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

[payn]

Just to add. Do people seriously track things like torches and water and food in their DnD games? Other than some rare occurances, it just hasn’t happened for me.

One time it did was when I ran The Worlds Largest Dungeon back in 3e. Food and water were a big issue.

But as the pc’s leveled up and then died to be replaced by new pcs complete with equipment, a curious thing happened.

Every single new pc came with a ring of sustenance. After a few pc deaths and levels, all the food and water stuff just stopped being an issue.

Why? Because the players aren’t sitting at the table to futz about worrying about meals. They do not care. Not even a little. And the mundaneness of it becomes zero fun very quickly.

Same thing happened in my low magic 5e game. The players constantly chafed at the restrictions and frankly hated the campaign.

While I would love to do a low magic game, I wonder how much of that is being a dm. Players want to do funky stuff. I swing my sword or I check for traps gets pretty old after twenty or thirty years.

I really liked how Forbidden Lands does resource management. You get a water/food/torch die and check it each day. Rolla 1 or 2 and the die drops from D8 to D6 and so forth until you are out. Then, you have to spend time making/finding things to keep going or bad stuff happens. In the bowels of a dungeon you might not happen to be able to spend the time as the resources don't exist.

That is fine for an OSR experience. I have long past given up on that play in modern D&D fantasy RPG. I now expect adventure paths with interesting faction play and overarching plots that are interesting to interact with. I imagine most players these days prefer the latter as well. Though, once in awhile I like to go old school for a handful of sessions and relive the good ol days. I dont use D&D for it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I really liked how Forbidden Lands does resource management. You get a water/food/torch die and check it each day. Rolla 1 or 2 and the die drops from D8 to D6 and so forth until you are out. Then, you have to spend time making/finding things to keep going or bad stuff happens. In the bowels of a dungeon you might not happen to be able to spend the time as the resources don't exist.

Oh I REALLY like that.

Does the initial die size depend on how much you spend and/or how much weight you carry?

 

[payn]

Oh I REALLY like that.

Does the initial die size depend on how much you spend and/or how much weight you carry?

The die is independent of weight (that is tracked with a separate system). If you spend a time resource (typically a portion of the day) you can replenish to your top die. The top die can and is different based on race and class.

 

[FrozenNorth]

So, really, what using the skill as a lie detector means is that instead of your character detecting an NPC's lie, it's you, the player, detecting lies from your DM. Hmmm.

Since your premise is that humans cannot reasonably detect when they are lied to, this shouldn’t be a problem, then.

 

[Voadam]

For the most part I can agree conceptually what you are stating here and for you and probably others it works. But I'll say this for me personally... because all classes in 4E were on the AEDU format and all powers encompassed the exact same suite of grid tactics (adjacent damage, blast damage, burst damage, pushing, pulling, marking, knocking prone etc. etc.)... any so-called "non-magical" classes in the Martial power source did almost the exact same kinds of grid tactic actions that the so-called "magical" classes did.

Which means that at least for me I never felt any real difference between magical and non-magical powers other than the Martial power source not having ranged burst (AoE) attacks. Everything was just 'Move here, attack this/these creatures here, move those creatures over there, shift here' and so forth. None of it felt really different, even though we were supposed to identify certain ones as "maneuvers" and others as "prayers" or "spells". "Low-magic" campaigns and "High magic" campaigns did not exist as separate things, because for me the tactical board game felt the same both ways at the same time.

I do not doubt that other people did indeed conceive all of these powers differently and actually felt like maneuvers were different from prayers were different from spells. But unfortunately some of the rest of us did not. And that's possibly one of the reason why 4E maybe ended up being more divisive in certain circles than I bet anyone thought it originally was going to be and perhaps trying to recapture some of that 4E essence in 5E wouldn't actually solve the problems that people might think it would? (And not suggesting that's what I think you are saying, because I know you're not making that case.)

For me 4e was awesome for flavor options.

You could do a full noncaster party of fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords with lots of differences between characters and covering different roles and be full on baseline effective.

You could be a whole single god powered party of clerics, paladins, avengers, and invokers and be full baseline effective and feel divinely powered.

You could be the magical university party of wizards, bards, swordmages, and warlocks and be magical with everyone magical and no gods involved.

You could do a Cataclysm era Dragonlance with no clerics and make it work for baseline D&D.

My ranger felt very distinct from the party rogue even though they were both martial strikers.

I thought 4e handled classes very well. I appreciated the balance and options.

In B/X and AD&D a whole non-magical martial or a whole arcane magic party would not work to baseline D&D levels, particularly with healing. In 3e it would be pretty hard to build such a party to work to baseline D&D. In 4e you could just do it and go.

 

[FrozenNorth]

While I would love to do a low magic game, I wonder how much of that is being a dm. Players want to do funky stuff. I swing my sword or I check for traps gets pretty old after twenty or thirty years.

