Flexible Magic - Impossible?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sat May 31, 2014 12:09 pm

Do you realize you just described a theory of gravity that has inanimate objects levitating away into space, and then followed that up with a declaration of internal consistency about the game world, which I am 100% sure does not feature inanimate objects levitating away into space under their own power?

I'm like 99% sure the sin theory of gravity was never a thing, mind you. I can't tell if that specific theory is your's or the book's, but it doesn't really matter, because either way it's a sufficient fuck up to prove Frank's point about the game being driven by making your on the spot asspulls sound reasonable. In that that was obviously an on the spot asspull by somebody to whom it sounded reasonable at the time, and it turned out to be super sketchy and highly debatable (or just plain wrong).

All material objects fall to earth because they contain sin, because this world is sinful. Angels are able to fly because they are not sinful. This was an actual thing people in the real world actually believed, because they really didn't know what else caused it. They saw that everything falls, and they came up with a theory that explained everything to within their best ability to take measurements, and it worked so they used it. So yeah, rocks don't levitate away, because rocks are sinful.

This is not just someone's asspull, any more than Newton's Laws were an asspull. This is genuinely the best theory they had about how things worked in the world around them. It wasn't just people fucking around, this was science.

It happened to be wrong, but it's like Ptolemeian cosmology: it's wrong in a way that makes sense of the world around them, and allows them to form useful predictions about the future so they could build cathedrals and cast cannon and do other things that people at the time did.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat May 31, 2014 1:04 pm

Okay, let me repeat myself: that's not actually a thing people believed! No historically relevant explanation of gravity from Aristotle to Newton is based on sin, and the kludge about inanimate objects being full of sin is also totally not a thing people believed. I am 99% sure that you just made this up on the spot because it sounded like a thing they would have thought, and are appending additional BS to it to fix it. Which, hilariously, would completely make the point that Ars Magica is about convincing other people to accept your asspulls.

If it's coming from the book, then they just fucked up. That was not the prevailing explanation of gravity a thousand years ago, and they've made things considerably more confusing by forcing me to not only remember pre-Newtonian physics, but remember the specific ways in which they got pre-Newtonian physics wrong.

Aside: there are people alive with natural keratin horns right now, complicating the matter further. Developing skin tumors is totally in the nature of a human being. But 'Mythic Europe' doesn't have skin tumors, so an illness that makes you grow horns is actually just a really obvious case of minor demonic possession. That's mentem or vim, nothing to do with animal at all - and we're back to a nontrivial case for rego, to boot.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sat May 31, 2014 1:43 pm

Hmmm. Apparently I did fuck up. Having gone through Aristotle and Ars Magica, apparently the reason things fall is because they contain the natural element of Earth, which desires to be at its natural level at the centre of the earth. This is why fire rises, as you separate the ash (earth) from the flames (fire) and the smoke (air).

Mea culpa.

Still: Things falling because of the element of earth wanting to find its natural level is not any less stupid than sin causing it to fall.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Sat May 31, 2014 1:53 pm

MGuy wrote:Even in a game without 'levels' there is a 'power level' you want people to be working at if you care about any semblance of balance at all. You may not want to throw that all outta wack.

Yeah, and that's why I keep pointing out that I'm aware other people don't necessarily want to play the game I do, because I largely don't care about balance as an end goal. I believe that a lot of people do, and thus that it's probably important for everyone to have fun (which I do care about as an end goal), but I think it's entirely possible for people to have fun without balance. Granted, in a competitive situation, I'm not so sure that's possible, but I don't like playing pvp video games, much less pvp ttrpgs. I don't like playing competitive real life.

Drolyt wrote:I'm not sure what you mean. HERO has special effects, which covers damage type.

DSMatticus wrote:Also, it does have damage types - the fluff for an ability isn't optional, and you're supposed to give them sfx keywords like "fire" or "ice" or "psychic" or whatever. Some characters will have special defenses/weaknesses that apply to certain sfx keywords.

Oh. Okay.

Drolyt wrote:It also doesn't have classes or levels.

DSMatticus wrote:Hero is a classless and levelless point buy system with a ton of fiddly little levers and dials. So... yes, it has a lot of pieces, many of which are fiddly, but no, you can't take three levels of fighter, because you can't take any levels in anything. You can call yourself a necromancer without doing any necromancing, but it would be a lot like me calling myself an astronaut - it only works until you start asking me what I do that makes me an astronaut.

