Jal Dorak's page

My take: Any GM who wants to remove raise dead from the game or similarly "harden" the death rules should first play a campaign (not a game, but a full campaign over the course of at least 13 character levels). What might feel fun on one side of the screen isn't always fun on the other...

AKA: For a while, I had similar rules for death and resurrection in my game, but that was at a point where I was always the GM and never the player. After playing in a few campaigns, I realized that even WITH resurrection and the like, there's still very much a fear of death for your character. Just the fact that you can be brought back to life doesn't make dying any more sucky... even if it only amounts to the fact that you don't get to take action in the game for an hour or two. Not being able to play the game you want to play because your character died for an hour is, frankly, bad enough.

Also, playing a story-heavy campaign like an Adventure Path, you really SHOULD have raise dead options. No raise dead only really works in a true sandbox game where being the same character in a carefully plotted storyline isn't as key to enjoyment of the game.

Conversely, the original criticism ignores the fact that a player may not always want to bring their character back to life. I've had several characters die very satisfactorily and decided to bring in a new character rather than mess with their "ending".

A spell that brings someone back to life in the middle of combat may in fact be nothing but a bullseye on the cleric and the resurrected character. I know as a DM that my giants and goblins like nothing better than desecrating corpses and "might-be-deads".

stuart haffenden wrote:

If you want a rant, and sometimes we all do to be fair, make sure you post a "rant warning" before hand so nobody takes it personally!

What do you think that avatar means? I thought everyone knew that that red-costumed jester avatar means "rant warning!!".

Now I see what you were getting at. The grappled character would definitely know which one was the real one.

Your DM is correct. By the rules there is no bonus.

Improved familiars are generally useful combat additions and can still do all the normal familiar shtick. Definitely worth a feat (in this case you get blindsense and telepathy and flight - a perfect scout familiar).

In the past I have given bonuses in high-powered campaigns. In that particular case it was a pseudodragon; if I recall it shared its +2 racial bonus against poison.

The special materials section of the rules are FUBAR. There is six different special materials and there are six different ways to calculate the costs for those materials.

Cold iron is a simple x2

Darkwood are by the lbs.

Adamantine has a single weapon cost but multiple armor costs.

Silver has a cost for light or heavy weapons and a vague missile cost

Dragon hide ignores the armor cost but doubles the masterwork costs.

Mithral is by armor type or by the lbs for other things.

What a mess.

You may consider improving the Fey Magic. Considering any spellcaster (except Adepts) now gets unlimited 0th-level spells, it's not that impressive.

My DM ruling would be that any grappled creature is treated as being an object and this it appears that there are 1d4+4 glabrezi grappling 1d4+4 of the PC.

The PC could do something clever to work around this, like drop an object in their square, but that's something to encourage.

I use my 3rd Edition Monster Manual Gift Set box for MM3-5.

Josh, can we have flame wars over the Monster Manuals! I choose number 2.

BEST MONSTER MANUAL EVER!

Jal Dorak wrote:

SirUrza wrote:

Jal Dorak wrote:

But can Wizards print them on their own or would they need a deal with Paizo? Not that they ever would now, but maybe in the future?

With or without Paizo they are never going to. They're done with 3rd edition.

Never say never. If there is money to be made they will do it. They just can't now without damaging 4th Edition.

No offense Jal but the never say never attitude in this case is just being ignorant.

Forgotten Realms fans have been waiting close to 10 years for Wizards to ALLOW Profantasy to release the 4th and final patch (that's been finished for close to 8 years now) to the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas. Guess what came out today, Windows 7. It'll be interesting to see if the Atlas works.

Look at the games being released on Steam nowadays, after all.

What is D0, D1, ect....?

I heard something about Erik Mona writing about the Spires...

How about conversions of any old modules?

There are also:

Journey
Last Baron
Superstar
Treasure Chest
Urban
Wilderness

Paizo customer service. Not just a good thing, the BEST thing.

