Wading Through _D_T&T, part 3

Working into the magic section of the game, I knew what to expect about three years ago. Some of it was good, some was not so good. On the good side, Kremm-resistance is worked into the spells themselves and not a general rule of thumb, as it was in the 7th edition. One the bad side, I'll let this sidebar quotation illustrate,

"Spells don’t backfire any more. In the 7th edition of T&T, spellcasters needed to make an IQ saving roll on the level of the spell being cast in order to cast it successfully. Failing to do so, especially on a total fumble roll of 3, could have tragic results. That rule has been revoked. Warriors don’t drop their weapons under pressure; archers don’t bobble their arrows trying to nock them. And we wouldn’t drive cars, ever, if a fumble might blow up the engine and kill the passengers any time we turned the key or put our foot on the gas."

As with most poor justifications, the statement is grossly incorrect and it doesn't make sense. The car starting, showing the reader how practical(?) the quoted is, at the end doesn't clear things up for sure. The act of starting a car isn't a skill, but just by following this logic, spells run out of battery power on very cold days, the caster might drop the keys while in a hurry. Okay somebody didn't like using saving rolls for casting spells. Do we have to get this explanation? Forget that failure does occur in reality, and better written fiction, and just say "it's magic."

The rest of the magic section reads like a card game and shows how to really get some munchkin action going, along with a warning that doing these tricks ruin role-playing. It starts to read like stereo assembly instructions after a while, until it finally gets to the spell section. The magic section isn't as clarified as combat is, the edition that does settle all qualms for everybody concerning the usage of magic is going to be 1,600 pages long. Right now, the magic is akin to a Roger Zelazny's Dilvish, the Damned, series and not whatever Jack Vance wrote that inspired Gary Gygax when he was on the mountain while living in the sewers. The fact that it isn't, you've heard it before, is a good thing.