Is it possible to balance a high fantasy RPG? [Archive]

Lapak

2018-05-02, 09:17 AM

So what should magic do? It's hard define a rational limit to magic. Hypothetically, if I can shoot fire at a single target, why can't a stronger caster shoot fire at 100 targets?
It's hard to assign a rational limit, but not hard to introduce arbitrary ones based on how magic works that balance god-wizards.

One angle is time: if it's possible to destroy an army with a single spell, but spells of that magnitude take a week of ritual casting to execute, you can have godly wizards who still need/are vulnerable to mundane fighters.

Or cost: if every spell takes a fraction of your life force (damages you, or ages you, or whatever) rather than recharging spell points/spell slots, there's more thought involved in using them. Or it requires genuinely rare materials.

Or require concentration for all magic: wizards can blast armies, or protect themselves from attack, but not at the same time. Or require deep specialization: Gandalf knew fire and inspiration, Saruman knew ringlore and invention, Radagast knew nature and animals, but they were much less useful outside their field.

There are lots of ways to balance magic against the mundane without losing a 'high fantasy' feel.

Aetis

2018-05-02, 09:20 AM

I've banned some broken spells (notably the polymorph line, but also things like glibness), and nerfed other spells (glitterdust for one), and banned half the material out there.

Casters optimize as hard as they can with the given limits. They seem to be balanced with the melee characters in terms of overall usefulness.

Feantar

2018-05-02, 10:07 AM

Psyren

2018-05-02, 10:07 AM

Well I would argue that 4E lost of a bit of that high fantasy feel because instead of spellcasters "feeling" different and powerful they felt cookie cutter, similanteously all the classes ended up feeling like casters with various 1/day, 1/encounter, at-will powers to use.

4e is absolutely high fantasy - you can take on Elder Dragons and Archdemons, walk the stars, raise the dead, etc. Lack of variety doesn't mean low fantasy.

But more to the point - once you duplicate powers that are conventionally considered magical and let martials access them too, then yeah, they're going to feel like casters. That's not necessarily a bad thing - it's not what i personally want out of a TTRPG, but there's examples of it working for others.

One way to pull it off believably is to make PCs magical regardless of class. For example: you're not a normal member of your race, you're a Nephalem, or a Godwoken/Godspawn, or a Chosen, or a Vessel, or a Dragonborn etc.

Quertus

2018-05-02, 10:19 AM

So what should magic do? It's hard define a rational limit to magic. Hypothetically, if I can shoot fire at a single target, why can't a stronger caster shoot fire at 100 targets?

A genral approach to balance is to make every player supernatural. Think mage the ascension - your character can be a ninja, but they are a magic ninja.

let martials access them too,

One way to pull it off believably is to make PCs magical regardless of class. For example: you're not a normal member of your race, you're a Nephalem, or a Godwoken/Godspawn, or a Chosen, or a Vessel, or a Dragonborn etc.

I think that the easier approach is to start with the martial characters. What will you let them do? Will you let them be Hercules, redirecting the flow of a river with their bare hands? Will you let them be wuxia, balancing on clouds? Will you let them be special?

Then build your casters to match.

4e is absolutely high fantasy - you can take on Elder Dragons and Archdemons, walk the stars, raise the dead, etc. Lack of variety doesn't mean low fantasy.

But the feel just isn't there. And that, more than anything, is what I think most people are aiming for.

Vhaidara

2018-05-02, 10:25 AM

But the feel just isn't there. And that, more than anything, is what I think most people are aiming for.

That's a matter of opinion. I've felt significantly more awesome playing 4e than I ever felt in 3.PF. And that's regardless of if I'm playing a pirate captain, a high powered pyrmancer, a truenamer, a fallen angel, or the scion of an archduke of hell (all characters I am currently playing)

Malimar

2018-05-02, 10:25 AM

So what should magic do? It's hard define a rational limit to magic. Hypothetically, if I can shoot fire at a single target, why can't a stronger caster shoot fire at 100 targets?
If I can sword a single target, why can't a stronger fighter sword 100 targets at once?

I'm not even completely disagreeing with you. I just watched Thor: Ragnarok, and Thor regularly hammers or swords dozens of foes at once, even when he's not using his lightning powers. Hela does the same but more so, using only the "has lots of swords" trick in terms of magic.

You can balance a high fantasy game by restricting the casters or by allowing the mundanes martials to be powerful, or a little of each. Any of these is a fine paradigm. The problems of 3.5 are not universal problems.

Lapak

2018-05-02, 10:29 AM

If you're talking about tolkienesque level, then it depends. LOTR & Hobbit level has magic limited to gods, with a couple of very powerful individuals capable of performing incredibly minor miracles. So, in a sense, your players are mundanes, and they can sometimes battle the minor supernaturals through craftsmanship (elfmade blades damaging wights), not magic. I think this gets into how the mundane/magical divide can be bridged a bit, by the way, because most men and hobbits would 100% say that those elf-crafted blades were forged with magic, while the elves wouldn't even necessarily say that Feanor used magic to craft the Silmarils.

They're ambivalent about it even when referring to something like the Mirror of Galadriel:

'And you?' she said, turning to Sam. 'For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf magic?'
There are high fantasy universes where The Way Things Work would cross over into what we would call magic, but in-setting it's just skill or a deep understanding of the world or something else. Keeping that in mind can help everyone feel more reasonable about allowing 'mundane' characters to do exceptional things.

After all, when Aragorn healed those wounded by the Nazgûl, was he casting a spell?

tedcahill2

2018-05-02, 10:29 AM

That's a matter of opinion. I've felt significantly more awesome playing 4e than I ever felt in 3.PF. And that's regardless of if I'm playing a pirate captain, a high powered pyrmancer, a truenamer, a fallen angel, or the scion of an archduke of hell (all characters I am currently playing)

4E suffers from the "Invincibles Syndrome" when you make everyone special, nobody is.

tedcahill2

2018-05-02, 10:32 AM

If I can sword a single target, why can't a stronger fighter sword 100 targets at once?

I'm not even completely disagreeing with you. I just watched Thor: Ragnarok, and Thor regularly hammers or swords dozens of foes at once, even when he's not using his lightning powers. Hela does the same but more so, using only the "has lots of swords" trick in terms of magic.

You can balance a high fantasy game by restricting the casters or by allowing the mundanes to be powerful, or a little of each. Any of these is a fine paradigm. The problems of 3.5 are not universal problems.

I wouldn't think Thor or Hela are mundanes by any means.

Malimar

2018-05-02, 10:40 AM

I wouldn't think Thor or Hela are mundanes by any means.
The point you've missed is that their combat styles are mostly mundane martial, even though they themselves are superhuman.

Or else we've run into the equivocation of nobody is consistent about whether "mundane" means "not using magic" or "limited to human abilities". There's no reason for the latter to ever be in play in a high fantasy RPG.

We should probably just taboo the word "mundane" and never use it again under any circumstances, it causes only confusion.

Peat

2018-05-02, 10:44 AM

So what should magic do? It's hard define a rational limit to magic. Hypothetically, if I can shoot fire at a single target, why can't a stronger caster shoot fire at 100 targets?

You tell me. Pretty much every work of high or epic fantasy out there has a different approach as to where they set their limits for magic and why. But limits they do have - and usually quite a lot below what a D&D3.5 lvl20 Wizard can theoretically do. There is no rule saying that just because a Wizard could theoretically do it, the Wizards in your setting definitely can.

Magic's pretty much always gonna be more powerful than can be accomplished with the laws of physics and mortal capacity, not unless you feel like being quite vicious with the laws of magic and mortal capacity for magic. But there's still plenty of room for mortal men to have their say if magic doesn't render them utterly pointless.

Lapak

2018-05-02, 10:46 AM

I wouldn't think Thor or Hela are mundanes by any means.
What about Sir Gawain, whose strength waxes and wanes with the sun?

What about Sir Lancelot, who is mundane except for the fact that he is unbeatable in combat (by one men or twenty or a hundred) until his fall from grace?

What about Cú Chulainn, who defeated an army single-handed and hurls a deadly javelin with his feet?

There's plenty of non-wizards and non-spellcasters in fantasy and myth who do impossible things.

Quertus

2018-05-02, 10:59 AM

If I can sword a single target, why can't a stronger fighter sword 100 targets at once?

Thank you for explicitly going there - I forgot to.

That's a matter of opinion. I've felt significantly more awesome playing 4e than I ever felt in 3.PF.

4E suffers from the "Invincibles Syndrome" when you make everyone special, nobody is.

Incredibles.

The issue is when you make everyone the exact same kind of special. Or make the differences unimportant - or unimportant to the person in question.

Bounded Accuracy makes sure that no one is special in certain ways that matter to me. This includes, btw, matching my experiences IRL (if you aren't as special as people IRL, how special can you be? Bounded Accuracy represents a failure of epic proportions). 4e likewise ensues that no one is special in certain ways that matter to me. Wuxia, otoh, allows people to be special in ways that not only don't matter to me, but also often annoy me (for inexplicable reasons).

I wouldn't think Thor or Hela are mundanes by any means.

Martial, though, they are. (EDIT: even if not exclusively)

Vhaidara

2018-05-02, 10:59 AM

4E suffers from the "Invincibles Syndrome" when you make everyone special, nobody is.

...That mentality answers your question then. If, for anyone to be special, someone has to not be special, than by definition you can't create a balanced game, because someone has to be boring and lame for anyone else to by awesome and special.

Me? I can think of a ton of non-specials. They're called NPCs. We don't play them.

Quertus

2018-05-02, 11:06 AM

...That mentality answers your question then. If, for anyone to be special, someone has to not be special, than by definition you can't create a balanced game, because someone has to be boring and lame for anyone else to by awesome and special.

Me? I can think of a ton of non-specials. They're called NPCs. We don't play them.

In chess, Knights are special, because they can jump over other pieces. Yet they are considered the second to least valuable pieces on the board. Being special doesn't have to equate to being overall better.

Knaight

2018-05-02, 11:17 AM

So what should magic do? It's hard define a rational limit to magic. Hypothetically, if I can shoot fire at a single target, why can't a stronger caster shoot fire at 100 targets?

The way magic functions is setting specific, and can be established essentially arbitrarily. The limits can just be there, and they don't need to be rational - particularly because the limits themselves are a large part of defining how the magic works.

Telonius

2018-05-02, 11:22 AM

If I were trying to build a system like the OP is describing, I'd probably give the arcane caster a chassis something like a 3.5 Warlock. Lots of neat at-will stuff, that's not gamebreaking on its own. But then, add something like Incantations (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm) on top of it. (Ignore the bit about noncasters, and have it be an arcanist-only thing). The massive casting time of each of the example incantations listed means it's not something you do all the time, it's something you work up to and prep for. Eldritch Blast (or whatever the equivalent you come up with) is enough of a minor "zap your enemies" thing without it being all-consuming like a Wizard's spell list.

You'd definitely want to expand the list of incantations to include other battlefield-altering, world-changing stuff. Like, Saruman calling Caradhras down on the Fellowship, or Elrond setting up the river-defense of Rivendell.

dude123nice

2018-05-02, 11:30 AM

Malimar

2018-05-02, 11:36 AM

LOL, Lotr is not high fantasy. And even there you have beings like Sauron or the Witch King who are very powerful even when they are not using any spells.
:smallannoyed:

The works of J. R. R. Tolkien—especially The Lord of the Rings—are regarded as archetypal works of high fantasy.
but more importantly

Now everyone may have a different definition of what high fantasy is
but most importantly definitions are boring so this argument is boring.

Cosi

2018-05-02, 11:53 AM

Is it possible to balance a fantasy RPG where magic wielded by powerful wizards actually feels godly but a warrior of equal level can be equally useful?

3e is balanced in the Tolkien range. The characters in LotR and The Hobbit are for the most part no more than 6th level characters. E6 is a balanced subset of 3e, and later editions have stretched that power range over twenty levels. If all you want to do is stuff that is "basically LotR" (or "basically Conan", or "basically Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser"), you can already do that.

Of course, you can balance the game at higher levels. You just have to do what LotR does and force the Fighter to become a Ghost King with level appropriate magical powers when the party starts having high level adventures.

Sure it is, just look at 4e for an example. The question though is what you give up to achieve such extreme levels of egalitarianism. Often, things being unbalanced in a controlled way makes the overall game more interesting.

