Effects of banning "flashy" magic

Ok, The premise for my world is one in which magic is not about artillery support nor summoning nor conjuration. i.e All wizards are specialist with Evocation/Conjuration as opposed schools. Clerics and Druids also are banned from these schools except that healing is still possible. I might keep Flame-strike as a divinely inspired smite though . By the way, early gunpowder and good alchemy does exist, so area effect is till an issue as well as Reflex saves. Also, summoning will involve long rituals (hours to days) based on knowledge, spellcraft and concentration checks.

Supposedly, specialists are balanced with other spellcasters, so this should not be a problem. But in the interest of "debugging" my future campaign, I'd like any help in diagnosing any future issues.

Thanx

Some standard issue spells get thrown out with the bath water. Mage armor, teleport, one of the ones that really irks me is sending. You've probably considered this already, possibly even consider it a benefit.

Well, are you likewise banning flashy magic weapons?

If a wizard can't create magical fire (*shock*), then I'd imagine it's pretty hard to create a magic sword that lights itself on fire on command.

Also, you lose things like wizards lighting candles with their fingertips ...

I think you're hurting wizards more than clerics and druids (the two strongest classes in DnD). Wizards lose staples like Fireball, Teleport and battlefield control. But druids get to keep it in the form of Entangle. And clerics retain their two mightiest spells - Righteous Might and Harm.

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One effect of removing overt magic is that it becomes a lot harder to definitively prove someone is/is not a wizard. Or rather it's a lot easier to fake it. e.g. from my Enclave setting:

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Wizardry of Seafarers and Islefolk

Only tales and seafarers' songs remain of the old, potent Magi wizardry that faded with the Vanishing; sails to charm the wind; great tomes and ledgers that knew their own contents; robes to slick away arrows and fire like rainwater; hulls that avoided shoals of their own accord; full sea chests weighing less than a feather; cold wizard-lights to bring day to night; fishhooks to call and land the mightiest eels of the Unending Sea.

Dusky Islefolk in Port, Cael and fisher villages know only a little of the old wizardry; the ways of the Magi Vanished along with the Isles. All that is left now was once traded to the stonefolk or recorded by renowned Ammander sages such as The Denier or The Expected Smile. In truth, few descendants of the Magi have the perseverance or the talent in their blood - wizardry may come easily to Datarii, but not to mortal folk.

Still, most Magi-blooded shipwrights claim a little wizardry and many folk believe them. Islemarks are carved on prows, painted on sails and engraved on axes used by Seafarers' Guildsmen - marks thought lucky or effective are paid for in good coin, but only a few amongst the many descendants of the old Magi work true wizardry; Seafarers' Needles; wizard-lights; Unbroken Casks, and the like. Islefolk such as Nelaan the Lightkeeper and Master Shipwright Benlei are held in high regard for their wizardry, albeit the merest shadow of that wielded by the greatest Magi of the Vanished Isles.

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You'll see a lot of things similar to makers of Islemarks - stuff that isn't magical but might just be, and enough people believe in luck or effectiveness to muddy the waters. The same goes for mind-effecting magic, only more so; does it work because it works, or because the victim is convinced of it?

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Declarations and Refutations

...The Silent could stand no more than a day and a night of this terrible fellow and his animals. She wrote a Refutation to end all Refutations, direct and puissant, scribed most carefully on the cheapest, poorest parchment. The sage emerged from her manse to thrust the Refutation upon the trader. His face paled upon the reading of it, and he ran as though the Powers themselves were chasing him - but in silence. For all we know, he is running still, Refutation clutched tightly in his hands, somewhere in the far reaches of the Ammand....

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So, yes, subtle magic means lots of fakes and frauds and interesting stories. Uncertainty is always fun.

Reason
Principia Infecta

We probably have a differing opinion of what constitutes "flashy" if you're keeping spells like mirror image, invisibility, and fly.

I think you'll have more success getting the feel you want if you just completely redo the spell lists for each caster type.

Instead of removing flashy magic from my world, I made it highly frowned upon by the law and most sentient beings.

Most large communities won't stand for a stray spell destroying property, and will arrest the wizardi n question, while in a village, you better hope you can run faster than the village mob / posse.

D

iwatt said:

Supposedly, specialists are balanced with other spellcasters, so this should not be a problem. But in the interest of "debugging" my future campaign, I'd like any help in diagnosing any future issues.

Click to expand...

I have an elven Wizard/Rogue NPC in the game that I'm running. She's a specialist who has Evocation and Necromancy as opposed schools. Simply getting rid of Evocation gets rid of most of the flash so I don't know if you need to get rid of Conjuration. I purposely "crippled" this NPC so she couldn't outshine a now-dead Sorcerer PC. Basically, she winds up doing a lot of support spell casting either out of combat or before combat and is fairly useless in combat unless she pulls her rapier and pokes at things. Of course she's an NPC and that was the idea.

What I think you need to consider is (A) do you need to exclude Conjuration, (because Druids,for example, rely on Conjuration in the form of Summon Nature's Ally and such), (B) almost all summoning is Conjuration, which is useless if you exclude that school, (C) making summoning take a long period of time excludes the use of summoning in combat, and (D) magic using characters won't have much do to in combat other than pick up a weapon and start fighting. Is that what you really want?

Basically, think about what you want Wizards, Sorcerers, Clerics, and Druids to do when the combat starts. If you eliminate all of their combat spells, then what are the players going to do during the combat part of the game? Will they enjoy that role?

Relics & Rituals: Excalibur has some really good advice about demphasizing this sort of magic, but not taking it away from players entirely. Basically, flashy spells have components worth 100g per spell level. Although not a perfect solution -- players tend to just hoard the big booms for climactic fights, instead of skipping them entirely -- it takes you most of the way there without removing them entirely, which players may not like and which may cause some future unforseen balance issues.

Almost all of the most devastating combat spells in the game are in the Enchantment, Transmutation, and Necromancy schools anyways.