What are the ramifications of killing Magic?

[Thrathgnar]

So I'm currently starting on a new world for my next campaign. Here is the basic concept: about 70 years prior, a lich named Vecna absorbed the tarrasque into himself, united all of the planes, and killed the Serpent, the embodiement of magic itself. Fast forward 70 years to a time where all creatures are subject to Vecna's rule, and over the years the next generations have been taught that Vecna is kind and benevolent when he is really evil and cruel. Also, Vecna has a spell on everyone that makes them immortal but puts in them a kill switch to where he can kill anyone at anytime.

There was, however, one wizard who forsaw Vecna's plan and prepared. Back when the world was normal, he managed to disable Vecna's ability to create a phylactery and sabotage Vecna's spell to where people aren't immortal. This wizard also researched artifical magic, and created a couple of magic gems in preperation for this time. Now, after 70 years of hiding, the wizard kidnaps ten children and informs them on the situation and trains them.

The players are among those children, and their basic goal is to kill Vecna without Vecna seeing them or knowing who they are so the kill switch can't be activated. This means that the campaign will consist largely of deception and convulated plans, ect ect.

My question is about the world. Since all the planes are united, celestials and fiends and humans ect are all on the same plane, but magic doesn't exist anymore (except Vecna's and the wizard's artificial magic), so how would everyone be affected by that? If magic doesn't exist, do dragons and fiends still exist, and if so, what about them change? If it gets too complicated, I may say Vecna just killed all non mortal beings.

To sum things up, the question is as the title: what are the ramifications on a fantasy world where magic is suddenly removed?

Edit: oh and also Vecna killed all the gods

[Karl Aegis]

The universe would collapse in on itself due to the massive influx of mass.

[NichG]

There's a logic gap in here somewhere. Vecna has created a stable utopia where everyone is immortal. What is the motivation of the PCs for killing Vecna and ending that utopia? It sounds like the rebel wizard is the bad guy here.

[Coidzor]

Well, the first ramification would be that Vecna would no longer be capable of magic because he done shot himself in the foot and that's why he'd never do it in the first place unless he could make like Kefka and become the new font of magic.

Since we're just assuming that he does so in the one case and doesn't in the other as a given... The first consequence is that a loooooot of magical beasts and monstrous humanoids and outsiders and aberrations are going to be either dead or severely nerfed to the point that predation/their natural enemies may kill them off.

Displacer beasts? No longer displacing. Medusas? No more gaze attacks. Beholders? Probably dying from total existence failure, honestly, that or ruptured gas bags from suddenly experiencing pressure properly for the first time in ever.

Aboleths almost certainly run into a lot of digestive troubles unless you keep psionics unaffected.

Dragons? Say goodbye to breathing fire and flying.

Lycanthropy and Mummy Rot won't be a thing anymore.

Depending upon how you rule it, most/all undead may just collapse/turn into dust.

Constructs will basically all power down.

Psionic creatures may or may not cease to be psionic. Creatures that were incorporeal due to being partially on the Ethereal will no longer be incorporeal because they'll be on both the ethereal and the material plane at the same time on the same plane.

Illithids may all starve. A whole boatload of Githyanki are going to starve to death/age into dust instantly.

Elves may or may not suddenly be about as long-lived as dwarves or possibly even humans.

Folding the planes in on one another is going to have a lot of problems because the errant time flows will make causality go straight to hell and there's no chrono-wizards to help fix any temporal problems anymore.

Also there'll be some existential questions about what to do about the stuff that's from before magic died that's still hanging around in temporal bubbles, would magic still be working in places where it's still 100 years ago?

Also, you're going to run into problems where you'll have Pratchettian moments where something will suddenly have been somewhere for thousands of years, but it wasn't there for thousands of years yesterday.

Depending upon whether you're including multiple cosmologies here, people may end up accidentally traveling to Eberron from Faerun while nipping down to the corner store due to incorporating aspects of the plane of shadow into the material plane.

