3 Comments

Interesting post!

In my experience alot of TTRPG's has different power curves for casters vs. martial classes. Often casters will have an exponential power curve being very weak at lower levels and extremely powerful at higher levels, whereas martial classes often have a more linear power progression.

Another method of mitigating CMD is to make casting magic unreliabable or potentially dangerous like in WFRP, forcing the player to consider the risk of casting a spell in a given situation opposed to handling the situation with more mundane means using skills or martial abilities.

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Good post!

I'd be interested in a post summarizing other TTRPG systems, lesser known ones, to see how they attempted (or succeeded) solving the CMD problem.

In particular, I'd like to know more about systems that find root-level solutions for general magic and for magic being exclusive. I imagine many of those solutions are systems where casters must be more specialized - e.g. only knowing illusion spells or only knowing fire spells. Some probably solve it another way by giving martials extreme supernatural abilities (like charming people at will, climbing mountains in minutes, digging through walls with brute force).

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Good analysis! This was an enjoyable read.

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