Why do we still have warriors?

[SiuiS]

Honestly, I think the only proof we need is that a caster has double the variable age of a warrior. A warrior prodigy human can be on the road and fully powerful at 16; a caster is looking at 17. But on the other end, a particularly slow or thorough warrior is 21 and a particularly slow or thorough caster is leaving home at 32. Specifically because of the ease of pick-up.

And that's just this edition.

[Lord Raziere]

How do you rationalize it as easy to just be upper class nobility? It's not a choice anyone gets to just make, love.


well here is the thing:

if wizardry is so valuable and political, then why would the nobility let the commoners have it? this medieval ages, the nobility go "screw the commoners!" and then send their kid to wizard school because only they can afford it, who get to cruise on the high life while everyone else gets a far worse deal, there is no plausible way for any of the peasantry to get selected to be a wizard's apprentice, and education is limited to nobility anyways even without magic. nobility + education + magic + politics = most if not all wizards are nobility. so many wizards, plus nobles who aren't wizards trying to favor charisma, leads to bloodlines where if you aren't an intelligent wizard, your a charismatic sorcerer. the nobility's justification for being nobles- that they were just born better- gets backed by supernatural power, and suddenly you have wizards and sorcerers ruling everything anyways, and the universe favoring them because of it. the world of warriors and the world of spellcasters diverges.

warriors become little more than bodyguards, rogues become obsolete and so on so forth, even without Tippyverse shenanigans. the rich get richer, poor get poorer, only with magic instead of coin. sure, technically a rich person's life is stressful as well a poor person's life, but as some old song went "I'd much rather be rich than poor." even if a rich person's life causes them stress, its still better than being a poor person without all the safeguards a rich guy has. the wizard creates a similar situation but with spells. sure, you might say that the wizard has stress in their life- but the spells they have access to ensure they won't ever experience anything as bad as what a fighter will experience in their daily life. spells, coin- these are just different words for power, and the upper class always seek to gather more of it while they're already comfortable while the lower class suffers for it.

and in a world of magic wins, the guy with no spells loses.

"I had to study books, learn how to speak funny words and hand signs to manipulate reality then repeat them while the fighter beside me took all the hits and nearly dies to protect me while I remained unharmed. POOR ME." -#wizardworldproblems

[BeerMug Paladin]

I don't think it's unreasonable to have wizardry available to commoners. I don't think it's unreasonable for that to be the standard case, even. Not in worlds where there's apparently peasants who have access to basic literacy. In multiple languages, even. That doesn't just happen, that takes public school.

School means that a specialist teacher exists and is going to notice a really smart kid now and then. Maybe the teacher knows a wizard who's always interested in getting a smart kid or two to be passed along to become an apprentice. There's a reason a wizard might approach a teacher or a school and ask for this kind of deal. Patience and smarts make for a better apprentice.

Once an apprentice, they could help the wizard study their own things, or help out around the lab. And in the meantime, learn a bit of magic themselves. Eventually they'll know enough to fully practice wizardry on their own and perhaps move on.

Of course, if there's not basic literacy across the setting, this could easily be disregarded. But you could still do things like, "A commoner child performed a clever magic trick once (stage magic) for a visiting wizard, and impressed him. Later on, the commoner was invited to become the wizard's apprentice."

[Lord Raziere]

I don't think it's unreasonable to have wizardry available to commoners. I don't think it's unreasonable for that to be the standard case, even. Not in worlds where there's apparently peasants who have access to basic literacy. In multiple languages, even. That doesn't just happen, that takes public school.

School means that a specialist teacher exists and is going to notice a really smart kid now and then. Maybe the teacher knows a wizard who's always interested in getting a smart kid or two to be passed along to become an apprentice. There's a reason a wizard might approach a teacher or a school and ask for this kind of deal. Patience and smarts make for a better apprentice.

Once an apprentice, they could help the wizard study their own things, or help out around the lab. And in the meantime, learn a bit of magic themselves. Eventually they'll know enough to fully practice wizardry on their own and perhaps move on.

Of course, if there's not basic literacy across the setting, this could easily be disregarded. But you could still do things like, "A commoner child performed a clever magic trick once (stage magic) for a visiting wizard, and impressed him. Later on, the commoner was invited to become the wizard's apprentice."

That only shifts the source of inequality and makes it wider.

its creates a culture valuing intellectual thought and wizardry. culture eventually creates value upon which people are judged to be a winner or a loser, favored or unfavored, which eventually forms hierarchies that systemize these values and positions, with the losers at the bottom and the winners at the top. with wizards at the top, the people who wield magic are the winners, the people who don't become the bottom of the hierarchy and thus are the losers, and thus the fighter, the rogue, and so on, they all lose in the eyes of this culture not only because they a fight, but because they do not get an intellectual education or seen as wasting it on swords. the people at the top of the hierarchy, despite what stress they may have mentally, are always the ones who suffer the least, while those at the bottom suffer the most. the wizards are still picked over the fighter. the magic still dominates. only now the common people will reason "oh he went through all that schooling but chose to be some guy who wields a sword, what a waste"

this is inevitably how all cultures work. hierarchies form, the people at the top prosper, the people at the bottom don't, until people get fed up with it, revolutionize and....form a new kind of hierarchy, which will simply select different winners and different losers and start the whole thing all over again. even Anarchy is not immune to this, as its simply shifting the winners to whoever has the most strength to enforce their rules.

and in a setting with magic that can warp reality and do fantastic things? the wizards will eventually end up being valued as winners, then eventually becoming the winners at the top of the hierarchy much like a noble or a CEO. and thus we will end up with wizards having it less hard than warriors regardless.

[Curbstomp]

Guys-

We are pretty off topic. Is anyone still addressing the original question directly? :smallannoyed:

[Cazero]

even Anarchy is not immune to this, as its simply shifting the winners to whoever has the most strength to enforce their rules.
And as soon as this happens, it stops being anarchy to become some sort of despotism. Anarchy is an utopic state of peace and social stability without any enforced law.
But back to the topic.

Having wizardry in limited access to nobility actually answers the initial question, wich was "why would anyone be a warrior, seriously, that life would suck". Your 95% of commoners couldn't pick any spellcasting class and would have to default to some fighter type.

If everyone had an equal opportunity choice (wich, incidentally, would be some kind of utopia where all manual labour and everything tenuous is handled by some kind of golems), everyone would obviously pick whatever they enjoy more, regardless of what it actually is.
If someone choose risking his life in adventuring when he could spend a quiet, comfortable life, he obviously enjoys it enough to pick it rather than the alternative. Once that is established, seeing some people picking fast gratification trough physical stength training they enjoy over long studies they dislike that might eventually result in learning how to reshape all of reality some day, is a very likely scenario. Wich it was already regadless of actual enjoyment, since wizard actually start at level 1, not 12, and can get one-shoted by lucky crit for a long time, and as such, chosing to be a wizard is some kind of all-in bet that many, many intelligent people would avoid. Thus, we still have warriors.

[BeerMug Paladin]

That only shifts the source of inequality and makes it wider.

...
I think you're placing a value judgement on the relative worth of wizards that just isn't intended by the source material, or is a consequence of the game world. Whether or not one agrees with that value judgement is going to make a big difference whether or not they're going to agree with your wizards ruling over everything outcome.

I believe rogues, bards, druids and clerics would all be more likely to become rulers. But I don't think it's really something that's exclusive enough to only be workable in one way either.

For those still interested in why someone would choose (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0162.html) to become a fighter (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0113.html) instead of a spellcaster (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0345.html), consider this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0657.html).

[AMFV]

That only shifts the source of inequality and makes it wider.

its creates a culture valuing intellectual thought and wizardry. culture eventually creates value upon which people are judged to be a winner or a loser, favored or unfavored, which eventually forms hierarchies that systemize these values and positions, with the losers at the bottom and the winners at the top. with wizards at the top, the people who wield magic are the winners, the people who don't become the bottom of the hierarchy and thus are the losers, and thus the fighter, the rogue, and so on, they all lose in the eyes of this culture not only because they a fight, but because they do not get an intellectual education or seen as wasting it on swords. the people at the top of the hierarchy, despite what stress they may have mentally, are always the ones who suffer the least, while those at the bottom suffer the most. the wizards are still picked over the fighter. the magic still dominates. only now the common people will reason "oh he went through all that schooling but chose to be some guy who wields a sword, what a waste"

And the problem is that you are making assumptions about value in our world which don't necessarily hold true. I'm, not to brag overmuch, pretty intelligent. And I have had mostly trade related jobs. I don't want to get a job in Academia or as a lawyer, or a doctor. I probably have the intellectual capacity to obtain such a job. And I would have the raw drive to succeed at it, if it were something I wanted. But it isn't. In the real world not everybody always makes all of the choices with the same value judgements. I value personal quality of life over financial success, and I've made decisions to that end. Even supposing that everybody in a fantasy world has the same option, you can't assume that they're going to value the same thing.

The Guy who went through all the schooling and now wields a sword... is he happy? Because I bet you he might be.



this is inevitably how all cultures work. hierarchies form, the people at the top prosper, the people at the bottom don't, until people get fed up with it, revolutionize and....form a new kind of hierarchy, which will simply select different winners and different losers and start the whole thing all over again. even Anarchy is not immune to this, as its simply shifting the winners to whoever has the most strength to enforce their rules.

But you're also ignoring the fact that the world isn't just a series of vertical hierarchies. Also even in our world obtaining total power is not agreed on as an absolute high point in value. The problem is that you're making a really big assumption: That everybody places the highest value on power, and that therefore everybody would be willing to be miserable in order to be powerful. It's like being rich. There are a lot of people who would like to be rich, but there is a large percentage of people who don't want to be miserable to be rich, and even some percentage of people that don't particularly care about money at all, making it very difficult to be rich, ergo why you would see Fighters in a world with Wizards, even provided that there is no inherent entry barrier (and that varies a lot, and I mean A LOT) with the setting.

So even if everybody could become a Wizard if they wanted to (everyone has a high Int Score and can obtain a teacher, and has the money for spellbooks), not everybody is going to want to. I've pointed out why in the real world I made the equivalent choice, becoming at one point in my life a Marine rather than going into a field which was more lucrative financially. Since having lucrative financial power is roughly equivalent to Wizardly power.



and in a setting with magic that can warp reality and do fantastic things? the wizards will eventually end up being valued as winners, then eventually becoming the winners at the top of the hierarchy much like a noble or a CEO. and thus we will end up with wizards having it less hard than warriors regardless.

But the CEOs aren't the winners of everything in our world. They have a lot of power, yes. But demonstrably financial success is not always linked to happiness. To be fair there is a point where increased financial success doesn't make you any happier. And that is going to be even more the case with increased Arcane power. Where having that power, not only engenders a high responsibility to use it, but having it attracts all kind of unsavory attention.


Guys-

We are pretty off topic. Is anyone still addressing the original question directly? :smallannoyed:

We aren't off-topic at all. Not even a little bit, people are still answering the original question on this page. We're addressing the corollary issue of "supposing that being a wizard and a fighter are the same entry difficulty would there still be both?" To which I believe the answer is yes. For the reasons I've stated. And we're answering the important question of: "Is the entry barrier the same for Wizards and fighters?" Both of which directly relate back to the original question. Also we've addressed comparative quality of life under different values systems, which goes to explain why somebody might choose one over the other.

[Frozen_Feet]

This discussion has been pretty D&D centric. The basic premise for Wizard life being easier is the assumption that wizards just stay in a tower and read books, and presto, ultimate cosmic power!

But that's not how it went in folklore, not how it went in Tolkien's works, not how it went in Lovecraft's works, not how it went in Howard's works... pretty much not how it went in any of the inspirations for RPGs.

How it did go, then?

Well, Lovecraft's and Howard's works, the price for magic routinely is going to extremely distant and abandoned places and facing horrible abominations From Beyong. In order to get those books to read in your tower, you'll have to go to some ruined city in the middle of the desert and GO INSANE, or hope some other guy has done that for you so you can GO INSANE from reading his work.

Basically, wizarding requires you to do the horribly dangerous adventuring thing while being any mundane hero does not. And even after you do it, it's less "ultimate cosmic power" and more "plaything of apathetic cosmic powers".

In Tolkien's work, learning magic is hard. Most common types of magic actually require you to be the top of your craft first - Elves, Numenorians and Dwarves could make those awesome things because they had decades, even centuries or millenias to perfect their craft to the point where it could reach magical heights. A normal human just doesn't have the choice to do that, most would die of old age before ever getting there. Those who actually "cast spells" akin to those in D&D tend to be angels and demons in disguise, and the price for them doing that is to cloak themselves in vastly inferior corporeal forms.

In folklore, the "easiness" of magic came at the cost of your soul. Or, magic was highly unreliable, and you did it mostly "to be sure" while also undertaking mundane efforts to guarantee your success. And even if, as a Shaman, Priest or Witch-Doctor, you'd be esteemed and powerful member of society, so were warriors. Magic powers by and large were not failsafe protection against cold, sharp steel in mythology - on the contrary, what we today see as "mundane" weapons, like iron swords or firearms, were considered SUPER-EFFECTIVE against supernatural forces, because they symbolized man's triumph over nature.

[Morty]

We probably have 3e D&D to blame for pushing the fact that casting magic tends takes much longer in fiction than decapitating someone or shooting them in the throat does out of fantasy discussion.

[AMFV]

This discussion has been pretty D&D centric. The basic premise for Wizard life being easier is the assumption that wizards just stay in a tower and read books, and presto, ultimate cosmic power!

Well the reason that we've been focusing on that is because it sets the bar at the highest point. Obviously in a world where Wizards commune with the great old ones and get their souls burned out there are going to be less people wanting to be Wizards. So we've been arguing from a point that even where those drawbacks are not there people would still be fighters.

Not that there's anything wrong with having magic be inherently dangerous or difficult. It's a setting and design consideration, however, if we can prove that if magic was not that much more difficult than Soldiering, that due to the differences in the nature of studying magic, that there would still be fighters, it would filter through the entirety of the systems, since it's been proven at a higher bar. So that's the reason is because the bar is higher where we've been arguing.

[Lord Raziere]

@ Frozen Feet: yea but those kinds of magic, if they are so hard, complicated and damning to your soul or so unreliable, its more of question why anyone would choose to do magic when all it does is screw you over in the end. without even giving you the awesome effects other kinds of magic does. you might as well just become an Inquisitor and start burning all witches and books in those universes, at least then you'd get to burn stuff and prevent people from suffering under the influence of evil/amoral cosmic powers.

[SiuiS]

well here is the thing:

if wizardry is so valuable and political, then why would the nobility let the commoners have it?

No, seriously, this answers the question. You've admitted people would be warriors because casting is scarce.


Guys-

We are pretty off topic. Is anyone still addressing the original question directly? :smallannoyed:

A direct refutation of support for an answer is on topic, actually, insofar as anyone is willing to actually change opinion.



Having wizardry in limited access to nobility actually answers the initial question, wich was "why would anyone be a warrior, seriously, that life would suck". Your 95% of commoners couldn't pick any spellcasting class and would have to default to some fighter type.

Basically this.


This discussion has been pretty D&D centric. The basic premise for Wizard life being easier is the assumption that wizards just stay in a tower and read books, and presto, ultimate cosmic power!


No, we addressed literature in general. We only honed in on D&D because it was the sticking point that needed to be argued. The gelatinous hair with teeth is all I need to say about Lamentations of the Fire Princess, for example.

[Morty]

@ Frozen Feet: yea but those kinds of magic, if they are so hard, complicated and damning to your soul or so unreliable, its more of question why anyone would choose to do magic when all it does is screw you over in the end. without even giving you the awesome effects other kinds of magic does. you might as well just become an Inquisitor and start burning all witches and books in those universes, at least then you'd get to burn stuff and prevent people from suffering under the influence of evil/amoral cosmic powers.

Because they still let you do things that a magic-less mortal can't, period. Magic might be relatively useless for things that can be accomplished by mundane skill, but mundane skill won't let you summon spirits, gaze into the future or raise the dead. Is it worth it, in the end? Who knows, and it doesn't really matter.

[Frozen_Feet]

@ Frozen Feet: yea but those kinds of magic, if they are so hard, complicated and damning to your soul or so unreliable, its more of question why anyone would choose to do magic when all it does is screw you over in the end.

The existence of petty criminals*) in real life tells us it's because some people really are that desperate. Or stupid.

The saying "crime doesn't pay" exist for a reason, even if it's not 100% accurate. Crime can pay... to about 1% of criminals who are smart enough to not get caught. The rest actually shoot themselves in the leg due to all social sanctions petty crime acrues. Unsurprisingly, majority of petty criminals tend to belong to the poorest social classes.

Incidentally, you can replace "crime" with "warrior" to get a round-about answer to the thread subject. :smalltongue:

[AMFV]

The existence of petty criminals*) in real life tells us it's because some people really are that desperate. Or stupid.

The saying "crime doesn't pay" exist for a reason, even if it's not 100% accurate. Crime can pay... to about 1% of criminals who are smart enough to not get caught. The rest actually shoot themselves in the leg due to all social sanctions petty crime acrues. Unsurprisingly, majority of petty criminals tend to belong to the poorest social classes.

Incidentally, you can replace "crime" with "warrior" to get a round-about answer to the thread subject. :smalltongue:

See this is exactly what I was arguing against, or one of the main points. There are reasons that people would choose to be a warrior even if poverty or class weren't a factor. The same as in the real world, desperation is not the only reason people would take that as a career path.

[Talakeal]

This thread is making some really weird assumptions that almost border on unfortunate implications.

I don't believe that any one discipline is necessarily "harder" than any other. Barring natural aptitudes, I really don't think any one career requires more dedication or time than any other, nor do I think different types of training (for example physical exercise vs. book learning) can be said to be harder than the other in any absolute terms. Some might have a lower barrier for entry or jive better with a given person's natural aptitudes, but I really don't think one can make a blanket statement like that.

Getting really good at something is incredibly hard. And, unlike real life where people plateau, RPGs allows nearly infinite advancement. So even if being a mage really was much easier than being a fighter, well that fighter could simply put the same amount of effort in and become an even better fighter, kind of like how AD&D had different XP requirements for different classes.

Also, the idea that you can be in peak physical shape with no effort and spend all your free time partying is laughable. While there might be a few exceptions, I guarantee that if you ask your average competitor in the Olympics / Mr. Universe competition how much time they spend training vs. "drinking and whoreing" the latter is not going to be the winner.


Most games have more abilities beyond just fighting and casting. Even if swinging a sword was easy, most characters have a large arsenal of secondary skills and proficiencies, all of which are irl full time careers in their own right. While D&D fighters are fairly lacking in skills, most can still be experts in multiple trades, and someone like a ranger, rogue, or monk is going to have to be busting their butt off to keep up with their massive skill sets.


On a side note, a couple people also associate character class with danger and chance of death. I would personally say that has more to do with being an adventurer vs. taking a job in town. In my experience anyone who chooses to be an adventurer, regardless of class, is going to be taking their life in their own hands on a near daily basis.*


*: Barring the kind of 3.5 campaigns I hear about on the internet but never see in real life where everyone is sitting in their own private slow time demi-plane and only leaves in the form of an astrally projected ice assassin aleax of themselves.

[AMFV]

This thread is making some really weird assumptions that almost border on unfortunate implications.

I'm not sure if this is the case, particularly since no two people have had the same set of assumptions that I've seen.



I don't believe that any one discipline is necessarily "harder" than any other. Barring natural aptitudes, I really don't think any one career requires more dedication or time than any other, nor do I think different types of training (for example physical exercise vs. book learning) can be said to be harder than the other in any absolute terms. Some might have a lower barrier for entry or jive better with a given person's natural aptitudes, but I really don't think one can make a blanket statement like that.

They aren't harder or easier, they are different. Physical work is fundamentally different experientially than book learning. Therefore some people will find one much more difficult than the other. I don't think people have been making the blanket statement that physical work is more difficult or more easy than academia. But they are different in difficulty.



Getting really good at something is incredibly hard. And, unlike real life where people plateau, RPGs allows nearly infinite advancement. So even if being a mage really was much easier than being a fighter, well that fighter could simply put the same amount of effort in and become an even better fighter, kind of like how AD&D had different XP requirements for different classes.

You are absolutely wrong. D&D involves working at the same plateau (while you're in a level) having a sudden spurt of advancement (when you level up) and then remaining at the same plateau. D&D is all about plateauing and advancing past plateaus. Most RPGs are the same way, very few of them allow consistent advancement throughout, which would ironically be unrealistic. Since in real life people tend to experience periods of stagnation and periods of advancement.



Also, the idea that you can be in peak physical shape with no effort and spend all your free time partying is laughable. While there might be a few exceptions, I guarantee that if you ask your average competitor in the Olympics / Mr. Universe competition how much time they spend training vs. "drinking and whoreing" the latter is not going to be the winner.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, spent almost all of his time when he wasn't training partying. And he was pretty damn effective. Also you're making a comparison to athletics which is patently a false one. A better comparison would be to professional soldiers. Who do relax in their off-time. You don't spend all of your freetime partying. You spend the time in between adventures relaxing so you don't become so stressed you break under the pressure. Because your day job is so rough and so intense that a few months of light work are necessary to recover from each adventure (the same as with a military deployment).

Then you get back into shape before the next adventure. Working yourself up to that point again, but if you try to work continuously you risk injury for very little advantage.



Most games have more abilities beyond just fighting and casting. Even if swinging a sword was easy, most characters have a large arsenal of secondary skills and proficiencies, all of which are irl full time careers in their own right. While D&D fighters are fairly lacking in skills, most can still be experts in multiple trades, and someone like a ranger, rogue, or monk is going to have to be busting their butt off to keep up with their massive skill sets.

The point is that a fighter advances all of his skills just by doing them. Yes, it's difficult to improve as a warrior. But a fighter is continually doing just that. The Wizard gets more powerful, but he still has to find or research spells. And write them down, and he's expected to cover different niches. A fighter becomes better just by fighting. So a fighter does get all the training they need. Because every time they go into a dungeon they are training harder than anybody else ever does. So yes, they can have an off-week or two in between dungeons, because they train so hard while in them.

[Talakeal]

A d&d wizard requires one day to learn a new spell and has a higher starting age. Afaik that is the only indication in the books that wizards are harder than martial characters. That is pretty light evidence to make a lot of these assumptions, and i would be pretty miffed if someone used it as a rationale to tell me i wasn't allowed to play a lazy party animal wizard or a hard working and dedicated martial artist who spends all day in the dojo honing her skills.


Also, there is a world of difference between doing enough to get by and actually striving to be the best you can possibly be. I would imagine that anyone who does the former is never going to make high levels without tremendous natural talent.

[AMFV]

A d&d wizard requires one day to learn a new spell and has a higher starting age. Afaik that is the only indication in the books that wizards are harder than martial characters. That is pretty light evidence to make a lot of these assumptions, and i would be pretty miffed if someone used it as a rationale to tell me i wasn't allowed to play a lazy party animal wizard or a hard working and dedicated martial artist who spends all day in the dojo honing her skills.

And you've had a D&D Wizard where you didn't want to learn at least ten spells per level? Because I really haven't usually it's closer to 20 to 30 to be honest. So that's at least a month spent on learning new spells. And that's provided that I'm just allowed to buy them, and I don't have to go hunting for them, or planeshift someplace to buy them, or teleport, in which case you'd have to add the time added by not having that uses of Plane Shift or Teleport per day. And that's still not accounting for a character who has to research the spells himself, since nobody is selling the ones he wants. And that takes weeks for a single spell.

Now you could have a lazy wizard, but a lazy wizard is going to suck... That's the problem, a Wizard doesn't improve anything but raw power when he's adventuring, and raw power doesn't help a Wizard that much, versatility does, and versatility is gained through the weeks of studying, haggling over spells, researching spells, spellcraft checks to find the existence of spells. Now it is possible to do something like an Easy-Bake Wizard, but the problem is that the fluff for that (and the feats required) essentially implies that they are studying pretty much continuously also, they're just better at balancing that with their adventuring career.

So building a non-sucky lazy Wizard, probably not going to happen. I'd recommend Sorcerer or Bard instead for that particular endeavor. But what about you're fighter who trains in a dojo? That's certainly possible but what you aren't recognizing is that by the time the fighter is going into battle they are already past the point where training in a dojo would really have any appreciable benefit for them, they've improved by doing, they don't have a reason to pretend to be doing anymore, why train in an environment that's fake when you've experienced the real thing?

You could train because you want to, and that works, but it will never be more than a little relaxing, in real life that sort of training can improve your conditioning, but there are limits on that, and your fighter has probably reached them.



Also, there is a world of difference between doing enough to get by and actually striving to be the best you can possibly be. I would imagine that anyone who does the former is never going to make high levels without tremendous natural talent.

Your warrior isn't just "doing enough to get by". He's improving at fighting because he actually does it. He "trains" by going into the most brutal environment possible and risking his life. All of his insights, all of his instincts, they're honed by actual combat. After you've tried to kill a real opponent who was trying to kill you, you aren't going to get the same training value from a wooden dummy. The things he needs, they've already been put into muscle memory. Because he has been through something so much more brutal than any training, the training he'd do between would be little more than recreation, if he enjoyed it.

Also in a metagame sense, the fighter does not have power in versatility, as the wizard does, he gets all of his power as he levels. He doesn't need to train excessively past that point since well he already has. He's been using his abilities. He doesn't gain a new level of fighting stuff, he just improves what he has, now he may gain something, but it won't be that dramatic.