There may or may not be occasional rains of Talking Frog/Giant Frog in areas where Limbo holds especial sway over the resulting planar melting pot. Slaadi also can't reproduce, but the magical stones making all Slaadi manifest as giant frogs won't work anymore, so True Slaadi can manifest in whatever way, which will make the Slaad lords even more unhappy than they already were to lost most of their power, but since they're not actually deities proper, they're happier than the Powers themselves.

Though, actually, I guess none of the outsiders except for the Yugoloths can reproduce, aside from the ones that can breed with mortals and create half-Xes. Although since in many cases that sort of reproduction is magical they may now be sterile, at least for the most part.

Various planar hazards like the winds of a couple of layers of Pandemonium may just be constantly moving natural disasters or they may just spontaneously manifest here and there, or sometimes simultaneously manifest in a lot of different places...

In many ways the resulting land may resemble what happened to Equestria in that one episode where they let Discord out and let him run amuck and start causing chocolate milk rain and stuff like that, at least in several respects in some places at certain times.

[Thrathgnar]

Vecna created artificial magic and/or absorbed power from the Serpent. i haven't decided which.

Coidzor, you bring up some good points. What I'm trying to go for is Vecna rebuilding everything how he wants it, and erasing things from the past and the differences between the planes. Itd might be interesting to have various planar hazards, but that doesn't really fit in with the goals on the campaign

[Friv]

There's a logic gap in here somewhere. Vecna has created a stable utopia where everyone is immortal. What is the motivation of the PCs for killing Vecna and ending that utopia? It sounds like the rebel wizard is the bad guy here.

I sort of assume that this utopia is only skin-deep, based on the description. Like, everyone is immortal and things seem happy... but there are places that you don't go, and sometimes people just vanish forever and are never seen again, and anyone who ever so much as questions the status quo or starts digging into history tends to randomly and messily die, thereby "proving" that such knowledge is dangerous and evil and should always be avoided. Vecna's most powerful lieutenants can literally do anything that they want to anybody and the religion that Vecna has constructed says that dying for them is inherently righteous, and he's busy researching whatever spells he wants by swallowing souls and inflicting whatever agonies seem like they'll get the job done fastest.

It's stable only because any potential instability is obliterated. It's a utopia only because you personally have been fortunate enough not to draw the attention of a cruel and omnipotent god.

[Thrathgnar]

I sort of assume that this utopia is only skin-deep, based on the description. Like, everyone is immortal and things seem happy... but there are places that you don't go, and sometimes people just vanish forever and are never seen again, and anyone who ever so much as questions the status quo or starts digging into history tends to randomly and messily die, thereby "proving" that such knowledge is dangerous and evil and should always be avoided. Vecna's most powerful lieutenants can literally do anything that they want to anybody and the religion that Vecna has constructed says that dying for them is inherently righteous, and he's busy researching whatever spells he wants by swallowing souls and inflicting whatever agonies seem like they'll get the job done fastest.

It's stable only because any potential instability is obliterated. It's a utopia only because you personally have been fortunate enough not to draw the attention of a cruel and omnipotent god.

This is pretty much what I was thinking, but you added a bit to it that i didn't think of. I think it makes for an interesting setting

[NichG]

The issue is more that I think efforts to try to place the PCs on one side of the story are really dangerous. It would be a valid choice in such a world for a PC to say 'you know, this isn't so bad, and if we go through with this then everyone starts dying again. So lets not commit genocide here just because our powerful wizard mentor is pining for the good old days.' And I would expect at least two or three players to grab on to that idea and refuse to let go. Which means that trying to motivate them may lead to escalation of railroading.

Certainly in that situation I'd be more alarmed at off-the-cuff things like the wizard mentor messing with the immortality spell and making it so people still die. That's basically a spiteful action that harms all the innocents in the situation in order to deny Vecna a little bit of power or perfection.