Metaphor, sorry. Frank was complaining that there's no difference between a Fire Mage and an Ice Mage because a Fire Mage can take all the Ice Mage powers at the same cost, and that seemed to me a lot like complaining that there's no difference between a Necromancer and a Fighter because someone can take levels of Fighter while calling themselves a Necromancer.
'sall.

Drolyt wrote:HERO has a few mechanics for in game flexibility. The most versatile is a Variable Power Pool, which lets you make up new powers on the fly. It is usually limited to a specific special effect.

DSMatticus wrote:Drolyt already said it, but Hero has a thing called the variable power pool (VPP). Basically, you set aside a bunch of your points that you can then use to build powers on the fly. Depending on how much game time it takes to rebuild your powers (ranging from instantly in combat to days of downtime or more), it will either be more or less expensive.

Modular Abilities, then. Cool. I have no real objection to that, then. It matches up with something I use fairly frequently. So Ice9 was right and my only issue is with source-based systems.

Laertes wrote:That's three "consider me interesteds." New topic time to discuss this? I would be extremely happy to make space in the game for anyone who's spoken ill of Ars Magica but wants to play it to actually see what it's like.

Wonderful! I have one yes and two maybes on my end (plus me), so that should be plenty. Set it up wherever and let me know.

Laertes wrote:a) The GM sets the goalposts, and then those goalposts are something that both the players and the GM can rely on fairly and consistently without them being further shifted.

I'm fine with this if they are clearly and explicitly defined at the beginning of play. Problem is, it seems likely that things will come up that weren't clearly defined but do have GM goalposts. It may not look like shifting on your end, but from my angle those goalposts are invisible until I run into them and I don't like that.

Antumbra wrote:If part of the system is literally "have some guidelines, make the final effect up yourself and ask the GM if it's cool" and you consider that a valuable attribute... then Ars Magica or Ritual Path Magic is as good as you're going to get.

Don't talk to me about Ritual Path Magic.

Laertes wrote:See, Ars Magica is set in Mythic Europe, which doesn't run by real world science but instead runs by the rules the people at the time thought it ran by. Which means that the physics are Aristotelean, the cosmology is Ptolemean, and the biology is by Galen and Paracelsus.

...Well fuck. Okay. I can handle that. If it's internally consistent. Science! Magic Edition, and all that. Expect me to spend a lot of time stress-testing your physics/metaphysics.

Laertes wrote:It occurs to me that I've derailed the thread. My apologies.

It also occurs to me that Frank and I may have stumbled on the basic answer to the initial question, though. How does one make a magic system which is flexible without being merely a source of constant GM fiat? How do we handle the fact that skin and horn are both made of keratin, while fruit are biologically distinct from the trees that grow them?

Science. In the same way that Ars Magica cleaves faithfully to the underlying laws of its world, we make our magic system cleave faithfully to the underlying laws of *our* world.

Well, the trivial execution of that is to note that the underlying laws of our world don't let people do magic.

But with a couple handwaves in the premise, I could get behind a fairly-scientific sort of magic. I'd enjoy that a lot, actually, I think.

Anyway, I gotta go to work, but I'll be looking for a game prep thread (or link to one if you wanna do it elsewhere) when I get back.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 31, 2014 2:02 pm

Laertes wrote:All material objects fall to earth because they contain sin, because this world is sinful. Angels are able to fly because they are not sinful. This was an actual thing people in the real world actually believed, because they really didn't know what else caused it.

That is true, but it is importantly true that this is not in fact what Aristotle believed. Aristotle believed that things had a natural place and that they would fall or buoyantly rise if they were raised above or below that place. Earth on the bottom, then Water, Air, and finally Aether.

But fundamentally: what the actual fuck are you talking about? That rant you went off on about how things actually use the Ptolemeic system and shit was so fucking crazy that I felt compelled to actually look through Ars Magica 5th edition. And you know what I found? I found that you are completely off your rocker. While I will admit that Ars Magica 5th edition is way more Christian than the edition I'm familiar with playing (which I believe to be 3rd), it does not once in the entire book mention that the Sun goes around the Earth. That would be a pretty important piece of world building, and the game doesn't say that anywhere. It uses the word "sun" a lot of times (because "Sun" is an important spell duration that a lot of things in the game have), but not once does it actually say that the fundamental nature of the universe is non-Copernican.

