Is Magic a Setting Element or a Plot Device

[Hussar]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] - sure, I understand. And I think pre-4e D&D is pretty bad at not addressing the implications of its magic. 3e is far worse than prior eds though, magic being much cheaper, more common, and often more powerful.

Yeah, I'd pretty much agree with that. When you can actually make magic items at fairly low levels, it becomes problematic when it comes to setting construction.

4e has its own issues with this, again because you can still create magic items fairly easily. OTOH, the lack of "utility" spells tends to make the issue closer to 1e or 2e. Sure, you can crank out +1 swords I suppose, but, that's a whole lot less setting changing than, say, a decanter of endless water.

Or a wall of iron.

 

[Ariosto]

Make what you will out of conjured iron, conjurers can dispel as well!

The trouble with all this hyperbolic hypothesizing is people assuming that there "ought to be" a bunch of characters chomping at the bit to do thus or so when the players themselves can't be arsed.

Evidence:1, hypothesizers: 0.

Try it in a real game, and you'll find out what actually happens!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

[MENTION=80487]Ariosto[/MENTION], yes, it is rather similar to, for example, adding a whole section of rules to baseball explaining how you can't use firearms to take out opposing players when they are trying to catch a throw or swing a bat.

Now, I get it that the game evolved into something different. The spirit changed; so the rules needed to follow. But that is more a critique of what game later, and maybe a reservation about the spirit of the rules changing, than it is a valid knock on the original.

To wit, there is supposed to be hare-brained, zany stuff in the original that is supposed to be handled by whatever hammer the Viking Hat DM cares to use, as necessary, to keep the spirit of the game humming along. That later people felt the need to codify some of the more "interesting" possibilities is a valid option, but says nothing about the utility of the original in certain hands.

 

[Hussar]

Make what you will out of conjured iron, conjurers can dispel as well!

The trouble with all this hyperbolic hypothesizing is people assuming that there "ought to be" a bunch of characters chomping at the bit to do thus or so when the players themselves can't be arsed.

Evidence:1, hypothesizers: 0.

Try it in a real game, and you'll find out what actually happens!

What would happen?

Players don't do this for two reasons. One, it's boring and two, most players have no interest in being jerks and destroying someone's campaign.

That doesn't mean they can't do it, but, most players are a bit more respectful than that. And, while Wall of Iron might not be done, I know that IME, Continual Light was used constantly - every high level PC's castle/tower/home was lit by it. Glyphs of Warding on arrows were another common use. Or, the Unearthed Arcana spell, Sepia Snake Sigil. That was a personal favorite of mine.

And, unlike Continual Light, Wall of Iron can't actually be dispelled, so you're point about conjurers doesn't really work.

/edit - actually went hunting for the rules and I was wrong.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

I think that's why I tend to run D&D campaigns where possible resources are almost always exploited and used. The first D&D naval campaign I ran, the first thing the players came back to me with was a Lyre of Building. And, while it was a total PITA in the game, I couldn't fault them for it. Hrm, automatically make your ship immune to all damage for an hour and, with a decent skill check, you can play it for several more hours. Yeah, that's a really, really good idea.

It's such a good idea that I was rather at a loss to explain why every ship didn't have one. After all, a ship is a heck of a lot more money than a single Lyre of Building. Having at least one in a fleet makes too much sense not to. If nothing else, the ability to repair ships on the move would be invaluable, never mind the fact that you could actually build more ships.

/snip

While, for the overly pedantic among us, this isn't specifically a Wall of Iron spell, it's essentially the same problem.

So, there is evidence of the problem in actual play in this thread [MENTION=80487]Ariosto[/MENTION].

 

[Pentius]

Make what you will out of conjured iron, conjurers can dispel as well!

Actually, the rules seem clear on this, at least for the SRD. As we can see, Wall of Iron is an instantaneous spell. Dispel magic cannot dispel an instantaneous effect, since the magic creates the wall, then is done. "The effect of a spell with an instantaneous duration can’t be dispelled, because the magical effect is already over before the dispel magic can take effect." Hussar, I'd be interested in knowing what you found that refutes this.

But even if conjured iron could be dispelled, well, so what? Natural iron can simply be destroyed by other spells, so if a spellcaster wants to destroy your iron, the origin of the iron isn't really important. It's going to get destroyed.

The trouble with all this hyperbolic hypothesizing is people assuming that there "ought to be" a bunch of characters chomping at the bit to do thus or so when the players themselves can't be arsed.

Evidence:1, hypothesizers: 0.

Try it in a real game, and you'll find out what actually happens!