:)

Jal Dorak wrote:

But can Wizards print them on their own or would they need a deal with Paizo? Not that they ever would now, but maybe in the future?

With or without Paizo they are never going to. They're done with 3rd edition.

Damon Griffin wrote:

Combined issues began with Dungeon #90, but apparently split again beginning with #114, so I don't have any of the Paths in my back issue magazines. I did buy Shackled City (as a possible setting book) at a deep discount during my FLGS's inventory reduction sale a couple of years ago, for either 75% or 90% off. I think I heard that contractually the two later paths cannot be reprinted?

All of the contents of Dungeon are owned by WotC. We had to arrange a special licensing deal with them to reprint the Shackled City adventures as a hardcover book, and although we asked many times for permission to do the same for Age of Worms and Savage Tide, they never gave us that permission.

Not that they ever would now, but maybe in the future?

The Adventure Path line has been FAR AND ABOVE the MOST successful part of our publishing business; the core rulebooks are the first thing we've done that have eclipsed the adventure path books in popularity. What I'm saying is that we're obviously doing SOMETHING right with the Adventure Path, and I'm not interested in changing that formula. We found something that works, and minor adjustments are always happening to that formula, but huge changes like removing all of the back matter and making each volume one huge adventure installment are not going to happen.

And no... Hasbro has not bought out Paizo. My bank account is proof enough of that.

Maybe somewhere along the line we could see a Deities & Demigods style book? One can hope. But that doesn't mean I don't want the APs to change format.

The structure works. The books are a good size, organized, and have a bit of everything.

Seriously, we should be happy the material is published at all. This seems a bit like biting the hand that feeds.

PS. Have I mentioned how ecstatic I was with the Tiefling options in CoT? Fantastic. I love d% charts!

Sometimes you get the opposite - the players know exactly what they will be getting but do it anyway.

In our first Ravenloft campaign, the realm was rules by co-denizens, a lich and a small innocent boy (they may even have been the same person, we never found out).

At some points, they were both directly involved with the party. The boy showed up like a ghost, giving us hints and help. The lich followed us around like an NPC, only helping when we really messed up. Nevertheless we found him incredibly meddling, annoying and arrogant.

Anyway, this ancient decaying black dragon tells us the key to escape is in this old wizard tower, so we spend an adventure getting to the top.

As my rogue is about to open the door at the top of the tower, I turn back to the party. "I swear to all the dark powers, if that stupid lich is on the other side of this door I'm going to charge." After a bit of discussion we all agreed that would be a good way to vent our frustration.

I open the door. The DM stops for a second.

DM: "You do realize what you're about to do?"
Me: "You're telling me he's actually there?"
DM: "Yes, he..."
Me: "I charge."

That was pretty much the end of the campaign right there, but we made our own beds.

Anybody want to go play Cops and Robbers?

Rush's cold bloodedness continues to intrigue me, and makes a nice foil to his protogee. The "Stick your arm into the gate, this might work" was kind of funny, in a cold way.

The arm thing was the first thing I thought of as soon as the alarm for 3 minutes went off. That made me happy, as it stayed true to Stargate's method of continuity/problem-solving (in a way, it goes all the way back to episode 2 of SG1).

That moment turned around a similar moment that almost put me off the series.

If you're looking at human nations, then perhaps treat regional humans as different racial subtypes.

If that's too specific, just say a race loses any weapon proficiencies, bonus feats, and physical or singular ability score bonus.

Instead they gain Weapon Focus and the benefits you describe, although you may want to look at making them more than just additional hit/damage increases.

Sold for $17, 925!

I can't tell you where I heard this but rumour is Roman arch-lich Fortunatus Minimus bought it back. It's his old d20 and it always rolled 1s at the worst of times. He's been waiting 2000 odd years to smash it to splintereens.

My favorite place to hide a phylactery? As part of a spellbook.