The only mention of Ptolemy or his theories is in the Artes Liberales skill, which among other things allows you to understand his theories. And that's it. As a learned person from that time and place, you presumably believe that the Sun goes around the Earth in a crystal sphere, but there is no indication in the entire rulebook that it actually does. Since player characters can't use magic to discover or affect anything above the Earth's atmosphere, it's essentially a moot point in most games, but any connotations such a proposition might have are wholly unsupported by the 5th edition Ars Magica book.

Fundamentally, whenever games devolve into questions of realism, they get fucked. Because most MCs think they know a lot more about how things really work than they actually do. You can see this sort of shit in action when SKR goes off on rants about how high level warriors should never be able to do something or other because it's kind of hard for an out of shape gamer to reproduce the stunt on the first try. But Laertes is really the perfect example. He thinks that questions of physics and biology should be adjudicated not by his limited understanding, but by his limited understanding of the limited understanding of people who lived eight hundred years ago. Really. He totally fucking said that.

This is why open ended systems like Ars Magica's are ultimately futile. Even if you have a system that you think you understand pretty well, at any time you could find out that your Storyguide thinks that some effect should be resolved according to his misunderstanding of 13th century misunderstandings of Aristotle's flawed physics model. That is a thing that could happen, and if Laertes is your Storyguide it evidently will.

-Username17

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sat May 31, 2014 2:10 pm

Laertes stop being a fuckass, you're are marching to a battle that has already been lost several times over. I suggest you read the Zak S threads because you're making his exact argument, it didn't work for him and it won't work for you.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sat May 31, 2014 3:33 pm

Laertes wrote:When "something comes up", for me as a player, it isn't because the GM is frustrated with a player who's found a way to win. It's because the setting's verisimilitude is broken, and with it is broken my sense of immersion and my ability to enjoy that setting. If someone found a way to do infinity damage when doing something nobody has ever done before, that's great, that happened in real life and we called it the Manhattan Project and it changed the world and every country which had the infrastructure to do it started to use that rules exploit. That doesn't damage the setting at all, quite the opposite. But if a guy walking down the road one day found a way to hit people with his hands in just such a way that it did infinity damage, that's bullshit. Hitting people with hands is a well-understood problem. By now, humans have been hit with human hands in every possible permutation of ways, and nobody has ever done infinity damage with it. If it is possible to do that in a game, then that's bullshit and that reduces the amount of fun I have as a player.

Therefore, if "something comes up", I expect the GM to leap in right fucking then like Superman and go "NOPE" and for it to be fixed then and there. On the spot. We can discuss it later and come up with an elegant fix that everyone agrees upon and implement that in a way that works for everyone, but right now? My game's broken and my fun's draining out, and I expect the GM to be Mr Game Plumber and fix it. Not next week. Now.

That's not "Mother, May I". That's a recognition that sometimes there are problems, and problems need to be fixed so that we can all go back to playing a game where the rules work. And if we don't spot those problems until they occur? Yeah, that's how the world works. Welcome to real life.

So if I understand you correctly, if another player plays the game in a way you personally don't like, you expect the DM to jump up and yell 'NOPE' in the players face?
Just because you personally have a problem with it?

Antumbra · Post by **Antumbra** » Sat May 31, 2014 3:47 pm

Frank: Arts and Academe, the sourcebook that Laertes mentioned goes into Astronomy and it's rather clear on the matter that the Sun is the second planet, twice the size of the Earth and Ptolemy was right.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 31, 2014 3:57 pm

Antumbra wrote:Frank: Arts and Academe, the sourcebook that Laertes mentioned goes into Astronomy and it's rather clear on the matter that the Sun is the second planet, twice the size of the Earth and Ptolemy was right.

This doesn't make it any better. This makes it worse.

