Greg Benage
Legend
I really don't think they necessarily have anything to do with each other. Elric is definitively S&S and definitely not "low magic."
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D&D 5E Sword & Sorcery / Low Magic
- Thread starter overgeeked
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Ath-kethin
Elder Thing
I think that, as mentioned above, Sword & Sorcery is mostly a matter of the protagonists having limited to no ability with magic, and magic being a dangerous and terrifying thing. Maybe dangerous just because the baddies have it and the heroes don't, though there are certainly tales of magic physically and mentally corrupting its users.
Villains in Sword & Sorcery stories can have magic and even powerful magic; there's a Conan story that describes a magical effect that reads like a reskinned fireball, even. Instead of a concussive blast, the flame leaps rapidly from one target to then next, but mechanically I'd call it a fireball.
The heroes of S&S tales have only bits of magic and none of it is deadly; the Grey Mouser refers to magic pretty frequently but almost never actually uses any, and I don't recall any friendly magic users in a Conan story aside from the 80s films.
So I agree that Sword & Sorcery and Low Magic are not necessarily the same thing.
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
There have been some good sorcerers in Conan. Epemitreus the sage was in the first, or one of the first stories about Conan, the phoenix on the sword. Not sure how much magic he used and I think it was more that he warned Conan rather than casting great and powerful magic. I think he showed up as a spirit and enchanted a sword which may have been the extent of his powers. Cant even recall if he showed up in person or contacted Conan through his dreams.
I recall a couple others but I can't recall if they were part of the original stories or not. I've read so many Conan books by different authors that it's all blended together.
I recall a couple others but I can't recall if they were part of the original stories or not. I've read so many Conan books by different authors that it's all blended together.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I wouldn’t either, I’d just use their classes.
Don Durito
Hero
Yes. And that's before you start getting into later Sword and Sorcery such as the Thieves world stories.
But really on rpg forums Sword and Sorcery usually just means "Conan Pastiche" these days.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
That's right. That wizard contacted Conan in a dream and enchanted his sword to damage the ape-demon Thoth-Amon sent to murder someone else who happened to be attacking King Conan in the Phoenix on the Sword...which was the first Conan story ever written and published. It was a fix-up of an earlier Kull story Howard wrote.
There are three in REH's original stories.
Pelias, who helps Conan escape from the Korshemish dungeon in The Scarlet Citadel.
Zelata, who helps him kill Xaltotun in The Hour of the Dragon.
@cbwjm and @overgeeked already mentioned Epemitreus, from the Phoenix in the Sword.
There is also Khemsa from The People of the Black Circle who is an antagonist through most of the story, but then helps Conan with some advice and a magic item when he dies.
There are probably a few more in L. Sprague de Camp's weaksauce revisions, but I haven't read any of those.
In the Venn diagram of Sword and Sorcery and Low Magic, there is an overlap area but also areas of no overlap in both sub-genres.
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Don Durito
Hero
These assumptions tend to arise when Sword and Sorcery is treated as a dead fossilised genre anyway.
There's more modern works like the Thieves World stories, the Black Company books, and the Malazan Book of the Fallen which are basically modern Sword and Sorcery (to the extent they are in dialogue with earlier works which is the only meaningful definition of genre). All of these have powerful sorcery.
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Ath-kethin
Elder Thing
See? And I didn't recall any of them. My statement stands true.
I've read all of REH's Conan stories, but not in a long time; I've never Conan stories by any other author. I've been working my way through the Nehwon stories by Lieber, slowly but surely, for a good while now. The approaches are different but complimentary.
I DID spend a while trying to come up with rules to mimic the sorcery approach in Perdido Street Station and the Bas-Lag books, but I was not very successful with it.
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