Low magic vs. magic as a plot device

[mafisto]

My campaign setting. Here's a link to the website. Here's a link to the Magic rules.

That's some excellent stuff, thanks! I'm assuming it's possible to use spell casting as a passive weapon, due to the 10' CON drain? I'll have to read your story hour when I get a free day... looks like a lot of fun possibilities.

No swashbuckling for me, thanks. The word 'swashbuckle' provokes unreasoning fits of rage in my head. I don't know why.

The site's livejournal stuff is broken, btw.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

The problem lies in the fact if you ground it in the rules, you make it available to the PCs. When it acts as a plot device, it usually acts in such a capacity because it does something powerful and scary.

As sort of a cheap shortcut, I don't mind making it powerful, scary, and unpredictable for NPCs but relatively reliable for PCs.
The king might try to train an army of 1,000 bright young men as wizards and find that only one has "the gift" to be a wizard and ten create wild surges all the time. On the other hand, any PC who wants to become a wizard just happens to have "the gift". This is similar to how PCs just happen to usually encounter creatures near their power level, whereas level 1 NPCs can and do get squashed by giants.
My main concern is not making it feel like technology for the society as a whole.

 

[barsoomcore]

That's some excellent stuff, thanks! I'm assuming it's possible to use spell casting as a passive weapon, due to the 10' CON drain?

Oh, yes, if you can handle the potential CON drain to yourself... Which is one reason why most Barsoom spellcasters become undead, thus avoiding the whole pesky problem of CON drain (and gaining unlimited casting levels, in the process).

One of the primary NPC's, who was basically a deity, had a Grasp Shadow skill of +80 or something. It worked out to about a quarter-mile radius she could deal 80+ POINTS OF CON DAMAGE -- no save. As a move action. You know, you send an army after ONE person, you kind of expect to get some results. No such luck.

The site's livejournal stuff is broken, btw.

Yeah, there was some fussing with the URL outside of my control and now many of my links are all busted up. I gotta get to those tonight. If you click on "The Tale" and then read it Canto by Canto it'll work. But the site journal has been noted as being particularly unhelpful unless you were actually there in the first place. The Story Hour is much more... informative.

 

[barsoomcore]

My main concern is not making it feel like technology for the society as a whole.

Actually, if it were treated as technology for the society as a whole, that'd be okay, too. It's just that D&D has this magic that seems ubiquitous and straightforward and predictable, but doesn't have much effect on society as a whole. You've got medieval towns and stuff, but guys who can literally cure disease over and over again every day. Something's not very logical with that picture.

It's the "Star Trek Transporter Issue" (which you've probably never heard of because I made it up). Essentially it means technologies that are developed in stories for some specific purpose, without any thought being put into their impact on society. In Star Trek they have "transporters" which basically destroy matter at one point in space and create matter at another.

So they can synthesize matter. At arbitrary points in space. At orbital distances. In synchronicity with the movement of planetary bodies (it would kind of suck if Kirk appeared on the surface of Vulcan, only not moving at the exact same speed and direction as that surface). And they can destroy matter, again at arbitrary points in space, etc, etc. I don't think I need to point out how pretty much everything else in Federation Space falls apart at this point.

Obviously Star Trek's not meant to be an exploration of how matter synthesis might affect society, and that's okay, and people aren't dumb because they like Star Trek. But the basic problem DOES exist, and I'm all for solving basic problems if possible.

In D&D the fact is that most people WANT to play in a world that resembles the world described in fairy tales, Arthurian legend, fantasy literature, and that's not a world that makes a whole lot of sense. And that's okay.

But when I'm developing a campaign setting, I just have trouble getting around stuff like that. I like my worlds to make a little bit of sense. Even if I've got dinosaurs and ironclad airships and red guys and flintlock pistols, I want some versimilitude. So I like consider how magic would affect things and what sort of world would emerge where magic behaved in a certain way.