This is one of a bazillion things we're gonna be fixing if/when we reprint. Honestly, this error is the tied with the "Reigon" typo on the poster map for "Most Embarrassing Error in a Pathfinder Product" as far as I'm concerned, and that they're both in the same product is shameful. Neither error is one we talk much about. But yeah... they're errors. (cries)

I had to cut back a while ago as well. It seems to go in cycles.

To other points, might I point out that in terms of available material, Paizo offers very reasonable pdf prices for high-quality. If you just want a single item for a single use, you can't go wrong with the pdf.

And considering it 'bucking tradition' when someone ignores rules and constraints that do not exist and were never a part of the game (and do not that 3.X/PF are not 2e/1e/0e) causes major issues around the community at large.

Oh I agree, we kinda went a different way with it really, Some worlds we ran elves tend to"forget" and live in the moment allowing sadness and bitterness to slide away.

Anyhow the long lived race issue has always been an issue. I try to tackle it early on in my worlds building, but really elves are less likely then humans to go hunting though dungeons for the most part. You would have some high powered elves somewhere but really not a huge amount. Long lived races I can see gaining skill focus as a bonus feat for long age but really it's something that never comes up for a player

Needless to say, all the other races hated them, but for a different reason than normal.

A comment on the "one gnome cleric" deal. It's all well and good to come up with such a concept and play it out.

But what if Gnomecleric dies? Does Gnomeclerictwin show up? Divine favor fails? Or does the DM play coddler and let the PC live because he/she is special?

If it's a matter of "flavour", what is it about the gnomes that attracts the player? Why not just play a halfling with a gnome-like personality?

If the player really wants to buck tradition and rules by being a unique being, then that raises many other issues at the table and in-game. Some of us feel the psionic/wizard argument ties in to these problems.

Watching the trailer again, I'm wondering

I dug planet hulk till the end... when they screwed him over... but then every cool major thing they have done has been that way to me. Civil war, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion.... just one awesome idea turned junk after another.... just me though :P

But I agree the endings to Planet Hulk, World War Hulk and Civil War were both too sudden. It's like they get caught up in the story and forget they have a limited run to wrap things up.

The biggest problem with Planet Hulk was the need to have it lead to WWH, meaning they needed to arbitrarily mess with his head. But it did raise some interesting questions.

Okay VV, let's get it all out there without misrepresentation:

I'm saying unnecessary conflation is bad, and as a corollary, a world that relies on unnecessary conflation is designed badly.

A world must stand on its own merits, independent of any and all rules,

and then be strong enough to bear interpretation by the rules, both in the hands of the players and the DM.

A world that uses the mechanics and the classes as a crutch in defining it, that shackle the classes into specific world aspects that can only be represented in a single manner? That world is badly designed.

I'm also saying that if you ban anything, you must have a valid reason.

There are a lot of valid reasons. There are a lot of invalid reasons. Banning something over an invalid reason is bad. Banning something over outright false reasons is bad. Not every case of banning something is bad, but you must have a valid reason.

I'm also saying that the players have their rights, which shouldn't be usurped without a valid reason. There are a lot of valid reasons. There are a lot of invalid reasons. Usurping player rights over an invalid reason is bad. Usurping player rights over an outright false reason is bad. There are times when saying no to a character concept or a build choice is appropriate, but you must have a valid reason.

I am not saying that if you say, "no," if you don't allow absolutely everything, then you are a bad DM. I'm saying that if you say, "no," or if you ban something for an invalid reason, or for no reason at all, then you are wrong. Big difference.

Because what you are leaving out here is that when you combine your arguments you are really saying:

1) DM should not use rules to build their world.
2) Characters in-game cannot tell mechanics at all.
3) The player gets to choose the rules for their character.
4) The DM needs a reason to deny #3 but cannot use #1 or #2 as it is wrong.

Therefore, you are saying a good number of world-building DMs are bad.

And again I ask the question, if the rules don't matter in-game, what justification does the player have to use alternate rules to represent their concept? I can only assume it is a mechanical play reason, which means they want some advantage or another.