[Thrathgnar]

The issue is more that I think efforts to try to place the PCs on one side of the story are really dangerous. It would be a valid choice in such a world for a PC to say 'you know, this isn't so bad, and if we go through with this then everyone starts dying again. So lets not commit genocide here just because our powerful wizard mentor is pining for the good old days.' And I would expect at least two or three players to grab on to that idea and refuse to let go. Which means that trying to motivate them may lead to escalation of railroading.

Certainly in that situation I'd be more alarmed at off-the-cuff things like the wizard mentor messing with the immortality spell and making it so people still die. That's basically a spiteful action that harms all the innocents in the situation in order to deny Vecna a little bit of power or perfection.

The way i run campaigns, I let the PCs do whatever they want. In the one I am currently running, they are all playing with their own motives behind each others backs. Also, the reason for the wizard messing with the spell is so that Vecna's minions are killable. If everyone was truly immortal, it wouldn't make much for a campaign. And even so, there is so much evil and corruption that allowing innocents to live under Vecna's rule forever is worse than death.

[JCAll]

Only thing actually made of magic are going to start dying out. Other things are going to lose their supernatural and spell-like abilities. Remember, you're subtracting magic, not imposing real world physics. So Dragons can still fly, but can't spit lightning. Giants aren't going to start collapsing under their own weight.

[NichG]

The way i run campaigns, I let the PCs do whatever they want. In the one I am currently running, they are all playing with their own motives behind each others backs. Also, the reason for the wizard messing with the spell is so that Vecna's minions are killable. If everyone was truly immortal, it wouldn't make much for a campaign. And even so, there is so much evil and corruption that allowing innocents to live under Vecna's rule forever is worse than death.

As long as you're prepared to run with it and don't try to make the universe into an Aesop, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Angelmaker]

Vecna unified the planes? Does it mean there is no more afterlife for the good aligned people in the astral sea/elysium/whatever? Depending on the answer the wizard messing with the eternal life spell really IS evil.

I think your setting has a a GIGAMETRIC ton of consequences which I really cannot wrap m head around.

[veti]

So... There's no magic, no gods, and no other planes? I know a world like that, it's called Earth.

So what would happen if everything from the Monster Manual was suddenly deposited on Earth, subject to Earth physics and chemistry and ecology?

I think a lot of things would do okay. Dragons would lose their breath weapon and flight, but they're still basically huge dinosaur-like beasts with human or better intelligence. I agree medusas and beholders will be in trouble, though.

As for demons - well, that depends on what counts as "magic". If human anger and jealousy and fear is projected into an external personification, and that personification starts to walk and talk on its own accord, and can be seen by other people and shown to exist objectively, at what point did "magic" come into that process? The answer to that will tell you what becomes of the demons.

Although I too think there's a good chance of the players picking the "wrong" side in this story.

[Thrathgnar]

Some of these replies got me thinking. Let me make a couple of clarifications.

1. People aren't immortal, the wizard sabotaged that part of the spell.

2. The world is openly corrupted by Vecna's greed. Undead armies opress the people, and Vecna has spies that report to Vecna any signs of "treason" so that Vecna may kill whoever spoke or acted against him.

3. The players may indeed pick the wrong side of this, which I'm fine with. I doubt they will however, as this is actually a sequel campaign and in the last one they all earned grudges against Vecna.

4. The wizard was once lawful good, but has turned into a more "the end justifies the means"character. He wants to remove Vecna's evil from the world and undo his spells, which would restore things to their natural order and bring back all the people he killed, but he will do that at any cost, for example kidnapping children at the beginning of the story.

[Karl Aegis]

So how did Vecna stop gravity from working?

[NichG]

What led the wizard to the conclusion that undoing Vecna's spells would bring back the people who were killed? It seems that pinning down that particular piece of evidence is really, really important in terms of having people make decisions about how to act.

Also, it seems like Vecna also still has some form of magic (since, if the wizard can prepare some magic reservoirs with a bit of advance notice, the deity who hatched the plan in the first place should have been able to make tons of reservoirs before moving against the Serpent). So in that case, why does Vecna need undead lieutenants to ferret out subversive elements when he's the god of secrets?

