D&D General Putting The Awe Back In Magic

The burgher himself unlocked her shackles, making a grand show of producing the right key from the thick ring at his belt. The oldest, most ornate, and most worn of the bunch.

He gave it to two of the younger men and waved at them to free the prisoner, taking himself well back and away to watch them struggle with the old locks.

And as the heavy metal cuffs fell from her wrists to the stones underfoot with a clang and a rattle, he sneered and announced, “I’ll believe in this mighty magic when I see it, and not a moment before.”

His words were meant for the watching men of the town, not the freed captive, but he turned when they were done to see how she took them.

The young woman of few words met his bristle-browed gaze with a slight smile. Then she shrugged, turned away from him and the men of the town in a swirl of dark tattered robes, and murmured something swift and liquid under her breath, words they couldn’t quite catch—or that were in a tongue unknown.

And the air around her swiftly-weaving fingertips was suddenly alive with sparks, racing motes of light that spiraled down to the floor in front of her worn-toed boots like fireflies caught in a whirlpool.

And then burst with the roar of a dozen lions into a raging pillar of white flames taller than the loftiest towers of the Castle, a pillar that cracked and melted—melted, by All The Gods!—flagstones it spun across as it marched away from her to strike the towering black gates.

And with shrieks as ear-piercing as they were brief, those thick armour plates and the man-thick timbers that wore them were gone, locks and hinges and stout door-bars and all—simply…gone.

Leaving only an empty doorframe, its arch scorched by the vanished whorl of flames.

As the men of the town all stared at it in disbelief, a few shards of blackened stone, cracked away from the massive blocks of the arch by the heat of that brief magic, plummeted from the arch to shatter on the blackened flagstones. Clack, clack…klak.

“Well, now,” the burgher stammered, his voice seeming far away. And shorn of all bluster. Everyone turned to hear his verdict.

And blinked at what they beheld. Despite his paunch and wrinkled old age, the leader of the town had somehow taken himself half across the chamber in a trice, to the grudging shelter of the lee of an old stone pillar. “Well, now.”

​

Magic.

The ‘not real’ part of our fantasy roleplaying games, and fiction.

Yet also an essential part; we feel vaguely cheated when it’s not there, even if it’s scarce or long-fallen from old days of greatness. The element that makes so many monsters dangerous and feared, and that keeps many imaginary worlds from being ruled by the brute who commands the biggest, nastiest gang of brutes (er, king with the biggest army).

Yet the very same precise codification of magic, its workings, and the details of its clashings that make it understood and somhow more “fair” around the gaming table has, by the nature of exhaustive explanation, robbed magic of its chief glory: awe.

That’s a shame, because awe is one of the emotions (or moods, if you prefer) that we get to feel least in our lives, especially in this age of information, when most people can swiftly learn a lot about anything and so strip away its mystery, the lure of the unknown, in short order.

Obviously magic, like everything else, will have more awe clinging to it when it’s mysterious rather than known to nigh-everyone in full detail. When the game master’s descriptions of what a spell looks like when it manifests, and what it does, are attentively listened to by everyone around the gaming table—because everyone’s eager (nay, desperate) to learn all they can.

Rather than just flipping to the right page of a rulebook to read all about it. Which points at this: one road to this sort of mystery that’s available only to game masters running their own rules systems or substantially modifying published rules systems is to keep the practical details of magic (how spells are cast, the gestures and ingredients and incantations—verbal, somatic, and material components in D&D) secret. Things to be observed when others cast magic, and noted down in one’s own magical workbooks, or said by NPCs who are paid much in coin and service to do so, or paid even more to train a PC in how to cast and wield a lone spell.

This precious secrecy will tend to make those who can cast spells do so in private, or in public only in emergencies or for a lot of compensation.

It also, at a single stroke, makes magic, and its lore, the most prized treasure in a game.

Another way of making magic more awe-inspiring is to have it vary in effects from place to place, or by who or what is involved.

If a stranger wizard casts a recognizable spell and it shakes the valley rather than snapping in midair like a firecracker, there’ll be instant awe. Or at least respect, if not fear.

If a spell that’s supposed to force open a door is cast with the aid of a grimy old bone carving that looks small in the caster’s palm, and destroys the door and the wall around it rather than just cracking the door open, again there’ll be a reaction that could soon be awe.

