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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kitsune9" data-source="post: 5820523" data-attributes="member: 18507">I like having uber fantasy in my campaign like Eberron, FR, and Iron Kingdoms (my favorite in which steampunk and magic is works side-by-side).I can see where some gamers want magic, but don't want gonzo to go with it. Sometimes, I get a little tired of it too, but if magic is easy, accessible, limitless, then it's only logical that societies would be built around the concept of magic-as-technology. Matter of fact such societies would accelerate at a rate greater than our technological advancement and would either take to the stars (or planes of existence) or wipe themselves out.There's some ways to deal with this in your campaign in order to have fantastical magic, but keep it from pushing society forward. Here's been my thoughts and discussions in the past:1. Make the barrier of entry high. In 3.x, if you have a wizard or sorcerer with their stat of at least 11, they could cast 1st level spells. Raise this. Also as a campaign flavor, make the level of training and development to be many years. For example, for someone to learn to cast spells as a wizard, they must spend at least 10-15 years of continuous study to cast their spells. For spontaneous casters, their ability doesn't manifest themselves until they reach a certain age. If the average lifespan of a human in medieval times is 45 - 50 then having a character who starts out at 30 as a 1st level caster will more than likely not live long enough to retire and then focus on magic research.2. Make magic unpredictable, uncontrollable, or dangerous. Look at nuclear technology. If used effectively, it can provide incredible power to millions of people in a region. However, shoddy construction, a mistake at the control panels, a faulty heat-exchange valve and so on can create a disaster to kill hundreds or thousands and give cancer and radiation poisoning to twice as many. Does the risk outweigh the good? Magic can be unpredictable, or uncontrollable, or inherently dangerous to use. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has this which greatly curtails magic use.3. Eliminate the magic economy. Part of any rise of a society is creating systems of efficiency. Part of creating that efficiency is having a stable system of weights and measures in which you can value goods to be traded within your society and to others. However, if you cannot price something, then despite its benefits, it will be of little use to society. "Money is what makes the world go round" is an old adage that is very apt here. Your players may find +1 longswords all over the place in dungeons, ruins, and swamps, but if merchants can't price them or have no means of independently verifying their value, you won't have people creating them and you won't have people trading in them. 4. Make magic a scarce commodity. Magic seems to come from "someplace" so that anyone with an ability score high enough and some material components that are mostly cheap can keep casting spells every day until they die. However, what if there was a finite supply of magic in the world and once it was used up, then magic would be gone forever? For your campaign purposes, you wouldn't have a system to track the finite supply of magic in the world, but societies that know this truth would greatly curtail on who can and cannot use magic. Unregistered use of magic would be dealt with harshly in order to keep it from running out. This would be part of the logic of why there are no continual light lamps and magic trains.5. There is no such thing as permanent magic. Sure, you can cast permanency on something, but really it just means a long time because after several years or so, the magic wanes and then fades away. And the more costly to make "permanent" magic, the less likely that casters will use it. Look at car batteries for electric vehicles. Why isn't everyone driving a hybrid or an electric vehicle? The batteries are expensive, have serious range limitations, and wear out after 70,000 miles and need to be replaced. Until we have a breakthrough on these limitations that increases the efficiency by tenfold, the adoption of this technology will be slow. Make magic the same way, but have no breakthrough available. So this could be an explanation that society places little value on permanent magic because it's of little practical use. Think of that magic train in Eberron that is powered by elementals. What if the rituals involved in capturing and binding the elemental must be done every 10 miles or 20 miles for the train to operate? Guess what, no more trains. Too impractical. Other posters can come up with additional ideas. This list is by no means exhaustive.</blockquote>

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