D&D General Greyhawk and "Low Magic" : Why Low Magic is in the Eyes of Beholder

[Sepulchrave II]

I guess that I would offer a definition of a low-magic game world as something along the lines of "people and societies function more-or-less as you would expect in the real world." If magic is sufficiently powerful and/or ubiquitous, this assumed normalcy becomes logically untenable.

My feeling is that - if we're talking specifically about the Greyhawk folio and boxed set - the campaign world is so bare bones that a DM could run a "low magic" game or just as easily offer a full gonzo experience.

I think that if the 1E DMG and Greyhawk level demographics are assumed, it's not too much of a strain on credulity that the world be considered "low magic." Modules from the 1E era and set in Greyhawk assumed rather more magic, more magic items, higher prevalence of higher-level characters etc.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

EDIT:

To add to what I wrote above, the current Lord Mayor of Greyhawk, the most important city-state (free city) in the Flanaess, is a 10th level thief.

 

[Ancalagon]

Warhammer Fantasy is an interesting case.

The spellcasters there are not powerful but there are so many of them.

• Every race but Dwarves has spellcasters
• Several nations have magical organizations (Colleges of Altdorf, Tower of Hoeth, Ice Witches, The Fay, The Liche Priests etc)
• Every named lord has 1 or 2 artifact tier magical item.
• 2 of the main bad guy factions are either all magical monsters (Vampire Counts, Negash's Undead) or has a big contingent of magically boosted warriors (All 6 types of Chaos)
• There are large amounts of known magical monsters.

But it is sort of low magic in power and versatility

• Only 3 races can even use more than 1 winds of magic. And one requires a special birth (Grey Seers)
• Spellcasters who aren't named or Slann or Elven Archmages barely can cast spells over 3rd level.
• Although every named lord character has OP magic wargear, regular magical items are weak. +1 swords and such.
• Although there are a lot of casters, you can't expect one to adventurer with you as the world is too deadly and no one wishes to risk a caster (except Greenskins and Dark Elves of course)

So even though you can't expect to have a mage ally or a magic item while adventuring, you also can't be shocked if she-dark-elf-stripper-mage burns your tank's face off with purple fire and takes your thief as a slave. And you can't expect to get your wounds healed by magic because good luck finding a Jade Wizard or Life Damsel. You're better off commiting heresy and praying to Papa Nurgle.

Hello

I cannot agree with you on the frequency. What you are listing is more an indication of variety. (edit: this variety doesn't increase versatility, because that is a measure of how versatile an individual caster is, not the entire combination of all magical traditions/practices).

The lore clearly state that members of the colleges are literally 1 in a million. I believe this clearly indicates that the designers are bad at math - sorry I mean this clearly indicates that mages are very rare. Non-college spellcasters are often hunted down and killed. Whenever magic is used by a bad guy, it's a big deal and scary.

Because of the character generation system, the average party will have zero casters, and some will have one caster. Multi-caster parties are very rare (unlike being the norm in D&D).

The "artefact tier" items are more like very rare/legendary in power level.

 

[Ancalagon]

(some details about my math snark)

The population of Altdorf (the main kingdom in warhammer) is not detailed (that I know, please correct me if I am wrong), but we can take a historic equivalent, the holy roman empire, which had 16 million people by 1500 AD.

If there literally is only 1 in a million, then there are 16 members of the college of magic, or 2 per color... that doesn't "fit". However, if we went 1 in 100 000, the college has 20 members per color, which almost seems right. There certainly aren't hundreds of members per color.

 

[Helldritch]

Going mostly from memory of old Dragon magazines.

What are you using for sources here?

There is a whole 1e Waterdeep sourcebook that goes pretty in depth on NPCs but there was nothing comparable for 1e Greyhawk.

The 2e City of Greyhawk lists 14 named and statted mages from levels 12 to 23 in its chapter on mages and priests. And that does not include Philidor the Blue Wizard (level 25) a new resident of the city statted in From the Ashes.

A few memories from dragon article, the supplement Greyhawk adventures but even that one is a bit off the charts at some places as the FR bloating was seeping into every products in that era, even Dragonlance did not escaped it. Just check the power Knights of Solamnia had wven compared to paladins and cavaliers, it was a joke...

 

[Voadam]

EDIT:

To add to what I wrote above, the current Lord Mayor of Greyhawk, the most important city-state (free city) in the Flanaess, is a 10th level thief.

Worth noting he is assistant to the thieves guild guildmaster who is 16th level and is on the council who appoints the mayor.

And in 3e he advanced all the way Rogue 12 in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Worth noting he is assistant to the thieves guild guildmaster who is 16th level and is on the council who appoints the mayor.

And in 3e he advanced all the way Rogue 12 in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

The issue with Greyhawk is the amount of emphasis you put on the "fill in the gaps" work.