4e is not balanced, and its problems come from catering to mundanes, not trying to balance the game. It turns out that people like the crazy high level crap casters did in 3e, and it was a bad idea to take it out of the game.

I'm not even completely disagreeing with you. I just watched Thor: Ragnarok, and Thor regularly hammers or swords dozens of foes at once, even when he's not using his lightning powers. Hela does the same but more so, using only the "has lots of swords" trick in terms of magic.

Yes, Thor is a martial character who it is appropriate to play in a high level game. He is also a demigod with lightning powers, superhuman durability, and interplanetary teleportation. He is not, in any sense of the word, "mundane". But yes, that is a totally reasonable vision of what a high level "sword guy" (well, hammer guy) might look like.

Necroticplague

2018-05-02, 12:03 PM

Is it possible to balance a fantasy RPG where magic wielded by powerful wizards actually feels godly but a warrior of equal level can be equally useful?
Yes: you make high-level warriors capable of similarly godly acts. When you're at high levels, you've long left the world where any mortal human limits have made sense. So the powerful wizard performing acts far beyond most mortal men's ken wiping out a whole army is possible not because he's a wizard, but because he's higher level. A similarly high-level fighter could perform a similar such feat.

DEMON

2018-05-02, 12:05 PM

Is it possible to balance a fantasy RPG where magic wielded by powerful wizards actually feels godly but a warrior of equal level can be equally useful?

No. Just kidding: yes.

Psyren

2018-05-02, 12:07 PM

4E suffers from the "Invincibles Syndrome" when you make everyone special, nobody is.

I think you meant Incredibles here.

Also, can I ask what it is you want? Because either you have to accept some degree of imbalance (i.e. where not every class can do the same things) or you're going to have to accept homogeneity instead. It's one or the other.

In other words, what Keledrath said.

In chess, Knights are special, because they can jump over other pieces. Yet they are considered the second to least valuable pieces on the board. Being special doesn't have to equate to being overall better.

But chess pieces aren't internally balanced. That's why they have different point values. Queens and Rooks are, overall, better than knights (though knights can still contribute, and even defeat the other under certain circumstances.)

digiman619

2018-05-02, 12:11 PM

Necroticplague

2018-05-02, 12:17 PM

I think you meant Incredibles here.

Also, can I ask what it is you want? Because either you have to accept some degree of imbalance (i.e. where not every class can do the same things) or you're going to have to accept homogeneity instead. It's one or the other.

In other words, what Keledrath said.

"not every class can do the same things" isn't imbalance, so long as the areas of defeciency and strength are equal in magnitude and applicability.

Psyren

2018-05-02, 12:29 PM

"not every class can do the same things" isn't imbalance, so long as the areas of defeciency and strength are equal in magnitude and applicability.

Sure, I'll agree with that. My problem though is that there are some fantasy abilities that are iconic, but simultaneously difficult to swallow without magic - things like raising the dead, or summoning, or creating a demiplane. (Certainly there are other abilities that I'd be fine giving martial classes though, like mind blank and time stop.)

Necroticplague

2018-05-02, 12:42 PM

Sure, I'll agree with that. My problem though is that there are some fantasy abilities that are iconic, but simultaneously difficult to swallow without magic - things like raising the dead, or summoning, or creating a demiplane. (Certainly there are other abilities that I'd be fine giving martial classes though, like mind blank and time stop.)

While I agree with the statement made here, I'm not sure how it's relevant to what I was quoting. If casters and martials don't have to be able to do the same things (a point we seem to already agree on), it's perfectly fine if casters have some ability martials don't, so long as that also means martials have abilities casters don't.

Psyren

2018-05-02, 12:49 PM

While I agree with the statement made here, I'm not sure how it's relevant to what I was quoting. If casters and martials don't have to be able to do the same things (a point we seem to already agree on), it's perfectly fine if casters have some ability martials don't, so long as that also means martials have abilities casters don't.

Indeed, and this begs the question - like what? Currently the answer to that is only "not hosed by antimagic" and "not reliant on a daily resource." The former, in addition to being rare, hoses martials too because of their reliance on gear. The latter meanwhile is also rare because running enough combats to make spell slots matter is a OOC chore.

Telonius

2018-05-02, 01:05 PM

Hmm, a magic system that's mostly at will (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/spheres-of-power), but has incantations? (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/incantations) If only such a system existed...

Yeah, never really looked into Spheres too closely. It's taken me a few years to get my current group to figure out 3.5. Learning Pathfinder Plus would just be a couple steps too far.

Quertus

2018-05-02, 01:07 PM

But chess pieces aren't internally balanced. That's why they have different point values. Queens and Rooks are, overall, better than knights (though knights can still contribute, and even defeat the other under certain circumstances.)

And that's my point. A thing can be special even when it's objectively inferior.

While I agree with the statement made here, I'm not sure how it's relevant to what I was quoting. If casters and martials don't have to be able to do the same things (a point we seem to already agree on), it's perfectly fine if casters have some ability martials don't, so long as that also means martials have abilities casters don't.

Indeed, and this begs the question - like what? Currently the answer to that is only "not hosed by antimagic" and "not reliant on a daily resource." The former, in addition to being rare, hoses martials too because of their reliance on gear. The latter meanwhile is also rare because running enough combats to make spell slots matter is a OOC chore.

Things that the Fighter can do that the Wizard cannot:

Survive. Fighters have HP, armor, and, in earlier editions, saving throws.

Persist. No x/day abilities here.

Lead. In earlier editions, at least.

Carry the wizard's corpse. The average wizard can't reciprocate.

Vizzerdrix

2018-05-02, 01:30 PM

Things that the Fighter can do that the Wizard cannot:

Survive. Fighters have HP, armor, and, in earlier editions, saving throws.

Persist. No x/day abilities here.

Lead. In earlier editions, at least.

Carry the wizard's corpse. The average wizard can't reciprocate.

Survive- casters get tons of (far too many imo) "get out of jail free" spells. They can even write these on cards for literal get out of jail free cards.

Persist- Is literaly something they can do with spells. And make undead. And constructs. And a slew of other critters.

Lead- their is an entire class of magic that can make things like you.

Carry- why carry the body when you can finaly turn the meat shield into an undead? Or shrink item it. Or toss it in any one of several magical storage units. Or toss it on a tensers disk.

Personaly I want martials to have nice things too. But I don't think anything D&D will ever be the system for that without jumping through lots of hoops.

digiman619

2018-05-02, 01:34 PM

Yeah, never really looked into Spheres too closely. It's taken me a few years to get my current group to figure out 3.5. Learning Pathfinder Plus would just be a couple steps too far.

With respect, it's easily back-portable, so playing it in a 3.5 game isn't impossible. Still, I don't know you or your gaming group, so you do what works best for you.

Telonius

2018-05-02, 02:08 PM

With respect, it's easily back-portable, so playing it in a 3.5 game isn't impossible. Still, I don't know you or your gaming group, so you do what works best for you.

Yeah, we have one math-phobe, a couple of casual gamers mainly there for the snarky comments, one average player, one munchkin, and me. I'm pretty sure the casual gamers would take one look at the block-o-links in the Wiki, and go brain-dead. The math-phobe would probably make it as far as the MSB/MSD section. The average player wouldn't have a problem. The munchkin would create some unholy mashup I'd need to figure out how to counter. The munchkin and I could back-port it without too much trouble. The average player could, if we explained what to do. The others, just not happening.

Psyren

2018-05-02, 02:12 PM

Things that the Fighter can do that the Wizard cannot:

Survive. Fighters have HP, armor, and, in earlier editions, saving throws.

Persist. No x/day abilities here.

Lead. In earlier editions, at least.

Carry the wizard's corpse. The average wizard can't reciprocate.

And all of these are great - at low levels. It doesn't take long for wizards to catch up on these.

Now, you could remove a wizard's ability to defend themselves from melee, or succeed at physical tasks, or succeed at social situations, or to be leaders. But a lot of that is iconic, so you run the risk of people not wanting to shell out money for your boring book about boring wizards.

I definitely agree on Persist though, casters have too many spells in 3.x.

Necroticplague

2018-05-02, 02:30 PM

And all of these are great - at low levels. It doesn't take long for wizards to catch up on these. They don't, currently. I was under the impression we were talking about a theoretical game, which could simply not make the wizard ever get these.

Now, you could remove a wizard's ability to defend themselves from melee, or succeed at physical tasks, or succeed at social situations, or to be leaders. But a lot of that is iconic, so you run the risk of people not wanting to shell out money for your boring book about boring wizards. How is being a smooth talker 'iconic'* to the pure wizard concept? If you want a wizard who can fight in melee, you multiclass, prestige class, or use a weaker hybrid class. If you want a caster with a silver tongue, same deal.

*=I never understood what that word meant in these kinds of contexts, since every person has a different set of references as to what anything is, especially things with no basis in reality.

I definitely agree on Persist though, casters have too many spells in 3.x.
Way too many spells, and ways to stretch out their spell slots.

Peat

2018-05-02, 02:40 PM

How is being a smooth talker 'iconic'* to the pure wizard concept? If you want a wizard who can fight in melee, you multiclass, prestige class, or use a weaker hybrid class. If you want a caster with a silver tongue, same deal.

*=I never understood what that word meant in these kinds of contexts, since every person has a different set of references as to what anything is, especially things with no basis in reality.

Gandalf's a pretty charismatic guy and very good at browbeating people. Mind you, he's pretty good at stabbing people too. Tbh, I'm not really sure where the concept of a wizard who's good at magic and very little else originated other than D&D.

Pleh

2018-05-02, 03:01 PM

4e is absolutely high fantasy - you can take on Elder Dragons and Archdemons, walk the stars, raise the dead, etc. Lack of variety doesn't mean low fantasy.

LotR is the gold standard for high fantasy. Heroes in a LotR game would never do any of these things directly. Elder Dragons and Archdemons would be the enemies of likewise immortal beings and the real reason Sauron was defeated was that he made himself vulnerable through the ring (that, and several wars fought by superhuman armies got the ring away from him).

Walking the stars and slaying god like monstrosities aren't the benchmark for high fantasy, rather they indicate high power magic systems. The "high" part refers to a literary elevation rather than the heroes smashing bigger giants with bigger sticks.

Let's rephrase the question: is it possible to attain class balance in a setting marked by sophisticated fantasy?

Marvel Studios has recently demonstrated that sophistication is essentially unnecessary to successful fantasy if you balance the action, drama, and humor carefully. It is delightfully unsophisticated (not that it never makes any higher level points, but that these tend to be somewhat secondary), but they are really fun to watch anyway.

LotR was crafted at least in part to impress Tolkein's academic colleages of literature. It uses high level themes and complex literary mechanics, but the whole point seemed more or less to prove that it could be done regardless of the fundamental content. He used a conglomeration of fairy tale elements that weren't very popular outside of children's material at the time

So let's examine the question again: is it possible to balance sophisticated fantasy in an RPG?

I would submit that an overabundance of player agency in proportion to setting agency tends to result in trivial adventures that leave little room for sophistication. To build sophistication, somehow you must craft meaningful choices for players. Limiting character power level is a quick and easy way to eliminate dozens of pitfalls that ruin sophistication through trivializing encounters. However, that only makes it that much more rewarding to successfully create sophisticated fantasy at a higher power level.

Superman is so high in power, developing challenges that merit his strength isn't easy and some speculate that creating true drama around his character is impossible (but this isn't true). What actually happens is that stories about superman have to involve the spectacular nature of his integrity and good will. No matter the situation, he never compromises. This is where his fantasy can become sophisticated.

In an RPG, I think the key to this is understanding that power (thus also balance of power) is tangential to high fantasy. They relate, but indirectly. You can have sophistication at high and low power and it has more to do with creating dillemas for the characters that operate on multiple levels.

For mr sword guy, it's not just killing the old wizard mad with power, it's fighting his old mentor to stop him from making deals with demons that will wreak havoc on the landscape while advancing their tribe's political status.

For the wizard, it's not just spell management in a dungeon, it's work to unlock ancient secrets lost in the fall of a powerful civilization plagued by mysterious madness from a forgotten god.