Brother MacClaren posts a sentence, I ramble on for six paragraphs. It's how I am.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

In D&D the fact is that most people WANT to play in a world that resembles the world described in fairy tales, Arthurian legend, fantasy literature, and that's not a world that makes a whole lot of sense. And that's okay.

Exactly. I want to play in a world where the mounted knight is the most feared offensive force. I want to play in a world where people still build castles and wear armor. I want to play in a world where a hero can slay monsters with the valor in his heart and the strength of his good right arm if that's all he wants to use, as the heroes of myth did.
A world with ubiquitous magic isn't going to look like that. A world where magic is rare and scary and wondrous for almost everybody could quite well look like that. If magic is only reliable for PCs and the BBEG du jour, it could also look like that.
I admit that I am looking to take the easy way out. Trying to calculate the logical impact of (100+? 200+) spells is beyond me.

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

It's the "Star Trek Transporter Issue" (which you've probably never heard of because I made it up). Essentially it means technologies that are developed in stories for some specific purpose, without any thought being put into their impact on society. In Star Trek they have "transporters" which basically destroy matter at one point in space and create matter at another.

So they can synthesize matter. At arbitrary points in space. At orbital distances. In synchronicity with the movement of planetary bodies (it would kind of suck if Kirk appeared on the surface of Vulcan, only not moving at the exact same speed and direction as that surface). And they can destroy matter, again at arbitrary points in space, etc, etc. I don't think I need to point out how pretty much everything else in Federation Space falls apart at this point.

Actually, Mr. Barsoomcore, I think I have to dispute this.

Dealing only with ST:TNG for the moment (the reduced quality of technobabble in the later series being a major problem), Star Trek society and technology seem perfectly compatible with transporters. I'd like to hear how you think the Federation would fall apart.

Transporters are easy to disrupt, generally require an active signal to get a lock from any significant distance, cannot reproduce or copy existing patterns, cannot transport various dangerous substances, are easy to detect and track, and can be shielded against with only minimum effort.

 

[kamosa]

Exactly. I want to play in a world where the mounted knight is the most feared offensive force. I want to play in a world where people still build castles and wear armor. I want to play in a world where a hero can slay monsters with the valor in his heart and the strength of his good right arm if that's all he wants to use, as the heroes of myth did.
A world with ubiquitous magic isn't going to look like that. A world where magic is rare and scary and wondrous for almost everybody could quite well look like that. If magic is only reliable for PCs and the BBEG du jour, it could also look like that.
I admit that I am looking to take the easy way out. Trying to calculate the logical impact of (100+? 200+) spells is beyond me.

I guess I don't see how this is excluded with the current D&D magic system. After all, you could rule that the players are the only people in all the world with access to this magic and then Everything you said above would be true for everyone in the world except those in the party.

The prices, item creation rules and such are just short hand for the games that want them. If you don't want them, toss them out and have a world where magic is rare.

Kings don't train armies of 1,000 wizards because they can't round up 1,000 people in their whole kindom that have the ability to become mages. Or, they didn't know any wizards that would train such a force. After all Merlin didn't offer to train the knights of the round table in his tricks.

It's a story not a darwinian experiment in the evolution of society under the effects of magic. If you are willing to go to the point of tearing down a class to keep it balanced, why not go the other way and write a world view that supports rare magic.

 

[kamosa]

High levels vs Magic as a plot device

I've been thinking about the orginal premise of this thread, that magic should be a plot device instead of a player ability (over simplification, read their posts for the meat)

I think this stems from where the game has gone in terms of the levels that players expect to play at. I mean in the old game you would go to around level 9 or 12 and then pack it in and start all over again.

9th level spells where basically out of reach and as such you didn't need to worry about creating worlds where they exsisted.

In addition I think GM's tend to believe that anything that ends up in their campaign is ubiquotas in the world. IE, if the players have raise dead, everyone has raise dead and I need to worry about how this is unbalancing the world. Kind of like the cop that thinks all black people are criminals, because the only black people he deals with are criminals. It's a problem of perception not reality.

