Normal/High Magic/Not Gritty How-To

[kamosa]

I think the things that engross someone in a story don't change just because you move from high to low magic or back. Good character developement, proper plot developement and a sense for the heroic should be present at all levels of gaming. If you want to engross your players, make them care about their world, and give them a sense that they matter in the story.

At campaign design I try to create organizations and structures that can evolve as the players grow in power, allow the players to move up the structure of these groups and will continue to function if they are attacked by the players. In one campaign I set some of the players up as low level members of a powerful mages guild. As they raised in power, they came to have roles with in the guild. Reputation, responsibility and ownership were bestowed on the players. When that guild was later attacked, it was as if they had been attacked and they were quite pissed.

In another campaign I had set up a large trade guild as the "enemy" of the players. This guild was spread out geographically and could not be hit all at the same time. In fact it was almost impossible for the players to attack them in a way that would have done enough damage that the guild couldn't have responeded by utterly crushing the players. This caused the players to scale back their actions against the guild. They had to be careful not to go to far and get a reaction back. When they do something, it was always plausible that a counter attack was coming and would be quite nasty.

Don't give your bad guys the Dune disease. You know, one base in a very predictable place with seemingly unassailable defenses. PC's will always seem to find a way to attack a single point in the system. Build your bad guy organizations such that they don't have a single point of failure. If one function is destroyed, that function is picked up by another part of the opporation. If the players go on the offensive against your baddies, give them a chance to fight back and go at the players just as hard.

Just like low mana games, when the players are put in the position of saying "we could just attack, but would that be wise thing to do" their creativity climbs and there involvement in the story also goes up. Give them a positive role to play in a struggle among the powerful. Have their decisions and actions change the course of the game, but not destroy the core of the world. Give them things, people and places to defend, but also give them targets that they can destroy(because you know they will) without also destroying the game.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Which points out another great guideline of high-level gaming: "It Can't Be Solved with Violence." Though D&D in large part revolves around combat, high-level characters don't fight for survival (except against the Uber-beasts), they fight for goals. At higher level goals that are not simply killin', or that are killing with reprocussinos, become much more intriguing.

"If a problem seems like it cannot be solved with brute force, you are not using enough."

- Ancient Engineer Proverb

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hehehe, the only problem being that the force has to come from somewhere, and always has more than the intended effect....you want to punch a hole in armor, you need to desgin the right point, propell it, implement it. And then it doesn't just punch a hole in armor, it also makes a dent.....there are ripples, and origins.....

 

[Altalazar]

As someone already pointed out, survivability of underlings or lesser NPCs could be made important. PCs, even powerful ones, can't be everywhere at once. They protect one caravan, another one gets attacked. And so on.

An interesting variation of this might be one where a lesser group needs to traverse a journey along land that doesn't like or otherwise doesn't want anything from the high level, "most powerful in the land" PCs, and yet they are in danger and need protection. So perhaps the adventure there is to have the PCs discreetly shadow the group, trying to intercept dangers and offer help without the group even knowning they are there helping. Perhaps there are dire consequences both for letting anyone in that group die AND for getting "found out" giving help. That makes for a very interesting puzzle - one that can't be solved by power alone. It is more about guile. Anything you do to help you want to be unnoticed as help. If you can, you want to eliminate threats such that they are never aware they existed in the first place (and therefore the elimination doesn't need an "explanation" or doesn't need to be done in such a way to betray their presence). That could lead to all sorts of fun.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Love that idea, and it doesn't even nerf their powers!

 

[Nightingale 7]

As for the Highlander series,although I didn't follow it religiously,there WAS a point were Mcleod was beaten.IIRC there was this episode that a spirit was released,and it went after Duncan by assuming a variety of forms.It leads him to a mall,and has him continuously on edge by utilizing hit-and-run tactics and unnerving sudden appearances while it knows that Duncan's red-haired protege (can't recall his name) is coming to help him,but when he meets him Duncan is so edgy that he accidentally kills the boy,thinking it's the specter,and the spirit escapes.The episode ends with a grief-stricken Duncan asking his friend to kill him for what he has done.Although Duncan is the best swordsman in the world and he could best the specter,it scored a great victory against him.I believe that is a very good example of how the best can be bested.

