...Why not both? There's a lot of middle you're excluding here.
Plainly, there's nothing inherently wrong in asking the DM to adjudicate. Come on now; you get on me about hyperbole and come right back with more?Not exactly a good example, though. Because what you're describing is essentially a warlock. Roll to hit, maybe do some damage. Uninspiring in terms of magic.
But yeah, in the end, I don't have a problem with that particular concept provided the description of your spell works out. Take, for specifics, the ray of frost spell in the playtest. As I remember it (and I don't have the rules on hand so correct me if I'm wrong) it's designed pretty much entirely around stopping one enemy's movement for a round. Right? Says nothing about causing ice buildup or anything like that. But when a player wants to use it to ice over the gong in the bugbear lair and dampen that sound, what's wrong with asking the DM if it'd work, and then either letting it happen if he agrees, or coming up with another idea if he doesn't? What's inherently wrong with asking the DM to adjudicate the situation?
I want a more robust rule-set in which the DM doesn't need to adjudicate every bit of interesting tactics beyond attack and damage rolls. I don't expect 5e Fighters to have a 4e-like list of powers. What I expect is for them to be able to do interesting, Fighter-y stuff based on their actual class features.
Like I said - I am not making a "good" or "bad" value judgment.Why do these things need to be specified in order to be good or interesting design?
I'm talking about what I want in Next. If I want the 1e or RC experience, I still have those games. I can still play them. I have, in fact, done so rather recently. 1e's a much better-designed game than it often gets credit for, with a much tighter caster/non-caster balance than any edition up until 4e.
Putting out a brand new rule-set where the PHB is 2/3 stuff for Wizards and Clerics and the Fighter gets left out in the cold on more interesting options ... well, it's not a game that's offering me anything I don't already have.
-O