Blessed are the cheesemakers.

Still gastrointestinal, so I didn’t try to commute. I suppose eventually somebody will complain, but so far no one has.

Written (game design): 397:

D&D makes everything spells. Gnomes can talk to forest animals?
They cast speak with animals once per day (keep track of that
separate). Tieflings need spooky powers? They can cast, uh…
hellish rebuke, it has “hell” in the name! And darkness, that’s
spooky. (Track them both separately.) Dragons should be magically
powerful? They can cast these pile of spells three times a day each
(track them each separately), these other spells once a day (yep),
and these spells whenever (hope you like flipping through the PHB). It’s
not hard to see why they do it that way: the spell list is the closest a
game like D&D has to a catalog of powers. It’s still a list of spells
for Magic-Users, though, gibbering and gesticulating and waving around
eye of newt. Clerics and druids and everybody are shoehorned into the
same paradigm, because that’s the most generic and least interesting
option.

Actual Vancian casting for wizards isn’t completely flavorless,
although D&D hasn’t had that since 3rd ed at latest, but the current
system with spells known and X slots of Y level and then possible
additional powers that refresh on a different cycle or use a pool
of points with a refresh cycle and yadda yadda is a lot of bookkeeping
for no flavor at all. I’d rather go with a single pool of points that
spells, ancestral powers, random class powers, etc, all draw from, like
Runequest MP. This does strongly imply that all abilities that draw from
the pool are magic, but I’m okay with a fighter slicing through stone
pillars or a martial artist leaping ninety feet in the air
not being completely mundane. I don’t think we need to draw a strict
line between magic and not-magic in any case.

I also don’t want magic to work like electricity with batteries that
discharge and recharge, which is pretty much the only other paradigm
besides spell levels (and even those often get translated into charges)
that we find outside of squishy storygames. My best thought so far is to
say that magic damages human souls, and magic points are how much you
can use before it starts really hurting you. Recovering magic points
(which now need a new name) isn’t recharging, it’s healing. Also this
opens the possibility of taking actual damage to do more magic than you
really can, which is always nice.