How does bardic music better represent bless than the spell? Because they can do it more? The bonus is higher? Then certain people would notice such a discrepancy.

Because if nobody, even a god, can tell that the bard priest is not a cleric priest, then the bard themselves cannot tell and therefore it doesn't matter if they were a bard or a cleric and the whole argument is moot. Why cause the conflict? Just play the cleric.

Unless of course there is a distinct mechanical advantage, and we come back to the discrepancy issues.

(I'm intentionally ignoring mechanical balance complaints, since that's an easy no for a DM).

I'm not saying you can't play a bard priest, I'm just saying that in-game, people know the difference. And sometimes knowing the difference causes unwanted problems (like the psion/wizard).

Frankly, I would rather people start pronouncing Paizo correctly.

I'd like to think of my approach, to use your analogy, as the following:

My world is the grocer. I decide what is for sale (rules) and for how much (disposition), and even sell some recipes (archtypes/suggestions).

My players decide what to cook (characters) and how to cook it (roleplaying).

All the recipes (adventures) combine together to form the banquet that is my world history.

I have three home-brew worlds, though technically two of them are the same world millenia apart. Each world has different levels of detail. The default world is more like a farmers market where most things are found for a price. My other world(s) are more limited.

Finally, I have a "superworld" where pretty much anything is possible - this is where I do stuff like allow players to pretend they are Maiar.

The good folks at Paizo have already made this point!

Here's my world-building take on things:

You would likely end up with two core beliefs within halfling society.

1) Halflings are meant to rule and should use this power for their own good. These halflings would likely be condescending to other races, keep slaves, and live in a sexually promiscuous society. Think Brave New World.

Halfling laws for this group would give halflings superiority under the law, and make crimes against halflings more severe (or crimes against non-halflings less severe).

Knowing their race is destined to rule and will survive almost anything they would be highly militaristic and take on reckless and wild pursuits to support their empire. After all, they can always breed more halflings.

2) Halflings are meant to rule and should use this power for the good of all. These halflings would be delicate with other races, seeing them as fragile and perhaps slow. They would engender altruism from experience and be very cautious about breeding lest they overwhelm the world. Think Victorian England.

Halfling laws for this group would still favour halflings (after all, killing a 1000 year old divine spark is more serious than a 50 year old human). They would exhibit a sense of responsibility to the world and spread their empire in an effort to share its bounty - but only to those willing.

3) Likely a neutral group - probably reclusive and untrusting of non-halflings. These would act more like the stereo-typical elves of D&D.

Grimsh wrote:

I believe in Shadow in the Sky, Pathfinder 13, it says that Drow rhymes with bow.

An excellent answer (especially in written form)!

Going back to FakeHealer - I wouldn't dispute your pronunciation. Mine (as in Bach or Loch) is closer to yours than to the common "litch". The etymology of the word is very cloudy, even moreso than drow.

Although there may be some credence to the argument that since the plural is "liches" the pronunciation would be a soft sound - again why I originally went with "lih".

Next Marvel Animation DVD

I'm sure this has been mentioned elsewhere, but it bears repeating.

If you like Hulk, Planet Hulk, Conan, sci-fi, or just Marvel in general then this looks to be a strong outing. Budget looks bigger and seems to capture scenes right out of the books.

Hopefully it is long enough to tell all the stories from the series.

The real question is, how do the drow pronouce it, and do they kill you for saying it wrong?

Of course, given the drow, they probably have more pronunciations than we do. They probably start House wars over it. Now there's an adventure idea. Imagine the villains big reveal for the global war being a single word.

I think a lot of DMs wrangle it so not all clerics are full-on armored battle priests and buckets-o'-healin'

For my own game, I'm going with the house rule that you can only autoburn spells into other spells of a Domain your god has that you took. A cleric of a healin' god burning all their spells into healing makes sense. Ditto a death priest with the death domain being able to do all the harming spells which also heal undead. But having the priests of the gods of wine, clockwork, and commerce do the same things? Not so much.

