Normal/High Magic/Not Gritty How-To

[I'm A Banana]

In response to the debate going on in the lm/gng thread, I've been noticing that many (or a significantly vocal minority) of DM's have troubles with high-level D&D3.5. Saying things like that in normal D&D, mystery, suspense, drama, and nickel-and-diming is impossible to cultivate, especially at high levels (with the correspondingly wondrous spells and survivability).

I'm hoping this thread will help dispel that myth: that great stories can and do exist at high levels, with all the magic accoutrements. So post your fun and engaging examples to this thread, but make sure they're high-powered! To counteract many of the arguments, you may want to pay specific attention to (a) getting your players emotionally attatched to their characters, (b) dealing with divination, resurrection, and teleportation magic, (c) making the PC's fear something as characters (not just subject to dragon's fear).

Go as high as you want, but you should bottom out at about LV10.

Come onnnn, EN World! You're the most creative D&D community in existence. Show me what you've got for high-level fun!

 

[Silvanos]

Ummm. Have you read Pcats story hour? The last update had one of them wakeing up with her friends eating her intestines....

Well you have to read it to put that into context...

Drew

 

[mmadsen]

In response to the debate going on in the lm/gng thread, I've been noticing that many (or a significantly vocal minority) of DM's have troubles with high-level D&D3.5. Saying things like that in normal D&D, mystery, suspense, drama, and nickel-and-diming is impossible to cultivate, especially at high levels (with the correspondingly wondrous spells and survivability).

I believe the argument is that mystery, suspense, and drama are difficult to cultivate at high levels (with the correspondingly wondrous spells) without resorting to extensive magical countermeasures -- and that this magical arms race leads to an increasingly implausible, difficult-to-imagine world.

 

[Piratecat]

I really disagree with mmadsen. While I had some magical countermeasures in place during this last adventure in order to foster a sense of isolation, it's the first time I've ever done that, and I've never needed it before.

My general rule of thumb when dealing with high level adventurers is to take the players' assumptions and then twist them. An example that came up recently: the group was planning to storm a hidden underground temple-laboratory dedicated to the God of Abominations. I had planned it with a whole slew of melded-animal and melded-monster abominations, a handful of "scientists" (mostly clerics and wizards) doing the experimenting, and a vampiric dracolich being falsely worshipped as a deific avatar by everyone in the temple.

I had a wonderful entrance for the dracolich. Throughout the temple were mounted dragon skulls on walls; each of these breathed out clouds of mist. In some cases, the mist was magical and transported anyone in it into the next room. My plan was for the group to come into yet another room with a dragon skull on the wall. The difference was that this time, the skull belonged to the dracolich as she observed comings and goings with her head stuck through a wall. I figured that the players would relax into a pattern by the time they got there, so it would be a tremendous surprise when she tumbled down the wall and attacked.

Of course, my players somewhat outsmarted me. They used commune with nature to figure out which parts of the underground temple had the greatest concentrations of evil. Then they used an earthquake to collapse as much of the complex as possible, and used digging spells to tunnel straight down to the nasty parts. It was beautiful tactics.

In return, the dracolich heard them coming and got into position. They angled so as to emerge into her anteroom, and so she gave them a moment or two of false security before she set off the trap that I had previously planned. It was a glorious battle. Tactically, the earthquake meant that certain reinforcements couldn't reach the dracolich in time, and that was a reward for the group's clever thinking. There was still plenty of suspense and drama, though, no question about it.

My point is really that since high lvl characters have a lot of resources at their disposal, you have to challenge the players to think and outsmart you. Do that by guessing how they'd most easily solve a problem, and make a solution a possible problem in itself. Someone here recently mentioned tracking a really evil bad guy to his home town, only to learn that he was a most beloved mayor; that's a great example of requiring your players to then take a different and more creative tack to finding a solution.

