Anybody else getting sick of the pervasive-magic crutch in the game?
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
Crothian
First Post
So, why the loaded answers?
I'm curious about your yes answer. Does having magic make your players stop thinking or something? I've not heard that magic makes anyone stop thinking, unless it kills them of course.
As DM in control of my game I find that the level of magic in the game is always exactly what I want it to be. So, no I don't think there is too much magic in the game.
I'm curious about your yes answer. Does having magic make your players stop thinking or something? I've not heard that magic makes anyone stop thinking, unless it kills them of course.
As DM in control of my game I find that the level of magic in the game is always exactly what I want it to be. So, no I don't think there is too much magic in the game.
Emirikol
Adventurer
Crothian said:
Heh, to force people to make up their minds that's why
Here's my beef with the ever pervasive magic in the game. There's too dang much of it. There's so much in fact that I've seen that players no longer need to use their brains and instead play D&D like some kind of "TCG" where before thinking, they look to their items or spell lists..wait, maybe that's why 4E is going to be such a hit!
The more the magic, the less thinking out of the box.
jh
kaomera
Explorer
Quoted for the very-nearly-Truth. (Not that I'm saying it isn't 100% true for Crothian in his game, but it doesn't seem to quite be big-T universal Truth to me.)Crothian said:
The magic level in my game is exactly what I set it at (including I may have inadvertently let in). I do my best to make informed decisions, and to correct things if they go wrong. About 90% of the time there is neither too much nor too little magic in my games, and I spend the other 10% of the time adjusting.
Having said that, the core assumptions regarding magic of 3.x are somewhat higher than what I would prefer to play in. And even in the games I run there is slightly more "unimportant but useful" magic than I might prefer. But I don't think it detracts from problem-solving or thinking. In fact, one of the big areas where creative thinking can be applied to the game has always (IMHO) been in playing a Magic-User, trying to figure out how to apply your spells to a given problem to bypass it.
Sigurd
First Post
Unlike fighting
D&D has never held itself responsible for having a magic system that actually works.
Lots of titles for schools of magic but little internal logic.
In D&D Magic is like an abused snowball of spell ideas. It isn't internally consistent and anyone in its path is barraged with a million options that beg to affect game balance.
That said I think magic is much less powerful the Power Attack Fighters in shear damage ability.
Unfortunately Magic requires a DM to create a cohesive rule system for his own campaign - real work. There is too much stuff to represent the background of any one wizard. Players have a relationship with magic like warriors have a relationship with smith forges but Magic players keep the whole forge in their back pocket.
D&D has never held itself responsible for having a magic system that actually works.
Lots of titles for schools of magic but little internal logic.
In D&D Magic is like an abused snowball of spell ideas. It isn't internally consistent and anyone in its path is barraged with a million options that beg to affect game balance.
That said I think magic is much less powerful the Power Attack Fighters in shear damage ability.
Unfortunately Magic requires a DM to create a cohesive rule system for his own campaign - real work. There is too much stuff to represent the background of any one wizard. Players have a relationship with magic like warriors have a relationship with smith forges but Magic players keep the whole forge in their back pocket.
Psion
Adventurer
Emirikol said:
I disagree.
Characters usually only have a short list of spells, and hard problems before them. I find that players look for ways to deploy their magic in ways that will solve their problems.
Magic like "+1 chain mail" is brainless, mono-functional. Magic like a wand of silent image... now you are talking something players will start using their brains over.
airwalkrr
Adventurer
I think magic has definitely become more pervasive in the game. However, that's easy to rectify as the DM. For me, when it comes to magic, I allow my PCs to begin play with only spells in the PH and items from the DMG. Other magic items must be researched before I even tell the player whether or not the item is allowed in my campaign, using the research rules in the DMG. It requires a significant expenditure of resources to get access to new spells and magic items and this limits each player to no more than a few of each, even he even wants them. I think it solves the problem quite nicely. If you just allow every spell from the Spell Compendium into your campaign and let players craft any item they want, well, that is the problem. I don't think any game was meant to be played quite like that. The DM needs to decide which rules are appropriate for his campaign, but more importantly, which rules are NOT appropriate.
Ltheb Silverfrond
Explorer
I think while the system was built with magic as something not required, the challenges and expectations of the system require it.
Its hard to walk that tightrope of balance with magic; Too much, and you are hounded for being too generous. Too few magic items can make seemingly normal encounters impossible.
Overall, I have run both high and low magic games, and I would say the low magic games were the ones the players enjoyed the most. They didn't have x, y, and z magic items to fall back on, so they couldnt just solve everything via violence, and there was that element of surprise when an NPC villain busts out the Staff of the Kraken. (Or whatever)
Low magic works, your players just have to like it to get it to work.
I threw a "yes" because I prefer simplicity vs vulger ammounts of magic items. Allowing a player to play a spellcaster or PCs to find a small cache of magical artifacts (not true artifacts, but strong, useful magic items) after slaying a dragon is totally acceptable. Randomly rolling half a dozen from the DMG makes magic seem more common than Rations. (In a campaign I was in, which was a good campaign, but I am sure we found more magic items than we did mundane things. I am counting the dungeon furnishings. 'Twas fun for a while, but it just became a numbers race.)
Its hard to walk that tightrope of balance with magic; Too much, and you are hounded for being too generous. Too few magic items can make seemingly normal encounters impossible.
Overall, I have run both high and low magic games, and I would say the low magic games were the ones the players enjoyed the most. They didn't have x, y, and z magic items to fall back on, so they couldnt just solve everything via violence, and there was that element of surprise when an NPC villain busts out the Staff of the Kraken. (Or whatever)
Low magic works, your players just have to like it to get it to work.
I threw a "yes" because I prefer simplicity vs vulger ammounts of magic items. Allowing a player to play a spellcaster or PCs to find a small cache of magical artifacts (not true artifacts, but strong, useful magic items) after slaying a dragon is totally acceptable. Randomly rolling half a dozen from the DMG makes magic seem more common than Rations. (In a campaign I was in, which was a good campaign, but I am sure we found more magic items than we did mundane things. I am counting the dungeon furnishings. 'Twas fun for a while, but it just became a numbers race.)
Again with the silly false dichotomies. I'm tired of the over-pervasiveness of magic (as an example, I like the Bo9S, but I would have liked it a lot better if more of the maneuvers were things someone really good with a sword could plausibly do, and a lot fewer were "you utter the mystic incantation of McGuffin and flames shoot out your ass"). But, what that is supposed to have to do with how cerebral the game is, is beyond me. The two issues are completely orthogonal to one another.
"To force people to make up their minds" is a poor reason for knowingly using badly worded options, especially when those options go so far as to tie two completely seperate questions together. People will make up their minds just fine if you ask simple, straightforward, clearly worded questions about one thing. In fact, I find that answer mildly insulting.
"To force people to make up their minds" is a poor reason for knowingly using badly worded options, especially when those options go so far as to tie two completely seperate questions together. People will make up their minds just fine if you ask simple, straightforward, clearly worded questions about one thing. In fact, I find that answer mildly insulting.
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