Where does BS magic come from? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-06, 08:37 AM

Monsters are just different, which means they could be weird, special or just alien. If the monsters only can use PC built abilities then there would be no mystique which is a big part of the discovery/exploration pillar of play. And in this case (nice post) NPC and Monster are equivalent terms. Also, for the OP, might want to read up on crafting rules in the DMG. They are wide open. Someone else made the Teleport Circle point.

I think the important part is whether or not there's an in-universe reason for the difference. A monster having some ability that's unique to it is fine by me, but a NPC wizard having a spell a PC wizard can never have because they're a PC is not. Can't agree with this. The spells in the PHB are a subset of all of the spells in the game world. See the DMG new spell creation guidelines for more detail. This is another place where "finding new spells in scrolls/books" was such an important part of the discovery pillar in the TSR editions, and has been lost in the WotC editions.

My default assumption with those BS magic is that the PHB only include stuff that could reasonably be learn within a year and without a quest. I like your take on that.

This is one of those things that XP costs from earlier editions were so good for.

You want to cast the mega-ward spell that protects your castle against all teleportation, flying, and scrying? Okay, but it's gonna cost 50k XP every year. Also helps explain why retired adventurers get washed up and aren't out crushing all the mid-tier threats they could handle over a weekend. They tend to use their XP performing things to help their community. Aah, good parsing of that feature.

The in-universe explanation is that spells are a tiny, tiny fraction of what magic is.
It's also the most convenient one.
Take Tomb of Annihilation, for example. The Curse of Death requires an artifact made by the second most powerful Lich in the multiverse, an undead god-foetus, and three Night Hags.

In the same module, one of the NPCs know a ritual that can makes a group grow wings for several days. IIRC, she knows it because she follows /worship elementals from the Plane of Air.

And as a more archetypical point, I don't think your players are complaining that gods grant their PCs spells, are they? Heh, that last sentence hit the nail on the head.

So you know how if you cast teleportation circle in the same spot every day for a year you get a permanent teleportation circle? It comes from the same place. Those kind of things take investment in time and manpower that a group of adventurers don't have. You want your castle have candlekeep like protection, spend 200,000gp and five years of time putting in the permanent and undispelable magic. I used this as part of a plot in my Salt Marsh campaign. Keledek was working hard to, day by day, make a Teleportation circle permanent, since he had that spell in his book, and as he got nearer to completion he was running out of gems. In a few cases he cashed in gems that the PCs had found (they didn't know why he did that, but he was getting shipments of stuff now and again from Ket via that circle) and he also used his imp to steal gems and jewels from most of the wealthy NPCs in Saltmarsh. He was 13 days from completion when the PCs confronted him over the stolen staff form the Dragon Turtle, and as it worked out, they foiled his plan to complete that permanent teleportaoitn circle ... and still have no idea that they did so.

Batcathat

2023-10-06, 08:51 AM

Can't agree with this. The spells in the PHB are a subset of all of the spells in the game world. See the DMG new spell creation guidelines for more detail. This is another place where "finding new spells in scrolls/books" was such an important part of the discovery pillar in the TSR editions, and has been lost in the WotC editions.

Yes, and if the reason Bob the PC don't have access to the same spells as Alice the NPC is that he haven't found the right book, that's fine. That's an in-universe reason. I'm not saying PC wizards should have access to all spells all the time, I'm saying that the reason they don't should never be the fact that they are PCs (since the PC/NPC divide doesn't exist in-universe. Well, unless you're playing in the OotS-setting or something like that. :smalltongue:).

Psyren

2023-10-06, 09:08 AM

Nothing is unattainable by PCs if your DM wants you to have it. Instead of blaming the books, maybe talk to them?

KaussH

2023-10-06, 10:22 AM

Overall, as I have said before, the GM has access to everything. All spells, natural forces, monsters, NPCs, ect. They can freely make things and rules and ability's outside the reach of PCs if they like. I ask the GM could have giant space rocks fall to earth, wiping out a city and making a new dungeon. I can make a list of powerful and toxic spells that one work for X group, Y species, only while wielding the stick of yar, ect.

While it is not cool to wield the "I can do anything" stick in secret (aka only using it when you dont want the PCs to do stuff and telling them only when it comes up) it isnt BS for the GM to do stuff PCs cant have access to for whatever reasons. It is just normal worldbuilding stuff.

Damon_Tor

2023-10-06, 10:29 AM

It depends. If an ancient lich worked for 500 years to create and master a spell, then it's reasonable to tell the PC wizard he can't simply copy the spell into his spellbook and expect to use it. Maybe it would take him a few decades to figure it out or something.

Sigreid

2023-10-06, 10:41 AM

Easy e

2023-10-06, 10:43 AM

Well, if players do not like that DMs can do things in their modules that players can not..... they can always DM!

JonBeowulf

2023-10-06, 10:54 AM

Can't agree with this. The spells in the PHB are a subset of all of the spells in the game world. See the DMG new spell creation guidelines for more detail. This is another place where "finding new spells in scrolls/books" was such an important part of the discovery pillar in the TSR editions, and has been lost in the WotC editions.

I bring this up to my players all the time and NOBODY ever even attempts it. Players put a lot of effort into character builds, concepts, and sometimes backstory. They may even try to have a major impact on the game world in some way. But creating a spell they can put their name on? Nope.

KaussH

2023-10-06, 11:15 AM

RSP

2023-10-06, 11:29 AM

I go with Monsters monster abilities can be different because they're monsters. NPCs can't do anything the players couldn't in theory do. The problem is, using those effects requires things the party won't do. For example, that spell that creates an uncurable plague? Yeah, that requires you to betray and murder 100 people who are friends. It can't be dupes either; if you don't feel the loss on an emotional level, that person doesn't count.

100% agree on the first part: monsters/NPCs can have abilities that aren’t PC attainable.

But disagree on the second if it’s a Wizard spell in a Wizards spell book. I think this is where DMs can get themselves in “trouble”.

By rule, we know how scribing Wizard spells work. If a PC finds a Wizard spell book that has the cool custom spell that the Lich used against the party in it, then it should follow the rules for scribing Wizard spells from one spellbook to another.

Much easier just to make the spell either a magical ability inherent to being a Lich, or a spell that the Lich created through Sorcerer abilities (which means it wouldn’t be in their spellbook).

It’s a subtle difference, but one that can cause the titular “bs” response, in my experience.

LibraryOgre

2023-10-06, 11:39 AM

I generally treat it like a grand-scale enchantment.... you are making your castle into a magic item, in effect.

Now, for teleporting, you might look at Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum... several 7th level casters, or one high level caster, and have them cast it every day for a year and it becomes permanent. Now, I found a map that makes Candlekeep about 1250 feet long, and 750 wide, which would take about 94 4th level castings a day, for a year, to cover the whole thing all at once... but you could also do it over a few years, slowly protecting more and more (first the library, then various parts of the main bailey, then the outer bailey, etc.). (these are back of the envelope numbers)

Or enchant something that will do the job for you. Which might take a while, but will probably take less than 94 years.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-06, 11:45 AM

Can't agree with this. The spells in the PHB are a subset of all of the spells in the game world. See the DMG new spell creation guidelines for more detail. This is another place where "finding new spells in scrolls/books" was such an important part of the discovery pillar in the TSR editions, and has been lost in the WotC editions.

Sure, and if you can find the NPC wizard's spellbook and learn the spell, everything is fine.
What's not fine is if SOMEONE suddenly comes with an idea to reprint existing statblocks, change how their spellcasting work, give them abilities that are NOT spells, and then has the gall to not only call them wizards, but explicitly [subclass available to PC] wizard, when they are less similar to actual wizards than they used to be before the pointless, stupid moneygrab... I mean, reprint.

Nagog

2023-10-06, 11:57 AM

When is it ok to place in a module something that is "BS", thus a power/ability unattainable by PCs?

When the plot demands it.

There could be a magic item or artifact that does it, or a magical anomaly that causes it, or a million other things, but the fact that there are some things that PCs can't innately do isn't unique to 5e: It's present in pretty much every game type across every format that has NPCs. It's present in Video games, tabletop games, board games, etc. If a PC really wants to do something an NPC has done, it's up to you as a DM to determine if that's possible, balanced, or fun for the whole group (yourself included!). Then you can go about considering how to let them earn that.

In-universe, it's not outlandish to have some things some people cannot do: a Goliath with 20 Str is going to be able to lift and carry far more than a Human could because of Powerful Build. Similarly, a Sorcerer may be able to do something with their magic a non-Sorcerer may never be able to replicate without innate magic.

If your players want unrestricted access to everything (especially BS powers), it's time for them to be a DM, or toss out the book and go full narrative playground.

J-H

2023-10-06, 01:28 PM

D&d, and many other fantasy universes, also lean on the tropes of "Magic used to be more powerful" and "lost knowledge."

Netheril had flying cities. Now it's a desert, and how many cities fly?
Feanor could make the Silmarils. Nobody can come close to copying him now. Elven magic fades in the 4th Age. The Ents aren't reproducing.
The Egyptians made the Pyramids. Then nobody else made anything monumental at that scale for a couple of millenia.
In Wheel of Time there were some big high-powered channeling statues in like book 4. They were thousands of years old. Why isn't anyone making more of them?
The Wall in GoT is 8,000 years old, and nobody knows how it was built.
Evermeet(?) has a mythal ward that protects it, but it's slowly fading. Nobody knows quite how to repair it, or make them again.
Hogwarts has 800 year old wards. Nobody knows how to upgrade them to keep the Dark Mark or Dementors away.

It's much more rare to find a "magic is more powerful now than ever before" story.

NichG

2023-10-06, 01:59 PM

I think any particular approach to this can be fair as long as you don't reason backwards to ensure that a PC cannot do it or access it.

That is to say, want to say that this weird thing requires a magical ritual that takes 3 years of prep, exotic ingredients, and pacts with the Far Realms? That's fine, but if a PC is willing to spend 3 years of prep, hunt for those exotic ingredients, and make that pact (and the pacing of events allows for that), then that's fine.

Only the blood descendants of Vecna can bring about this particular effect? That's fair, but if a PC goes and hunts down a heretofore unknown blood descendant of Vecna, they should be able to in principle get that person to produce that effect for them (if they can persuade them, teach them, etc).

Esoteric enchantments that can only be performed during certain stellar conjunctions? Well, a PC should be able to hunt down knowledge of those and figure out if any are coming up in the next century that they might want to enact, even if that doesn't mean they can do it right now.

People used to be able to do it, but now it's ancient lost knowledge? So if a PC goes and finds some ancient laboratory or the private demiplane of a 3000 year old wizard, there should be hints about that knowledge right?

Etc...

The point is, be willing to commit to the follow-through of whatever explanation you choose. Don't put wondrous magic into a game where someone is playing a magical researcher and expect them to not want to research it. That may just mean that they occasionally get to read about yet another ritual they don't have the qualifications for. And it doesn't mean that any totally arbitrary thing should become possible by implication. 'A ritual exists that gives people wings' does not imply that there must also be a ritual out there that lets people break cap on their stats or lets them become the ruler of the moon or whatever, nor does it imply that such a ritual is even possible. But having some kind of coherent logic as to how and why these sorts of effects can be brought about, what limits them, what enables them, etc - and picking that so you'd be willing to follow through and elaborate - will avoid some of the feeling of unfairness.

When you give an explanation its not just saying 'here's why we ignore it and move on', its saying 'this is a thing about how the world works, this stuff is out there'. If the natural consequence of that is 'it won't solve the PCs problems' that's fine, but if a player says 'oh thats really interesting I want to investigate things like that further' you should be prepared to follow through on that (and its natural consequences, which may still be 'yeah this stuff is useless for dealing with the oncoming orc army'). Where it can start to feel unfair is when you keep layering on reasons why it won't work, won't be accessible, can't be studied, just drop it already once a player has actually heard the explanation and has said 'that actually doesn't put me off, I still want to look into it'. It shouldn't ever feel like you're making it this way 'because I don't want PCs to have it'.

MoiMagnus

2023-10-06, 02:30 PM

I think any particular approach to this can be fair as long as you don't reason backwards to ensure that a PC cannot do it or access it.

Part of me agree with it, especially with the part "being honest with the players" (don't pretend that you're ok with them having something if you're not), but on the other hand, I fully understand a GM that is in the situation "I'm fine with your character having this power, but this power changes so much the campaign that I'm not interested in GMing with PCs having such power, so unless one of you want to take back the GMing mantle, we need to find a reason why this power is inaccessible".

Time travel is the typical example. One GM might want to have a campaign that rely on a single time-travel instance, but might not want to deal with time-travel being actively used by the PCs because that require having to map out the vast consequences of their actions in the past and temporal paradoxes.