[Aasimar]

Because not everybody who has to fight has what it takes to be a fighter. (natural inclination, training, etc.) Nevermind the more eclectic fighting classes.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Also in a metagame sense, the fighter does not have power in versatility, as the wizard does, he gets all of his power as he levels. He doesn't need to train excessively past that point since well he already has. He's been using his abilities. He doesn't gain a new level of fighting stuff, he just improves what he has, now he may gain something, but it won't be that dramatic.
The wizard's spells are basically just wizard equipment. It gives him more tools to use. Fighters get fighter equipment. Things like potions of flight, jump, barkskin, curing, bull's strength, better sword enchantments, better armor, magic rings, etc...

I don't see a fundamental difference really. Fighters do get more versatility, once you consider what they would spend their own money on in order to improve. Gathering the resources is still going to take time and effort, it's just frequently overlooked.

[AMFV]

The wizard's spells are basically just wizard equipment. It gives him more tools to use. Fighters get fighter equipment. Things like potions of flight, jump, barkskin, curing, bull's strength, better sword enchantments, better armor, magic rings, etc...

I don't see a fundamental difference really. Fighters do get more versatility, once you consider what they would spend their own money on in order to improve. Gathering the resources is still going to take time and effort, it's just frequently overlooked.

Gathering the resources is generally part of adventuring for fighters, depending on how OCD they are about items. The problem is that a wizard wants in a very big way a specific list of equipment. They want this much more than fighters want the same (although fighters do want certain piecs). There is a distinct difference between getting a +x weapon with a few enchantments and getting a series of specific spells.

The Wizard who wants to remain at his best has to grab the spells to do that, a fighter may have to grab the items, but he doesn't have to craft them himself (the equivalent of researching). A Wizard may have to do this. Depending on setting. Generally the fluff does tend to run this way.

[TheCountAlucard]

A wizard who scribes a spell into his spellbook pretty much has it forever - a fighter who gets a potion of barkskin can use it precisely once, and then he has to buy it again, and again, and again...

[SiuiS]

(for example physical exercise vs. book learning)

Casting spells != book learning. That's spellcraft/academics. You don't get the spell casting without privation and mediation, waiting to hear the voice of your god; without making deals with djinn and worse to learn esoteric approaches to physics that make sanity an untenable handicap; without going through initiation rituals with a high turnover and mortality rate that help shape your perspective utterly; without being the only kid to have poltergeist activity instead of wet dreams at puberty and struggle to get them under control before you kill someone.

Reflected in D&D rules, fluff, other games rules, fluff, and in the core media that is supposed to inform the rules and the fluff.


I guarantee that if you ask your average competitor in the Olympics / Mr. Universe competition how much time they spend training vs. "drinking and whoreing" the latter is not going to be the winner.

Except at the actual Olympics, of course, where every four years they have to air mail condoms to the Olympic city in a large acme crate.



On a side note, a couple people also associate character class with danger and chance of death. I would personally say that has more to do with being an adventurer vs. taking a job in town. In my experience anyone who chooses to be an adventurer, regardless of class, is going to be taking their life in their own hands on a near daily basis.*


The warrior decides to learn a new weapon form. He gets the ear, finds a trainer, and gets beaten bloody everyday, bruised but fine.

The caster experiments with alchemical regeants to develop a new spell and, except specifically in 3e, 4e and heartbreakers, stands a decent chance of blowing himself up.

Adventuring need not apply.


A d&d wizard requires one day to learn a new spell and has a higher starting age. Afaik that is the only indication in the books that wizards are harder than martial characters.

That's not all there is though. That's just all there is for hard rules in one edition of one game. Which is pretty light evidence, indeed.


A wizard who scribes a spell into his spellbook pretty much has it forever - a fighter who gets a potion of barkskin can use it precisely once, and then he has to buy it again, and again, and again...

That's why you get 'eternal potions'.

[Talakeal]

Well, by RAW you could learn every single spell in the PHB in just over a year. That is not a whole lot. Heck, getting a BA in a soft science takes more time than that.


I think it looks like a lot of people in this thread are using it as an excuse to "get back at the jocks" and are belittling physical accomplishments both in game and in real life to do so, and that is making me a little uncomfortable.

[Jay R]

I think it looks like a lot of people in this thread are using it as an excuse to "get back at the jocks" and are belittling physical accomplishments both in game and in real life to do so, and that is making me a little uncomfortable.

I don't think guessing at negative motivations serves any useful purpose.

King Arthur had hundreds of knights, and one wizard. Middle-Earth had hundreds of thousands of Fighters, and five wizards. Today's world has far more warriors than physicists or engineers. Throughout history, draft armies have shown that the majority of drafted recruits can be turned into warriors. Relatively few people have become philosophers, alchemists, chemists, physicists, engineers, or whatever a culture's closest equivalent of wizards might be.

Pointing out these facts is not inherently motivated by getting back at, or belittling, anybody. Pretending that it is just keeps you from addressing their actual points. You won't change anybody's mind that way

[Talakeal]

I don't think guessing at negative motivations serves any useful purpose.

King Arthur had hundreds of knights, and one wizard. Middle-Earth had hundreds of thousands of Fighters, and five wizards. Today's world has far more warriors than physicists or engineers. Throughout history, draft armies have shown that the majority of drafted recruits can be turned into warriors. Relatively few people have become philosophers, alchemists, chemists, physicists, engineers, or whatever a culture's closest equivalent of wizards might be.

Pointing out these facts is not inherently motivated by getting back at, or belittling, anybody. Pretending that it is just keeps you from addressing their actual points. You won't change anybody's mind that way

I apologize if you thought I was putting words in anybodies mouth, that was not my intention. I was mot talking about any one thing you, or any other poster, said, just kind of a feeling of tone that I felt was hanging over the whole thread and making me uncomfortable.

I am not really interested in debating this point about real life. Talking about the merits of large groups of rl people is likely to be both offensive and largely based on stereotype and anecdote rather than any actual knowledge.

If, however, you want to debate about a fantasy world I am totally game. The examples you use don't really relate to hard work, as in both cases being a wizard was an inborn talent stemming from supernatural origins.

Debating all of fantasy, or even all of d&d if tough, as we dont really have common ground. A lot of "facts" presented in this thread are just house rules or assumptions based on RAW or a particular campaign world.

If you want to narrow it though, we can look at Dragonlance, as it is the setting I am most familiar with. In this world being a mage requires you be born with the talent, which appears to be a recessive genetic trait, learn from a master in a society where most people are poor and barely literate, and take a dangerous test to earn a license to practice magic. Any one of these would be a Very good reason for wizards being rare without factoring effort or danger into it.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I don't think guessing at negative motivations serves any useful purpose.

King Arthur had hundreds of knights, and one wizard. Middle-Earth had hundreds of thousands of Fighters, and five wizards. Today's world has far more warriors than physicists or engineers. Throughout history, draft armies have shown that the majority of drafted recruits can be turned into warriors. Relatively few people have become philosophers, alchemists, chemists, physicists, engineers, or whatever a culture's closest equivalent of wizards might be.

Pointing out these facts is not inherently motivated by getting back at, or belittling, anybody. Pretending that it is just keeps you from addressing their actual points. You won't change anybody's mind that way

Merlin was not a D&D wizard. He was more like an adept with lots of ranks in various Knowledges. Gandalf was not a D&D wizard. He was a divine being. Warriors in those were pretty much meant to be real life warriors. At best, they were using E6.

In addition, epic fantasy stories from the 20th and 21st century seem to be more about the world than about the characters. The characters are only a drop in the bucket, they serve as our eyes and ears to the events going on around them.

Now, let's look at some other legends and stories, shall we? Beowulf, Hercules, Achilles, Thor. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Hero. Berserk. Kung Fu Panda. RWBY.

[Tzevaot]

I think it is becuase as in real life we have the players and the pawns.

Seriously now in most setting wizards are villains. That says something about the type of person who wants to be a wizard and how people perceive this "profession".

[AMFV]

Well, by RAW you could learn every single spell in the PHB in just over a year. That is not a whole lot. Heck, getting a BA in a soft science takes more time than that.

Try getting a BA in a soft science, or in anything while being in the Military full time. That's a much closer comparison. It takes a year if the wizard dedicates all of their time to doing just that. Wizards however tend to have other professions, many are adventurers, and adventurers do not have a year to sit around writing spells, they have two to three weeks between adventures to scribble spells, and they have to find them, which may take time as well depending on GM permissiveness and setting.

Furthermore there are more good spells than there are spells in the PHB, now you could probably get by with less spells, the Easy-Bake Wizard does. But that's a limiting factor. Obtaining spells is a serious issue for Wizards. And it would present an entry barrier into the career. So it is true that Wizards would have less freetime on average than Fighters would,at least in D&D and fluff-wise I think in pretty much every game I've ever seen where magic wasn't a result of genetics or a freak of nature type thing. In which case there is an in-setting explanation for the existence of fighters and the limited number of mages.



I think it looks like a lot of people in this thread are using it as an excuse to "get back at the jocks" and are belittling physical accomplishments both in game and in real life to do so, and that is making me a little uncomfortable.

It seems unlikely that this would be the case for me, considering that I have presented myself as a fairly close analog to somebody who "chose to be a fighter" in the real world. I'm just saying when I was in the military I was much more aware that my free time was in fact free time than when I was in academia and studying. As a student, you're expected to study, you don't really have free time. If I was in the military, I did have to go to work, and go on long deployments. But the second I was home, I could get blackout drunk if I so chose, my freetime was my own. And it seems that this is a reasonable comparison.

There are definitely reasons people would find the life of a fighter easier, and freetime is one of them. It isn't diminishing to anybody to say that certain jobs often have more downtime.


I apologize if you thought I was putting words in anybodies mouth, that was not my intention. I was mot talking about any one thing you, or any other poster, said, just kind of a feeling of tone that I felt was hanging over the whole thread and making me uncomfortable.

Well you have some of that, in fact some of that from the same side of the debate, which is why I stated that there was no one side to this debate. Everybody has a different viewpoint and most people are arguing for their slightly modified viewpoint.



I am not really interested in debating this point about real life. Talking about the merits of large groups of rl people is likely to be both offensive and largely based on stereotype and anecdote rather than any actual knowledge.

Well since we are discussing how to increase the feeling of verisimilitude real world experience is liable to be significant. Also of note, my experience is not based on stereotypes, but on actual personal experience as a professional in a military field. That should count for something.



If, however, you want to debate about a fantasy world I am totally game. The examples you use don't really relate to hard work, as in both cases being a wizard was an inborn talent stemming from supernatural origins.

Depending on setting this can certainly be a factor.



Debating all of fantasy, or even all of d&d if tough, as we dont really have common ground. A lot of "facts" presented in this thread are just house rules or assumptions based on RAW or a particular campaign world.

Well all facts about a game are going to be houserules or assumptions derived from the rules or from the setting. If you don't allow any of that then it is literally impossible to discuss the subject. As far as RAW goes, I've pointed out that even including your "year" figure you have to account for the fact that the majority of the time is spent adventuring. Also you have to account for the fact that the Wizard does have to sleep, and that he's not going to work all the time, and that he has to locate spells. So you're still looking at a significant free time difference between Wizards and Fighters.



If you want to narrow it though, we can look at Dragonlance, as it is the setting I am most familiar with. In this world being a mage requires you be born with the talent, which appears to be a recessive genetic trait, learn from a master in a society where most people are poor and barely literate, and take a dangerous test to earn a license to practice magic. Any one of these would be a Very good reason for wizards being rare without factoring effort or danger into it.

True, which is why we haven't been discussing Dragonlance. It's easy to prove that there would be fighters in a setting like that. We are attempting to prove that in a generic 3.5 setting people would still choose to be fighters, since once that's proven it'll trickle down to prove the same for virtually everything. And I think we're doing a good job at succeeding in this, or at least I'd like to think so.

[Arbane]

Merlin was not a D&D wizard. He was more like an adept with lots of ranks in various Knowledges. Gandalf was not a D&D wizard. He was a divine being. Warriors in those were pretty much meant to be real life warriors. At best, they were using E6.

Prior to D&D, I don't think there's been a single non-god spellcaster in fiction OR mythology that's as powerful as a high-level 3.5 D&D wizard.

[Marlowe]

I don't think guessing at negative motivations serves any useful purpose.

King Arthur had hundreds of knights, and one wizard. Middle-Earth had hundreds of thousands of Fighters, and five wizards. Today's world has far more warriors than physicists or engineers. Throughout history, draft armies have shown that the majority of drafted recruits can be turned into warriors. Relatively few people have become philosophers, alchemists, chemists, physicists, engineers, or whatever a culture's closest equivalent of wizards might be.


No. Middle Earth does not have hundreds of thousands of anything. A few thousand combatants is a big army in Middle Earth, as you'd expect of a largely wild and underdeveloped continent.

Also, most of those are going to be Warriors (the NPC class) rather than Fighters. Fighters are a PC class. They simply are not that common.

[AMFV]

Prior to D&D, I don't think there's been a single non-god spellcaster in fiction OR mythology that's as powerful as a high-level 3.5 D&D wizard.

Well the Vikings were pretty close. Baba Yaga has been pretty close in some stories. In any case I think we're close to establishing that even in 3.5 people would be willing to act as fighters.

[The Witch-King]

Casting spells != book learning. That's spellcraft/academics. You don't get the spell casting without privation and mediation, waiting to hear the voice of your god; without making deals with djinn and worse to learn esoteric approaches to physics that make sanity an untenable handicap; without going through initiation rituals with a high turnover and mortality rate that help shape your perspective utterly; without being the only kid to have poltergeist activity instead of wet dreams at puberty and struggle to get them under control before you kill someone.

That's awesome! May I quote you in my signature? Also -- did you mean 'mediation' or 'meditation'?

And on a related note, does anyone know how many lines of text I'm allowed to have in my sig? Thanks!

[Wardog]

I think most of the answers to the OP can be summarised as:

1) Ability
2) Preferences
3) Opportunity

1) Some people are going to be naturally more suited to working as a warrior than as a wizard. If you have 18str and 11int, you will be more useful as the former, just as someone with 11 str and 18 int will make a much better wizard.

2) Even if you are equally adept at both, if someone enjoys physical pursuits more than academic, they may well chose the former, even if the latter would be objectively "better". And if they find academic (or more specifically magical) study sufficiently boring or unpleasant, they might not even be able to do it effectively, even if their int is high enough.

3) In a medieval-style world, academic pursuits are for a minority. Even without some sort of mageocracy maintaining a monopoly of mystical training, most people aren't going to have the opportunity to get the sort of schooling necessary to become a wizard. Most commoners are going to be labourers of some kind. Those bright enough to be worth teaching to read and right (probably by the church) are probably going to become clerks, or go into the priesthood ("cleric" and "clerk" have a common etymology for a reason). People from the merchant class are going to have better access to education - but will probably become merchants (or lawyers, or the like). Even in default D&D, which generally seems to be both a more literate and a more liberal society than the real middle ages, it is unlikely that very many people would have that opportunity.



And that's before you get to more setting-dependent issues, such as the aforementioned magical monopoly, or magic being seen as sinful, or all magic being inherently dangerous, or needing a magic gene to be able to cast spells, or it taking years or decades of study to become a wizard, etc. (Also, a lot of the game rules are probably written with players in mind, and aren't intended to represent what would be possible or practical if everyone else wanted to be a wizard. The game can treat material components as common enough that the PC wizard doesn't need to keep track of them or pay to replenish them - that doesn't mean they are common enough that the same would apply if everyone in the world was a wizard).


Plus, even in vanilla D&D, magic is dangerous. I don't think a warrior can accidently stab himself with his own sword without the player or DM specifically deciding they do, but a wizard can easily blow themselves up with a fireball if they misjudge the range, or summon something that turns on them. And given that wizards are usually frailer than warriors, and spells are usually powerfuller than spells, that would probably be even worse than accidently stabbing yourself in the face.

[Braininthejar2]

Same us why we aren't all engineers, I guess.

Also, wizards get awesome stuff at high levels: most people in the world stay level 1 all their lives. Being a level 1 wizard isn't cool.

[SiuiS]

That's awesome! May I quote you in my signature? Also -- did you mean 'mediation' or 'meditation'?

Sure, and yes that should have been meditation. My phone can't keep up when I type fast sometimes >_>


And on a related note, does anyone know how many lines of text I'm allowed to have in my sig? Thanks!

According to the forum rules, it's 12 lines but with wrap included. Or 2,000 characters, I believe.


Total height of your signature may not exceed 12 lines or equivalent. A smaller font may allow additional lines and a larger font will count against multiple lines. A 120 pixel high image is equivalent to 8 lines, a spoiler with no blank lines around it is equivalent to 2 lines. Please be aware of text wrapping as long lines will count as multiple lines at our discretion.

Other than those, knock yourself out. :)


Same us why we aren't all engineers, I guess.

Also, wizards get awesome stuff at high levels: most people in the world stay level 1 all their lives. Being a level 1 wizard isn't cool.

Depends on spell selection wouldn't it?

[AMFV]

Same us why we aren't all engineers, I guess.

Also, wizards get awesome stuff at high levels: most people in the world stay level 1 all their lives. Being a level 1 wizard isn't cool.

Ray of Frost is a level 0 Spell, and it's very cool. Like ice-cold.

[Marlowe]

Same us why we aren't all engineers, I guess.

Also, wizards get awesome stuff at high levels: most people in the world stay level 1 all their lives. Being a level 1 wizard isn't cool.

Wizard is one of the more powerful classes at level one. And one of the few that can expand their abilities without having to go up in level. In an E1 world, I'd certain choose it over most other classes.

Loads of strange assumptions popping up in this thread.

-"First level Wizards are weak!" - nope.

-"Wizards need a high stat to be effective" - not really; not more than any other class. Wizards want a high stat to be more effective.

-"Being a Wizard is a rich kid's game!" - no. Being a Fighter is a rich kid's game. Look at the cost of scale armour vs a commoner's salary. "Well-equipped Fighting Man" has historically and in-game always been a role that required substantial disposable income.

-"There are [insert inflated number] of Fighters in the world and few Wizards!" - In most settings, there's not supposed to be large numbers of any PC classes in the world.

And the really biggy:

-"This thread is about Wizards vs Fighters" - no, it's about why somebody would chose to be a martial character rather than a spellcaster of some description.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Wizard is one of the more powerful classes at level one. And one of the few that can expand their abilities without having to go up in level. In an E1 world, I'd certain choose it over most other classes.
Personally, I'd prefer the rogue. Since restriction to level 1 means I'd never become a master at anything, I may as well be a dabbler in many things. If I were an arcane spellcaster, I'd go with sorcerer, since that would mean more magical juice for a longer day. But really, everyone is going to have different preferences here.


Loads of strange assumptions popping up in this thread.
Agreed, at least partly. I'll expand on some statements and question others.

-"First level Wizards are weak!" - nope.
They're not really weaker than any other first level class. But after they've blown their few tricks for the day, they become a glorified commoner. As a wizard levels up, they can last longer, but still have this problem. A fighter, rogue and many other classes never become a glorified commoner no matter how long their day lasts.

-"Wizards need a high stat to be effective" - not really; not more than any other class. Wizards want a high stat to be more effective.
Like most times wizards are discussed, I think people are assuming the only thing that matters is high level play. And when you get to the point where you potentially have access to very high level spells, you need that int to allow you access to those high level spells.

But the difference between a 14 int and 18 int wizard at level 1 is the spells that allow saves have a slightly higher chance of success for one wizard. There really is no great difference until level 9. And many games I've been in don't go much higher than that.

But if I played a low level game, intending to be a single classed wizard with 14 int and 18 strength (or whatever the high stat is not being in intelligence), I suspect a lot of people would criticize that supposedly obvious stupid choice. Even if it doesn't make any real difference. I actually have been criticized for building spellcasters like this before. I find such critique to be pretty silly.

-"Being a Wizard is a rich kid's game!" - no. Being a Fighter is a rich kid's game. Look at the cost of scale armour vs a commoner's salary. "Well-equipped Fighting Man" has historically and in-game always been a role that required substantial disposable income.
In the game, fighters begin with more disposable income than a wizard. I usually take this to mean the wizard's training and the fighter's training took different amounts of money to complete. I don't think this is that unfair an assumption to make, but I think wizardry being the rich kid's game has more to do with the specific setting in mind than a generic setting.

-"There are [insert inflated number] of Fighters in the world and few Wizards!" - In most settings, there's not supposed to be large numbers of any PC classes in the world.
This is supposed to be true, but when I actually run games, I generally don't actually often construct NPCs using the NPC classes. Except in very rare cases. I suspect the way people discuss these topics that I am not all that rare in doing this.


And the really biggy:

-"This thread is about Wizards vs Fighters" - no, it's about why somebody would chose to be a martial character rather than a spellcaster of some description.
I suspect this is because pro-martial class side quickly broke down the question to regard the definitive martial class vs the definitive spellcaster class.

Of course, there's a lot of other martial classes, like the monk, and spellcasters, like the druid. Approaching this from the standpoint of believing spellcasting isn't for everyone, if there were a clear reason why someone would pick the least flavorful martial class over the generally highest regarded spellcasting class, then every other possible choice also makes sense.

I don't know why the pro-wizards side is really using that assumption, though. All they can do is try to refute that one specific general approach to the question. Leaving classes as different as the rogue completely unaddressed with all the points they're making about wizards being the clear, obvious choice.

[AMFV]

Wizard is one of the more powerful classes at level one. And one of the few that can expand their abilities without having to go up in level. In an E1 world, I'd certain choose it over most other classes.

Loads of strange assumptions popping up in this thread.

-"First level Wizards are weak!" - nope.

That one varies depending on game setting and system AD&D level 1 Wizards are very weak and flimsy. For what it's worth I've been using 3.5 as a model only because being a Wizard in 3.5 is more desirable and as such if it can be proven that fighters would exist in that model logically they should elsewhere.



-"Wizards need a high stat to be effective" - not really; not more than any other class. Wizards want a high stat to be more effective.

But Wizards need a stat of at least 10, and that would make them so mediocre as to be laughable. Fighters do better with a lower spread of stats, similar to the elite array.



-"Being a Wizard is a rich kid's game!" - no. Being a Fighter is a rich kid's game. Look at the cost of scale armour vs a commoner's salary. "Well-equipped Fighting Man" has historically and in-game always been a role that required substantial disposable income.

Being a professional soldier is not really a rich kid's game, at least not in any era where they've really had professional soldiers. Being a professional soldier typically involves some kind of servitude to the group that gives you your equipment, you work to pay back the mercenary group for your armor and weapons and training, very much like the real world. I suspect that it's often very to conflate wealth with military success, because historically the wealthy are the ones that could afford to manipulate the media to write about them. But I imagine that the majority of the military in a pseudo-medieval setting are paid mercenaries, which is very similar to an actual medieval setting, however I suspect historically downplayed.



-"There are [insert inflated number] of Fighters in the world and few Wizards!" - In most settings, there's not supposed to be large numbers of any PC classes in the world.

Well considering the thread was discussing martial characters in total, rather than fighters, that's a fair assumption.



-"This thread is about Wizards vs Fighters" - no, it's about why somebody would chose to be a martial character rather than a spellcaster of some description.

I think that there really hasn't been anybody who has made this assumption at all. I haven't and I don't recollect anybody with what I consider even close to that reading. Mostly what I've seen are people suggesting that the opportunity cost for being a wizard and being a fighter are exactly the same.

The closest we've gotten to that, is my claim that sans instant access to Sigil the Wizard is going to have to find somebody who can sell him scrolls or research spells, put a damper on his freetime, and that's the price of ultimate power.

[S@tanicoaldo]

This discussion has been pretty D&D centric. The basic premise for Wizard life being easier is the assumption that wizards just stay in a tower and read books, and presto, ultimate cosmic power!

But that's not how it went in folklore, not how it went in Tolkien's works, not how it went in Lovecraft's works, not how it went in Howard's works... pretty much not how it went in any of the inspirations for RPGs.

How it did go, then?

Well, Lovecraft's and Howard's works, the price for magic routinely is going to extremely distant and abandoned places and facing horrible abominations From Beyong. In order to get those books to read in your tower, you'll have to go to some ruined city in the middle of the desert and GO INSANE, or hope some other guy has done that for you so you can GO INSANE from reading his work.

Basically, wizarding requires you to do the horribly dangerous adventuring thing while being any mundane hero does not. And even after you do it, it's less "ultimate cosmic power" and more "plaything of apathetic cosmic powers".

In Tolkien's work, learning magic is hard. Most common types of magic actually require you to be the top of your craft first - Elves, Numenorians and Dwarves could make those awesome things because they had decades, even centuries or millenias to perfect their craft to the point where it could reach magical heights. A normal human just doesn't have the choice to do that, most would die of old age before ever getting there. Those who actually "cast spells" akin to those in D&D tend to be angels and demons in disguise, and the price for them doing that is to cloak themselves in vastly inferior corporeal forms.

In folklore, the "easiness" of magic came at the cost of your soul. Or, magic was highly unreliable, and you did it mostly "to be sure" while also undertaking mundane efforts to guarantee your success. And even if, as a Shaman, Priest or Witch-Doctor, you'd be esteemed and powerful member of society, so were warriors. Magic powers by and large were not failsafe protection against cold, sharp steel in mythology - on the contrary, what we today see as "mundane" weapons, like iron swords or firearms, were considered SUPER-EFFECTIVE against supernatural forces, because they symbolized man's triumph over nature.