Essentially, high fantasy just doesn't care about balance. RPGs care about balance. High fantasy cares about stories that have a complex and meaningful message

Morty

2018-05-02, 03:07 PM

It's virtually impossible to create a game that is perfectly, entirely balanced. Games that allow for higher power levels are more difficult to balance than those which don't. Likewise for games with a higher degree of complexity. It is, however, perfectly possible to create a game that is more balanced than 3e-era D&D has ever been. Or at least one that doesn't screw over half of its characters while fawning over others like they're self-insert OCs in a fanfic.

How you're going to accomplish that is another matter, because as the two pages of this thread alone show, people have completely different ideas of what "high fantasy" even means and what characters therein should be able to do. 4e got pretty close while remaining recognizably D&D, so that might where you should look if you're interested in that. But 4e has its own issues, so the question then becomes, how do we keep its tighter balance while avoiding the pitfalls? 4e emerged from the design of 3e's last years, and the flaws it has are likewise ones D&D has often struggled with one way or the other.

I think "balance" might not be the best word, really. Narrative and gameplay agency is a better way of putting it. As long as everyone has their own ways to shine, be useful and feel fantastic, it's good. The issue is when some characters overshadow others to a ridiculous degree and the system itself trips the weaker ones up at every turn, as is the case in D&D 3.x.

Andor13

2018-05-02, 03:44 PM

Now everyone may have a different definition of what high fantasy is, but for my purposes I see it as being a very Tolkien-esque world of elves and dwarves and humans, mostly rogue/warrior types (for PCs anyway) with the occasional Gandalf tossed in the mix.

Is it possible to balance a fantasy RPG where magic wielded by powerful wizards actually feels godly but a warrior of equal level can be equally useful?

I'm trying to conceptualize what that would even look like. In a high fantasy setting magic is so close to divine miracles that I don't know how you could balance that against martial adeptness. Not without the sword play feeling a little magic-y.

Yes, but it requires you build the system with that in mind.

What does that mean?

It means magic needs drawbacks that balance it's godly power. This can be done in a lot of ways, but many of them are not tabletop friendly. (Making Merlin sleep in a cave for (Spell level)years after every casting works poorly for an ongoing campaign.) If I were tasked with designing the game I would probably split magic into two bits.

1) Low Magic, this is your day to day useful stuff. The cantrip to 1st or 2nd level spell range. This can work about like in D&D without significant issue, yes glitterdust is nice, but it's not world changing.
2) High Magic. Here is your godly power stuff. Want to curse the snotty princes castle and staff into being Disney fashion accessories? Turn into a Dragon? Create a demi-plane or summon a demon army? This has you covered. But not with out nicely narrative drawbacks. High magic should be some combination of big, loud, slow and vulnerable. What does that mean?

Big means just that. If you want to open a portal to hell that binds a demon army to your service you don't just need a circle, you need the whole "Evil Overlord" style castle, and every brick of it is part of the ritual.
Loud means that your activity is noticeable at great range. This can be at casting (as when Gandalf made fire burn on Caradhras), or simply be that building an entire castle made to weird specs and strange materials is hard to keep hidden from those who know what to look for.
Slow means exactly that. High Magic is not in combat magic, these spells take days or even years to cast. (This is not to say High Magic cannot have in combat effects, if a Wizard cast a ritual that curses anyone who strikes at him, that's legit, but he didn't cast it as you kicked down the door.)
Vulnerable means that not only are the rituals interruptible, but that every spell has a bane. Something that can be achieved by mundane characters that will undo it. It doesn't have to be easy, or obvious, but it has to exist.

And additionally I would require magic users to be weird. You pay a price for your power. Every caster has something that they have given up, some burden they have assumed, some vulnerability they have gained that separates them from most people.

Just my 2¢

Quertus

2018-05-02, 04:06 PM

Survive- casters get tons of (far too many imo) "get out of jail free" spells. They can even write these on cards for literal get out of jail free cards.

Persist- Is literaly something they can do with spells. And make undead. And constructs. And a slew of other critters.

Lead- their is an entire class of magic that can make things like you.

Carry- why carry the body when you can finaly turn the meat shield into an undead? Or shrink item it. Or toss it in any one of several magical storage units. Or toss it on a tensers disk.

Personaly I want martials to have nice things too. But I don't think anything D&D will ever be the system for that without jumping through lots of hoops.

You are assuming casters can somehow survive to the level to be able to do these things.

And all of these are great - at low levels. It doesn't take long for wizards to catch up on these.

If they live. Which they are much less likely to do than the fighter.

Way too many spells, and ways to stretch out their spell slots.

Or way too few spells, especially if they're trying to cover multiple bases. Clearly, we have different experiences.

people have completely different ideas of what "high fantasy" even means and what characters therein should be able to do. 4e got pretty close while remaining recognizably D&D,

Um... 4e was, in not just my highly opinionated opinion, but in the view of many, not D&D. So that makes the whole statement suspect, but... I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, so... how did 4e get close to high fantasy?

Psyren

2018-05-02, 04:16 PM

LotR is the gold standard for high fantasy.

I suspect our definitions of "high fantasy" are very different then.

If you want a wizard who can fight in melee, you multiclass, prestige class, or use a weaker hybrid class.

But what about transmuters? Or summoners? Or necromancers? All are pretty iconic, and both are capable of (by proxy for the latter two) being significant melee bruisers. And even if you throw wizards out for these, what about clerics and druids? They're even more iconic in these roles.

If you want a caster with a silver tongue, same deal.

Well my exact words were "succeed socially." The whole point of magic (especially enchantment, illusion, and divination) is that you can make friends and influence people without being natively persuasive at all. Again, you can eliminate stuff like mind reading and compulsions and magical disguises, but that's still taking a machete to the iconic hedge.

Way too many spells, and ways to stretch out their spell slots.

Indeed. For this one I'd be pretty happy abolishing bonus spells entirely and reducing the number of slots, then giving out a few scaling at-wills to negate the "crossbow problem" - much like 5e did.

Morty

2018-05-02, 04:19 PM

Um... 4e was, in not just my highly opinionated opinion, but in the view of many, not D&D. So that makes the whole statement suspect, but... I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, so... how did 4e get close to high fantasy?

Whatever "many" might claim, 4e is D&D through and through. It might not be D&D someone likes, for entirely legitimate reasons, but D&D nonetheless. By "gets close" I meant that it gets close to being balanced, not high fantasy, since I wasn't particularly interested in nitpicking over what high fantasy means. But if 4e isn't high fantasy, then neither is any other edition of D&D, anyway.

Feantar

2018-05-02, 04:50 PM

There are high fantasy universes where The Way Things Work would cross over into what we would call magic, but in-setting it's just skill or a deep understanding of the world or something else. Keeping that in mind can help everyone feel more reasonable about allowing 'mundane' characters to do exceptional things.

After all, when Aragorn healed those wounded by the Nazgûl, was he casting a spell?

Expanding on this, the problem lies in how the world approaches the supernatural. We allow individuals to breach natural laws because they have magic. If you make magic accessible by normal means you raise the issue of (unless the world is really really young) why isn't there wide magic (à la Eberron)? That's the usual problem with mundanes being able to do unbelievable stuff.

Taking mythological examples, most of them have some supernatural ancestry (Hercules, Perseus), were given their power by supernatural means (Taliesin, Achiles), or were the subject of divine providence (David). There are a few who are the Hero in such stories that seem mundane, but those are usually cunning (Odysseus) and don't do anything really unbelievable (at the time). Yes, there are exceptions (Beowulf, Gilgamesh), but to my knowledge, this is the rule. So, unless you want to go the route of "the potential is in everyone" which requires a young world, as stated above, or a really grim-dark approach of everyone choosing to be incompetent, I don't think a plain non-supernatural individual should be able to go Thor-like.

By the way; yes Aragorn was arguably casting a spell of sorts. Yes, it was amplified by his long years in being a ranger (and thus an aspiring herbalist) but it was preceded by prophecy (The King's hands are healing hands). He was also raised under one of the most powerful elf sort-of-sorcerers in middle earth. So yes, even unconsciously, he was doing something supernatural. That's what I meant by subtle. It is something that is unseen, but it is a solid justification why Bob the Builder-who-wants-to-be-king could not do the same, because Elessar has magic, and he does not.

Lapak

2018-05-02, 05:34 PM

Expanding on this, the problem lies in how the world approaches the supernatural. We allow individuals to breach natural laws because they have magic. If you make magic accessible by normal means you raise the issue of (unless the world is really really young) why isn't there wide magic (à la Eberron)? That's the usual problem with mundanes being able to do unbelievable stuff.
You make some solid points, but I think we can take a clue from the sort of thing that *becomes* myth and look at folktales. John Henry out-drilled a steam engine without being a demigod, but if that story had been given a couple hundred years of being passed down as oral tradition you can bet he would have been.

The obvious answer to why it isn't common is that just because something is possible doesn't mean everyone can do it. I mean, we see this in the real world all the time. Not every gymnast is Simone Biles, even the ones that work at it every day. Not every painter is Van Gogh. Not every strongman is Magnus ver Magnusson. If we take heroic tasks and assume that any given person - not EVERY person, but potentially any individual -could raise swordplay to an art such that no person or group could overwhelm him, could master song to the degree that he can make the dying dance and the mighty despair, can slip past guards through the shadows like LeBron James pressing to the hoop, you're there.

It's all very Ratatouille - "Anyone can cook" doesn't mean everyone gets to be the most celebrated chef in Paris.

By the way; yes Aragorn was arguably casting a spell of sorts. Yes, it was amplified by his long years in being a ranger (and thus an aspiring herbalist) but it was preceded by prophecy (The King's hands are healing hands). He was also raised under one of the most powerful elf sort-of-sorcerers in middle earth. So yes, even unconsciously, he was doing something supernatural. That's what I meant by subtle. It is something that is unseen, but it is a solid justification why Bob the Builder-who-wants-to-be-king could not do the same, because Elessar has magic, and he does not.
WRT your spoiler - the 'arguably' is important, because it's not laid out that clearly. It could be as simple as his deep wisdom knowing that athelas in particular could combat the shadow curse. All he does is steep it in water and call to the afflicted as a friend, and it is very possible that 'The King has the hands of a Healer' is simply descriptive of reality rather than indicative of magic - the True King is the one who knows how to make war AND to heal, to bind and let loose, to build what is good and cast down what is evil. When you see the guy who knows how to do all that, stick a crown on him!

digiman619

2018-05-02, 06:09 PM

Gnaeus

2018-05-02, 06:29 PM

Yes, but it requires you build the system with that in mind.

What does that mean?

It means magic needs drawbacks that balance it's godly power. This can be done in a lot of ways, but many of them are not tabletop friendly. (Making Merlin sleep in a cave for (Spell level)years after every casting works poorly for an ongoing campaign.) If I were tasked with designing the game I would probably split magic into two bits.

1) Low Magic, this is your day to day useful stuff. The cantrip to 1st or 2nd level spell range. This can work about like in D&D without significant issue, yes glitterdust is nice, but it's not world changing.
2) High Magic. Here is your godly power stuff. Want to curse the snotty princes castle and staff into being Disney fashion accessories? Turn into a Dragon? Create a demi-plane or summon a demon army? This has you covered. But not with out nicely narrative drawbacks. High magic should be some combination of big, loud, slow and vulnerable. What does that mean?

Big means just that. If you want to open a portal to hell that binds a demon army to your service you don't just need a circle, you need the whole "Evil Overlord" style castle, and every brick of it is part of the ritual.
Loud means that your activity is noticeable at great range. This can be at casting (as when Gandalf made fire burn on Caradhras), or simply be that building an entire castle made to weird specs and strange materials is hard to keep hidden from those who know what to look for.
Slow means exactly that. High Magic is not in combat magic, these spells take days or even years to cast. (This is not to say High Magic cannot have in combat effects, if a Wizard cast a ritual that curses anyone who strikes at him, that's legit, but he didn't cast it as you kicked down the door.)
Vulnerable means that not only are the rituals interruptible, but that every spell has a bane. Something that can be achieved by mundane characters that will undo it. It doesn't have to be easy, or obvious, but it has to exist.

And additionally I would require magic users to be weird. You pay a price for your power. Every caster has something that they have given up, some burden they have assumed, some vulnerability they have gained that separates them from most people.