And to some degree, I empathise GMs lacking foresight and only realising that they're not fine with the PCs having a specific power at the moment where the PCs are about to get it (though that's definitely a mistake from them).

But in the end, I still want to agree with you because most examples of "the PCs get an powerboost unexpected by the GM" is not actually "vastly-campaign-changing to the point where it's fair for the GM to say that it's not the kind of campaign they want to tell". It's of the level of "the Wizard gets an homebrew teleportation spell that can take a few additional teammate with them", which while it offers a few shortcuts here and there, it doesn't change the campaign all that much.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-06, 02:52 PM

Count me very much on the side of "PCs should never expect to have access to all the powers they see, even if they're labeled as "spells" or whatever." Not all in-game "wizards" are PC-class wizards. In fact, I'd say close to 0% of them are.

I'm very explicit about this--I have a sidebar in my materials that goes like:

Classes are archetypes for playing the game. They represent a tiny slice of the wild and wonderful variation in the world. While playing <in my games>, you may encounter creatures, including other "normal" humanoids who have abilities reminiscent of class abilities and those with entirely other abilities that no class offers. Even if they are called "fighter" or "rogue" or "paladin", they may not have all the abilities of a member of that class and may in fact have others unattainable in game. Every individual is different, but the classes represent packages of abilities balanced and suited for play as an adventurer. They are not "real" in the context of the fictional world.

Classes are not real things in-fiction--someone called "wizard" in-fiction may or may not have a spellbook. In fact, a PC wizard might be the only one in-setting who has a spellbook and that particular list of spells. Etc.

At the same time, I'm totally ok with giving people boons that go way beyond what the books offer. Whether via items, feats, or just plain "new things". They're discovered in play and received as rewards/consequences for actions, they're not entitlements.

NichG

2023-10-06, 03:09 PM

Part of me agree with it, especially with the part "being honest with the players" (don't pretend that you're ok with them having something if you're not), but on the other hand, I fully understand a GM that is in the situation "I'm fine with your character having this power, but this power changes so much the campaign that I'm not interested in GMing with PCs having such power, so unless one of you want to take back the GMing mantle, we need to find a reason why this power is inaccessible".

Time travel is the typical example. One GM might want to have a campaign that rely on a single time-travel instance, but might not want to deal with time-travel being actively used by the PCs because that require having to map out the vast consequences of their actions in the past and temporal paradoxes.

I'd still say the right way to do this is not to reason backwards in order to keep it from the PCs, but instead come up with a setting in which rare events of time-travel might happen but at-will time-travel isn't going to be a thing. A planetary conjunction connects a single point on the planet to a corresponding point in the past when that conjunction occurred previously? Sure! That's now a phenomenon with an explanation, PCs can research why only this conjunction and not others, what it takes to set this up, when it will happen next, etc. The planets involved are associated with particular gods with domain over time, fate, etc, so its this one thing every 500 years - yeah maybe you can chain hop if you're very fast and go back multiples of 500, but you won't be able to do it arbitrarily and freely. Or its a series of alien artifacts that, at that particular time in the past, caused the sun to collapse into a black hole in a parallel universe and the present is when that black hole finally consumed the world - you could repeat it but it'd take a thousand years to set up and require fighting off the forces of good in that parallel universe. Or (the one I use for the campaign I'm currently running) in order for changes made via time-travel to stick, they have to be anchored to a certain kind of being whose existence is slightly outside of time, of which there are only so many. Each such being can anchor one change to the timeline. So if you want to do lots of time-travel, you're going to have to find a lot of those entities to agree to use their one change on your project - doable, heck you can even try to figure out how to become one of those entities yourself, but not unlimited (and also, killing the anchor reverts the change for anyone who wasn't part of the time travel event that created it, so any alterations you make are on borrowed time anyhow - the best use is to gather information from alternate futures or to personally skip over certain moments).

Mostly though, don't be surprised, and certainly don't get bent out of shape, when one of the PCs says 'Time travel is a thing? I must study it!'. You made a choice to put that element into play maybe because you thought 'time travel is kinda cool, this will be awesome'. But if you put the element in and then don't let the players touch it or interact with it, at least for me that would do a lot of damage to my willingness to actually engage with or care about other 'cool things' you put in. It sort of turns it from a world to an amusement park with cardboard facades.

Again, 'I go and research this' or 'I want to look into how this works and try to replicate it' doesn't have to mean 'I can do it at will now' or even 'I will be able to do this over the course of the campaign'. It doesn't even mean 'well maybe you can't replicate the grand time-travel, but you can use these insights to customize your Haste spell a little' (although that kind of thing is cool), it just means be willing to try to follow through in a coherent way with elements you choose to add to the setting. Which might just mean 'sure, if you wait 500 years you can do this again'. Probably not going to matter in the course of the campaign, but it at least says that the reason the PCs aren't doing it is because everyone is required to hold the idiot ball and forget that its a thing that can be done in the setting. And heck, maybe there will be a near TPK, the party's immortal elf is the only survivor, and they manage to stay alive until the chance happens again, travel back, and warn the party right before the fight that would kill them all, and its an awesome story.

Otherwise, its worth thinking twice about whether you want to use those elements in the first place.

And just to be clear, none of this is to say that the method of accessing or researching such things should be available via leveling up and selecting abilities granted to you by doing such, or taking some class or subclass, or other kinds of character build resource expenditures. Nor should it be necessary that all of these things be laid out in advance in player-facing documents. But if you make the (unwise) decision that saying 'Pazuzu, pazuzu, pazuzu' lets you get a wish in exchange for your eventual damnation, and you have an NPC do it in front of the PCs, then yeah you do kind of need to follow through with that thing you established or its going to give away the illusion.

kazaryu

2023-10-06, 03:26 PM

What really intrigues me as a DM and a module creator is this: When is it ok to place in a module something that is "BS", thus a power/ability unattainable by PCs?

to start with this is going to change table by table.

for me, personally? always. its always ok to have powers that are unattainable by the PC's. sort of. generally speaking, anything I introduce is something that the PC's could theoretically do. if they really went out of their way to do so they could absolutely learn to become a lich, or learn some of the spells/magics that i'll often display NPC's having. at least in theory its all on the table.

in practice, however, the requirements to do some of those things are so impractical enough that the PC's wouldn't be able to accomplish them.

but the key thing is that, for me, classes don't exist in world. not all "evoker" wizards get the the sculpt spell and overchannel features. indeed not all wizards are confined to the schools listed in the books. i treat the class/subclasses in the books as samples of what all someone can do in world...because well...it would be impossible to make an exhaustive list of all potential class/subclass combinations. if 5e were designed around ala carte abilities, like say GURPS, then thats one thing.

so..yeah idk. i've never really encountered anyone that thought it was unfun for NPC's to have abilities that the PC's don't have. and especially with the examples you gave...thats such a foreign way of thinking to me.

Anymage

2023-10-06, 03:34 PM

If it's an environmental effect or a power that a being has due to their mythic nature or even simple body plan, make up whatever you like. D&D is basically massive piles of accumulated stuff that people made up.

There is a deeper question of how much information to give PCs about this new thing. Antiteleportation effects are fine especially if the PCs are informed that the area is under those effects beforehand, while introducing a random monster that destroys your gear if you attack it like you would any other monster is antagonistic DMing and pretty BS. Both how well a new thing can be planned around and how much of a character's toolkit will be affected are relevant concerns. However, those apply to official elements just as much as homebrew; just because your average poster here is familiar with rust monsters and troll regeneration does not mean that they're not official content that's still pretty BS if you happen to be a new player just coming across them.

Ionathus

2023-10-06, 04:01 PM

Hey guys,
my question popped up on our last session, when my party talked homebrew. They HATE homebrew because it is so often unbalanced and gives NPCs powers, PCs have no access to. We were talking about Candlekeep in this case, which has "cant fly or teleport in" megaspell active at all times. Another similar example is Xonthals tower from Rise of Tiamat(nonflying/teleporting in) or "megaplague" from Tomb of Annihilation, that somehow affects creatures globally.

What really intrigues me as a DM and a module creator is this: When is it ok to place in a module something that is "BS", thus a power/ability unattainable by PCs?

Also I'd really appreciate if you guys could help me make a list of such magic from official modules, so I can study them.

Thank you

When is it okay? Anytime and anyplace, for any reason, as long as it makes the game more fun. Dungeon Masters are allowed to "break the rules" in ways that players are not, by design, full stop. The freedom to play outside the core rules is solely the privilege -- and the responsibility -- of the DM.

Your players calling non-PC-accessible effects "homebrew BS" is, in my opinion, a symptom of mild player-vs-DM thinking. Not because they are being combative/hostile with you, or approaching the table in bad faith...but because they believe that your "pieces" and their "pieces" should be on equal footing. They see you as the opposing team's coach, when really you are the referee (who's also puppeting the opposing team's coach, don't think about it too hard :smallbiggrin:).

The players have a finite, quasi-rigid list of abilities, mechanics, and tools at their disposal because it makes their side easier to balance and easier to play with minimal effort or justification. The DM has a bajillion kajillion options because they're not the ones trying to win, they're the one trying to curate an interesting and memorable challenge, and they also have a lot more creative leeway for setting the terms, the conditions, and the stakes of every encounter. Players look at a unique, NPC-specific spell and cry "homebrew!" but that's just part of the unique story you're telling: by that metric, the decision to have the dragon fight take place in a volcano vs. an empty square white room is also "homebrew."

Even in published modules, the DM makes a thousand small decisions each session that distinguish their playthrough of the module as unique. I guarantee every single playthrough of Lost Mines of Phandelver has a slightly different "difficulty", simply because it's impossible to create a module that accounts for everything and thus it's impossible to DM without making small choices here and there to polish those rough edges.

Of course, not every DM is good at balancing their additions to a campaign. And players can definitely be sore about magic or monster abilities that aren't well telegraphed, or strip them of a deserved victory, or make them feel put in the backseat to the DM's novel-writing, or just feel like the DM doesn't know what they're doing. But that's an execution issue, not a problem with the concept of "homebrew."

And I bet they wouldn't complain if you tossed them a couple of "homebrew" magic items, even if those items allowed them options not afforded by core rulebooks. Bet they wouldn't call BS on that :smallcool:

Slipjig

2023-10-06, 04:43 PM

Most of these gigantic magical workings are almost certainly long term rituals with a multitude of contributors with a cost in resources that may equal several year's worth of GDP for a small kingdom. Sure, a PC can hew out a colossal block of stone and maybe even move it by themself, but building a pyramid will still take decades of work.
If that's what your players want to do with their downtime, that's fine, but it's totally okay to say, "Okay, you are building your own Soulmonger. You almost certainly won't finish it during the course of the current campaign." Unless, of course, the campaign is specifically about gathering the resources needed to build their own Soulmonger.

Mindflayer_Inc

2023-10-06, 06:45 PM

5e is designed specifically with the mentality of, "the PCs are hard-limited by what the classes allow, while NPCs are free to do anything and everything the DM desires them to do."

It's... super annoying, from a certain perspective.

You should try playing some games as NPCs (I mean, they become PCs at that point but you know).

Let the players replace features as you go along the game from similar creatures and CR. Wacky time.

5eNeedsDarksun

2023-10-06, 07:17 PM

Broadly I'd say NPCs/ Monsters are not the same as PCs in 5e. This ranges from the way attack bonuses are calculated (or not: try to do the math on some of the Monsters), NPCs being stat blocks (Druid, Veteran, etc) as opposed to just creating Druid X or Fighter X, all the way up to Lair Actions and Legendary Actions. There is also a decent list of things that PCs can do, like Feats and a fair range of Bonus Actions that Monsters/ NPCs usually don't have access to.

Overall, I don't have any expectation that either side has access to everything the other does, nor do my players. So far as neutering some abilities (I'd add teleport in DotMM, which was discussed in a recent thread), sometimes it helps to make an adventure work. Overall, I don't really have a lot of sympathy for the OPs position. Given that it's specifically focused on magic, it kind of strikes me as another one of these "Why can't my caster have yet another toy?" complaints. Casters are fine, and no, they don't need to have everything they bad guys have; sometimes bad guys, including casters can be scary and have abilities that the party can't understand or replicate.

RSP

2023-10-06, 09:13 PM

Classes are not real things in-fiction--someone called "wizard" in-fiction may or may not have a spellbook. In fact, a PC wizard might be the only one in-setting who has a spellbook and that particular list of spells. Etc.

I think Wizard is specifically the only class that is an in-fiction thing (probably more like a profession or course of study). Once you tie a character (NPC or PC) to studying spells and reliance on a spellbook, I think it kind of fits the bill.