THIS! This is the main point in my opinion. Magic was always portrayed as something evil, corrupting and sinister or something that demands a high craftsman skill (like alchemy).

People used to believe you could gain powers like flight and control the weather by simply kissing the devil's butt. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Osculum_infame.jpg

It was not hard to get, you don't need to be a genius or something, but it was an evil act.

In my games I tend to go with the Lovecraft's and Howard's works. Besides hard to find magic is like a drug and slowly corrupts the body, mind and soul of the user, that would explain why we do not have so many people who want to be a wizard. But there are people willing to suffer the effects of corruption slowly becoming a monstrous, infamous, horrible, abominable creature and lose their sanity.

After all that is the price for:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D8i8QGgz0k

EDIT: It would also explain why arcane magic cannot heal like divine magic. If there is nothing evil with it why mages are not able to heal?

[AMFV]

EDIT: It would also explain why arcane magic cannot heal like divine magic. If there is nothing evil with it why mages are not able to heal?

I can't heal people, and I don't think I'm evil. All of my professional skills have absolutely nothing to do with healing others, with the exception of some very basic first aid, and I wouldn't consider those professions evil.

But I'll turn this around. If Wizards aren't good, why aren't they able to channel negative energy to inflict harm, cause they can't do that either.

Also in some systems Wizards can heal.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah, below the magic systems of the "hard and corrupting" variety is the "magic is just plain evil!" variety which I pretty much hate. it just doesn't seem fun, and it forces me to play a mundane character that I'm not really interested in doing anyways, even an Inquisitor with holy powers would be more interesting, at least then I am wielding awesome powers to do something cool, even if its not outright blasting things or whatever. I don't get peoples obsession with making magic unfun, complicated, rare, boring or otherwise just a lot of pain to go through for little reward. you might as well just say "magic is off limits, no cool powers for you." if you want to play a low fantasy game just say so, so I can say "kay bye." and find a game where magic is awesome, and I don't mean DnD-kind, they're too powerful and all controlling to be awesome.

[S@tanicoaldo]

I can't heal people, and I don't think I'm evil. All of my professional skills have absolutely nothing to do with healing others, with the exception of some very basic first aid, and I wouldn't consider those professions evil.

But I'll turn this around. If Wizards aren't good, why aren't they able to channel negative energy to inflict harm, cause they can't do that either.

Also in some systems Wizards can heal.

Well... They can cast energy drain...


yeah, below the magic systems of the "hard and corrupting" variety is the "magic is just plain evil!" variety which I pretty much hate. it just doesn't seem fun, and it forces me to play a mundane character that I'm not really interested in doing anyways, even an Inquisitor with holy powers would be more interesting, at least then I am wielding awesome powers to do something cool, even if its not outright blasting things or whatever. I don't get peoples obsession with making magic unfun, complicated, rare, boring or otherwise just a lot of pain to go through for little reward. you might as well just say "magic is off limits, no cool powers for you." if you want to play a low fantasy game just say so, so I can say "kay bye." and find a game where magic is awesome, and I don't mean DnD-kind, they're too powerful and all controlling to be awesome.

Not evil mind you... I never played like that. Just alien and amoral.

Dunno why I just feel that magic should be like that. I guess it is thanks to the fantasy literature I used to read when I was a kid(Sword and sorcery). And the power for a price and power corrupts tropes.

If power has price and it corrupts than great powers must cost and corrupt greatly.

[Talakeal]

yeah, below the magic systems of the "hard and corrupting" variety is the "magic is just plain evil!" variety which I pretty much hate. it just doesn't seem fun, and it forces me to play a mundane character that I'm not really interested in doing anyways, even an Inquisitor with holy powers would be more interesting, at least then I am wielding awesome powers to do something cool, even if its not outright blasting things or whatever. I don't get peoples obsession with making magic unfun, complicated, rare, boring or otherwise just a lot of pain to go through for little reward. you might as well just say "magic is off limits, no cool powers for you." if you want to play a low fantasy game just say so, so I can say "kay bye." and find a game where magic is awesome, and I don't mean DnD-kind, they're too powerful and all controlling to be awesome.

That's a pretty common opinion, but one that I have never been able to wrap my head around. Doesn't having something like magic be omnipresent and common place make it less cool and special; not more so?

[Milo v3]

That's a pretty common opinion, but one that I have never been able to wrap my head around. Doesn't having something like magic be omnipresent and common place make it less cool and special; not more so?

Well, if magic is so super corrupting and dark, then it really limits Players using it and it just makes you feel like your being punished for playing your character. I'd get bored with that quickly.

[Lord Raziere]

That's a pretty common opinion, but one that I have never been able to wrap my head around. Doesn't having something like magic be omnipresent and common place make it less cool and special; not more so?

I love technology. does that mean I only want a single piece of technology to forever gaze in wonderment at? or do I want as much as I can, be surrounded in it, with each device having its own purpose and use?

similarly, a rich man loves money. does that mean they only want one coin to be happy about?

I also love books. does that mean I only want one book?

[Talakeal]

I love technology. does that mean I only want a single piece of technology to forever gaze in wonderment at? or do I want as much as I can, be surrounded in it, with each device having its own purpose and use?

similarly, a rich man loves money. does that mean they only want one coin to be happy about?

I also love books. does that mean I only want one book?

I would say that no, you aren't going to be gazing in wonderment at any technology if you are surrounded by it, you will just see it as a mundane part of everyday life and be annoyed when you have to make due without it. A hundred or so years ago light bulbs and refrigerators were amazing things that revolutionized the world. Now they are just background noise that we don't appreciate except when the power goes out and we get grumpy about drinking warm sodas and fumbling around in the dark.

Well, psychological studies have shown that most people value money more as a status symbol than an actual means of purchasing power, so for your second example I would say THEY want plenty of money, but most absolutely do not want to be surrounded by other people with lots of money.

[Lord Raziere]

I would say that no, you aren't going to be gazing in wonderment at any technology if you are surrounded by it, you will just see it as a mundane part of everyday life and be annoyed when you have to make due without it. A hundred or so years ago light bulbs and refrigerators were amazing things that revolutionized the world. Now they are just background noise that we don't appreciate except when the power goes out and we get grumpy about drinking warm sodas and fumbling around in the dark.

Well, psychological studies have shown that most people value money more as a status symbol than an actual means of purchasing power, so for your second example I would say THEY want plenty of money, but most absolutely do not want to be surrounded by other people with lots of money.

:smallbiggrin:

you still can't refute me on the book though, otherwise you'd have done so in that post.

what about the hardcore science-fiction fan? or the people who just can't seem to get enough of superhero comics? or stuffed animals, or collections, or....well lots of things.

that and love is more than just eternally gazing at something with a grin on one's face. a short-sighted person takes what they have for granted as you say. I am not short-sighted. without the technology around me, I would not be the individual I am today. would not have the interests I have. I have everything to thank for technology. for science. for progress. one can still appreciate what surrounds me without gushing about it. rarity is not the only determination of value. it is a physical determination of value, and nothing more, when there are far greater ways to value something.

I may not think about it everyday, but ultimately even the lowly fork is a production of a long change of society and technology that I am thankful for. that and we can we not find value in that its commonplace? that we do not have to worry about the dark? rarity seems such a shallow way to value something: hey look everyone I have something that you will never have, gaze and be jealous.

[Talakeal]

:smallbiggrin:

you still can't refute me on the book though, otherwise you'd have done so in that post.

what about the hardcore science-fiction fan? or the people who just can't seem to get enough of superhero comics? or stuffed animals, or collections, or....well lots of things.

that and love is more than just eternally gazing at something with a grin on one's face. a short-sighted person takes what they have for granted as you say. I am not short-sighted. without the technology around me, I would not be the individual I am today. would not have the interests I have. I have everything to thank for technology. for science. for progress. one can still appreciate what surrounds me without gushing about it. rarity is not the only determination of value. it is a physical determination of value, and nothing more, when there are far greater ways to value something.

I may not think about it everyday, but ultimately even the lowly fork is a production of a long change of society and technology that I am thankful for. that and we can we not find value in that its commonplace? that we do not have to worry about the dark? rarity seems such a shallow way to value something: hey look everyone I have something that you will never have, gaze and be jealous.

Actually I didn't see the book part. However, if you want me to address it in a similar vein:

I don't know about you, but I certainly got a lot more fun and enjoyment out of books when they were rare. Back in the 90s I would spend days searching gaming stores and used book stores for new gaming books, and it was great fun when I found a new one I didn't even know existed, and I read them all. Now with Amazon, and Ebay, and Drive Thru RPG I can get any book in the world delivered to my door for a relatively small amount of money. There is no joy and wonder in it, and 90% of the books on my shelf never even get read.

High magic settings are similar. Magic that has become a common commodity just doesn't feel "magical" to me.

[Lord Raziere]

Actually I didn't see the book part. However, if you want me to address it in a similar vein:

I don't know about you, but I certainly got a lot more fun and enjoyment out of books when they were rare. Back in the 90s I would spend days searching gaming stores and used book stores for new gaming books, and it was great fun when I found a new one I didn't even know existed, and I read them all. Now with Amazon, and Ebay, and Drive Thru RPG I can get any book in the world delivered to my door for a relatively small amount of money. There is no joy and wonder in it, and 90% of the books on my shelf never even get read.

High magic settings are similar. Magic that has become a common commodity just doesn't feel "magical" to me.

then I guess you simply don't see things the way I do, a pity that you cling to rarity as a reason to stop enjoying things.

[Arbane]

I don't get peoples obsession with making magic unfun, complicated, rare, boring or otherwise just a lot of pain to go through for little reward. you might as well just say "magic is off limits, no cool powers for you." if you want to play a low fantasy game just say so, so I can say "kay bye." and find a game where magic is awesome, and I don't mean DnD-kind, they're too powerful and all controlling to be awesome.

So, you don't like 'magic has drawbacks' systems, AND you don't like D&D 'magic is all-powerful'....

...can you give an example of a system that hits the happy medium for you? (I can think fo a few possibilities.)

[Lord Raziere]

So, you don't like 'magic has drawbacks' systems, AND you don't like D&D 'magic is all-powerful'....

...can you give an example of a system that hits the happy medium for you? (I can think fo a few possibilities.)

Fairy Tail, or something like Anima Beyond Fantasy where you pick a path of magic and stick with it, y'know themed kind of thing where if your a pyromancer, you can only do things with fire. doesn't mean you can't be creative, but you have to be creative with the specialization you have. No picking other kinds of spells, but you can round yourself out from your magical specialization by learning mundane skills. that sort of thing, it gives you a definite advantage but its not all powerful.

[SiuiS]

Well, if magic is so super corrupting and dark, then it really limits Players using it and it just makes you feel like your being punished for playing your character. I'd get bored with that quickly.

Why? There are a number of games where the character failing is supposed to be fun for the player. World of darkness, paranoia, apocalypseworld... The idea that only by living vicariously through your character and being a rock star can you have fun and win is outdated and strictly limited to a very specific subset of games, includin all D&D editions.

But D&D is not all of Roleplaying.

[Lord Raziere]

Why? There are a number of games where the character failing is supposed to be fun for the player. World of darkness, paranoia, apocalypseworld... The idea that only by living vicariously through your character and being a rock star can you have fun and win is outdated and strictly limited to a very specific subset of games, includin all D&D editions.

But D&D is not all of Roleplaying.

Well.... newsflash: its simply not fun for me. I just can't see myself having fun with it, so I won't. It doesn't matter if other people find it fun, they can go have that fun in other systems, but where is my kind of fun that isn't all powerful DnD magic that can do anything?

no one is saying that you can't have those but....its not really the normal magic I expect to see, or want to see. the way I see it, DnD magic is the best of bad options: sure its prepared-slot thing where I can only shoot my fireball four times at most, but the others go:
"well in mine, your fireballs can only work when no one is around to see it, and even that is not a guarantee!"
and then the one after that goes:
"well mine doesn't have any fireballs at all, and you need to do a lengthy ritual to get anything done, and that is mostly to summon a bunch of demons and chariots to do things for you!"
and then another goes :
"well MINE you have read grimoires that drive you insane to mutate my arms into tentacles!"
and then there are the ones that go:
"well MINE involves sacrificing twenty-two virgins and then drinking their blood chanting the 666 names of Satan backwards so that I can summon a demon who screws me over and eats my soul for kicks while only technically fulfilling his end of the bargain in the most jerkish way possible!"
all acting as if these are a selling point, and I'm just like:
"Dude. why aren't you going in the opposite direction? GIVE ME MY MAGITECH ALREADY!"

[SiuiS]

Well.... newsflash: its simply not fun for me. I just can't see myself having fun with it, so I won't. It doesn't matter if other people find it fun, they can go have that fun in other systems, but where is my kind of fun that isn't all powerful DnD magic that can do anything?

I'm not talking about you. Your preferences are relevant but not the be-all and end-all. This thread is in general RPG section; a D&D bias in magic and a D&D bias in standard operating procedure are just as bad as a bias in racial interaction or a bias in a sexually diverse workplace.

If someone makes a comment about warriors or magic in fiction as a general trend or series of trends, sorry, but how you like to play D&D doesn't matter. How I like to play of doesn't matter either, though.


no one is saying that you can't have those but....its not really the normal magic I expect to see, or want to see. the way I see it, DnD magic is the best of bad options: sure its prepared-slot thing where I can only shoot my fireball four times at most, but the others go:
"well in mine, your fireballs can only work when no one is around to see it, and even that is not a guarantee!"
and then the one after that goes:
"well mine doesn't have any fireballs at all, and you need to do a lengthy ritual to get anything done, and that is mostly to summon a bunch of demons and chariots to do things for you!"
and then another goes :
"well MINE you have read grimoires that drive you insane to mutate my arms into tentacles!"
and then there are the ones that go:
"well MINE involves sacrificing twenty-two virgins and then drinking their blood chanting the 666 names of Satan backwards so that I can summon a demon who screws me over and eats my soul for kicks while only technically fulfilling his end of the bargain in the most jerkish way possible!"
all acting as if these are a selling point, and I'm just like:
"Dude. why aren't you going in the opposite direction? GIVE ME MY MAGITECH ALREADY!"

This does not address the question.

Why are Games where magic is a corrupting force not fun for players? Answer: that is untrue, these games can be fun for players. Why do games where magic is a corruptive force limit your opportunities for fun? Answer: this is untrue, they don't by nature limits your possibilities.

Magic in D&D is a corrupting force! Mages get uppity because "screw you fighter, your proud legacy of honorable tradition means nothing because I can read draconic and murder you In Your sleep!", and "pssh we don't need armies who sacrifice themselves nobly to symbolize their people in honorable combat I'll just murder them all with god power". How is that not corrupt? That's frikken evil! We've argued the value of replacing people who want to matter and who seek to change the world with a select few who maintain tyranny through ruthless murder, assassination and fear.

But that's what you like to play.

Ergo, I posit that you do not have a problem with magic as a corrupting force. You have a problem with games where problems are internal (hubris, pride, greed, moral blindness) rather than external (goblins, dragons, evil beings). Thats cool. But if D&D can be a game about external problems that uses a corruptig magic then Other games where magic is a corruptive force can also be played with externalized problems, so people shouldn't have the objection to them they do.

It sounds really like general-you want to play as you've always played, and the objection is to games which shift focus to make you feel 'blamed' rather than on corruption sucking.

Actually Razierre, I think that may be why you don't like the world of darkness. It's entire point is to use the external to symbolize the internal and deal with it. Huh. Might also be why I've slowly begun to grow out of D&D... Neat!

[Lord Raziere]

Uh... no?

I'm one of the people who argued the most for class equality of power between warriors and wizards. a player shouldn't be better than another just because they chose a different class.

wizards aren't better than anyone else, they just have awesome abilities that I want. I don't see anything wrong with enjoying them as long as I don't hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it.

so, to answer the actual question of the thread, the answer varies based on the setting. in some of them, the distinction is non-existent or near nonexistent.

and, ok, I like them external, so what? that doesn't mean I'm like black-and-white morality thank you very much. the world is more complex than that.

[Milo v3]

Why? There are a number of games where the character failing is supposed to be fun for the player. World of darkness, paranoia, apocalypseworld... The idea that only by living vicariously through your character and being a rock star can you have fun and win is outdated and strictly limited to a very specific subset of games, includin all D&D editions.

But D&D is not all of Roleplaying.

I don't really see what that reply has to do with what I said.

Firstly, I never said that failure can't be fun and in fact play and run World of Darkness games and Call of Cthuhlu. Second, never said anything about just wining. Third, never mentioned D&D.

As for why. Because I personally don't like being punished for casting a spell.... Why do I require more of a reason aside from my personal preference. :smallconfused:


Why are Games where magic is a corrupting force not fun for players? Answer: that is untrue, these games can be fun for players. Why do games where magic is a corruptive force limit your opportunities for fun? Answer: this is untrue, they don't by nature limits your possibilities.
Just because it can be fun doesn't mean it IS definitively fun for everyone on the planet. And when I said corruptive magic is limiting, I was saying about how it lowers the chance of several people choosing that option since it punishes them for simply filling their role as a character.


Magic in D&D is a corrupting force! Mages get uppity because "screw you fighter, your proud legacy of honorable tradition means nothing because I can read draconic and murder you In Your sleep!", and "pssh we don't need armies who sacrifice themselves nobly to symbolize their people in honorable combat I'll just murder them all with god power". How is that not corrupt?
Where is the rule that says that mages have to be jerks???? I'm pretty sure that's something your individual player would have to go out of their way to roleplay.

[Marlowe]

Honestly, I'm starting to get the feeling that someone is using this thread as an indirect way of complaining about some traumatic campaign she went through several editions ago. She seems so sure and so detailed, and yet so much of it is personal interpretation presented as fact, specific singular detail presented as universal reality, or just plain wrong.

[Talakeal]

then I guess you simply don't see things the way I do, a pity that you cling to rarity as a reason to stop enjoying things.

AFAIK its just a staple of human nature. We consider things we have access to as normal and generally only appreciate them when we have to do without. In my experience the proverb "Its the journey, not the destination, that matters" to hold true to most forms of material acquisition.

Anyway, my point is that I feel people would benefit from being more open minded to genre. I have played in games where everyone is a wizard like Mage and Harry Potter, and I have played in games where magic doesn't exist at all like Aces and Eights. IMO it is low fantasy where magic has the GREATEST impact on the world.

You made the comment that you will not play in a low fantasy game, and I have seen many people make similar statements*. I was merely pointing out that this seemed counter to my experience, because that is the only genre that allows you to tell stories that are actually ABOUT magic rather than just have it be an excuse for bad storytelling like technology in Star Trek**. Low magic games allow you to quest for or investigate new magic, learn to overcome foes with powers you aren't used to dealing with, questing to find a miraculous solution to a problem, have PC casters be treated with awe, fear, and respect and just feel like special snowflakes, and just plain old staring at awe in magical wonders that break the rules of reality as you know them.

To use a recent example take Disney's Frozen. This is a story about magic, and is solidly low fantasy. Elsa can do wonderful and dangerous things, no one is really sure what her limits are, including herself, and everyone has strong opinions and reactions about it.
This is not a story you could tell in a D&D style high fantasy setting. Her parents would have simply bought potions of cold resistance and an anti magic collar for her while they arranged for the mages guild to send over an arch-mage to teach her to control her powers, and then she will eventually become just another nearly omnipotent wizard queen as rules half the countries in the known world.

I am not trying to tell you that you are doing it wrong by any stretch of the imagination. I just think that maybe you should give a broader range of genres a try as in my experience it is not always the most obvious places you find fun.

Oh, and also I totally agree with you. Settings where magic is completely evil or physically / mentally / spiritually corrupting suck balls. My friends all love Riddle of Steel, but I hate it for this reason. Magic is super powerful, but can only destroy, not create. It can kill people, even strong people from a great distance, with minimal effort, but healing or even buffing people is incredibly hard (and painful) and bringing back the dead is flat out impossible. Likewise every single spell you cast has the risk to kill or even age the caster, but reversing or even slowing the effects of aging, both magical and mundane, is flat out impossible. It makes for an all right horror game, but not so much a fun fantasy game for either wizards OR non wizards as either way magic is going to be the death of you sooner or later.

* I have one in my group actually, although he takes it one step further. He has flat out told me that he doesn't care about plot, character, immersion, exploration, social interaction, or even tactical challenge. He only sees the game as a power fantasy, and refuses to play any system where he can't play a nigh omnipotent D&D style T1.

**This is a generalization in Star Trek, but normally they simply use technobabble as a short cut or a deus ex machine, and frequently have to come up with BS reasons why established technology doesn't work to tell many stories.

[VoxRationis]

I would offer the amendment to your statement that in low fantasy, magic alters the plot to a greater degree than in other genres, but in high fantasy, magic alters the setting to a higher degree. When magic is cheaply and readily available, it replaces technology, with the same sorts of far-reaching, culture-rewriting impacts that industrialization has, because every lowly peasant will end up seeing its effects. But when there is no magic by default, a single spell has ripples which touch everything on a level of kings and heroes, but pass over the common folk in their day-to-day existences.

[Lord Raziere]

yea but here is the thing about low fantasy:

if I'm the only one who has magic....and no one else does....

WHERE IS THE CHALLENGE?

I'd just be pulling wings off flies if I was the only one using magic. it'd be like playing Dr. Manhattan. Sure I'm incredibly powerful, but no one else is. I can just do whatever I want and no one would be able to stop me, and where is the fun in that? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4zlC8jAISk)

[Segev]

I tend to go with vancian magic working the way it does because you perform rituals which are the pre-payment of your side of a bargain spelled out in ancient contracts (at least, if you're a wizard). The casting of the spell itself is the invocation of the rights granted to you for performing your side of it, commanding in appropriate names and dictating the effects you wish according to binding agreements in return for the work you did as part of your preparations.

There are supernatural forces with whom you are dealing. You may be working a tried-and-true spell, wrested from terrible powers by ancient wizards who made grand bargains, or you could be performing one you or your master negotiated, yourselves. Or you could even be combining clauses from many contracts to form new dues which fall to you as a new spell, having discovered loopholes and interactions.

None of this is inherently corrupting, but it's certainly not "magical science." Wizards are (rules) lawyers. What's corrupt about that? >_> <_<

[Talakeal]

I would offer the amendment to your statement that in low fantasy, magic alters the plot to a greater degree than in other genres, but in high fantasy, magic alters the setting to a higher degree. When magic is cheaply and readily available, it replaces technology, with the same sorts of far-reaching, culture-rewriting impacts that industrialization has, because every lowly peasant will end up seeing its effects. But when there is no magic by default, a single spell has ripples which touch everything on a level of kings and heroes, but pass over the common folk in their day-to-day existences.

Agreed. Personally I prefer a setting I can relate to as it makes it easier to get immersed in character, but YMMV.

[VoxRationis]

yea but here is the thing about low fantasy:

if I'm the only one who has magic....and no one else does....

WHERE IS THE CHALLENGE?

I'd just be pulling wings off flies if I was the only one using magic. it'd be like playing Dr. Manhattan. Sure I'm incredibly powerful, but no one else is. I can just do whatever I want and no one would be able to stop me, and where is the fun in that? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4zlC8jAISk)

Are you talking about low fantasy as a genre, or low magic availability in D&D?
In the genre, generally magic is rare and limited even to those who have it. They can't just use it to solve all of their problems.
In the case of low magic availability in D&D, you are mistaken if you think that being the only high-level caster in the area makes it low-magic. Even if no one else has it, you still have high magic. A true low-magic adjustment to D&D requires several things besides removing the NPC wizards in town. It requires that the PCs conform to that aspect of the setting in the same way the setting itself does.

[Talakeal]

yea but here is the thing about low fantasy:

if I'm the only one who has magic....and no one else does....

WHERE IS THE CHALLENGE?

I'd just be pulling wings off flies if I was the only one using magic. it'd be like playing Dr. Manhattan. Sure I'm incredibly powerful, but no one else is. I can just do whatever I want and no one would be able to stop me, and where is the fun in that? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4zlC8jAISk)

Didn't you say you liked settings where warriors and wizards were of a similar power level? If so why can't melee challenge you? Especially in large groups or in the form of monsters.*

Also, you wouldn't be the only one using magic in the game, just the only one who shows up reliably.


Also, what is your definition of "low fantasy"? Traditionally the term means a story set in the real world with a few fantastic elements added (like the afore mentioned plot of Frozen), but a lot of people use it interchangeably with Sword and Sorcery** or even a high fantasy setting where magic is not omnipresent (like Lord of the Rings). Or maybe you are just referring to a RPG setting with a control freak DM who doesn't want any of the cool toys falling into the PCs hands.

*In my system wizards have more straight up power, endurance, and versatility than they do in D&D (at least without shenanigans like abusing the ANY clause in polymorph any object, genesis, wish, or manipulate form, or using things like consumptive fields, magical traps, or shape change to get infinite castings). Yet I can still challenge them with a group of mundanes or a large monster, especially if backed up by a priest, and I can build a mage hunter NPC who can easily stalemate or drive off and potentially even kill a mage in a 1 on 1 combat.

** My personal favorite as it gives both sides of that equation Swords and Sorcery, time to shine and plenty of plot spotlight. I prefer the swords side of the equation for my PCs because I like being the underdog and can more easily relate to people with "realistic" capabilities, but without the sorcery side of the equation it falls flat.

[Lord Raziere]

Are you talking about low fantasy as a genre, or low magic availability in D&D?

Yes.