I have several ongoing plots that might never be solved if the group doesn't use divination spells to get a glimpse into what is going on. These are fun adventures, but they'd be much tougher to do if the group wasn't high level.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

In response to the debate going on in the lm/gng thread, I've been noticing that many (or a significantly vocal minority) of DM's have troubles with high-level D&D3.5. Saying things like that in normal D&D, mystery, suspense, drama, and nickel-and-diming is impossible to cultivate, especially at high levels (with the correspondingly wondrous spells and survivability).

You forgot the "Cheese Factor"... High level D&D is just silly.

 

[Piratecat]

You forgot the "Cheese Factor"... High level D&D is just silly.

This is a thread for talking about cool aspects of high lvl D&D; it's not a thread for debating high vs low level D&D. If you want that, please go elsewhere. In addition, sig or no, you'd be a lot better off prefacing your comment with "I think" if you want to avoid sounding quite rude. Based on my experiences, your statement certainly isn't a blanket truth. Quite the opposite, actually.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

This is a thread for talking about cool aspects of high lvl D&D; it's not a thread for debating high vs low level D&D. If you want that, please go elsewhere.

Actually, the first post implies that people that don't like high magic D&D must have a "problem" with it and that we non-High Magic lovers need some form of education in how to play the game because, well, obviously we must not know what we're doing or we'd like it.

I'm pointing out that this isn't the case. I understand D&D. I understand how the rules work. And I understand how the game is played. I don't have a "problem" with it. I just don't like it.

And, yes, it is silly. At the very least, I have a hard time taking it seriously.

Granted, in the other threads, I tried to explain to some folks what I like about the "other style". Here, though, I'm going to be honest: 3E just plain and simply comes across as silly and no amount of telling me about your campaign (general sense "you", no one specific) is going to change the perception us those of us that supposedly have "problems" understand D&D (especially if these tales are proceeded by being informed that we obviously have a "problem").

Then again, if the concept of High Magic D&D appealed to us, we'd be playing it.

Of course, I guess you're the mod. If you don't mind people starting new threads just to have their personal stage from which to rip on people they can't prove wrong in another thread, that's the decision made. As it was, though, I wasn't debating. I was just pointing out that KM forgot one of the reasons some people don't like High Magic.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Or, let me put it this way...

If someone starts a thread and asks, "what's Low Magic and Grim and Gritty", and I and others spend a dozen pages of posts defending our tastes in gaming, then when the same folks attacking our preference start a thread saying "High Magic is great", than they had best damn well be ready to defend their preference.

Anything else would be "unbalanced".

 

[Brother MacLaren]

While I really like Bendris' points on the other threads, here I would suggest that we take this thread to discuss "How can normal-magic games be made 'not silly'?"
I think that even the advocates of normal-magic games will recognize that if you don't come up with some good ideas to make your world work, it's going to have glaring inconsistencies and seem rather ludicrous. And it takes a lot of work to balance and run normal-magic adventures. You don't want combats to drag out over hours, but you also don't want every fight to be determined by who wins initiative. You want to be able to create a world your players can believe in enough to connect to it. Obviously, that's hard in any game, and I think it's much harder in a normal-magic game than in a low-magic game. (I'm using "normal-magic" to mean DMG standard, which is in my opinion "high-magic" compared to most fantasy literature)

So, Piratecat is not telling us "Why normal-magic D&D is cool," but rather "What you can do to make a cool game from normal-magic D&D." Not just cheerleading for his genre, but advice and examples. At least, that's what I take from his post.

 

[Piratecat]

Or, let me put it this way...

If someone starts a thread and asks, "what's Low Magic and Grim and Gritty", and I and others spend a dozen pages of posts defending our tastes in gaming, then when the same folks attacking our preference start a thread saying "High Magic is great", than they had best damn well be ready to defend their preference.

Anything else would be "unbalanced".

If my instructions were somehow unclear, feel free to email me. Trying to pick a fight in this thread won't be tolerated. I'm also less than impressed by the implication that if I don't bow to your wishes, I'm allowing this to be a thread where low magic can be insulted. That's neither fair nor accurate.

On an entirely different note, Ben, your sig is a little long -- if you're going to keep it that length, please only show it once per page. In general, a sig should never be longer than the post it follows.