Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 1008869" data-attributes="member: 2804">I recently DMed a 21st level game and have DMed high level before.  I have found that several things are true.Certain spells in the game are "broken".  I don't mean broken in the PC has too high an AC or does too much damage, I mean broken in plot destroying, game breaking ways.For example, I have removed all Detect Alignment magic.  I have removed all Scrying.  I have removed all Commune and Legend lore type spells.  Teleport and all forms of Planar Travel magic require a will save or bad things happen.  I have removed Wind Walk.  I have changed invisibility so that you still get all the bonuses it provides but you look like a predator and you can be seen and targeted in combat.  I have also removed all Raise Dead and Resurrection spells from the game.I give players a certain number of Fate points that whenever they fail a save that would otherise kill them or do something really nasty to them, they can spend a Fate point to avoid the effect.  This helps compensate the players for my taking away Raise dead magic.  With all the save or die spells and abilities of monsters, its obvious that D&D combat is partially balanced with the assumption that the PCs can come back from death.  But for flavor reasons I don't like that so I had to rebalance the game with something in return for taking those spells out.I let the players build powerful characters and they can commission magic items or make them themselves if they need them.  Raw power such as high AC, SR, lots of HP, good Attack bonus, etc. are not a problem for me.  I can just slap levels and magic on monsters and bad guys and they are good to go.But when players need to know something, they should research.  When they need to go someplace, they should travel there.  When players need to discover the layout of the bad guys fortress or follow someone they need to actually scout or shadow the NPC in question.I don't like spells that can be used to break plots apart.  Also with Scry and Teleport it becomes hard to justify the PCs own survival.  If the PCs can Scry the darklord and teleport in and assassinate him in the privy, then the darklord can do the same to them (and would).  Nor should they be able to use Detect Evil as some sort of bad guy detector.  They still have dimension door, and fly and all those other nifty spells and those don't bother me a bit.  They can even toss down maximized, empower, heightened 20d6 fireballs and thats fine.But dammit, a murder mystery isn't a murder mystery if you can Raise the victim.  A vampire can't masquerade as a local lord if Detect Evil makes him glow like a Christmas tree at night, etc.  And PC death has no emotional impact if life is just a spell away.</blockquote>

Verification