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Jan 31, 2013 -- 7:47PM, LolaBonne wrote:

I already gave my solution: Throw it out.  It's a terrible, unfun, annoying mechanic

Speak for yourself.
And concerning tracking resources and aging, if you want to turn your RPG game into a pseudo video-game of hack and slash where all you do is roll damage from this attack or that spell until you "clear the dungeon" of monsters... that's perfectly fine if that's how your group likes to play tabletop.
But I'd rather see D&D made like the real tabletop RPG it has always been.
If you don't like those rules you simply house-rule them out of your game. Easy job. But not all of us want to see our D&D turned into Diablo.


So I say yes to:
1-Tracking resources like food and water.
Because survival is part of the game. And not all challenges should be about how many hit points a monster has or how much damage he does.

2-Character aging (not so much concerning magical effects but simply keeping track of the years passed in the campaign).
Because it makes a character feel more human (or human-like if you're another humanoid race) and real. And it's very cool to see your character start out in his teens at level 1 and be around his forties when he's of higher level, and see how that person has spent his life in that setting, how he has influenced the world, how to world influenced him and made him what he became, what he has accomplished... meaning, seeing in a character the changes we all experience in life as we grow, giving the character a lot more depth, and a great lifetime story.

3-Level drain, energy drain and other such effects.
Because of what I said in topic 1, that not all challenges should be set by HP/damage, and because such abilities are perfect for certain monster concepts, like some types of undead.
And because it's those abilities that, more than anything, make a player feel that chill in his spine and fear for his character when he encounters a monster... instead of simply saying "whatever, I have enough HP, just keep 'em coming."
Encounters with such creatures are always memorable in campaigns. Yet your DM shouldn't be including creatures like that all the time in the game like they were orcs or kobolds, or else the players would just feel underwhelmed. They're for those special moments.
Also, there should also be a way in game to reverse these effects, but they shouldn't be easily accessible like simply casting a restoration, or else it kinda defeats the purpose of having something your players would be terrified to face.


And I would say no to:
1- The wish spell.
Kinda "meh" to have a spell that can do anything and practically renders all other spells obsolete.
I would maybe use Wish as part of an artifact or something very very rare like that, and even then giving it a slight possibility of misfiring or something of the sort. But as a spell you can use almost at will... nah.

That said, I don't mind at all the spell being left as core since it's always been there and it's one of those iconic things in D&D.
Like I said, it's a simple thing to house-rule it out of my games. Which is what I've always done not only with Wish but some other spells like Fly as well.