Just my 2¢

I think Andor is spot on. With the addition that it tends to be highly specialized. I want a system where wizards can summon demons, raise the dead, polymorph, divine, enchant, make items etc. But iconic wizards, even godlike ones, can rarely do more than one or two of such things. In 3.5, a wizard can get essentially every useful shapeshift thing with 4 spells (Alter Self, Polymorph, PAO, Shapeshift) out of the 36 above L1 spells he gets for free. Every single well built 3.5 wizard can do every single thing every iconic wizard in fantasy can do, and 95% of it they can do in 6 seconds. Compare w/rolemaster where you need a full spell list that’s a significant investment to do that. Or GURPS where it’s a tree of a dozen spells with prereqs. In Mage you would need to be a master of the life sphere. But 3.5 you just hit 17, pick or buy one spell and you can turn into almost anything in the world for hours at a time. That’s absurd.

Look at Krull. The Old One has knowledge skills and some heals. The diviners get divinations. Ergo can shapeshift. The prince shoots fire. Yeah, some of those are better than others, but I wouldn’t throw any out of my group.

Quertus

2018-05-02, 07:34 PM

Whatever "many" might claim, 4e is D&D through and through. It might not be D&D someone likes, for entirely legitimate reasons, but D&D nonetheless.

Hmmm... What does it mean to be D&D? "Has the D&D label", while a valid answer, is clearly not what I mean. But what do I mean?

D&D is a game. D&D is a role-playing game. D&D is a tactical and strategic, resource management fantasy role-playing game.

D&D is a class-based, rules-heavy, combat focused RPG with monsters.

I think that a) most everyone world agree so far; b) all published editions of D&D loosly fit that description; c) but so do a lot of other things.

So what does D&D mean? I think that, beyond that level, we'll have a hard time reaching an agreement. So, what does D&D mean to me? What do I consider its sacred cows?

Well, it has to allow dungeon crawls, wilderness survival, exploration - even if an individual game does not feature these.

It has to feature wonky monsters and relics of bygone eras.

But... Why doesn't 4e feel like D&D? Why could I pretend that the previous editions were all "the same game", but not with 4e? What sacred cows did it sacrifice to make me reject its claim to being D&D?

I don't know. I suspect it's when they removed any logical underpinnings from the world. I suspect it's when they implemented arbitrary recovery times, arbitrary HP inflation just because something was encountered alone, arbitrary abilities and treasures with no relation to each other, arbitrary healing limitations, etc etc, all with no in-game justification. When It became impossible to roleplay the character's understanding of why they were doing what they were doing. When it became no longer a role-playing game, but a glorified war game.

That's my suspicion, at any rate.

Quertus

2018-05-02, 07:45 PM

Though I was a tad bit facetious with mentioning SoP, a high fantasy system can be balanced (in theory). In addition to magic "costing more" (i.e., far less spell slots, long time to cast/get spell slots back, casting hurts the caster, etc.), there should also be a very distinct role that magic cannot do, either directly or indirectly. And whatever that niche is, it has to be something that scales to the endgame. One of the problems that currently exists is that every time the paradigm shifts, it's because of the magic: fly, teleport, plane shift; a challenge is never taken from impossible to easy by anything a martial does.

How about... no save, just die (3.0 improved crit keen Vorpal) (3.5 übercharger)?

How about... AoE no save, just die (3.0 improved crit keen Vorpal great cleave) (3.5 spoiler)?

How about having an army (2e followers)?

How about hitting incorporeal (3e Jade)?

How about finding invisible creatures (2e (& 3e?) flour) (3e spot) (3e scent)?

How about surviving huge falls (any edition HP)?

I don't think you can really claim that mundane never changes the game, never makes the impossible possible.

RoboEmperor

2018-05-02, 07:54 PM

Yes - particularly if you use the example of Gandalf, held by some to only have the spells of a level 6 Wizard.

Gandalf is not a wizard. The only spell he cast is his shoving match with Sarumon. Everything else he killed with a sword. Tolkien is the very definition of a low-magic setting not high-magic.

emeraldstreak

2018-05-02, 07:56 PM

digiman619

2018-05-02, 08:18 PM

How about... no save, just die (3.0 improved crit keen Vorpal) (3.5 übercharger)?

How about... AoE no save, just die (3.0 improved crit keen Vorpal great cleave) (3.5 spoiler)?
Yes, no one was complaining that martials can't handle combat. That was never the issue.

How about having an army (2e followers)?
2nd Edition was ahead of my time, but I'm pretty sure there were limits on what you could do to your soldiers; chances are that they will object if you throw them into traps. Summoned monsters have no such problems.

How about hitting incorporeal (3e Jade)?
Yeah, in Rokugan. What about in the other half-dozen settings? Or in any homebrew setting that doesn't include it?

How about finding invisible creatures (2e (& 3e?) flour) (3e spot) (3e scent)?
I'm sick of the "Use sacks of flour to find invisible creatures" argument. First things first, you have to correctly guess what square the invisible creature is in. If you're wrong (and chances are, that you are; in just a 30 x 30 room, that's 36 possible squares take out the 4-6 that the party is in and maybe 2-8 for obstacles, that's 4.5% chance. At best.), the whole thing is moot. Second, you've got to spend the action to get the sack from your backpack (unless the battle just happens to take place in a flour mill, I suppose). Then you've got to throw the sack and actually hit the dang thing. That means that even if you have the sack, and guessed the correct square, you still have the 50% miss chance to deal with. It's not in any way a reliable way to beat the invisibility. As for spot, you have to beat the +20 to Hide that invisibility grants, which is largely impossible for most invisible things. And scent is generally not a player ability in the first place.

How about surviving huge falls (any edition HP)?
And when was the last time you had an adventure that hinged on the PC's surviving huge falls? But more to the point, the 36 CON Barbarian 20's 400 HP won't help anyone else survive that fall, while the Wizard 20's feather fall will save a dozen plus other people and that's his least powerful spell.

I don't think you can really claim that mundane never changes the game, never makes the impossible possible.
If you want me to believe your point, name one possible adventure that would be totally impossible for a party of Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, & Rogue to do at 7th that is suddenly available at 9th. Because there are a few that a party of Wizard, Cleric, Druid, and Binder could do in that stretch.

InvisibleBison

2018-05-02, 08:35 PM

Gandalf is not a wizard. The only spell he cast is his shoving match with Sarumon. Everything else he killed with a sword. Tolkien is the very definition of a low-magic setting not high-magic.

At last reluctantly Gandalf himself took a hand. Picking up a [piece of wood] he held it aloft for a moment, and them with a word of command, naur an edraith ammen! he thrust the end of his staff into the midst of it. And once a great spout of green and blue flame sprang out, and the wood flared and spluttered.

[Gandalf] stepped up to the rock again, and lightly touched with his staff the silver star in the middle beneath the sing of the anvil. Annon edhellen, edro hiammen! Fennas nogothrim, lasto beth lammen! he said in a commanding voice.

'I do not know', answered Gandalf. 'But I found myself suddenly faced by something that I have not met before. I could think of nothing to do but to try and put a shutting-spell on the door'.

Sorry, but the idea that Gandalf wasn't a powerful wizard or didn't do much magic is something of a pet peeve of mine.

RoboEmperor

2018-05-02, 08:46 PM

Sorry, but the idea that Gandalf wasn't a powerful wizard or didn't do much magic is something of a pet peeve of mine.

Harry Potter had more magic than Gandalf. Gandalf's magic was simply a plot-advancer. If there was no need to advance the plot there was no magic by Gandalf, which is why he used a sword exclusively in combat. In anycase I'm going by the movies not the books so I might've missed some "spells" Gandalf cast. A wizard that doesn't cast even a single spell in combat is... well...

He's passable as a druid though seeing how he has an army of eagles at his beck and call that he never uses to help Frodo.

Tolkien is the definition of a 0 magic party with a token wizard for mandatory out-of-combat magical shenanigans or explanations.

emeraldstreak

2018-05-02, 08:50 PM

Gandalf is exactly the type of wizard that would make 3.5 work instead of devolve into Tippyverse.

DMVerdandi

2018-05-02, 09:13 PM

I would say, what are your goals in creating this Balance? Can you balance a lone warrior against a field of archers? Or one archer? Should an equal leveled archer be better than a swordsman? Because if they have the same amount of hocus pocus going on, the answer should be yes. Being able to accurately shoot to an insane degree should beat out someone able to cut at the same degree due to range and distance, and for the most part, SPELLCASTING, as we know it is has sort of a literary feature of having great amounts of distance, since you are trading the causative means of a phenomena for the same result. One can create a fire physically, but creating a fire magically, which has the same result has an easier method.

So for any usable and reliable system of magic, it should be a better alternative than physically doing it otherwise it nullifies the reason for magic to exist.

That being said, I think that having a "magic dude" and "non-magic dude" contributing equally is silly. Everyone should be a "magic dude". Should there be a difference between a spellcasting dude and non-spellcasting dude that has differences? ABSOLUTELY. Should having magic take away from one's own ability to be valuable in physical combat? No. That's one of the DNDisms that I don't care for at all. People Cite western mythology, but western mythology is not very systematic. It's very narrative and poetic, but it doesn't lend well to a game. It has it's own tropes and ideas, and in comparison to other mythologies for inspiration it falls REALLY short in providing inspiration for a game where spell casters and physical fighters occupy the same space.

Indian mythology and chinese/japanese mythology in comparison is where it's at to have that kitchen sink effect, simply because they provide reasons other than divine heritage for someone to be, well better than the common man, and they accurately describe why in a systematic and logical matter. Now you can have something be logical, and still be fantastic, but it should be logical.

For both [In which one essentially inspired the others [Proto-indian culture being spread across asia through buddhism, mahayana in particular, with it's return to hindu ideas]], A regular human being can be greater than his peers through yoga[discipline of mind and body, tapping into it's attachment to the cosmos, or other sources of power, or even his own eternal self], in fact ANY being can do it. Animal, demon, ghost, whatever. And it doesn't necessarily make you a spell caster[as magic is it's own application of awareness], but it can definitely strengthen you. And it still has limits based on your own disposition. Psionic as we know them are originally from indian thought, with the idea of Deep consciousness [Citta], being able to birth psionic powers [Riddhi]

In all 3 primary asian hegemonic cultures, martial arts also has a really popular basis as well, and things like magic weapons, but instead of the weapons being the source of the strength of the character, they are merely means in which that strength is best harnessed.

All that long windedness is to say this, there is no reason to make spell casting less fantastic. However, There is no reason to make martial artists less magical either, but that nature in them needs to be described, and systematized and THAT is what you balance. Because it can be used as a resource.

Ideally, I would have every class [even though idea needs work], have some sort of magic. It can be cast differently, and has different mechanics and such, and even the *Sword guy*, would have things other than minor enhancements like feats [which should just be customization tools], have him perform supernatural feats. I would make them based on the physical body and their weapons at all times, just as the cleric is based on alignment energy, and the druid is based on flora and fauna, but there still needs to be something that they have as a finite resource and fuel.

Pathfinder's Psychic spellcasting/ And psionics are a good direction to start in, but I also like maneuvers for attacks.
I would just have TONS more boosts and counters, and then maybe have like half casting for classes that blend sources of power.

4e almost had it right, but it was a bit less modular than I would have wanted, or maybe it presents that way. I also didn't like the organization style but that's a whole other argument.

Anyhow, the way is by making everyone magical[AND VERY], but still having limits on that magic through intelligent, systematic and tasteful application theme and mechanics.

InvisibleBison

2018-05-02, 09:17 PM

If there was no need to advance the plot there was no magic by Gandalf, which is why he used a sword exclusively in combat.

In the wavering firelight Gandalf seemed suddenly to grow: he rose up, a great menacing shape like the monument of some ancient king of stone set upon the hill. Stooping like a cloud, he lifted a burning branch and strode to meet the wolves. They gave back before him. High in the air he tossed the blazing brand. It flared with a sudden white radiance like lightning; and his voice rolled like thunder. 'Naur an edraith ammen! Naur dan i ngaurhoth!' he cried. There was a roar and a crackle, and the tree above him burst into a leaf and bloom of blinding flame. The fire leapt from tree-top to tree-top.

In anycase I'm going by the movies not the books so I might've missed some "spells" Gandalf cast.
Tolkien is the definition of a 0 magic party with a token wizard for mandatory out-of-combat magical shenanigans or explanations.

