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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gothmog" data-source="post: 1258641" data-attributes="member: 317">Very well stated- this is exactly what I was trying to say.  Magic in D&D doesn't feel like magic from myth and literature- it feels like a game.  There is no sense of wonder, no mystery, its simply a tool almost like technology.  Because its taken for granted, players develop a reliance on it rather than on looking for alternative methods for solving a problem because it is so potent and reliable in every situation.  And once players have found that the scry/buff/teleport or Imp. Invis/Fly/Bomber mage works, they rely on those tactics to the exclusion of all other things.  I'll admit that as a DM, I would much rather think about interesting characters and plots in my game than searching rulebooks for ways to foil the latest l33t spell/magic item combo the players have discovered.  Blah, extremely boring and predictable.  The problem is that D&D characters are so reliant on magic under the core rules that in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, you have to reduce the power level of the game.  Although I haven't restricted PCs to just NPC classes, I ended up making magic items much more rare, slowing down the spellcasting progression to 1 spell level every 3 leves of the class, editing the spell lists and making a cap of 6th level spells, and reducing the frequency of monsters.  And you know what?  I haven't seen the problem of player mental laziness in quite a while.  While I occasionally enjoy the high-magic one-shot for its simple "wahoo" factor, I can't take it seriously because its impossible to identify with a character with that kind of power and who view themselves as their set of equipment or spells rather than as an individual with a personality and goals.  Again, I'm not saying all high-powered play is like this, but IME in the last 22 years I have been gaming, probably a good 80% is.  There isn't any right or wrong way to do things regardig power level, but I think that there is something to the arguement that D&D is overpowered and encourages a dependence on magic.  Some people want to try and correct what we see as a problem, not a feature of the game- and to do that the basic assumptions and system of the game have to be modified.</blockquote>

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