No other class is dependent on others existing as they do, in-fiction, like the Wizard. Rogue PCs aren’t reliant upon other Rogues existing as Rogues to increase their Sneak Attack dice, Fighter PCs don’t need Fighter NPCs to collect Extra Attack, etc.

But for Wizards to collect spells from spellbooks and scribe them into their Spellbook, the fiction has to have other Wizards who make them.

NPC Wizards don’t have to follow the Wizard class as PCs do (such as leveling or Ritual Casting), but they do need to connect as “wizards” in terms of the fiction in regards to the spellbook. Once you have an in-fiction magic user who studies from their spellbook, I think it’s fair that said spellbook follows the rules of spell books as presented in the Wizard class sidebar (if the PCs can get their hands on it).

Lunali

2023-10-07, 09:24 AM

My rule is that anything NPCs can do, PCs can do.

There are a variety of ways around this. Sometimes the requirements are particularly evil or may cause the PC to no longer be a PC. For other things, particularly monster abilities, you may need to collect pieces of the monster, do some research, and create a magical item that duplicates the effect, possibly at the cost of attunement. Another option is having the ability tied to a consumable item, which the PCs can capture, but they'll have a limited number of uses. There's also the limitation that putting forth a lot of effort to be able to break a rule in a small area like Candlekeep could be very useful as part of an NPC's long term plan, but it's much less useful to a PC that is just visiting the area.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-09, 02:03 PM

Sure, and if you can find the NPC wizard's spellbook and learn the spell, everything is fine.
What's not fine is if SOMEONE suddenly comes with an idea to reprint existing statblocks, change how their spellcasting work, give them abilities that are NOT spells, and then has the gall to not only call them wizards, but explicitly [subclass available to PC] wizard, when they are less similar to actual wizards than they used to be before the pointless, stupid moneygrab... I mean, reprint. *golf clap* Well played.

D&d, and many other fantasy universes, also lean on the tropes of "Magic used to be more powerful" and "lost knowledge." Concur.

My rule is that anything NPCs can do, PCs can do.
Poor idea. Example number 1. Gladiator NPC. Gets an added damage die to all melee attacks.
Gets a parry reaction as a default that adds to AC +2 against a melee attack.

Which PC class do you intend to add this to?

Poor Idea. Example number 2. NPC Archmage has advantage on all saving throws versus spells and magical effects.
That's a DMG Epic Boon level of a boost.

Which PC class to you intend to give this to?

Poor Idea. Example number 3. Legendary actions: gives 3 reactions, not one, during all other turns.

Which PC class do you intend to give this to

PCs and NPCs are built for different purposes.

PCs have to deal with an entire adventure day, NPCs have to deal with 1 encounter.

Lunali

2023-10-09, 04:41 PM

*golf clap* Well played.

Concur.

Poor idea. Example number 1. Gladiator NPC. Gets an added damage die to all melee attacks.
Gets a parry reaction as a default that adds to AC +2 against a melee attack.

Which PC class do you intend to add this to?

Poor Idea. Example number 2. NPC Archmage has advantage on all saving throws versus spells and magical effects.
That's a DMG Epic Boon level of a boost.

Which PC class to you intend to give this to?

Poor Idea. Example number 3. Legendary actions: gives 3 reactions, not one, during all other turns.

Which PC class do you intend to give this to

PCs and NPCs are built for different purposes.

PCs have to deal with an entire adventure day, NPCs have to deal with 1 encounter.

The short answer is, none of them. If a PC wants to gain the sort of advantage that an NPC has, they have to do something on par with what the NPC has done to get that ability. In the gladiator case, that would likely mean they would need to level to 7 or so as a fighter with the gladiator subclass. For the archmage example, you yourself give an example of how they might acquire it, an epic boon.

The point is really to make it so it's rarely worthwhile for a player to change their progression to acquire NPC abilities.

NichG

2023-10-09, 06:32 PM

Poor idea. Example number 1. Gladiator NPC. Gets an added damage die to all melee attacks.
Gets a parry reaction as a default that adds to AC +2 against a melee attack.

Which PC class do you intend to add this to?

Poor Idea. Example number 2. NPC Archmage has advantage on all saving throws versus spells and magical effects.
That's a DMG Epic Boon level of a boost.

Which PC class to you intend to give this to?

Poor Idea. Example number 3. Legendary actions: gives 3 reactions, not one, during all other turns.

Which PC class do you intend to give this to

So one by one, because they're different...

For the Gladiator, I wouldn't use an NPC like that with those abilities unless I was willing to say to a player: 'they get that from a special Gladiator class/subclass, which you could retrain in if you wanted; it gets the following' or 'they get that from two feats, which you could learn from them if you got them to agree to teach you' or 'its part of a system of special maneuvers for horizontal advancement in martials, which you could get access to in the following way' or 'its an alternate class feature thing, you can learn it as a Fighter but you'll lose access to your superiority dice stuff in exchange'. Or I might just not use that statblock at all if I wasn't willing to do such a thing. Because a Gladiator is too similar conceptually to things that PCs do have access to for me to justify them working so differently in an inaccessible way as to somehow be totally out of scope for PCs. To put it another way, "I want to learn how to hit as hard as a gladiator does" is the sort of reasonable reaction to the narrative and the exposed part of the mechanics that I would not want to discourage players from having.

For the Archmage it can be more complicated. I might, again, just not use that. I might tie those effects to specific spells which could be learned, and which if players were interested I'd write down the levels and mechanics for. I might tie those effects to performing certain non-spell rituals, which might or might not extend to 'adventuring out in the wilds' - quite possible something integrated with the mage's sanctum and which only works for them there. And if that was my explanation, I'd also commit to that in the form of allowing the reasoning 'we should try to lure the archmage out of their tower so they're easier to defeat' and have doing that remove those particular advantages. Most likely however, I just wouldn't have archmages have that effect since to me it's thematically awkward. I get that its supposed to be 'they're so experienced with magic that they're better at avoiding its consequences' but in that case it really should be a PC wizard/sorceror thing too, because there's no reason why a PC should never be able to understand magic in such and such a way if its only a matter of understanding that supports the ability. On the other hand, that kind of ability would work great on the chosen cleric of a deity, or on some kind of sorcerous entity that happens to be feasting on a ley line at the time, or other sorts of 'its more than just that my understanding is better than your understanding' circumstances.

For the case of legendary actions, well, most often those are going to be attached to creatures that are not usually options for PCs to choose to play as. If a PC got themselves permanently transformed into such a creature, then sure, I'd have them gain this ability. They might lose the ability to take class levels though. It'd really depend on setting stuff - is there a metaphysical reason why the creatures that get legendary actions are different? Is it just a body type thing - nerves transmit impulses at 3x the rate and their brain runs 3x faster? Maybe they've got the biomagical equivalent of a Sandevistan slotted? Etc. The point would be for me to be willing for there to be a reason, and pick that reason with a commitment to follow through on it's implications.

I mean, I say all of this as someone who does regularly have a standard 'boss monster template' kind of thing - 10x hitpoints, extra actions per round, etc. I've also had a campaign where PCs could dip their toes into having that template, temporarily and optionally permanently. I've had it be 'this is a boon granted by a cosmic entity to its underlings (to get the boon you'd have to sweet-talk the entity, but you could do it)', 'this is because the entity is so much larger than the expected range of the mechanics that it needs unique rules - but if you become a city-sized lifeform you too can have the hitpoint boost and immunity to death effects', 'this is what happens when you become an ancestor spirit with a certain number of descendants worshipping you - its a proto-divinity. If you want to die and get some worshippers and come back as a ghost, you could go this route too!', 'this is what happens when you turn yourself into the physical avatar of a concept like Time or Chaos; go form a deep enough connection with the source of such concepts and you can also do this', etc. You won't just be able to 'take a level in awesome' to get it, it'll be at minimum some onscreen quest or post-denoument of the campaign, and maybe at the end you'll NPC out because it involves fusing together 100 souls into a gestalt being that isn't your character anymore. Or maybe ascending that way is how the party ends up getting its way and the campaign concludes shortly after. And its not always going to be something a PC could even conceptually fit into, much less practically fit into.

But I'm always going to be willing to let the players ask 'why?' and will try to make that answer make sense with regards to the world and the demonstrated abilities of things within it.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-09, 07:29 PM

Poor idea. Example number 1. Gladiator NPC. Gets an added damage die to all melee attacks.
Gets a parry reaction as a default that adds to AC +2 against a melee attack.

Extra damage dice can be added in various ways. Really, the only unique thing Gladiator does is that the extra dice is the same as the weapon, instead of being fixed. An example for all, paladin get Improved Divine Strike for extra 1d8 radiant damage.
The parry is somewhat different Defensive Duelist feat: doesn't require free hand and finesse weapon, but the bonus is fixed instead of increasing with proficiency bonus (or is it? The Gladiator's Parry adds +3, which is its proficiency bonus, Noble gets +2, again matching its proficiency, and same with Marilith's +5).

I can easily see barbarian or fighter subclass with either or both of those abilities.

Example number 2. NPC Archmage has advantage on all saving throws versus spells and magical effects.
That's a DMG Epic Boon level of a boost.

That's worse version of School of Abjuration's level 14 ability. That one does only affect spells, not magical effects, but it also halves damage received.

Example number 3. Legendary actions: gives 3 reactions, not one, during all other turns.

Legendary actions don't give reactions. And yes, those are not for PCs.

RazorChain

2023-10-09, 07:32 PM

rel

2023-10-09, 10:59 PM

JNAProductions

2023-10-09, 11:11 PM

TBH, I think the D&D designers are way too eager to use spells to represent non-tactical scale effects.
This not only limits what a GM (or publisher) can add to an adventure, but limits the degree to which a non spellcasting character can participate in a non combat challenge.

Making effects like guards and wards, magic mouth, arcane lock, commune, and so forth accessible via 3.5 style incantations instead of spellcasting would go a long way towards improving class balance and simultaneously allow for PC access to some of the more interesting strategic effects without damaging game balance.

Isn't that what 4E did?

kazaryu

2023-10-09, 11:12 PM

rel

2023-10-09, 11:39 PM

Isn't that what 4E did?

I think 4th removed most strategic effects entirely, rather than implementing an incantation style system.

the only thing that limits the degree to which non spell casters can interact with non combat challenges is DM's undervaluing ability checks, often by imposing too high of DC's to them, or insisting on rolls when failure shouldn't be a realistic possibility.

I can't say I agree, having never seen an ability check replicate raise dead, teleport, commune or sending myself.

Psyren

2023-10-10, 12:02 AM

I can't say I agree, having never seen an ability check replicate raise dead, teleport, commune or sending myself.

Nor should they. And if you absolutely need those things to advance the story and your party lacks the right magic (or ANY magic), pound the pavement and find an NPC or item. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0340.html)

Schwann145

2023-10-10, 02:02 AM

Poor Idea. Example number 2. NPC Archmage has advantage on all saving throws versus spells and magical effects.
That's a DMG Epic Boon level of a boost.
To play Devil's advocate from the player's perspective:
"I'm a 20th level Wizard. I am the pinnacle of studied arcane knowledge and skill. I am a world-shaking threat by myself. And I am more powerful and knowledgeable than the Archmage NPC. So why is this Archmage capable of magical understanding and/or magical power that I am not? Why is this unavailable to me, his/her superior in the arcane arts?"

Many of these BS things are actually mythals, 10th level spells that often took days, weeks or years to cast by a group of casters. They existed in earlier edition most often in epic or godlike tier of play (level 20 to 30)

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mythal

there must be some grognards that played the boxed sets or advanced dungeons and dragons here?
Yep.
Old mythals of elven High Magic (epic spells) that have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
•Undermountain is powered by a mythal that Halastar has modified for hundreds of years.
•Candlekeep has both "old and rather unique" layers of magical wards as well as a singular mythal. Who or where those wards came from is unexplained afaik.
•Myth Drannor famously has a mythal that included a human mage alongside the elves for the first time in history.
•The city of Silverymoon in the north is protected by a mythal.
The list goes on, usually for elven cities but sometimes other places as well.
(The problem with mythals is, while they are "old magic" they're not "forgotten magic." There are elves living in current-date Faerun that know how to craft them, and there are spellcasters alive [and undead] who have participated in their casting. But they are still "high magic" and that basically means "DM fiat, unavailable to players.")

Also potentially remnants of ancient Netherese magic, like Mythallars that are still active for some reason (Mythallars being the Netherese's attempt to copy elven Mythals). One pops up in Rime of the Frostmaiden, iirc.