If you're going just by the movies, fine, but you can't really say that you're describing Tolkien's work. Also, Gandalf does magic in combat in the movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGQFkWI_bM) too.

Andor13

2018-05-02, 09:18 PM

Hmmm... What does it mean to be D&D? "Has the D&D label", while a valid answer, is clearly not what I mean. But what do I mean?

D&D is a game. D&D is a role-playing game. D&D is a tactical and strategic, resource management fantasy role-playing game.

D&D is a class-based, rules-heavy, combat focused RPG with monsters.

I think that a) most everyone world agree so far; b) all published editions of D&D loosly fit that description; c) but so do a lot of other things.

So what does D&D mean? I think that, beyond that level, we'll have a hard time reaching an agreement. So, what does D&D mean to me? What do I consider its sacred cows?

Well, it has to allow dungeon crawls, wilderness survival, exploration - even if an individual game does not feature these.

It has to feature wonky monsters and relics of bygone eras.

But... Why doesn't 4e feel like D&D? Why could I pretend that the previous editions were all "the same game", but not with 4e? What sacred cows did it sacrifice to make me reject its claim to being D&D?

I don't know. I suspect it's when they removed any logical underpinnings from the world. I suspect it's when they implemented arbitrary recovery times, arbitrary HP inflation just because something was encountered alone, arbitrary abilities and treasures with no relation to each other, arbitrary healing limitations, etc etc, all with no in-game justification. When It became impossible to roleplay the character's understanding of why they were doing what they were doing. When it became no longer a role-playing game, but a glorified war game.

That's my suspicion, at any rate.

Exactly my experience. I enjoyed 4e as a game. But it was not a roleplaying game because I could not relate to, or even conceive of the in-world cause-effect relationships at some points.

Harry Potter had more magic than Gandalf. Gandalf's magic was simply a plot-advancer. If there was no need to advance the plot there was no magic by Gandalf, which is why he used a sword exclusively in combat. In anycase I'm going by the movies not the books so I might've missed some "spells" Gandalf cast. A wizard that doesn't cast even a single spell in combat is... well...

He's passable as a druid though seeing how he has an army of eagles at his beck and call that he never uses to help Frodo.

Tolkien is the definition of a 0 magic party with a token wizard for mandatory out-of-combat magical shenanigans or explanations.

1) If you haven't read the books why are you even claiming to have a valid opinion on how much magic Tolkien had in his stories?
2) Modern Americans often badly misunderstand the level of magic in Tolkien because he was not a modern American writer. His was British, and therefore given to understatement. He was also a veteran of one of the most horrible wars in history, had seen almost his entire generation of friends wiped out, and therefore did not find war the least bit romantic, nor was he fond of describing it.
3) Most Tolkien magic is not combat magic. Every dwarf in the hobbit cast spells, but they were dwarfy spells for dwarfy things like keeping your home secure, or finding buried gold, or making magic widgets.
4) "But not Gandalf. Bilbo's yell had done that much good. It had wakened him up wide in a splintered second, and when the goblins came to grab him, there was a flash like lightening in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead." - The Hobbit. There you go, combat magic. Cast in a split second from a dead sleep, and killed several foes. Couldn't ask for anything more D&D. Was it Fireball? Lightning Bolt? Burning Hands? Maybe he conjured a grenade? Beats me, that's not the point of the story. Gandalf doesn't yell his spell names like a Naruto Ninja, he just does his thing and moves on with being mysterious.

RoboEmperor

2018-05-02, 09:39 PM

If you're going just by the movies, fine, but you can't really say that you're describing Tolkien's work. Also, Gandalf does magic in combat in the movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGQFkWI_bM) too.

That was a plot advancer. He never did any of those two things ever again. You know what I mean by spells in combat. Fire balls, lightning bolts, entangling roots, etc. What Palatine does with his lightning fingers.

1) If you haven't read the books why are you even claiming to have a valid opinion on how much magic Tolkien had in his stories?
2) Modern Americans often badly misunderstand the level of magic in Tolkien because he was not a modern American writer. His was British, and therefore given to understatement. He was also a veteran of one of the most horrible wars in history, had seen almost his entire generation of friends wiped out, and therefore did not find war the least bit romantic, nor was he fond of describing it.
3) Most Tolkien magic is not combat magic. Every dwarf in the hobbit cast spells, but they were dwarfy spells for dwarfy things like keeping your home secure, or finding buried gold, or making magic widgets.
4) "But not Gandalf. Bilbo's yell had done that much good. It had wakened him up wide in a splintered second, and when the goblins came to grab him, there was a flash like lightening in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead." - The Hobbit. There you go, combat magic. Cast in a split second from a dead sleep, and killed several foes. Couldn't ask for anything more D&D. Was it Fireball? Lightning Bolt? Burning Hands? Maybe he conjured a grenade? Beats me, that's not the point of the story. Gandalf doesn't yell his spell names like a Naruto Ninja, he just does his thing and moves on with being mysterious.

1) Fair Enough.
2) ???
3) My point exactly.
4) Fair enough.

It's still low magic not high magic. d&d is high magic. Calling Tolkien E6 is really pushing it so it's low magic.

Nifft

2018-05-02, 09:42 PM

It's very possible to balance a High Fantasy RPG.

That RPG will not be 3.5e D&D, of course.

Cosi

2018-05-02, 10:00 PM

I think it's reasonable to say both that LotR is low magic and high fantasy, not that either of those terms are terribly well defined.

That being said, I think that having a "magic dude" and "non-magic dude" contributing equally is silly. Everyone should be a "magic dude".

Yes, exactly this. The obvious solution to "magic is better than non-magic" is just "make people get magic when they hit high enough levels". You know, like Aragorn does in LotR.

Pleh

2018-05-02, 10:15 PM

I suspect our definitions of "high fantasy" are very different then.

The rest of my post was elaborating on how I thought my definition better answered the OP's question.

Gandalf is not a wizard. The only spell he cast is his shoving match with Sarumon. Everything else he killed with a sword. Tolkien is the very definition of a low-magic setting not high-magic.

I really don't think the OP was referencing "high magic" when they said, "high fantasy."

Mechalich

2018-05-02, 10:36 PM

'High Fantasy' is a storytelling mode, not a power level. High fantasy is epic storytelling set in a world that is not our own, usually featuring a great evil, and very often where victory is not achieved through the direct expedient of cutting off the head of the evil overlord. High fantasy contrasts with other storytelling modes such as heroic fantasy - which encompasses many classic myths, low fantasy - which is not told in the epic mode and often has massive confrontations changing nothing of consequence, and dark fantasy - which hovers around the border between fantasy and horror.

LotR is high-fantasy, low-magic. Contrast with WoT, which is high fantasy, high magic. Codex Alera is heroic fantasy, high magic. Conan is heroic fantasy, low magic (mostly). The Black Company is low fantasy, high magic. The First Law is low fantasy, low magic. The Mazalan of Book of the Fallen is dark fantasy, high magic. A Song of Ice and Fire is arguably dark fantasy, low magic (at least through the extant books).

It is absolutely possible to balance a game for any of the given storytelling modes. The question is whether you can balance a game and create a functional fantasy world for high magic as opposed to low magic. The second challenge is actually much more difficult than the first. Balancing the game is simply a matter of numbers management. You can make the numbers go as high as you want and still be balanced. The Disgaea video games include levels up to 9999 and HP and damage totals in the billions, but are quite balanced since they have very tightly controlled inputs. In the tabletop setting, D&D 4e is illustrative here. The game remains far more balanced than most RPGs as you crank the power level because the inputs are tightly controlled. However, this confines the game to a box and reduces the freedom many players desire.

Balancing the world is harder. 'Magic' is functionally simply a form of power given to persons. There's two connected issues: adding energy to the system as a whole, and increasing power inequalities between the highest powered individuals and society as a whole.

Adding energy means that it becomes more and more difficult to control the system. You just have more variance and bigger swings and you may loose relatable scale. It becomes harder to predict what all this energy is doing as you add more of it in different ways and you end up with weird oversights like automatically resetting magical traps in 3.X D&D - which do things to the setting that they were clearly never intended to do. The more power available, the more likely some weird interpretation that totally subordinates setting will go unnoticed. For example, in the WoT time books it is revealed fairly late in the game that 'shadowspawn cannot pass through a gateway.' What this meant was that the good guys could teleport all over the map and the bad guys mostly couldn't. This had massive strategic consequences and it meant that the military components of the final battle had to unfold in an extremely constrained timeframe or the Trolloc horde would rapidly be rendered useless. Brandon Sanderson thankfully noticed this and arranged the conflict accordingly.

Increasing power inequalities means dramatically reducing the number of people that matter in a setting and at the extreme essentially eliminating all impact by all but a handful of individuals. This creates problems because all issues in the setting are now personal issues, and if your setting is dependent upon the personal impulses of a group of PCs, you're out of luck. The best example here is DBZ, which establishes very early on that a literal handful of people are the only ones that matter and the only reason Earth (and later on the entire universe) exists is their whims. This simply isn't functional in a game context, which lacks the troll-proofing of an individual author's control. Even without progressing the power level that far, severe inequalities of power tend to induce grimdark. Exalted - which is much more open about the consequences of phenomenal power without any moral consequences - has this problem in spades. When you have one class of people that is literally better, in every possible way, than another and this is blatantly obvious, it tends to end extremely badly.

Balanced world-building is therefore much easier in a low-magic scenario, since you can build a framework that is stronger than anything the PCs can output in order to break it (and if the history of gaming has taught us anything it is that they will try) and as a consequence you also prevent any particular NPC from being able to break the setting at the same time without having to resort to special pleading as to why they don't do so. Even most methods used to balance high-magic settings are mostly about restricting overall magical availability - if spells consume life force to cast, that's a limit on how many you can ultimately cast and thus a limit on total magic. Others tend to rely on various fiat methods: MtA uses Paradox, which explicitly allows extremely high-powered magic, but more or less forbids doing anything substantial with it.

I'm not personally aware of any high magic fantasy world that I would consider robust over the long term. There is a strong trend in fantasy novels of 'the magic comes back' serving as evidence for this, and also of launching a cataclysmic confrontation with a dark lord and then rolling the credits before considering what happens next, but it is rare for a TTRPG publisher to state that 'this game has a five year operational timeframe.'

InvisibleBison

2018-05-02, 10:53 PM

That was a plot advancer. He never did any of those two things ever again.

Of course it's a "plot advancer". It's a book/movie - everything serves to advance the plot. He never does those two particular things again, because he never finds himself in a situation where they'd be useful. But he does lots of magic, all throughout the series. And yes, some things he does do multiple times, most notably creating fire but also telepathy, mind control and changing his apparent size.

Pleh

2018-05-02, 11:11 PM

I'm not personally aware of any high magic fantasy world that I would consider robust over the long term. There is a strong trend in fantasy novels of 'the magic comes back' serving as evidence for this, and also of launching a cataclysmic confrontation with a dark lord and then rolling the credits before considering what happens next, but it is rare for a TTRPG publisher to state that 'this game has a five year operational timeframe.'

I love everything that you said and I'd like to touch on this point a little bit more. Our own society tells us that civilization constantly pushes ever forward. The only reason we ever pause or slow in our technological advancement is to gradually experiment with how we can move forward. With arbitrary magic systems, it's hard to derive convincing excuses to prevent an exponential progression to either some form of utopia/dystopia/oblivion. True high fantasy needs some kind of answer to this, and most solutions are magic is unaffordable (either dangerous and/or costly) universe is protected by some external force or beings universe is protected by some limits intrinsic to magic (1 is a special case of this where the limit is bounded to resources, while this is talking about static limits. exponential world changing is already in effect, but hasn't reached a noticeable portion of the curve yet

Lapak

2018-05-02, 11:27 PM

RoboEmperor

2018-05-02, 11:30 PM

Of course it's a "plot advancer". It's a book/movie - everything serves to advance the plot. He never does those two particular things again, because he never finds himself in a situation where they'd be useful. But he does lots of magic, all throughout the series. And yes, some things he does do multiple times, most notably creating fire but also telepathy, mind control and changing his apparent size.

