Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
Whenever this topic, or others like it come up, it occurs to me that maybe these discussions would greatly benefit from more gamers having broader exposure to a variety of systems... that maybe some gamers just interpret what's being said through the lenses of black-box magic and leveled progression and so on, without the alternatives coming to mind.
Black-box magic and leveled progression, albeit not precisely in D&D fashion, are what you get in most video games, whether it's jRPGs, Skyrim, or your average MMO. Regardless of how much of that's due to cross-pollination the idea of fire-and-forget magical effects tied to a resource pool (point based systems are probably more common than spell slots, but D&D doesn't get any less imbalanced when you switch to psionics so that's not really significant) is firmly entrenched at this point. It's also a fairly convenient system to use at a table, is easy to write content for, and has fairly good rules clarity to prevent arguments. 'I use X, it does Y' is a simple and effective formula that unfortunately happens to be particularly vulnerable to balance issues, especially when you start allowing multiple output variables to interact.

By contrast, systems where you build character powers by adding up points like in GURPS or by formulating effects on the fly like in MtA or Ars Magica have some very clear abuse points and tend to lead to a great many arguments with the GM if people at the table aren't willing to be accommodating. Heck, many of the most contentious or known to be broken D&D spells are some of the most open-ended ones like Charm Person, and Polymorph. Nobody complains about Scorching Ray. The perfectly manageable magic system doesn't exist, everything's a trade off.