And if a spell cast in a sinister ruin deep in a gloomy forest either sputters feebly or splits the heavens with a deafening roar, rather than conjuring its usual merry lantern-flame, awe won’t be far off.

Theatrics help with awe. Tomes rising out of chests with menacing slowness, all by themselves, and opening as eerie glows kindle about their pages, said pages turning by themselves as deep, booming voices speak from those same books, demanding to know who disturbs them.

Voices that speak suddenly out of empty air to herald the awakening of magic. For example: “Ah, more intruders. Let the deaths begin.”

Another way of making magic feel special and more precious is to keep it scarce. Or needing as a focus or consumed component in its castings something rare (the grave-dust or a bone from the grave of a truly good person, or a dead mage) or valuable (a gem of a certain type, size, and flawlessness). Or draining the life-force of the caster or a slave or pet or willing third party. Or leaving the caster vulnerable, by rendering them unconscious or physically weak, or revealing one of their most precious memories, for every spell cast, as vivid holographic moving images in midair, brightly glowing, for everyone on the scene to see.

Magic should have a cost. Perhaps not a price in coins, but it must be paid for. My players will not soon forget the wrinkled old near-skeleton who sat on her throne shrouded in cobwebs—until they approached, and she cast a spell that flung open many doors that her courtiers were hurled through unwillingly, into her presence. Courtiers who began to shrivel into lifeless husks with every spell she cast—‘hung,’ waiting spells unleashed by a lone word each—as she grew younger and more alive and vigorous with each casting, the adventurers suffered under the clawing damages of her magics, and her court died around her to pay for it all. The thief of the party had hopes that she could be outlasted; the party could run her out of courtiers to drain. Hopes that were dashed when the floor beneath the heroes’ boots opened up to dump them into caverns below where dragons were magically chained—dragons that withered even as they attacked the PCs, their life-force stolen by the queen on her throne above.

The throne, of course, was itself magical, and in the end soared into the skies to enable her escape from the adventurers, to scheme and ready herself for their next meeting.

The awe came back then, when the queen’s magic whisked dead dragon after dragon aloft to follow her. The thief wanted to grab and ride the last one, to go along, but the rest of the PCs were a trifle saner, and grabbed him and held him back.

So I could dole out more awe, on a game night to come.

 

[Voadam]

4e encouraged trying to flexibly bend magic using the arcana skill particularly in skill challenges. 3e had the spellcraft skill but the uses were rigorously defined and even optional systems to use it more for different ritual magic purposes and such were fairly rigorously defined to specific effects.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This right here. There just aren't a lot of unexpected consequences in D&D, and very few surprises that are actually indexed by the mechanics. This is especially true of the magic system. Obviously you can play it differently, as @hawkeyefan and his table do, but that can be a lot of work if it's all done extemporaneously, and there's a very real risk of uneven application when the DM has to decide, de novo, in each case what that might look like.

I understand that, but I also think we need to remember that it is completely possible to do so with no changes to the system.

For the example @hawkeyefan gave, my literal first thought was "why can't you?" I have rules for the hp of objects, their ability to withstand damage. a fireball is roughly equivalent to a grenade, so it could work, lets roll and find out.

And it doesn't address the other side of the problem people seem to have at all. Casting Fireball is casting fireball and it still does the exact same thing and doesn't risk the wizard's health at all. This doesn't change that.

To put a final consideration out, I do want to make mention of something I said on a different forum. Right now, magic is balanced around the idea that it is reliable and safe. To make it unreliable, you would likely have to make it more powerful. To make it unsafe, you would likely have to make it more powerful, and there already exists the idea that magic is too powerful in the game.

Now, yes, maybe these are good nerfs that will satisfy those people, but equally likely it will end up just making magic more powerful, especially if it was done by the designers at WoTC.

 

[Fenris-77]

I understand that, but I also think we need to remember that it is completely possible to do so with no changes to the system.

For the example @hawkeyefan gave, my literal first thought was "why can't you?" I have rules for the hp of objects, their ability to withstand damage. a fireball is roughly equivalent to a grenade, so it could work, lets roll and find out.