At least from the movies, he just felt like a normal swordsman who pulled out a wish spell whenever the plot needed moving and that was it. Didn't explain what spells he could cast, how he came to cast them, what the rules of magic were in LotR, etc. It felt like "Oh, a wizard did it" and felt very convenient.

As someone new to the fantasy genre who wanted to see a proper wizard throwing lightning bolts around on the big screen I was just very disappointed. I was expecting something along the lines of Diablo II level of magic but instead I got a telekinetic shoving match and a bridge collapse.

Baelrog (I think that's how you spell it) was the only thing I liked from the 1st movie and even then it was cause of the CG. When I looked up his non-cg picture he looked like a generic gargoyle mook instead of a badass fire demon. And his fight scene was just a bridge collapse. Not an epic fight against man and demon, it was just a brief bridge collapse. And his follow up fight scene was skipped. You only see the brief anti-climactic end of his death.

I know this is all subjective, and it is insulting to real tolkien fans to judge his work by the blockbuster movie, but from a magic lover perspective LotR (and even harry potter) was a disappointment. If they at least showed the Baelrog vs Gandalf fight in full instead of as a brief flashback, or if Gandalf at least threw a fireball at some random goblins instead of whacking them with his staff and sword, my opinion would've been better.

You said it was a pet peeve of yours when people say Gandalf didn't use much magic, but it's the truth. While technically not true as you've perfectly explained with a few short quotes here and there, it still doesn't change the fact he was a very underwhelming wizard compared to the stereotypical wizard because all of his "magic" was invisible and out of combat for minor things.

edit:Please don't hurt me!

Psyren

2018-05-02, 11:52 PM

I really don't think the OP was referencing "high magic" when they said, "high fantasy."

Looking back at the OP, I rather think they were:

Is it possible to balance a fantasy RPG where magic wielded by powerful wizards actually feels godly but a warrior of equal level can be equally useful?

I'm trying to conceptualize what that would even look like. In a high fantasy setting magic is so close to divine miracles that I don't know how you could balance that against martial adeptness. Not without the sword play feeling a little magic-y.

Magic that feels godly/miraculous sounds like high magic to me.

InvisibleBison

2018-05-02, 11:56 PM

At least from the movies, he just felt like a normal swordsman who pulled out a wish spell whenever the plot needed moving and that was it. Didn't explain what spells he could cast, how he came to cast them, what the rules of magic were in LotR, etc. It felt like "Oh, a wizard did it" and felt very convenient.

As someone new to the fantasy genre who wanted to see a proper wizard throwing lightning bolts around on the big screen I was just very disappointed. I was expecting something along the lines of Diablo II level of magic but instead I got a telekinetic shoving match and a bridge collapse.

Baelrog (I think that's how you spell it) was the only thing I liked from the 1st movie and even then it was cause of the CG. When I looked up his non-cg picture he looked like a generic gargoyle mook instead of a badass fire demon. And his fight scene was just a bridge collapse. Not an epic fight against man and demon, it was just a brief bridge collapse. And his follow up fight scene was skipped. You only see the brief anti-climactic end of his death.

I know this is all subjective, and it is insulting to real tolkien fans to judge his work by the blockbuster movie, but from a magic lover perspective LotR (and even harry potter) was a disappointment. If they at least showed the Baelrog vs Gandalf fight in full instead of as a brief flashback, or if Gandalf at least threw a fireball at some random goblins instead of whacking them with his staff and sword, my opinion would've been better.

You said it was a pet peeve of yours when people say Gandalf didn't use much magic, but it's the truth. While technically not true as you've perfectly explained with a few short quotes here and there, it still doesn't change the fact he was a very underwhelming wizard compared to the stereotypical wizard because all of his "magic" was invisible and out of combat for minor things.

edit:Please don't hurt me!

Okay, I see where you're coming from now. Even in the books, a lot of Gandalf's magic is fairly subtle - I didn't notice most of it until I reread the books specifically looking for it - and the movies cut out a lot of the scenes where he does stuff. Given what you're saying about your preferences, it makes perfect sense that you would find Gandalf underwhelming.

Also, it's spelled Balrog.

Edit: I certainly don't intend to hurt you! I'm sorry if I'm being overly aggressive or confrontational; that wasn't my intention.

Florian

2018-05-03, 01:59 AM

@DMVerdandi:

Should you be able to read german, download and read the Splittermond rules. Skill-based system, with magic schools as skills, similar to Sphere of Power/Might. Balancing point is based on the rather limited Focus Points pool and the difference between "using" and "spending" your points, ie. a "Fighter" will learn some self-enhancing magic and "spend" the points to have the effect last 24h, while a "Mage" will avoid that and just "use" the points to power spells with. Similar to how initiator classes work, there's a reset mechanic and a total reset of all un-spend points after each combat.

Edit: That also touches on something Quertus mentioned. A "Full Martial" with the complete pool "spend" has a very high power floor, but lacks burst capacity, a "Partial Caster" with a 50/50 mix or a "Full Caster" with zero points "spend" drop rapidly in power floor but raise in burst. So our hypothetical D&D "Fighter"-clone will have comparatively high HP, AC, fantastic saves and maybe power an "aggro aura", making them very tough to crack, while the "Paladin"-clone might have a healing and resistance aura up, power their weapon for permanent smiting, while the "Wizard" must come by without all those protections in place when they want to stay flexible with spells.

tiercel

2018-05-03, 02:45 AM

Okay, I see where you're coming from now. Even in the books, a lot of Gandalf's magic is fairly subtle - I didn't notice most of it until I reread the books specifically looking for it - and the movies cut out a lot of the scenes where he does stuff. Given what you're saying about your preferences, it makes perfect sense that you would find Gandalf underwhelming.
.

Gandalf has, by D&D standards, far less (and less obvious) magic than a Wizard might normally be expected to have, but it is potent even against harrowing foes.

He knows a bit of everything, seems to be a reasonable party face/social skillmonkey (certainly good at talking his way into places and convincing people of things), is good at rallying the spirits of his companions/followers, and can break the hold that enchantments have on another.

He’s also respectable with a sword, if not a dedicated warrior.

In D&D terms, Gandalf’s demonstrated abilities are arguably reasonably well modeled by a bard.

——

In general, high fantasy is always going to have a number of plot/background problems, and one of them is The Elf Problem. I’ll just let 8-Bit Theater sum that one up (http://www.nuklearpower.com/2006/04/04/episode-681-of-civilizations/).

JyP

2018-05-03, 04:06 AM

In D&D terms, Gandalf’s demonstrated abilities are arguably reasonably well modeled by a bard.
However, Gandalf could be also seen as a god in disguise (think of Odin as a wanderer on Midgard) - he is able to battle a Balrog, from the lowest to the highest of Moria - but whenever no one can see it. The D&D levels mechanism does not model a god in disguise well, who must hide his powers from mortals ^^

Peat

2018-05-03, 04:43 AM

And personally I think the best way to represent Gandalf in d20 would be as a spontaneous divine caster with a divine template on top... but at the same time, he *is* the archetypal wizard for at least one variant of high fantasy (and is referenced in the OP), and there seems to be a reasonable case for allowing any wizard in a game aiming at High Fantasy to be modeled on Gandalf.

Particularly if one is worried about balance. A wizard with Gandalf's capabilities is not likely to overwhelm the rest of the party. He doesn't solo combats and he doesn't possess powers that allow him to skip large parts of the plot.

But - if we're maybe thinking a more high magic type of high fantasy - lets consider Wheel of Time.

Wizards are pretty overwhelming in combat, although they still benefit from martial bodyguards.

Their access to abilities is fairly circumscribed by native aptitude, but still consists of a fairly wide array of things - healing, weather manipulation, metal manipulation etc.etc.

But there's still a role for non-magical types. Wizards can't summon help, so rely on non-magical types for numbers and utility. Teleporting is pretty rare, so wilderness knowledge is still useful. Compulsion has a lot of social uses, but is pretty blunt, so social skills are still useful and so on. Historical knowledge still has a use - etc.etc.

Although, again, it should be noted that many of the wizards have very good social skills. Wizards that use magic and only magic are not, imo, iconic. But as we've already seen, a lot of people have a lot of different ideas about what high fantasy means.

That said - again imo - if you want a balance where magic can't overwhelm everything and make anything a non-magic user do borderline pointless, then magic users need better access to the non-magical solutions.

Feantar

2018-05-03, 05:16 AM

Preemptive apology: Posting from smartphone.

Another attempt at balancing mundanes and spellcasters was done by 2nd edition, where they had differing exp tables. This is an interesting approach - learning to swing a sword is easier than lewrning to apply Change through Will. So you keep the extreme spellcasters, but they are effectively gods and are treated as such, whilw the party has lesser casters.

However, Gandalf could be also seen as a god in disguise (think of Odin as a wanderer on Midgard) - he is able to battle a Balrog, from the lowest to the highest of Moria - but whenever no one can see it. The D&D levels mechanism does not model a god in disguise well, who must hide his powers from mortals ^^

Yes! That. Gandalf was actually modelled after Odin, or at least so the rumour goes. Note that he is is essentially level drained in LotR, because he inhabits a weak mortal body. He is a deity, or at least something closer to a Proxy Solar, that a wizard. Younneed to understand that he generally does not use his powers because he shouldn't - his mission is to lead the mortals to defend themselves.

Telonius

2018-05-03, 05:46 AM

In D&D terms, Gandalf’s demonstrated abilities are arguably reasonably well modeled by a bard.

Tolkien's world is hard to model, because some of its assumptions are very different from the "vanilla" D&D setting. The entire world of Middle Earth was created through music, and something very much like what Truename magic was trying for, is extraordinarily powerful. (A non-terrible version of Truenamer would be king of the setting). Gods (the Valar; overdeity Iluvatar didn't step in much) didn't typically grant what we think of as "Cleric magic." Healing was hard to come by, and resurrection was a special favor that only happened once in a blue moon and after a Gilgamesh-level quest.

Mechalich

2018-05-03, 06:01 AM

Yes! That. Gandalf was actually modelled after Odin, or at least so the rumour goes. Note that he is is essentially level drained in LotR, because he inhabits a weak mortal body. He is a deity, or at least something closer to a Proxy Solar, that a wizard. Younneed to understand that he generally does not use his powers because he shouldn't - his mission is to lead the mortals to defend themselves.

Gandalf, like the other 'wizards' in Middle Earth is "forbidden to oppose Sauron with power." He's one of the Maiar - the lower tier of deities in the setting (though theologically 'angels' is more appropriate), and is best represented in a d20 context as a high level Celestial (such as Deva) under an extremely powerful version of a geas. Note that Gandalf can, and does, display the full extent of his powers when fighting the Balrog in Moria and on the Endless Stair, because a Balrog is not a creation of Sauron, but a creation of Morgoth. Sauron himself is a fallen member of the Maiar who joined the service of Morgoth ages earlier, as are all of the Balrogs. Gandalf and the other 'wizards' where dispatched by the Valar - the higher tier of deities - in order to oppose Sauron on their behalf rather than having the Valar intervene directly as they had previously when overthrowing Morgoth. There are several reasons why the Valar did this rather than intervening directly.

Ignimortis

2018-05-03, 06:13 AM

I think people conflate high fantasy with high power, even though there is absolutely no need for one to follow the other or vice versa. Furthermore, there's also a high-low scale for magic to add into the mix.
Lord of the Rings is an archetypal high fantasy setting - but it's also incredibly low-power by most RPGs' standards, while something like Warhammer Fantasy would be higher in power and magic, but it's still considered low fantasy.

Pleh

2018-05-03, 06:28 AM

Magic that feels godly/miraculous sounds like high magic to me.

Interesting that you skip the first paragraph where the OP's "high fantasy" is defined:

Now everyone may have a different definition of what high fantasy is, but for my purposes I see it as being a very Tolkien-esque world of elves and dwarves and humans, mostly rogue/warrior types (for PCs anyway) with the occasional Gandalf tossed in the mix.

Simply upping the power level isn't what the thread is asking for. It's more asking, "can you increase magic power in LotR without destroying the balance that engages sophisticated fantasy?"

I forget who mentioned WoT as high magic/high fantasy (I think it was Mechalich), but that was probably a very good recommendation for exactly how to answer the thread's question: "can I have my tolkein drama and eat my high magic cake too?"

In WoT and settings like it, yes.

