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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6658861" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm not so worried about the highest levels, what I'm not really interested in doing is being forced to develop the whole world entirely around low level magic use. The D&D conceit is that magic is known, and certainly low level magic isn't incredibly rare. Most people have probably seen a cleric, perhaps some other sort of caster, and while they would be amazed by a spell there would be plenty of people in a village that have seen it or even been the target of it. Yet its not common enough to completely alter the normal pattern of life (IE clerics can't wipe out every disease or prevent all hunger, wizards can't stop all crime, etc). AD&D level magic made that assertion pretty difficult. You really had to assume that there were just VERY few casters of even level 1 because the spells were easy to employ and highly effective. That clashed with the basic presumptions. High level magic? How much impact does one 20th level wizard really have on the world? Plenty if you happen to be operating in that league perhaps, but for the ordinary peasant or townsperson they're just a distant rumor. Perhaps Kings now-and-then employ magical countermeasures, but mostly you just assume you're flying under the radar and its usually true.4e (and maybe 5e to a somewhat lesser extent) mostly works with that, but 5e still has those annoying spells that are super effective in a certain way, like Zone of Truth, that can make things MUCH easier. If you are going to assume they're constantly factored into everyone's plans, then you must assume a world rather different from D&D fiction (unless you run Eberron). In fact your campaign world sounds completely different from what D&D assumes. That's great, but I appreciated that 4e's selection of powers and rituals was carefully designed around only gradually allowing the PCs to really alter the basic world assumptions, so that if you were 15th level then strategic flying was possible, or making a zone of truth, etc. But 15th level was fictionally a pretty rare thing for people to attain, like you're probably the only guy of that level in your class in the world at any given time rare.</blockquote>

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