Thread by @AlexandraErin

Along the lines of the sentiment in this tweet: one thing about the Critical Role cartoon is it illustrates how much more interesting magic tends to be in the stories that inspired or were inspired by D&D than in actual D&D.

https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1368404860153040899

Like, a lot of the magic use in Legend of Vox Machina has a direct line of inspiration from spells that exist in the D&D rules, and a general trope of being able to exhaust one's magic if overused correlates in a vague way with the game's expendable spell slots.

But the magic does not behave like D&D magic, even D&D magic with an inventive player and generously flexible DM. Because D&D's magic obeys rules designed with specific gameplay purposes in mind, and LoVM's magic obeys rules designed with storytelling purposes in mind.

*Most* magic in D&D just works, because the "effort" the player puts into it is a combination of game progression (get those spell levels), opportunity cost (prepare/learn those spells), and resource management (conserve those slots).

When magic has a chance of failure (hit roll, saving throw by the target, percentage failure rates, HP thresholds, etc.), things like how hard the caster is trying and how much they believe in themselves and whatnot are abstracted away in the throw of the dice.

And you could choose to characterize your character's casting style as being "at first it looks like the spell is faltering and her lip quivers and she thinks about how much the team is counting on her and then FWOOSH! - a giant gout of flame blossoms from her hands."

But the system for the most part isn't set up to create that kind of moment for it. There's not ludonarrative support for it, outside of you having Bardic Inspiration dice or whatever you think to use.

In D&D magic, a Ranger with no healing spells can't replicate a Druid's healing magic by imitating the actions with the right components and having another team member perform the most generic magical action for his unrelated third class of magic to put a little spark on it.

I mean, you *can* have the Ranger make a (possibly untrained) Medicine check, score a nat 20, and flavor it as they remembered enough of the healing magic they saw the Druid do to stop the person from dying. Whatever limits D&D has, it doesn't stop you from using your imagination

"Alexandra, didn't you defend D&D a bunch earlier today?"

Yeah. It has good points and bad points.

And basically, its magic system... I'm not going to pretend I haven't found great inspiration in the potential embodied by specific spells among its multitudes.

But of all the things about D&D that are very D&D, it's the very D&Diest.