In the genre, generally magic is rare and limited even to those who have it. They can't just use it to solve all of their problems.
In the case of low magic availability in D&D, you are mistaken if you think that being the only high-level caster in the area makes it low-magic. Even if no one else has it, you still have high magic. A true low-magic adjustment to D&D requires several things besides removing the NPC wizards in town. It requires that the PCs conform to that aspect of the setting in the same way the setting itself does.

And that is what I exactly I don't find fun! I just said this: I'm the only high caster in the area. there is no challenge, because there is no one equal or more powerful than me, therefore it might as well be pulling wings off flies.

while rare, limited and can't solve all my problems is even worse! that just means I'm a mundane dude who happens to know a few rituals that could maybe help someday. I might as well just forget magic entirely by then.

[Talakeal]

Yes.



And that is what I exactly I don't find fun! I just said this: I'm the only high caster in the area. there is no challenge, because there is no one equal or more powerful than me, therefore it might as well be pulling wings off flies.

while rare, limited and can't solve all my problems is even worse! that just means I'm a mundane dude who happens to know a few rituals that could maybe help someday. I might as well just forget magic entirely by then.

So you want a system where literally everyone has limitless magic with no constraints? I really can think of any system or fictional setting that would meet your criteria, even full on tippyverse falls short. I was planning on starting a new thread on a similar topic, maybe we should continue that discussion there instead of derailing this thread further.


Back to this thread, I wonder how differently this thread would play out if the default setting in peoples mind was one where melee characters used ToB classes and magic was limited to healers, beguilders, war mages, and dread necromancers.

[Lord Raziere]

So you want a system where literally everyone has limitless magic with no constraints? I really can think of any system or fictional setting that would meet your criteria, even full on tippyverse falls short. I was planning on starting a new thread on a similar topic, maybe we should continue that discussion there instead of derailing this thread further.


Wow, why do people keep assuming that. what I really want is to wield themed magic at will. as in pyromancers only doing pyromancer things all the time. or healers doing healing magic all the time. its just logical. or at least with a mana system thats more logical than all this....jiggery pokery.....involving strange convoluted rituals running on strange reasoning.

also, to answer your other post, sure fighters are equal, but that doesn't mean I like settings with low magic, if fighters and wizards are equal, that means there has to be more magi to balance the scales. and thus magic would change the world more, and thus get the setting I want: one with more widespread magic and magitech.

[Talakeal]

Wow, why do people keep assuming that. what I really want is to wield themed magic at will. as in pyromancers only doing pyromancer things all the time. or healers doing healing magic all the time. its just logical. or at least with a mana system thats more logical than all this....jiggery pokery.....involving strange convoluted rituals running on strange reasoning.

also, to answer your other post, sure fighters are equal, but that doesn't mean I like settings with low magic, if fighters and wizards are equal, that means there has to be more magi to balance the scales. and thus magic would change the world more, and thus get the setting I want: one with more widespread magic and magitech.

Did you read what you typed in the post I quoted? Unless I am missing some context, you seem to be saying that you hate systems with any sort of drawback or limitation to magic.

Also, I agree with what you are saying. I think if D&D had gone with a similar ideology in limited mages to frequent spell casting in a narrow field it would be far superior to what we have now.

[SiuiS]

I don't really see what that reply has to do with what I said.

It's by association.


Firstly, I never said that failure can't be fun and in fact play and run World of Darkness games and Call of Cthuhlu. Second, never said anything about just wining. Third, never mentioned D&D.

You said, by association, that failure with magic is no fun. I just asked why you felt that way and provided external proof that it's not a given.


As for why. Because I personally don't like being punished for casting a spell.... Why do I require more of a reason aside from my personal preference. :smallconfused:


Well, I mean, why do you view it as punishment? That's what I am asking. It sounds like you as a player feel punished by stuff that happens to the character.


Honestly, I'm starting to get the feeling that someone is using this thread as an indirect way of complaining about some traumatic campaign she went through several editions ago. She seems so sure and so detailed, and yet so much of it is personal interpretation presented as fact, specific singular detail presented as universal reality, or just plain wrong.

I assume from pronouns you mean me? You can be frank. We needn't tiptoe around things. If you think I'm wrong, say so. Insinuating that you want to insinuate something is silly.


yea but here is the thing about low fantasy:

if I'm the only one who has magic....and no one else does....

WHERE IS THE CHALLENGE?

I'd just be pulling wings off flies if I was the only one using magic. it'd be like playing Dr. Manhattan. Sure I'm incredibly powerful, but no one else is. I can just do whatever I want and no one would be able to stop me, and where is the fun in that? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4zlC8jAISk)

Well, that's why casters are, by default, treating with things like demons and spirits and things. Because people spend to the limit and go as far as they can.

But yeah. If you're top dog, unless there's something able to qualitatively shift the world around, you're not gonna have fun.


So you want a system where literally everyone has limitless magic with no constraints.

No, it sounds more like Raziere wants equality. I think equal squalor would work just as well as equal god-force, as long as the point of the squalor wasn't to rub your face in it.

[Milo v3]

You said, by association, that failure with magic is no fun. I just asked why you felt that way and provided external proof that it's not a given.

Well, I mean, why do you view it as punishment? That's what I am asking. It sounds like you as a player feel punished by stuff that happens to the character.
Actually I wasn't saying that it's no fun, ever, that's why I specifically said that I would get bored. As for why, if I'm playing a role I want to be able to do that role without sucking because that's the role I chose. I mean, if I want to play a sword-guy, I don't want to cut my hand or drop my weapon on a natural 1.

[Marlowe]

I assume from pronouns you mean me? You can be frank. We needn't tiptoe around things. If you think I'm wrong, say so. Insinuating that you want to insinuate something is silly.


This entire thread's like this turbulent chaotic ocean of unsupportable premises and ever-changing terminology clashing and foaming together, from out of which constantly rises these warped, misshapen gothic castles of headcanon that stand tall for brief seconds before imploding under the pressure of scrutiny.

So singling you or anyone else out just seemed pointless. So I probably shouldn't have said anything. Your posts do seem oddly internally consistant though; I just don't think they have a lot to do with the game I play.

[BeerMug Paladin]

what I really want is to wield themed magic at will. as in pyromancers only doing pyromancer things all the time. or healers doing healing magic all the time. its just logical. or at least with a mana system thats more logical than all this....jiggery pokery.....involving strange convoluted rituals running on strange reasoning.
Once for a 3.5 game, I made a class effectively able to do only one specialized thing based around one or two thematically related spells, but do it very well. For example, one path I created took the spell telekinesis and broke it down into the various uses of the spell which were all gained at different levels. I also dumped levitation and flight in there as well, since they fit with the theme.

It sort of wound up like the warlock class, but much more restricted. I gave them a bigger hit die, some weapon proficiencies (similar to the rogue) and decent skills to compensate for that a little.

It was probably nowhere nearly balanced or reasonalbe, but I thought it was an interesting experiment. It was done to fit into a homebrew setting where I wanted sorcery to work like that. So I think I know where you're coming from.

[SiuiS]

Actually I wasn't saying that it's no fun, ever, that's why I specifically said that I would get bored.

You said "Well, if magic is so super corrupting and dark, then it really limits Players using it and it just makes you feel like your being punished for playing your character. I'd get bored with that quickly."

I asked why you think it really limits players and makes them feel like they are being punished for playing their character when, clearly, this is not always true because these games work fine. You can say you always meant you and just you alone, but it seems clear from your phrasing you feel these are universals, and I wonder why you felt they were universal. I thought you may have missed out on some games that could be interesting to you. I also think it speaks of a very specific D&D bias, which I try to continually challenge in a non-D&D thread.


This entire thread's like this turbulent chaotic ocean of unsupportable premises and ever-changing terminology clashing and foaming together, from out of which constantly rises these warped, misshapen gothic castles of headcanon that stand tall for brief seconds before imploding under the pressure of scrutiny.

So singling you or anyone else out just seemed pointless. So I probably shouldn't have said anything. Your posts do seem oddly internally consistant though; I just don't think they have a lot to do with the game I play.

That's rather poetic.

I probably don't play the game you do. I've been chasing the same experience since I started at 6 years old; my gaming has been consistent to that with a few exceptions. This means that I don't play D&D with the exact same conceits as others who play D&D.

The tone if dismissal makes me sad though, as if you recognize my experience as other but rather than curiosity you just want it gone.


Once for a 3.5 game, I made a class effectively able to do only one specialized thing based around one or two thematically related spells, but do it very well. For example, one path I created took the spell telekinesis and broke it down into the various uses of the spell which were all gained at different levels. I also dumped levitation and flight in there as well, since they fit with the theme.

I have tried that a few times, but I always find something more canon that does just about what I want so I give up.

My current projects are creating an astral kingdom in changeling and creating a sorcerer-form of incarnum through refluffing. :)

[Milo v3]

You said "Well, if magic is so super corrupting and dark, then it really limits Players using it and it just makes you feel like your being punished for playing your character. I'd get bored with that quickly."

I asked why you think it really limits players and makes them feel like they are being punished for playing their character when, clearly, this is not always true because these games work fine. You can say you always meant you and just you alone, but it seems clear from your phrasing you feel these are universals, and I wonder why you felt they were universal. I thought you may have missed out on some games that could be interesting to you. I also think it speaks of a very specific D&D bias, which I try to continually challenge in a non-D&D thread.

This is why I specifically went and wrote "I'd get bored with that quickly" after writing the above before I posted it. :smallsigh:

Also, why do You keep bringing up D&D and suggesting that other people have D&D bias. I mean hell, I was playing World of Darkness last sunday and that game's got Dark in the title. I really don't think I have a D&D specific bias, to be honest I think I lean towards a game more like Exalted (though I sadly lack the books) and Pokemon Tabletop United.

[Arbane]

Wow, why do people keep assuming that. what I really want is to wield themed magic at will. as in pyromancers only doing pyromancer things all the time. or healers doing healing magic all the time. its just logical. or at least with a mana system thats more logical than all this....jiggery pokery.....involving strange convoluted rituals running on strange reasoning.


Try Mutants and Masterminds?

[Lord Raziere]

Try Mutants and Masterminds?

have it. still need a setting man. sure I got an idea for the fantasy setting I want, but it still needs work, fleshing out, and all that. a system is good, but I need a setting as well. a good one.

[Frozen_Feet]

Well, if magic is so super corrupting and dark, then it really limits Players using it and it just makes you feel like your being punished for playing your character. I'd get bored with that quickly.

Hold on. Why do you say it's the player being punished? The character obviously suffers, but that does not in any direct way translate to the player doing so, unless we're talking of a specific sort of game mechanics that take away control of your character when you reach X level of corruption. And even that is questionable, because reaching that level of corruption could be a win condition all on its own.

[Lord Raziere]

Hold on. Why do you say it's the player being punished? The character obviously suffers, but that does not in any direct way translate to the player doing so, unless we're talking of a specific sort of game mechanics that take away control of your character when you reach X level of corruption. And even that is questionable, because reaching that level of corruption could be a win condition all on its own.

well I suffer because that isn't what I want for my character. its twisting the character in a way I don't want. I'm not comfortable with it. its going "your guy is eviller now." when there was no intention of evil at all, with no intention of him ever being evil. its taking a slight amount of control away from them by going "they are more corrupt for no reason!" and unnecessarily changing the character for actions I always intended for them to do and not get changed internally at all. its simply not what I want for the character.

[Kalmageddon]

You know, Raziere, I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.

You want a world with magitech and readily available magic to everyone. Ok.

But then you say you want warriors and other "mundane" characters to be just as powerful as wizards and magic users. And this is where you lost me, because I have no idea on how to make "readily available magic" and "balanced mundanes" work together, outside of making magic useless.

Because, if history has tought us anything, is that the moment a better way of doing something becomes apparent the old ways will be discarded uncerimoniously and everyone will jump on the bandwagon.
If your pseudo-medieval setting has pyromancers, like in your example, without any particular restriction you just made obsolete all kinds of mundane warfare.

Armor? Doesn't protect you, in fact, it becomes detrimental because it could be set on fire or it would just simply overheat if made of metal, causing even worse burns.

Melee weapons? Useless against someone that can set you on fire from far away. Also, weapons with wooden handles, like axes and spears, would burn.

Bows and crossbows? I'm betting it's pretty hard to aim when you are on fire or dodging fireballs. Also, pyromancers can create a lot of smoke to conceal themselves. Also, both bows and crossbow are very vulnerable to temperature changes and very vulnerable to being burned.

So with just pyromancers you created a world where anyone that can master pyromancy will do so and anyone that can't won't be a soldier or warrior, since as soon as they meet a pyromancer (which will happen, magic readily available, right?) they wouldn't even be useful as cannon fodder. Also people tend to not fight or follow orders very well when set on fire.

And this is just one very specialized class. Things would be even more extreme with more magic users thrown in.
So good job, now warriors have no reason to exist, because a pyromancer does everything a warrior could do (kill things) far more effectively. And guess what? Magitech doesn't fix that. You could imagine warriors with heat resistant armor and magic machineguns, but they wouldn't be the ones getting all that stuff. No, more magic users would. Because there is no reason to upgrade a surpassed and sub-par form of warfare when you can simply improve on the more effective one.
It would be as if in real life we tried giving tank armor to horses just for the sake of having cavalry again after tanks were invented. Anything that can make a mundane warrior useful will make a pyromancer even more useful.

So you are left with two options: either you make a world where everyone is a wizard and mundane classes don't exist, which is not what you want because otherwise you wouldn't have said that you want balanced mundane, or you limit magic in some convincing way, like making it really hard to learn or require some unique skill that makes less than 1 in a 1000 people able to perform it... Only in this last instance, whooops, you just made a low fantasy setting.

Or, you simply filp off logic and say that warrios have more hitpoints and are not bothered by being set on fire, while pyromancer can be knocked unconcious by a gentle breeze. Which is what D&D tries to do and that works great, doesn't it?
Point being, if you step out of the cursed D&D mindset for a moment you realize that any setting or system aiming for an even marginal degree of authenticity needs to put a severe limit to magic in order to make it able to integrate with the more mundane aspects of life.

But then again, you cited shonens as your inspiration. A form of media that notoriously throws logic and coherency out of the window in favour of completely brainless rule of cool. I just personally wouldn't wanna play in a setting where I can't aswer the question "why are people still using spears and swords when we have biological flamethrowers and nukes?".

[Lord Raziere]

I dunno, it all seems logical to me.

some people's magic is just being an epic fighter who can jump high and cut through lots of things, or sneak about a lot and lie really well. not all magic is obvious. that and magic is a thing of the soul, personal for every person. not even two pyromancers are exactly alike, because they each have their little interpretation of fire that doesn't work the same. magitech is the soul of things meeting the body of things, and therefore has its own rules separate from pure magic.

that and the magic parts is mostly my preferences while the equality part is mostly me thinking that its unfair for other players to get punished for not sharing my preferences. I mean, technically I'd play a spellcaster over everything else in DnD, but that doesn't mean I think that the way 3.5 is set up is a good way to do things, its completely unfair to the people who might want to be badasses while not sharing my preferences, the people who like to cut fireballs in half and such, which I can actually see being a mundane kind of awesome I can get behind. the only weird thing being that no one wants to cut fireballs in half and such, which is weird. because dudes, you can totally do that if you just revise on your thinking on how this is all self-consistent a little. science isn't about stating a rule and then saying that anything that happens that contradicts the rule, is not apart of this universe, its about seeing what happens and therefore concluding that the previous rule is inaccurate, and that you need to revise how you think about the universe

therefore if any "inconsistency" rises, it doesn't mean there is no consistency, it means that your thoughts about how the universe were inaccurate. I don't see why this should stop holding true in fiction. if a guy is shown to cut a fireball in half in a universe, then clearly its possible to do so and therefore any information before then is just inaccurate, and is often stated by the characters themselves who are human and therefore fallible and don't know everything. how characters think their universe works has no bearing on how it actually does, and neither do ours. trying to apply our physical laws to what happens in fiction is like trying to apply Canadian law to what happens on Saturn, or applying Japanese laws to what happens in Mexico. they simply run on different rules that ours has no right to intrude upon.

but whatever.

apparently I'm not logical enough. apparently everyone else knows better than me about how logic and coherency works, and I'm just fine with super-martial artists and mecha and wizards and so on all existing all at the same time, don't know why you guys aren't. I just know I want certain things, the reasons behind them come after, if I want all this stuff put in, I just put them in and then come up with ways for all of them to be in the same universe afterwards, which more logical than starting from the beginning and thus potentially getting rid of things I want, I mean where's the fun in that?

[Morty]

This entire thread's like this turbulent chaotic ocean of unsupportable premises and ever-changing terminology clashing and foaming together, from out of which constantly rises these warped, misshapen gothic castles of headcanon that stand tall for brief seconds before imploding under the pressure of scrutiny.

Well, it's been twelve pages and it doesn't seem like more than two people here operate under the same definition of 'magic', so I think you may have a point.

[Arbane]

You want a world with magitech and readily available magic to everyone. Ok.

But then you say you want warriors and other "mundane" characters to be just as powerful as wizards and magic users. And this is where you lost me, because I have no idea on how to make "readily available magic" and "balanced mundanes" work together, outside of making magic useless.

Because, if history has tought us anything, is that the moment a better way of doing something becomes apparent the old ways will be discarded uncerimoniously and everyone will jump on the bandwagon.
If your pseudo-medieval setting has pyromancers, like in your example, without any particular restriction you just made obsolete all kinds of mundane warfare.

Armor? Doesn't protect you, in fact, it becomes detrimental because it could be set on fire or it would just simply overheat if made of metal, causing even worse burns.


Protective amulets, for the people who don't want to memorize dozens of counterspells. Is not difficult.

[Talakeal]

@kalmeggeddon:

I believe what Raziere is saying is that fantasy mundane does not need to be real world mundane. Warriors who, through training, essentially become super heroes would still be considered mundane" in her ideal settings.

I apologize for putting words in your mouth if this isn't right.

[Lord Raziere]

@kalmeggeddon:

I believe what Raziere is saying is that fantasy mundane does not need to be real world mundane. Warriors who, through training, essentially become super heroes would still be considered mundane" in her ideal settings.

I apologize for putting words in your mouth if this isn't right.

Actually this is pretty much my ideal mundane for fantasy settings. they have to contend with things like dragons, gods, giants and so on. at some you either need to start becoming so good at mundane swordery and such that you can jump through the sky and cleave through the dragons wings before you fall and land on the ground unharmed, or you start needing to use some kind of technology or magitech, and when you start doing the latter option your not really mundane are you? your a guy who harnesses things that are not mundane at all in a different way. either your becoming a shonen fighter, or you start becoming iron man or batman. or a cyborg.

[SiuiS]

This is why I specifically went and wrote "I'd get bored with that quickly" after writing the above before I posted it. :smallsigh:

Well yes. I'm not questioning you, in clarifying why I said what I did because I don't think you got it. I'm doing a bad job though.


Also, why do You keep bringing up D&D and suggesting that other people have D&D bias. I mean hell, I was playing World of Darkness last sunday and that game's got Dark in the title. I really don't think I have a D&D specific bias, to be honest I think I lean towards a game more like Exalted (though I sadly lack the books) and Pokemon Tabletop United.

Laziness on my part. Games where only in-character success counts as fun are a hallmark of the D&D playstyle, among others. So when an entire discussion revolves around how a nuanced and interesting twist is just no fun and basically losing because you're not winning in-character, I make assumptions.


have it. still need a setting man. sure I got an idea for the fantasy setting I want, but it still needs work, fleshing out, and all that. a system is good, but I need a setting as well. a good one.

Run exalted! I hear both that exalted is great as a setting and M&M is great for running existing settings. Heck, I would try that. Run it as PbP!


Hold on. Why do you say it's the player being punished? The character obviously suffers, but that does not in any direct way translate to the player doing so, unless we're talking of a specific sort of game mechanics that take away control of your character when you reach X level of corruption. And even that is questionable, because reaching that level of corruption could be a win condition all on its own.

That's what I was trying to say, yes. Thanks.


well I suffer because that isn't what I want for my character. its twisting the character in a way I don't want. I'm not comfortable with it. its going "your guy is eviller now." when there was no intention of evil at all, with no intention of him ever being evil.

What confuses me, is that you find gaining evil points because of in-game events to be bad, but you find gaining damage points because of in-game events to be okay. You accept damage to your body is a result of the game because fights happen, but you don't accept damage to yor mind or soul because of sacrifice techniques (in this case, magic) to be okay. And to me, as long as it's established before start as a part of the setting, corruption for certain magic is just as normal as damage and disease and poison from combat or traps. They are all equally understood risks and all equally happen despite your best wishes. Like paradox in Mage; you know when you casts vulgar spell it's risky and might affect your soul and sanity. If you roll bad on paradox, you can't blame anyone for it; it's just a consequence.

I do feel that when this is a surprise it's a problem though, and I do know some systems can do a bad job of making it seem non-punitive.


Well, it's been twelve pages and it doesn't seem like more than two people here operate under the same definition of 'magic', so I think you may have a point.

There is that, yes.

[Milo v3]

What confuses me, is that you find gaining evil points because of in-game events to be bad, but you find gaining damage points because of in-game events to be okay. You accept damage to your body is a result of the game because fights happen, but you don't accept damage to yor mind or soul because of sacrifice techniques (in this case, magic) to be okay. And to me, as long as it's established before start as a part of the setting, corruption for certain magic is just as normal as damage and disease and poison from combat or traps. They are all equally understood risks and all equally happen despite your best wishes. Like paradox in Mage; you know when you casts vulgar spell it's risky and might affect your soul and sanity. If you roll bad on paradox, you can't blame anyone for it; it's just a consequence.

If I roll bad on paradox I generally convert some or all of it into physical damage via the backlash rules to lower the chance of bedlam, since I don't really want to be forced to play the personality of my character in a certain way just because of a die roll.

[Lord Raziere]

Exalted is not the fantasy I want its just going in a different direction from DnD-

.......y'know what nevermind. I will go do that....just be warned that my style of GMing includes uh.....a character I'd play as a player to serve sort of as a.....side hero....that sort of helps enable other heroes.... and what not. >_> I will ignore all those who say "DMPCs are one of the worst techniques a GM can use" blah blah blah, it served me well in the first campaign I ever GM'd and that ended well, even if it had only one player. and ended only a week ago.

[S@tanicoaldo]

This entire thread's like this turbulent chaotic ocean of unsupportable premises and ever-changing terminology clashing and foaming together, from out of which constantly rises these warped, misshapen gothic castles of headcanon that stand tall for brief seconds before imploding under the pressure of scrutiny.

It is beautiful right?
I perceive it as a cacophony of voices that are talking with each other at the same time they are not able to listen to anything other than themselves.

On the topic, I remember a situation that really bothered me, I was playing dragon age II (I really like how magic is portrayed in that game except it is an innate trait rather than a "choice") where in a quest I was a asked to investigate some explosions in a desert or something and after some exploration I found out some dwarfs were testing chemical explosives, something almost non-existent in that world, one of the characters asked why and what is the point? Why not just call a mage to explode everything and create a new mine with magic?

The dwarf said that only humans and elves are able to use magic and they did not want to be dependent of something they were unable to control so they started to create something that would allow non-mages to do everything they wanted from explosions to flight without magic.

And I was like What in the nine circles of hell?
I mean... What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!
And what is a mage? A person who control cosmic powers of reality warping or the dinanamite of a construction work in a mine?

This is the kind of mundane use of magic that makes me feel uncomfortable. That makes it lose all that charming, occult and mysterious look.

[Marlowe]

Well, I've gone and hit my head, so excuse the shonky grammar here and in the last post; but I've onl got one question.

To all those people talking about how magic is hard, magic is dangerous, magic requires you to basically give up having a normal life, etc.

How do you account for Bards?

Bards aren't as powerful casters as others, obviously. But they still have some wicked abilities, including some unique spells. And yet they're not described as working hard to get their magic (they presumably work hard on other things). They are skillful, they are sociable, they sing, they party, they pick up a massive range of eclectic knowledge, they can potentially take a good stab at any role. They don't seem to need study their magic much (their somantic gestures are specifically pointed out as being very simple) , they don't inherit it, they don't make bind unknown powers or whatever. They just get magic as a side-effect of being well-travelled and generally awesome.

Their existence makes nonsense of most of this thread.

[Milo v3]

This is the kind of mundane use of magic that makes me feel uncomfortable. That makes it lose all that charming, occult and mysterious look.

Well.... since magic wasn't used I don't see why use of non-magical chemicals to do something relatively reasonable makes magic less mysterious :smallconfused:

[S@tanicoaldo]

Well, I've gone and hit my head, so excuse the shonky grammar here and in the last post; but I've onl got one question.

To all those people talking about how magic is hard, magic is dangerous, magic requires you to basically give up having a normal life, etc.

How do you account for Bards?

Bards aren't as powerful casters as others, obviously. But they still have some wicked abilities, including some unique spells. And yet they're not described as working hard to get their magic (they presumably work hard on other things). They are skillful, they are sociable, they sing, they party, they pick up a massive range of eclectic knowledge, they can potentially take a good stab at any role. They don't seem to need study their magic much (their somantic gestures are specifically pointed out as being very simple) , they don't inherit it, they don't make bind unknown powers or whatever. They just get magic as a side-effect of being well-travelled and generally awesome.

Their existence makes nonsense of most of this thread.

In my games bards, rangers and paladins can't cast spells.