For sake of argument, if I were playing the wizard in this scheme rather than the kidnapped children, my top priority would be figuring out a way to make my scheme be public knowledge and at the same time be below Vecna's notice. E.g. it has to not be secret, but at the same time it has to be able to pose a threat to Vecna and come from an angle that he won't consider threatening until it's too late. That's an interesting puzzle to unravel, so it might be a good generator of plot if we can figure out what you'd have to do to pull that off.

I imagine the primary way to do it would be to make oneself seem too pitiful to bother to kill - something like a court jester. E.g. publically go on rants about how you're going to kill Vecna but show no signs of actually being able to go through with it, until you end up being the example kept alive just so Vecna's minions can point to you and say 'see, Vecna doesn't kill people just for speaking out against him'.

[Thrathgnar]

What led the wizard to the conclusion that undoing Vecna's spells would bring back the people who were killed? It seems that pinning down that particular piece of evidence is really, really important in terms of having people make decisions about how to act.

Also, it seems like Vecna also still has some form of magic (since, if the wizard can prepare some magic reservoirs with a bit of advance notice, the deity who hatched the plan in the first place should have been able to make tons of reservoirs before moving against the Serpent). So in that case, why does Vecna need undead lieutenants to ferret out subversive elements when he's the god of secrets?

For sake of argument, if I were playing the wizard in this scheme rather than the kidnapped children, my top priority would be figuring out a way to make my scheme be public knowledge and at the same time be below Vecna's notice. E.g. it has to not be secret, but at the same time it has to be able to pose a threat to Vecna and come from an angle that he won't consider threatening until it's too late. That's an interesting puzzle to unravel, so it might be a good generator of plot if we can figure out what you'd have to do to pull that off.

I imagine the primary way to do it would be to make oneself seem too pitiful to bother to kill - something like a court jester. E.g. publically go on rants about how you're going to kill Vecna but show no signs of actually being able to go through with it, until you end up being the example kept alive just so Vecna's minions can point to you and say 'see, Vecna doesn't kill people just for speaking out against him'.

1. The way the spell works is that Vecna can control life and death. So anyone he kills he can bring back. I put the details in other thread, but I'm on my phone right now and I can't get to it.

2. Yeah I think there are multiple ways to go about it. The wizard wanted more people to help him, but the problem is if he starts spreading secrets one of Vecna's spies might find out because they are everywhere, hence capturing children. It turns into a trust no one scenario.

Also, love the jester idea. If one of the players were able to infiltrate Vecna's palace like that, it would be pretty sweet.

[Thrathgnar]

So how did Vecna stop gravity from working?

Nanomachines son.

JK magic

[NichG]

I still don't understand how killing Vecna means that his power will automatically be used to revive the dead. It seems like killing Vecna just removes the possibility of that power getting used at all. Also, if the wizard messed with the immortality aspect of the spell already, doesn't that mean that Vecna can't actually bring back the dead (or he'd just fiat the immortality by always immediately resurrecting his defeated minions)?

So it looks like if you're playing Vecna by-the-book, secrets are fine as long as they don't affect more than 500 people within a span of ~2 months. Basically, you'd have to focus all your secrets onto building up resources to do the final one-hit takedown of the entire organization. How you find out about the particular limits of Vecna's portfolio sense would be an interesting problem too.

[Karl Aegis]

Nah, dude. Killing Vecna means the magic suppressing gets undone and everything in the universe going hurtling to the infinite mass of the outer planes that are imploding due to having infinite mass pulling infinite mass into the center of the planes. Killing Vecna doesn't really help anyone. You end the universe so nobody has to keep living, but since there are no afterlives to go to the dead people would just go about their lives as normal as someone being pressed into infinite mass can be normal.

[Keltest]

Nah, dude. Killing Vecna means the magic suppressing gets undone and everything in the universe going hurtling to the infinite mass of the outer planes that are imploding due to having infinite mass pulling infinite mass into the center of the planes. Killing Vecna doesn't really help anyone. You end the universe so nobody has to keep living, but since there are no afterlives to go to the dead people would just go about their lives as normal as someone being pressed into infinite mass can be normal.