The fact that there are obscure sourcebooks that upend the nature of physics and reality such that true facts I know about the world around me and can infer to be true about the world described in the game by reading the core book are actually false and shit is actually off the hook insanity all the time makes the game essentially unplayable. Basic assumptions of how "stuff" interacts when I use my "thumbs" may or may not be valid based on a book I haven't read? Absolutely no fucking way.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat May 31, 2014 4:08 pm

Yeah, going back to Unknown Armies, the idea of "pulling back the veil" a little at a time to reveal deeper truths about the way things are works fine for literature, but in a game with actual rules you just run the risk of continually undermining player's actions and gamemaster's plots and stories. That doesn't mean you can't elaborate on a system - the Book of Moar Spells is a pretty default supplement - but you get to the point where like Magic of Incarnum you're basically inviting munchkins in for tea and grossly overadvertised powerups, your panties dangling off one delicately poised ankle to make sure there's no misunderstandings.

(Or, of course, you can go the Virtual Realities 2.0 route and just rewrite the subsystem to your heart's content.)

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat May 31, 2014 4:39 pm

Ishy wrote:So if I understand you correctly, if another player plays the game in a way you personally don't like, you expect the DM to jump up and yell 'NOPE' in the players face?

Ishy, I think Laertes point is related more to problems in the rules resulting in weird behaviours, than to individual playing styles.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Sat May 31, 2014 7:04 pm

Ok, I'll take my beating for saying "I'm the GM therefore I win such arguments." I don't actually get into arguments very often because most of my players don't even know the system well enough to argue with me in the first place and always ask me what the appropriate level is for a spontaneous spell.

That said, Frank, and others arguing that Ars Magica is a "mother may i" system: here are the Rego Corpus vs Muto Corpus guidelines in 5th edition. All spells, unless increased in level, default to Target: Individual, Duration: Momentary, and Range: Self (as in targeting the caster)

Rego Corpus:

General: Ward against creatures associated with Corpus from one realm (Divine, Infernal, Faerie, Magic)

Level 2: Make a target lose control of a body part
Level 3: Move a target slowly in one direction along a surface that can support its weight.
Level 4: Control the large scale physical movement of a target
Move a target slowly in any direction you please i.e straight up, across a surface that can't normally support them
level 5: hold a target motionless
level 10: control a target's motions
eliminate fatigue and wound penalties
animate a corpse
teleport up to 5 paces away (pace = yard= meter)
level 15: direct the flow of bodily energy (transfer fatigue levels)
move a target quickly in any direct you please
teleport up to 50 paces away
ward a target against being touched by other human beings
Level 20: teleport the target 500 paces away
level 25: teleport the target up to one league away
level 30: teleport the target up to 7 leagues away
level 35: teleport the target to anywhere you have an arcane connection to

Muto Corpus
level 2: change someone to give them a minor ability
level 3: utterly change the appearance or size of a person (must still remain human)
level 5: make a body resistant to damage (+1 soak)
level 10: make a body resistant to damage (+2 soak)
turn into a land animal with Animal Requisite
level 15: make a body resistant to damage (+3 soak)
level 20: make a body resistant to damage (+4 soak)
turn a target into a bird or a fish with Animal Requisite
level 25: turn a target into a solid inanimate object (Terram requisite)
turn a target into a plant (Herbam requisite)
level 30: turn a target into an insubstantial object (Auram/Aquam requisite)

So Frank's example of the horn growing out of someone's head is implicitly a Muto Corpus spell, not Rego, which governs motion. I'd put it at the level 3 baseline for "utterly changing" since horns never grow naturally out of a human's head.

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Sat May 31, 2014 7:26 pm

Heaven's Thunder Hammer wrote:That said, Frank, and others arguing that Ars Magica is a "mother may i" system

Dude, you just said in the previous sentence that in your games spontaneous magic consists entirely of your players asking you "mother may I". You're undermining yourself.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer wrote:Muto Corpus
level 2: change someone to give them a minor ability
level 3: utterly change the appearance or size of a person (must still remain human)

I'd put it at the level 3 baseline for "utterly changing" since horns never grow naturally out of a human's head.

Big horns are a minor ability of getting a weapon attached to your head, small horns are completely cosmetic, and you're putting the effect at the same level as Enlarge Person (what else "utterly changing the size of a person" could be?) Is there anything Muto Corpus 2 could possibly be useful for in your game?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 31, 2014 7:27 pm

Heaven's Thunder Hammer wrote:I'd put it at the level 3 baseline for "utterly changing" since horns never grow naturally out of a human's head.