So, would all this be solved by stopping play at say 11th level again? Slowing down the XP progression and letting the players just play at low levels, where the G&G model of playing works the best?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Something I have toyed around with before and am considering using again is the impact of seasons upon a druid’s spell casting power. Briefly, all I did was associate the seasons with an aspect of magic. It seemed like summer was too strong (with all of the fire spells) when compared to the spells that were enhanced during the other seasons. Not a huge issue as I subsequently weakened the seasonal magic during the opposite season (i.e. summer spells being weaker during the winter months).

I have an order of druids, Hernic Druids, whose magic is affected by the seasons as follows: Spells gained as though a caster of +1 level during the summer months; spells gained as though a caster of -1 level during the winter months. Therefore, during the winter, a 1st level Hernic Druid gains no spells whatsoever.

Celenic druids have their caster levels altered on the basis of lunar cycles, and more strongly...but this is also more complex, so I'll leave it at that.

Raven Crowking

 

[Raven Crowking]

But that is all besides the point. The point is that saying magic in D&D is screwed up because it doesn't match the fiction, is a silly arguement. There are tons of things that do not match the fiction. I don't find the monsters particularly drawn from fiction, or from their mythlogical roots. I don't find the number of skill points each character gets to be like what I imagine the heroic characters from books having.

Heck, I don't even find characters that raise in level to be particularly mapped to fiction. There are tons of examples of game mechanics that are not like fiction.

Using this as an arguement to pick on magic is just a screen for an underlying bias against magic. That's fine, and to each his own fun, but don't pretend that it is drawn from some high minded place.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. I don't believe that this argument is indicative of a bias against magic. Rather, I believe that it is a call for magic that feels "magical" to the original poster. What you are suggesting is analogous to claiming that the "Grim n Gritty" combat thread is evidence of a bias against combat.

Ultimately, the problem arises, IMO, from determining if magic is a science or not. If magic is a science, then the D&D rules are fine. Consistently applied, magic brings about consistent results. If magic is not a science, if it, in fact, borrows from the powers of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, or some form of Unstable Quasi-Reality That Lies Behind Our Own, then the magic system is going to need tinkering.

From a folklore/myth viewpoint, magic acts more through symbolism than through exacting methodology, and even when performed properly its results are not necessarily all that is desired. In D&D, magical power is controlled through "spell slots" inherent to the caster. In most mythology/folklore, magical powers are taken from greater beings with, or without, their consent. D&D magic is powered by the concept that "the more things you kill/defeat, the more XP you get, the more powerful you become." Mythic/folkloric magic is powered by the idea that "the more you know, and/or the more power you accumulate through ritual/meditation/sacrifice/etc, the more you can do...but there still may be unexpected prices to pay, or consequences to what you do."

Some fixes that can be used toward making D&D magic more mythic include:

1) Restore the "you have to have a copy of a spell to learn it" rule from previous editions of D&D.

2) Extend the ideas of rare/common spells and Witching Sites/Times from Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed to other classes.

3) Have some spells cause Powers checks ala Ravenloft, and/or Sanity checks ala Call of Cthulhu/Unearthed Arcana.

4) Make racial/societal spell lists. An elf from Mirkwood knows different spells than a dwarf from the Lonely Mountain.

5) Use some of the excellent alternate spellcasters as NPCs/Pcs -- everything from Conan's Scholar, through Monte Cook's Witch and Greenbond, to the really flavorful classes in the Medieval Player's Handbook.

I agree with Kamosa about a lot of the monsters, though. If you go straight by the core books, they are too cheesy/video-gamey for me. These require more of a "flavor" fix than a "rules" fix though. Change the fluff, and the crunch is alright. Except, or course, sanity checks for some aberations and undead. And vampires who suck blood instead of levels. And faeries that seem like faeries.....

Raven Crowking