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Message: <blockquote data-quote="der_kluge" data-source="post: 1703093" data-attributes="member: 945">You guys are forgetting the one spell that would potentially alter a world more than any other - augury.  A cleric with augury could potentially bog down a town into complete chaos.  Insight from the gods?!  "God, should this man marry this woman?"  "God, should I eat corn flakes for breakfast, or Lucky Charms?"  "God, does this shirt go with these pants?"  If average people have access to Augury, nothing would get done without consulting the divine creator first.  And any cleric should be more than willing to provide divine insight to his flock if they seek it.But enough about that.  Extrapolate this out to high level, and huge cities with high level wizards.  The DMG even mentions that a large city with a high level wizard has access to wish.  Yes, it costs him dearly to cast, but a city of sufficient size could easily afford the payment, and imagine what that could do to the landscape of a city?  "Wizard, we need crops that never need seeding", "wizard, we need wells that never run dry", "wizard, we need to put an end to this bubonic plague".  Even if a wish is only cast once per year, cities that have been around for hundreds of years would still be enjoying the fruits of some wizard's labor to the current day, and properly worded wishes could very easily alter the nature of the society forever.  People wouldn't have to farm anymore, and food would always be plentiful, and water would always be clean and pure.Crap, imagine the effects ONE decanter of endless water could do to a town.  One is all anyone needs.I think a lot of people liked Eberron because the world was constructed with some of these things in mind - i.e., what happens to a world that has magic in it, and what is the end result of that?The problem is, and this is why a lot of folks stick with low-magic/rare-magic is that once you extrapolate, and I mean REALLY extrapolate the effects of magic on the world, you end up with a SCI-FI setting.  Or at least something like steampunk.  Some people don't want that.I was thinking on the way home about high magic versus low magic.  If you play D&D exactly as written, you end up with a very epic, high magic kind of game.  At 20th level, your fighter with his +5 whatever, and the sorcerer, with more spells per day than he could ever possibly cast, along with their other sufficiently powerful friends, cut a path through the outer planes, killing outsiders and whatever else.  Don't get me wrong, this is great fun, and for those that enjoy this, awesome.  The thing that struck me was how much D&D was geared to this.  Which struck me as odd, since LoTR was such a heavy influence on Gygax in the beginning, yet LoTR could easily be classified as low magic, or at the very least low level.  But D&D's roots weren't in fantasy literature, but rather wargaming, and strategy gaming.  This was the origin of the game.  If you ever read any of the Gygax articles in Dragon, it seems as if every game he ever ran with the original players was some quest to go find more treasure.  "Robilar wanted to explore the 6th level of the dungeon to find more treasure."  That wasn't a role-playing game, it was treasure-finding game!  Was it fun?  I'm sure it was, since it's still around today.  Has it changed, not a whole lot.  The emphasis is still very magic/treasure-centric.  A chart in the DMG lists average treasure gp value by level.  All kinds of rules exist around magic items, and leveling up, and XP, and slaying bigger and bigger monsters.  It's core to the game, and don't get me wrong, I've done it for years and years, and am doing it in my own current game.  It works.But I think people are looking for something more simplistic.  Something grittier, and leaner.  It strikes me as somewhat a shame that the core rules do low magic so poorly.  I mean, I can play a low magic individual at low level, but I can only do that so long.  I mean, one could just throw away all rule books, make up generic characters, and sit around and role-play every weekend set in some generic fantasy world.  Let's face it - you don't need *any* rule book for that.  So, to actually play a true role-playing game doesn't actually require any books, or any dice at all.  Oh, I suppose once you start interacting with the world you need to know things like how strong, or fast you are, but that's semantics.For me, low-magic is about getting into a more realistic frame of mind.  But, it's all about context, I suppose.  For me, that means a medieval setting in a traditional fantasy sense.  People aren't dying of the plague, and throwing filth in the streets like they did in reality, but something at least close to that.  In this world, starting off at 1st level with the starting gold listed in the PHB is just wacky.  Take a village of 200 people, and to have a 1st level fighter start off with something like 120 gold is just ridiculous.  "For my first action, I shall purchase this quaint village".  As John Stossel might say, "Give me a break!"  /babble over</blockquote>

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