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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 3907516" data-attributes="member: 13892">Way back when in the days of yore, magic was plentiful and life was good. This was was the time of heroes. Today, old magic is but a memory to the world's population, save for those of us who knew it then. It is a lost art. . . How exactly do you model something like this in D&D? Out of the box, D&D assumes that every basic tenet of the rules is statis -- it always has been, always will be, and always is. What happens when you throw that out of whack. That is, what happens when you assume that the Age of Heroes (and high magic) has an end. This thread is inspired, in part, by the film Krull. In this movie, the only people who wield powerful magic are The Widow of the Web and The Emerald Seer. And their power is closely tied to physical fetishes and certain sites or names, indicating that their power is fundamentally different than that of folks like Ergo (The Magnificent). What's more, despite their powers being nigh-godlike, the Emerald Seer and The Widow of the Web are also bound by some heavy restraints (again, indicating that their brand of magic isn't the same as Ergo's). In many ways, these characters and Ynyr (The Ancient One) seem more akin to demi-gods than normal people. The Ancient One (Ynyr) does not use any magic, though he knows things that seem to have been forgotten by the rest of the world (such as the prophecy of the Beast's demise). At any rate, all the past of all three of individuals in question is examined briefly in the film, indicating that they were all once mighty heroes in their own right. So, how do you set up a generation-based magical divide in D&D. Or, more correctly, how would you tackle this kind of divide? That is, how would you set up a world where old (ultra-powerful but very limited) magic is known only to a few heroes of the past, while new (bog standard D&D magic) is known to heroes of the present. How do you chart that kind of change? Typical D&D spell progression makes it tough, because the older you are, the more levels you have, and magical power in D&D is (by the RAW) directly linked to how many spells you know and can cast, whereas people like the Emerald Seer of Krull only demonstrate a few abilities, though ones that easily overshadow your run of the mill magic (as cast by Ergo). Help me, ENWorld!</blockquote>

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