Unless magic seriously changed in the latest editions, the life of the spellcaster is not automatically tied into the activity of the spell. Most effects will last after the death of the caster, assuming nothing happens to dispel them.

More likely they would need a specific counter-spell somehow, which allows for the inclusion of a "don't destroy existence through infinite mass in one spot" effect. Now, Vecna's death would certainly make such a spell easier to use, but it isn't necessarily a requisite either.

[NichG]

I thought the major cause of the changes to the multiverse in this was the death of the Serpent. That suggests to me that the setting isn't operating under the 'kill a god and gain its powers' trope. So, it doesn't seem like killing Vecna should end up having any particular effect with respect to magic being present or absent.

What you really need to do is go find a sealed-away time god or something like that, and alter the past.

[Thrathgnar]

You all bring up some good points. I kinda like the idea of a counterspell, I'll think about that. The thing is since this is a custom world and game I can change it however I want, like I changed how undead works and things like that. I feel like that can address a couple of issues.

Lemme get the link to the other post about the prequel campaign and how all this came to be. That might give a bit more insight

[Thrathgnar]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?390584-Greyhawk-Campaign-Storyline-Thoughts-and-Ideas

I wrote this before the campaign started, so some has changed, but its the basic idea

[Coidzor]

That reminds me. There's going to be some Ethergaunts and other empires in the ethereal/deep ethereal that are now exposed to more pedestrian reality properly for the first time in aeons. So that might be a bit interesting. That or Vecna may have gotten into their good graces for killing all the other gods for them or they might have signed up with him to get back access to their racial spellcasting. Otherwise they'll probably double-down on their non-magical technology that works like magic.

Additionally, the Demiplane of Dread will no longer be quite so isolated from the rest of reality. The Mists may or may not still work to prevent people from getting in and out mundanely but Vecna's ilk stands a good chance of having free run of the place if there's anything they want to get.

Probably a bit more people released by the mists, though, since the mists don't have to work nearly so hard to let people out since it no longer involves planar travel. On the other hand, the mists may tighten up and try to prevent anyone from being able to leave again, ever. Depends on how the Dark Powers feel about one of their former Dark Lords compressing the multiverse, I think.

But the non-magical Devices that do magic non-magically from there if you're using those rules would be of an especial interest to anyone who managed to get some that had been smuggled out over time or someone who actively figured things out, so Vecna would probably have a vested interest in clamping down on anything like that himself. Which might give the Dark Powers more of an incentive to let Devices out of the Mists, since it'd be a good way to needle at Vecna...

Additionally there's going to be a lot of Wizards' abandoned/forgotten/??? demiplanes and fortresses that'll pop into normal existence somewhere or another. If constructs aren't all goners, there might be some situations where the self-replicating guardian constructs might threaten a gray goo scenario in an area around such a place.


I thought the major cause of the changes to the multiverse in this was the death of the Serpent. That suggests to me that the setting isn't operating under the 'kill a god and gain its powers' trope. So, it doesn't seem like killing Vecna should end up having any particular effect with respect to magic being present or absent.

I think it's more like Ultimecia's Time Compression gambit from Final Fantasy 8. Papa Vecs wanted to get rid of all of those planar boundaries on his perceptions and scrying. Or something.


What you really need to do is go find a sealed-away time god or something like that, and alter the past.

If Temporal Prime is melded with the material plane, they may not even need to do that. Of course, how time travel would work in such a case is going to be its own chusterflubbery.

[Thrathgnar]

That reminds me. There's going to be some Ethergaunts and other empires in the ethereal/deep ethereal that are now exposed to more pedestrian reality properly for the first time in aeons. So that might be a bit interesting. That or Vecna may have gotten into their good graces for killing all the other gods for them or they might have signed up with him to get back access to their racial spellcasting. Otherwise they'll probably double-down on their non-magical technology that works like magic.

