Low magic vs. magic as a plot device

[Raven Crowking]

I point all that out just to show how I believe the XP, HP and stat punishments are used. If you want something discouraged you attach a penalty to it. You can call it an investment if you want, but the reality is you are restricting how often something can be used with a negative effect that happens everytime it is used. That sounds like a penalty to me, no matter whether the penalty is worth paying or not.

If something becomes a normal, encouraged, part of the game, the game penalties should be mitigated for the players, IMHO.

Excepting, of course, that "restriction" and "punishment" are not synonomous terms. As you will presumably gain more XP (and how long in most games, really, does it take to earn 200 XP?), an XP cost is no more restrictive than the GP cost for the fighter's shiny new armor. IMC, you're a lot more likely to gain 200 XP on a low-level adventure than 200 gp, but that's just me.

Raven

 

[mmadsen]

I don't think magic item creation counts as as standard every day use of magic, even for those that have it as a feat.

This reminds me of another alternative magic system: replace spellcasters with Experts (with Spellcraft) who can "prepare" spells -- using the game mechanics for creating a scroll.

The character has many "wizardly" abilities beyond magic -- an Expert can know just about everything there is to know, including how to disarm traps, etc. -- with the ability to cast many different spells, but every casting is an important expenditure.

 

[rbingham2000]

Turning this back toward ways to make magic interesting again, I'd like to add this little tidbit:

Every powerful sorcerer or other magic-user has to have a weakness, a way to break his or her power without relying on more powerful magic. Because let's face it, if you can't overcome a sorcerer by any means except magic items or more powerful magic, you're stuck with the unenviable task of explaining why the sorcerers of your world didn't take over long ago.

It's much like superheroes in comic books. Until Superman's writers came up with Kryptonite and other limits to his powers, nobody wanted to read about his exploits because the odds were automatically stacked against just about anyone who came up against him -- and when you know that there's no way that the hero or villain can possibly be beaten believably, it makes for a very dull story.

For an example of what I'm talking about, a powerful sorceress rules her frozen realm with an iron fist. Her power comes from a magic ring that she found several hundred years ago. The ring makes her immortal and unaging, and grants her the use of several terrible powers:

• Her scream can shatter ice and cause avalanches from up to several miles away.
• Her breath can freeze someone solid from ten paces or less, and when used in full force, can create powerful gusts of wind that can travel through the land and have the power to blow someone off a mountain or other precarious perch.
• She can call up powerful ice storms against her enemies.
• She can create monsters from the ice and snow to do her bidding.
• She can control any animal that lives in the wilds of her frozen realm.
• Her voice can be carried on the winds for miles.

In other words, this is one lady you do not want to mess with. But as powerful as she is with the ring, it also bestows upon her several very nasty weaknesses:

• She thrives in the arctic cold of the realm that she rules, but she cannot travel to other parts of the world except during their winter months. If she tries to travel to other parts of the world any other time, she will slowly start to melt and die from the heat.
• She cannot be near any source of heat, like fire, or she will slowly start to melt as above.
• If the ring is ever taken away from her, she will revert to the age that she would have been had she never found and put on the ring. Because she has lived for several centuries with the ring, this will result in instant death as her body crumbles into snow.

Kinda sucks, huh? Well, as Barsoomcore so kindly put it, "them's the breaks." The price that this sorceress pays for her tremendous power is being cut off from any kind of warmth in the world and being more or less bound to her frozen realm.

 

[barsoomcore]

I point all that out just to show how I believe the XP, HP and stat punishments are used. If you want something discouraged you attach a penalty to it. You can call it an investment if you want, but the reality is you are restricting how often something can be used with a negative effect that happens everytime it is used. That sounds like a penalty to me, no matter whether the penalty is worth paying or not.

Yep. Exactly right. And if you're a fair DM, you lay out the penalties/rewards/costs/callemwhatchulike for the various options and let your players pick. You don't want to deal with the penalties? That's okay by me. You don't get any special powers.

Oh, you want special powers but don't want the penalties? Well, play in someone else's campaign, then. You play in Barsoom, you use Barsoom rules.

If something becomes a normal, encouraged, part of the game, the game penalties should be mitigated for the players, IMHO.

I'm glad you run your campaign the way you think it should be run. I do exactly the same as you.

 

[mmadsen]

In the current campaign I want them to be able to create low level magic items, so I've removed the XP penalty for single use items like scrolls, potions and tattoos. They still pay the gold and time costs, which keep them in line, but they know that I don't consider it taboo to create mundane items.

That's exactly the kind of thing the "low magic" approach tries to avoid: mundane, cheap-but-weak magic.

 

[Geoff Watson]

One problem with "low magic" is that some people mean "less powerful magic" while others mean "rare magic". I suggest that people stop using "low magic" as a term and be more specific.

Geoff.

 

[kamosa]

One problem with "low magic" is that some people mean "less powerful magic" while others mean "rare magic". I suggest that people stop using "low magic" as a term and be more specific.

Geoff.

The problem Geoff is that most use rare magic arguements as a justfication for making magic less powerful. So, they can't really be seperated in the current context.

 

[kamosa]

That's exactly the kind of thing the "low magic" approach tries to avoid: mundane, cheap-but-weak magic.

Well even with this rule they almost never make items, because there are still limits on creating items. So, they aren't mundane or cheap.

 

[mmadsen]

Another alternative magic system -- one that's truly low magic, but not necessarily more dramatic -- is to replace the major spellcasting classes with variant Bards; just switch out the spell list. The class mechanics of the Bard match many, many non-Bard character concepts: inspiring preacher, wise man, enchantress, etc.

 

[mmadsen]

If something becomes a normal, encouraged, part of the game, the game penalties should be mitigated for the players, IMHO.

Choices have both costs and benefits. You're dwelling on costs -- and calling them penalties. We can create a variant magic system that remains balanced with the old system even while imposing much higher costs on magic -- simply by increasing the benefits. We have lots of ways to do that.

We can let casters learn spells more easily, we can let them learn higher-level spells earlier, we can reduce the defenses and counters against their magic, we can allow them to cast spontaneously, we can let them cast more spells and go over their hard limit of spells per day, etc.

In addition to dwelling on costs though, you're acting as if casting multiple spells per day, every day, should be a normal, encouraged part of the game. I think that's exactly what the "low magic" crowd wants to get away from. After all, Gandalf did not cast spells regularly.