D&D General What Should Magic Be Able To Do, From a Gameplay Design Standpoint?

[Edgar Ironpelt]

What magic should be able to do is a setting and world-building issue.
In times past I've played around with campaign design sheets, mostly for Hero (4e) because it was a 'universal' system that needed to be tuned to the specific setting conception one wanted to run.

Here's an essay of mine from those days:

How Much Magic Is There?​

“How much magic is there?” in a given fantasy world? This is a question that has answers in multiple dimensions which are only partly interrelated. As an attempt at a breakdown:

What proportion of the population can cast spells or otherwise “do” magic?​

The ability to cast spells or otherwise “do” magic can be a rare gift, talent or skill, or it can be a common one. Or it can be universal or nearly so: E.g. 1st and 2nd ed RuneQuest “spirit magic” that anyone can learn and that practically everyone does learn. Or the “magic” can be very very simple: In real life, anyone can nail a horseshoe over a barn door or throw a pinch of salt over their shoulder. In a fantasy world, these things can have real (if minor) magical effects.

(A sidenote: One of the most common forms of ‘folkloric’ magic seems to be magic specifically directed against magical beings. E.g. wearing your clothes turned inside-out makes you invisible to the fay folk but not to ordinary people. Or spitting on an arrowhead to negate a magical beastie’s immunity to arrows. A game example might be “disbelieving illusions.” Generally, you don’t have to be specially talented/gifted/skilled in magic to do these things.)

One can make a distinction between “mundane magic” that’s too weak to count and “real magic” usable only by “real magic users.” By analogy, the US has universal literacy, but not everyone is a “writer.” Which brings us to the next question:

How common are “powerful” magic users compared to “weak” ones?​

The magic-user population can form a pyramid, with many ‘hedge wizards’ for every master mage. Or it can be a more even distribution with relatively few weak wizards for each strong one. Or there can be a ‘population inversion’ of power, where powerful wizards exist but weak ones don’t. This last version feels unnatural and counter-intuitive and calls for some in-world explanation (E.g. weak/beginner mages must either grow powerful or die.)

Then there’s the question of what “powerful” means:

What is the absolute level of magic power in the world?​

Moving a megalith by magic from Ireland to England might be a once-in-a-lifetime feat by the greatest wizard in a thousand years. Or it might be something that happens once a year, or once a month. Likewise transforming a cat into a dog might be something only a Great Mage can do, or it might be the regular test for an apprentice to graduate. A magical “fireball” might be the size of a fist or the size of a room. It might scorch a man if it hits, or it might burn right through him.

Of course fire magic might be especially weak or hard to do in a given fantasy world, which brings up the next question:

What is magic especially good at or especially bad at?​

In some worlds, magic is the “power cosmic” - it can do anything, and it can do it better than any other method. In other worlds, magic has strange limitations, or a specific “flavor.” In 2nd edition RuneQuest, for example, there’s an explanation that the gods prefer to work with energy rather than with matter, and to work with magical energy rather than with other kinds.

Likewise, one fantasy world may have magic slanted to mind or emotion-affecting spells, with the production of physical effects being difficult or impossible. Another might be the opposite: lightning bolts and magical walls are easy to conjure, but mind-control is difficult or impossible.

How easy is it to preform weak magics compared to strong ones?​

Classic D&D has a lower limit on how weak spells can be: It is at least as hard (if not harder) to cast a ‘bic-flick’ level candle-lighting spell as it is to cast Burning Hands. A lot of gamers didn’t like this, and ‘cantrips’ were developed as an attempt to ‘fix’ it. Some gamers don’t think this went far enough, and prefer variants and systems where one can easily cast really weak magics.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for making a strong break between mages and non-mages via a minimum ‘up front’ investment for using magic. On the third hand, this result tends to feel unnatural and counter-intuitive, similar to the way having powerful mages but not weak ones.

One variant might be to limit common, weak magic to a purely defensive ‘anti-magic’ role: Magics affecting the magical are common, and easy enough for anyone to preform; magics affecting the mundane have to have power, skill, and talent behind them.

Another variant might be to make weak magics easy for those who know the strong magics, but hard or impossible for those who don’t. Thus trained and talented mages can do trivial stuff with magic, but Joe Peasant and John, Lord Doe cannot. This has the advantage of making mages ‘cooler’ while adding little to their gross power.

Finally:

How easy is it to share the fruits of magic?​

The easier it is to share magic, the more commonplace it becomes. This is related to how many mages there are and to how easy it is for them to use magic. These things make it easier to find a mage willing to cast a spell for oneself. It can be partly mitigated by the nature of magic: If healing magic only works on the caster, or on other mages, then healing magic will be less commonplace than if it will work on anyone.