If you've got the Artifice domain, you should be able to burn your spells into Mending, Make Whole, Fabricate and the like, and if you channel energy, it should be a big wave of repair that fixes everything in your radius and heals constructs. And so on.

The whole "Behold the power of my god!" routine shouldn't just come in two flavors.

And in regards to the heavy armor - sure you can use it, but no-one forces you. If a player really wants to I could envision allowing them giving up armor proficiency for Lay on Hands or maybe Favored Enemy depending on the church.

I use "rhymes with pow".

I love reading Monte Cook's articles on how as a young fantasy reader you often make up your own pronunciations because you have no comparison.

For example, for years I pronounced lich as if it were "lih" (hard h).

Count me in as well.

Here is a fun one this thread has made me think one...Monk orders. How do you explain non monk classes as part of a monk order? I mean how do you all gain the same training from a very young age and come out with wildly different ability and some of you just can not do "monk" ability at all?

I got thinking about it from my homebrew as there is one order of "monks" but how would you explain say fighter or ranger with in the order and not being the "monk" class?

On the other hand, at some point the monks in charge would realize "Hey, this one can't hack it."

To the whole priest/cleric argument:

I'm in the camp that says: depending on the church, any class could be a priest, but only certain mechanics make a cleric.

Of course, in my game I usually have full-on Priest classes with no armor and more spells than a cleric...

I've been really busy lately, but there have been some VERY GOOD ideas on all sides recently (and also some bad ones).

Just thought you all should know I was still reading...

Just to chime in in regards to the "player changes 'fluff' to suit the DM using rules they do not want" discussion.

If a player has a great idea for a character, but needs to use certain rules to represent that character, then the 'fluff' is irrelevant to their argument as well. They are admitting that their is a mechanical reasoning to their character, and thus if a DM says no based on the mechanics they are SOL.

However, if they are as reasonable as they claim, they should have no problems representing this great character with ANY mechanics.

For example:

Player: I have a really great idea for a 'Highlander-style' swordsman.
DM: Sounds neat, what've you got?
Player: But I need to use the psionics mechanics to play it.
DM: Why?
Player: It would play better.
DM: Well, if the concept is that important, why not just play a multiclass sorcerer/fighter. We can come up with a rule to ignore armor or something to make it do what you want.
Player: Okay, let's look at what that could be.

This is a healthy co-operation.

I don't remember his exact issue, but he had some concern with skills. It may just have been a "if its not broke no need to fix it" type of thing. Can anyone help explain why Pathfinder skills work out better, if they do?

A general issue he had with 3.5 is that it always seemed so easy to get attack bonuses, and it was much harder to get a stronger defense. He took one look at fighter in pathfinder and frowned since he gets even more ways to easily hit now. In general to the system, has offense and defense buffs been changed or balanced out at all?

We had a concern about cross-classing not having any penalties anymore and the way you get +3 on skill checks to your class skills. It seems really easy for someone to just take a couple levels in various classes and then just have +3's to skills around the board.

If someone is multiclass just for skill boosts, they will miss out on much more.

Voted.

I'd like to rephrase my original point, as I feel I've been slightly behind in this fast-moving thread.

1) I do in fact agree with Viletta's primary argument that if a character rewrites the fluff to satisfy the DM, then that character is okay.

2) I do believe I have a different degree of defining "fluff" - and I do feel that some mechanics have an inherent fluff.

However, that second point of mine would really be better served by making it a mechanical argument. To me it feels like a fluff argument, but it is also an objection to the mechanics (not even balance, just how they work).

I hope I haven't come of as some sort of tyrant DM, because honestly (and I tried to make this point in my posts) I am very accomodating to my players requests.

Finally, to address the "sorcerer/psion" argument. A sorcerer DOES know how many spells they can cast each day, and of each "level", and can roughly gauge their relative power as he/she improves. To an observer, a sorcerer has a predictable level of power. "Well, Arkved has fought my army countless times but his fire spell has never slain any of my men with a single burst."

