Making Magic Magical Again?

[Li Shenron]

How would you make Magic "magical again" in 5th Edition?

How would you make items magical again?

Do you even think it can be done? If so, how?

What are your ideas?

What is the stuff that we call "magical" in real life?

- something we don't understand or cannot explain?
- something we aren't able to do or at least control ourselves?
- something constitutes an ultra-rare event that defies common sense?

I don't know if the rules can or are even supposed to support things like these without making the game unbalanced or too random or just frustrating.

Probably it is ultimately up to the gaming group to find their own way to bring some wonder back.

 

[Alzrius]

Define what you mean by "magical" please.

Here's a blog post explaining why it can't be done...

Wow, that really does sum up the problem and why it can't be fixed (by the game itself, at least).

 

[Belphanior]

Magic has never been "magical", in the sense that it evokes a sense of wonder. (It's always been magical in the sense that it's supernatural, of course.)

To use an example again brought up earlier, the ring of regeneration. It makes your wounds heal quicker. Ok, that's supernatural. Is it wondrous and mystical? Eh, not really if you ask me. It changes the numbers on your sheet a bit.

Even if it was something like the Ring of Tau-Re, ancient minotaur pharaoh king, which lets you sacrifice a bull and eat its heart to regain health... it's still just yet another "satisfy requirement X to get Y amount of health back" item.

To me this hypothetical ring is ten times more wondrous than just about anything D&D is known for... and it's still not very wondrous at all.


Bottomline: you can't make the game something "again" if it's never been that to begin with. YMMV of course.

 

[Zaukrie]

This will be one of the biggest challenges for the designers. Is magic magical in WoW or Skyrim? Is it really magical even in the pathfinder version of D&D?

I think this is harder and harder to do the more people are familiar with magic. As stated earlier, it is going to be a lot about words and fluff, as much as it is about rules, I think.

That said, I think making fighters and others who use martial powers seem more magical, makes the magic using characters less magical. While I love a lot of the cool powers that martial characters have, I wonder if it is the right way to go if you want magic to seem magical.

 

[Hassassin]

I'm not convinced magical magic is impossible to have, but I strongly suspect magical balanced magic is.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm not convinced magical magic is impossible to have, but I strongly suspect magical balanced magic is.

This is true, and it's really one of the fundamental issues facing D&D. If your mages can shoot fire, control minds, teleport, and have their wishes granted, they will not be balanced with characters who can't.

If your mages can't do those things, you're not playing D&D.

There's certainly plenty of room to improve nonmagical characters, and they can be made fun and interesting and important, but in some sense they'll never be "balanced" with the mighty mage.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The problem is that you can't simply take out +X items from 3e or 4e after the fact. All the math assumes them and there are no guidelines to altering challenge ratings for a low-magic-item campaign.

Actually, you can, at least in 4e, but there is no reason it wouldn't work in other editions as well. It has an optional rule (DMG2 & Dark Sun) called Inherent Bonuses, which essentially replaces the need to be on the item treadmill, and just grants the assumed bonuses at whatever level.

I've been using this since it was introduced and it works well. I can now drop "interesting" magic items in my game that are "magical" and not just math.

I would remove the bonuses to Attack, AC and saves from magical items, thus removing the items from combat maths. A +X sword would only give bonuses to damage, armor would give, I dunno, damage resistance, and amulets shouldn't have +Xs anyways.

But a +X sword is boring. Every magic item should do something awesome, add at least 1 new option additionally to the default use of the item (a sword is for hitting things, a flaming sword should be able to do something more than "hitting things with fire damage"), and preferably be vague enough so that a creative player could find more. A flaming sword, to reuse my example, could be used as the occasional flamethrower, a torch, a very impressive lighter, a creative way to smoke out monsters from their dens, whatever the players think of, really.

Basically this.

Also, magic shops should be removed (and so should be the pricing of magical items other than scrolls and potions, we can split them by tier instead). Magical item creation should be initially restricted to scrolls and potions, but their should be a module released within the first year of the game's existence with magical item creation rule (but not as part of the Core Rulebook)

I fully agree that item shops and the magic item economy should be removed. This was one of the changes that happened in 3e that I really hated. I mean it's all well and good to have a way of budgeting these things when making a new character above level 1, but by extending that to the rest of the game, I felt it cheapened what items were supposed to represent. It makes magic a commodity.

I can see if you built a world around that - a lot of video games do this - but even in those worlds, there are items that you just can't buy, and those are the special ones.

 

[keterys]

Eh, we don't need Wish. The rest are workable.

 

[Hassassin]

Actually, you can, at least in 4e, but there is no reason it wouldn't work in other editions as well. It has an optional rule (DMG2 & Dark Sun) called Inherent Bonuses, which essentially replaces the need to be on the item treadmill, and just grants the assumed bonuses at whatever level.

I've been using this since it was introduced and it works well. I can now drop "interesting" magic items in my game that are "magical" and not just math.

Yes, the annoying thing is that inherent bonuses still have the inflated math of magic items.

I would prefer a non-bonus approach designed with the core, so that either removing +X magic items would lower "effective party level" by 20% or whatever, or default would be off and adding them would raise it.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Yes, the annoying thing is that inherent bonuses still have the inflated math of magic items.

Can you elaborate on why this is intrinsically 'bad'?

To me, it's pretty simple - you plug in the numbers and you're good. It has the added side benefit of removing dependence on implements for casters, and divorcing weapon-users from a single item that they've "invested" in, so that you can again have your master-at-arms warrior, or a caster that doesn't need a "magic stick" to make spells effectively.

But if you want those things, you can still have them.

I would prefer a non-bonus approach designed with the core, so that either removing +X magic items would lower "effective party level" by 20% or whatever, or default would be off and adding them would raise it.

I would be okay with this approach, but it's a lot easier and more practical, considering the history of the game, to design around the assumption that there will be +x items, and make allowances for not using them.

Keeping the math seems a lot simpler than making ad-hoc judgements about "effective level," though I would be pleasantly surprised if they could make it work.