Other than that, it's all "ancient forgotten magic" like old Imaskari Arcana or magic from the Creator Races from tens of thousands of years ago, etc etc etc.

kazaryu

2023-10-10, 09:53 AM

I can't say I agree, having never seen an ability check replicate raise dead, teleport, commune or sending myself.

commune is a means of gathering information...you've never seen a party...do research? or ask people questions? really?

sending...is a message....teleport is just travel. neither of those would typically even need an ability check to accomplish non-magically. the big benefit of then is they're instantaneous. which is neat. but if your "non-combat challenge" is reliant on the party being able to teleport....or cast sending then...wow.

my point wasn't that ability checks can do everything that magic can. my point was that casters having magic...isn't a limitation on non-casters. Non-casters can and should be able to interact with non-combat challenges through ability checks. even if they don't have specific bonuses to those checks. for example rogues expertise, or ranger's natural explorer

edit: oh and raise dead is....finding someone capable of casting the spell, and convincing them (possibly through ability checks) to help you.

To play Devil's advocate from the player's perspective:
"I'm a 20th level Wizard. I am the pinnacle of studied arcane knowledge and skill. I am a world-shaking threat by myself. And I am more powerful and knowledgeable than the Archmage NPC. So why is this Archmage capable of magical understanding and/or magical power that I am not? Why is this unavailable to me, his/her superior in the arcane arts?"

-20th level isn't the pinnacle. its just where gameplay ends
-how does the wizard know they're more powerful than the archmage NPC? they're only 2 levels higher than it, and levels aren't a thing in world. from the players perspective the archmage is casting 9th level spells...just like the 20th level wizard
-how is the wizard more knowledgeable than the archmage? the archmage has a +13 to arcana...without some form of boost external to the wizard class, a 20th level PC wizard is limited to +11
-why are the arcane ward and projected ward and improved abjuration features not available to a 20th level wizard?

i get that you're playing devil's advocate. just pointing out the flaws in that particular argument. generally i agree with that perspective. but the thing is...the rules don't say that the PC is incapable of learning those things. the rules just say that a PC doesn't inherently pursue those things. Thats my issue with the perspective the OP talked about. there's multitude of ways you can specialize. the given classes are just 1 example, so they have a set list of abilities. its inherent to a class based design.

RSP

2023-10-10, 09:55 AM

JNAProductions

2023-10-10, 10:34 AM

I think 4th removed most strategic effects entirely, rather than implementing an incantation style system.

No, it had Rituals.

Willie the Duck

2023-10-10, 10:55 AM

I think it is important to note that the rules (particularly the PC-facing rules) absolutely are fundamentally built around facilitating, balancing (roughly), and level-gating wandering treasure-hunters or do-gooders going about and doing those activities. That means that there are not spells for common medieval life activities like plowing a field, milling flour, or stonemasonry (despite those being some of the first things you might try to make spells to do, if you lived in such a world). It also means that there aren't (an exhaustive list of) spells for setting up strongholds or other things which an opposing party might treat as a dungeon or adventure site. There are some (most of the 'cast every day for a year and it becomes permanent' spells), but mostly the ones that also have an in-adventure application. Certain editions (especially 3e, which as mentioned above has the advantage of including the xp-cost mechanic) have tried to do more of this, but in general always leave a lot of glaring omissions and odd rules interactions.

The question becomes -- should the PCs be able to access these if they decide to pursue them? Generally, my response is that they should -- but it might require activities that preclude a life of adventuring (casting the same spell every day for a year being the simplest variation thereof). Just like your PC should be able to settle down and become a farmer (using rules not well delineated in and adventuring game), they should be able to settle down and become a dungeon-maker. Whether there needs to be an exhaustive ruleset for this I think is up for debate.

I generally treat it like a grand-scale enchantment.... you are making your castle into a magic item, in effect.
More powerful spells ought be framed as equivalent to crafting a magic item. Expensive material components is highly variable in use as a limitation, and there needs to be a middle ground between 'can cast every day simply by expending a spell slot' and either 1) cast daily for a year, or 2) Wish's 1/3 chance of permanent loss.

Fable Wright

2023-10-10, 11:24 AM

I can't say I agree, having never seen an ability check replicate raise dead, teleport, commune or sending myself.

In certain systems (specifically Pathfinder 2e), I have seen Medicine skill checks raise the (recently) deceased through supreme medical skill (DC 40), and Religion checks divine the wills and knowledge of the gods without a spell slot. I've seen Teleportation Circle as a ritual via Arcana check, without a slot, and Sending is... admittedly spell-only. The ease at which it makes instantaneous communication is very bad for preserving a fantasy feel and I would vastly prefer it to be replaced with Animal Messenger. Gandalf sent a moth to get help from the Eagles, rather than getting a magical cell phone out. But the implications of Sending on the fundamental assumptions of society are not relevant to the topic at hand.

I think it is important to note that the rules (particularly the PC-facing rules) absolutely are fundamentally built around facilitating, balancing (roughly), and level-gating wandering treasure-hunters or do-gooders going about and doing those activities. That means that there are not spells for common medieval life activities like plowing a field, milling flour, or stonemasonry (despite those being some of the first things you might try to make spells to do, if you lived in such a world).

Tangent, but no, those would not be some of the first things you might try to make spells do. The time and money required for wizards to be created is sufficiently high that magic would be the plaything of the nobility only, and the nobility were 'those who fight' in the medieval paradigm. Combat applications would be the first and primary means of development by the only people who could afford to be wizards, in close lockstep with quality of life magic to impress one's peers with the quality of research. The peasant who could benefit from magical plows or mills would never have the time nor resources to invest in discovering the limits on and innovating on magic. Peasants are something that they have too many of in pre-Black Death times, and anything that would reduce the workload of peasants would be considered bass-ackwards by the nobles of the time because there were already more than you knew what to do with. It takes a truly cataclysmic plague to make people ever consider improving the conditions of peasants. You will note that Ancient China had several paradigm-changing inventions proposed to their emperors that would dramatically reduce peasant workload, and those ideas were banned from production because peasants were a renewable resource, and we don't want too many of them having free time.

Spells as presented in the book (especially in AD&D) are relatively in line with what I would expect a medieval society to generate.

Composer99

2023-10-10, 11:44 AM

Just last week, I had two players (they're 11 years old) griping about bandits getting to shoot from behind a two-dimensional picture of a rock on a VTT map.

So, you know, players will complain about a lot of things which may or may not be legitimate causes for complaint.

---
At the metafictional/"game-as-game" level:

Player-facing options are designed (more or less) to provide players with interesting and engaging gameplay of fantastic adventure with repeated use over many days of adventure (with 5e using the "adventuring day" as the assumed basic unit of adventuring time);
NPC-facing options are designed to allow NPCs to provide an (ostensible) interesting and engaging obstacle for players over what is most likely a single encounter;
"Setting-facing" power, such as Candlekeep's anti-teleportation magic, is basically set dressing that helps establish that the player characters live and act in a magical, fantastic setting.

Within the in-game fiction:

Player-facing options represent what people who spend their time adventuring end up being capable of;
NPC-facing options represent what people who spend their time doing something else end up being capable of;
As others have noted, "setting-facing" powers are often the results of ancient magic that might be lost to time and/or magic rituals on the scale of public works projects.

Whatever angle you're approaching it from, to a certain extent, player-facing options and NPC-facing options are meant to be distinct - unless, I suppose, the player characters decide to stop being adventurers and start doing the other things that give them NPC-facing capabilities. At which point either your campaign is over or you're committing to play well outside the "scope", as it were, of D&D - which is fine, in and of itself, but may not be especially interesting or engaging gameplay without a lot of work on the part of both DM and players.

rel

2023-10-10, 11:31 PM

No, it had Rituals.

In certain systems (specifically Pathfinder 2e), I have seen Medicine skill checks raise the (recently) deceased through supreme medical skill (DC 40), and Religion checks divine the wills and knowledge of the gods without a spell slot. I've seen Teleportation Circle as a ritual via Arcana check, without a slot, and Sending is... admittedly spell-only. The ease at which it makes instantaneous communication is very bad for preserving a fantasy feel and I would vastly prefer it to be replaced with Animal Messenger. Gandalf sent a moth to get help from the Eagles, rather than getting a magical cell phone out. But the implications of Sending on the fundamental assumptions of society are not relevant to the topic at hand.

Fair enough then, in 4th or pathfinder 2nd, ability checks really can provide the non-combat utility normally reserved for spellcasting.
Hopefully the barbarian and wizard were given equal access to those systems.

But in 5th edition, if the PC's come across a ruined building drifting miles overhead while crossing the wastes of Netheril the non-casters can bring little to the table in terms of getting up there.

If the challenge isn't remove X HP from thing Y, the spellcasters have their long laundry lists of cosmic power.
But the only things a character with a non-spellcasting class brings to the table is the capacity to make ability checks, use equipment and go questing for an answer. All of which a spellcasting character can also do, and might in fact be able to do better.

Bohandas

2023-10-11, 12:06 AM

In 3.5e there were two RAW metgods to gain the ability to craft artifacts. One was to be a god, and the other was to read certain specific volumes of the Nether Scrolls.

edit:
3.x also had epic spellcasting, which could create global scale effects if you were willing to burn enough xp and/or could hit a high enough spellcraft check DC.

Schwann145

2023-10-11, 12:46 AM

Not sure about lore, but doesn’t Waterdeep have something like this as well, protecting it from Dragons?

Plenty of this stuff around in FR.

Indeed. Ahghairon's dragonward, a mythal cast about 450 years prior to current timeline that covers a 12,800-ft radius dome over the vast majority of the city. :smallsmile:

In fact, on the topic of dragons and mythals and magic no longer available, the Rage of Dragons that happens across Faerun roughly every 300 years is caused by an ancient mythal that the elves constructed around the entirety of Faerun to undermine the rule of dragons millennia ago.

Willie the Duck

2023-10-11, 09:21 AM

Note: since we are talking about activities not exclusive to peasants, I am going to assume we are really talking about peasants, freemen, and commoners.

Tangent, but no, those would not be some of the first things you might try to make spells do. The time and money required for wizards to be created is sufficiently high that magic would be the plaything of the nobility only, and the nobility were 'those who fight' in the medieval paradigm. Combat applications would be the first and primary means of development by the only people who could afford to be wizards, in close lockstep with quality of life magic to impress one's peers with the quality of research. The peasant who could benefit from magical plows or mills would never have the time nor resources to invest in discovering the limits on and innovating on magic.
This is predicated on:
1) Magic being the exclusive domain of the wealthy -- something that does not need to be so, and throughout folklore and mythology, isn't consistently so. It was a decision made in the development of the game. A world full of village hedge-mages who used magic to solve trivial problems is perfectly coherent (and fitting with a more faery-tale style of fantasy world). That isn't what D&D ended up as, but that is my actual point (D&D instead developed to facilitate adventuring in faux-medieval funhouse/sandbox).
2) The social applications being insufficient to warrant it. Admittedly, the examples I used were small, but those were simply what came first to mind. The spell Create Aqueduct is just as absent from the game as Plow Field. As is, I should mention, most military or otherwise nobility-appealing applications excepting AoEs damage spells and Wall of Stone. WotC-era D&D has been slowly winnowing away on spells which create long term consequences or effects larger than a portion of a football field (because, I posit again, the PC-facing rules are focused on facilitating adventurers, not world-changers).
It also misses the military application of freeing your peoples from having to manage their fields, allowing them to be mustered during the labor-intensive portion of farming. Being the only kingdom in the area who could levy their peoples year round would be world-changing.

Peasants are something that they have too many of in pre-Black Death times, and anything that would reduce the workload of peasants would be considered bass-ackwards by the nobles of the time because there were already more than you knew what to do with. It takes a truly cataclysmic plague to make people ever consider improving the conditions of peasants.
The invention of irrigation agriculture (vs horticulture), roads, centralized mills, metal tools, and heck walled settlements to protect them are all developments designed to reduce the workload/improve the efficiency/protect ones investment in peasants/he common folk, and they were all researched and adopted. Regardless, too many people was not a universal, certainly not in an uncertain world. There have been innumerable times (on a local or regional level) where people have starved, or frozen, or otherwise died due to lack of the products of civic output. If you could stop the harvest from failing through some means, it would be seen as immensely valuable.

You will note that Ancient China had several paradigm-changing inventions proposed to their emperors that would dramatically reduce peasant workload, and those ideas were banned from production because peasants were a renewable resource, and we don't want too many of them having free time.
What you are saying it is a product so valuable it has to be banned lest it disrupt society. That sounds exactly like one of the fist things someone would try to do once they realized magic could do this.

Fable Wright

2023-10-11, 02:43 PM

Note: since we are talking about activities not exclusive to peasants, I am going to assume we are really talking about peasants, freemen, and commoners.