However, Gandalf could be also seen as a god in disguise (think of Odin as a wanderer on Midgard) - he is able to battle a Balrog, from the lowest to the highest of Moria - but whenever no one can see it. The D&D levels mechanism does not model a god in disguise well, who must hide his powers from mortals ^^

Perhaps angel in disguise is more apt. 3.5 doesn't have much rules for archdeities, but the system works just as well narratively if you have 1 greater deity and the Vanar represented as a host of demigods (lesser deities might not be sufficiently weaker than a greater deity to represent the power gap). The Istari were weaker servants of these demigods, so a step down from Demigod would be some form of angel.

And, to be fair, an angel's SLAs could easily appear to be a wizard's spells. Especially if all his "spells" were SLA wishes to emulate whatever wizard spell he needed at the time.

hamishspence

2018-05-03, 06:40 AM

The Valar were sometimes called "gods" by men, and some of the most powerful of the Maiar got revered as gods as well - Osse as a "god of the sea" who can tow around islands (the Eldar island Avalonne was towed into place by him) raise islands, like the isle the Numenoreans lived on, and Sauron was revered as a god in the Second (and maybe Third) age as well.

It's possible that Osse might need "lesser god" rules, and the Valar "intermediate god" rules. I got the impression Iluvatar was more "overdeity" than just "greater god".

EDIT- The Valar Ulmo, Osse's boss, was the one who towed Avalonne - but Osse is credited with the raising of the isle for the Numenoreans to live on.

Psyren

2018-05-03, 09:10 AM

Interesting that you skip the first paragraph where the OP's "high fantasy" is defined:

No, I saw it. But the OP appears confused about which one they mean, so I went with the more detailed explanation (i.e. the kind of magic they wanted) rather than the surface-level name used for it. Particularly since whether a setting is "low-fantasy" or "high-fantasy" has absolutely nothing to do with game balance, that is a storytelling term.

Pleh

2018-05-03, 09:35 AM

No, I saw it. But the OP appears confused about which one they mean, so I went with the more detailed explanation (i.e. the kind of magic they wanted) rather than the surface-level name used for it. Particularly since whether a setting is "low-fantasy" or "high-fantasy" has absolutely nothing to do with game balance, that is a storytelling term.

It's not confusing anything. The OP specifies that the goal is to capture Tolkien-esque Fantasy (a world populated by mostly martial characters with preciously few full casters) without limiting magic the way Tolkien-esque fantasy does (i.e. using the vancian style magic of 3.5/PF, instead of Tolkein's deliberate choice to use magic as little as possible).

Your answer appears to be, "of course you can, the setting can be whatever you say it is," but this is where the OP seems to imply another unspoken constriction on our search parameters: "Without breaking suspension of disbelief" which is where the term "balance" is coming from.

The question is in regards to the fuzzy relationship between story and mechanics (you're right that they don't have to be directly related, but for many players the connection may need to be quite a bit stronger). Over in the RPG forum, PheonixPhyre has a thread about the Roles of Rules and one of the points made there is that many players value Rules as Mapping because to some extent, every game has rules that make implications about how the world itself works. Some systems create rules that have bizarre and nonsensical implications about how that universe is supposed to work, which impedes verisimilitude.

Can a Tolkien Fantasy society possess D&D Vancian magic without exponentially evolving into Tippyverse/blowing up the world while ALSO being self balancing such that we don't have to keep cognitively ignoring all the reasons such a magic system OUGHT to be evolving in such a manner?

Can D&D be Weighted to replicate the Tolkien Social structure without having to scale back the Vancian Magic system?

It's really not between High Fantasy as Story or High Fantasy as Power Level, but about how to combine them in a way that passes an acceptable level of verisimilitude.

One answer is E6, which essentially says to take D&D at the portion of its power curve that most closely resembles the world Tolkien made. Another answer seems to be WoT, which says, "if you do a LOT of work defining the rules of this high level magic."

Psyren

2018-05-03, 09:50 AM

It's not confusing anything. The OP specifies that the goal is to capture Tolkien-esque Fantasy (a world populated by mostly martial characters with preciously few full casters) without limiting magic the way Tolkien-esque fantasy does (i.e. using the vancian style magic of 3.5/PF, instead of Tolkein's deliberate choice to use magic as little as possible).

Your answer appears to be, "of course you can, the setting can be whatever you say it is," but this is where the OP seems to imply another unspoken constriction on our search parameters: "Without breaking suspension of disbelief" which is where the term "balance" is coming from.

The question is in regards to the fuzzy relationship between story and mechanics (you're right that they don't have to be directly related, but for many players the connection may need to be quite a bit stronger). Over in the RPG forum, PheonixPhyre has a thread about the Roles of Rules and one of the points made there is that many players value Rules as Mapping because to some extent, every game has rules that make implications about how the world itself works. Some systems create rules that have bizarre and nonsensical implications about how that universe is supposed to work, which impedes verisimilitude.

If that's truly the case then the question itself is dumb, or at the very least it should be more up front about what these "unspoken constrictions" actually are if we're going to have a productive discussion. "Preciously few full casters" is already baked into the game - just look at the ratios in the DMG population tables. There is no disbelief to suspend, or at the very least there rationally shouldn't be.

Can a Tolkien Fantasy society possess D&D Vancian magic without exponentially evolving into Tippyverse/blowing up the world while ALSO being self balancing such that we don't have to keep cognitively ignoring all the reasons such a magic system OUGHT to be evolving in such a manner?

Can D&D be Weighted to replicate the Tolkien Social structure without having to scale back the Vancian Magic system?

It's really not between High Fantasy as Story or High Fantasy as Power Level, but about how to combine them in a way that passes an acceptable level of verisimilitude.

One answer is E6, which essentially says to take D&D at the portion of its power curve that most closely resembles the world Tolkien made. Another answer seems to be WoT, which says, "if you do a LOT of work defining the rules of this high level magic."

We can also go with the actual answer, which is "external forces (like gods) keep it that way." Tippyverse very pointedly doesn't have them, or if it does they are very laissez-faire/preoccupied with non-player-setting-issues compared to published D&D deities.

Andor13

2018-05-03, 12:15 PM

instead of Tolkein's deliberate choice to use magic as little as possible.

I think it's worth noting that while Gandalf used magic as little as possible (but still used it a lot) magic is everywhere in LotR. But the most common form of magic is enchantment. Arguably everything Elves make is magic, since they don't even appear to understand the distinction between magical and mundane objects. Furthermore there are a lot of human and dwarf crafted magic items, enough that people hand them out to passing strangers they take a liking to. (The staves that Faramir gave to Frodo and Sam for example.) Magic is common enough that when Aragorn gives someone the ring of Barahir as a token of goodwill he makes a point to mention that it isn't magic. Treebeard is so freaking magical that his entire house lights up like a laser show, and his regular supper shared with Merry and Pippin was enough to act like a permanent potion of growth and make them the tallest Hobbits in history.

Andor13

2018-05-03, 12:30 PM

2) ???

What I meant is that first, Tolkien tends to under-describe things compared to what we are used to. For example, I'm personally of the opinion that Anduril is a flaming sword, but even quoting the relevant passages doesn't convince everyone because he doesn't spend pages describing the flames. Second, combat scenes in particular are under-described because while they were necessary to the narrative, J.R.R.Tolkien took no pleasure in contemplating them or dwelling on them, and didn't particularly wish he readers to do so either.

Sorry if I came across too strongly, I've been arguing Tolkien vs D&D since before there was a Web. :redface:

Telonius

2018-05-03, 01:27 PM

There's that old saying that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I think that in Middle Earth, a sufficiently wise understanding of a thing's True Nature is indistinguishable from magic. On the flip side, an unwise manipulation of a thing's True Nature, "breaking a thing to find out what it is," is one of those "deceits of the Enemy" that Galadriel was talking about to Sam.

Cosi

2018-05-03, 02:07 PM

I'm not personally aware of any high magic fantasy world that I would consider robust over the long term. There is a strong trend in fantasy novels of 'the magic comes back' serving as evidence for this, and also of launching a cataclysmic confrontation with a dark lord and then rolling the credits before considering what happens next, but it is rare for a TTRPG publisher to state that 'this game has a five year operational timeframe.'

Clearly the answer is to take a page from Xianxia stories and mandate that anyone who gets strong enough to break the setting pop up to a different setting that is assumed to have already been broken in that way. Having the ability to create infinite food and water doesn't really matter if everyone you interact with either has that ability or doesn't need to eat in the first place.

We can also go with the actual answer, which is "external forces (like gods) keep it that way." Tippyverse very pointedly doesn't have them, or if it does they are very laissez-faire/preoccupied with non-player-setting-issues compared to published D&D deities.

No, this is stupid. Having the setting be enforced by the gods makes player actions meaningless. If the reason there are undead is because Nerull is pro-undead, what is the point of fighting undead? Nerull is just going to undo whatever progress you make. You're not even really protecting anyone, because life exists because Pelor protects it. The way forward is to make rules that produce a setting that is good. Because we do want players to change the setting with their actions, which means that stasis can't be the result of divine intervention.

Pleh

2018-05-03, 02:15 PM

If that's truly the case then the question itself is dumb, or at the very least it should be more up front about what these "unspoken constrictions" actually are if we're going to have a productive discussion. "Preciously few full casters" is already baked into the game - just look at the ratios in the DMG population tables. There is no disbelief to suspend, or at the very least there rationally shouldn't be.

I found the questions to be exploratory; the person asking was trying to work out how to phrase it as they were going along. Making derogatory comments about the state of a question that was intended to be free to evolve as it needs to most certainly isn't productive, just as you say.

Pointing to the DMG amounts to saying, "it is that way because it is defined that way" which doesn't help us in any way suspend our disbelief because it doesn't really explain to us why the DMG is telling us that it is that way.

Fair enough that all my arguments rest on the notion that I've accurately understood the nature of the question and until the original poster confirms it, that remains to be proven.

We can also go with the actual answer, which is "external forces (like gods) keep it that way." Tippyverse very pointedly doesn't have them, or if it does they are very laissez-faire/preoccupied with non-player-setting-issues compared to published D&D deities.

And why are these gods so concerned that mortals not discover the industrialization of magic for the betterment of their society? If we say, "because it always leads to an apocalypse" then the question of this thread becomes, "but what if it/they didn't?"

Again, you aren't allowing the game's own story and function to balance itself, you're just propping it up with fiat declarations (which intrinsically have no justification and therefore require suspension of disbelief). That's not "balancing" the magic system, it's just bracing it so it doesn't need balance.

To alleviate the need for suspending disbelief, we have to justify these assumptions that allow the system to work. If the gods are keeping society at this level, why are they doing it? Is it a good thing that they do, or is it just something no one has the power to prevent? And how are they doing it? It's easy to say, "they're gods, they can do anything" but D&D deities usually aren't truly omnipotent. They have nigh omnipotence within the parts of reality that fall under their personal domains, but if we're going to have High Fantasy in this High Magic system that involves gods acting as counterweights on mortal progression, we have to examine that relationship and determine how and why the gods are acting in this manner as opposed to doing something else.

Psyren

2018-05-03, 02:36 PM

I found the questions to be exploratory; the person asking was trying to work out how to phrase it as they were going along. Making derogatory comments about the state of a question that was intended to be free to evolve as it needs to most certainly isn't productive, just as you say.

Pointing to the DMG amounts to saying, "it is that way because it is defined that way" which doesn't help us in any way suspend our disbelief because it doesn't really explain to us why the DMG is telling us that it is that way.

Fair enough that all my arguments rest on the notion that I've accurately understood the nature of the question and until the original poster confirms it, that remains to be proven.

I don't see what's so difficult to believe about spellcasters being noticeably rarer than mundanes. Nearly every work of fantasy fiction including foundational works like LotR, Shakespeare, and Wizard of Oz treat them that way. So the logical thing to do would be to look at the tables and go "yep, makes sense."

And why are these gods so concerned that mortals not discover the industrialization of magic for the betterment of their society? If we say, "because it always leads to an apocalypse" then the question of this thread becomes, "but what if it/they didn't?"

Again, you aren't allowing the game's own story and function to balance itself, you're just propping it up with fiat declarations (which intrinsically have no justification and therefore require suspension of disbelief). That's not "balancing" the magic system, it's just bracing it so it doesn't need balance.