Well.... since magic wasn't used I don't see why use of non-magical chemicals to do something relatively reasonable makes magic less mysterious :smallconfused:

The fact that except for those dwarfs the only way to make explosions and open mines is to call a mage to act as dianmite.

[Milo v3]

The fact that except for those dwarfs the only way to make explosions and open mines is to call a mage to act as dianmite.

Sooo..... You think a species defined by living underground should just let itself rely on other species to Live Underground. If dwarves weren't trying to make explosives they would be complete idiots.

Anyway IMO, just because x can make an explosion doesn't make y less cool or flavourful, especially when x requires mixing chemicals and is very hap hazard, and y is rewriting reality whenever you wish to Make the explosion appear wherever you want.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Sooo..... You think a species defined by living underground should just let itself rely on other species to Live Underground. If dwarves weren't trying to make explosives they would be complete idiots.

Anyway IMO, just because x can make an explosion doesn't make y less cool or flavourful, especially when x requires mixing chemicals and is very hap hazard, and y is rewriting reality whenever you wish to Make the explosion appear wherever you want.

The problem is not the dwarves. The porblem is that mages are actively called to carry out explosions. Like mundane construction workers.

[SiuiS]

Exalted is not the fantasy I want its just going in a different direction from DnD-

.......y'know what nevermind. I will go do that....just be warned that my style of GMing includes uh.....a character I'd play as a player to serve sort of as a.....side hero....that sort of helps enable other heroes.... and what not. >_>

Oh, huh. Is there an existing example of a setting you like then? I thought exalted was it.


If I roll bad on paradox I generally convert some or all of it into physical damage via the backlash rules to lower the chance of bedlam, since I don't really want to be forced to play the personality of my character in a certain way just because of a die roll.

Huh.


It is beautiful right?
I perceive it as a cacophony of voices that are talking with each other at the same time they are not able to listen to anything other than themselves.

On the topic, I remember a situation that really bothered me, I was playing dragon age II (I really like how magic is portrayed in that game except it is an innate trait rather than a "choice") where in a quest I was a asked to investigate some explosions in a desert or something and after some exploration I found out some dwarfs were testing chemical explosives, something almost non-existent in that world, one of the characters asked why and what is the point? Why not just call a mage to explode everything and create a new mine with magic?

The dwarf said that only humans and elves are able to use magic and they did not want to be dependent of something they were unable to control so they started to create something that would allow non-mages to do everything they wanted from explosions to flight without magic.

And I was like What in the nine circles of hell?
I mean... What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!
And what is a mage? A person who control cosmic powers of reality warping or the dinanamite of a construction work in a mine?

This is the kind of mundane use of magic that makes me feel uncomfortable. That makes it lose all that charming, occult and mysterious look.

Sounds like you Wouldn't like the free council then.


Well, I've gone and hit my head, so excuse the shonky grammar here and in the last post; but I've onl got one question.

To all those people talking about how magic is hard, magic is dangerous, magic requires you to basically give up having a normal life, etc.

How do you account for Bards?

Bards aren't as powerful casters as others, obviously. But they still have some wicked abilities, including some unique spells. And yet they're not described as working hard to get their magic (they presumably work hard on other things). They are skillful, they are sociable, they sing, they party, they pick up a massive range of eclectic knowledge, they can potentially take a good stab at any role. They don't seem to need study their magic much (their somantic gestures are specifically pointed out as being very simple) , they don't inherit it, they don't make bind unknown powers or whatever. They just get magic as a side-effect of being well-travelled and generally awesome.

Their existence makes nonsense of most of this thread.

Twenty years of Druidic conditioning in a culture with mythic history.

[Milo v3]

The problem is not the dwarves. The porblem is that mages are actively called to carry out explosions. Like mundane construction workers.

When your a race that comes in contact with magic rocks so often that your species becomes resistant to magic I'm not that surprised they'd use mages more mundanely/reasonably than the other people in the setting.

[Lord Raziere]

Oh, huh. Is there an existing example of a setting you like then? I thought exalted was it.


I thought Exalted was. once. I was being stupid. turns out its just really interesting to me, but a lot of the things I thought were a given were actually just misconceptions I just got from Keychain of Creation. the reality is that its just going in a different from DnD, but again not the direction I'd go. all it really did was put all the creatures in the monster manual out in the Wyld, made everything not human a god, made fighters more powerful than wizards, made the wizards complete ritualists, made heaven into a bureaucracy, hell into slums, and that there is actually even more inequality between Exalts, got rid of all morality, and that all its magitech was never intended, its anime influences supposed to take backseat to old myths I could never find a way to like.....I became disillusioned.

I guess Anima Beyond Fantasy is closer or closest, it has a martial art that is basically someone controlling nanorobots as a fighting style, and has magic systems that generally make the most sense to me.

I like Eberron, but even then, it kind of just seems a lite version of what I really desire. doesn't do enough y'know?

in some ways, Warhammer 40,000 comes closer than most. ships that travel because magic and wizards controlling the navigation. weapons filled with demons. wizard-space marines. things like that. the only problem being is that its Warhammer 40,000. too grimdark for what I intend.

really I could probably spend a lot of time looking at settings and thinking why or why not they'd work, but ultimately I think I'm searching for something that only exists in my own mind that I haven't fully created yet.

[SiuiS]

Hmm. I think you could run a Keychain of Creation game. I mean, look at D&D, we've got tippyverse and Mythos and all that. It's not too hard to make a subsystem consistent enough to be it's own thing.

And if you use M&M, it would be mostly fluff anyways, so jsut discussions about what is what, instead of rules hacks. :smallsmile:

[Frozen_Feet]

Well, it's been twelve pages and it doesn't seem like more than two people here operate under the same definition of 'magic', so I think you may have a point.

I've gone a wild rant on this too before. Suffice to say, in fantasy "magic" is a buzzword that can mean anything the author of a setting wants it to mean.



How do you account for Bards?

When introduced to roleplaying, Bards were the hardest class to apply for. Historically, being a bard was an intermediate step on the way of becoming a full-blown druid and required years of education.

Bards are an example of magic being hard, not of the reverse. Even at their plainest ("magic through music"), it's still acknowledged to be hard because music is hard.

[Marlowe]

In my games bards, rangers and paladins can't cast spells.


Yes. I figured there'd be responses like this. The only counter needed is "That's interesting, but totally irrelevant." Your games are just your games.


When introduced to roleplaying, Bards were the hardest class to apply for. Historically, being a bard was an intermediate step on the way of becoming a full-blown druid and required years of education.

Bards are an example of magic being hard, not of the reverse. Even at their plainest ("magic through music"), it's still acknowledged to be hard because music is hard.

Firstly, Bards don't even have to be musical. Second, Bards apparently have time to learn a lot of things other than music and magic. And thirdly it doesn't change that Bards are still picking up magic as a side-effect of learning other things.

And bringing up the way it was in previous editions is just shifting the goalposts. Again.

[SiuiS]

And bringing up the way it was in previous editions is just shifting the goalposts. Again.

No it's not. Check your forum.

Giant in the Playground > Forums > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > Why do we still have warriors?, with not a single 3.5 or Pf in sight.

If the question is about bards, bards are difficult, college trained, expected to have incredible memory and skill that feeds directly into their magical studies and represent the Druidic tradition. If the question is about one alternate form of one class in one game in forty years, then this is the wrong thread for that, because this is not and never has been a 3.5 or even a D&D thread.

There's a clear answer why bards in 3e look simple and are base class that seems to have a low threshold for entry, but the question is not as revelatory as you would have it seem.

[Marlowe]

No it's not. Check your forum.

Giant in the Playground > Forums > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > Why do we still have warriors?, with not a single 3.5 or Pf in sight.


In that case; all this stuff about Fighter, Wizards, Warlocks, Elite Array vs rolled stats and the relative effectiveness of d&D classes with them? It all needs to go.

It is very late in the thread to be arguing that this isn't about D&D.

[SiuiS]

In that case; all this stuff about Fighter, Wizards, Warlocks, Elite Array vs rolled stats and the relative effectiveness of d&D classes with them? It all needs to go.

It is very late in the thread to be arguing that this isn't about D&D.

I've been ignoring D&D this whole time, except for asides about how even in 3e this holds true predominantly and specifically said it was an aside and that I was discussing media and fiction img general. I said nothing about elite arrays and 'fighter' is a term for a person who fights – we've been using warrior predominantly.

It's very late in the thread to insist it's been 3.5 all along, really.

[Marlowe]

I've been ignoring D&D this whole time, except for asides about how even in 3e this holds true predominantly and specifically said it was an aside and that I was discussing media and fiction img general. I said nothing about elite arrays and 'fighter' is a term for a person who fights – we've been using warrior predominantly.

It's very late in the thread to insist it's been 3.5 all along, really.

But you even mentioned "Shocking Grasp". The spell. The D & D Spell. Just a few pages ago. :smalleek: Is there another rules system with a spell by that name? And you went and asked me to give examples "by the rules".

You cannot say you've been ignoring D&D. At all.

Edit: Seriously, please. I've already got a head injury. I cannot afford a headdesk.

[Frozen_Feet]

Firstly, Bards don't even have to be musical. Second, Bards apparently have time to learn a lot of things other than music and magic. And thirdly it doesn't change that Bards are still picking up magic as a side-effect of learning other things.

Firstly, "not being musical" is basically a variant class. The default 3rd Edition rules, stripped of nearly all other descriptive text, refer to their main feature as Bardic Music. The default rules assume they are casting their spells via music. Saying "it doesn't have to be that way!" is true, but almost utterly meaningless. You can arbitrarily redefine bards as doing or not doing whatever.

Second, Bards are partial casters of full casters precisely because they are "jack of all trades, masters of none". Bards ended up being as good as they are somewhat by accident. And third, picking up magic as a side-effect of things is not true, the magical part is still very much part of their training. They pick up magic among other things, because magic is something they train for, among other things. And as noted in the previous point, they still don't get as good at is as a full caster.


And bringing up the way it was in previous editions is just shifting the goalposts. Again.

Wrong. This is the general RPG forum. Bringing up other games than 3rd edition D&D is perfectly valid, as is bringing up the inspirations for those games. Especially when it comes to bards, a class that has changed perhaps most radically both in ability and basic description.

[Morty]

I've gone a wild rant on this too before. Suffice to say, in fantasy "magic" is a buzzword that can mean anything the author of a setting wants it to mean.

I've read it, and I think I may have responded to it, but I'm not sure. Sadly, everyone else seems to have ignored it in favour of good old back-and-forth. But that's exactly it - magic, by itself, doesn't mean anything. It only gains any meaning in context.

[Seward]

So you want a system where literally everyone has limitless magic with no constraints? I really can think of any system or fictional setting that would meet your criteria, even full on tippyverse falls short.

Try Nobilis. You are a literal incarnation of a concept, with powers to remake reality. The only thing that can resist you is active opposition by someone of equal power. (it breaks down to who wants it more, mechanically, and a fairly strict action economy limiting how many effects you can sustain).

[Wardog]

Because, if history has tought us anything, is that the moment a better way of doing something becomes apparent the old ways will be discarded uncerimoniously and everyone will jump on the bandwagon.
If your pseudo-medieval setting has pyromancers, like in your example, without any particular restriction you just made obsolete all kinds of mundane warfare.

Armor? Doesn't protect you, in fact, it becomes detrimental because it could be set on fire or it would just simply overheat if made of metal, causing even worse burns.

Melee weapons? Useless against someone that can set you on fire from far away. Also, weapons with wooden handles, like axes and spears, would burn.

Bows and crossbows? I'm betting it's pretty hard to aim when you are on fire or dodging fireballs. Also, pyromancers can create a lot of smoke to conceal themselves. Also, both bows and crossbow are very vulnerable to temperature changes and very vulnerable to being burned.

So with just pyromancers you created a world where anyone that can master pyromancy will do so and anyone that can't won't be a soldier or warrior, since as soon as they meet a pyromancer (which will happen, magic readily available, right?) they wouldn't even be useful as cannon fodder. Also people tend to not fight or follow orders very well when set on fire.


If a pyromancer can set anyone and anything on fire, from any range, with no limits on how much they can do it, and with perfect control and precision, then yes, what you say is true.

But if there are limits to any of those, there will be situations where "stab the enemy in the guts" is quicker, or more efficient, or more effective, or more reliable, or stealthier, or has less risk of collateral damage than "set them on fire with magic", and so there will a use for mundane combat (i.e. "warriors").

As a real-world comparison: the fact that we can equip soldiers with flame-throwers, or grenade or rocket launchers, or laser-designators to call down air-strikes hasn't made "guy with a rifle and a big knife" obsolete.

[Knaight]

You know, Raziere, I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.

You want a world with magitech and readily available magic to everyone. Ok.

But then you say you want warriors and other "mundane" characters to be just as powerful as wizards and magic users. And this is where you lost me, because I have no idea on how to make "readily available magic" and "balanced mundanes" work together, outside of making magic useless.
Armor? Doesn't protect you, in fact, it becomes detrimental because it could be set on fire or it would just simply overheat if made of metal, causing even worse burns.

Melee weapons? Useless against someone that can set you on fire from far away. Also, weapons with wooden handles, like axes and spears, would burn.

Bows and crossbows? I'm betting it's pretty hard to aim when you are on fire or dodging fireballs. Also, pyromancers can create a lot of smoke to conceal themselves. Also, both bows and crossbow are very vulnerable to temperature changes and very vulnerable to being burned.

So with just pyromancers you created a world where anyone that can master pyromancy will do so and anyone that can't won't be a soldier or warrior, since as soon as they meet a pyromancer (which will happen, magic readily available, right?) they wouldn't even be useful as cannon fodder. Also people tend to not fight or follow orders very well when set on fire.
You're assuming that pyromancy is some sort of perfect art here, where a pyromancer can do whatever they want with fire and heat to perfect precision in a negligible amount of time. That doesn't fit much of any depiction.

Armor is still plenty useful. The metal absorbing heat meant for the outside of your skin is progress, and then the padding under it prevents it from getting to you as much as it would otherwise - consider a hot metal pan held by an oven mitt. Sure, if there's enough heat there then it stops being protective, but that gets back into the unlimited heat issue, which they probably don't have.

Melee weapons? Still useful if you can get close, and the assumption that wood can be burnt that quickly and easily again assumes either a very, very hot fire or prolonged exposure. It takes a while in a camp fire for wood to start burning. And really, you might as well say that melee weapons are useless against archers, as they can just shoot you before you get there. Yet they coexisted.

Archers and crossbows? Sure, firing a bow is difficult if you've got fire being flung at you. Presumably flinging fire at people is difficult if you have arrows being loosed at you. There's no guarantee that the fire is as accurate, or as fast moving, or much of anything else as the projectiles are. There's no guarantee that the precision is anywhere near that needed to heat the weapon itself.

There's basically no reason to think that pyromancers won't have limits. There's a good range of limits where they are still useful, but they don't make mundane methods obsolete. After all, all that really takes is being better at some tasks and worse at others. Maybe the magic is ridiculously powerful, but is also really slow, and as such the mage is highly susceptible to assassination, which would be carried out by mundane characters, prevented by mundane characters, etc. Maybe the pyromancer is a threat at range and is capable of attacking groups, but their fire travels far more slowly than an arrow and they're completely useless at anything requiring stealth. So on and so forth.


And what is a mage? A person who control cosmic powers of reality warping or the dinanamite of a construction work in a mine?

This is the kind of mundane use of magic that makes me feel uncomfortable. That makes it lose all that charming, occult and mysterious look.


The problem is not the dwarves. The porblem is that mages are actively called to carry out explosions. Like mundane construction workers.
It gets in the way of some portrayals of magic, sure. I don't necessarily see it destroying the charming, occult, mysterious look at all. For one thing, carrying out explosions isn't in the purview of mundane construction workers in the setting. Mages are carrying out specialized tasks that is years off from even showing up as technology, and probably decades off from implementation. They're wielding a power that nobody else even has.

To use a different example, REIGN has two magical specialties that mostly do what others could, but better. There's the smoke sculptors, and the earthquake drummers. The smoke sculptors light fires, then take the smoke and sculpt it with gestures. The material they make can't be replicated - it's strong enough to work in place of stone or metal and has the density associated with a gas - but ultimately a great deal of what they're doing is making buildings, and outside of the cases where the ability to pick up and carry the building is useful, it can basically be replicated. Their methods are far faster than mundane ones, but they can be replicated, and with smoke sculpting the rare and carefully guarded art that it is, mundane options are often cheaper (though that's a lot less true in areas with more smoke sculptors).

On the other hand, if you don't find people making buildings out of smoke magical, and it doesn't have a mysterious feel to it, I question your definition of magic, or the specifics of the description. It's the sort of thing that is really, really easy to portray in a magical way.

Then there are the earthquake drummers. They move earth, by drumming. Just about everything they do could be done with enough people with shovels, hammers, stone to bring in, etc. Some of what they do has a mundane tinge to it, as some roads are made by earthquake drummers.

Again though, if the mental image of someone walking down a path appearing before them, called by the drum they play as they walk doesn't seem magical, I don't know what will. Maybe the smoke sculptors; they've always appealed to me a bit more. Those two schools (followed by the mages who aren't necessarily doing anything that won't be possible with genetics, though it exceeds modern genetic manipulation) still manage to be the most interesting though.

[Kalmageddon]

You both missed on the fact that theoretically nothing is preventing a pyromancer from also being a normal soldier. In D&D you have classes with arbitrary limitations. In real life, if you had to choose between a soldier that can throw fireballs from his fingers while also being easily trainable in other more mundane weapons and a normal person that is trainable in mundane weapons only, you would pick the first one every time.

It also doesn't help your case that even in D&D, where magic users are for some stupid reason more vulnerable to harm than the average person, there still isn't any place for warriors and mundanes when casters are available.

Point being, you can't balance magic with mundane outside of making it either situational, costly or weak. Easily accessibile magic with powerful effects is inherently stronger than anything mundane while also not being mutually exclusive with it. On this last point, there are some systems that try to make this work by having magic opposed to science, like the video game Arcanum, which kind of works. But I was replying to a user that was very specific in their dislike for any limiting factor, while also wanting magic to be balanced against mundanes. And to that I say "it's impossibile", unless magic is limited to silly little tricks with little to no impact to gameplay, which again, the user I replied to dislikes.

I personally like magic as a concept but unless you want to create a world where everyone can use it and therefore mundanes do not exist, there has to be some real limiting factor both in terms of how may people in the setting can use magic and in terms of how much stronger magic makes an individual, becuse otherwise you have demigod wizards that, while rare, are impossibile to balance with the party when present. And spells per day are not a good limiting factor, as D&D demonstrates.
Of course saying "screw logic, it's cool" is perfectly viable if you find the right audience. I simply wouldn't be among them.

[VoxRationis]

I would argue that you can make magic useful—more than "little tricks"—without eclipsing mundane skills. D&D has spells which readily counter most mundane attacks, but there's no reason those spells have to be in there. Ways in which I posit one could make magic useful, but vulnerable:

Increased cost, likely of more than simple material resources;
Making it proactive, rather than reactive (no contingent effects);
Making "defensive magic" counter other magic more than mundane attack types;
Having harder limits on how much magic one can keep going at one time;
Increasing the time it takes to cast magic, such that it lacks combat utility, or has combat utility only for the most basic attack-type spells (like magic missile-equivalents).

Having only a few of these points worked into the design of a magic system would address the issue to some degree.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

To reply to the original question in a silly mechanical way;


Because by the time the wizard or cleric is lvl 1, the beasticks have been adventuring for several years. With 4 fights per day, they're already level 52+, having gained a level per week




See? Fighters can exploit the system, too.

[Segev]

The premise of most Exalted games is that all of the players are playing Exalted. Usually of the same type (Solars being the core book assumption). The players' characters really are on similar playing fields at that point. Magic is nigh-universal to their world-view.

The lowly mortals are definitely lowly in comparison. But they're (usually) not PCs.

In Exalted, playing something weaker than the "tier 1" character equivalent is a definite and deliberate choice, not a facet of the game telling you that mortals and Exalted are theoretically on par the way fighters and wizards supposedly are in D&D.

You can make build mistakes, don't get me wrong. 2e had some doozies, not the least of which included an over-valuing of extra health levels in terms of their cost and not understanding the best way to protect against the lethality of the system. But insofar as build archetypes and your choices of what to play, it's quite up-front about the fact that the Exalted - the intended PCs - just win.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

If a fighter can do "everything" as far as fighting is concerned, why can't he do the following;


1) Be athletic enough to avoid the wizard's area effects. Even RL people can do 20-foot jumps. Now imagine a fighter at the athletic level of the warriors in the Iliad or similar myths. Don't tell me they can't jump 20 feet to avoid a fireball. They could probably jump twice as far and fast as any real-life guy and 60 feet are enough to clear almost any AoE.


2) Be accurate enough to shoot people long-range and strong enough that their bows can shoot that far. Longest real-life kills with appropriate weapons are at 2 miles or so - epic heroes should be capable of at least twice that (and they were, in some legends). Also, bows with draw weights of 100 lbs could send arrows 400 feet. Someone with the strength of Hercules (or a 20th level DnD fighter) pulling a bow with draw weight of 7.000 lbs... DnD casters can't cast spells that far as is.


3) Be faster than the wizard. As is, DnD wizards can cast 2 spells in 6 seconds, plus 1 contingency. There are RL people who can punch you 5 times per second. There are athletes in European basketball that can win or lose the game for their team in the game's last second.
Epic heroes should be much faster than that. Let's see how wizards can cope when they can get shot 5 times before they can cast, and another 5 times before their contingency activates.


4) Have tactical options. FBI tests show that at a distance of 20 feet or less, there's a chance opponents can run up to you and stab you before you can draw your gun and fire. Drawing your gun and firing takes considerably less than casting a DnD spell would have. RL people are a dozen times less agile, fast and strong as heroes of myth or DnD fighters. So the option for a fighter to counter-strike before the wizard can cast? Easy.
The fighter should also have the option to take total cover behind a nearby barrier - that is standard practice against shooters IRL after all - or if the caster is using a nondamaging spell they could take total cover behind their shield, interrupting Line of Effect and ruining the spell.






Those are only a very small number of options that fighters should have had... but don't.

[S@tanicoaldo]

If a fighter can do "everything" as far as fighting is concerned, why can't he do the following;


1) Be athletic enough to avoid the wizard's area effects. Even RL people can do 20-foot jumps. Now imagine a fighter at the athletic level of the warriors in the Iliad or similar myths. Don't tell me they can't jump 20 feet to avoid a fireball. They could probably jump twice as far and fast as any real-life guy and 60 feet are enough to clear almost any AoE.


2) Be accurate enough to shoot people long-range and strong enough that their bows can shoot that far. Longest real-life kills with appropriate weapons are at 2 miles or so - epic heroes should be capable of at least twice that (and they were, in some legends). Also, bows with draw weights of 100 lbs could send arrows 400 feet. Someone with the strength of Hercules (or a 20th level DnD fighter) pulling a bow with draw weight of 7.000 lbs... DnD casters can't cast spells that far as is.


3) Be faster than the wizard. As is, DnD wizards can cast 2 spells in 6 seconds, plus 1 contingency. There are RL people who can punch you 5 times per second. There are athletes in European basketball that can win or lose the game for their team in the game's last second.
Epic heroes should be much faster than that. Let's see how wizards can cope when they can get shot 5 times before they can cast, and another 5 times before their contingency activates.


4) Have tactical options. FBI tests show that at a distance of 20 feet or less, there's a chance opponents can run up to you and stab you before you can draw your gun and fire. Drawing your gun and firing takes considerably less than casting a DnD spell would have. RL people are a dozen times less agile, fast and strong as heroes of myth or DnD fighters. So the option for a fighter to counter-strike before the wizard can cast? Easy.
The fighter should also have the option to take total cover behind a nearby barrier - that is standard practice against shooters IRL after all - or if the caster is using a nondamaging spell they could take total cover behind their shield, interrupting Line of Effect and ruining the spell.






Those are only a very small number of options that fighters should have had... but don't.

My question was not "Wizards Vs. fighters". Rather why would someone in a d&d universe in-character would choose to fight stuff with weapons instead off you know have the power to fly and go to other dimensions.


Well, if magic is so super corrupting and dark, then it really limits Players using it and it just makes you feel like your being punished for playing your character. I'd get bored with that quickly.

It does not. It feels more organic and realistic. Marie Curie did not want to die because of the radiation in her experiments. But she did. That was a consequence for the pursuit of truth and knowledge. The same has to happen with mages.

It does not limit your character. Just because magic is evil or corrupting does not make your character evil. It can be a visionary character. How the corruption affects your mage and how he deals with it, especially if he is not evil is part of the charm of a corrupting magic setting.

[AMFV]

You both missed on the fact that theoretically nothing is preventing a pyromancer from also being a normal soldier. In D&D you have classes with arbitrary limitations. In real life, if you had to choose between a soldier that can throw fireballs from his fingers while also being easily trainable in other more mundane weapons and a normal person that is trainable in mundane weapons only, you would pick the first one every time.

Time investment, difficulty of training, requirement to have a certain talent... It's the same reason that the military trains people to fit specialized roles.



It also doesn't help your case that even in D&D, where magic users are for some stupid reason more vulnerable to harm than the average person, there still isn't any place for warriors and mundanes when casters are available.

There certainly could be, you're think from an out-of-game metagame standpoint and then assuming that it applies through the world which is not always the case. Also it takes more time and money to train a caster to be effective than it does to train a mundane.




