The problems in Designing a High Magic Campaign.

[A'koss]

Here's a few more thoughts to mull over when thinking on HM games...

1. The "Mutually Assured Destruction" clause that many people like to use to balance their game isn't as good a restraint as one might think. Easy Resurrection at high levels virtually assures you never have to fear death (except, perhaps from old age) as it's nearly impossible to permanently kill someone. Even feeding people to Barghests only grants you a 50/50 chance of success. Sure you can try imprisonment, but that's all it is - a prison from which you can be released from.

2. Power and Corruption: How do HLers look upon the general populace? How do they treat them? How are they looked upon by the commoners? D&D is different from many other fantasy fiction in that beings can improve virtually every aspect of their being, even those that would be very difficult to do in real life - wisdom, charisma... A HL fighter, who began his career as common man, now finds that he can effortlessly rip a grown man in half with his bare hands. A HL wizard, who also began from humble beginnings, is now so intelligent that commoners are the mental equivalent of primates to him.

You can argue that this kind of power is going to generate feelings of superiority (not unwarranted mind), isolation, pity, annoyance and so on over the common folk. What do their lives mean to someone with near god-like power?

Does a HL cleric look at his flock as just a bunch of weak-willed sheep? The commoners lives may not hold a lot meaning or interest for these kinds of people unless used as a crude tool or a means to an end.

Something I'm trying to do IMC, is make commoners more useful in the campaign. For example, a PC classed character will never be better than a commoner in a skill that is the commoner's job.



Cheers,

A'koss.

 

[ergeheilalt]

I suppose my campaign is on the higher end of the magic spectrum (mostly arcane magic). With it being ruled by a gigantic benevolent magocracy some 1500 years ago, and three rather large good magocratic kindoms and two less them amicable mage-run military state...

Watch out if you put anything some place that might be precieved as evil. I had a player freak out when he saw a statue in the courtyard of a mage-city that had a glowing orb on the staff. For players making the transition between one low magic game and a high magic game, you can have a lot of misunderstandings.

Erge

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Here's a few more thoughts to mull over when thinking on HM games...

1. The "Mutually Assured Destruction" clause that many people like to use to balance their game isn't as good a restraint as one might think. Easy Resurrection at high levels virtually assures you never have to fear death (except, perhaps from old age) as it's nearly impossible to permanently kill someone. Even feeding people to Barghests only grants you a 50/50 chance of success. Sure you can try imprisonment, but that's all it is - a prison from which you can be released from.

Heh. For Urbis, I've stated flat-out that rich people don't die of anything but old age unless you use some extreme measures to seal their soul away - or destroy it.

In other words, in most cases character assassination is much more effective than the real thing.

2. Power and Corruption: How do HLers look upon the general populace? How do they treat them?

Well, there are all those Nexus Towers that drain a small amount of life energy from everyone who lives nearby and turn it into magical energies - which can be used to power epic-level spells or create magic items.

The fact that almost all cities have such towers says a lot. Of course, they are only used for defensive purposes...

How are they looked upon by the commoners?

As any ruler - which tends to be mostly the case, anyway. Epic-level folks usually tend to drift to one of the cities where they become part of the local ruling class.

D&D is different from many other fantasy fiction in that beings can improve virtually every aspect of their being, even those that would be very difficult to do in real life - wisdom, charisma... A HL fighter, who began his career as common man, now finds that he can effortlessly rip a grown man in half with his bare hands. A HL wizard, who also began from humble beginnings, is now so intelligent that commoners are the mental equivalent of primates to him.

You can argue that this kind of power is going to generate feelings of superiority (not unwarranted mind), isolation, pity, annoyance and so on over the common folk. What do their lives mean to someone with near god-like power?

Does a HL cleric look at his flock as just a bunch of weak-willed sheep? The commoners lives may not hold a lot meaning or interest for these kinds of people unless used as a crude tool or a means to an end.

This doesn't really differ from medieval monarchs and aristocrats. They usually regarded the commoners as nothing more than a source of wealth...

 

[dren]

High Magic

Although I'm certainly partial to a low magic type of campaign, I don't like to say I DM a low magic world. Mages and sorcerors exist, and somewhere there are high level ones...not that any of them have a high degree of recognition like Elminster.

Wizards are reviled in my world, usually they are killed on sight in most of the rural places. Most congregate in small secret societies who take what they call the Oath of Neutrality, a promise they won't mess around in governments if the rulers do the same to them. You might wonder why mages would listen, because most good/lawful wizards treat the oath as gospel and make sure that nobody breaks the delicate balance.