Sure, I even said this was possible above. However, it's a lot of work as the DM. Not so much the occasional fireball at a pillar (although that does have issues, and which I'll come back to) but rather the idea of overcoming the inertia of the normal spellcasting system having zero risk and zero variation.

As far as the pillar goes, there's risks because of the way D&D damage scales. A fireball does an average of 28.5 damage. If that enough to topple a stone column, would a good blow from an axe that did the same damage also topple the column? That's the sort of thing I don't want to have to deal with on a constant basis. If you handle the whole thing outside the damage system it easier to avoid that sort of issue, which is probably how I'd handle it.

And it doesn't address the other side of the problem people seem to have at all. Casting Fireball is casting fireball and it still does the exact same thing and doesn't risk the wizard's health at all. This doesn't change that.

To put a final consideration out, I do want to make mention of something I said on a different forum. Right now, magic is balanced around the idea that it is reliable and safe. To make it unreliable, you would likely have to make it more powerful. To make it unsafe, you would likely have to make it more powerful, and there already exists the idea that magic is too powerful in the game.

Now, yes, maybe these are good nerfs that will satisfy those people, but equally likely it will end up just making magic more powerful, especially if it was done by the designers at WoTC.

That's correct, to make it risky you also have to make it more powerful, up to a point. There are different ways of making more powerful of course. A system that allowed unlimited castings, but gated that using a different mechanic should probably be balanced to return an outcome more or less roughly in line with the current system. However, if by more powerful you mean each individual spell, the the balance would have to be achieved in other ways.

Part of the reason magic is considered 'too powerful' now is the reliability and consequence-free nature of the system. It makes for a system that's very easy to game (not in a bad way). By that I mean the acquisition of the 'right spells' is trivially easy, as well as the complete reliability of those spells in any encounter. Add in a handful of spells that really are OP, and you are where we're at now. I don't think it's broken, but it does have some issues.

 

[Undrave]

I have an easy way to bring awe back to magic!

You just need to spell is 'Mawegic'!

 

[Undrave]

But joking aside, maybe some spells should simply have been left out of the PHB and kept in the DMG as treasure to be found in dusty tomes and the evil grimoires of fallen spell casters. I could see someone do that with the levelled spells from Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'd probably start by making every 9th level spell something that need be acquired, and quite possibly a decent sized list of spells at other levels. And/or changing the completely open nature of new spell acquisition at new levels.

 

[pemerton]

I find that D&D really tends to push players into established paths of action. And while that may be okay in general, it tends to remove alternate actions and surprise from the game.

And I think if we’re talking about magic being awesome, then the ability for it to surprise the players is pretty vital.

There just aren't a lot of unexpected consequences in D&D, and very few surprises that are actually indexed by the mechanics. This is especially true of the magic system.

These remarks take me right back to this:

In Gygaxian AD&D it still made sense, though with a slightly different logic: your spell load-out is, in effect, your selection of "I win" cards for the expedition, and part of the skill of play is making the right selection. The fact that, in the fiction, the spells are magic is secondary - really just a superficial overlay to make sense of "I win" cards within the scope of the ostensible genre.

When one thinks of D&D from the point of view of a wargame, the mechanical stability and predictability of magic is a feature. The surprise consists in discovering what challenges the GM has established (sometimes this is very literal, as in, what's behind that door?). Magic is part of the solution, and not itself intended to be a source of surprise or upset.

Of course if one takes these wargame/"skilled play"-oriented rules out of that context and tries to use them as a fiction or genre simulator, the fiction won't involve dynamic or scary magic! If you want that, you'll need to hange the rules in some way. But the D&D community seems very conservative in relation to rules, which creates some practical problems here for a commercial publisher.

there's a very real risk of uneven application when the DM has to decide, de novo, in each case what that might look like.

Classic D&D relies upon the GM to exercise judgement in building his/her dungeon. The game offers some general guidelines and frameworks (eg monsters-by-level charts; treasure charts; etc), but it's part of the point of things that the dungeon experience might be different from referee to referee.

So I think the word "risk" is misplaced in your posts; and probably also the word "uneven". If you look at the link I posted above to an account of my 4e campaign, you'll see that another poster shared his experiences of running the same module. It played differently in his hands and with his group from how it did in my case.