This is predicated on:
1) Magic being the exclusive domain of the wealthy -- something that does not need to be so, and throughout folklore and mythology, isn't consistently so. It was a decision made in the development of the game. A world full of village hedge-mages who used magic to solve trivial problems is perfectly coherent (and fitting with a more faery-tale style of fantasy world). That isn't what D&D ended up as, but that is my actual point (D&D instead developed to facilitate adventuring in faux-medieval funhouse/sandbox).

My logic for this assumption:
1. The development of physics is something that was the exclusive domain of the wealthy. In theory, it did not need to be so—anyone can observe and measure the rate of apples falling to the ground, and spend the time to realize that the Aristolean paradigm of natural motion did not account for the fact that objects' velocity was increasing the longer they fell. And yet, it was not. Why? It's because there are a number of requirements for specific developments. Namely, books (which, being parchment and hand-written, are very expensive) to know what work has been done, a basic understanding of arithmetic, the ability to write down and record findings, and the free time required to study and investigate these basic questions. Anyone who was amongst the nobility would have an insurmountable edge in any learning-based field over a peasant while the field was being developed.

2. You posit the idea of village hedge mages who use magic as an idea that there must be development sufficient for Plow Fields or Mill Flour without examining the framework of all player-facing magic in the game. Several factors are the level-gated nature of spells; the fact that there are only three classes that can change their spell selection on a daily basis, indicating the framework for iteration on spell development outside of level-ups; and the limited scope of what each spell can do at a given level.

Following the idea of Plant Growth being the first spell that can actively affect a significant portion of a field, you require the following circumstances to occur:
1. A Hedge Mage exists, and has enough experience in his small, out of the way town that he is capable of developing third level spells, which is not a common feat. That's the level at which to sling around fireballs and fly—not exactly, to my understanding, common abilities of hedge wizards in myths—and has been supporting himself through the use of daily spells, cutting down on time for independent research.
2. This Hedge Mage has a sufficient theoretical understanding of magic to use custom spell creation rules, and the time to follow through with them, and the skills to obtain any rare components required for spell creation (also a genre staple, which require combat to obtain or excessive amounts of wealth to purchase from wandering merchants), and remains in a village area where he would continue to have a vested interest in Plow Fields, as opposed to living in a city where he may be able to get the wealth but wouldn't be near a plow and have the time/inclination to care about plowing fields instead of getting money from the nobility.
3. This rural hedge mage, having gotten an incredible level of skill and resources, successfully invents the Plow Field spell, and is not stoned to death by farmers worrying that he can put them out of a job when they already live in precarious circumstances. If one man can do their job in a fraction of the time, they have no reason to work... and those who do not work do not eat. This is common knowledge in the medieval world.
4. This hedge mage successfully manages to teach multiple apprentices to the point of being able to cast third level spells so that the custom spell can propagate, and does not die with its inventor, not written down. He doesn't have bad luck with being unable to get level 0 commoners to level 5 without violent deaths, with his teaching style being unintelligible, and he's willing to teach an apprentice at all and risk his unique skillset being devalued.

(Mill Flour can be done by Unseen Servant ritual, and so is excluded from this conversation. It already exists, in a spell that can do many more things than just mill flour.)

Each of these is a Hard Step, to borrow the parlance of the Hard Steps model of intelligent life that seeks to explain why it appears that the galaxy is not teeming with observable intelligent life after billions of years of development. Each Hard Step is an extraordinarily unlikely event that must occur in order for life to develop to a specific threshold. (Such as the introduction of symbiotic mitochondria within a cell, which was at no point a guaranteed development but is vital for multi-cellular life forms.) If you start from an end state (humans and modern society) and look back at how we got here, it's easy to conclude that we probably should see signs of intelligent life elsewhere. Megastructures at least, because that's the inexorable trajectory of human development. And yet, we don't. That's because each Hard Step of development is sufficiently unlikely that the vast majority of planets, possibly all non-Earth plants, have not reached them and may never reach them.

What you are saying it is a product so valuable it has to be banned lest it disrupt society. That sounds exactly like one of the fist things someone would try to do once they realized magic could do this.

What I am saying is, real life products have been deemed so valuable that they had to be banned lest they disrupt society. They did not see introduction.

You are positing the following chain of events:
1. Of course magic can do these things to improve peoples' lives.
2. So of course someone will get magic to do these things.
3. So of course the D&D world seems illogical for those things not being included despite the fact that they obviously should have been done long ago.

I am positing a counterargument:
1. Magic can theoretically do anything; I agree that it could be done to improve peoples' lives.
2. This does not mean that someone in the medieval world would have done these things, given the societal situation.
3. The D&D world can be logically consistent with its medieval theming and have the provided spell lists make sense as the only spells ever developed due to societal pressures similar to that of the real world.

Let us take, for example, the case of sorcerers. Sorcerers definitely have access to magic reaching to 9th level, and some flexibility with their spells; they do not require a spellbook to determine what their magic can and cannot do. They can come from anywhere. They are some of the very few people who can, out of nowhere, realize that magic is a product that can completely disrupt the society, and doing so would not negatively impact their social station.

The default fluff for sorcerers is that they're hunted with prejudice, shunned, and feared for their powers. The most likely cause of this would be a Noble class also realizing that a Sorcerer could disrupt the fabric of society, and thus instituting cultural propaganda to prevent such things from occurring. After all, the people in charge have the most to lose from a disruption of society. This is the same reason why heresy was hunted down and eradicated with prejudice in the medieval ages; it could disrupt society.

We are dealing with the following facts:
1. D&D is themed after medieval fantasy.
2. There are a set of logical assumptions based off of medieval attitudes that allow for the list of player spells to be the only spells available, and not society-reshaping spells.
3. Should the spells you are positing exist, D&D should be a bare minimum renaissance-era, if not modern world. The renaissance paradigm is the very first time in human history where the thing of value to a ruler is people and the valuable skills they have developed rather than land and the value it has when laborers are introduced.

If we're talking about Eberron, then yes, I would say that a Plow Fields spell makes sense. It's set in a period roughly between world wars 1 and 2; wands of Plow Fields make sense as equivalents of modern plow machinery, and wands of Harvest Fields are the equivalent of a combine harvester. I would personally have it be an infinite-use item of Unseen Servant to fit better with what's in the PHB; but a specific Plow Fields/Harvest Fields spell instead fits, though it's not my cup of tea.

On an infinite timescale? Sure, Plow Fields will probably be invented and widely disseminated at some point. It is by no means necessarily easy or one of the first things to develop, and there's no reason to assume that it should exist in the D&D universe at any time.

Bohandas

2023-10-11, 05:18 PM

Don't you all think those society-disrupting spells and technologies would have a tendency to get handed out by D&D's considerable grab bag of literal gods of chaos

JackPhoenix

2023-10-11, 05:33 PM

Don't you all think those society-disrupting spells and technologies would have a tendency to get handed out by D&D's considerable grab bag of literal gods of chaos

Speaking of gods, there are also forces, both divine and other, that actively prevent progress.

Schwann145

2023-10-11, 06:33 PM

Speaking of gods, there are also forces, both divine and other, that actively prevent progress.

Indeed. As well as gods that grant power to faithful even if they're not of a noble cast. Clerics of Chauntea might be peasant farmers and be granted the sort of power that allows for significant gains in crop production or harvesting, for example.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-11, 08:33 PM

Indeed. As well as gods that grant power to faithful even if they're not of a noble cast. Clerics of Chauntea might be peasant farmers and be granted the sort of power that allows for significant gains in crop production or harvesting, for example.

Sure, but that's another thing: She gives the power to some of her faithful clerics, not every random wizard with few hundred gold to spend on magical ink. You can't reliably build an industry on that basis.

Psyren

2023-10-11, 10:00 PM

Sure, but that's another thing: She gives the power to some of her faithful clerics, not every random wizard with few hundred gold to spend on magical ink. You can't reliably build an industry on that basis.

^ In addition to this, "wizards with a few hundred gold to spend on magical ink" are themselves a tiny minority of a D&D setting's population.

Bohandas

2023-10-11, 10:27 PM

I'm pretty sure Boccob and Zagyg give their power to every wizard with a few hundred gold to spend on magical ink though

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-11, 10:50 PM

I'm pretty sure Boccob and Zagyg give their power to every wizard with a few hundred gold to spend on magical ink though

Definitionally no, otherwise they'd be clerics. Wizards don't get power from gods (that's rather in the definition!)

Bohandas

2023-10-12, 12:35 AM

I meant in a more general sense than directly granting spells.

In any case, there's also Nuitari, Lunitari, and Soliniri.

Speaking of gods, there are also forces, both divine and other, that actively prevent progress.

True, but they're underused (and in the case of the anti-pact-magic organization, badly written) and don't generally have the scope that they need to.

That really ought to be the main thing that Baator does, but it barely even makes the list. Instead it's all left to little used and overly specialized things like those inevitables from the 3e Fiend Folio that go after folks who mess with time.

EDIT:
With regard to spells that plow and/or harvest fields, and to the likely power of random local hedge wizards, it's questionable whether a spell that plows fields would be worthwhile when you could just pile up a bunch of random berries, leaves, roots, and mushrooms from the forest and cast purify food and drink on them

EDIT:
Admittedly the leaves and roots might be pushing it, but definitely any random fruits or mushrooms that you happen to come across

Vahnavoi

2023-10-12, 02:11 AM

Hey guys,
my question popped up on our last session, when my party talked homebrew. They HATE homebrew because it is so often unbalanced and gives NPCs powers, PCs have no access to. We were talking about Candlekeep in this case, which has "cant fly or teleport in" megaspell active at all times. Another similar example is Xonthals tower from Rise of Tiamat(nonflying/teleporting in) or "megaplague" from Tomb of Annihilation, that somehow affects creatures globally.

What really intrigues me as a DM and a module creator is this: When is it ok to place in a module something that is "BS", thus a power/ability unattainable by PCs?

Also I'd really appreciate if you guys could help me make a list of such magic from official modules, so I can study them.

Thank you

There are two slightly different aspects to it. One pertains to asymmetry between player and non-player characters in general, the second to magic in particular.

So, asymmetry: D&D isn't, by default, a battle of wits between two sides of equal play power. That is just one of many possible scenarios. Even sticking to published materials, a dungeon master has the option to, say, throw a high level demon at a low level party, to facilitate particular challenges where the players have to overcome enemies that have resources beyond their own. Nothing ever guarantees player characters get the same resources as their opponents, the game is only ever as balanced as a dungeon master wishes it to be. This is so because a dungeon master isn't merely an opposing player, they are a scenario designer - they are given a wider palette to paint with so they can set up gameplay challenges outside the constraints of player-facing character creation rules. Being able to grant abilities that don't exist in published materials is just one side of that, banning or withholding abilities that do exist in published materials is part of the same package.

Then, magic: all reasons for any character to know any fictional magic are invented BS. There isn't any actual reason for any of these invented BS reasons to cover all forms of magic for any given character. It's perfectly acceptable for a dungeon master to come up with contrived just-so reasoning why player characters are only allowed one set of abilities, and their enemies another. The only justification needed is that the dungeon master manages go craft an interesting scenario around such asymmetry.

For contrast, let's take another game system: Praedor. The world of the game and the post-apocalyptic ruins the titular Praedors explore were created by immortal sorcerers. The players don't get to play said sorcerers. Full stop. Because the theme of the game is about what normal humans can scavenge out of a long-gone society they can neither understand nor replicate. The setting would be easy to adapt to D&D, since going to ancient ruins to look for lost treasure and magic artifacts is the root of what D&D is about, but imagine the crocodile tears over not being allowed to play any kind of spellcaster.

Psyren

2023-10-12, 10:08 AM

I'm pretty sure Boccob and Zagyg give their power to every wizard with a few hundred gold to spend on magical ink though

Even if their power did come from Boccob (or Mystra, Solinari, etc whoever...) that's still a minority. It's like saying "The Bar Association bestows a license to practice law on everyone who passes their exam." Even if that's technically a true statement, the vast majority people in the world don't pass the bar - whether because they tried and failed, or they didn't try at all. And the same is true of Chauntean clerics, Asmodean warlocks etc etc. And the tiny few that do get this kind of power end up more often than not keeping each other in a state of detente. Hence, status quo prevails.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-12, 10:34 AM

To play Devil's advocate from the player's perspective:
"I'm a 20th level Wizard. I am the pinnacle of studied arcane knowledge and skill. I am a world-shaking threat by myself. And I am more powerful and knowledgeable than the Archmage NPC. So why is this Archmage capable of magical understanding and/or magical power that I am not? Why is this unavailable to me, his/her superior in the arcane arts?" (1) Because it took him 50 years in-world to become an archmage, and you went from 1 to 20 in less than two years.
(2) Bounded accuracy. You are still vulnerable to a volley of Orcish Arrows.
(3) Epic boons are in the DMG, which means you either earn them or you don't. You didn't. Quit your whining. (Alternatively, the epic boon that was a quest reward will be mentioned)
(4) You have the wish spell. Quit your whining.
(5) You have a spell book. You have way more spells than that archmage and all of your rituals are free. Quit your whining.
(6) You have an 18th level ability to cast shield at will and misty step (or levitate, or web) at will. Quit your whining.