The actual amount of information from Gygax regarding Nerof is nearly non-existent, but if you add in the City of Greyhawk and Greyhawk Adventures (let alone 2e and 3e material) you get a different picture.

Same with almost everything.

 

[TheSword]

I'm not sure if I would call Warhammer "low magic." It's "low(er) magical accessibility" but it seems like a relatively high magic setting overall. Mike Mearls's Iron Heroes system is more low-magic. The specllaster class, the Arcanist, is optional and the rest are non-casters.

@Helldritch, if the relative frequency of low-level NPCs determines whether a setting is low magic or not then Eberron is just as "low magic" as Greyhawk, if not more so. And we speak of Eberron as "wide magic," it's still relatively higher than the norm of the fantasy genre. This is largely because D&D has mostly been varying degrees of high magic in the same way as sorting your blue colored shirts from lightest to darkest. At the end of the day, your blue shirts are still blue.

I think there is a distinction between Warhammer fantasy battle and WFRP. The former is about the great lords and unique characters, the latter - which I was referencing - is mainly rat catchers, ex soldiers, disowned nobles and witch hunters. Teclis, Mannfred von Carstein and Balthazar Gelt don’t get involved with WFRP. As a setting though there is literally a vortex draining magic from the world, coupled with the fact that magic is inherently dangerous and convoluted helps de-magic the setting a fair bit.

There has to be a difference between no magic and low magic. A low magic setting is surely one in which magic has substantial less impact on the characters. Either because magic is less effective or less prevalent or both. In D&D most villages of any size have a wizard living in a tower or running an inn somewhere abouts. In WFRP the wizards are hiding from the witch hunters. Or are powerful enough they have the protection of the colleges - far and few between. The core city of Ubersreik has one wizard and he’s a git.

I would consider Adventures in Middle Earth a low magic setting for the same reason though taken a degree further. In fact anyone looking for a very low magic setting could do a lot worse than AIME.

 

[Minigiant]

Hello

I cannot agree with you on the frequency. What you are listing is more an indication of variety. (edit: this variety doesn't increase versatility, because that is a measure of how versatile an individual caster is, not the entire combination of all magical traditions/practices).

The lore clearly state that members of the colleges are literally 1 in a million. I believe this clearly indicates that the designers are bad at math - sorry I mean this clearly indicates that mages are very rare. Non-college spellcasters are often hunted down and killed. Whenever magic is used by a bad guy, it's a big deal and scary.

Because of the character generation system, the average party will have zero casters, and some will have one caster. Multi-caster parties are very rare (unlike being the norm in D&D).

The "artefact tier" items are more like very rare/legendary in power level.

No, I was talking about how the world handles magic's versatility. A human normally can only learn one wind of magic. If you were taught Fire you were not taught Shadow therefore you knew zero illusion spells and zero necromancy spells.

However the Empire had 8 colleges, so there were at least 16 wizards in the Empire even if you only gave each 2. But if there were 15-25 in each college, then there are 120-200 wizards in the Empire. You can't say magic is rare if the Empire has 100+ level 3+ wizards in the capitol.

GW's math is off. It doesn't math the worldbuilding they set up.

You could say magic access is rare. Which is what I said. It's not like Greyhawk where you don't know where casters are and bump into them by luck. Nope, there are dozen of them in Altdorf, you just have no access to them without being a lord or count or general or some other big name.

And every race but Dwarves and Halfling has mages. The issue is that only Elven and Slann can normally use more that one wind. There are no healers in Kislev. Slann are always asleep. Elves don't help nonelves. Chaos sorcerers don't like each other and much devote themselves to one of four three gods to get magic. Greenskins only have 2 "winds". Tomb Kings have 3? winds and don't help intruders. etc.

And because in WHFB anyone can fight anyone else at any time, you could run into enemy mages at anytime.

Warhammer Fantasy isn't low magic.

 

[Voadam]

The issue with Greyhawk is the amount of emphasis you put on the "fill in the gaps" work.

The actual amount of information from Gygax regarding Nerof is nearly non-existent, but if you add in the City of Greyhawk and Greyhawk Adventures (let alone 2e and 3e material) you get a different picture.

Same with almost everything.

Yeah, but being appointed by a council including the 16th level Guildmaster of Thieves is from Gygax's 1980 Greyhawk folio

Greyhawk is ruled by its Lord Mayor, this individual chosen by the Directing Oligarchy. The latter body is composed of the Captain-General of the Watch (Fighter, 12th level), Constable (Fighter, 14th level), the Guildmaster of Thieves (16th level), the Guildmaster of Assassins (14th level), and various representatives of the Society of Magi, Merchants and Traders Union, Artisans League, and Clerical leaders. The total number of the Directors ranges from 12 to 18. (For greater detail see CITY OF GREYHAWK, to be published by TSR.)