 

[Victim]

One thing to consider about a magical arms race is that it doesn't necessarily preclude mundane solutions - in fact, it can make them even more important. Think about scrying and all the different defenses against it. Eventually things max out with Mind Blank defeating Discern Location. So the Mind Blanked archmage is essentially unfindable. Except for the guy with lots of contacts who tracks down the wizard by using Gather Information. Same thing for Invisibility and Hide. Invisibility is easy, but spells can defeat. So there's an arms race there. But Hiding really well can work regardless of anti-invis spells.

And characters can definitely be "the best" and still lose. Our group of 16th level characters was within a hair of losing to a 7-10th level team that hired 30 1st level archers. They might have won if their low caster levels didn't cause their crippling spells to wear off in the middle of the fight. That was humiliating - and boring: another player and I were essentially out the entire fight.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

As for the Highlander series,although I didn't follow it religiously,there WAS a point were Mcleod was beaten.IIRC there was this episode that a spirit was released,and it went after Duncan by assuming a variety of forms.It leads him to a mall,and has him continuously on edge by utilizing hit-and-run tactics and unnerving sudden appearances while it knows that Duncan's red-haired protege (can't recall his name) is coming to help him,but when he meets him Duncan is so edgy that he accidentally kills the boy,thinking it's the specter,and the spirit escapes.The episode ends with a grief-stricken Duncan asking his friend to kill him for what he has done.Although Duncan is the best swordsman in the world and he could best the specter,it scored a great victory against him.I believe that is a very good example of how the best can be bested.

Yes - but you kind of make my point for me. Duncan was "beaten" by a foe that attacked his weakness (Will save). He wasn't beaten by a superior swordsman. Likewise, Boromir and Achilles weren't defeated by better warriors, Hercules and Samson didn't get their butts whooped by stronger dudes, and Robin Hood wasn't challenged by a better archer. So, yes, the best can be beaten, but it's not necessary to challenge their strength head-on. Let the 20th-level fighter be the best fighter in the world, but challenge him with situations. (Foes outnumber him; foes use poison; he's caught unarmored at one point; betrayed by someone close to him; foes use mental/magical attacks.)

Victim - you make a lot of really good points. A properly-played NPC party - even one of lower level - can be very dangerous. I also hadn't thought about your "end to the arms race" but it is kind of neat to see how Gather Information and Hide could remain useful.

 

[I'm A Banana]

See, I saw that more as a bait-and-switch.

For instance, the enemy of the PC's lets it slip that "only a blade bathed in my child's blood can kill me," or somesuch...he acts really nervous and/or cocky about it....then the PC's go kill his kid, and bring the battle to him, only to find they're just as ineffective....and that the BBEG really just wanted his kid out of the way.

If you give the PC's information, they're likely to take it at face value. If it's WRONG information....then, well....hehehehehe....those divinations would've been useful.

And if the party is extra-paranoid and uses them, the DM can still roll with the punch. Sure, they found out he was lying, but that doesn't tell them what the truth is, or how to achieve it. And thr truth could be something much more horrible (only a blade bathed in an innocent's blood can kill him.....just see the PC's wriggle out of that one morally unscathed!)

And as far as the arms race goes, it's not any weirder from a verismilitude standpoint than weapons and armor. Someone makes a stabby sword, someone is going to walk around with metal that can deflect the blow. Similarly, someone starts to be able to read minds, someone is going to walk around with a power that negates that. Most magic may be more an all-or-nothing, rock-paper-scissors than attacks and AC, but it's fundamentally the same logic (indeed, saving throws mitigate this......disintigrate is no more save-or-die than a power attack from a barbarian's enhanced greataxe....)

 

[S'mon]

high-levels

As my campaigns get to high levels and the PCs become movers & shakers, I find that inevitably they play a more and more political role - forging alliances, negotiating with rival powers; working out what's going on and _who_ to attack rather than simply _how_ to attack them. I'd find it very difficult to be running nothing but Monte Cook or Diablo style dungeon-crawls all the way to 20th level, it would severely strain my suspension of disbelief (I think it might also be rather boring for me). Also, the political game is much less dependent on balance between PCs in terms of power; the 11th level Druid and the 14th level Fighter both have strengths and weaknesses in the political arena that have nothing to do with their butt-kicking abilities. There's an old deity PC imc (Upper_Krust's Thrin) who is still played by U-K and likes to chip in (via his mortal servants) to offer 'helpful' advice to the current primary PCs - advice that is of course intended to further the Church of Thrin's own political agenda, which may or may not coincide with the agendas of the primary PCs... and their own agendas, while linked, will also inevitably differ somewhat depending on the different PCs' attitudes, backgrounds & such.