I dislike ethnocentric views that somehow justify monotheism in fantasy worlds. Guess what, most of the world we live in today isn't monotheistic, why should the fantasy worlds be? Although PC clerics/paladins worship one god, common people don't think of it as worship so much as respect, and they give small sacrafices to any of the gods with temples in the area. Even good pcs usually throw a few silvers in a road side shrine to an evil god, this isn't worship, it's, well, respect.

Wizards and sorcerors work as officers in armies but they don't cast fireballs or lightning bolts in combat, as this is considered uncouth and uncivilized. What they do instead is protect the generals from magical assassins monsters, like the invisible stalker, and advise. Some may create items, but only for 2-3 people, not the whole army. Likewise, potions and wands are known of, but rather rare, and only high ranking officers (read mostly PCs) have access to anything but the most simplest of magic items.

Magic exists, for everyone else it's mysterious and wonderous, but it's all around them in small forms pretty much all the time. No one knows how or why, and few trust it but that's why the heroes are heroes.

guessmith
game on!

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by Jürgen Hubert:

Heh. For Urbis, I've stated flat-out that rich people don't die of anything but old age unless you use some extreme measures to seal their soul away - or destroy it.

In other words, in most cases character assassination is much more effective than the real thing.

Indeed.

Destroy their businesses, steal or destroy their most valuable possessions (this for many PCs is worse than death ), make them look incompetant in front of those in their service... Mind Blanked, Teleporting, Invisible Hit & Run squads can initiate a terror campaign making surgical strikes against a kingdom's cities, towns and villages until the populace revolts against their "incompetant" rulers.

This doesn't really differ from medieval monarchs and aristocrats. They usually regarded the commoners as nothing more than a source of wealth...

Yeah, but now imagine if these same monarchs now had D&D levels of power at their disposal...


Cheers,

A'koss.

 

[Xeriar]

Take a good look at the hallow and unhallow spells. Note their instantanious duration.

Entire cities will be covered in these, if not even entire nations. This causes a few rather major changes.

1: Charm, Domination and other mind control effects are useless.

2: Evil (or Good) creatures may not be summoned.

3: The buried dead stay dead. Necromancers cannot create vast armies from the royal catacombs.

4: The forces of good (or evil) fight at an effective 10% bonus. This is a pretty serious benefit.

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Other important spells to consider, as a group, are insta-kill and ressurection spells. It may be a good idea to choose either to change these (making them both less potent), restrict them in some way, etc.

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Teleportation Circle is another good one. One pair of circles can transport 80,000 troops in a day (one-way).

Spells like Shadow Walk and Ethereal Jaunt create potentials for portals through other planes - in fact I am in a campaign right now where access to the Astral has been sealed off, and vast armies are being marched through shadow-gates.

You should have some spell in your campaign that protects people and/or objects from disintegrate. Either partially or totally.

A dimensional lock spell is also a must.

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Spells like Gentle Repose are great for keeping harvests from decaying. This can potentially save a great deal of food.

Druids and wizards, with control weather, can keep vast areas stable and productive.

Spells like Plant Growth and Create Food really depend on the number of mid-level druids and clerics in proportion to your population, but they chould not be used to supplement a population's food supply. Great for facing down seiges, though.

Purify food and drink, and create water (along with eternal fountains and whatnot) can help to perfect a city's water supply and septic system.

Cure disease can stop some plagues before they start, but not all.

Although others have expressed distaste for having continual flame lighting the streets, and so on, it has been observed that the ultimate limiter on a city's size has not been food or water, but its fuel supply. Removing light sources from the equation eliminates an entire barrier.

Spells like dimension door and teleport have the serious potential of distancing the aristocracy even further from the commonfolk (and in medieval times they already considered eachother seperate species!)

If your civilization is particularly old and been producing food for awhile, the effects of superior plant breeding will show up and food will become more plentiful. This is not a modern effect so much as one of a stable society with the ability to afford giving up the best of its crops for awhile.

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Lightning bolt, and its varients, can slay armies. Either armies look more like modern special forces, or armies are equiped with something that can give the mass of them electricity resistance.

Watch out for the guy who shows up with energy substitution.

The watch, or whatever police forces exist, should have rapid access to a magic item which lets them call for a good deal of backup if the need arises.

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Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, Move Earth, Liveoak... Spells such as these can greatly expand, refine, and speed construction. Specialized versions of disintegrate can be used in conjuction to create elaborately built structures.

