Solve my grim and gritty debate

[Desdichado]

Hey, I wish I had players like you. I've been waiting to try out my cool new setting, where the PCs are first-level human commoners armed with pointy sticks, and humans have a +25 LA, so they can't get any experience or acquire any gear unless they go kill some epic-level monsters. But my players are being so presumptuous as to tell me they don't want to play in that world! Can you believe the nerve of them?

Seriously though, everyone needs to remember that D&D is a game, and the DM is responsible for making it fun. If he doesn't care about what the players want, and just ego-trips all over them with his 1337 DM p0w3rz, why bother playing the game at all?

Ah. The classic "reduce his position to an extreme and absurd parody of what it really is and then attack that instead of his actual position" argument. There's a latin term used by debate aficionados, but it's a bit early in the morning and the chances of me spelling that correctly are pretty low.

There's a certain level of trust implicit in allowing one to be the DM. Sure, it's entirely possible that either dontpunkme is a bad DM, or one who's tastes run counter to the group he's running for, but I think we can give him the benefit of the doubt, assume that he runs a game that's fun to play in, and that he knows what he's doing as a world-builder rather than create an absurd example of a game that's patently not likely to be fun and then claim that what he's doing is in any way similar.

As a DM, the only reason I do it is because I'm a born campaign creator who loves to tinker with things. If I had players telling me I couldn't do something a certain way, I'd quit. It simply wouldn't be any fun to me anymore, as it would take away the thing that I enjoy about DMing in the first place.

 

[D+1]

Yes they should retain abilities. They are often what makes the monster... what it is. What is an ogre magi without invisibility and cone of cold? If you want low magic in your game - use monsters with low magic. Exceptions abound of course and adaptation is always a possibility but as a rule, run them as-is.

 

[dcollins]

I voted yes, but I think that monsters should be encountered much less often.

Agreed.

 

[Zappo]

I think they should retain their spell-like abilities, but the monster themselves should become rarer. Monster with powerful spell-lkie powers should be very rare indeed (and have their CR upped on account of the PCs' lack of equivalent magic).

 

[Raven Crowking]

Hey, I wish I had players like you. I've been waiting to try out my cool new setting, where the PCs are first-level human commoners armed with pointy sticks, and humans have a +25 LA, so they can't get any experience or acquire any gear unless they go kill some epic-level monsters. But my players are being so presumptuous as to tell me they don't want to play in that world! Can you believe the nerve of them?

Seriously though, everyone needs to remember that D&D is a game, and the DM is responsible for making it fun. If he doesn't care about what the players want, and just ego-trips all over them with his 1337 DM p0w3rz, why bother playing the game at all?

Although this is straying off topic, AuraSeer, I agreed with Ourph. If the DM's game sucks, then "his players" won't exist. If they do, then it's the DM's world. The DM has to be able to set up situations that make sense to him/her, because (1) the game has to be fun for the DM, too, and (2) the DM presumably knows more about the setting than the players. I could go on about this, but that's really not what the thread is about.

I vote along with what seems to be the majority at this point. If you have a low-magic setting, it is perfectly all right to have powerfully magic creatures, but they should be a lot rarer and often not hostile (for example: fey, an oracular dragon, etc.). CRs should be adjusted upward to reflect the lowered power of the PCs.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well its not a no magic world, just a low magic world. All would-be wizards attend one of a handful of small schools where they study the art of magic until around 7th level. After that they take a grueling test and if they survive then they can travel and use their powers.

Harry Potter?

 

[d4]

Ah. The classic "reduce his position to an extreme and absurd parody of what it really is and then attack that instead of his actual position" argument. There's a latin term used by debate aficionados, but it's a bit early in the morning and the chances of me spelling that correctly are pretty low.

"straw man" -- though that's not very latin...

Make them rare, tone down abilities e.g. make something that would be multiple times a day, once a day, or make once a day once a week.

note that, in the vast majority of circumstances, for a monster once per day and once per week mean exactly the same thing: once per encounter. it's not actually reducing the effectiveness of the monster at all.

similarly, for a monster there's usually not that much difference between "at will" and 3 times per day -- most monsters aren't going to survive long enough to use a special ability more than 3 times against the PCs anyways.

 

[Desdichado]

"straw man" -- though that's not very latin...

D'oh! That's actually better. Reducto ad absurdum was the phrase I was thinking of.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Such creatures in such a campaign would be more rare, but I don't think necessarily less powerful. Bump up their CR, and thus the XP gained by defeating them, and you'll probably be fine.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm in the boat of what's good for the goose is good for the gander...or in this case, what cooks one cooks the other.

If magic is rare, magic is *rare*. You can't have magical creatures running around casting spells that the PC's aren't capable of matching or overcoming, and you have to realize that CR's are based in part on what kind of spells a party of that level will have access to.

If the party meets the occasional wizard, they can meet the occasional magic beast, but they should be roughly on par with each other in terms of both *power* and commonality.

If 1st level wizards don't exist before the PC's hit 7th level (sounds Prestige-Class-esque, nice spin), then neither should things that cast magic using spell-like abilities...they have to go through the same effort to get them, and they're going to be hunted just as much (if all sorcerers are killed on sight -- and some of them could be LG -- imagine just how more dedicated the wizards would be to slaughtering things that *won't* work with them, and are wild and untamed, and vile, uncontrolled magic in it's rawest forms...if there are pixies around who aren't 7th level, my verisimilitude is busted).

It's not nessecarily about being fair to the PC's, it's about building a consistent world. If magic is rare and powerful, *all* magic should be rare and powerful, not just what the PC's use. That's not only being unfair, it's also being inconsistent....because I'm a punchy little brat () I'd be demanding to play one of these creatures with spell-like abilities so that I could be one of the powerful entities of the world...but that's me being obnoxious.