Additionally, the Demiplane of Dread will no longer be quite so isolated from the rest of reality. The Mists may or may not still work to prevent people from getting in and out mundanely but Vecna's ilk stands a good chance of having free run of the place if there's anything they want to get.

Probably a bit more people released by the mists, though, since the mists don't have to work nearly so hard to let people out since it no longer involves planar travel. On the other hand, the mists may tighten up and try to prevent anyone from being able to leave again, ever. Depends on how the Dark Powers feel about one of their former Dark Lords compressing the multiverse, I think.

But the non-magical Devices that do magic non-magically from there if you're using those rules would be of an especial interest to anyone who managed to get some that had been smuggled out over time or someone who actively figured things out, so Vecna would probably have a vested interest in clamping down on anything like that himself. Which might give the Dark Powers more of an incentive to let Devices out of the Mists, since it'd be a good way to needle at Vecna...

Additionally there's going to be a lot of Wizards' abandoned/forgotten/??? demiplanes and fortresses that'll pop into normal existence somewhere or another. If constructs aren't all goners, there might be some situations where the self-replicating guardian constructs might threaten a gray goo scenario in an area around such a place.



I think it's more like Ultimecia's Time Compression gambit from Final Fantasy 8. Papa Vecs wanted to get rid of all of those planar boundaries on his perceptions and scrying. Or something.



If Temporal Prime is melded with the material plane, they may not even need to do that. Of course, how time travel would work in such a case is going to be its own chusterflubbery.

Man theres a lot going on in this setting lol

[Maglubiyet]

Nothing says you had to start off with the full multiverse of the entire expanded D&D cosmology. You could settle for a dozen or so planes and no ethereal, astral, temporal, or demi-planes. To make it easy, without overlapping dimensions combining with each other, now each plane is a single planet around the same star or separate zones on an extremely large flatworld. You could fly or walk to the plane/region of fire, the Abyss, and Valhalla.

The denizens of each area are now just funny-looking mortals. They would still have claws, giant size, elemental forms, wings, or whatever, but no spell-like abilities. If you're using 3.x and you actually plan to have encounters with these new, non-magic versions, you might have to recalculate CR's -- the difficulty levels assume that they have the full abilities as listed.

[Kaun]

this kinda makes me think of the Midnight setting meets Abercrombie First Law trilogy.

[Thrathgnar]

Nothing says you had to start off with the full multiverse of the entire expanded D&D cosmology. You could settle for a dozen or so planes and no ethereal, astral, temporal, or demi-planes. To make it easy, without overlapping dimensions combining with each other, now each plane is a single planet around the same star or separate zones on an extremely large flatworld. You could fly or walk to the plane/region of fire, the Abyss, and Valhalla.

The denizens of each area are now just funny-looking mortals. They would still have claws, giant size, elemental forms, wings, or whatever, but no spell-like abilities. If you're using 3.x and you actually plan to have encounters with these new, non-magic versions, you might have to recalculate CR's -- the difficulty levels assume that they have the full abilities as listed.

yeah I kinda wanted the setting to be a bit simpler, so that the story could focus more on the characters in it rather than where they are

[Lord Torath]

I wonder how this would affect a Spelljammer campaign. Obviously, the spelljammer helms stop working, so everyone inbetween planets/asteroid bases will probably die. But what happens to the Crystal Spheres? The plogiston? Will all the worlds be brought to the same place? Or will the spheres remain separate? Back in 2E, Psioncis was explicitly not magic, so it should continue working normally. This may or may not be the case in your setup.

Athas used to be unreachable via spelljamming, but planar travel could still get there. Now that all the planes are connected, can you walk from one world to another? If so, and if Psionics still works, expect a lot of Athasian creatures to quickly start taking over other worlds. They're bigger, stronger, and most of them have psionic abilities. The Sorcerer Kings would no longer have their spells, but they are powerful psionicists in their own right. Even if psionics doesn't work, monsters on Athas were generally tougher and meaner than those on other worlds, and PCs had higher ability scores (humans topped out at 20, rather than 18).