 

[TiQuinn]

While there are several great ideas for how magic might change a society over the course of several years, I'm not sure that that's where the "problem" in high magic campaigns stems from. It comes from devising a proper challenge for a society that has improved itself so much through magic.

There needs to be some force or opponent that cannot be defeated by throwing tons of magic at it. It's already been proposed that evil magic within a high magic society would be at a big disadvantage unless said society is evil as well, aka the Drow. Disease would be a non-issue. Death, for all intents, would be a non-issue for the powerful and the wealthy.

All of this means that the DM of such a campaign NEEDS to come up with an enemy that poses a threat to this kind of society. Otherwise, why bother with adventurers?

What kind of suggestions do you have for opponents or forces that would be a true challenge to such a high-magic society?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I agree that this is one of the essential challenges, along with determing how high magic has effected demographics.

One perspective is that most high magic campaigns assume that magic is in the hands of the traditional magic users: mages or at the very least civilized folk.

Messing with this assumption opens up a lot of possibilities particularly with regard to challenges.

The latest homebrew I played with was a high magic concept built around a high level of magical knowledge and large population of heroes, but the challenge comes from the fact that people control only a fraction of the magic controlled by nature and several ancient magical 'machines.'

After all, why should a high level of magic apply to just the talking and walking types, even if you're gonna ratchet it up for one segment of the world ratchet it's going to go up for the other sectors eventually.

What happens to land management when your local druid has taken to awakening wolf packs and teaching them sorcery?

What about when the most powerful magic user is a storm or when the real power behind the throne is the throne?

This method of applying high magic needn't necessarily be so over the top, but a lot of high magic settings help define themselves not only by the degree of utilitarian magic but also by large amounts of wild, free, or environmental magic. Chains of floating islands, forests of crystal trees that feed off of perpetual winds, and spirits that inhabit everything and trade service for the proper rituals.

If nothing else, there is no rule that states that human or humanlike things should have an undisputed position at the top of the food chain.

 

[Hackenslash]

OOppss !! Lost my Thread.....didn't realise it was moved....sorry for no replys.

Hello all,

Thanks to everyone for their ideas and feedback, especially Piratecat, I really like your suggestions on a "Magic Shop" and what a magic item can cost, other than cold hard cash !! Very interesting. I was thinking along some similar lines that have been posted on this thread but was exploring the possibility of a Highly Magical city with, "Salamander" powered Steam Baths, "Flying Carpet" Taxi's, Bars with "Unseen Servent" waiters, "Self Fabricateing" city walls and other constructions, Magically controlled "Ottyugh sewage disposal units", Common Folk being able to purchase Scrolls with Cantrips of Mending, Cleaning etc....City Guards with Magic weapons, Nobility attending "Pegasai" Race Tracks etc...etc...All of this would just be in one city, while the rest of the campaign world would be a more moderate, or if you prefer standard DnD world. I think i could make this work and as it's only one city, would not be too overpowering on the Campagin World, plus not as much work for me either. Thanks again for all the suggestions and comments. Cheers All

 

[Hackenslash]

OOppss !! Lost my Thread.....didn't realise it was moved....sorry for no replys.

Hello all,

Thanks to everyone for their ideas and feedback, especially Piratecat, I really like your suggestions on a "Magic Shop" and what a magic item can cost, other than cold hard cash !! Very interesting. I was thinking along some similar lines that have been posted on this thread but was exploring the possibility of a Highly Magical city with, "Salamander" powered Steam Baths, "Flying Carpet" Taxi's, Bars with "Unseen Servent" waiters, "Self Fabricateing" city walls and other constructions, Magically controlled "Ottyugh sewage disposal units", Common Folk being able to purchase Scrolls with Cantrips of Mending, Cleaning etc....City Guards with Magic weapons, Nobility attending "Pegasai" Race Tracks etc...etc...All of this would just be in one city, while the rest of the campaign world would be a more moderate, or if you prefer standard DnD world. I think I could make this work and as it's only one city, and would not be too overpowering on the Campagin World, plus not as much work for me either. But I am stuck with an Idea as to anchoring the city in an area and as to why the magic is so strong in this particular place and not the rest of the world. I do have some good plot lines for the city, such as What happens if some disconcerted citizen gets it in his head to cast or gets someone else to cast a few "Anti Magic Shells", thus bringing Catastrophie and disaster to the city, with I am sure some highly comical and intrigueing results. Certainly enough to get adventurers involved and interested. Thanks again for all the suggestions and comments. Cheers All