and consciousness are made out of. Spirit includes planar travel and teleportation.



In Daoism, the five ways of moving correlate to the five Helenistic elements in the following way.

Fire ← Fire
Water ← Water
Metal/Crystal ← Earth
Tree/Wind ← Air
Soil/Space ← Spirit


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## The Grassy Gnoll (Apr 23, 2018)

CapnZapp said:


> It's not a great idea. In fact, I predict PF2 will fail if they forget that the allure of D&D is the texture - the incongruities, the exceptions, the oddities.
> 
> Nobody want a generic game with abstract classes and fully streamlined rules.
> 
> ...




Sorry for being dumb - what is a heartbreaker rule?


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## TwoSix (Apr 23, 2018)

The Grassy Gnoll said:


> Sorry for being dumb - what is a heartbreaker rule?



People have been making their own houseruled versions of D&D almost since D&D came out, where they clean up rules they don't like into something more symmetrical, or streamlined, or simply better, in their eyes.  The collective term for those kinds of games is "fantasy heartbreaker", because everyone who makes one thinks their ideas will spread like wildfire because they've "fixed D&D", only to be inevitably disappointed when no one cares.


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## The Grassy Gnoll (Apr 23, 2018)

Thank you!


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