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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 1567552" data-attributes="member: 537">It's not my fault that I define drama in terms of moral, emotional and social conflict, in addition to the relatively shallow arena of physical conflict. This is an eminently reasonable thing to do, and I'm not even a paid drama critic.Even if you want to limit things to the purely physical stuff for some reason, play high-level D&D with all its bells and whistles some time. You'll find it's stupidly dangerous, to the point that resurrection is not a luxury, it's a necessity if you want any sort of continuity.And why on earth do you include the qualifier "human and human-like warriors"? Are you suggesting that the balrog in Moria was a boring fight because it wasn't human? How about the nazgul? Or Smaug? Foul demons and similar otherworldly challenges are part and parcel of fantasy. If you can't handle that, chances are you don't even like fantasy in the first place, and so you fall outside the scope of the discussion.Finally, there's a heck of a lot more source material to draw on than just low-magic fantasy novels. High-level D&D tends to follow wuxia in many ways. In terms of the campaign and adventure structure, the PCs are usually loners operating outside the bounds of society, they can whack anyone whose kung fu (levels) isn't as strong as theirs, and there's usually a few top-end villains who do present a credible challenge. In more mechanistic terms, everyone flies and teleports, and magic is flashy. Wuxia is legitimate fantasy too, albeit outside the western tradition.Or if you want to stick to occidental stuff, go back to Greek or Celtic myth. The stunts that people pull there are easily fodder for high-level adventures. There is plenty of precedent for characters who can do wild and wacky things like running along blades of grass, or descending into the underworld, even if a lot of it has been forgotten or mislaid. Perhaps if one can't find precedents for what D&D does in the material one is familiar with, the solution is to look further afield.And high magic does not obviate the tension inherent in sneaking around enemy territory, hostile environments, difficult political situations, etc. While you'll probably easily handle most people you meet, in any competently designed adventure there'll always be someone whose kung fu is as strong as yours.In fact, by giving characters more tools, it probably even makes it more likely that they'll end up in these types of situations. There's not much point in going into the Abyss if you're going to get toasted within an hour, or trying to sneak into a castle filled with 1,000 guards if you're not sure you'll get past at least 990 of them.Cite evidence that these are indeed the kinds of situations that "most players" find exciting. ThaADVANCEnks!The simplest solution to these issues is not to think about them. Seriously. Whether such things occur is something entirely under the control of the DM, who can decide that, if they would be detrimental to the enjoyment of the game, they don't occur. Again, it's the characters-on-a-stage approach.If it really does get to you, the next-simplest solution is to get rid of the broken spells. These are well known; the fact that even you can identify them is a sign of that. The game remains high magic; people still fly around, chuck fireballs, wade through armies of mooks and so on.Just as overthinking Star Trek is silly, so is overthinking fantasy.They may be more accessible to many players, but that has more to do with the players themselves and what social and cultural expectations they bring to the table, rather than any inherent limitations of high-powered D&D.The point I'm making is that, _if_ someone is willing to delve into high magic, they can find it just as satisfying, just as exciting and dramatic and tension-filled, as any other sort of game. Saying stuff like it's less dramatic or less tension-filled is just a handwave. You also get more spectacular visuals, and the feeling of doing deeds that would be beyond ordinary mortals. Note that this is a Good Thing as far as most players are concerned. D&D, Vampire, Exalted, RIFTS, Champions -- the most successful RPGs all have a means for PCs to transcend the limits of what normal people can do. As Robin Laws has said, roleplaying is most often a power fantasy, and games usually cater to that, with exceptions (like Call of Cthulhu) being few and far between.While the convenience factor is certainly something that makes low magic easier to handle, it's also orthogonal to everything that's been considered so far. Not to mention that it's more to do with levels rather than magic as such. Even if you cut back on the funky stuff dramatically, you're still going to run into scaling issues at the top end, as the different linear progressions diverge. It's an issue to do with the design of d20.Most "mature readers" think Aragorn is a shallow, one-dimensional character living in a shallow, one-dimensional world who kills nonexistent things so he can sit on the throne of a nonexistent country.</blockquote>

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