Commonplace magic risks becoming boring, but there is also a danger to making magic rare in an attempt to make it wondrous. Magic must be witnessed to seem wondrous; magic so rare as to never be noticed becomes completely mundane.

As an example, consider Merlin’s transport of Stonehenge to England. If the PCs (or protagonists in read-only fiction) personally witness this, it is most wondrous. If they hear about it but don’t witness it personally, the sense of wonder depends on how reliable the reports seem to the characters. The more mythical the event, the less wondrous it seems.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I mentioned this before, but, I think it got lost in the scrum.

Imagine a simple fix. In order to learn a higher level spell of a given school, you needed to learn two spells from that school, but, one level lower. So, 2 1st level spells would let you learn a 2nd level spell from that school. Considering most casters only gain 2 spells known per level, that would sort out the arcane casters pretty well.

You could go broad - learning lots of lower level spells, or you could go deep - focusing your learned spells into a single school or two.

Would this not massively sort casters out?

if a character is learning two new spells per character level that would be four new spells per spell level right? i might even go so far as to say you need three spells known of a level before you can learn the next if you really want to push the choice of to go wide or deep, although three school spells per level on some class' spell lists might not be a feasible achievement...

would you intend to apply this method of restriction to...prepared casters is it? divine casters, god i can never remember which method is called what, given they can rewrite their entire list each morning it seems like it would end up being more of an annoyance than an actual hindrance?

 

[Mephista]

Okay. So. Magic in general should be able do anything. Specific kinds of magic, such as wizardry, should have specific niches, themes and limitations that they cater to.

Traditionally, there are four flavors of "magic" in DND. Martial, Divine/Primal, Arcane, and sometimes Psionic. Which kind of corresponds to the Physical, Mystical, Technological Trinity trope.

Martial magic is mainly focused on the body and it's enhancements. Stamina, Rage, Ki, etc. Its all about what's internal to the body. This is the Physical. I think its fine that martials are restricted to doing body-things, but i also think that we haven't really explored the full extent of what that means or what they can do without spellcasting. Far too often, we're just pushing spellcasting onto the subclasses for my taste - I much prefer things like the '24 elemental monk to the pseudo-caster '14 elemental monk. I'd prefer less spellcasting on Shadow Monk, even if its redundant. I'm fine with hybrid subclasses like EK and AT that are specifically meant to be part-spellcaster options as the focus of the subclass. I'm less fine with randomly giving, say, Purple Dragon Knight a ritual for Comprehend Language, or the Totem Barbarian a ritual for exploration. I want to break away from spellcasting in martials as much as possible. I'd also like to see magical-but-not-spellcasting options for weapon masteries granted by subclass as an expanded-spell-list-for-martials equivalent.

Divine magic is the mystical side of magic. And, by mystical, I mean that its tied to spirits and gods instead of your self or through learning. Call it what you will - faith, miracles, spirit magic, invocations. Its all about being a conduit for outside forces acting through you. Channel Divinity (and Wildshape) I think of the defining magic of these classes - at the most basic, its what's going on with every magical action they take. Sure, paladins get their power from an Oath, but that Oath is tying them to a god, a spirit, even a living philosphy, just as a cleric's blessing does. That god/spirit/whatever is what gives them the spells they prep every day when they choose what spells they "know." Primal classes are the same - the only difference is that cleric divinity is more of a light/dark slightly-christian-themed duality focus while primal classes focus more on elemental land gods, spirits, and philosphies.

Arcane magic (save for Sorcerer*) is the equivalent of science and technology in D&D. Wizards, warlocks, bards and artificers all rely on learning and knowledge for their magics. Bards learn new Words of Power and incorporate them into art, wizards study books and scrolls and do experiments, artificers mess with magical materials to see what they can do, and warlocks have dedicated tutors as Patrons. They might not be following actual scientific process, but the Arcane -is- dedicated to knowledge gathering in some fashion, and the expansion of knowledge is how Arcane classes grow. There's no official divide in arcane magic like we have with divine / primal, but with how sorcerer and the other Arcane classes have basically eaten psion's lunch...

Psionics has traditionally been about channeling magic inside of you out. Storywise, this covers the same thematic ground as Sorcerer, but with a Mind-Magic focus (similar to bard magics) over an Elemental-Magic focus. In 5e, psionics has been diluted across some Arcane and some Martial subclasses. PF2 has effectively blended psionics with bardcraft and witchcraft into Occult spellcasting. It feels like modern D&D clones are moving away from psychics as the 4th spellcaster flavor and moving more towards bardcraft. Which, tbh, I'm fine with - bookish vs tool users works, I think. I would personally rather see Sorcerer and Psion break away from being spellcasters and be closer to Martials mechanically. Not necessarily tied to the Attack action like martials, but I'd rather see dragon sorcery act like the Dragonborn do - all non-spellcasting stuff.

