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From: burton@inuxg.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Creative Use of Spells
Message-ID: <265@inuxg.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Jan-84 10:35:58 EST
Article-I.D.: inuxg.265
Posted: Fri Jan 20 10:35:58 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Jan-84 07:06:18 EST
Organization: AT&T Consumer Products Div., Indianapolis
Lines: 69

<bug go Splat>
I have received several letters, and read several articles, over the
past few days from people who seem to be under the impression that
the argument going on between Steve Maurer and myself is over whether
or not to allow creative spell use. Not at all. I'm all in favor
of creative spell use; I encourage it (and reward it) within my dungeon
group. There is quite a difference between creativity and abuse, however.
Steve's original statement was:

    I assume that you mean D & D spells.

    What you are really looking for is holes in the rules systems
    that allow you to do gross things.  This is possible, because
    D&D has never been throughly debugged.   Using these holes is 
    fun, just as long as the monsters don't start doing likewise.


	My "favorite" spell is "feather fall".   This allows you
    to reduce the weight of an opponent to almost nothing, and
    "push" him whereever you want to.   A third level MU once got
    rid of a Xorn, by floating him up 1/2 a mile.....

Note that Steve was asserting that the rules had holes and bugs
which allowed him to use the spell as stated (and there were other
examples given as well). He went on to say that the rules allowed
several other abuses, and implied that as a whole the AD&D system was
so flawed that it was trivial for low level characters to mop up on
high level creatures by making use of these holes. My main point
to Steve was that it wasn't the holes and bugs which allowed him to
abuse the spells as he stated, it was his lack of knowledge about the
rules. Steve wasn't just giving examples of creative spell use, he was
attacking the AD&D game system by giving (incorrect) examples of how
the rules allowed such abuses. So you see, I wasn't coming out in
opposition to creative spell use; I was just pointing out that the holes
were all in Steve's head. We all know that AD&D has bugs and holes in
it; it's just that the examples Steve gave were not bugs, just incomplete
understanding (in some cases, complete misunderstanding) of the rules.
Hey, I'm a liberal kind of guy (no, really!). I don't sit down and add
up to the last ounce how heavy the magic-user is when he casts feather
fall to save himself from a deadly plummet. However, that same MU would
not get away with trying to levitate a whale, nor would he get away with
even one extra second of duration on Feather Fall if he (or she, I should
be saying) abuses the spell (as Steve was doing in his example). Mercy
tempered with justice, as someone stated. Many of you who posted followup
articles (and replies directly to me) probably didn't see Steve's
original posting where he talked about Boxing Basilisks, carving up
Medusa's heads, using Invisibility to run helter-skelter through dungeons,
et cetera. As I said earlier, creativity is one thing, abuse is quite
another. Twisting spell rules (or totally ignoring them, particularly
factors like duration, range, area of effect, weight limits, etc) does
not fall under the umbrella of "creativity", unless the DM has changed
a spell for his campaign (in which case the fault is not that of the AD&D
system, but of the individual DM). I am constantly called upon to make
decisions on creative spell use, particularly when the spell is poorly
worded or vague. I keep a notebook full of such rulings to insure that
I stay consistent within my universe; consistency is probably THE most
important rule of fantasy role-playing. Nothing upsets players more than
a chaotic DM, who make arbitrary rulings from one game to the next which
are totally inconsistent with each other.

Well, I've said enough. Time to step
                                     down from my soap box. I just
wanted to clear matters up on where I stood concerning the creative
use of spells, since so many people seem to have misunderstood me.


			Doug Burton
			ATT-CP Indianapolis
			inuxg!burton