Also, you are level 20. Congrats on surviving that long.
The campaign is over.
Please write out, one sheet of paper or so, what your wizard will be doing during retirement in the campaign world.

Are you going to DM the next campaign?

LibraryOgre

2023-10-12, 11:05 AM

To play Devil's advocate from the player's perspective:
"I'm a 20th level Wizard. I am the pinnacle of studied arcane knowledge and skill. I am a world-shaking threat by myself. And I am more powerful and knowledgeable than the Archmage NPC. So why is this Archmage capable of magical understanding and/or magical power that I am not? Why is this unavailable to me, his/her superior in the arcane arts?"

I tend to go with "Because he researched it."

In my mind, most adventuring wizards functions more as carpenters, rather than engineers. They can use the tools, and understand the basic principles of their function, but they don't necessarily design brand new things off the beaten path... even if they're researching new spells, it's still "I am making a new tool out of parts I bought at Radio Shack" not "I am designing an entirely new thing, and have to custom-make the tools to build it because the ones I need do not exist."

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-12, 11:11 AM

Psyren

2023-10-12, 11:15 AM

Not directed at anyone in particular:

Your wizard can be the engineer/innovator/researcher just fine! The game just wants you to work with your DM about it instead of beating them over the head with a passage from the rulebook. Not every ability your character might be exposed to in the game needs codified rules for player acquisition; that doesn't make them wholly off-limits either.

LibraryOgre

2023-10-12, 11:23 AM

That's a nice approach, and has a bit of an old school feel to it.

My knees tell me the old school is where I'm supposed to be. :smallbiggrin:

Bohandas

2023-10-12, 11:36 AM

Even if their power did come from Boccob (or Mystra, Solinari, etc whoever...)

Like I said, It's not a matter of it coming from them directly, it's a matter of Boccob's whole thing being the promotion of the spread of magical knowledge. (And the fact that Zagyg is similar with the addition of being very very irresponsible and indifferent to who he pisses off.)

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-12, 11:42 AM

Schwann145

2023-10-12, 03:00 PM

I tend to go with "Because he researched it."

In my mind, most adventuring wizards functions more as carpenters, rather than engineers. They can use the tools, and understand the basic principles of their function, but they don't necessarily design brand new things off the beaten path... even if they're researching new spells, it's still "I am making a new tool out of parts I bought at Radio Shack" not "I am designing an entirely new thing, and have to custom-make the tools to build it because the ones I need do not exist."

I find the opposite to be easier to narratively justify: The archmage spent 50 years doing it safe, apprenticing to a wizard and staying in their tower, learning magic their way, before growing out of an apprenticeship and moving into their own tower, to study the familiar, well-known, readily available, safe magic.

Meanwhile, the adventurer is doing the opposite, exploring dangerous ruins or hostile cultures or perilous dungeons and crypts for all the magic they can get their hands on; safe, unsafe, new, old, foreign, etc.

=======

I think what sticks out (for me at least, can't speak for others here) is that "researching new magic" is a fundamental part of what being a Wizard is all about, yet actually doing it is 100% homebrew territory. There is zero player-facing options, or even suggestions, from the game.

Should everything outside of class advancement be a GM decision? Absolutely. Totally agree. However, the Wizard class fails to deliver on it's own fantasy, and that's jarring. So when you see NPCs that are very clearly and obviously based on the Wizard class getting access to abilities that a player doesn't, it just stands out. (And while, yes, technically every NPC is not a class, the Archmage is very clearly, obviously, an Abjuration Wizard by design.)

Boci

2023-10-12, 03:09 PM

Poor Idea. Example number 3. Legendary actions: gives 3 reactions, not one, during all other turns.

Depends on what you mean by letting players do that. I've given a player a magic item that let them take an action in response to a hostile creature ending their turn within 30ft of them. It was very limited in use, but it was basically a legendary action when it aligned.

Bohandas

2023-10-12, 03:12 PM

Speaking of gods, there are also forces, both divine and other, that actively prevent progress.

They don't really come off as common enough to explain things though. Like this ought to be one of the main types of villainy, but at most it tends to come off as a secondary thing that's also happening in addition to the main evil schemes Thay or Sarlona or wherever.

Like, it needs to be like WH40K or Dune or something where the source of society's stagnation is in charge across most of the world* and hobbling society is a major part of what they do

*or at least a bunch of similar forces, if not necessarily all part of the same power structure

EDIT:
And even in WH40K it kind of seems like the imperium ought to be getting curb stomped by the forces of either tzeentch or slannesh since they are so much greater in sorcery and technology, respectively. The emperor and his henchmen have made their civilization weak on purpose in order to maintain their stranglehold over the people, how have they not been blown away like dust when faced by enemies who have no such weakness

LibraryOgre

2023-10-12, 03:31 PM

I find the opposite to be easier to narratively justify: The archmage spent 50 years doing it safe, apprenticing to a wizard and staying in their tower, learning magic their way, before growing out of an apprenticeship and moving into their own tower, to study the familiar, well-known, readily available, safe magic.

Meanwhile, the adventurer is doing the opposite, exploring dangerous ruins or hostile cultures or perilous dungeons and crypts for all the magic they can get their hands on; safe, unsafe, new, old, foreign, etc.

Story-wise, you will certainly have the wizard who did nothing remarkable for 50 years... but I'd argue, within my analogy, the first person would be a "technician"... good at what they do, but not having done anything innovative.They DID magic, rather than sought it out.

The adventurer, however? He's found an entirely novel kind of magic? How does he learn it? WHEN does he learn it? Because getting a handle on a new kind of magic, the lost secrets of an ancient age, isn't going to happen unless something makes it happen (i.e. how to do it was placed in his mind)... or he sat down and studied to make it work.

I think what sticks out (for me at least, can't speak for others here) is that "researching new magic" is a fundamental part of what being a Wizard is all about, yet actually doing it is 100% homebrew territory. There is zero player-facing options, or even suggestions, from the game.

Yes and no.

First of all, I *don't* think "researching new magic" is a fundamental part of being a wizard... while they study magic, there's also the implication that they retread a lot of ground, learning and improving spell magic and relatively standard enchanting practices. They may figure out how to build a wand of fireballs, or a new spell, but they likely haven't discovered a unique enchanting method, just a different recipe within the standard method.

A standard wizard may be a virtuoso in the kitchen; the best chef ever, with the help of his rat familiar and a combination of well-worn recipes and innovative alterations. The unique magics, the stuff that goes beyond what's in the PH and DMG? That's inventing a microwave.

And that's why it's homebrew, because anything beyond "I make a spell that does thing X" pretty much cannot be in the PH or DMG. They cannot come up with everything you're possibly going to do. They may come up with new things ("What if people made pacts with demons, and got Superpowers?"), or someone else may devise something ("What if we had a magic that you combined different power words to make whatever spell you want?"). While I think there's more guidance that could be done on building spells and the like, the really unique magic is always going to have to be homebrew, or stuck in a supplement.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-12, 03:36 PM

Story-wise, you will certainly have the wizard who did nothing remarkable for 50 years... but I'd argue, within my analogy, the first person would be a "technician"... good at what they do, but not having done anything innovative.They DID magic, rather than sought it out.

The adventurer, however? He's found an entirely novel kind of magic? How does he learn it? WHEN does he learn it? Because getting a handle on a new kind of magic, the lost secrets of an ancient age, isn't going to happen unless something makes it happen (i.e. how to do it was placed in his mind)... or he sat down and studied to make it work.

Yes and no.

First of all, I *don't* think "researching new magic" is a fundamental part of being a wizard... while they study magic, there's also the implication that they retread a lot of ground, learning and improving spell magic and relatively standard enchanting practices. They may figure out how to build a wand of fireballs, or a new spell, but they likely haven't discovered a unique enchanting method, just a different recipe within the standard method.

A standard wizard may be a virtuoso in the kitchen; the best chef ever, with the help of his rat familiar and a combination of well-worn recipes and innovative alterations. The unique magics, the stuff that goes beyond what's in the PH and DMG? That's inventing a microwave.

And that's why it's homebrew, because anything beyond "I make a spell that does thing X" pretty much cannot be in the PH or DMG. They cannot come up with everything you're possibly going to do. They may come up with new things ("What if people made pacts with demons, and got Superpowers?"), or someone else may devise something ("What if we had a magic that you combined different power words to make whatever spell you want?"). While I think there's more guidance that could be done on building spells and the like, the really unique magic is always going to have to be homebrew, or stuck in a supplement.

I agree with this.

For me, wizards discover spells, they don't necessarily invent them. Most D&D worlds are ones full of lost magics, things invented once upon a time...and then lost in one of the many cataclysms, upheavals, or just angry-peasants-with-pitchforks episodes. Adventuring wizards go out into the world, seeking scraps of lost knowledge. Most of the spells in the PHB are exactly that--lost to the normal people (including most wizards). Carefully hoarded by archmages, in scraps in a lost library, etc. A wizard leveling up is going over his notes on how things behaved, piecing together lore he's gathered, and stitching it together. He's a technician, not a scientist. Or at best, he's a field scientist. Not a theoretician, not even a cutting-edge experimentalist with a well-staffed/established lab. They're the guys out there digging up bones and piecing together enough to do what needs to be done.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-12, 04:07 PM

They don't really come off as common enough to explain things though. Like this ought to be one of the main types of villainy, but at most it tends to come off as a secondary thing that's also happening in addition to the main evil schemes Thay or Sarlona or wherever.

Like, it needs to be like WH40K or Dune or something where the source of society's stagnation is in charge across most of the world* and hobbling society is a major part of what they do

*or at least a bunch of similar forces, if not necessarily all part of the same power structure

Villainy? Gond prevents technology getting "out of hand", explicitly stopping gunpowder from working, and Mystra does the same with magic. And Harpers stab anyone who would develop society beyond feudalism in the interest of "fighting tyranny". In FR, stagnation is apparently Good.
As for Eberron, things ARE advancing, and the standard(ish) D&D level is where the developement is right now. 5e style wands with replenishing charges are a new developement (originally in 3.5 as Eternal Wands), as are warforged, airships (... sort of) and all sort of stuff. There were more advanced civilizations, but they are gone and their secrets have been lost, perhaps for the PCs (or villains) to find. Aerenal is stagnant thanks to its ancestor worship and emphasis on doing things the same way they did, but it is technically more advanced than Khorvaire, just in some different ways. Sarlona is more advanced and also stagnant (the stagnation... ahem... stability... is the point). Argonnessen is more advanced, but the dragons aren't sharing their secrets.

And even in WH40K it kind of seems like the imperium ought to be getting curb stomped by the forces of either tzeentch or slannesh since they are so much greater in sorcery and technology, respectively. The emperor and his henchmen have made their civilization weak on purpose in order to maintain their stranglehold over the people, how have they not been blown away like dust when faced by enemies who have no such weakness

Forces of Chaos don't have numbers or anything resembling unity, Tzeentch is spending half its time plotting against itself, because that's its thing. Slaanesh does not have better technology. The Imperium is holding up mostly because it's too massive to fall (also, plot armor), and the Emperor had nothing to do with its current state, that's the result of overreaction after the Horus Heresy and Age of Apostasy, and paranoid attempt to prevent anything like that from happening again. Also, stupidity. Mechanicus is to blame for the technological stagnation (regression), but in a setting where weirdly shaped heating spiral in a toaster may inadvertently form a chaotic rune and cause anyone who eats the toast to be possessed by demons, they can't be entirely blamed they don't want anyone creating new inventions.

Bohandas

2023-10-12, 04:36 PM

Slaanesh does not have better technology.

It doesn't in practice but its backstory strongly suggests that it should. It's a case of what's shown not matching up with what's told. Remember, Slannesh and the Eye of Terror are the Eldar empire

and the Emperor had nothing to do with its current state

Debatable. While I usually do tend to agree with the interpretation that the Ecclesiarchy has been having a 10000 year Weekend At Bernies, or that at the very least that the Emperor is no longer able to give any actual orders, in either which case you would be correct, it's been pointed out to me (I forget where; I think it was a 40K themed thread on this forum a couple of years ago) that there is apparently some evidence to the contrary

Psyren

2023-10-12, 06:18 PM

I agree with this.