Mechanically, I do enjoy how, in 5e, most spellcasters have a trim, highly focused core spell list, with subclasses expanding on that list. What I do wish, however, is that the wizard was forced to conform to that mechanic as well a bit better. Like, every subclass says to take at least one spell from the appropriate spell school. But what about subclasses like Scribe and Bladesinger? Nada. And you still get two spells per wizard level versus one spell-school per two wizard levels. The subclass spells are drowned out. The wizard needs to tighten up, mainly because of the next point. And it's not just st the wizard, but the 5e bard. Curated spell lists matter.

I kind of spent a lot of time talking about existing flavor and themes in the game, which I do like in D&D. But there's a lot of BAGGAGE in the game that is getting in the way. The wizard and its history as the premere Magic User one of them. Spellcasters, as a whole, have a lot of advantages, but the point of classes are to create a narrow and highly thematic link of abilities. That's part of the appeal of class - its a distinct entity with a focus on story elements represented by its class skills. Spellcasting, by its nature, is a class skill that's a full grab bag of random abilities. When the class spell list is kept trimmed to appropriate themes, its doable, and it should be. Breaking away from the central theme means that you're diluting what makes the class interesting. Class fantasy is important to any fantasy RPG, be it pen and paper, PbP, video game, or whatever. Spell casting needs to serve the class fantasy and enable both players and GM to have fun.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I never saw it as much more powerful than medium healing or potions. Hate of that spell always confused me

It replaced food. If you want PCs to have to find what they need in the world, a low level spell that just gives it to them is a problem.

 

[nevin]

It replaced food. If you want PCs to have to find what they need in the world, a low level spell that just gives it to them is a problem.

Well I don't care to run games where people are starving and looking for food so I honestly don't care about that stuff, so I guess if you run those kinds of games it's an issue but I can't imagine it being any fun after 3rd level scrounging for scraps to survive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well I don't care to run games where people are starving and looking for food so I honestly don't care about that stuff, so I guess if you run those kinds of games it's an issue but I can't imagine it being any fun after 3rd level scrounging for scraps to survive.

I can imagine it, and have played and run it. Level Up has rules for acquiring and using Supply while traveling or otherwise on adventure, and they don't stop being relevant after level 3.

 

[Reynard]

Well I don't care to run games where people are starving and looking for food so I honestly don't care about that stuff, so I guess if you run those kinds of games it's an issue but I can't imagine it being any fun after 3rd level scrounging for scraps to survive.

It isn't even about starvation. One of the fun things about encumbrance is players having to choose between gear and gold. Gear often means survival, and you can count rations in that. But rations are bulky and heavy, and the more of them you carry, the less loot you can carry.

As usual, the modern game has largely done away with the hunt for treasure as the motivating impetus behind play, so the "gear or gold" question is moot.

 

[nevin]

I can imagine it, and have played and run it. Level Up has rules for acquiring and using Supply while traveling or otherwise on adventure, and they don't stop being relevant after level 3.

never said they did. I just don't like dealing with people finding food in my games. I don't have pet squirrels I have players trying to be the heroes. Nothing about that is fun on any level for me. I know a lot of people like those little mini-games within the game. They just annoy me. Have fun with it but It's never going to be a regular thing in a game of mine. Just no fun there for me.

 

[nevin]

It isn't even about starvation. One of the fun things about encumbrance is players having to choose between gear and gold. Gear often means survival, and you can count rations in that. But rations are bulky and heavy, and the more of them you carry, the less loot you can carry.

As usual, the modern game has largely done away with the hunt for treasure as the motivating impetus behind play, so the "gear or gold" question is moot.

and at some point they get bags of holding or portable holes. DND isn't really a game for worrying about survival resources.

 

[Lanefan]

I mentioned this before, but, I think it got lost in the scrum.

Imagine a simple fix. In order to learn a higher level spell of a given school, you needed to learn two spells from that school, but, one level lower. So, 2 1st level spells would let you learn a 2nd level spell from that school. Considering most casters only gain 2 spells known per level, that would sort out the arcane casters pretty well.

You could go broad - learning lots of lower level spells, or you could go deep - focusing your learned spells into a single school or two.

Would this not massively sort casters out?

An interesting idea, though it requires leaning much deeper into the idea of spell schools than I ever have.