I personally like magic as a concept but unless you want to create a world where everyone can use it and therefore mundanes do not exist, there has to be some real limiting factor both in terms of how may people in the setting can use magic and in terms of how much stronger magic makes an individual, becuse otherwise you have demigod wizards that, while rare, are impossibile to balance with the party when present. And spells per day are not a good limiting factor, as D&D demonstrates.
Of course saying "screw logic, it's cool" is perfectly viable if you find the right audience. I simply wouldn't be among them.

Well it depends. Not everybody in the real world is an Engineer. Not everybody in the real world spends all of their time trying to get money, which is equivalent. Preference is a pretty good limiting factor to something, frankly.

[BeerMug Paladin]

My question was not "Wizards Vs. fighters". Rather why would someone in a d&d universe in-character would choose to fight stuff with weapons instead off you know have the power to fly and go to other dimensions.
Just out of curiosity, have any of the attempts so far to answer this question made sense to you?

I recognize that not strictly all answers for this have dealt with the question from an in-character perspective, but a bit of topic drift is within the nature of an ongoing discussion like this.

To give another answer I'm not sure has been brought up, if you wanted to be a generally highly skilled person, with lots of skill in multiple disciplines such as artistry, crafting, physical performances, speaking, and so forth, the best option available to you is to train as a rogue with no magic of your own. (Or potentially debatably the expert, which also has no magic.)

[Lord Raziere]

It does not. It feels more organic and realistic. Marie Curie did not want to die because of the radiation in her experiments. But she did. That was a consequence for the pursuit of truth and knowledge. The same has to happen with mages.

It does not limit your character. Just because magic is evil or corrupting does not make your character evil. It can be a visionary character. How the corruption affects your mage and how he deals with it, especially if he is not evil is part of the charm of a corrupting magic setting.

and if that is not a direction I want my character to go in, you might as well just mind control him into being evil anyways and have him act out becoming a well-intentioned extremist who through his extremism becomes evil just in a different way. if you want to turn my character into a villain, fine but I'm not playing with you if you do.

[Milo v3]

It does not. It feels more organic and realistic. Marie Curie did not want to die because of the radiation in her experiments. But she did. That was a consequence for the pursuit of truth and knowledge. The same has to happen with mages.

It does not limit your character. Just because magic is evil or corrupting does not make your character evil. It can be a visionary character. How the corruption affects your mage and how he deals with it, especially if he is not evil is part of the charm of a corrupting magic setting.

It does limit your character, but that's intentional and "sort of" fine in my opinion not completely but sort of, I mean I hate how it lowers the possible backstories since most people wouldn't be stupid enough to play around with something they know will kill them if they play with it via the method they are using.

My main issue is that it limits Players, since several players wouldn't want to play a character that might die or gone insane just because of using your only class features (and equivalent in classless systems), lowering the chances of people actually ever playing that role.

[Talakeal]

and if that is not a direction I want my character to go in, you might as well just mind control him into being evil anyways and have him act out becoming a well-intentioned extremist who through his extremism becomes evil just in a different way. if you want to turn my character into a villain, fine but I'm not playing with you if you do.

I always wondered how that does effect RP. If I am playing D&D and am routinely committing arbitrarily evil acts like using spells with the evil descriptor for altruistic purposes, gut I still act like a good guy. Does the DM take away my character from me? Penalize my XP? Simply yoyo my alignment from scene to scene?

The books get all fire and brimstone and say "You do X and you are EViL!" But has no mechanics for actually enforcing the change.

[Milo v3]

I always wondered how that does effect RP. If I am playing D&D and am routinely committing arbitrarily evil acts like using spells with the evil descriptor for altruistic purposes, gut I still act like a good guy. Does the DM take away my character from me? Penalize my XP? Simply yoyo my alignment from scene to scene?

The books get all fire and brimstone and say "You do X and you are EViL!" But has no mechanics for actually enforcing the change.

I'm pretty sure casting the alignment spells doesn't change your alignment on their own, and that it's what you do with them that would change your alignment, with the descriptor more just being for casters that have limited spell lists based on alignment. Either way, their is a mechanic for alignment change, when your actions overall are more fitting for one alignment than your current one you eventually move closer to that alignment over time until you are that alignment.

[Talakeal]

I'm pretty sure casting the alignment spells doesn't change your alignment on their own, and that it's what you do with them that would change your alignment, with the descriptor more just being for casters that have limited spell lists based on alignment. Either way, their is a mechanic for alignment change, when your actions overall are more fitting for one alignment than your current one you eventually move closer to that alignment over time until you are that alignment.

As far as I am concerned no, according to the core rules it does not according to RAW. I have talked to people on this very forum who insist that it is RAW according to the PHB, and other people who say it is RAI and they play that way anyway.

Regardless, later books, (BoED, BoVD, Champions of Ruin, Heroes of Horror) went on to try and codify alignment and listed a whole bunch of "always evil" acts, including cast spells with the (evil) descriptor.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

My question was not "Wizards Vs. fighters". Rather why would someone in a d&d universe in-character would choose to fight stuff with weapons instead off you know have the power to fly and go to other dimensions.
Several reasons;


1) Magic is unreliable. There are locations where it doesn't work, creatures immune to it, magic items providing immunity to specific schools, creatures with their own immunities, ways to easily neutralize very powerful wizards with a mid-level spell like antimagic field or even silence. Nothing is outright immune to physical attacks, nowhere are physical attacks impeded and nobody can simply render physical force irrelevant as easily as magic.


2) Magic is initially weak. Before a wizard can learn to fly or travel to other dimensions, they must survive till they get that power. In DnD, simple academic reading does not experience give: you need 40 genuine challenges to reach level 4. That's 40 chances to get hit by an arrow doing more damage than you got HP. In contrast, warriors are initially more survivable and powerful and someone who needs to raise an army of thousands will naturally prefer warriors.


3) Magic is slow to learn. The point I made before; most casters need years to train up to level 1. A fighter can do so much earlier, then spend the remaining years till the casters catch up to actually fight and accumulate power and wealth.


4) Magic is limited. No matter how powerful a wizard you are, if you can only target 20 kobolds with your memorized offensive spells before they run out but there are 40 of them, you'll lose the fight; it won't matter that you can kill each kobold ten times over. If your buffs only run for a few minutes and you've buffed enough to win, an enemy could simply hide/run/delay until they fade then defeat you. In contrast, a warrior has no such limits in most cases - they don't run out of attacks and with the right feats they might not even run out of HP over multiple fights.


5) Magic has narrow, specific effects. A wizard needs a different spell to carry heavy loads, open doors, resist grapples, go over obstacles, break barriers, escape bonds, or do a specific kind of labor. A warrior only needs his strength score. Sure, the wizard may be more efficient in any task he chooses to be, but cannot do all of them and if he has not memorized or doesn't know the exact spell for each task, he can't do it at all.

[AMFV]

As far as I am concerned no, according to the core rules it does not according to RAW. I have talked to people on this very forum who insist that it is RAW according to the PHB, and other people who say it is RAI and they play that way anyway.

Regardless, later books, (BoED, BoVD, Champions of Ruin, Heroes of Horror) went on to try and codify alignment and listed a whole bunch of "always evil" acts, including cast spells with the (evil) descriptor.

However it's important to note that there are NO posted rules in 3.5 for alignment changes outside of StW, Mindrape, or a Helm of Opposite Alignment. There is no "at 76 EVIIIIL Points you become EVIIIIL." It's entirely a DM call.

[TheCountAlucard]

Nothing is outright immune to physical attacks...Incorporeality; good luck killing that Shadow without magic in some form or other.


...nowhere are physical attacks impeded...Damage Reduction impedes physical attacks pretty darn well. :smalltongue:


...nobody can simply render physical force irrelevant as easily as magic.You're right there; magic sure can render physical force irrelevant. :smallamused:

For that matter, how do you think a Fighter is going to beat a Wall of Force?

[Frozen_Feet]

I always wondered how that does effect RP. If I am playing D&D and am routinely committing arbitrarily evil acts like using spells with the evil descriptor for altruistic purposes, gut I still act like a good guy. Does the DM take away my character from me? Penalize my XP? Simply yoyo my alignment from scene to scene?

The books get all fire and brimstone and say "You do X and you are EViL!" But has no mechanics for actually enforcing the change.

In 1st Ed AD&D, there was a chart for alignment, and one of the GM's explicit duties was to position and rank all character actions on that chart. There were also rules for moving between alignment - for example, you couldn't move from one extreme to another directly, without passing through the intervening alignment. For example, you couldn't move from Lawful Good, to True Neutral, without becoming Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good first. So on and so forth. There were exceptions for radical magic effects, like Helm of Opposite Alignments.

In addition: sudden alignment changes based on singular extreme actions caused negative levels. In order to truly change alignment, your character had to have a long history of changing behaviour to be in line with the new, desired alignment. If you tried to "jump alignments" many times in short order (thrice was the limit, I recall), the gods struck your character dead.

By 3rd edition, these rules had become absent. Changing alignments is still something easy to infer from the rules - as alignments are descriptive (seriously, the SRD has it under description), a character is evil or good depending on how well they match with the descriptions given. There are few mechanical penalties for changing alignment, but they're there: loss of rage for Barbarians, loss of character advancement for Bards and Monks, loss of class features for Paladins & Druids etc. Splatbooks expanded this list, and Champions of Ruin had exactly the sort of "white stones, black stones" system you'd expect alignment to work with.

D&D, by and large, has not been one of those games that takes away your character if he turns evil. The stigma against evil player characters originated with 2nd Edition AD&D, when TSR wanted to avoid association with satanism and other anti-social subcultures. (Seriously, they had a long list of in-company guidelines for what was or wasn't acceptable material for D&D.)

Other systems are much stricted. In CODA Lord of the Rings, if your character consistently acts villainous and nets enough Corruption, they become an NPC villain. In Conan d20, 10 points of Corruption from magic-use make your character an evil NPC. This is a pretty common mechanic.

[SiuiS]

To reply to the original question in a silly mechanical way;


Because by the time the wizard or cleric is lvl 1, the beasticks have been adventuring for several years. With 4 fights per day, they're already level 52+, having gained a level per week

See? Fighters can exploit the system, too.

Hahaha!


and if that is not a direction I want my character to go in, you might as well just mind control him into being evil anyways and have him act out becoming a well-intentioned extremist who through his extremism becomes evil just in a different way. if you want to turn my character into a villain, fine but I'm not playing with you if you do.

Okay, but again, why is "my character suffers damage from something I didn't want" and "my character suffers damage from magic that I didn't want" so different?


I always wondered how that does effect RP. If I am playing D&D and am routinely committing arbitrarily evil acts like using spells with the evil descriptor for altruistic purposes, gut I still act like a good guy. Does the DM take away my character from me? Penalize my XP? Simply yoyo my alignment from scene to scene?

The books get all fire and brimstone and say "You do X and you are EViL!" But has no mechanics for actually enforcing the change.

No, it's there. It's stark and it's subtle, but it's there. Performing evil Acts is something evil characters do. [evil] spells are evil acts. Performing the act of casting [evil] spells is an evil act which only evil people do. Doing that means you are evil.

The thing is, being evil doesn't have any real effect most of the time. So it's basically ignored.


As far as I am concerned no, according to the core rules it does not according to RAW. I have talked to people on this very forum who insist that it is RAW according to the PHB, and other people who say it is RAI and they play that way anyway.

Regardless, later books, (BoED, BoVD, Champions of Ruin, Heroes of Horror) went on to try and codify alignment and listed a whole bunch of "always evil" acts, including cast spells with the (evil) descriptor.

Those got weird. Especially the fiendish codex; a lot of basic stuff of heroic fantasy sent you to eternal damnation.


However it's important to note that there are NO posted rules in 3.5 for alignment changes outside of StW, Mindrape, or a Helm of Opposite Alignment. There is no "at 76 EVIIIIL Points you become EVIIIIL." It's entirely a DM call.

Eh. There is no "mechanic" in that you don't go through a series of prescribed forms or anything. It just happens.


In 1st Ed AD&D, there was a chart for alignment, and one of the GM's explicit duties was to position and rank all character actions on that chart. There were also rules for moving between alignment - for example, you couldn't move from one extreme to another directly, without passing through the intervening alignment. For example, you couldn't move from Lawful Good, to True Neutral, without becoming Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good first. So on and so forth. There were exceptions for radical magic effects, like Helm of Opposite Alignments.

In addition: sudden alignment changes based on singular extreme actions caused negative levels. In order to truly change alignment, your character had to have a long history of changing behaviour to be in line with the new, desired alignment. If you tried to "jump alignments" many times in short order (thrice was the limit, I recall), the gods struck your character dead.

By 3rd edition, these rules had become absent. Changing alignments is still something easy to infer from the rules - as alignments are descriptive (seriously, the SRD has it under description), a character is evil or good depending on how well they match with the descriptions given. There are few mechanical penalties for changing alignment, but they're there: loss of rage for Barbarians, loss of character advancement for Bards and Monks, loss of class features for Paladins & Druids etc. Splatbooks expanded this list, and Champions of Ruin had exactly the sort of "white stones, black stones" system you'd expect alignment to work with.

D&D, by and large, has not been one of those games that takes away your character if he turns evil. The stigma against evil player characters originated with 2nd Edition AD&D, when TSR wanted to avoid association with satanism and other anti-social subcultures. (Seriously, they had a long list of in-company guidelines for what was or wasn't acceptable material for D&D.)

Other systems are much stricted. In CODA Lord of the Rings, if your character consistently acts villainous and nets enough Corruption, they become an NPC villain. In Conan d20, 10 points of Corruption from magic-use make your character an evil NPC. This is a pretty common mechanic.

Yeah, basically.

[Lord Raziere]

Okay, but again, why is "my character suffers damage from something I didn't want" and "my character suffers damage from magic that I didn't want" so different?



I'm ok with swords or spells attacking me cast from another enemy. I'm ok with an enemy trying to mind control my character. thats just what can be expected from my enemies if they have the power over minds.

what I'm not ok with is my own magic screwing me over. I mean, I cast a certain spell and suddenly I become slightly more corrupted? I don't like that, because if my character can cast the spell, they are already the kind of person who would cast it in the first place, so a magic saying that I change because I cast the spell and make me more evil is saying that I wasn't this person before, that I wasn't ok with it before, when clearly I just cast it and am ok with it and not changed. its therefore restricting my character's morality and forcing them into a certain box of corrupted evil.....just because. when I don't want it to force me and my character down that road.

I mean, Sith force lightning, I want to kill dudes with it, bad dudes who are all like, deserve it. but I'd earn corruption points for it, even if all I do is sith force lightning bad dudes over and over without doing anything else evil, until I become evil and suddenly I'm this completely evil jerk for no reason. which makes no sense. its just lightning, there are superheroes who blast things with lightning all day and not become evil, but somehow blasting people with force lightning is evil.....for no reason. or force choke, even though its little different from a regular choke, just from a distance. is it really so evil to kill a sith lord by force choking them to death? I don't think so.

yet these mechanics insist that just by doing this certain action that I think is cool and isn't all that bad, I automatically start becoming eeeeeeeeevil. I disagree with them strenuously. I mean, what if the person just blasted force lightning at a rock or something constantly just because he could? how is that evil? it limiting my options because it says that after I do a certain amounts of actions, I suddenly lose control and start doing out of character actions.....for no logical reason. its just like I suddenly decide "I'm EVIL now! DIE EVERYONE! >:D" which does not connect. and the slow progression thing well....why would someone just slide into evil? your in control of your decisions, so you can completely avoid making any decisions that actually make you evil, the spell is just a tool that I use after all.

[NichG]

For force lightning and corrupting magic, think of it like this:

In order to actually successfully deploy the magic, you have to find a way to take the target - whatever it is, a rock or person - and make yourself deeply and irrationally hate them. You have to enter a state of mind in which you aren't willing to live in a universe in which that thing continues to prosper, and then demand that the universe budge before you will.

In other words, the very process of casting successfully involves performing a damaging mental act. Someone who tries to do it without actually going all dark side... isn't going to produce a spark. You turn evil after repeatedly force-lightninging a rock because producing the effect at all requires debasing your own mind and morality at a deep level. The fact that you waste it on a stone rather than using it to blast someone who deserves it is neither here nor there - its your choice of target once you paid the price for access.

[Coidzor]

For force lightning and corrupting magic, think of it like this:

In order to actually successfully deploy the magic, you have to find a way to take the target - whatever it is, a rock or person - and make yourself deeply and irrationally hate them. You have to enter a state of mind in which you aren't willing to live in a universe in which that thing continues to prosper, and then demand that the universe budge before you will.

In other words, the very process of casting successfully involves performing a damaging mental act. Someone who tries to do it without actually going all dark side... isn't going to produce a spark. You turn evil after repeatedly force-lightninging a rock because producing the effect at all requires debasing your own mind and morality at a deep level. The fact that you waste it on a stone rather than using it to blast someone who deserves it is neither here nor there - its your choice of target once you paid the price for access.

Enemies that have legitimately earned such hatred and enemies that actually shouldn't exist for various reasons would complicate that, however. And if it's just the "mentally damaging act" of wanting to unmake someone, well, that would also need to apply to sword-in-the-face and other methods of murdering, really. Except it's never just that anyway.

The Dark Side is actively malevolent in many now-non-canonical depictions, and many other setups where Magic Makes You Evil, or at least certain magic does, have a similar semi-personification/demiurgification of that magic as something that leaves a semi-sentient part of itself in the person using it that gets bigger and bigger with every use until it has eaten the personality of the person who was using it and now uses them instead.

Or replaced them with a similar personality but reinterpreted to be like their evil, goatee'd equivalent from their mirror universe.

[SiuiS]

I'm ok with swords or spells attacking me cast from another enemy. I'm ok with an enemy trying to mind control my character. thats just what can be expected from my enemies if they have the power over minds.

what I'm not ok with is my own magic screwing me over. I mean, I cast a certain spell and suddenly I become slightly more corrupted? I don't like that, because if my character can cast the spell, they are already the kind of person who would cast it in the first place, so a magic saying that I change because I cast the spell and make me more evil is saying that I wasn't this person before, that I wasn't ok with it before, when clearly I just cast it and am ok with it and not changed. its therefore restricting my character's morality and forcing them into a certain box of corrupted evil.....just because. when I don't want it to force me and my character down that road.

Okay.

Dark side powers are not inherently corrupting though. They require you to be corrupt to use them. They are a bad analogy.


Enemies that have legitimately earned such hatred and enemies that actually shouldn't exist for various reasons would complicate that, however.

Not at all. There is no Light Side; there is the force, and the corrupted passionate and egotistical use of the force. The force does not have enemies. The force does not hate. Ever. If you do you have allowed schism between you and the force. Grappling it through that schism – instead of reconciling yourself, healing, and returning to the right path – is inherently selfish and egotistical, further separating you from the truth that is the force.

[Wardog]

My question was not "Wizards Vs. fighters". Rather why would someone in a d&d universe in-character would choose to fight stuff with weapons instead off you know have the power to fly and go to other dimensions.


Fly is a 3rd-level spell, meaning you have to get to 5th level to cast it, and have at least 13 int.

Plane Shift is 7th-level (for wizards), meaning you need to be 13th level and have 17 int.

Even if becoming a 1st-level wizard is trivially easy, very few people will be able to progress that far or have the ability to cast those spells.

(Remember: if we're talking about a D&D-style world, not a D&D game, people won't have a DM providing level-appropriate challenges for them at a rate that enables them to advance in a timely fashion. They might go for years without seeing a single goblin, and then get ganked by a pack of ogres).

[Coidzor]

Not at all. There is no Light Side; there is the force, and the corrupted passionate and egotistical use of the force. The force does not have enemies. The force does not hate. Ever. If you do you have allowed schism between you and the force. Grappling it through that schism – instead of reconciling yourself, healing, and returning to the right path – is inherently selfish and egotistical, further separating you from the truth that is the force.

Considering that the Force specifically has nothing to do with that point about irrational hatred being complicated by entirely rational hatred, uh, yeah, you haven't so much refuted me as decided to go off on a tangent. :smalltongue:

So, congratulations on playing with your own paper tiger, I guess? :smallconfused:

[Lord Raziere]

Okay.

Dark side powers are not inherently corrupting though. They require you to be corrupt to use them. They are a bad analogy.


ok how about Mage: The Awakening powers then? I can apparently blast a fireball. but actually aiming a fireball and succeeding at what a fireball is meant to do apparently makes me a little less Wise and more evil or something. even though getting rid of something like I dunno, one of those lich guys who are going around eating souls is totally something that it'd probably be useful in dealing with.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Incorporeality; good luck killing that Shadow without magic in some form or other.

Damage Reduction impedes physical attacks pretty darn well. :smalltongue:

You're right there; magic sure can render physical force irrelevant. :smallamused:

For that matter, how do you think a Fighter is going to beat a Wall of Force?

1) There are at least 3 materials affecting incorporeal creatures without being enchanted, and one forging technique. That's not even getting to feats or special abilities.

2) There are two ways that sentence can be read. If you can tell me of any effect that can shut down physical force as easily as antimagic and dead magic can do on spells...

3) Jump over it. It's only a 10-foot wall. Or dig under it. Remember, it can't be used for ceilings or floors as it must be vertical. Also, since it's an immobile effect with a duration, by RAW no portion of a Wall of Force can ever be further than 25 ft +5 ft/2 CL than the wizard that cast it.
Last but not least, it's a DC 32 strength check to break a wall of force if you got the right special abilities.

[NichG]

Enemies that have legitimately earned such hatred and enemies that actually shouldn't exist for various reasons would complicate that, however. And if it's just the "mentally damaging act" of wanting to unmake someone, well, that would also need to apply to sword-in-the-face and other methods of murdering, really. Except it's never just that anyway.

No, not just the mentally damaging act of wanting to unmake someone. Lets call that a 3 on a 0 to 10 scale. To hit force lighting, I'm talking about breaking the top and going for 11.

Its the difference between 'I hate that guy' and 'I render myself mentally incapable of understanding or empathizing with any point of view that would suggest even tentatively that there is a downside to his utter destruction and the desolation of everything he holds dear'. Essentially, something where you have to - briefly - turn yourself into a psychopath to get the effect to work. The more you do it, the easier it becomes for you to think in that way. After getting to the point where its second nature, that mode of thought may be hard to slip out of (or even detect when you're thinking that way).

Now, this is all supposition. The Star Wars stuff doesn't go into any particular detail saying that one must do things like this. It'd be reasonable to argue 'thats not how it works in Star Wars'. Instead what I'm trying to show is that it is possible to conceive of a kind of magic where the rigors of using the magic require you to basically slowly corrupt yourself, because the spell effects simply do not work unless you embrace a bit more of your shadow each time.

Someone who has the strength of will to not be corrupted will simply flub the casting.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Lord_Raziere: I think the problem here is that you're operating on an entirely different concept of action and consequence than most systems with harmful magic or karmic repercussions for using it. Or rather, it seems you're unaware the laws of action and consequence even can be different, as shown here:


its just lightning, there are superheroes who blast things with lightning all day and not become evil, but somehow blasting people with force lightning is evil...

The "superheroes" you're talking of by and large exist outside Star Wars. They are not beholden to the mystical laws of the Force or that setting's preference of harmony over discord. Within Star Wars universe, Force Lightning is never "just lightning" and said superheroes might not even be able to exist.

Lets look at another, hypothetical setting example where the highest virtue is non-violence. No-one deserves a death penalty. If your character fries someone with lightning because he thought "he deserves it!", he's proven he's no longer in line with what that setting considers good. Hence, his description turns to evil. This doesn't necessarily mean the character is restricted from doing anything, saying they've "become evil" or have "committed an evil act" are simply objective in-setting observations of what's happened. Arguing against that would be like saying "my character totally didn't jump over that fence, he just used to muscle power of his legs to get over it!"

As has been said, magic is a buzzword; it can mean anything an author wants it to mean. This extends to all other supernatural forces in-setting, including the moral cosmology within which magic operates. The first step in playing in such a setting is accepting that your own values of morality and magic no longer apply. Saying "my character became evil for no reason" is almost always ignorant of the actual in-setting rules, as within the setting, there's nearly always a reason. Not necessarily a good or well-thought-out reason, but a reason still. And these reasons can't be applied across settings.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Lets look at another, hypothetical setting example where the highest virtue is non-violence. No-one deserves a death penalty. If your character fries someone with lightning because he thought "he deserves it!", he's proven he's no longer in line with what that setting considers good. Hence, his description turns to evil.

1) I fry someone with Force Lightning because I can and should keep it nonlethal. The moment I try to shoot him with blasters or slash as him with a lightsaber is the moment that I can decapitate him or cleave him in two, even if only by accident.

2) I fry him with Force Lightning because I can and should avoid permanent damage. Even a "merciful" blow with a lightsaber can and will send limbs flying or rupture internal organs.

[Frozen_Feet]

Both scenarios you posted assume you can zap someone with lightning non-lethally and you're still acting like violence is a (morally) good option at all in a setting based on non-violence. The only thing you got right is that in scuh a setting, any other form of violence would be just as immoral.

[Seward]

Most of the "magic can screw you over" rules fall into 3 categories.

1. The magic isn't you, it's some being using you as a sock-puppet to affect the mortal world (see clerics in AD&D, or diabolists in Ars Magica). Using it against the ethos of the sponsoring being will get it taken away from you. Using it with the ethos of the sponsoring being will be rewarded with more power, but also make you more and more like that sponsoring being.

