[Poll] As A *Player*, Do You Enjoy Low-Magic/Grim&Gritty Campaigns?

[kamosa]

Some defenses are relatively cheap. Flour, tripwires, guard dogs, sentries holding 40' ropes attached to bells (for defeating Silence). And, logically, everybody aware of magic would be using them, which would hurt the effectiveness of existing spells.
For gorgon's blood, if you say it's very expensive, then there's profit to be made. A merchant *will* - not "might" - hire adventurers to capture a gorgon, cripple and muzzle it, bleed it regularly, and keep it alive via magic. He's getting rich. And then another merchant tries the same trick. So the price of gorgon blood drops, and it becomes more commonplace. In any world, you have to account for economics - prices are not fixed for all time.

That's just evil, really, I mean it. Evil.

In a good way, but still just evil.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I want far fewer NPC casters than the default. Ergo, I want a low(er)-magic game.

hrm, I'd probably be inclined to call that a rare magic game, rather than low magic. The power a magic using character has access to is exactly the same, but the competition is less. To me, 'low magic' means magic is less powerful. (and for the record that is only nerfing the characters if you reduced to power level of magic but left the class with the same HD, skill points and BAB/saves... which would be bad form. )

Kahuna Burger

 

[Eridanis]

Let's cool down the cross-talk, please. Continued on-topic posts are welcome; continued bickering will close the thread.

 

[d4]

I guess the real problem isn't that you don't want to deal with affects of high level spells, but refuse to admit that you'd rather play low level.

i for one want low / rare magic games, i don't want to deal with high-level spells, but i most definitely do not want to play low level.

i like highly-cinematic action, and that pretty much requires super-competent (high-level) PCs. however, i want them to be powerful due to intrinsic qualities like high ability scores, skills, feats, and extraordinary class abilities and not because of what i see as extrinsic qualities: magic -- whether spells or magic items.

(yes, i'm increasingly seeing that D&D is not the game for me. but i still think it's very possible to do such a game within d20.)

i think your assumption that low magic == low PC power or low level is quite wrong. IMO "grim & gritty" usually equates with low PC power, but grim & gritty is wholly independent of low magic.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

That's just evil, really, I mean it. Evil.

In a good way, but still just evil.

See, that's why I find the full consequences of a high-magic world just impossible to really wrap my brain around. I can come up with a few hundred examples like that one of what the effect would be and how it would impact economics and culture, but only a few hundred. There are so many impacts that I'd be missing. Like, with 3.0 polymorph (er, one of their many versions), I figured that the evil hobgoblin empire would have polymorphed as many of their warriors as possible into stone giants. But since I wanted their forces to be hobgoblins, not a stone giants with hobgoblin HP, I had to think of some reason why they wouldn't have done that. Hard to do, when the stone giant option is so effective.

That said, while my preference for trying to design or play in an internally consistent world is rarer-than-normal magic, I can also say "Let's just not worry about it" and play in an admittedly inconsistent world in which magic is common and yet the world still looks vaguely medievalish and in which most people are still farmers.

 

[Pants]

No preference here.

I like the 'flashy, boom' style of magic that is present in High-Magic Campaigns. Worlds where ships soar through the air, towers pierce the clouds, cities float on water or in the air. Where magic is used as technology.

I wouldn't mind playing an all-fighter quest where the players are all members in a mercenary party where death is around the corner at all times and shades of gray are the most prominent color.

I also wouldn't mind playing in an over-the-top swashbuckling adventure, where the PC's aren't spellcasters, but are definitely larger than life, always trying to make the next big score. The villains always have big scars or other 'I am a total badass' road signs pointing to them and they twist their mustaches evilly between bouts of insane laughter.

They could all be fun.

 

[Uruush]

I think a lot of the hostility (which tends to generate multiple pages in a thread) has to do with how difficult it is to even define these terms. The definitions aren't settled on so participants argue right past one another.

To kill a common assumption, in the "low-magic" campaigns I have participated in, magic is powerful, and the DM is definitely not using "low-magic" to "nerf" casters, or to take away power from the players. Where magic is rare, it is is scary. Again, it all depends on the paradigm of the campaign, but it is wrong for advocates of either style to assume so much. In a low (rare) magic campaign I was in, I have personally witnessed a squad of soldiers sent running from a "Dancing Lights" spell.

The "lazy" tag boggles me. It is a lot of work for a DM to shoehorn d20 into a low-magic shoe, particularly at the mid to high levels....

