Curiosity will probably kill me, but…

[Tormenet]

However, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, DON'T GET AMBUSHED IN THAT SYSTEM!!!

They knew, without doubt, that THEY could have easily been in the same position, and it causes a subtle shift in play style.

There must be a traumatic story behind that first line.

The second line hits very strongly on what I like. Players are smarter and less hack and slash when they know combat is unpredictalbe and can lead to more than just the need to get ressurected, IMHO.

Tormenet

 

[Tormenet]

I've never quite understood this attitude toward divination, as any time I've experienced it a divination was more confusing than helpful. If the response is in the form of a quattrain like Nostradamus, or some other obscure and easy to misinterpret format, then the PCs still have to do just as much investigation to figure out what the divination meant as they would have done to get the answer without the divination. You can lead your players around by the nose and hand them a bushel of red herrings using divinations.

I also don't see why a world would have to be reworked to account for things like fireballs and teleportation. Unless the world is so high-magic that every farmer knows a fireball spell, it's not going to cause a major change to the way the world functions. Your average town still needs walls to keep out all the bad stuff that doesn't know how to teleport. If you want a relatively low-magic setting, I'd recommend you be sure you make very clear to your players beforehand what you mean by "low magic", or face the possibility of having some very disappointed players down the road.

Sniffles, thanks for your thoughts.

I agree, you can lead them around.

It's not that every farmer knows Fireball. It's that the state knows it will need Fireball and has its military Wizards and Sorcerers sitting around preparing for the day. They make scroll and wands and on the day of the fight, well let's just say Lee's boys had it easy during Pickett's charge. Imagine a hundred wizards strung along a hill casting Fireball or Ice Storm each round at some poor advancing formation, with their apprentices spitting magic missiles from wands. Pretty much a duck shoot.

The Black Company system allows for some really impressive fireworks, but from a very limited pool. This results in magic being alot more scary, IMO.