All the games I play require GM judgement at some point. In MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, what's the borderline between an ordinary power-use and a "stunt" (which requires a plot point expenditure, but also adds a bonus die to the pool)? When Gandalf's player wanted to slow the orcs he was pursuing, whom he knew to be carrying the (hitherto) lost palantir of Annuminas, he used his knowledge of the arcane and his own sorcerous power to cause the palantir itself to slow them through it's metaphysical burden and the lure of its power. My judgement was that this was a permissible action declaration, but a stunt. Another GM might have (in my view a bit pedantically) held it to be impermissible, because having no direct analogue in LotR; a third GM might have held it to be a regular use of sorcery not counting as a stunt at all.

In our Classic Traveller game, one of the PCs with electronics skill wanted to jury-rig his communicator ("reversing the flux capacitor" as the player decribed it) so that it would blog the signal being used by an enemy spotter to relay the PCs' position back to the starship that was firing on them from orbit. Can this be done? And how hard is it? The rules leave that up to the GM. I decided that it can be done - otherwise what's the electronics skill for? - and set a difficulty extrapolated from a single example given in the rulebook.

And in our 4e game linked to above, I had to decide (i) whether a moment of possession can be used to extract a password from a victim's mind (I judged that it could) and (ii) what happens when the attempt fails?

My overall view is that, provided the maths of the system are robust (and they are in the three systems I've mentioned) then the GM can generally follow the players' lead as to what is possible in the fiction, structure that in appropriate mechanical terms for the system being played, and then (if the action fails) adjudicate appropriately having regard to the system's framework for consequences.

Different players will judge different things possibl. Different GMs will apply the system differently (is it a stunt? how difficult is it? etc). And different GMs will narrate different consequences for failure. But that's part-and-parcel of playing a RPG!

 

[pemerton]

4e encouraged trying to flexibly bend magic using the arcana skill particularly in skill challenges.

Right. If we're talking about how, in D&D, to put the awe back into magic, I don't see how 4e can be ignored. It had an extremely flexibile non-combat resolution framework which made it very easy to incorproate and adjudicate imaginative uses of magical ability. The example I linked to upthread is just one such.

The mechanical framework that underpinned this was one of standardised difficulties plus a common currency of player-side resources (encounter and daily powers, plus rituals). It's no coincidence that in this respect 4e more closely resembles (say) MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, or a PbtA game, than it does AD&D or 5e.

 

[Fenris-77]

Here's hawkeye's original post, where he refers both his group's decision add the kind of effect and consequences we were discussing, and also his preference that the mechanics support that kind of play.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s the kind of stuff that I really enjoy. I find it largely absent in the rules for 5E as written, but it’s possible with a group of players and a DM willing to go beyond what’s presented. My group has kind of established an informal process for this kind of stuff....but honestly, I prefer when systems are designed to support this kind of play.

My use of the word risk and uneven both index this state wherein the DM has to decide, in each and every instance, how and to what extent to apply additional X.

So I think the word "risk" is misplaced in your posts; and probably also the word "uneven". If you look at the link I posted above to an account of my 4e campaign, you'll see that another poster shared his experiences of running the same module. It played differently in his hands and with his group from how it did in my case.

<snipped examples for brevity>

Different players will judge different things possibl. Different GMs will apply the system differently (is it a stunt? how difficult is it? etc). And different GMs will narrate different consequences for failure. But that's part-and-parcel of playing a RPG!

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at. Obviously DMs can adjudicate consequences and make snap judgments about what is and is not possible. That is indeed part-and-parcel of RPG play. I'd like to dig down to what I meant though, so let's pick an example, let's look at adding possible consequences and effects to spells, not just occasionally, but consistently. I can obviously adjudicate the fireball and pillar case from above. No problem. That's probably true of most single case examples I could think of. However, players being the naturally creative and devious beings they are, this would quite naturally turn into a very regular occurrence.