 

[kamosa]

i for one want low / rare magic games, i don't want to deal with high-level spells, but i most definitely do not want to play low level.

i like highly-cinematic action, and that pretty much requires super-competent (high-level) PCs. however, i want them to be powerful due to intrinsic qualities like high ability scores, skills, feats, and extraordinary class abilities and not because of what i see as extrinsic qualities: magic -- whether spells or magic items.

(yes, i'm increasingly seeing that D&D is not the game for me. but i still think it's very possible to do such a game within d20.)

i think your assumption that low magic == low PC power or low level is quite wrong. IMO "grim & gritty" usually equates with low PC power, but grim & gritty is wholly independent of low magic.

I guess if you take out high level magic, I view that there isn't any real play difference between higher levels and lower levels. Yes you get more hitpoints and more skill points, but the actuall play difference it minor. Monsters have more hitpoints, but the fighters do more damage. So, the combats still last about the same number of rounds. You get more skill points, but the DC's also go up such that most checks are still around the same chance of sucess.

We all agree that monsters have levels to them. We understand that CR 9 monster is tougher then a CR 3 monster. So, we think of it as progress when our characters can take on these higher level CR's. We all understand when a skill goes up in level. The DC of that lock is 15 the DC of this lock is 35. Where you run into the difference in oppinion is in the other types of challenges that players face. We don't have a system for ranking crossing a river or gathering information about a crime through divination. So, for arguement, lets make one up.

So, suppose we had a ranking system for these types of situations. Crossing a wide river is a MR 1(Magic Rating) level encounter. At first level we come to the river, we have no magical abilities that get us across, so we must seek a boat. The GM can then roll play bargaining for the boat, constructing a boat, looking for a big log, trying to swim. (I know there are other ways, but lets keep it simple for the example). They love this stuff, hey I love this stuff.

Later on we come to this same river, this time we are 7th level. The priest casts water walk, the mage casts fly and bang we are across the river. Not to mention the dreaded teleport that is just around the casting corner. Many GM's are pissed, they wanted that same roleplaying challenge that this was at 1st level. The problem is that the MR level of the party is now 7 or 8 and the challenge was still a 1. So the mage's abilities are attacked by the DM in an attempt to force their skills back to that 1st level MR.

We don't really have a system for scaling these types of encounters and many GM's don't want to scale these encounters. So, they cripple the ability of the casters to advance in MR levels. That is why I say that those GM's want to still play at low levels, but won't admit it. They want to scale the other two types of play, use of skills and the CR of the monsters, but they don't want to deal with the increase of the parties ability to challenge MR.

I know we just made the name up on the spot, but I think the concept of an MR is valid, whether it uses that name or not.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

i like highly-cinematic action, and that pretty much requires super-competent (high-level) PCs. however, i want them to be powerful due to intrinsic qualities like high ability scores, skills, feats, and extraordinary class abilities and not because of what i see as extrinsic qualities: magic -- whether spells or magic items.

Nail on the head with this one, folks.

(yes, i'm increasingly seeing that D&D is not the game for me. but i still think it's very possible to do such a game within d20.)

I think this might be the root of the problem. These boards are for "General RPG Discussion", although I think we can generally admit that the central focus is usually d20-based gaming. However, some folks seem to believe that d20=D&D, which is no longer the case. Indeed, it's far from it; d20 has become it's own animal (or, more accurately, is constantly becoming more animals).

All these folks that whine about people that don't play by the "standard" rules should simply take a breather and relax. Just because some of us are done playing default D&D and have moved on to other things doesn't mean that anyone has to get their panties in a bunch. All D&D is now is d20 with pre-set conditions, just like Arcana Unearthed is d20 with pre-set options, and Babylon 5 is d20 with pre-set options, and Traveler: T20 is d20 with pre-set options, and Call of Cthulu is d20 with pre-set conditions, and Fading Suns is...

Anyone getting the point here?

All the homebrewers are doing (and this is true for low magic, rare magic, grim n gritty, higher magic, comical, sci-fi, Modern/Espionage, and any other genre) is erasing the pre-set conditions of any of these individual games and setting their own parameters of play. To indicate that any style is the result of fear, laziness, incompetance, or anything else that would imply a "lesser status" within the community, is to indicate a lack of understanding concerning what the d20 engine is capable of, the purpose of Open Gaming, and the ability of others to modify the system.

 

[Pants]

All these folks that whine about people that don't play by the "standard" rules should simply take a breather and relax.

I don't know what you're reading, but I haven't seen any of this... at least not in this thread.
What I have seen is a couple of people with wildly differing viewpoints, throwing vaguely insulting comments and assumptions at each other.

Can't we all get along? There's really nothing inherently superior about a low magic world, there is also nothing inherently superior about a high magic world either.