It's not that all the gods are against it, it's that there are as many forces dedicated to chaos, destruction, and entropy as there are to order, construction and progress. In fact, the latter are canonically outnumbered, or the Blood War (where we need the help of devils to keep demons in check) wouldn't exist. Forget progress, standing where we are and even having mortal civilizations is an achievement in and of itself.

tedcahill2

2018-05-03, 08:58 PM

I found the questions to be exploratory; the person asking was trying to work out how to phrase it as they were going along. Making derogatory comments about the state of a question that was intended to be free to evolve as it needs to most certainly isn't productive, just as you say.
My question was exploratory, and as I think about it I can see the issue in the way I chose to word it. At first, when I was thinking of LotR, I thought about the way that magic was an integral part of the story. From Gandalf's interventions, to the magic swords they found, to the ring itself. Magic is central to the plot of the LotR. At the same time, as I think again after reading everyone's comments, I see that magic itself is actually quite scarce. Yes they find magic swords and such, but magic is still rare. People are still aghast when they meet Gandalf and find out he's a wizard. There's an immediate disbelief of all things supernatural. Even in a world where worgs and giant eagles and ogre are known to exist, many folk still seem to have an innate disbelief of magic.

That's a hard thing to duplicate in a game I think. Or maybe just in my groups. If I try to explain that magic is rare and often feared, first thing my caster player will usually do is blast off a spell in the middle of town.

Full disclosure, I'm sort of mining the forum for everyone's brilliant minds. I have only every played D&D. Never branched into other RPG's other then a short Shadowrun stint. Now as I've mature as a gamer what I have begun finding is that I kind of dislike the general swingyness of d20 systems. Don't get me wrong, they've been my bread and butter for 20 years, but statistically I don't like them. The dice pool system of Shadowrun is statistically superior to the d20 (in my opinion) BUT I really don't like the future fantasy thing (at least not compared to fantasy).

I'm trying to find the right conceptual balance for magic. What I'm learning from all this, and I already knew this from D&D, that given wizards world altering magics is massively disruptive to the game world, and letting them use too much power too quickly (i.e. spells v rituals) is problematic as well.

Knaight

2018-05-04, 12:11 AM

Full disclosure, I'm sort of mining the forum for everyone's brilliant minds. I have only every played D&D. Never branched into other RPG's other then a short Shadowrun stint. Now as I've mature as a gamer what I have begun finding is that I kind of dislike the general swingyness of d20 systems. Don't get me wrong, they've been my bread and butter for 20 years, but statistically I don't like them. The dice pool system of Shadowrun is statistically superior to the d20 (in my opinion) BUT I really don't like the future fantasy thing (at least not compared to fantasy).

I'm trying to find the right conceptual balance for magic. What I'm learning from all this, and I already knew this from D&D, that given wizards world altering magics is massively disruptive to the game world, and letting them use too much power too quickly (i.e. spells v rituals) is problematic as well.

Look into Desolation, a fantasy system that uses the Ubiquity engine. It's not particularly D&D or LotR like, mostly because it leans towards being incredibly bleak in a lot of ways, but if you tone down the bleakness (and it's obvious what you need to do to make that happen) it would fit what you're looking for just fine. It's also pretty well balanced, as far as things go.

Florian

2018-05-04, 01:29 AM

JyP

2018-05-04, 03:08 AM

I'm trying to find the right conceptual balance for magic. What I'm learning from all this, and I already knew this from D&D, that given wizards world altering magics is massively disruptive to the game world, and letting them use too much power too quickly (i.e. spells v rituals) is problematic as well.
I think that D&D evolved to have more "magic"/fantasy over time - from mainly human PCs to a lot of fantasy races, magic being more and more common (Greyhawk vs Eberron for example). As magic is more and more common, it means D&D is missing a great potential for low fantasy stories : if wizards are such a rare breed, storytelling the way an astute adventurer found lost tomes of magic and became a wizard himself should be a great story. But D&D was always about playing wizards from the get go.

As for RPGs or settings with good explanations & systems about the scarcity of wizards :
- Reve: the Dream Ouroboros (Rêve de Dragon in French) follow stories of Travellers, in a low fantasy world which is said to be dreamed by Dragons. A big cataclysm on the beginning of the 4th Age where a lot of Dragons awakened means the world is broken, and you pass from a dream to another one during your travels, having no more an unified world. "Wizards" in it are those who try to discover dragon secrets, but there's a big taboo about them - and practicing magic can summon dragon curses. Moreover, it is very difficult to become a wizard if you start as mundane, as it can happen only during a Dragon Dream, whenever PC sleeps. A fun thing by the way : whenever PC sleeps, they recall in dreams what they did in previous lives - and gain experience this way.

- Ars Magica take the trope of mighty wizards to the hilt. Beginning characters followed 15 years of apprenticeship to another mighty wizard, and are now able to unleash their powers (think D&D wizard level 7 and more at the start) ! Alas, other older wizards don't want to be disturbed by an angry mob with torchs, they want to study in peace... and in fact so will you, as your powers increase mostly by study, not adventuring. Hence each player is controlling a wizard, but also another main character better tailored for adventuring. After all, wizards needs tomes, secrets, and these pestering templars, fae, demons or even mundanes won't let you study in peace ! Ars Magica uses Medieval Earth as setting, but as if medieval stories were true : there are really fae, dragons, demons and angels out there - and if you blow up an hamlet they will come for you. Being able to do Magic comes with a price : you have a bad aura, roughly being perceived by all mundanes as if you would be a leper. Hence the need of social characters on top of wizards, and the Order of Hermes forbid you to do as you please with mundanes, as it can focus unwanted troubles to you.

Andor13

2018-05-04, 10:13 AM

At first, when I was thinking of LotR, I thought about the way that magic was an integral part of the story. From Gandalf's interventions, to the magic swords they found, to the ring itself. Magic is central to the plot of the LotR. At the same time, as I think again after reading everyone's comments, I see that magic itself is actually quite scarce. Yes they find magic swords and such, but magic is still rare. People are still aghast when they meet Gandalf and find out he's a wizard. There's an immediate disbelief of all things supernatural. Even in a world where worgs and giant eagles and ogre are known to exist, many folk still seem to have an innate disbelief of magic.

I think you misunderstood something. Magic is not rare in LotR. Combat magic that is not an enchanted weapon or monster ability is basically not seen outside of Gandalf, yes. However magic is common enough that Bilbo literally hands out enchanted items as party favors (admittedly he is a wealthy and well-connected man at that point, but still.) Nor can I think of a single example from the books where anyone fails to believe in magic. People in the series often have trouble believing that Sauron is active, because people commonly prefer not to believe they are living in dark times, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with magic. Nor is anyone ever aghast that Gandalf is a wizard. Gandalf foes are frequently aghast when they find out he's Gandalf, because he is a terrifying foe.

BTW I think it's worth mentioning that Wizard, in the context of Middle Earth has an extremely specific definition that does not apply to D&D. Wizards are not men who have learned magic, they are Maiar, basically angels, sent by greater powers to oppose Sauron. There are exactly 5 of them. Gandalf, Radagast, Sarumon, plus Alatar and Pallando who are never "on screen" in the books.

Peat

2018-05-04, 10:48 AM

My question was exploratory, and as I think about it I can see the issue in the way I chose to word it. At first, when I was thinking of LotR, I thought about the way that magic was an integral part of the story. From Gandalf's interventions, to the magic swords they found, to the ring itself. Magic is central to the plot of the LotR. At the same time, as I think again after reading everyone's comments, I see that magic itself is actually quite scarce. Yes they find magic swords and such, but magic is still rare. People are still aghast when they meet Gandalf and find out he's a wizard. There's an immediate disbelief of all things supernatural. Even in a world where worgs and giant eagles and ogre are known to exist, many folk still seem to have an innate disbelief of magic.

That's a hard thing to duplicate in a game I think. Or maybe just in my groups. If I try to explain that magic is rare and often feared, first thing my caster player will usually do is blast off a spell in the middle of town.

Full disclosure, I'm sort of mining the forum for everyone's brilliant minds. I have only every played D&D. Never branched into other RPG's other then a short Shadowrun stint. Now as I've mature as a gamer what I have begun finding is that I kind of dislike the general swingyness of d20 systems. Don't get me wrong, they've been my bread and butter for 20 years, but statistically I don't like them. The dice pool system of Shadowrun is statistically superior to the d20 (in my opinion) BUT I really don't like the future fantasy thing (at least not compared to fantasy).

I'm trying to find the right conceptual balance for magic. What I'm learning from all this, and I already knew this from D&D, that given wizards world altering magics is massively disruptive to the game world, and letting them use too much power too quickly (i.e. spells v rituals) is problematic as well.

I completely agree about the swingyness of d20 and preferring dice pools. Frankly, I'm here for the overwhelming amount of options, intriguing kitchen sink approach to fantasy, and the fact my group like it more than me.

Reign and Exalted might be options for you to look at, if you want a die pool approach to fantasy.

How much magic do you want? My first thought based on mainly martials with the odd Gandalf seemed to indicate not much. Your post here seems to indicate quite a bit. Maybe a world where magic is a relatively accepted fact and many people have access to artifacts or have a few minor powers, but out and out wizards are uncommon?

In any case - for what my opinion is worth - I don't think letting them have world altering magics is too disruptive, nor is being able to use a lot of power quickly. Both exist in High Fantasy literature without non-magic users feeling pointless to the plot. Nor do I think they're incredibly disruptive to games in and of themselves.

Where things fall apart imo is

a) Sheer range of options. When magic can provide an answer to everything, the other answers become that little bit less relevant. And when magic users can access all of those answers all by themselves, they become that bit less relevant again. I can't think of any High Fantasy stories that let magic and magic users do so much. Few games too.

b) Options that allow them to directly usurp the mundanes' area of competence. Using summoning or necromancy to get better martials/trapmonkies. Using skill buffs on themselves to be the skillmonkey. Having so many persisted buffs on that they become the better option for a 1vs1 melee fight.

c) When you combine the two and you get spellcasters that can access all the answers.

Honestly, a Sorcerer who hasn't dipped too deeply into the broken stuff and a Tier 4 Martial with a good out of combat utility skill selection are probably balance enough to be in the same party and get the feel you want - just like Gandalf and Aragorn, or Moraine and Lan.

Gnaeus

2018-05-04, 11:13 AM

BTW I think it's worth mentioning that Wizard, in the context of Middle Earth has an extremely specific definition that does not apply to D&D. Wizards are not men who have learned magic, they are Maiar, basically angels, sent by greater powers to oppose Sauron. There are exactly 5 of them. Gandalf, Radagast, Sarumon, plus Alatar and Pallando who are never "on screen" in the books.

True, with the asterisk that there are also, offscreen, magicians and sorcerers. We have an indication that sorcery is evil magic, practicable at least by Maia and humans (Sauron was a sorcerer, as were some Nazgûl before they fell), and magicians may be the term for humans who are wizards by occupation but not divine heritage. Beorn is “a bit of a magician” but Gandalf uses the term elsewhere as well.

Segev

2018-05-04, 11:53 AM

4E suffers from the "Invincibles Syndrome" when you make everyone special, nobody is.

PEdantic nitpick: You mean "Incredibles."

The trouble, though, is that this is only true if you make everybody special in the same way. 4e's great sin is that it did so.

My Hero Academia demonstrates a setting where so much of the population is "special" that it's actually abnormal (to the point of near-disability) to not have a "quirk" (i.e. a superpower). But the quirks are so all over the place and unique that, even amidst groups of high-powered ones, they all feel special.

If everybody is a superman-package (what ps238 calls a "FISS" for "Flight, Invulnerability, Speed, Strength"), then yes, that becomes commonplace and not special. Evidence: humans actually heal much faster and have much greater endurance than most other creatures of our size on Earth, but we don't consider ourselves to be regenerating terminators. We consider it normal.

If, however, everybody has a unique superpower, then yes, everybody is special. There might be some who are "more special" than others, in terms of strength or uniqueness of power, but you could still balance differences out for a game system, at least.

Making a game where all PCs are beyond mundane wouldn't mean they can't all be special. Fighters using supernal strength and skill to achieve what would be inhuman feats IRL don't have to be playing exactly like a mage.

Tvtyrant

2018-05-04, 02:04 PM