2. Most people can't do magic because the consensus reality of mortals doesn't want magic to exist. (Mage the Awakening, Ars Magica inside a church). Essentially you're pitting your force of will against the universe, or at least the will, belief and desire of large, large numbers of mortals. You can succeed if you push hard enough, then the universe kicks back. Such systems encourage subtle uses of magic, either away from witnesses or actions that can be explained away. They often have environments where it's just fine to do magic, and these problems don't occur, so you can go gonzo flashy. This can work for you too. I had an Entropy Mage in Mage the Awakening that once banished a major demon just by pointing out that it seemed extremely unlikely a being like it could exist standing in a church the way it was at the time. Ok, I pushed a bit with probability magic but it was like tipping a boulder over in perfect equilibrium, not picking it up and lifting it over my head. Other days, well, sometimes you just need to have lightning arc between the automatic weapons of the small army about to shoot you. You just suck up the universal consequences of the action, and maybe after an especially bad day of that sort lock yourself into your room for a few years, trying to bleed off the backlash where nobody dares to bother you unless the end of the world is nigh, whereupon you emerge to do something disturbing and powerful, then retreat to your room (yes the same character. He reinvented the reality of a person wiped from the universe with a time paradox starting with a sock he found behind a dryer....it wasn't QUITE the same person because part of the rationalization for how he existed involved many things we thought we knew about him being actually wrong - the new guy was more like we imagined the original...)

3. The rules of how magic is done are deeply tied into who you are, using it is a statement about who you want to be - so the most violent, destructive uses of magic tend to do bad things to your head (Star Wars, the 7 laws of magic in Dresdenverse, the Unforgivable Curses in Potterverse). If you are a Jedi Knight and don't want to wear a goatee and start monologging, don't use your magic in anger. That is what your light saber or blaster are for, a way to express that anger or hate when it is appropriate without having your magic transform you, and it's likely why the Knights trained with such weapons, rather than just raw Force TK/Lightning effects.

[Coidzor]

It's probably worth noting that while apparently using the Force to do it will gain you darkside points faster. Maybe, thanks to that lovely bit of variable canonicity and such a large canon that the handlers lost track and ended up having it contradict itself in places. Just being a Khorneate Berserker or Angry Marine will get you where you're going just as well.

The interesting thing is settings with magic systems that corrupt that profess to be about the corruption of the person (rather than that the magic comes from an evil entity or parasite and exists to promulgate said evil) but then don't have a similar corruption for people who go full-evil without being casters and why.


No, not just the mentally damaging act of wanting to unmake someone. Lets call that a 3 on a 0 to 10 scale. To hit force lighting, I'm talking about breaking the top and going for 11.

Alright, glad that we're not actually in disagreement on that particular point of it not just being the mindset of murderer that makes one evil with these sorts of magic systems.


Its the difference between 'I hate that guy' and 'I render myself mentally incapable of understanding or empathizing with any point of view that would suggest even tentatively that there is a downside to his utter destruction and the desolation of everything he holds dear'. Essentially, something where you have to - briefly - turn yourself into a psychopath to get the effect to work. The more you do it, the easier it becomes for you to think in that way. After getting to the point where its second nature, that mode of thought may be hard to slip out of (or even detect when you're thinking that way).

Umm.... So, yeah, the difference between hating someone and deciding that they need killing in a hot, visceral way rather than a cold, calculated way. :smallconfused:

[NichG]

Umm.... So, yeah, the difference between hating someone and deciding that they need killing in a hot, visceral way rather than a cold, calculated way. :smallconfused:

I'm not sure how to explain how forcing oneself to think along certain lines can alter one's long-term point of view if you haven't experienced it yourself. This is a very abstract example, but maybe it'll give the idea. At one point I decided to try to teach myself to look at faces without perceiving them as a face, but instead to just see the parts. This is a hard thing to do since humans end up being wired for face detection as a special task from a pretty early age. After I managed it, it was a very creepy experience, because I'd look at someone and not see their face there but instead just some kind of arrangement of facial bodyparts; the person you're looking at almost doesn't seem quite alive because of the self-induced uncanny valley effect. Its sort of like doing the various tricks that make you aware of the skeleton beneath your skin - it skews your perception for a bit and generally can creep you out. After a few minutes the effect fades, but I could easily see that being the kind of thing you could learn to do at will, and then find that its hard to turn off that mode of perception.

Now, replace 'looking at someone's face and just seeing the body parts' with 'looking at people and just seeing objects to be manipulated'. If you do that kind of thing repeatedly and for a long period of time, its going to create long-lasting psychological effects. This kind of methodology has been historically used to train troops to be able to kill without hesitation, but it can also lead to a long-term psychology in which they have difficulty seeing their enemies as human. Not every soldier is going to be susceptible to that to the same degree, and in many cases it'd fade, but if you take someone who has a very strong dark side but is being held back by inhibitions, then you can end up with a situation in which those inhibitions go away when the person is thinking about 'the enemy', which can drive them to commit atrocities.

So, I could see a form of 'corrupting magic' that works the same way. Its not that there's some intelligent hostile force inhabiting the magic that takes over the practitioners. Its just that the actual mindset that the caster needs to maintain in order to access the magic is conducive towards this sort of dehumanization.

A form of magic, for example, that fizzles in the presence of any feelings of guilt would end up being something that has a 'light side' and a 'dark side' much like the Force. Those who basically live their lives very carefully can use the magic until something goes wrong, and then they have to retire. Or they train themselves to not feel guilt for anything anymore.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

If The Force worked like that, then why don't all Jedi get corrupted when they're using it to kill? Force-push someone off a bridge. Send your lightsaber to cleave someone in two with telekinetic combat. Enhance your speed and strength so you can kill people faster and better in combat. Use precognition and Force guidance to deflect a blaster bolt back into someone. Throw a vehicle weighing a couple of tons on someone. Force-stasis or Mindtrick someone into just sitting there while you shoot them. Is there any Jedi who hasn't killed people in a fight? Is there any Jedi that chose not to use the Force in said fight? If all the Jedi use The Force in fights and all of them kill, I fail to see a difference.



I like the Dresden Files "Laws of Magic" better. Use magic to kill, alter or rob the will of free-willed beings and you're corrupted, no ifs, no buts. That's because you genuinely believed that killing and alteration of form or mind should be done - and those things are evil, regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Use magic to reach beyond the borders of life, mess with causality and introduce things from beyond the universe into the world and you're corrupted, no ifs, no buts. That's because you're commiting the monumentally stupid hybris of deciding to go against the laws of the universe, believing that you, a mortal, know better than whoever made it.

[VoxRationis]

Because certain aspects of the Force have different effects. Side effects, in this case. This is true of most magic considered "corrupting" in a setting. The magic is corrupting because... it is. This is not arbitrary, necessarily, in-universe; it is an empirical fact of how the magic works, just like how some medications can cause deleterious mental effects. Ethical or philosophical debates are irrelevant.

[Lord Raziere]

I like the Dresden Files "Laws of Magic" better. Use magic to kill, alter or rob the will of free-willed beings and you're corrupted, no ifs, no buts. That's because you genuinely believed that killing and alteration of form or mind should be done - and those things are evil, regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Use magic to reach beyond the borders of life, mess with causality and introduce things from beyond the universe into the world and you're corrupted, no ifs, no buts. That's because you're commiting the monumentally stupid hybris of deciding to go against the laws of the universe, believing that you, a mortal, know better than whoever made it.

yea but thats just it: you can still shoot fireballs at things. shouldn't by "magic is corrupting" logic, I become corrupted just by coming up with the fireball spell, even if I say, just want it shoot a fireball into the air to see how pretty it is? because the fireball is an inherently offensive spell? therefore if I want to play a good character, it means I can't have them have a fireball spell that will destroy things for me, and I'm like "dude, what does the universe have against heroes who love fire and explosions?"

that and I'm pretty sure Harry Dresden the protagonist has broken more than one law of magic and yet is still seemingly fine. and lets not forget you get off scot-free if you just kill them with a gun or something, because that is like totally different. and don't talk to me about "twisting the energies of life" and whatnot into twisted dark ways that they shouldn't be twisted into, by that logic, when I choke somebody to death, I'm twisting the energies of life into twisted dark ways of cutting off that life.

either way, why play in such a universe, if all the efforts I LIKE to do are just going to earn me bad points? my fun is ruined if at the end of walking away from exploding the evil guy's lair, the GM goes "now your a little more evil for using fun explosion-magics to kill him." I mean dude, your ruining a good thing here, why you gotta make me kill them using BORING things like swords and guns?

[SiuiS]

Considering that the Force specifically has nothing to do with that point about irrational hatred being complicated by entirely rational hatred, uh, yeah, you haven't so much refuted me as decided to go off on a tangent. :smalltongue:

So, congratulations on playing with your own paper tiger, I guess? :smallconfused:

Of course it has to do with irrational or rational hatred. In a setting with the force, hatred AT ALL does not jive. If you are usig Harmony and love to murder someone, you're going to suffer for it, because no matter how much your human morality says it's okay, Harmony and love are nonmoral and objective and don't care about your human morality.

And there is no moral side, unless you accept the naturalistic fallacy (which may not be fallacy in universe). There's Right and there's Evil, but no Good.


ok how about Mage: The Awakening powers then? I can apparently blast a fireball. but actually aiming a fireball and succeeding at what a fireball is meant to do apparently makes me a little less Wise and more evil or something. even though getting rid of something like I dunno, one of those lich guys who are going around eating souls is totally something that it'd probably be useful in dealing with.

Because you are using the full force of your soul to clearly imagine the ending of someone and manifesting it as reality. Wisdom is about Wisdom; all killing is unwise because unlike any other game system, you can always know better, you can always know the consequences, you can always do something more wise. If you're killing someone you've already failed to take the wise course of action, which would be orchestrating events such that their death is unnecessary.


If The Force worked like that, then why don't all Jedi get corrupted when they're using it to kill? Force-push someone off a bridge.

They do, originally. It's not until the EU where people get into totally sweet light saber fights all the time and flip out and kill people like ninjas that this is a problem. In the original idea, fighting is wrong, always, which is why Luke didn't fight. Pushing someone to their death is still killing them and you shouldn't do that. Sometimes it happens, but it's never justified even if it's necessary.

[Lord Raziere]

Because you are using the full force of your soul to clearly imagine the ending of someone and manifesting it as reality. Wisdom is about Wisdom; all killing is unwise because unlike any other game system, you can always know better, you can always know the consequences, you can always do something more wise. If you're killing someone you've already failed to take the wise course of action, which would be orchestrating events such that their death is unnecessary.


But the world doesn't cater to Wisdom. the world cares not for how wise you are, or how freaking smart or anything like that, its so unfair that eventually you can't live up to any ideal at all, you have to bend at some point. that includes the ideals of Wisdom. even if you try to live up to it, you eventually won't be able to. the universe will find a way to screw over your efforts anyways, you can't realistically expect to always hold yourself to that sort of thing and survive. you gotta be adaptive, flexible to do good in the world, and trying to hold yourself to any ideal is making yourself a little more inflexible.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

yea but thats just it: you can still shoot fireballs at things. shouldn't by "magic is corrupting" logic, I become corrupted just by coming up with the fireball spell, even if I say, just want it shoot a fireball into the air to see how pretty it is? because the fireball is an inherently offensive spell? therefore if I want to play a good character, it means I can't have them have a fireball spell that will destroy things for me, and I'm like "dude, what does the universe have against heroes who love fire and explosions?"
Nope. It's not the casting of a fireball that is corrupting - it's you using it to kill sentient beings that's corrupting. Much like building a gun and shooting a gun is not bad - it's when you use it to murder people that it's bad. Except that magic is (usually) more corrupting when used that way than the gun because while shooting a gun can be accidental or under the influence, using magic is always deliberate to some extent.



that and I'm pretty sure Harry Dresden the protagonist has broken more than one law of magic and yet is still seemingly fine. and lets not forget you get off scot-free if you just kill them with a gun or something, because that is like totally different. and don't talk to me about "twisting the energies of life" and whatnot into twisted dark ways that they shouldn't be twisted into, by that logic, when I choke somebody to death, I'm twisting the energies of life into twisted dark ways of cutting off that life.
Harry Dresden talks to himself. Has a split personality. Is often irrational. Is murderously violent to the point of traumatizing his apprentice and terrifying the people he works with. He has abandonment issues, family issues, relationship issues, communication issues, denial issues. He is borderline psychotic. He has admitted that he is insane more than once and that has been metaphysically proven. Just because he's the protagonist does not change those facts.
Now, go back to the story and look at all the people who use guns to kill. Or even other methods to kill. There is not a single one of them that is not damaged at some level by what they did. They may deny it, ignore it, hate it, revel in it but they're all monsters to some extent.



Either way, why play in such a universe, if all the efforts I LIKE to do are just going to earn me bad points? my fun is ruined if at the end of walking away from exploding the evil guy's lair, the GM goes "now your a little more evil for using fun explosion-magics to kill him." I mean dude, your ruining a good thing here, why you gotta make me kill them using BORING things like swords and guns?
Your character thinks going into other peoples' lairs and blowing them up is fun? And his alignment is other than chaotic evil? :smallconfused:
You know that any kind of killing other than in war gets you a psychic evaluation and possibly a trial, right? You know it leads to post-traumatic stress and mental baggage the size of Texas? Even in self-defense, even if you're police and you shoot a proven bad guy, there's always checks to see just how much the killing damaged you and an investigation to see if you were actually in the right for doing it. And that's for killing one single time.

[Lord Raziere]

Harry Dresden talks to himself. Has a split personality. Is often irrational. Is murderously violent to the point of traumatizing his apprentice and terrifying the people he works with. He has abandonment issues, family issues, relationship issues, communication issues, denial issues. He is borderline psychotic. He has admitted that he is insane more than once and that has been metaphysically proven. Just because he's the protagonist does not change those facts.
Now, go back to the story and look at all the people who use guns to kill. Or even other methods to kill. There is not a single one of them that is not damaged at some level by what they did. They may deny it, ignore it, hate it, revel in it but they're all monsters to some extent.

Your character thinks going into other peoples' lairs and blowing them up is fun? And his alignment is other than chaotic evil? :smallconfused:
You know that any kind of killing other than in war gets you a psychic evaluation and possibly a trial, right? You know it leads to post-traumatic stress and mental baggage the size of Texas? Even in self-defense, even if you're police and you shoot a proven bad guy, there's always checks to see just how much the killing damaged you and an investigation to see if you were actually in the right for doing it. And that's for killing one single time.

1. aka normal PC. whats the problem here?

2. well the lairs in question are evil. and dude, why are you including all that stupid boring real life stuff in a game? thats like going "your superhero can't actually fly, because thats impossible without aircraft, he falls and dies." I mean what the heck?

[VoxRationis]

Some people like fantasy to include challenge and verisimilitude, rather than just a power trip.

[Lord Raziere]

Some people like fantasy to include challenge and verisimilitude, rather than just a power trip.

well I do to. I just don't like the challenge to come from things like power trips that screw me out of nowhere for using the tools that I use to overcome the challenges, because that wrecks my verisimilitude.

[VoxRationis]

This isn't the "Secret House Rules" thread; presumably, you and your character both know that use of that particular tool carries repercussions. They are not, therefore, "out of nowhere."

[Lord Raziere]

This isn't the "Secret House Rules" thread; presumably, you and your character both know that use of that particular tool carries repercussions. They are not, therefore, "out of nowhere."

uh no, the "repercussions" are just strange abstract mechanical stuff that has nothing to do with what actually happens, or impose arbitrary punishments on me for doing what I want to do, so I don't play those games anyways, my character doesn't have the Wisdom track in their head telling them all this, they don't have the corruption point measure in their head, all they have are other people telling them that this is wrong, who might be mistaken because they might not have an accurate view of how it actually works, as they're often filtered through backwards traditions that don't make any sense and when you think about it, are often completely stupid-even from an in character point of view-, so my character has little reason to follow them.

[SiuiS]

E: your Mage does have the wisdom track actually. Spirit, mind, death, fate and prime can all tell you the relative condition of your soul and why and how, and Mage society specifically studied and makes available knowledge on wisdom.


But the world doesn't cater to Wisdom. the world cares not for how wise you are, or how freaking smart or anything like that, its so unfair that eventually you can't live up to any ideal at all, you have to bend at some point. that includes the ideals of Wisdom. even if you try to live up to it, you eventually won't be able to. the universe will find a way to screw over your efforts anyways, you can't realistically expect to always hold yourself to that sort of thing and survive. you gotta be adaptive, flexible to do good in the world, and trying to hold yourself to any ideal is making yourself a little more inflexible.

That's intentional. This problem is actually an issue with how wisdom (and other moralities) are worded.

You are supposed to even out around Wisdom 5. That's "normal". That's what the game expects. 3-4 is kinda looney, 6-7 is really good, 8+ is basically saintly. There are extra points to allow you to experiment and learn as a new player without truly being punished.

But because they start at 7, you think 7 is normal and falling to 6 or even 5 feels like you're losing, when that's actually where you should be from start.


You're wrong on one count though. As a Mage, you can literally make perfect decisions. There will never be surprise consequences for you unless someone actively works to make it so. Ergo, you have the possibility of perfection, and are responsible for not achieving it. This is why maes cannot raise wisdom by becoming better people. Mages know better and do not get the 'I didn't know' excuse.


1. aka normal PC. whats the problem here?

Yes actually. Going into someone's home and murdering them is not normal PC. And even if it was, being standard doesn't make it okay.


2. well the lairs in question are evil. and dude, why are you including all that stupid boring real life stuff in a game? thats like going "your superhero can't actually fly, because thats impossible without aircraft, he falls and dies." I mean what the heck?

Ideally, you still have qualms about it.

You can't have murderhobo run into evil liars and throw fireballs without also having goblins are not people and hating them is not racist, unfortunately. You'll have to pick whether or not these apply game by game.


well I do to. I just don't like the challenge to come from things like power trips that screw me out of nowhere for using the tools that I use to overcome the challenges, because that wrecks my verisimilitude.

What do you mean out of nowhere? Power trips are by definition bad; you've gotten power and now go on a bender.

A moral person having moral considerations to murder is verisimilitude. Always. The difference is that in settings where you're supposed to be conditioned for murder, they just get all your Wisdom degeneration out of the way in basic training.


This isn't the "Secret House Rules" thread; presumably, you and your character both [I]know that use of that particular tool carries repercussions. They are not, therefore, "out of nowhere."

Snerk.

[VoxRationis]

uh no, the "repercussions" are just strange abstract mechanical stuff that has nothing to do with what actually happens, or impose arbitrary punishments on me for doing what I want to do, so I don't play those games anyways, my character doesn't have the Wisdom track in their head telling them all this, they don't have the corruption point measure in their head, all they have are other people telling them that this is wrong, who might be mistaken because they might not have an accurate view of how it actually works, as they're often filtered through backwards traditions that don't make any sense and when you think about it, are often completely stupid-even from an in character point of view-, so my character has little reason to follow them.

Unless your setting is very light on wizards and a wizard character therefore has very little knowledge about others of their kind, they'll have heard about how many necromancers have gone insane and started killing villages, for instance. They don't need to have a knowledge of mechanical points of corruption in order to know that the corruption exists in-universe. A fighter, by comparison, doesn't need to know about Base Attack Bonus or levels to know that experienced fighters are more accurate, on average, than their inexperienced counterparts. When something empirically exists in the setting a system powers, and the rules for that thing come up reasonably often, it's not a tremendous stretch of the imagination to think that the people whose jobs cover that thing might know about it.

[Lord Raziere]

E: your Mage does have the wisdom track actually. Spirit, mind, death, fate and prime can all tell you the relative condition of your soul and why and how, and Mage society specifically studied and makes available knowledge on wisdom.



That's intentional. This problem is actually an issue with how wisdom (and other moralities) are worded.

You are supposed to even out around Wisdom 5. That's "normal". That's what the game expects. 3-4 is kinda looney, 6-7 is really good, 8+ is basically saintly. There are extra points to allow you to experiment and learn as a new player without truly being punished.

But because they start at 7, you think 7 is normal and falling to 6 or even 5 feels like you're losing, when that's actually where you should be from start.


You're wrong on one count though. As a Mage, you can literally make perfect decisions. There will never be surprise consequences for you unless someone actively works to make it so. Ergo, you have the possibility of perfection, and are responsible for not achieving it. This is why mages cannot raise wisdom by becoming better people. Mages know better and do not get the 'I didn't know' excuse.



Yes actually. Going into someone's home and murdering them is not normal PC. And even if it was, being standard doesn't make it okay.



Ideally, you still have qualms about it.

You can't have murderhobo run into evil liars and throw fireballs without also having goblins are not people and hating them is not racist, unfortunately. You'll have to pick whether or not these apply game by game.



What do you mean out of nowhere? Power trips are by definition bad; you've gotten power and now go on a bender.

A moral person having moral considerations to murder [i]is verisimilitude. Always. The difference is that in settings where you're supposed to be conditioned for murder, they just get all your Wisdom degeneration out of the way in basic training.



Snerk.

1. well then. guess I don't like Mage the Awakening after all.

2. well then, thats another reason for not liking Mage any more. I don't believe in perfection. I believe in improvement, but perfection is impossible.

3. well yeah, I'm not a murderhobo, I'm a guy who kills the evil peoples. the villains. kinda basic stuff.

4. I'm not power tripping. thats when you start cackling evilly and and declaring your going to eat souls/steal things just because you can/so on. I fireball things for the good of the world, thank you.

[SiuiS]

I personally feel that having the tools to know what are good ideas and what are bad ideas is a silly reason to stop liking a game. But if you think that being a moral person in a game about morality is a bad idea, then more power to you I guess?

You can still pinch the casting mechanic though, it's basically the same as epic D&D casting. But yeah. If you don't want to understand how duress and justification affect your perspective as a person, don't play Mage.

[Lord Raziere]

I personally feel that having the tools to know what are good ideas and what are bad ideas is a silly reason to stop liking a game. But if you think that being a moral person in a game about morality is a bad idea, then more power to you I guess?

You can still pinch the casting mechanic though, it's basically the same as epic D&D casting. But yeah. If you don't want to understand how duress and justification affect your perspective as a person, don't play Mage.

because it makes everything too easy. if I know what is a good idea automatically which won't blow up in my face or cause any dramatic situations that actually make me feel tension and y'now actually challenge me, then why am I playing? there is no uncertainty, no potential to screw up. I might as well be playing a Mary Sue.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

I'm a guy who kills the evil peoples. the villains. kinda basic stuff.
Ever wondered why Angels and Archons in DnD don't do that? They don't descend from the heavens to smite the wicked. They only do that to evil outsiders (who can't die - only be banished to their plane) and evil undead (who are already dead).


I fireball things for the good of the world, thank you.
That's your choice. Because you always have the option of doing nonlethal damage with melee attacks and even get bonuses with the right feats, and you also have the option to use buffing spells, control spells and save-or-lose spells instead of damaging spells to win the day.



In short when you kill, even in DnD, you have made a conscious choice as a player to murder rather than winning non-lethally. And that's evil.

[Lord Raziere]

Ever wondered why Angels and Archons in DnD don't do that? They don't descend from the heavens to smite the wicked. They only do that to evil outsiders (who can't die - only be banished to their plane) and evil undead (who are already dead).


That's your choice. Because you always have the option of doing nonlethal damage with melee attacks and even get bonuses with the right feats, and you also have the option to use buffing spells, control spells and save-or-lose spells instead of damaging spells to win the day.



In short when you kill, even in DnD, you have made a conscious choice as a player to murder rather than winning non-lethally. And that's evil.

and those angels are stupid, because this is a war between good and evil, and to win the war you kill the opposition. no wonder its been going on for so long.

and I guess all this morality stuff in any game would all be applicable and fine-if I was playing a paladin character or paladin-like character, like my elven pacifist-diplomat-summoner Nesalar Valvani, but other than that, such stuff isn't really a big part of most of my characters. its just not their focus.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

In DnD, killing the opposition is why evil hasn't been defeated yet. Kill a demon or devil and it will return to its home plane. Kill an evil sentient mortal and the soul goes to an evil plane to be turned into another demon or devil. Even killing demons in the Abyss merely returns the essence to the plane. All killing does is strengthen the forces of evil while slowly corrupting the killer as well - sooner or later you'll like killing so much that you'll kill some innocent without bothering to check if they're innocent. And then you'll join the demons and devils at the other side.



That's why those not-so-stupid Angels do everything to offer evil mortals a chance at redemption and give demons and evils a dose of the Imprisonment spell instead of killing. Killing never helps.

[Lord Raziere]

In DnD, killing the opposition is why evil hasn't been defeated yet. Kill a demon or devil and it will return to its home plane. Kill an evil sentient mortal and the soul goes to an evil plane to be turned into another demon or devil. Even killing demons in the Abyss merely returns the essence to the plane. All killing does is strengthen the forces of evil while slowly corrupting the killer as well - sooner or later you'll like killing so much that you'll kill some innocent without bothering to check if they're innocent. And then you'll join the demons and devils at the other side.

That's why those not-so-stupid Angels do everything to offer evil mortals a chance at redemption and give demons and evils a dose of the Imprisonment spell instead of killing. Killing never helps.

Ok, so I can have a Chaotic Evil guy who never harms his loved ones, friends or anyone commonly considered good, because he keeps killing the villains, and no matter how much he kills, he desires to save the world from evildoers who wish to use convoluted plans to mess it up, and no matter how many times he successfully saves the world from such guys, he is Chaotic Evil because he always kills them at the end, eventually culminating him in trying to kill all the gods of evil, while still holding to his principles of not killing the good guys- even going so far as to not kill paladins, but completely willing to kill the evil villains that deserve it- and you'd still consider them chaotic evil? like he acts like a normal good guy aside from being Chaotic Evil and kills all his villains?