This. This right here is why this sort of open ended "design an effect on the fly" system can never ever work. I'm not even going to address the decision of what school and what level to put that effect under. I'm going to address the reasoning. See, HTH decided to put it at level 3 because horns never grow naturally out of a human head. That's important, because it's not true.

It's called a cutaneous horn and we already mentioned it in this thread. That's a real thing that really happens to real humans. And when you have a system like this, where the MC pulls a difficulty out of his ass based on how he thinks the world works, you're basically up a creek. Because as we've already established when Laertes got Aristotle's gravity theories wrong, none of the people claiming that they can make perfect rulings based on the sacred texts actually know how things work.

HTH is simply medically wrong, which means that when you want to perform this completely arbitrary task I pulled out of my ass as a lame example, he will make his decision based on precepts that are false!

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat May 31, 2014 8:45 pm

I have actually met someone with that disorder. In his case it didn't look cool/creepy, mostly like a giant welt on his head since it didn't poke far enough out to do more than rupture the skin and make it look like a big sore.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sat May 31, 2014 8:46 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: HTH is simply medically wrong, which means that when you want to perform this completely arbitrary task I pulled out of my ass as a lame example, he will make his decision based on precepts that are false!

Well, just because something is true in rare cases in reality doesn't mean that it's going to automatically be true in your fantasy world (or that existing cases aren't actually caused by magic).

I mean, in RPGs you just got to expect that players and DMs aren't experts on anything. There's going to be weird medical conditions you've never heard of, and your dungeons probably aren't going to be sound from an engineering standpoint. At some point you just have to agree not to sweat the small stuff.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sat May 31, 2014 10:00 pm

silva wrote:
Ishy wrote:So if I understand you correctly, if another player plays the game in a way you personally don't like, you expect the DM to jump up and yell 'NOPE' in the players face?
Ishy, I think Laertes point is related more to problems in the rules resulting in weird behaviours, than to individual playing styles.

Yes, the DM should ban all behaviour Laertes finds weird even though other players might not find that weird at all. That is the point Silva.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat May 31, 2014 10:20 pm

Cyberzombie wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: HTH is simply medically wrong, which means that when you want to perform this completely arbitrary task I pulled out of my ass as a lame example, he will make his decision based on precepts that are false!
Well, just because something is true in rare cases in reality doesn't mean that it's going to automatically be true in your fantasy world (or that existing cases aren't actually caused by magic).

I mean, in RPGs you just got to expect that players and DMs aren't experts on anything. There's going to be weird medical conditions you've never heard of, and your dungeons probably aren't going to be sound from an engineering standpoint. At some point you just have to agree not to sweat the small stuff.

Fairly sure that people not being on the same page is kinda the point. No GM can see things from everyone's point of view. This is precisely why I think enough of the game is arbitrated by the GM and that there is nothing gained from having what your abilities do be any more vague than absolutely necessary.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sat May 31, 2014 10:29 pm

MGuy wrote:Fairly sure that people not being on the same page is kinda the point. No GM can see things from everyone's point of view. This is precisely why I think enough of the game is arbitrated by the GM and that there is nothing gained from having what your abilities do be any more vague than absolutely necessary.

Well the gain is precisely that it allows you to go beyond what was specifically written out. If you require everything to be written out, then you're limited to playing a board/computer game, where you have a finite action set, and trying anything beyond that results in the game engine telling you that you can't do that.

Obviously any time you introduce a human element you may have disagreements, but it allows for a lot of extra flexibility too (and a hell of a lot less required pages of the rulebook).

Drolyt · Post by **Drolyt** » Sat May 31, 2014 11:21 pm

Cyberzombie wrote:If you require everything to be written out, then you're limited to playing a board/computer game, where you have a finite action set, and trying anything beyond that results in the game engine telling you that you can't do that.

Did you just miss the discussion on HERO System? There might be things you can't do with a Cosmic VPP, but they are very few and far between. And HERO totally has guidelines for adjudicating effects the rules don't cover.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat May 31, 2014 11:29 pm

Cyberzombie wrote:
MGuy wrote:Fairly sure that people not being on the same page is kinda the point. No GM can see things from everyone's point of view. This is precisely why I think enough of the game is arbitrated by the GM and that there is nothing gained from having what your abilities do be any more vague than absolutely necessary.
Well the gain is precisely that it allows you to go beyond what was specifically written out. If you require everything to be written out, then you're limited to playing a board/computer game, where you have a finite action set, and trying anything beyond that results in the game engine telling you that you can't do that.