Let's assume I was willing to lift that somewhat enormous cognitive load. I'm now making a lot of case-by-case judgement calls, probably multiple times per encounter (on top of all the micro-decision making the DM job normally entails). This is where risk and uneven come back into our story. The mechanics of D&D support essentially none of this in any direct way. When the volume of individual judgments go up there is an increased risk of those calls not being even from instance to instance over time. There are a lot of different kinds of spells, and I'd have to have a pretty clear recollection of how I'd ruled before if I wanted to maintain consistency. The volume suggests that would be very difficult, and a reasonable result of that would be an uneven set of adjudications. Players are going to notice stuff like that, and it's a bad look, and it's no one in particular's fault. It would probably even out over time, as the players and I reached some sort of detente over the difference between possible and likely in their attempts to find new uses for spells, but that could be a long process.

I'd rather layer on some soft touch mechanics beforehand designed cover a lot of the cases the table wants to consider, and then just lean on those for more or even most of the resolution.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure, I even said this was possible above. However, it's a lot of work as the DM. Not so much the occasional fireball at a pillar (although that does have issues, and which I'll come back to) but rather the idea of overcoming the inertia of the normal spellcasting system having zero risk and zero variation.

As far as the pillar goes, there's risks because of the way D&D damage scales. A fireball does an average of 28.5 damage. If that enough to topple a stone column, would a good blow from an axe that did the same damage also topple the column? That's the sort of thing I don't want to have to deal with on a constant basis. If you handle the whole thing outside the damage system it easier to avoid that sort of issue, which is probably how I'd handle it.

Sure, if it takes 30 damage to topple a pillar, it takes 30 damage to topple a pillar. That ends up being the same as a Stone Giant maxing their club, or a throwing a boulder. Which, should be capable of smashing a stone pillar.

Doing that with a single blow of a weapon for a martial... Yeah, only happening on a crit with barbarian or Battlemaster using dice.

That's correct, to make it risky you also have to make it more powerful, up to a point. There are different ways of making more powerful of course. A system that allowed unlimited castings, but gated that using a different mechanic should probably be balanced to return an outcome more or less roughly in line with the current system. However, if by more powerful you mean each individual spell, the the balance would have to be achieved in other ways.

Part of the reason magic is considered 'too powerful' now is the reliability and consequence-free nature of the system. It makes for a system that's very easy to game (not in a bad way). By that I mean the acquisition of the 'right spells' is trivially easy, as well as the complete reliability of those spells in any encounter. Add in a handful of spells that really are OP, and you are where we're at now. I don't think it's broken, but it does have some issues.

Maybe, and like I said, maybe the system would be better and more balanced. But, I just wanted to bring up the discussion point.

After all, I don't think the reliability of magic is quite considered when talking about things like DPR or saves, because those aren't reliable. Hold Person does not always work, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But a Fighter can never do hold person. So making the spell less reliable doesn't really change that much.

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at. Obviously DMs can adjudicate consequences and make snap judgments about what is and is not possible. That is indeed part-and-parcel of RPG play. I'd like to dig down to what I meant though, so let's pick an example, let's look at adding possible consequences and effects to spells, not just occasionally, but consistently. I can obviously adjudicate the fireball and pillar case from above. No problem. That's probably true of most single case examples I could think of. However, players being the naturally creative and devious beings they are, this would quite naturally turn into a very regular occurrence.

Let's assume I was willing to lift that somewhat enormous cognitive load. I'm now making a lot of case-by-case judgement calls, probably multiple times per encounter (on top of all the micro-decision making the DM job normally entails). This is where risk and uneven come back into our story. The mechanics of D&D support essentially none of this in any direct way. When the volume of individual judgments go up there is an increased risk of those calls not being even from instance to instance over time. There are a lot of different kinds of spells, and I'd have to have a pretty clear recollection of how I'd ruled before if I wanted to maintain consistency. The volume suggests that would be very difficult, and a reasonable result of that would be an uneven set of adjudications. Players are going to notice stuff like that, and it's a bad look, and it's no one in particular's fault. It would probably even out over time, as the players and I reached some sort of detente over the difference between possible and likely in their attempts to find new uses for spells, but that could be a long process.

I'd rather layer on some soft touch mechanics beforehand designed cover a lot of the cases the table wants to consider, and then just lean on those for more or even most of the resolution.

So, do you never resolve any environment effect not in the rules?

It seems like you are thinking "if I let them break a pillar once, they will do it all the time" and therefor ruling they can't do anything clever or outside the rules. Which, seems rather against the spirit of the game. Letting players come up with clever solutions is half the point of the game