Has D&D become too...D&Dish?

[JohnSnow]

If that was to me, I can't take much credit. That particular chapter of that book was one of the best things I've ever read about world-building with magic. It's stuck with me.

I'd love to see Rich write something similar now, but even though he worked on Complete Arcane, he didn't (sadly) cover this again. I had been hoping he would revisit and expand his earlier work with 3e in mind.

 

[ThirdWizard]

It is if your goal is to run a low-magic world. Obviously. Although, of course, what you call "low magic" might not be what I call "low magic" or Hussar calls "low magic".

I think the difference might be that you're assuming a level of competance in theoretical DM using the "low magic" guidelines provided, and I'm not. But, then, it took us three years to figure out how to run a low magic D&D campaign without breaking everything, so I suppose I can't make claims to that competance myself.

 

[Hussar]

I think the difference might be that you're assuming a level of competance in theoretical DM using the "low magic" guidelines provided, and I'm not. But, then, it took us three years to figure out how to run a low magic D&D campaign without breaking everything, so I suppose I can't make claims to that competance myself.

Heh, I honestly don't trust my competence level that far and I KNOW I don't have the patience for it. I know it can be done. I'm pretty sure it can be done with DnD rules, but, I think it take a lot more work than I want to put into it.

JohnSnow, I like what you said. I agree mostly. Although, the benchmarks you put are perhaps off, IMO. I would place it more thusly:

Scarcity (1 being rare and 10 being common): 4-6
Power (1 being weak, and 10 being ultimate): 7-9
Mystery (1 - magic is technology, 10 = Cthulu): 1-3

When you follow the demographics rules, magic gets a WHOLE lot less common. There was a reason I had the king lighting the city. The vast majority of the people couldn't possibly afford 150 gp for a single light. When you take the demographics into account, DnD becomes a lot less magic.

I would point to Cauldron from the Shackled City AP. A well laid out city, lots of clerics and whatnot, but, certainly not highly magic-common. Not rare - certainly not, but not terribly common either.

One of the ironic things about this is, by RC's definition, I run a pretty low magic campaign. No magic shops, no core casters (not my choice, the player's chose not to have one), about 50-75% wealth and no custom magic items. And, honestly, not a really large difference in how the game plays out. Sure, they need to rest more often, but, that's about it.

But, yes, low to high magic is a spectrum. There's no cut off at any given point. It's easier to see the extremes because there's a whole lot in the middle.

 

[boredgremlin]

high and low magic are iffy and hard to quantify. and in my opinion not really the big problem. The problem to me is flashy magic and common magic. LIke JohnSnow said, the mystery of magic is key to its magical feel.

I saw a great idea recently for less flashy magic. Basically eliminate the schools of conjuration, evocation, most necromancy and transmutation. That leaves you with magic that protects from other magical spells or monsters, magic that messes with peoples minds and magic that reveals secrets. Like the typical mythological magic we all grew up with. For instance name one story where Merlin throws a fireball to help out the knights of the round table. Wizards were people who screwed with your mind and knew things no mortal could know, not living artillery platforms.

Another idea was to ditch full casters and make bard the base arcane caster and a similar class the base divine caster. Which also solves alot of the super magic issues.

So what do folks think about those?

 

[Hussar]

Hrm... this intrigues me. I know that I'm certainly tired of yet another blaster mage lobbing endless fireballs.

In all honesty, I could see keeping conjuration on the table. Yes, it's flashier than the other effects, but, it's also somewhat self limiting. Most of the conjured creatures are not overwhelmingly powerful and the one round casting time for summoning spells means that they are less likely to take over fights.

But I'm just biased 'cos I actually like summoners. Perhaps use the variant in the DMG where the summoner calls in the same creature(s) all the time. Sure, it's Pokemon, but, it's also Arabian Nights as well. Besides, where would wizards be without ugly circles on the floor?

 

[boredgremlin]

older summoning spells i can see keeping. But each new splat book seems to take damaging spells that should be evocation and shunting them into conjuration. If you kept just the core conjuration spells i can see keeping them though. I do like the image of wizards summoning magical creatures to serve... it just seems like part of the wizards image. So i agree with you on that after rethinking it.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, isn't it all the "orb" spells that are conjuration? Meh. Sorry, you bring in a ball of energy to hurt people with, that's evocation. Silly rule. If you bring in an fiendish troll to hurt people with, that's conjuration.

 

[shilsen]

high and low magic are iffy and hard to quantify. and in my opinion not really the big problem. The problem to me is flashy magic and common magic. LIke JohnSnow said, the mystery of magic is key to its magical feel.

I saw a great idea recently for less flashy magic. Basically eliminate the schools of conjuration, evocation, most necromancy and transmutation. That leaves you with magic that protects from other magical spells or monsters, magic that messes with peoples minds and magic that reveals secrets. Like the typical mythological magic we all grew up with. For instance name one story where Merlin throws a fireball to help out the knights of the round table. Wizards were people who screwed with your mind and knew things no mortal could know, not living artillery platforms.

Another idea was to ditch full casters and make bard the base arcane caster and a similar class the base divine caster. Which also solves alot of the super magic issues.

So what do folks think about those?

I think that's reasonable if you're going for the things you mentioned.

For me, personally, it would be a pretty lousy idea. When playing D&D, I don't want (most) magic to be mysterious and I'm not looking to mimic magic from the mythology I grew up with. I was reading The Mahabharata at 4 and have spent the last 25+ years reading heavily into just about every major mythological tradition worldwide, but I don't think most of them have a take on magic that maps well onto D&D, but then I think most literary fantasy doesn't map well onto D&D either. And I've never wanted it to. So, as a matter of personal taste, it wouldn't do it, but for the ends you want, that's a reasonable start. I think working through the entire PHB list of spells and creating individual spell lists of your own, would be an even better idea.