Obviously any time you introduce a human element you may have disagreements, but it allows for a lot of extra flexibility too (and a hell of a lot less required pages of the rulebook).

I'm not sure why you think having actual rules for magic in your game somehow is anymore limiting than any individual's imagination. Again, the GM is going to arbitrate much of the game. There's nothing about codifying the effects of your spells that somehow limits how creative someone is. This world has rules and, while there are things that we can't do, there are plenty of things we can. Creativity is not somehow snuffed out because of physics.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 12:30 am

The trouble I've had with HERO sfx is that there's no real guidelines for what you'll actually encounter in that game. If your Fire Mage says, "I want to kill some Ice Monsters", most GMs in my circle would either say, "sounds like what you want to play is Diablo," or, "Here, have an Asbestos Monster instead."

Fate Core at the moment is working out for me, because it has a resource system that dictates how often you can apply the (sometimes wrong, as shown above) "common sense" and "real world logic" to in-game verbs.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 12:31 am

MGuy wrote:I'm not sure why you think having actual rules for magic in your game somehow is anymore limiting than any individual's imagination. Again, the GM is going to arbitrate much of the game. There's nothing about codifying the effects of your spells that somehow limits how creative someone is. This world has rules and, while there are things that we can't do, there are plenty of things we can. Creativity is not somehow snuffed out because of physics.

Well, it certainly limits what you can do. You can do more with open-ended spells like major image than you can do with purely defined spells like fireball or web.

Even rules heavy systems like D&D have to create open-ended stuff for more flexibility sometimes. And yeah, there's plenty of arguments over what wish and silent image can do, and different DMs have their own interpretations. But I think the game is better with those effects rather than going the 4E ideal of sanitizing the game of anything requiring DM interpretation and getting a pure unambiguous miniatures game. I can understand the appeal to having that, but personally, the miniatures combat isn't why I show up at a RPG table.

That being said, I don't advocate a purely fiat system like Mage, but I can accept that sometimes you want open-ended effects, even if they do create arguments.

Drolyt · Post by **Drolyt** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:27 am

Cyberzombie wrote:Well, it certainly limits what you can do. You can do more with open-ended spells like major image than you can do with purely defined spells like fireball or web.

Open ended doesn't mean no rules. The D&D illusion spells are somewhat poorly written, but that isn't a fundamental limitation. It might be difficult but you can have effects that are well defined and open ended.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 5:36 am

Cyberzombie wrote:
MGuy wrote:I'm not sure why you think having actual rules for magic in your game somehow is anymore limiting than any individual's imagination. Again, the GM is going to arbitrate much of the game. There's nothing about codifying the effects of your spells that somehow limits how creative someone is. This world has rules and, while there are things that we can't do, there are plenty of things we can. Creativity is not somehow snuffed out because of physics.
Well, it certainly limits what you can do. You can do more with open-ended spells like major image than you can do with purely defined spells like fireball or web.

Even rules heavy systems like D&D have to create open-ended stuff for more flexibility sometimes. And yeah, there's plenty of arguments over what wish and silent image can do, and different DMs have their own interpretations. But I think the game is better with those effects rather than going the 4E ideal of sanitizing the game of anything requiring DM interpretation and getting a pure unambiguous miniatures game. I can understand the appeal to having that, but personally, the miniatures combat isn't why I show up at a RPG table.

That being said, I don't advocate a purely fiat system like Mage, but I can accept that sometimes you want open-ended effects, even if they do create arguments.

Rules that limit things limit what you can do. That much is true. If a rule says you can only carry X amount of things that rule limits you from carrying more than X. That is not necessarily a bad thing at all and that kind of limitation does, in no way, prevent you from being creative.

The more open ended/unclear a rule is the more likely it is to cause problems. Many of the spells in D+D are very clear and also don't appear in 4E as things you can do. Wall of Stone is a thing. It has limits. What it does is clear. It doesn't appear as a thing you can do (to my knowledge) in 4e. Claiming 4e did things badly does not advance your argument at all.