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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Caliburn101" data-source="post: 8243524" data-attributes="member: 6802178">Actually I don't think that is right. The issue is, hardly any truly successful writers of mainstream fantasy do high magic. Lord of the Rings, Conan, Game of Thrones, The Witcher, Assassin's Apprentice, Shannara, Wizard of Earthsea, Druss the Legend (anything by Gemmel), The Dragonbone Chair, The Mists of Avalon, Chronicles of the Black Company, The Spooks Apprentice, The Name of the Wind, Tigana, The Dark Tower, The Call of Cthulhu, The Narnia Chronicles, Six of Crows, Queen of Shadows, The Black Magician Trilogy, ... all of these have considerably less high power Gonzo magic like D&D. The Magician cycle (R.E.Feist) , Mazalan Book of the Fallen etc, The Wheel of Time series, Elric - these do have higher magic, but it is still RARE and wielded only by a few. Magic normally isn't utilitarian and everyday even in those worlds, and is commonly scary and has a price. It is far from the 'click -> boom & repeat' of D&D.There are vanishingly few worlds written (except D&D close-derivative novels like Drizzt et al) where most of the heroes and many NPCs wield magic and they commonly encounter fantastical enemies and magic using enemies round every corner. One exception here is Harry Potter - but that saga is literally about magicians alone, and even the magic there is not as Gonzo. There were no Meteor Swarms going off and full use of battle magic was reserved for all-out war, and STILL wasn't of the superhero variety of high level D&D play. So it isn't that lots of magic cannot be done as you say, it's because there are barely any decent stories out there in the real world which are also good stories and are super high magic like D&D.If you pack a world full of magic you either go with a Potter themepark or you have real difficulty making it relatable to readers or movie-watchers. It would be like every second person in Star Wars being a Jedi - the mystique of being one would soon be gone and scenes like at the end of The Mandalorian would lose their impact. Storytellers don't want that, and I would imagine that the upcoming D&D movie will not go full-gonzo like a D&D game, it will keep the magic more impactful by it not being used repeatedly by 3/4 of the party in every encounter.Personally that's what I liked about AD&D and Greyhawk - magic was rarer, much more special and wielded by dangerous egocentrics in the main. It was not a part of daily life even in the City of Greyhawk. Of course it proliferated in later editions until now where even the Bard is a demigod caster at high levels.Wheoever thought crowbarring in yet another full arcane caster into a game already overflowing with them was just being lazy.I cannot say I like the development. But I think it has to do with the fact that virtually all iterations of non-magical classes and subclasses through the editions have been mostly as dull as dishwater. Of course you can claim 'ki' isn't magic for Monks, but you get my point. Spellcasting is by far the most varied, impactiful and 'toolbox of cool' thing you can use in an encounter, and WoTC do not seem to be able to break out of that paradigm.That's why a properly relaunched Greyhawk would have to put serious curbs and houserules on the extent of 5e magic ubiquity - to maintain it's flavour and impact on the rich tapestry oof that world as envisioned when it was created.It would also have to break martial classes out of being one-trick ponies - which they are, from 'sneak attack, set up next sneak attack' to 'roll/hit, roll/miss and add the brief condition to the damage' to 'never send in your pet or it will die above CR 5', and of course 'I rage or I don't, and that's it'... pure 'damage with just a weapon' classes need variety and fun re-injected. THEY should be looking at all the lovely options they have from round to round instead of making one choice, roling the die and doing maths for 20 seconds or so and then waiting 5 minutes for all the spellcasters to make choices between all the interesting stuff available to them that makes non-magic classes look like the poor cousins of the party before the next turn.So many other systems do exciting and varied combat well. D&D has never managed to get there and has increasingly used flashy magic options to hide the elephant in the room.</blockquote>

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