D&D 5E (2014) banning Create Food & Water spell in Thule?

[Hussar]

I think, perhaps, the best approach is a gentlemen's agreement when creating characters. If you want to run "man vs nature" type adventures, just ask the players not to play full casters. Just don't have clerics, druids, wizards or sorcerers in the party. That, more than anything else, will affect the feel of the campaign. And it will fit so much better for the genre too, IMO. If you have characters dropping spells to solve problems, that's just not very Sword and Sorcery, IMO. Skills should be the focus of the game, not someone's spell book.

 

[bedir than]

D&D has always been a very high-magic game, so it has trouble with many traditional themes and particularly with 'man vs nature' conflict. 5e, in spite of dialing back magic items a bit, has high-magic issues as much as ever, because casting is so common among 5e pcs, and the caster mechanics can lead to very efficient use of spell slots.

I strongly disagree that DnD was always high-magic. At will spells didn't exist for its first twenty years. The number of spells able to be cast per day in early versions was lower. Not only that but the partial casting classes mostly didn't get spells until 9th level+ and their attribute requirements made it such that those classes were rare within the world.

DnD didn't get to be high magic until it started competing with MMORPGs for attention.

 

[GlassJaw]

D&D has always been a very high-magic game, so it has trouble with many traditional themes and particularly with 'man vs nature' conflict. 5e, in spite of dialing back magic items a bit, has high-magic issues as much as ever, because casting is so common among 5e pcs, and the caster mechanics can lead to very efficient use of spell slots.

While I generally agree, 5E is the first edition in a long time that I would consider adapting for a low-magic setting since it's fairly close out of the box.

Anyway, great stuff everyone. I really enjoy low-magic setting discussions. Spells like Teleport, Raise Dead, spells that communicate with divine powers, etc. could also be on the chopping block.

And beyond that, the natural next step is alter the magic system itself, either by reducing spell slots, making casting dangerous and/or unstable.

 

[Greg Benage]

At will spells didn't exist for its first twenty years.

Yes they did, they were just in wands. At least from B/X, if you played with modules or the RAW for treasure distribution, the game was pretty "high magic." In all the games I played in back then, magic items were plentiful. It's only recently I've really heard about the "Fantasy Vietnam dungeon horror you're lucky to have a torch let alone a magic item" style of play that all the OSR guys have apparently been playing for forty years.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

In a setting like this, where spells such as these would be more useful/pursued as an avenue, I think removing them entirely is a bit too far. If I were a rare spellcaster in the setting, a spell like this might be higher priority for discovery/creation than some blasty spell.

But that doesn't mean you can't make them less potent. What if goodberry was 1 berry per level of slot cast? Create food and water was either enough food or water for one person per level of spell slot?

Now they are costly but still valuable enough in certain situations that the choice becomes meaningful.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I strongly disagree that DnD was always high-magic. At will spells didn't exist for its first twenty years. The number of spells able to be cast per day in early versions was lower.

Even if you have 1 spell per day, that's an infinitely-renewable resource: you can cast it every day over a period of downtime. For combat spells that doesn't matter, no combat, no use for a combat spell, it doesn't matter that you could cast it 30 times in a month if there's only one day that month in which you have combats. But, for utility spells, that can have a profound impact. That's the issue being dealt with in this topic, a caster could just keep casting Create Food & Water every day, trivializing a survival challenge. And, it's been an issue in every edition of D&D. Limiting utility spells in ways other than just daily slots reduces the issue - gp-cost components, for instance, especially when it's significant compared to wealth/level guidelines (if present).

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Even if you have 1 spell per day, that's an infinitely-renewable resource: you can cast it every day over a period of downtime. For combat spells that doesn't matter, no combat, no use for a combat spell, it doesn't matter that you could cast it 30 times in a month if there's only one day that month in which you have combats. But, for utility spells, that can have a profound impact. That's the issue being dealt with in this topic, a caster could just keep casting Create Food & Water every day. And, it's been an issue in every edition of D&D. Limiting utility spells in ways other than just daily slots reduces the issue - gp-cost components, for instance, especially when it's significant compared to wealth/level guidelines (if present).

AFAIC, this runs counter to everything the setting lays out. At least so far as what I've read on it thus far. The characters aren't laying around for weeks, pumping out "free utility spells", cuz they got nothing better to do. You can play it that way if you like, but it's an aberrant angle for utilizing the setting material, IMO.

 

[Hussar]

While I generally agree, 5E is the first edition in a long time that I would consider adapting for a low-magic setting since it's fairly close out of the box.

Anyway, great stuff everyone. I really enjoy low-magic setting discussions. Spells like Teleport, Raise Dead, spells that communicate with divine powers, etc. could also be on the chopping block.

And beyond that, the natural next step is alter the magic system itself, either by reducing spell slots, making casting dangerous and/or unstable.

I think the Madness Rules are what's needed here.

The rules say that it's (I forget the exact wording) witnessing something like an "abhorrent" spell or something to that effect triggers a madness check.

I'd just expand it. Any spell with an obviously physical effect (basically anything other than charms) triggers a madness check. There, no more arcane casters. Healing gets a pass because it just has such good PR. But eating food created from nothing? No thanks, that is demonic/taboo food and will cost me my soul.

 

[Hussar]

AFAIC, this runs counter to everything the setting lays out. At least so far as what I've read on it thus far. The characters aren't laying around for weeks, pumping out "free utility spells", cuz they got nothing better to do. You can play it that way if you like, but it's an aberrant angle for utilizing the setting material, IMO.

That's not the issue though. It's not the players doing this. It's the setting changing effects of spells like this. If a barbarian tribe has a spell casting druid, they never starve. A 3rd level druid can feed 60 people a day with goodberries. A 5th level cleric can feed 30 people per day. None of this actually costs anything. And 30 people is a decent sized settlement in Thule. 60 people is a decent sized tribe. These kinds of spells have a major impact on the setting. It's not like a 3rd level druid is that difficult to come across.

One way is to change the demographics - casting characters are very, very rare. The trick is, how do you enforce that? It's inconsistent that casting characters are incredible rare and easy to become at the same time. Me, I'm not really fussed since I don't apply the PHB to the game world. The PHB is for players, not NPC's. But, I do know that that POV is contentious.

Now, as far as 5e being low magic - that's another issue. When the clear majority of classes have spells, it gets a bit wonky to run a low magic campaign. I don't believe it's a low magic campaign if the party is using magic every encounter.

So, I'll definitely be redacting the PHB in many ways to force the game down to a more mundane level with some magic, rather than a magic game with some mundane.

I mean, good grief, my current group has 6 PC's. 4 fighter types and two wizards. Five out of the six characters have spells or spell effects. I can see having some work cut out for me to make the campaign stick to genre. I wonder how people who have run this for Pathfinder fare? Pathfinder is every bit as magic heavy as 5e. Any Pathfinder players like to chime in?

 

[Bacon Bits]

D&D is a game where you're encouraged to change the rules to see what happens. Spells, races, classes, equipment, alignments, monsters, whatever. I'd argue that everything outside PHB chapters 7, 8 and 9 are entirely optional, and most things within those chapters can at least be modified and often heavily modified.

Mechanics that support tone and theme are fantastic. The best games do this. TotalBiscuit, normally a video game critic, recently posted a video talking about using mechanics to support theme.