If we represent Arkved with psionics, the in game effects are slightly different (if they weren't, why go to the trouble of using the class).

I'm not trying to argue against the fluff/ban thing anymore. I'm just making my case that some rules do have an in-game impact.

Jal Dorak wrote:

Changing the nature of potions doesn't change the fact that you need a feat to make them, and if a player has a class that for some reason doesn't get feats, then they can't make potions by any name.

You're talking apples and belugas here. NO ONE has proposed that re-flavoring the mechanics gets you a mechanical benefit, like being able to brew "potions" without the Brew Potion feat would.

Hypothetically, if potions were an optional rule, and as a DM I disliked the flavour of magic being destroyed or consumed because in my campaign world magic is too powerful, then disallowing potions for flavour is justified.

It's very convenient to overlook or dismiss the fact that certain mechanics in the core rules are tied to flavour.

See, there's always a caveat "if the mechanics don't break the game" and "if it doesn't ruin your world." Exactly, and what breaks the game or ruins the world (for me and my other players) is different than for you, or for any other of numerous groups.

It's not an argument any side can win.

Here's the opposite to your argument:

"If a DM has a reasonable justification to establish the mechanics and flavour of his campaign world, the players must work with those decisions to create characters that fit that particular story."

There's a lot of presumption in that statement. Just as there is to say "a DM cannot ban a book because of flavour if the players can rewrite the flavour."

Just because Eberron has different spellbooks doesn't change the fact that in the core rules wizards use actual books. Changing the nature of potions doesn't change the fact that you need a feat to make them, and if a player has a class that for some reason doesn't get feats, then they can't make potions by any name.

Jal Dorak wrote:

And you can pretend greatsword stats are actually the stats for mind-blasts. That doesn't change how they work mechanically compared to, say, Unarmed Strike or a dragon's breath weapon.

Thank you for telling us what we've been trying to tell you (plural) for the last 200 or so posts in this thread.

If a player came to me with a sorcerer and said his spells were actually weapon damage (not sure why...), I would tell him there are already rules for weapon damage that everyone else in the world must follow. And the rules for his spells already have a certain flavour to them.

The Shaman wrote:

One more thing - does anyone bother with the difference in the paladin code? Before they only fell for gross violations of it, now the "gross" is gone and technically a paladin can fall for any violation. Do you play with this? It can be a real b...h, now that a paladin can fall for using arsenic to poison rats.

I played with a guy who made it a player decision, not a DM one, when the paladin falls. On the one hand, if your players are untrustworthy losers, that's a bad idea. If they're really into the immersion, though, it makes the fall more of an interesting roleplaying experience and less of a "my DM hates me" call.

1) The player has to express an interest in changing alignment (this expression could take the form of drastic in-game actions that may generate a player-DM discussion, though).

2) Alignment is treated like XP. You change alignments after adventures and based on the sum total of your experiences in that adventure.

Combined, these rules allow me to change alignments of particularly insensitive roleplayers, but still allow the considerate ones to feel they have control.

The "reward" of alignment changes makes it something they work for now. Oh, and I also make sure that change is reflected in how NPCs treat them and other mechanical benefits.

For example, in my Second Darkness campaign the hobgoblin rogue just changed from LE to LN. In doing so, his behaviour attracted the attention of the church of Abadar which now is willing to finance and monitor some of his mercantile operations.

Jal Dorak wrote:

Technically, it has to be a book.

Not mechanically. There's nothing in the actual rules for spellbooks that makes them only work with a connected series of pages. You can mask the mechanics (keeping the actual rules identical -- 100 spell levels of space per "book", all the time and material component costs the same, etc etc) while changing the flavor and you've suddenly got a character who is, mechanically, a wizard, but plays the role of a bard in game -- he plays the didgeridoo and has engraved his spells across its surface.

That's not 'entirely' true Jal, regarding the spellbook piece. A class using the wizard mechanics would have to have some external source on which they store their power and refresh it daily, but that source doesn't have to be a spellbook.