For me, wizards discover spells, they don't necessarily invent them. Most D&D worlds are ones full of lost magics, things invented once upon a time...and then lost in one of the many cataclysms, upheavals, or just angry-peasants-with-pitchforks episodes. Adventuring wizards go out into the world, seeking scraps of lost knowledge. Most of the spells in the PHB are exactly that--lost to the normal people (including most wizards). Carefully hoarded by archmages, in scraps in a lost library, etc. A wizard leveling up is going over his notes on how things behaved, piecing together lore he's gathered, and stitching it together. He's a technician, not a scientist. Or at best, he's a field scientist. Not a theoretician, not even a cutting-edge experimentalist with a well-staffed/established lab. They're the guys out there digging up bones and piecing together enough to do what needs to be done.

Right. And if you really want to be the next Bigby or Mordenkainen or Drawmij, you can do that - but even those guys didn't revolutionize the entire industry of their world(s); rather, the majority of what they did was taking some existing spells and putting their own spin on them (e.g. Mage Hand or Dispel Magic.) And maybe go sightseeing other settings for a bit.

Villainy? Gond prevents technology getting "out of hand", explicitly stopping gunpowder from working, and Mystra does the same with magic. And Harpers stab anyone who would develop society beyond feudalism in the interest of "fighting tyranny". In FR, stagnation is apparently Good.

In FR, the Good gods are outnumbered by the Not-Good ones, and we're not even counting those nutjobs lurking in the Far Realm or all the jerks taking up residence in the infinite Lower Planes. It's a setting where the Blood War is the only reason mortals haven't lost already. It's not hard to imagine that barely maintaining the status quo is about all the forces of Good can manage... and keep in mind that that's WITH the regular help of adventurers and alarm-bell prophecies (thanks Alaundo.)

RazorChain

2023-10-12, 07:37 PM

Unoriginal

2023-10-12, 09:29 PM

Bohandas

2023-10-12, 10:27 PM

Lucas Yew

2023-10-13, 04:57 AM

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-13, 08:34 AM

Depends on what you mean by letting players do that. I've given a player a magic item that let them take an action in response to a hostile creature ending their turn within 30ft of them. It was very limited in use, but it was basically a legendary action when it aligned. Magic items bend a lot of the basic rules, so this fits the core assumptions pretty well.

Most D&D worlds are ones full of lost magics, things invented once upon a time...and then lost in one of the many cataclysms, upheavals, or just angry-peasants-with-pitchforks episodes. Adventuring wizards go out into the world, seeking scraps of lost knowledge. That is a core conceit of the D&D as a genre of its own.

In Europe the term journeyman comes from artisans that traveled in their journeyman years to other places to learn new methods from different places and bring them back home before they became masters.

So yes journeyman wizards should be traveling and discovering new magics *golf clap*

For Lucas: lets get back to basics here.
PC omniscience isn't a good thing.
The PCs discover things over the course of their journeys and adventures. Some things are horrors, some are secrets, some are magic items, some are magicks, some are loot/artifacts/lost lore. That is a fundamental aspect of the D&D game that has not changed; PC and players discovering things in a make-believe world, and while so doing getting slowly better at {class features and skills} as you make the journey and climb the level ladder.

(PS: even in video games / CRPGs, NPC skills aren't all available to PCs, although some are.
The player never gets Diablo's breath ability in Diablo II, for example, nor Baal's weird colored attack).

LibraryOgre

2023-10-13, 09:06 AM

I Europe the term journeyman comes from artisans that traveled in their journeyman years to other places to learn new methods from different places and bring them back home before they became masters.

So yes journeyman wizards should be traveling and discovering new magics

I am drawing a distinction between "spells" and "magics".

Most wizards discover and learn new and/or forgotten spells. It may be rescuing the spellbook of Fistandantilus from Xak Tsaroth, it may be coming up with the Bagby's Foot line of spells, but they are bringing new spells into the world. This extends to enchanting, as well; they're coming up with new formulas for healing potions and magic swords... they may even be unique formulas... but they're they're still formulas within the accepted framework.

What they are not doing is discovering new magics... unique ways of doing magic. They aren't out discovering True Naming and Binding. They aren't recreating Rune Magic from first principles. Partially, because I doubt there's enough unique kinds of magic for every wizard with a pack on their back to find something unique.

To go back to your journeyman example, they may have gone to other places and learned things not known to their masters... but they're also not inventing the lava-forge on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, or learning how to extract titanium.

Vahnavoi

2023-10-13, 09:09 AM

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-13, 12:03 PM

Video games are all over the place when it comes to character symmetry, so trying to use them to build a case either for or against, without specifying a game and why that game does things the way it does, is madness.
Plenty of modern players enter the TTRPG scene with CRPG/Video game experiences informing their assumptions about fantastical worlds (above and beyond books, movies, comic books, etc).

Vahnavoi

2023-10-13, 12:36 PM

KaussH

2023-10-13, 02:45 PM

Right. And if you really want to be the next Bigby or Mordenkainen or Drawmij, you can do that - but even those guys didn't revolutionize the entire industry of their world(s); rather, the majority of what they did was taking some existing spells and putting their own spin on them (e.g. Mage Hand or Dispel Magic.) And maybe go sightseeing other settings for a bit.

In old lore it was mostly the other way around, other versions of the spells were knock offs or generic versions of the spells they pioneered.

Psyren

2023-10-13, 02:57 PM

I think the important part is whether or not there's an in-universe reason for the difference. A monster having some ability that's unique to it is fine by me, but a NPC wizard having a spell a PC wizard can never have because they're a PC is not.

More or less my stance on the topic. My signature, if viewable, emphasizes this in bullet #2 again...

Two follow-up questions for the two of you then:

1) Can you give a flavor for the types of "in-universe explanations" you find acceptable? For example, Drow Shadowblades/House Captains have a poison that players don't have a codified way to access. Is there an explanation that would work for you as to why? (Personally mine would be - "this poison is divine in origin and functions for drow cultists of Lolth.")

2) If it's possible for the PC to gain such abilities by working with their DM (i.e. fiat), is that acceptable to you, or are you advocating specifically for some kind of universal/codified avenue in the rules to obtain NPC powers? Say, for the above example, becoming a worshiper of Lolth or serving her goals isn't enough, you'd want there to be a way to reproduce this magical poison in an alchemical lab.

In old lore it was mostly the other way around, other versions of the spells were knock offs or generic versions of the spells they pioneered.

That's fair, I could see their spell research going both ways - something new that gets mass produced later, or a unique twist on something that was previously widely available.

Batcathat

2023-10-13, 03:36 PM

Two follow-up questions for the two of you then:

1) Can you give a flavor for the types of "in-universe explanations" you find acceptable? For example, Drow Shadowblades/House Captains have a poison that players don't have a codified way to access. Is there an explanation that would work for you as to why? (Personally mine would be - "this poison is divine in origin and functions for drow cultists of Lolth.")

2) If it's possible for the PC to gain such abilities by working with their DM (i.e. fiat), is that acceptable to you, or are you advocating specifically for some kind of universal/codified avenue in the rules to obtain NPC powers? Say, for the above example, becoming a worshiper of Lolth or serving her goals isn't enough, you'd want there to be a way to reproduce this magical poison in an alchemical lab.

While individual explanations can obviously be more or less satisfying, I don't require any particular flavor to the explanation, just that there is one. Since the PC/NPC divide typically don't exist in-universe, having it decide who can do what in-universe isn't very good for my suspension of disbelief. Also, I would be annoyed if a GM came up with an explanation but then moved the goalposts if a PC reached them. For example, if they use your explanation for the drow poison but then a PC become a drow cultist and it still doesn't work for some additional reason.

I'm perfectly fine with reasons (whether codified or improvised) so specific and hard to attain that it's almost certain that the PC won't be able to achieve them, because the point isn't that the PCs need to be able to do everything, it's that out-of-universe factors like who's a PC and who's an NPC shouldn't decide in-universe factors like who can do what.

Psyren

2023-10-13, 04:06 PM

While individual explanations can obviously be more or less satisfying, I don't require any particular flavor to the explanation, just that there is one. Since the PC/NPC divide typically don't exist in-universe, having it decide who can do what in-universe isn't very good for my suspension of disbelief. Also, I would be annoyed if a GM came up with an explanation but then moved the goalposts if a PC reached them. For example, if they use your explanation for the drow poison but then a PC become a drow cultist and it still doesn't work for some additional reason.

Well, I'd argue that it's probably very hard to be both a free-willed PC and so dedicated a Lolth cultist that she grants you her divine poison - even in an evil campaign. But I'd probably work with the player on something close to that anyway.

I'm perfectly fine with reasons (whether codified or improvised) so specific and hard to attain that it's almost certain that the PC won't be able to achieve them, because the point isn't that the PCs need to be able to do everything, it's that out-of-universe factors like who's a PC and who's an NPC shouldn't decide in-universe factors like who can do what.

So if as a DM I were to say "sure, you can aspire to learn X, but it's highly unlikely you'd ever achieve that, or it might take the entire campaign" - you'd be okay with that? I could see some variation of that being acceptable.

Batcathat

2023-10-13, 04:14 PM

So if as a DM I were to say "sure, you can aspire to learn X, but it's highly unlikely you'd ever achieve that, or it might take the entire campaign" - you'd be okay with that? I could see some variation of that being acceptable.

It would depend a bit on the details (like whether it makes sense for it to be so hard to learn X, whether NPCs who can do it are likely to have faced a similar process, etc.) but in general, sure, something like that would be alright. It's the difference between a GM creating an enemy so powerful that the PCs are extremely unlikely to defeat it in combat and the GM just deciding "You can't win". The end result is likely more or less identical, but I mind one much less than the other. (This is a matter of taste, of course, since I've heard people say they would prefer it if the GM did the latter).

Rukelnikov

2023-10-14, 11:47 AM

Villainy? Gond prevents technology getting "out of hand", explicitly stopping gunpowder from working, and Mystra does the same with magic. And Harpers stab anyone who would develop society beyond feudalism in the interest of "fighting tyranny". In FR, stagnation is apparently Good.
As for Eberron, things ARE advancing, and the standard(ish) D&D level is where the developement is right now. 5e style wands with replenishing charges are a new developement (originally in 3.5 as Eternal Wands), as are warforged, airships (... sort of) and all sort of stuff. There were more advanced civilizations, but they are gone and their secrets have been lost, perhaps for the PCs (or villains) to find. Aerenal is stagnant thanks to its ancestor worship and emphasis on doing things the same way they did, but it is technically more advanced than Khorvaire, just in some different ways. Sarlona is more advanced and also stagnant (the stagnation... ahem... stability... is the point). Argonnessen is more advanced, but the dragons aren't sharing their secrets.

Adding to this, also take into account that industrial/engineering progress isn't ubiquitous, for instance Modrons can build giant laser cannons to shoot into portals, and spelljammer ships exist, so while Faerun/Toril may be forcefully stuck in the middle ages, no everything in the planes is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZZEPoVb4c

jjordan

2023-10-14, 12:24 PM

1) Can you give a flavor for the types of "in-universe explanations" you find acceptable? For example, Drow Shadowblades/House Captains have a poison that players don't have a codified way to access. Is there an explanation that would work for you as to why? (Personally mine would be - "this poison is divine in origin and functions for drow cultists of Lolth.") In my setting many, but not all, of the Drow poisons are produced in religious ceremonies where Lolth lends a portion of her power to the production. So players wouldn't be able to get access to the poison unless they found unused doses on the body of a Drow.

2) If it's possible for the PC to gain such abilities by working with their DM (i.e. fiat), is that acceptable to you, or are you advocating specifically for some kind of universal/codified avenue in the rules to obtain NPC powers? Say, for the above example, becoming a worshiper of Lolth or serving her goals isn't enough, you'd want there to be a way to reproduce this magical poison in an alchemical lab.I'm always willing to work with PCs to give them access to non-standard capabilities but sometimes there are hard stops; as above with the requirement for Lolth to contribute to the poison production. I try to keep things balanced for this reason but don't have a universal/codified way to enforce this. And a lot of the balance is setting specific rather than generic mechanics. My Servant of the Apsara warlocks got a huge boost from their pact to serve (an opportunity available at the end of an adventure) but also had some significant, ongoing requirements that, if not satisfied, would result in losing their powers and incurring significant penalties (up to and including death).

Unoriginal

2023-10-14, 12:45 PM

Adding to this, also take into account that industrial/engineering progress isn't ubiquitous, for instance Modrons can build giant laser cannons to shoot into portals, and spelljammer ships exist, so while Faerun/Toril may be forcefully stuck in the middle ages, no everything in the planes is.