(and this excludes any "oh lol I suddenly slide into being selfish/pointlessly stupid puppy-kicking/etc" kind of evil while they do this)

[Agrippa]

and those angels are stupid, because this is a war between good and evil, and to win the war you kill the opposition. no wonder its been going on for so long.

I have a simple and easy explanation. Think of Exalted's Sidereals. They're overworked and under a great deal of pressure, having to defend all of creation from numerous threats ranging from demons and devils, horrific godlike abominations to strange eldritch things that dwell within the stars. They celestials want to help the the innocent people of the Prime but they're overstretched as it is.

[Arbane]

well I do to. I just don't like the challenge to come from things like power trips that screw me out of nowhere for using the tools that I use to overcome the challenges, because that wrecks my verisimilitude.

So play something else. It's not like there aren't other ways of dialing magic back down from omnipotence besides 'it'll turn you evil'.

(Personally, I like the way Unknown Armies does it - to be a magician, you START as an obsessive nutcase, since magic is powered by obsessions. And its sanity system is one of the best. Your character has 5 sanity meters: Violence, Self, Isolation, Helplessness, and Unnatural - each goes from one to ten, and has 'hardened' and 'failed' notches. When you're confronted by a Bad Thing rated higher than your hardened notches in that category, you have to make a Soul roll - succeed, and you get a hardened notch, fail, and you get a failed notch. Failed notches make you freak out (somewhat) when confronted with that stimulus. But fill up two tracks with hardened notches, and your character becomes a sociopath. They don't become NPCs or go on a killing spree, but they've becomes so detached from their own emotions that they can't use nice benefits everyone else gets. There's methods like psychotherapy and magic to get rid of some notches.)

[Coidzor]

In DnD, killing the opposition is why evil hasn't been defeated yet. Kill a demon or devil and it will return to its home plane. Kill an evil sentient mortal and the soul goes to an evil plane to be turned into another demon or devil. Even killing demons in the Abyss merely returns the essence to the plane. All killing does is strengthen the forces of evil while slowly corrupting the killer as well - sooner or later you'll like killing so much that you'll kill some innocent without bothering to check if they're innocent. And then you'll join the demons and devils at the other side.

Partially, though there's really only the one good example of that sort of thing happening and even that suffers from being unreliable because it has to do with Asmodeus's origin story.

The bit where you actually have to get into a discussion of how an infinite number of demons is larger than an infinite number of devils at times to fully go into the nitty gritty of the way the cosmology was set-up to be weighted towards Evil helps matters along as well.


That's why those not-so-stupid Angels do everything to offer evil mortals a chance at redemption and give demons and evils a dose of the Imprisonment spell instead of killing. Killing never helps.

Eh, my recollection of even BoED on the subject is that there are, in fact, situations where killing is the only thing to do and does, in fact, help. It's just that converting an entity with noticeable power from team Evil is more than twice the net gain, so obviously it's more desirable if it's possible to do without incurring too much of a cost.

[SiuiS]

because it makes everything too easy. if I know what is a good idea automatically which won't blow up in my face or cause any dramatic situations that actually make me feel tension and y'now actually challenge me, then why am I playing? there is no uncertainty, no potential to screw up. I might as well be playing a Mary Sue.

This is a straw man.

• do not want moral corruption ever, because it's needless punishment
• do not want lack of moral corruption ever, because then there's no challenge because I'm sure of everything

[Lord Raziere]

This is a straw man.

• do not want moral corruption ever, because it's needless punishment
• do not want lack of moral corruption ever, because then there's no challenge because I'm sure of everything

well my characters have flaws yes, but I don't need some game system to impose ones that don't fit the character on me and make those flaws grow out of control to twist the character into something they're not. just because a guy will do one form of evil doesn't mean they will slide down down down until they're Mr. Puppykicker Von Slaughter, which is what all those corruption systems will do to the character, I don't need to be shackled to systems that slowly twist my character into something completely different just because they're morally imperfect in a way they don't like.

[Frozen_Feet]

1. aka normal PC. whats the problem here?

2. well the lairs in question are evil. and dude, why are you including all that stupid boring real life stuff in a game? thats like going "your superhero can't actually fly, because thats impossible without aircraft, he falls and dies." I mean what the heck?

1. The normal PC, AKA antisocial murderhobo, fits the description of Chaotic Evil in the rules and hence should classify as Chaotic Evil within the game.

2. This is the fallacy you commit. It's not the boring, real-life stuff that's the issue here, it's the in-game definition of Evil. If the game lacked an alignment system, or if the alignment system is restricted to Law versus Chaos, or if Evil was described differently, then your character wouldn't be Evil just for killing enemies.

Example: Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Alignment is about disposition towards absolute order or absolute chaos and has jack-squat to do with morality. Fighters, who are explicitly battle-scarred sociopaths and in any right universe would deserve to go to Hell, are by default neutral and have no prescription for their behaviour. A fighter can slaughter as many as he wants, and as long as those are acceptable enemies of society, no-one bats an eyelid.

[Seward]

that and I'm pretty sure Harry Dresden the protagonist has broken more than one law of magic and yet is still seemingly fine.

He's not fine. He started his career in magic by killing the person who taught him magic with magic and, as even his enemies have pointed out, a rather astonishing number of his enemies end up dead, even when he doesn't intend it. Luckily for Dresden, the law about killing (as with the transformation and mind control) laws seem to be about depriving MORTALS of "free will". There isn't a penalty from the universe for ganking monsters of various kinds, but it's likely he's killed a few bystanders by accident, and he's essentially a giant thug who has trouble doing things with magic that aren't destructive, especially when his emotions are up.

15 books later he's more nailed down in tactical combat, but he's still making some pretty epic mistakes when his buttons get pushed, and again, the opposition seems to end up very dead. There's a reason most of his colleagues think he's a warlock that should have been put down in his teens but...there was a war on (that he started) and they needed every gun, as it were.

Indeed, his current job is as the unseelie court's hit-man. He's still pretty careful not to kill mortals with magic though. He'll plug them with a gun instead, or brain them with his staff, because it's too easy for the magic to run away with him if he does it directly.

As for the other laws...Dresden's been good on those fronts. Granted he's not much for the finesse usually required to break most of them, but he doesn't transform people, invade their thoughts, mind control them, "go against the stream of time", ie go back in time and tamper, or try to learn about/summon outsiders into reality. He did summon a zombie T-rex once, but the necromancy law also seems to be about sentient mortal spirit binding, interfering with their afterlife. Animals are technically not a problem, and the universal world-laws back it (he's not been tempted to do the nastier forms of necromancy after that event, and it seems to have done him no harm, and not even the wardens he did it in front of felt they had a case to execute him over it). His issue is strictly with the first law, and it'll likely be a problem for him his entire life.

[Seward]

This isn't the "Secret House Rules" thread; presumably, you and your character both know that use of that particular tool carries repercussions. They are not, therefore, "out of nowhere."

Yeah. In fact in the Dresden Files RPG, the choices the example "Dresden" character made at creation were in fact PLAYER choices about the kinds of stories he wanted his character to have.

His trouble was "temptation of power" and he had "Doom of damocles" as an aspect plus the Lawbreaker 1st stunt because he wanted a character with those problems.

(Fate type systems are like that. Most of your power also comes from things that are sometimes your flaws, and all of them are things that signal to the GM what kind of trouble to cause. If you don't want to be conflicted about your magic use, DFRPG has an easy solution...play a nonhuman spellcaster - none of the 7 laws apply to you. Of course that may mean you share the weaknesses and political challenges of your type of monster, but nothing comes for free. Or play a human one that's careful about the 7 laws, again no problems. Your character will be mechanically good at solving challenges WITHOUT killing mortals, say. Dresden chose to be mechanically good at killing stuff, and also to have various nasty entities constantly tempt him with ever more destructive power, while being harassed by his own people as a suspected warlock and actually executed if he actually killed a mortal or succumbed to temptation to break another law right there on his character sheet.)

If you're in a D&D universe where the GM says casting evil descriptor spells are an evil act, don't prepare/learn those spells. If the GM says fireballing kobold kids and eggs is evil, don't do it. Find another solution or accept that in that universe you're evil. If you don't want mechanical consequences for being evil, don't take a divine spellcasting class of a non-evil god and try not to adventure with paladins. Etc.

[SiuiS]

well my characters have flaws yes, but I don't need some game system to impose ones that don't fit the character on me and make those flaws grow out of control to twist the character into something they're not. just because a guy will do one form of evil doesn't mean they will slide down down down until they're Mr. Puppykicker Von Slaughter, which is what all those corruption systems will do to the character, I don't need to be shackled to systems that slowly twist my character into something completely different just because they're morally imperfect in a way they don't like.

The game won't force you to become a terrible evil puppy kicker. It's your choice to do evil things that slide you down the scale. No one forces you to murder anything with balls of fire – that's all you.

And... Actually, yeah, one kind of evil does lead to another. Directly. Desensitization, justification, narrow minded focus, tunnel vision, emotional logic clouding, and slippery slopes occur. If you leave off all evil you can avoid all evil. If you start to cherry pick your evils, you'll find grey areas that, when pressed, become much clearer. And lead to more grey areas. You'll rationalize more descents. You'll slip further, because obviously you're a powerful and angry passionate wizard and that guy should have known not to do the thing, so it's his fault anyway. And who is he to judge you?

It's so easy to slip down that path. Hell, I've done it. And I'm not even talking about games, really. It's why I've stopped carrying a real knife. When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, and it becomes easier to justify the moral rightness of hammering.

The idea that devolving as you perform more and more heinous acts being ludicrous is, itself, ludicrous.

[Milo v3]

The game won't force you to become a terrible evil puppy kicker. It's your choice to do evil things that slide you down the scale. No one forces you to murder anything with balls of fire – that's all you.

Except it does force you to be complete horrible evil eventually, unless your suggesting that we play spellcasters who don't ever cast spells :smallconfused:

[Lord Raziere]

The game won't force you to become a terrible evil puppy kicker. It's your choice to do evil things that slide you down the scale. No one forces you to murder anything with balls of fire – that's all you.

And... Actually, yeah, one kind of evil does lead to another. Directly. Desensitization, justification, narrow minded focus, tunnel vision, emotional logic clouding, and slippery slopes occur. If you leave off all evil you can avoid all evil. If you start to cherry pick your evils, you'll find grey areas that, when pressed, become much clearer. And lead to more grey areas. You'll rationalize more descents. You'll slip further, because obviously you're a powerful and angry passionate wizard and that guy should have known not to do the thing, so it's his fault anyway. And who is he to judge you?

It's so easy to slip down that path. Hell, I've done it. And I'm not even talking about games, really. It's why I've stopped carrying a real knife. When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, and it becomes easier to justify the moral rightness of hammering.

The idea that devolving as you perform more and more heinous acts being ludicrous is, itself, ludicrous.

Except you forgot one important point:

This is fantasy. your talking about real life.

they absolutely nothing to do with each other.

stop stomping all over my fantasy.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Except you forgot one important point:

This is fantasy. your talking about real life.

they absolutely nothing to do with each other.

stop stomping all over my fantasy.

OK then. Each time you hit the bad guy, you get the wound, not him. Because it's fantasy, not real life, and they have absolutely nothing to do with each other, you must now make successful diplomacy checks to kill opponents rather than beat them.


See how real life having nothing to do with fantasy complicates matters? And that's before the pink talking ponies with purple spots are introduced in the campaign. :smalltongue:

[Lord Raziere]

cute, but that doesn't change my stance upon the kind of morality my characters have. I'm just ok with them killing the foe. its just what will naturally come about from the high level battles I'm interested in. if the person doesn't DIE after being hit with a big fireball, whats the point? while going nonlethal is just boring as well. its not fighting its restraining, its not exciting, its not interesting its just "wow ok, the guy is restrained, yay?" don't get your morality play into my high level action fights.

[Frozen_Feet]

The question you should occasionally be asking yourself is, why are you bringing your high-level action fights to other people's morality plays? :smalltongue:

For example, in Star Wars, responsibility of using power, stoicism and temptation by your emotions are core issues to the Jedi. That's what the stories about Jedi are about, more than they are about shooting lightning from your fingertips. In D&D, playing a Paladin is playing a Knight in Shining Armor, trying your best to adhere to rules of your religion and principles of Goodness and Justice, above and beyond just kicking bad people in the face.

Just because awesome powers are around, doesn't mean the game is about those powers, nor does it mean the game is about being awesome. In Old School D&D, being awesome is a reward if you, the player succeed in portraying your character as such. The actual game is about playing against the GM solving carefully-crafted 20 questions.

[Lord Raziere]

well I don't, thats why I don't play those games. I'm just arguing my position thank you very much.

[Kalmageddon]

cute, but that doesn't change my stance upon the kind of morality my characters have. I'm just ok with them killing the foe. its just what will naturally come about from the high level battles I'm interested in. if the person doesn't DIE after being hit with a big fireball, whats the point? while going nonlethal is just boring as well. its not fighting its restraining, its not exciting, its not interesting its just "wow ok, the guy is restrained, yay?" don't get your morality play into my high level action fights.

Do you play anything other than D&D? Because these observations really only apply to similar systems...

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Except that your position is not all that matters. There are two possibilities;

1) You're the DM. You may define morality and awesomeness but someone else gets to play the awesome PC.
2) You're a player. Thus you're playing in a game someone else created, not in one you define morality/awesomeness.


There's no way to both define morality and play the awesome character in the morality you defined.
You'll have to compromise if your ideas are entirely different from anyone else's.

[Morty]

Terry Pratchett wrote in Art of Discworld that magic isn't interesting. And, if we apply it like so many in this thread do, as just a way of waving your arms around to make things happen, I think I agree.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Whoa... Whoa... Guys there is no need to fight.

I think I have a good analogy for the situation here: Guns.

Let's think like this: Countries are the settings, the normal everyday civilian are the PCs and guns are the magic.

In some countries(settings) you can have guns(magic) and it is totally okay. In other countries (settings) you can't have guns because that is against the law (evil) in other countries you can have guns but you can't shoot people with it because that is against the law(evil) and in some countries you can have guns and can shoot people if they are a threat to you and your family.

I like to think that in my games magic is like nuclear energy. You can use it to make wonderful things or to bring calamity. But it is a dangerous force never the less and if you are not careful with it, the cost may be your life. Or the life of many around you.

It can be subtle kind of like warcraft where magic is the source of almost all problems but there are no mechanics for the corruption it causes and people routinely become wizards and use this corrupting and evil force for "good".

Or it can be something direct like CoC where it will definitely lead to ruin.

[Wardog]

[QUOTE=SiuiS;18075263]The game won't force you to become a terrible evil puppy kicker. It's your choice to do evil things that slide you down the scale. No one forces you to murder anything with balls of fire – that's all you.

And... Actually, yeah, one kind of evil does lead to another. Directly. Desensitization, justification, narrow minded focus, tunnel vision, emotional logic clouding, and slippery slopes occur. [QUOTE]

Yeah, I once contemplated creating a mage or sorcerer inspired by this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z29Rk8814w). And I had no illusions that - with the attitude expressed there - he would be "evil", by both D&D and real-world standards, even if he spent all his time fighting for "Team Good" against "Team Evil". (That doesn't mean he should end up flipping out, turning on his allies, and becoming some sort of Xykon-alike, or even an old-Belkar-alike, but it does mean he would be desensitize to violence, and would probably periodically freak-out his non-Evil companions by suggesting the sort of tactics Belkar would approve of).

[Lord Raziere]

Except that your position is not all that matters. There are two possibilities;

1) You're the DM. You may define morality and awesomeness but someone else gets to play the awesome PC.
2) You're a player. Thus you're playing in a game someone else created, not in one you define morality/awesomeness.


There's no way to both define morality and play the awesome character in the morality you defined.
You'll have to compromise if your ideas are entirely different from anyone else's.

too bad, I'm playing a guy who fireballs his enemies to death whether you like it or not. I don't see why your being worked up over something so little. its just the result at the end of all the action in a story thats far bigger than that, and I don't see why you'd give so much focus to it. and probably never join a group that wouldn't allow me to do that anyways, since they just wouldn't be fun. I mean I might as well be just throwing mundane nets around, and start up lame speeches about how we should all just be friends, how lame is that?

and if we are going to talk about real life, in real life if the supervillains are left alive and break out of prison? they just kill more people and its your fault that you didn't kill them first to protect everyone else. and they often do break out. that and killing them is arguably far more merciful than what happens to them in superhero stories where they don't die: suffer an ironic torment for a long period of time, which can sometimes be worse than death. Mr. Peek says hi from the core of the planet.

so yeah, sorry, but I'd rather have the natural result of combat as it should be, rather than whatever stupid redemption thing- I mean some guy is clearly a big evil guy, your just going to reward him for his efforts by giving him a second chance, letting all the people who desired justice for his actions down? lets go talk the BBEG out of being evil! maybe we'll get a word in long enough before he kills us mercilessly, then proceeds to kill and conquer everyone else, because he is evil! its just not smart to assume you can avoid death entirely and solve everything with hugs and words- unless your playing MLP, in which case why in the nine hells do you have combat at all?

also, your giving me good reasons to play Warhammer 40,000 here, especially Khorne worshippers. and Khorne worshippers don't use magic! and when that starts happening, I got to check for flying pigs. you must be arguing something really special there to convince me of that.

[SiuiS]

Except you forgot one important point:

This is fantasy. your talking about real life.

they absolutely nothing to do with each other.

stop stomping all over my fantasy.

Your fantasy is not fantasy in the usual sense. Your fantasy is power tripping wish-fulfillment. That's fine, but if you want to have power trip wish fulfillment and everyone else wants to play a fantasy game, You are the odd one out, and it will be helpful to recognize why you have these issues instead of insisting that other people are wrong because fantasy.

You cannot say "i am a murderer who murders because I can, but I'm not evil" because murderer = evil. You can say you don't care that it's evil or that you want to ignore it, but that's entirely different. Play a game without morals, don't try to strip morality out of games where morality is important.

[Milo v3]

You cannot say "i am a murderer who murders because I can, but I'm not evil" because murderer = evil. You can say you don't care that it's evil or that you want to ignore it, but that's entirely different. Play a game without morals, don't try to strip morality out of games where morality is important.

Wanting to be able to cast fireballs without having their character's personality modified =/ i am a murderer who murders because I can, but I'm not evil.

[Talakeal]

I can't but help but feel that this thread has turned into everyone vs. Raziere, which makes me feel bad for my part in it :(


While I will never comprehend, let alone agree, with how Raziere can boil down all of human experience and philosophy down to "BORING", I can still see where she is coming from. I imagine Raziere feels about gaming much the same way I feel about Michael Bay's Transformers. I come in to see explosions and giant robots fighting, realism and budget be damned, and then end up bored to tears when 90% of the runtime is flat human characters running around spouting hammy dialogue and bad jokes. That isn't my style of gaming, but it is one I can see the appeal of, and don't think there is anything wrong with it.

Also, I think forced moral consequences for actions in D&D are extremely lame. Although, ironically, it is for the opposite reason Raziere gives. When I perform an act that my RL ethics tells me would be the right thing to do (for example allying with an enemy to defeat a greater evil in D&D) I cannot except "Its fantasy and RL morals don't apply" as a good enough reason to do something I consider morally wrong. It is even worse in a system like Star Wars where there are tangible punishments for arbitrarily evil acts as it limits character concepts. For example, I once tried to make a sort of "dark seductress" character, but found it impossible as evil actions actually corrupt the bodies of force users and make them more deformed and monstrous as time goes on. In Star Wars beauty is most certainly not skin deep.


On a side note, I do agree that someone who enjoys killing has serious mental issues, and a character who looks for excuses to execute "bad guys" is probably either lawful evil or very dark neutral. That said, I don't think a pragmatist who kills bad guys because it is the most efficient way to protect the innocent is not good. They aren't saintly or exalted by any stretch of the imagination, and are on a slippery slope, but I can still see them as good.
Also, just because you don't enjoy killing doesn't mean you can't enjoy the thrill of combat or the rush of victory that goes along with it, fighting for dominance and proving our power through combat is a primal instinct that is hardwired into our bodies in much the same way that not killing other humans in, and I can't fault people for those feelings.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Except you forgot one important point:

This is fantasy. your talking about real life.

they absolutely nothing to do with each other.

stop stomping all over my fantasy.

I thought you liked it when there was a balance of fantasy and reality. You said that when I responded to a similar statement, citing your dislike of One Piece for being too unrealistic. Obviously it must have some similarities with reality.

If you want to be Superman, like actually the most powerful being in the universe whose challenges are when he has to convince someone not to commit suicide, go on dates with Lois, and do your reporting job while still punching out Zod or Brainiac every Wednesday, that's fine. If you want to be Superman, the guy who punches out Zod every time he pops up and then ignore the idea that there might be problems, real problems of life and death, not just "how much does Lois like me", that aren't nails for your superpowered hammer, that's boring. And I like Gurren Lagann as much as the next guy, but really, the challenging fights were largely "let's power up further!", and the parts that built characters were the interpersonal conflicts.

[VoxRationis]

I'd like to point out that I wasn't necessarily advocating that all lethal combat in D&D is morally wrong and characters should be penalized for it. I was pointing out that a kind of magic does not need to be ethically wrong in its usage to be corrupting, if that's what the magic is defined as by the creator of the setting.
I would also like to point out that the ethics of lethal magic use is far, far, away from the original point of this thread.

[Lord Raziere]

look, I can understand if you want to play a paladin character sometimes, sometimes I do to, but sometimes I don't want to focus on certain kinds of morality- for some characters, its just what they do. pondering the morality of it would just get in the way of I really want to explore with the character.

and then there are things like barbarians. I mean, are we seriously going to look at those raging guys of war, and say they never killed anybody, or how about any assassin character? do we tell them to stop doing their freaking job? or heck, any thief really, you think they learned sneak attacking from pick pocketing?

RPG's have an inherent built in opportunity of action and combat. its apart of the attraction. the opportunity to do things you could never do in real life- including playing a reckless slayer of dudes and being a total badass. for some reason, saying afterwards "and they were all knocked out and no one died." just ruins the effect sometimes, especially when its clear that people would've died from an attack.

I mean, I don't see any of the OOTS taking the time to be nonlethal to the vast majority of the monsters they kill.

I'm actually kind of confused here, because I'm currently arguing for the killer rpg character, which I got impression was kind of the tradition in RPG's y'know? the classic? kind of supposed to be a normal thing? when I see myself as a person of progress and such. so. kind of weird. I mean I wouldn't take any joy in killing it real life, but neither would I want explore the horrible implications of murder in fiction.

I mean I could do that right now, so easily:
"oh my god, I killed somebody. I have vanquished a life from this world, snuffing it out and denying any potential for redemption, any potential to be better. I have cut this person from this mortal coil early, and thus have committed murder. an elimination of not just this person, but of the potential he could've been, all the people he could've become, as well as all the people he could have helped. What if this man would've gone on to do such good that I have made the world worse for eliminating him from it? Truly, I am a monster."

but I don't feel anything from that. don't know why. what ya gonna do?

[SiuiS]

Wanting to be able to cast fireballs without having their character's personality modified =/ i am a murderer who murders because I can, but I'm not evil.

Wanting to be able to cast fireball without having your personality modified does not equal wanting to kill creatures in their home with a fireball without consequence.

Wanting to kick in someone's door, smile, wave, and destroy their entire clan with an explosion just because that power is on your character sheet, and not have any consequences for that whatsoever, does in fact equal being a murderer who murders because they can. Especially if your reason for doing so is "they are on the wrong team", which is the kind of thing Razierre has been against in the past.

Razierre: I'm not against that. I just feel that you should have the right system for it, or at least clearly say that's the kind of thing you want. It's silly, I know, but there's a difference in reaction between "I want to play a game like this using the D&D rules" and "I want to play D&D but with these changes", even though they are functionally identical in sum. People aren't logical. Even if two plus three is the same as three plus two, you will get different results based on whether the starting point is three, or is two.

[Lord Raziere]

Wanting to be able to cast fireball without having your personality modified does not equal wanting to kill creatures in their home with a fireball without consequence.

Wanting to kick in someone's door, smile, wave, and destroy their entire clan with an explosion just because that power is on your character sheet, and not have any consequences for that whatsoever, does in fact equal being a murderer who murders because they can. Especially if your reason for doing so is "they are on the wrong team", which is the kind of thing Razierre has been against in the past.

Well yes, I am still against that.

I'm against evil being portrayed as being biased to a certain color of skin. evil comes in all forms and sizes, not just orcs, while good comes in more forms than just beautiful ones likes elves.

doesn't mean I don't want to kill villains that threaten peoples livelihoods and are dangerous. a villain is a villain, no matter if they are the most beautiful elf or the ugliest troll. you can generally tell by the way they are being cruel, evil people causing other people suffering. y'know, their actions, not their skin.

and as for more subtle threats? thats why we have assassins, and espionage, and spies, and general detective work. to find and eliminate them if they are being all sneaky and secretive.

[SiuiS]

I dunno. While I, personally, understand and agree, universally saying "Oh, it's okay, we can have you assassinated if you're evil and untouchable" is an evil thing. Ah well. we've basically agreed with each other at this point, so we're just chatting about trouble. :smallsmile: