Too much magic in DnD - lets do something about it !

[rounser]

Game balance trumps everything else, as it should.

I think that's an ill-considered statement.

This is an RPG, not Magic: the Gathering - I think that there are things just as important as game balance, if not moreso. I wouldn't give up beholders and illithids for a more balanced ranger, for instance.

It's this kind of design philosophy (everything is secondary to game balance) that is responsible for some of my least favourite parts of 3E.

 

[hong]

You seem to be ignoring the fact that many low-level spells are quite flashy (Ray of Frost, Magic Missile, etc.), and many staples of "real" magic (Bestow Curse, Remove Curse) are high-level spells.

_3rd level_ counts as "high-level"? What game are you playing?

In any case, the important point is that bestow curse and similar spells are _powerful_, regardless of how flashy or otherwise they are. Therefore, it's only right that they should be "high level", regardless of anything else. Conversely, magic missile simply isn't that powerful, even if it's versatile and flashy. I don't see anything wrong with _some_ flashiness in the game, whatever level I happen to be at. Or are you going to suggest that prestidigitation and flare should also be 3rd level just because they involve nifty FX?

 

[hong]

I think that's an ill-considered statement.

This is an RPG, not Magic: the Gathering - I think that there are things just as important as game balance, if not moreso. I wouldn't give up beholders and illithids for a more balanced ranger, for instance.

It's this kind of design philosophy (everything is secondary to game balance) that is responsible for some of my least favourite parts of 3E.

I think it's good. In fact, I think they should have taken it further than they did -- there's quite a few areas where they didn't change things because to do so would mean killing sacred cows.

I can always provide flavour by means of dramatic scene descriptions, flourishes, and general roleplay. It's harder to provide balance if the rules themselves are unbalanced, or to make detached decisions if I'm working from a ruleset that's vague and ill-thought-out.

 

[rounser]

I think it's good. In fact, I think they should have taken it further than they did -- there's quite a few areas where they didn't change things because to do so would mean killing sacred cows.

I think you're confusing a non-gamist focus with conservatism. Sacred cows aren't what I'm referring to, and would be as happy as you to see many of them butchered.

I can always provide flavour by means of dramatic scene descriptions, flourishes, and general roleplay. It's harder to provide balance if the rules themselves are unbalanced, or to make detached decisions if I'm working from a ruleset that's vague and ill-thought-out.

What you seem to ignore in saying this is that a lot of the flavour is hardwired into the rules in the form of things like class abilities and monster selection. This very thread is about suggestions to change that hardwired flavour, because some people don't like the level of magic in the default game and consider the amount of inappropriately spellcasting classes distasteful.

I have nitpicks of my own. E.g.: The way a bard operates and what the 3E designers chose to put in the Monster Manual are a couple of examples of where I think 3E suffers from placing game balance on a higher pedestal than perhaps it should, to the detriment of other things that make the game fun, such as having a flavourful bard or cool monsters to play with.

For instance, MM monsters are selected to fulfil niches ("high level flying monster"), and new monsters were created where no existing creature fitted the role. This is a nice theoretical framework, but the game fails in that many of these creatures are ones that I consider too lame to want to use in a campaign - and do so only grudgingly.

Game balance is needed and a worthy design goal, but it's needs shouldn't eclipse other aspects of a good game. In short, I feel that 3E is somewhat too gamist to the detriment of some of the other things that make D&D great.

 

[kenjib]

And as I said, if you just don't like flashy magic, the solution to your problem is simple: play at 3rd-5th level, and stay there. Just because D&D provides a complete spectrum of power levels doesn't mean you have to use them.

Hello Hong. You make some excellent points but I must disagree that this is a very useful solution. Part of the fun of playing a game is advancing and improving your skills and abilities. D&D does not have the fine gradient (like GURPS has, for example) needed to support playing within a small power range and still enjoying the experience of making progress and getting better at what you do. In D&D the jumps are spread out and very large, so restricting a game to a small range makes for a rather static and uninteresting game. If you capped the game at 4th level, for example, you will only ever improve at anything in the game three times. That's not very dynamic and destroys part of the incentive for playing - the carrot approach, if you will.

I don't see anything wrong with _some_ flashiness in the game, whatever level I happen to be at. Or are you going to suggest that prestidigitation and flare should also be 3rd level just because they involve nifty FX?

That's the whole point of what some people want out of low magic. People want magic to be more subtle and more mysterious. Magic missiles are not mysterious. Flare is not mysterious. If this is not your goal then it seems like we are arguing in favor of two completely different things and that our different arguments do not contradict each other. You want something, but other people want something different. You don't see anything wrong with this flashiness and that's the problem. It's a subjective thing. Some people do see something wrong with this flashiness and that is precisely why people want to alter the rules.

Furthermore, claiming game balance and using magic missile as an example is perhaps a bit of a problem. In 3e there are certain spells that almost every wizard/sorcerer takes and magic missile is one of them. It's far more useful than almost any other 1st level spell in the majority of D&D campaigns. The fact that damaging evocation spells scale up by level with far greater efficiency than almost any other spells do is very significant and makes them more powerful overall than other spells of the same level. If you moved all evocation spells up one level people would still take them and they would still be useful in relation to other spells of the same level. Furthermore, if you lowered bestow curse to 1st level you could also lessen the effects to keep it in line with what a 1st level spell should do. Maintaining game balance and making magic more subtle are not at odds. It's all just a matter of fine tuning the details.

The constructive approach is not to say that lowering bestow curse to 1st level breaks and ruins the game. The constructive approach is to say that, if you want to lower bestow curse to 1st level to make curses more prominent in the game, you should make it a less potent spell to keep it in line with what other 1st level spells can do. Better yet, you should leave bestow curse where it is and just create a bunch of new, lower level, curses that do a variety of different things. These ideas are workable and can produce very useful and balanced results as long as we look at it from a constructive angle.

 

[hong]

What you seem to ignore is that a lot of the flavour is hardwired into the rules in the form of things like class abilities and monster selection. This very thread is about suggestions to change that hardwired flavour, because some people don't like the level of magic in the default game and consider the amount of inappropriately spellcasting classes distasteful.

I don't think I'm ignoring anything. Spellcasting is a mechanic meant to represent the way certain people can do things that break the laws of physics as we know them. Exactly how you rationalise that mechanic doesn't need to have anything to do with the mechanic itself.

For example, I don't have any problems with how the bard as written operates. Yes, it uses the same spellcasting mechanic as the sorcerer (with the exception that all bard spells require music). I see the bard as someone with the ability to command the forces of the supernatural through music. As far as I'm concerned, spell slots and all the associated mechanics are just a convenient way of representing that power over the supernatural, using a method that's familiar to D&D players.

For instance, MM monsters are selected to fulfil niches ("high level flying monster"), and new monsters were created where no existing creature fitted the role. This is a nice theoretical framework, but the game fails in that many of these creatures are ones that I consider too lame to want to use in a campaign - and do so only grudgingly.

So don't use them. Even if you were to replace these monsters with another six million variants on orcs, there are only so many niches to fill -- an orc is an orc, and a mook is a mook. This holds regardless of whether it's brown, purple or blue, or has a tail or a pointy head. At least the monsters in the MM serve some useful purpose for those DMs who _do_ have idiosyncratic niches to fill.

And really, no monster is as mysterious or as terrifying as a human with class levels.

Game balance is needed and a worthy design goal, but it's needs shouldn't eclipse other aspects of a good game. In short, I feel that 3E is somewhat too gamist to the detriment of some of the other things that make D&D great.

If by "gamist" you mean the philosophy that D&D is all about "going into dungeons, killing monsters and taking their treasure", I'm all for it.

 

[kenjib]

After considering the concept of expanding bestow curse I thought of a more broad approach that might result in a very interesting low magic spell list. What if all spells that exist have no identifiable result? They do have a quantifiable rules result, but the result operates in such a way that nobody can be sure that it was actually a natural event or magic. Many existing spells already work like this. We would be dealing mostly with enchantments, charms, curses, and the like, which all operate more subtly than other spells.

I'll use true strike as an example. It has very well defined results and is thus easy to balance mechanics-wise with other spells. However, the results of the spell can easily be attributed to chance rather than magic to the third party observer. For example, Llewyrd the witch casts her enchantment on an ally by raising the dessicated claw of an eagle and whispering some strange words. This is the true strike spell. As a result, her ally strikes down an enemy. People who do not believe in magic can simply claim that it was pure coincidence and that Llewyrd's backward, superstitious ways had no impact on the outcome.

I think that, if all spells worked like this, a very effective low magic feel would result. Instead of using magic missile, summon monster, cloudkill, and fireball to destroy enemies, this new caster can give someone a heart attack, make their hands tremble so that they have difficulty holding objects (such as a weapon or shield), make an arrow easily penetrate an opponent's thick breastplate, and strike fear into their hearts so that they flee. All of these effects, in game, can be attributed completely to natural causes, although at the meta level they have very well defined and balanced effects. The magic user can claim that he caused his enemy's heart to fail (and thus his death), but people might not even believe him since it could have been a fluke.

A big advantage of this idea would be that it requires no changes to the fundamental D&D rules, just a modification of the spell list and the introduction of some new spells. Rangers and Paladins can still cast spells, but they aren't flashy spells, they are more like when crocodile dundee forces a water buffalo off of the road or when Aragorn heals Frodo with herbs. They do not necessarily seem like magic.

Healing is a tough area though, as instant healing where wounds close up and the like are not very reasonable if the effects should not be visible. I'm not sure how to handle this but I suspect that moving to a wounds/vitality system would go a long ways toward fixing this problem. Vitality can be healed up all the time using magic with no problems, but wounds would have to be much harder to heal - probably the best you could hope for would be subtly speeding up the recovery rate, but nothing instantaneous.

Many existing spells are already (or with slight modification) completely compatible with this system - aid, bless, bull's strength, cat's grace, finger of death, bestow curse, true strike, neutralize poison, cure disease, shield, mage armor, charm person, locate object, scare, fear, enervation, emotion, magic weapon, magic vestment, death ward, divination, etc.

The problem is that many of the current spells of this type are a bit on the boring side. The trick to making the system fun to play would be to create lots of fun, interesting, and bizarre curses and enchantments. Many of them could have delayed effects so that they are not useful in combat, but rather as long term effects to antagonize and/or harm someone over time, having rats that are in the area come and bite someone when they try to sleep for example or blighting a farmer's crops, whereas others could have a more immediate impact - inflicting someone with a debilitating, shooting, headache during combat or making their sword break the next time they strike with it. With some creativity and a bit of deviousness, I think that we could come up with some really fun spells.

Magic items could work in a similar fashion - nothing glowing or flaming, or communicating via telepathy, but instead just things like keen swords, cloaks of elvenkind, rings of protection, and harps of charming - all subtle and not demonstrably magical.

 

[hong]

Hello Hong. You make some excellent points but I must disagree that this is a very useful solution. Part of the fun of playing a game is advancing and improving your skills and abilities. D&D does not have the fine gradient (like GURPS has, for example) needed to support playing within a small power range and still enjoying the experience of making progress and getting better at what you do.

I should also say that GURPS has its own problems; one, in particular, that seems apposite to this thread is that high-level people in GURPS are mortal. It doesn't matter if you're a 100 or 200-point character, a couple of critical hits from a pick will take you down. While this can be good from a certain point of view, it does tend to discourage the devil-may-care attitude that epitomises the "heroic" style of play.

And really, one way or the other, if you want to play something like GURPS, you'd be best off playing GURPS. Tweaking the rules to make D&D more like GURPS doesn't really accomplish very much as far as I can see. It's been said that D&D has a bigger base of supplements and fan material, but you'd still have to tweak these supplements to match. I don't see this as being a lot of work saved. Ultimately, that's probably the best reason for simply playing low-level: you don't have to do any major conversion work, whereas you would if you wanted to overhaul high-level D&D drastically.

That's the whole point of what some people want out of low magic. People want magic to be more subtle and more mysterious. Magic missiles are not mysterious. Flare is not mysterious.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Ultimately, for a good game, I think you want mechanics that are dependable and reproducible (this has nothing to do with whether dice rolls are involved). This means that spellcasters are likely to reuse those spells that tend to be most useful, whatever they may happen to do. And if you have a spell that's being used time and again by the spellcaster in your group, eventually it'll cease to become "mysterious".

(There are games that feature magic systems that are neither dependable or reproducible; Mage is the canonical example of these. I think the Mage system is great if you have a good GM. I also think it can be horribly abused if you have a _bad_ GM. Since I think one of the main reasons to have a ruleset in the first place is as a hedge against GM capriciousness or incompetence, the Mage system isn't to my liking.)

Furthermore, claiming game balance and using magic missile as an example is perhaps a bit of a problem. In 3e there are certain spells that almost every wizard/sorcerer takes and magic missile is one of them. It's far more useful than almost any other 1st level spell in the majority of D&D campaigns.

So replace magic missile with ray of enfeeblement, or burning hands, then -- the underlying principle is the same. I really don't have any problem with magic missile as it is; 1st level arcane spellcasters tend to be utter wimps in D&D (although not to as great an extent as they used to be). If they have one spell that lets them do funky stuff, more power to them.

The fact that damaging evocation spells scale up by level with far greater efficiency than almost any other spells do is very significant and makes them more powerful overall than other spells of the same level. If you moved all evocation spells up one level people would still take them and they would still be useful in relation to other spells of the same level. Furthermore, if you lowered bestow curse to 1st level you could also lessen the effects to keep it in line with what a 1st level spell should do. Maintaining game balance and making magic more subtle are not at odds. It's all just a matter of fine tuning the details.

Sure. In any case, though, I fail to see how a 3rd level spell somehow counts as "high level".

The constructive approach is not to say that lowering bestow curse to 1st level breaks and ruins the game. The constructive approach is to say that, if you want to lower bestow curse to 1st level to make curses more prominent in the game, you should make it a less potent spell to keep it in line with what other 1st level spells can do.

Chill touch, ray of enfeeblement, doom and bane all seem like nifty 1st level "curses" to me.

 

[rounser]

So don't use them. Even if you were to replace these monsters with another six million variants on orcs, there are only so many niches to fill -- an orc is an orc, and a mook is a mook. This holds regardless of whether it's brown, purple or blue, or has a tail or a pointy head. At least the monsters in the MM serve some useful purpose for those DMs who _do_ have idiosyncratic niches to fill.

I fail to see how this is relevant, hong. I can also choose not to play entire games I don't like. If the system doesn't provide fun, cool monsters that people want in their games, then the system has problems - especially D&D, because monsters are one of the core appeals of the game. IMO, 3E has very little on past editions in the area of providing fun or cool monsters, instead providing semi-lame creations like the destrachan, yrthak, and chuul. They're there for what they add to the game in terms of fulfilling a niche, rather than whether they are monsters that you'd actually want to play with in the first place because they're fun.

And really, no monster is as mysterious or as terrifying as a human with class levels.

That's a nice sentiment, but I'd still like cool monsters in my D&D games, thanks. They add colour and variety - two of the very things that it is possible to compromise if you watch the game balance ball too closely and forget other factors.

If by "gamist" you mean the philosophy that D&D is all about "going into dungeons, killing monsters and taking their treasure", I'm all for it.

No, I didn't mean that. I was referring to the simulationist / narrativist / gamist schools of "what makes a good game" philosophy. Stressing game balance above all else, possibly at the expense of other factors, is a gamist design direction.

IMO, in elevating game balance to the number one design focus the designers inadvertantly compromised some other things which are important to D&D. If they stressed realism they'd be simulationist, and if they stressed the flavour I'm referring to they'd be narrativist. There are things to be said for all three schools of thought, and D&D benefits from them all. At the moment though, I think they've taken a gamist direction at the expense of some of the narrativist elements of D&D (which I consider to have been it's main strengths in the past). Not too much, but enough to notice what's lacking, IMO.

Your initial statement that game balance should trump everything else in the core rules and that you'll provide the narrative is a stance I disagree with, because the rules carry with them a hardwired amount of narrativist tone and flavour and simulationist realism, or lack thereof. Your implication that I should use humans with class levels has strong narrativist implications of it's own. A story involving humans alone has a different feel to it than one involving fantastic creatures.

 

[hong]

I fail to see how this is relevant, hong. I can also choose not to play entire games I don't like. If the system doesn't provide fun, cool monsters that people want in their games,

I get the feeling that you're using the royal plural meaning of "people" here. How do you know that the monsters in the MM aren't "fun" or "cool"? Even if _you_ find that some of them are lacking, others may find that they're good. Conversely, what others find useless, you may think is just what's needed in your game. Diversity is a good thing.

then the system has problems - especially D&D, because monsters are one of the core appeals of the game. IMO, 3E has very little on past editions in the area of providing fun or cool monsters, instead providing semi-lame creations like the destrachan, yrthak, and chuul. They're there for what they add to the game in terms of fulfilling a niche, rather than whether they are monsters that you'd actually want to play with in the first place because they're fun.

Of the monsters you mention, I think the destrachan and yrthak are quite interesting. I haven't really looked at the chuul, but then I haven't looked at every monster in the MM in fine detail. I certainly don't need some of the comedic material that made up the 1E Fiend Folio or MM2, by contrast. (Not that there's anything wrong with comedy. But Roy and H.G. would be up the creek if rugby league ever started to think it was there just to provide laughs, so to speak.)

That's a nice sentiment, but I'd still like cool monsters in my D&D games, thanks. They add colour and variety - two of the very things that it is possible to compromise if you watch the game balance ball too closely and forget other factors.

Colour and variety can be found anywhere you care to look for it. If you want variety, give that troll a couple of levels of barbarian (remember Skurge Dwarfbane, anyone?). If you want colour, make it a bard. While I don't think it's necessary to cut down the menagerie to half-a-dozen monster types, I also think that multiplying them out just to provide variation is ultimately pointless, not to mention self-defeating.

No, I didn't mean that. I was referring to the s***********t / n*********t / g****t schools of "what makes a good game" philosophy. Stressing game balance above all else, possibly at the expense of other factors, is a gamist design direction.

I prefer the syllabicationist school. Every module and splatbook must meet a certain quota of polysyllabic words, in the grand tradition of E "Gary" Gygax, late of Lake Wisconsin, Geneva, to be considered a success. Or maybe the vitrionationalist school. The rules must contain examples featuring iconic characters from every race, which hate each other in the name of verisimilitude. Or, speaking of which, the verisimilitist school, which mandates that all supplements must harken back a facet of real life, no matter how obscure or far-fetched the link.