D&D General Wishing Away The Adventure

[Crimson Longinus]

Then put the interesting stuff at the teleport location.

Obviously. But ultimately what certain sort of powerful magic does, is greatly limit what sort of interesting stuff we can have. No travel adventures, no murder mysteries, no threat or death nor drama because someone died etc.

 

[Vaalingrade]

No travel adventures

Having seen how D&D travel adventures are usually an exercise in painful logistics: Good.

no murder mysteries,

Murder a god or a concept or something without a corpse to leave.

Murder a ghost!

no threat or death nor drama because someone died

Hooray!

~Begins six hour choregraphed dance number with a full Broadway cast and orchestral score.~

Good. Excellent. We as a society need a hiatus from this tired artifact of hackneyed reaction-seeking writing born of writer misinterpreting the advise of a HORROR writer talking about writing HORROR books.

Burn it. Send it to hell, and find something interesting to do with characters instead!

I'm not even sure I have enough digital ink to spill over how much I hate the Pop Culture Death Cult.

 

[Mort]

Obviously. But ultimately what certain sort of powerful magic does, is greatly limit what sort of interesting stuff we can have. No travel adventures,

Presumably "traditional" travel adventures have been done by 13th or so level. Time to change things up a bit!

no murder mysteries,

Says who?

Have you looked at speak with dead? There are a lot of issues with it. It WILL NOT be an instant mystery solver. And most of the other ones, like legend lore? They are a mystery to solve themselves.

no threat or death nor drama because someone died etc.

Because of resurrection magic? That's not fool proof.

But if it's a true issue, introduce something like in the Vlad Taltos series - where there is a type of weapon that makes raising from the dead impossible.

Yes, one way to deal with these issues - ban or nerf ALL the offending spells - that will work.

Or another way - Explore how a world with these spells fully active would function. How it would be different from what we know. Have the players explore THAT world, it's not like there would suddenly be no challenges presented.

 

[Alzrius]

Have you looked at speak with dead? There are a lot of issues with it. It WILL NOT be an instant mystery solver. And most of the other ones, like legend lore? They are a mystery to solve themselves.

Precisely. Most spells, despite how they're often discussed, have limitations and failure-modes built into them; the key is that most characters living in the game world will know about those and take measures appropriately. The GM can then work that into the adventure.

If someone is murdered, and you use speak with dead on the corpse, asking who killed them might get an answer of "they wore a mask, a white one with a red star mark on the forehead." Now it's a race to find that mask. Do they use locate object? Maybe it's at the bottom of a river, discarded by the killer, but has a strand of red hair still stuck to the edge. Use scrying on the red hair, and now it leads you to a tavern owner, who swears that the mask isn't his (and zone of truth confirms it), but that he wore it as part of a play he participated in two nights ago. Time to investigate the other members of the actor's troupe!

Just like that, you've incorporated the spells into the adventure, rather than having them negate it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Presumably "traditional" travel adventures have been done by 13th or so level. Time to change things up a bit!

Sure. To fantastical travel adventures of navigating your flying ship through the Nine Hells, not just boringly porting from site to site!

Says who?

Have you looked at speak with dead? There are a lot of issues with it. It WILL NOT be an instant mystery solver. And most of the other ones, like legend lore? They are a mystery to solve themselves.

Nah, just raise the murder victim from dead.

Because of resurrection magic? That's not fool proof.

But if it's a true issue, introduce something like in the Vlad Taltos series - where there is a type of weapon that makes raising from the dead impossible.

So the kryptonite solution.

Yes, one way to deal with these issues - ban or nerf ALL the offending spells - that will work.

Yes, and I greatly prefer this over letting the players take the spells and then invent excuses for them to actually work like in your example above.

Or another way - Explore how a world with these spells fully active would function. How it would be different from what we know. Have the players explore THAT world, it's not like there would suddenly be no challenges presented.

Sure. But it is way harder to invent such challenges, thus fewer people like to run high level games. And of course if taken seriously and with assumption that people other than the PCs would have access to such magic, the world would be unrecognisable.

 

[Reynard]

Step 1: Murder target.
Step 2: animate target's corpse.
Step 3: Profit.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Also I'd like to point out that all these issues are about magic, no martial class has the ability to completely restructure what the game is about, and most of the suggested counters are about magic too. So the end game is about mages warping reality and the other mages devising magical countermeasures. Might make the martials feel a bit like sidekicks, no?

Step 1: Murder target.
Step 2: animate target's corpse.
Step 3: Profit.

Case in point. To be an effective assassin, a rogue will not do, you actually need to be a caster.

 

[Mort]

Sure. To fantastical travel adventures of navigating your flying ship through the Nine Hells, not just boringly porting from site to site!

Flying ships carry stuff and can carry the loot you pick up along the way. Porting from site to site can be pretty limiting that way. Not to mention, Teleport isn't fool proof (and is actually pretty wonky sometimes. A surefire physical solution (such as a flying ship or whatever) is much more reliable plan A.

Nah, just raise the murder victim from dead.

Assuming they want to come back, or the murders, knowing raise dead is a thing didn't hide/incinerate the body.

True resurrection isn't exactly common. And if you do have it available that easily - things SHOULD be different.

So the kryptonite solution.

No, just a logical extension of what happens when raise dead is common. SOMEONE will develop a way to foil it.

Yes, and I greatly prefer this over letting the players take the spells and then invent excuses for them to actually work like in your example above.


Sure. But it is way harder to invent such challenges, thus fewer people like to run high level games. And of course if taken seriously and with assumption that people other than the PCs would have access to such magic, the world would be unrecognisable.

High level play SHOULD be a bit different. And the players, at that point, are dealing with VERY different challenges. Mundane challenges SHOULD be a cakewalk by that point.

 

[Mort]

Also I'd like to point out that all these issues are about magic, no martial class has the ability to completely restructure what the game is about, and most of the suggested counters are about magic too. So the end game is about mages warping reality and the other mages devising magical countermeasures. Might make the martials feel a bit like sidekicks, no?

IMO, D&D does that WELL before high level play, and it's an issue with the game long before then(there are plenty of contentious threads on this).

If your issue is Magic trivializes certain challenges and is unfair to martials outside of combat? You'll get no argument from me (though there are ways to mitigate) - but that's a general D&D issue not a high level issue.

Case in point. To be an effective assassin, a rogue will not do, you actually need to be a caster.

A martial assassin would need to make sure there's no body to resurrect (yes true resurrection still works). Something a HIGH LEVEL martial shouldn't have too much of an issue with.

But yes, it would be a very different world if this kind of thing was common and killing anyone "with means" was a difficult endeavor.

Though again, we're talking about seriously high level play, why SHOULD it be basically the same?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. To fantastical travel adventures of navigating your flying ship through the Nine Hells, not just boringly porting from site to site!



Nah, just raise the murder victim from dead.


So the kryptonite solution.


Yes, and I greatly prefer this over letting the players take the spells and then invent excuses for them to actually work like in your example above.


Sure. But it is way harder to invent such challenges, thus fewer people like to run high level games. And of course if taken seriously and with assumption that people other than the PCs would have access to such magic, the world would be unrecognisable.

Another question is: just how many high level characters are there in the world? Seems logical that at the highest levels it would just be a handful right? How much could such a small group of people really change the world, even if they all wanted to?