My Life As A Gamer: A Tales of Two Mage Classes

One of the big difference in RPG design between tabletop and digital is that digital is far friendly to very complex mechanical interaction than tabletop.

Let me show you by example.

Let's take a pretty typical fantasy magician character, the sort that tosses around the flashy battle magics. Regular readers will be familiar with some edition or derivative of Dungeons & Dragons, so you know how that works. I will compare this to Final Fantasy XIV's Black Mage.

Magic-User

• You have spells of all sorts, but very few are universally applicable, so you will need to prepare carefully to be effective in using them.
• You have X spell slots for spells of Y spell level per day. If you want to cast the same spell multiple times, you must prepare multiple copies of that spell.
• Spells, once cast, are expended.
• Your character must rest before preparing more spells, and each spell takes Z amount of time to prepare in addition to any material components required.
• You may or may not need to have free use of your voice (Verbal components) and your limbs (Somatic components) to cast a given spell- check the spell description.

Black Mage

• You have 10K Mana. You have Fire spells, Ice spells, Thunder spells, and a pittance of utility that you will almost never use in practice. You will almost never cast spells outside of combat.
• You have Ice aspect and Fire aspect. Ice spells don't hit as hard as fire, but this aspect reduces costs down to zero progressively and vastly accelerates mana regeneration even while in combat. Fire greatly enhances the damage done progressively, but increases the cost. This has minimal or no effect on non-aspected spells (e.g. Thunder). Casting spells of the opposing aspect swaps the user to that aspect.
• You cannot cast at all while moving or while silenced unless you have a special ability that allows you to do so available to you, which only appears at (much) higher levels; you're meant to be an artillery piece.

The result is clear when you do the ludological equivalent of watching a machine operate, like this video below.

These two game mechanic constructs have very different inputs, user controls, and outputs. Both are designed for their intended medium of use, and do not work well when translated out of that medium. (Go look at how quickly fantasy games abandoned Gygax & Arneson's magic rules when videogame adaptions arose, especially compared to the few that did adapted them straight like the SSI Gold Box games.)

The D&D Magic-User is a proven design. It allows the player to enjoy the potency of the sorcerer archetype without--when governed as intended, something later editions and many derivatives failed to do--overshadowing those that do not use magic.

FFXIV's Black Mage, in tabletop terms, is not only boring to play but also tedious and bothersome. The player has to manage two conflicting buffs, each with durations, has a handful of mostly-redundant spells, and has exactly two decisions to make each time his turn comes up: "Do I have enough targets clumped together to make Area of Effect worthwhile?" and "Do I have my Damage Over Time effect rolling?" (That, by the way, is what Thunder spells are for.) So little actual decisions to make, and a hell of a lot of conditions to manage. Perfect for a videogame--which handles that for you--but terrible on the tabletop.

Tabletop design needs to strictly adhere to the KISS Maxim. Your turn comes up, your man does one thing, it's resolved then and there, results applied, move on. This means "I cast Fireball!" needs to be followed by "Saving Throw" and "Take (X) damage"- no more, no less. Not "I'm too low on Mana for another Fire 1, so I'll Transpose to Ice and toss Ice 1; first tic of Mana regen puts me at 4.4K, and I have 10 seconds left on my Thunder DOT."

Folks like the Pundit have been around long enough to grok this, but you'd be surprised at how many people who've been around for decades that do not. Game design is machine design, folks. Test your machines. If your design can't be grokked by, and used as intended by, an ordinary player then you dun goofed- go back to the drawing board.