Spell
First Post
I recently saw a thread about low magic and its appeal that made me think.
I basically quit dming D&D because of my problem with high magic. I decided to talk about it here, so that someone might find a solution.
I'll start with a quote, from my DMG: "... magic is prevalent enough in the world that it will be always be taken into account by smart individuals."
The book talks about hiring magic-users to detect invisible thief in the market, continual flame spells to provide for lights, town militia with a couple of wizards to provide defence from magic, and so on.
I already have a couple of problems with this.
For example, I think that the concept of "town milita" was invented in London, when they created the so called "bobbies" (the policemen), in order to save the army for war and large scale disorders. That was when... late 1700s?
From what I know (and I don't think I'm completely wrong) there was no such thing as a "town militia" in medieval times. As a matter of fact, medival cities and lives were so different from our own that if we could time travel, we would find ourselves in a profoundly different world, regulated by different ideas and forces.
But that's alright. Nobody ever told that D&D was supposed to recreate history. The game world is a medieval-looking representation of the contemporary world... so what?
The problem, for me, is that that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Think about it.
A first level wizard (or sorcerer, or anybody with access to the trickery domain), could use a change self spell to change his appearance, go shopping, leaving a long list of debts behind, ending the spell, and living happily even after.
Sure, this is oversemplification, but it can be done, with some skill and preparation.
Castles. I wonder why somebody should bother building such a structure when you have mages throwing fireballs around, teleporting, calling lightinings, and so on.
Sure, you could pay somebody to protect your castle. You might even pay a fortune to create built-in magical defences... but is the game worth the candle?
I'm not going into the raise dead issue, and it's legal implications... Mr. Joe prince should be happy when his father returns from death for the third or fourth time...
And you also have no famines, and no plagues of mundane nature, unless you rule out the presence of good clerics and gods.
This is just what I could think of taking a glance at the PHB. I wonder how many problems you could cause studying the problem with more attention, or with access to other sourcebooks.
Some of you will smile and say that I'm oversimplifying things, that there are ways to prevent these things from happening... but I feel that this is back-thinking.
I think that most adventures, and game worlds are not built with the presence of magic in mind. Magic is added as an afterthought.
Instead of thinking what the world and the society could be like if magic would really exist, they just present a watered-down version of our reality, dressed like a medieval world, giving a couple of shortcuts to avoid problems with wild magic-users.
Now, is this my paranoia? Is there a real answer to run high- (or even normal-) magic campaigns without ignoring a lot of non-sense and weird sitations?
Moreover, has this problem of mine ever being discussed in _any_ RPG book (I'm not talking about just d20 books)?
What do you think?
I basically quit dming D&D because of my problem with high magic. I decided to talk about it here, so that someone might find a solution.
I'll start with a quote, from my DMG: "... magic is prevalent enough in the world that it will be always be taken into account by smart individuals."
The book talks about hiring magic-users to detect invisible thief in the market, continual flame spells to provide for lights, town militia with a couple of wizards to provide defence from magic, and so on.
I already have a couple of problems with this.
For example, I think that the concept of "town milita" was invented in London, when they created the so called "bobbies" (the policemen), in order to save the army for war and large scale disorders. That was when... late 1700s?
From what I know (and I don't think I'm completely wrong) there was no such thing as a "town militia" in medieval times. As a matter of fact, medival cities and lives were so different from our own that if we could time travel, we would find ourselves in a profoundly different world, regulated by different ideas and forces.
But that's alright. Nobody ever told that D&D was supposed to recreate history. The game world is a medieval-looking representation of the contemporary world... so what?
The problem, for me, is that that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Think about it.
A first level wizard (or sorcerer, or anybody with access to the trickery domain), could use a change self spell to change his appearance, go shopping, leaving a long list of debts behind, ending the spell, and living happily even after.
Sure, this is oversemplification, but it can be done, with some skill and preparation.
Castles. I wonder why somebody should bother building such a structure when you have mages throwing fireballs around, teleporting, calling lightinings, and so on.
Sure, you could pay somebody to protect your castle. You might even pay a fortune to create built-in magical defences... but is the game worth the candle?
I'm not going into the raise dead issue, and it's legal implications... Mr. Joe prince should be happy when his father returns from death for the third or fourth time...
And you also have no famines, and no plagues of mundane nature, unless you rule out the presence of good clerics and gods.
This is just what I could think of taking a glance at the PHB. I wonder how many problems you could cause studying the problem with more attention, or with access to other sourcebooks.
Some of you will smile and say that I'm oversimplifying things, that there are ways to prevent these things from happening... but I feel that this is back-thinking.
I think that most adventures, and game worlds are not built with the presence of magic in mind. Magic is added as an afterthought.
Instead of thinking what the world and the society could be like if magic would really exist, they just present a watered-down version of our reality, dressed like a medieval world, giving a couple of shortcuts to avoid problems with wild magic-users.
Now, is this my paranoia? Is there a real answer to run high- (or even normal-) magic campaigns without ignoring a lot of non-sense and weird sitations?
Moreover, has this problem of mine ever being discussed in _any_ RPG book (I'm not talking about just d20 books)?
What do you think?