Ah, see, there's the thing. I don't think it's important that a bunch of players, or even any players, use Wall of Iron for money. It's that the setting doesn't address the fact that the Wall of Iron spell enables an Iron Revolution just waiting to happen. If the Dm wanted to say that every time the players encountered or learned the Wall of Iron spell, it was the first time the world had seen it, that might work. But the books make no mention of the world changing ramifications of the existence of such a spell, resulting in situations like Hussar's example, where an offhand mention of a spell or effect suddenly brings up these questions.

 

[I'm A Banana]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] - sure, I understand. And I think pre-4e D&D is pretty bad at not addressing the implications of its magic. 3e is far worse than prior eds though, magic being much cheaper, more common, and often more powerful.

I think this is an example of the genre differences.

4e doesn't try to make sense of its magic. It is there, it is Balanced, and it is limited in its application. Each magic whatsit is a unique effect, and only that.

3e takes the idea that its magic exists as a setting element to its most logical conclusion. If a wall of iron can be created, then that is what happens.

For me as a DM, running a game, 4e's localized effects are really a PITA, since you pretty much see the effect as sacrosanct -- what it does is important, not what it is.

3e's complexity-causing effects were a lot more fun for me, since they introduced unexpected chaos to the mix, made you think about cause and effect, and helped set the tone for the game.

It's not always the best thought-out, and some corrections are useful, but its a lot more fun for me in a game to find a tool than it is to find a plot-point. The former can be used in any way you can think of, the latter is used for one specific purpose and only that. Part of what makes D&D fun as a game for me is the chaos and interesting effects caused by giving players tools to affect the world, rather than giving them the effect they are permitted to have.

On the other hand, I can accept Sauron being a big evil bad guy that nobody could beat, since that was a passive narrative. I'd have a lot more trouble accepting that in a game.

 

[maintainie]

I like magic rare enough that players have some foundation of familiarity without having to do a lot of homework to grasp the place, but common enough that I can have setting elements like "House Tyliel grew a witchwood around their manor and they keep leucrottas to ward away intruders" and these feel like something that would happen in the setting. Rare enough that characters without magic can't lean on "she doesn't have magic!" as a crutch to make them interesting; common enough that characters with magic can't lean on "he has magic!" as a crutch to make them interesting.

I like magic to reinforce the themes of whatever sort of game I'm running. If it's fantasy superheroes, I want magic to behave like comic book super-science. If it's an Arabian Nights pastiche, I want it to feel wondrous and colorful instead of being an alternate technology. If the speculative fiction approach undercuts and deconstructs a theme I want to celebrate, I'm not sufficiently interested in that approach to nurture it.

Juat what I want to say.You made some good points there.

 

[S'mon]

I think this is an example of the genre differences.

4e doesn't try to make sense of its magic. It is there, it is Balanced, and it is limited in its application. Each magic whatsit is a unique effect, and only that.

I think (pre-Essentials) 4e takes Rituals as the setting-integrated magic; they're designed to be used by NPCs and at least to some extent the game seems to consider their implications. And there seems to be an effort not to include magic items that would significantly alter a setting. Applications of battle magic outside combat don't get the same consideration though.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Hussar, I'd be interested in knowing what you found that refutes this.

Sorry, wasn't clear. I was referring to the pre-3e version of Wall of Iron, which can be dispelled.

The thing is, with this tangent, most of these issues are not insurmountable. Smelting the iron is simply an engineering problem. Heck, the easiest thing, in my mind, to do would be to create the wall on the edge of a cliff, push it over and let it shatter on the ground below. It's iron - it's not like it has a whole lot of tensile strength when it's an inch thick sheet covering many square feet.

And, dispelling isn't a major issue either. Simply cast Wall Of Iron many times. Make sure that you keep the batches separate. Equip your soldiers from the batches and make sure that every group is made up of ten batches or more.

Now it's going to take about twenty dispel magics to remove the iron from a group. Which begs the question whether a broken up Wall of Iron could be affected by a single Dispel Magic or not - I don't know, that's a DM's call. But, in any case, it's still not a seriously big issue.

I'd be much more worried about that 5th level wizard hitting my troops with fireball than dispel magic.

KM - I see where you're going with it, but, my problem with 3e is that it's so poorly thought out. Most of the effects are based on adventuring. That's why continual light is such a low level spell - by 3rd or 4th level, screwing around with torches is a PITA, so, you smack out a couple of these babies and you're good to go. So on and so forth.

The spells were never designed as setting elements. And, frankly, the consequences of these spells were never explored in many of the settings either. As you said, it's effect as Myth. It doesn't change the world because it's part of the Myth of that world and we are just encouraged to accept it.