In my above example, the guy's flavor was martial artist, he used kung fu scrolls to refresh his technique daily.

In an example VV gave, the alchemist flavor with wizard mechanics brews 'potions' and such every morning for use later in the day, by imbibing them, or splashing targets with them, etc.

So while your right in one sense, it's not as solid as you imply.

A spellbook has 100 pages of parchment, and each spell takes up one page per spell level (one page each for 0-level spells).

Jal Dorak wrote:

Wizards MUST use a spellbook unless the DM changes the rules. That spellbook is part of the flavour and mechanics of the class. Any class that doesn't use a spellbook has a totally different flavour. That flavour cannot be rewritten without changing the rules. That's very different from saying a bard is a priest.

Ah, but the spellbook doesn't have to be recognizable as what we would think of as a spellbook. I played a character once that carved all of his spells into the wood of his staff and used that as a spellbook. You could make just about anything into a spellbook if you thought about it and worked with it.

A psion can pretend to do the same thing, but destroy the spellbook and they are just as effective. Unless of course, the player is so attached to their concept that they actually roleplay the loss of the spellbook into character ineffectiveness.

Freesword wrote:

Then why can you not use another mechanic to represent your character instead of insisting on the one the DM objects to?

Why does the DM object to the mechanic that perfectly represents the character?

The players are coming into the game with control of one, and only one thing. Their character. Unless the DM has a very good reason (and do note that there are very good reasons- many of them, in fact), she should not rob a player of her ability to make an appropriate character and represent them as they see fit. The DM has the entire world. The player has this one character. If the player decides that the most elegant representation of her sorcerer is through the Psion class, the DM had better think long and hard before turning to her and saying, "No you can't," because that statement is a big deal. Stripping them of the tools to portray their character in the most appropriate way because you don't like the metagame tag of "Psion" that doesn't even exist in-game is a Bad Thing.

There are thousands of splatbooks published. None are conclusively "good" or "bad" so in the end those chosen to be a part of the game experience needs to either be a group or a DM decision, not solely the players.

Viletta, I've pretty much agreed with everything you've said about separation of description from mechanics.

The only points we seem to disagree on are that mechanics can be tied to the game world and requiring DMs to introduce new mechanics into the game world. Or at least I think we disagree.

Mechanics represent how a character does something, his method. Defining how effects can be achieved is part of defining the game world. It can be established in a game world that the only method of spell casting is Vancian and that this is an element of the setting. Introducing a new method that was not currently in use is a retcon. It alters the setting.

If the mechanic (method) is already established in the world or new and the DM agrees to retcon it's existence into the world, then any character concept built using that mechanic should be valid barring any other world continuity issues.

I admit I may be mistaking arguments that if a mechanic is established in the world, then it can be used for characters outside it's archetype (The mechanics for a Bard are established, therefore can be used to represent a priestess.), for an argument that because a player wants to use a mechanic to represent a character that the DM must incorporate that mechanic into the world. The first case I agree is perfectly valid and should be allowed, the second I disagree with and the DM has full discretion as to what mechanics are or are not valid in the world.

It's not the flavour of the class as is, but the flavour of campaign world and the mechanics within it. If a DM has a justification for using certain mechanics, and that justification is flavour-based, then re-writing the flavour of the class doesn't fix the flavour for the campaign mechanics.

For example, let's say I had a new campaign where I allowed spell-points. In such a campaign, it would be illogical for me to disallow psionics because it's a much easier analogue to fluff over. But at that point, there really isn't a reason to want psionics as the same thing can be achieved with minor tinkering to the spell-points system. But I would be more receptive to a request.

Finally, as much as Viletta is dismissing it, some game mechanics do have in-game consequences.

Wizards MUST use a spellbook unless the DM changes the rules. That spellbook is part of the flavour and mechanics of the class. Any class that doesn't use a spellbook has a totally different flavour. That flavour cannot be rewritten without changing the rules. That's very different from saying a bard is a priest.