I think a lot of that is “what does a low magic game mean?”.

For instance, for my next campaign, I’m modifying the core classes:

• Paladins become non-casters, with smite being a non-magical ability;
• Rangers become non-casters, with their spells replaced by non-magical abilities that can be performed a number of times equal to their proficiencies;
• Bards become half-casters;
• Channel Divinity and Wildshape use spell slots
• Wizards have fewer spell slots, but recover low level slots each short rest

The effect of these changes is to make the game more low magic. In standard D&D, a non-magic party is extremely unlikely, whereas in my homebrew, you could easily have a party with no full casters and a single half-caster.

As long as the players have interesting things to do, I don’t think they’ll miss the magic.

 

[James Gasik]

So as far as letting skills do exceptional things, I remember when 3e's Epic Level Handbook came out, offering new ways to use skills if you could hit insanely high DC's.

Now, my memory might be fuzzy, but I recall a lot of negative comments about the idea that a super high level Rogue could make a Balance check to stand on clouds and other such amazing feats.

There is a frequent insistence by a vocal percentage of the fanbase that wants magic to be !!magic!! and non-magic to be bound to what people on Earth can do in their fantasy roleplaying game.

Where I would prefer an approach like Earthdawn, where everyone is a little magical, or even 3e's "Extraordinary" abilities existing, things which bend, or sometimes break physical laws like you're in the Matrix, this viewpoint is persistent, even entrenched in the game.

If you can't use magic, the kinds of things you do have to be "realistic". If you can, you can do anything and everything under the sun. And people are perfectly ok with this.

Pulp heroes like Conan, John Carter, Lord Greystoke, and mythogical entities like Cú Chulainn have little place in this mindset. I don't know why it persists, but just look at any "Martial vs. Caster" debate to see frequent examples of "don't buff Fighters, Fighters are fine" and "I see no problem with Wizards at all".

And one quick look at 5e's design philosophy pretty much shows how ingrained this is. New content that isn't magical is often very conservative, but magical content (and spells, by Gygax) get's stronger and more prevalent over time.

Even in the PHB, every class has a magical option. And by this point, several magical classes get access to melee attacks and extra attacks, on top of magical abilities.

I don't get it, but if this is what pays the bills over at WotC, I don't think we'll ever see a low magic version of D&D. We'll just see powerful magic users and their sidekicks.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Since your premise is that humans cannot reasonably detect when they are lied to, this shouldn’t be a problem, then.

Oh, I don't think it's a problem. It just shows that trying to run Insight as lie detection, if the DM is going to try to deceive the player, really is about trying to guess what the DM is thinking. So you may as well not bother to roll.

 

[payn]

So as far as letting skills do exceptional things, I remember when 3e's Epic Level Handbook came out, offering new ways to use skills if you could hit insanely high DC's.

Now, my memory might be fuzzy, but I recall a lot of negative comments about the idea that a super high level Rogue could make a Balance check to stand on clouds and other such amazing feats.

There is a frequent insistence by a vocal percentage of the fanbase that wants magic to be !!magic!! and non-magic to be bound to what people on Earth can do in their fantasy roleplaying game.

Where I would prefer an approach like Earthdawn, where everyone is a little magical, or even 3e's "Extraordinary" abilities existing, things which bend, or sometimes break physical laws like you're in the Matrix, this viewpoint is persistent, even entrenched in the game.

If you can't use magic, the kinds of things you do have to be "realistic". If you can, you can do anything and everything under the sun. And people are perfectly ok with this.

Pulp heroes like Conan, John Carter, Lord Greystoke, and mythogical entities like Cú Chulainn have little place in this mindset. I don't know why it persists, but just look at any "Martial vs. Caster" debate to see frequent examples of "don't buff Fighters, Fighters are fine" and "I see no problem with Wizards at all".

And one quick look at 5e's design philosophy pretty much shows how ingrained this is. New content that isn't magical is often very conservative, but magical content (and spells, by Gygax) get's stronger and more prevalent over time.

Even in the PHB, every class has a magical option. And by this point, several magical classes get access to melee attacks and extra attacks, on top of magical abilities.

I don't get it, but if this is what pays the bills over at WotC, I don't think we'll ever see a low magic version of D&D. We'll just see powerful magic users and their sidekicks.

I dont really care for the cloud walking thing, but I dont really care for high level play either. I dont have an issue with skills becoming magical, but id prefer the low powered gritty levels not be impacted by it. I think a lot of folks would be ok if cloud walking is something that happens at higher levels. Though, how high should those levels be? Who knows I doubt folks would agree on that either.

 

[James Gasik]

Ok Bill Zebub, I have to ask. Is Insight simply not used in your games?

Because this is what the rules say it does:

Insight. Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.

If it can't detect whether someone is bluffing you, what does it do?