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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bendris Noulg" data-source="post: 921239" data-attributes="member: 6398">But only within the realm of D&D and CRPGs.  Outside of these limited examples within the genre, such prolifferation does not occur.Yet the DMG itself warns against using magic in just this very way.  Indeed, "where magic becomes technology" is mentioned as the "comical route" of campaign design.  Yet, throughout this thread (and many others), this is exactly how magic is explained as being.Inconsistancies abound, even in a universe that runs on science instead of magic.  But this isn't what is being discussed.  What is being discussed is magic being so abundant as to become blas'e and commonplace rather than exciting and magical.  This has nothing to do with solid rules dictating how magic works, but of how much magic is present.Well, let's look at Dragons.  If there are only a few Dragons about, each sleeping for decades or centuries, than not much magic is needed, particularly if they pop up, ravage things for a few months or years, and then vanish.  In this image, one dragon could appear and the obtainment of a long lost weapon or group of weapons (such as the long-lost blades of an ancient order of knights, the staff of the Priest-King and so forth) becomes the entire focus of a sizable time-frame within the campaign.Change this, however, to dozens of dragons in constant motion, meddling with the affairs of "lesser" creatures, eating aplenty, plotting, scheming, etc.  Now a great amount of magic is needed.  However, this later picture does the same thing to dragons as it does to magic: Rather than being magnificent, terrifying, mysterious creatures, they just become another beasty in a long line of other beasties, to be dealt with by just another magic item in a long line of other magic items.It is unfortunate that the rules, by supporting common-magic, promote this later image.Sounds like a personal problem, being that you would prefer to take advantage of a world's flavor rather than just "go with it".I would question your use of the word "need", since I have done differently (indeed, sometimes even the opposite) and come up with fun, viable, and (dare I say it) balanced campaigns that would be described as low magic (although rare magic is most often more accurate).The problem isn't that magic is used as a balancing factor; Rather, it's the amount of magic that was determined as the default.  To say that "Character's of [X] Level need [Y] amount of items because they should be able to beast [Monster Z]" is, more or less, telling me to play as written or deal with a broken system (and like it or not, if the system isn't designed the way you play, it is effectively broken even if internally consistant to it's own assumption).  After all, I've been playing for over 20 years, and I haven't even heard of a game having so much magic available in a game for well over a decade.  Indeed, even now, only on message boards do I find such a drive for the default assumptions to be upheld, since everyone I've met and continue to meet have all "toned down" this ratio in 3E.</blockquote>

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