D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[Micah Sweet]

You make a lot of threads which basically say you want to play 2E. I'd suggest you play 2E rather than complaining about 5E constantly.

I love 2e! But my players (and the vast majority of the TTRPG community) play 5e, so...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For some reason (I really cannot tell you why!) the last few years I've been playing 5E I've desired a "low-magic" style setting/game. I have been all of keeping it more mundane, heroic but not "superheroic", keeping magic and magical items rare, making the game gritty with easier death and harder recovery.

And I don't know WHY I have felt this way...

I don't know about you, but the magic D&D Wizards (specifically) tend to do, and particularly the same sort of spells people call "game-breaking" just don't jive at all well with magic in fantasy generally. Whether we're talking books, TV, movies, videogames, fantasy is a popular genre, hugely popular now even, and D&D's magic exists starkly at odds with the magic in virtually of that.

Most of the magic in fantasy as a genre exists on a spectrum of power and capability that a lot of D&D's stuff doesn't fit well with at all.

In particular, a lot of the spells in D&D feel like they should require lengthy rituals, multiple casters, special preparation, and so on, and D&D just doesn't have that beyond the odd 10-minute or 1-hour casting time, really. It doesn't do ritual magic at all, but virtually all fantasy that involves truly powerful magic does involve that.

Further in fantasy as a genre, magic tends to fall into basically three categories:

A) Very similar to psychic powers/psionics - there's an absolute ton of this, which often gets overlooked, and it's especially common with female authors and more female-audience-friendly fantasy for whatever reason. Prime exemplars would be Mercedes Lackey's work, Robin Hobb's entire Assassin setting (19 books over 25 years so far!), or the "Small Science" in the Grishaverse (Shadow and Bone etc.), which is the dominant form of magic there (and includes a lot of stuff that's very "Psionics Handbook").

B) Very similar to superpowers - again, this is just almost entirely absent from D&D, but I'm sure if D&D was being designed today it wouldn't be. There's a lot of this. Prime examples would be most of Brandon Sanderson's fantasy work (particularly Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive), or NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy.

C) Spells and ritual magic - This usually tends to be somewhat spooky/dark (even Harry Potter is a bit spooky). Spells are learned and cast in an organised way, rituals are conducted, and so on. This is closest to D&D's magic in some ways, but often is just one form of a magic in the settings it's in, and usually is very high-effort to both learn and use and can go very wrong in a way never seen with D&D's "if you cast, either it works or it doesn't" spells. The Grishaverse notably also has this kind of magic, which is seen as something different from the "Small Science", something terrifying.

D&D's lack of any skill checks for casting spells puts it at odds with all of these. In D&D, if you cast a spell, it can fail, but it can never go wrong, and it doesn't fail because of your lack of skill (outside of 4E, arguably), it fails because the target somehow shrugged it off, and generally inanimate objects can't do that, so those spells always work. So D&D is at odds with this stuff mechanically and conceptually/thematically, which I think is a real problem.

The same applies to everything you're saying re: grittier except "easier death" in media generally. Easier death is I think a canard people get from thinking about earlier editions of D&D. It doesn't achieve any of the same goals as the rest of the stuff, it just makes people re-roll characters a lot, which tends to reduce immersion, mildly inconvenience groups and annoy people more than making them feel much.

Anyway, I generally feel similarly to you, in that, the overpowered magic of D&D isn't interesting or exciting, it's just kind of annoying, and I do think a lot of that is because it's never fit with any fantasy except really Vance - and even that's arguable, if D&D Wizards were Vance characters they'd be able to memorize like, 4 spells at once, not close to 40 (Worlds Without Number shows how to make a playable D&D-style class that works this way, I note).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not that I necessarily desire low magic, but like @Lanefan says, the magic has become very plentiful, common and reliable. Which a least to me makes it feel less "magical," and that's not ideal.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's not that I necessarily desire low magic, but like @Lanefan says, the magic has become very plentiful, common and reliable. Which a least to me makes it feel less "magical," and that's not ideal.

Worse, it's not even done it in an interesting way.

Compare the "common" magic of D&D to the the properly-integrated common magic of Earthdawn, and whilst magic is as or more common in Earthdawn, it's hugely more interesting too.

 

[Ancalagon]

For a low magic game, I highly recommend warhammer frpg (2nd ed). It had 3 features that made magic "feel right" for a low magic setting:

1: There were not a lot of "dabblers" - half casters, 1/3 casters, feats that give a spell... no. If you knew magic, you were a caster. It was the norm to have one spellcaster in the group if any.

2: Magic was powerful but not guaranteed to work nor was it safe. Magic was not used casually. In other system, magic costs life (HP etc). Again, Magic is not used casually.

3: Casters were focused. A big problem IMO with casters in 5e is they can have a HUGE array of tools to fix problems (cleric, druids and wizards in particular). But a "proper" caster in a low magic game may know only a handful of spells. You couldn't do everything.

So if you wanted that in 5e... no feats that give spells, no magic using subclasses, and limit magic users to warlocks only.

 

[overgeeked]

The problem is the bad assumption that these spells have functioned exactly the same in every edition which is clearly false. 5E goodberry breaks 5E. 5E tiny hut breaks 5E. The earlier versions did not because they were better designed and better balanced. The problem isn’t that a spell called goodberry or tiny hut exists. The problem is the mechanics.

 

[FallenRX]

Because 3rd Edition power spike magic and their abilities so high to the point it makes the game less fun in comparison.

The right idea is reel it back to 2E maybe B/X level, with some modern QoL(Like cantrips, and non-vancian.)

 

[GMMichael]

And I don't know WHY I have felt this way...

It's caused by getting older. I mean, Harry Potter was aimed at young adults for a reason.

 

[Krachek]

Low magic setting unplayable in 5ed?

 

[cbwjm]

I tend to change tiny hut and good berry, tiny hut I use the 2e version and for good berry, I have it consume the material component.

I'd say that the most important aspect of 5e feeling high magic are the cantrips (which I love) because it means magic can always be cast by spellcasters, even if it is small magic. Magical Items tend to be more limited in 5e, due mostly to attunement, so people don't light up when someone casts detect magic. The ability to have a number of spells prepared without worrying about potentially wasting a spell slot in sure also helps in feeling like high magic.

Otherwise, dnd has always had an equal or greater number of spellcasters to non-spellcasters, even if some of those spellcasters wouldn't get their spells until 8th or 9th level.