Toril has printing presses, airships, submarines and functional automatons, including fully sapient ones. It is not stuck in pseudo-medievalia.

What it doesn't have is a coal-based industrial revolution or factories producing advanced technology en masse.

So yeah, not only the tech isn't spread evenly to all planes and worlds, the tech isn't spread evenly on each world.

Worth noting, though, that while Modrons may seem technologically advanced, they and everything in Mechanius is just look like that due to being representations of universal Order.

By which I mean that they're no more a technological creation than a demon is.

Rukelnikov

2023-10-14, 12:49 PM

Toril has printing presses, airships, submarines and functional automatons, including fully sapient ones. It is not stuck in pseudo-medievalia.

What it doesn't have is a coal-based industrial revolution or factories producing advanced technology en masse.

So yeah, not only the tech isn't spread evenly to all planes and worlds, the tech isn't spread evenly on each world.

True /10 chars

Anymage

2023-10-14, 07:29 PM

Toril has printing presses, airships, submarines and functional automatons, including fully sapient ones. It is not stuck in pseudo-medievalia.

Toril has been an active world for decades. It may not always be well written, but the need for novels, adventures, and splat has caused events to happen and new technologies to come about if for no other reason than some freelancer had a cool idea for a spell.

There is a certain themeparkiness in play when advances only seem to happen when there's an opportunity for an adventurer or major protagonist to get directly involved. I'm not going to complain too loudly because I don't have the time or brainpower to fully think through all the possible offscreen changes, but one usual sign is when a group is mentioned as having had a stable society for centuries or millennia (because authors like big numbers while not really understanding them), but promptly get embroiled in major events and start having some of their own because another author thinks they're a cool toy to play with.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-15, 08:01 AM

@KorvinStarmast: I don't disagree, it's just that which games they come from will radically change what they expect. How symmetric characters are in computer varies game by game and videogame designers themselves have differing opinions on how good an idea is, or what it is good for. True enough.

That's fair, I could see their spell research going both ways - something new that gets mass produced later, or a unique twist on something that was previously widely available. The original game had spell research (as did AD&D 1e) and it was possible for it to fail. <=== That is an important aspect of it. It's not "push button, get banana" style. And, it keeps the adventurer hungry for more assets, hence take on dangerous adventures ... you could re implement that via the DMG guidelines on spells and the DM/Player working together. And it would need to take down time and cost substantial resources.

In my setting many, but not all, of the Drow poisons are produced in religious ceremonies where Lolth lends a portion of her power to the production. So players wouldn't be able to get access to the poison unless they found unused doses on the body of a Drow. And that works.

Toril has printing presses, airships, submarines and functional automatons, including fully sapient ones. It is not stuck in pseudo-medievalia. Part of the incoherence of the setting ...

Toril has been an active world for decades. It may not always be well written, but the need for novels, adventures, and splat has caused events to happen and new technologies to come about if for no other reason than some freelancer had a cool idea for a spell.
Yes. Or a cool tattoo (Azure Bonds). The list is long and hardly distinguished.

goodpeople25

2023-10-15, 02:47 PM

Part of the incoherence of the setting ...
You think that's incoherent wait till I tell you about my new campaign setting which has tech that's all over the place in regards to advanceness.

It's called earth.

Witty Username

2023-10-15, 10:50 PM

Fun fact, the rapier was invented after the printing press.
Some level of magic impacting the setting and having a greater level of tech than medival makes d&d more coherent not less.

Unoriginal

2023-10-16, 02:25 AM

Fun fact, the rapier was invented after the printing press.

And the Inca Empire was established after Oxford University.

KaussH

2023-10-16, 09:53 AM

Overall, I see no real reason for PCs and NPCs to be limited to the same tools and toys. There are pages and pages of how NPCs should be made with stat blocks and short cuts and just using the needed bits since PCs are cool and unique and ect. But on the off chance some PC might want to do something X NPC does some of you say the GM needs to be fair and make sure it is reverse compatible? :) Nah

If I put something into the game and the players think its cool enuf to all get together and make it a new plot point, well thats one thing, thats kinda cool. But just as a "I am building the world or adventure" matter, as GM I dont feel limited to doing just what PCs can do or have. As GM "Playing fair" is a much wider thing than it is for a single combat or build. And a lot of it depends on the setting and game as well. Things like this always feel like those games where the PCs want to make a list of spells the GM cant use against the PCs, or make rules saying the PCs can lose items as their builds depends on them. That is a game style yes, but not one thats so fun for me. And if I am not having fun GMing, I wont GM.

Psyren

2023-10-16, 11:44 AM

True enough.
The original game had spell research (as did AD&D 1e) and it was possible for it to fail. <=== That is an important aspect of it. It's not "push button, get banana" style. And, it keeps the adventurer hungry for more assets, hence take on dangerous adventures ... you could re implement that via the DMG guidelines on spells and the DM/Player working together. And it would need to take down time and cost substantial resources.

My issue with codifying this kind of research, is that if it's possible for success and failure to be entirely mechanical, that will almost invariably lead to folks gaming the system, stacking every possible means of optimizing their check to get whatever custom spell they want. But if you're instead relying on the DM to only let through spells they want to allow, then the codified mechanics aren't actually doing anything, and you might as well not codify them in the first place. I can't think of any time codified spell creation mechanics have ever really worked in D&D, whether we're talking about things like wordcasting, incantations, epic spells, and even more limited/personal things like Create/Modify Spell etc.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-16, 12:13 PM

My issue with codifying this kind of research, is that if it's possible for success and failure to be entirely mechanical, that will almost invariably lead to folks gaming the system, stacking every possible means of optimizing their check to get whatever custom spell they want. But if you're instead relying on the DM to only let through spells they want to allow, then the codified mechanics aren't actually doing anything, and you might as well not codify them in the first place. I can't think of any time codified spell creation mechanics have ever really worked in D&D, whether we're talking about things like wordcasting, incantations, epic spells, and even more limited/personal things like Create/Modify Spell etc.

This I completely agree with. I'm all for giving DMs more guidance on how to build good spells[1]. I'm opposed to mechanizing it for player consumption. For all the reasons presented here.

[1] Although I absolutely do not trust WotC to actually provide good guidance on this matter, as their track record of creating well-balanced, interesting spells is...not good. On either side of the balance equation. Or the interesting equation.

Psyren

2023-10-16, 12:48 PM

[1] Although I absolutely do not trust WotC to actually provide good guidance on this matter, as their track record of creating well-balanced, interesting spells is...not good. On either side of the balance equation. Or the interesting equation.

For me, the best possible guidance is the guidance they already give - "look at an existing spell," which is of course the very first sentence in that DMG section.

So if I wanted to create a new spell - as an outlandish example, let's say I wanted something called "Command Undead" - I would start from the Command spell, but make it Necromancy, and only work on undead. Being more situational than the regular Command spell, I would probably buff it slightly, say by removing the language and/or directly harmful requirements (a skeleton probably wouldn't care even if an Approach command made it walk into a pit.) Just like that, I'd have a brand new balanced spell.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-16, 12:57 PM

For me, the best possible guidance is the guidance they already give - "look at an existing spell," which is of course the very first sentence in that DMG section.

So if I wanted to create a new spell - as an outlandish example, let's say I wanted something called "Command Undead" - I would start from the Command spell, but make it Necromancy, and only work on undead. Being more situational than the regular Command spell, I would probably buff it slightly, say by removing the language and/or directly harmful requirements (a skeleton probably wouldn't care even if an Approach command made it walk into a pit.) Just like that, I'd have a brand new balanced spell.

IFF "command" was already a balanced spell. Which that particular example may be...but yeah. Most are definitely not.

"Start from existing examples" only works as good guidance if the existing examples are all of representative[1], well-explained, and balanced. For spells, none of those are true for the entire set. They're a hodgepodge of balanced and utterly WTF (in both directions!) items. They're ludicrously not-representative, as they're biased very strongly in some directions (ie fire damage spells) and have huge gaps in other directions, and they're all just ad hoc "this is thing. Which fits very few, if any, of the other guidance."

Good guidance would include design theory--what makes a balanced spell, what the "cost" (in spell levels) is of various non-damaging effects, discussion about spell lists, limits on what should be a spell, what should have concentration, etc. None of those are things that WotC has shown any inkling of understanding themselves, about their own game, based on what they've printed.

[1] not meaning "covering all possible points", but "have an on-all-fours example for each supported type of spell you are expected to be able to create".

NichG

2023-10-16, 01:05 PM

IFF "command" was already a balanced spell. Which that particular example may be...but yeah. Most are definitely not.

"Start from existing examples" only works as good guidance if the existing examples are all of representative[1], well-explained, and balanced. For spells, none of those are true for the entire set. They're a hodgepodge of balanced and utterly WTF (in both directions!) items. They're ludicrously not-representative, as they're biased very strongly in some directions (ie fire damage spells) and have huge gaps in other directions, and they're all just ad hoc "this is thing. Which fits very few, if any, of the other guidance."

Good guidance would include design theory--what makes a balanced spell, what the "cost" (in spell levels) is of various non-damaging effects, discussion about spell lists, limits on what should be a spell, what should have concentration, etc. None of those are things that WotC has shown any inkling of understanding themselves, about their own game, based on what they've printed.

[1] not meaning "covering all possible points", but "have an on-all-fours example for each supported type of spell you are expected to be able to create".

Also a set of consistent metaphysics linking tier and types of spells, their method of action, and underlying principles. E.g. going back to things like 'arcane magic cannot heal', but more thoroughly set out and explained e.g. 'fundamentally all spells of this type of magic work by some variation of creating microscopic portals which only certain limited things can pass through - a spell that freezes metal creates microscopic portals through which heat escapes, a spell that stops someone in mid-fall creates a portal that has them exchange momentum with the planet below them, etc; anything that the player cannot conceptualize in these terms cannot be made within this school of magic, and the GM is the final arbiter of whether the explanation of the mechanism makes sense for the desired effect'.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-16, 01:15 PM

Also a set of consistent metaphysics linking tier and types of spells, their method of action, and underlying principles. E.g. going back to things like 'arcane magic cannot heal', but more thoroughly set out and explained e.g. 'fundamentally all spells of this type of magic work by some variation of creating microscopic portals which only certain limited things can pass through - a spell that freezes metal creates microscopic portals through which heat escapes, a spell that stops someone in mid-fall creates a portal that has them exchange momentum with the planet below them, etc; anything that the player cannot conceptualize in these terms cannot be made within this school of magic, and the GM is the final arbiter of whether the explanation of the mechanism makes sense for the desired effect'.

Yeah, that'd be nice. But I'd expect that to be very setting-specific. At least in a world that doesn't force everything into the straight-jacket of the uniform-metaphysics-multiverse. Which again, isn't the world we live in currently (in any sense).

NichG

2023-10-16, 01:44 PM

Yeah, that'd be nice. But I'd expect that to be very setting-specific. At least in a world that doesn't force everything into the straight-jacket of the uniform-metaphysics-multiverse. Which again, isn't the world we live in currently (in any sense).

I think if you're going to establish that a bunch of powers exist like 'spells' by printing player-facing material, you're already specifying something about setting metaphysics implicitly there. If you have a spell that lets your soul leave your body and possess someone else, and that results in you acting with your full memory, persona, continuity of experience, etc via that new body, you're establishing a lot about the nature of the soul in that setting. So I think it'd be better to own that and approach it intentionally. It wouldn't be a bad DM-facing splatbook for example, to say 'we tried to be consistent about how we wrote spells and powers, here's what our canon was and why things are this way, of course you can throw this out and make your own head-canon for your own setting but this is what such a framework looks like'.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-16, 01:46 PM

I think if you're going to establish that a bunch of powers exist like 'spells' by printing player-facing material, you're already specifying something about setting metaphysics implicitly there. If you have a spell that lets your soul leave your body and possess someone else, and that results in you acting with your full memory, persona, continuity of experience, etc via that new body, you're establishing a lot about the nature of the soul in that setting. So I think it'd be better to own that and approach it intentionally. It wouldn't be a bad DM-facing splatbook for example, to say 'we tried to be consistent about how we wrote spells and powers, here's what our canon was and why things are this way, of course you can throw this out and make your own head-canon for your own setting but this is what such a framework looks like'.

I'm just afraid that the current state is incoherent and getting to anything like a coherent metaphysics of magic requires reworking magic and spells entirely.

Psyren

2023-10-16, 01:53 PM

IFF "command" was already a balanced spell. Which that particular example may be...but yeah. Most are definitely not.

"Start from existing examples" only works as good guidance if the existing examples are all of representative[1], well-explained, and balanced. For spells, none of those are true for the entire set. They're a hodgepodge of balanced and utterly WTF (in both directions!) items. They're ludicrously not-representative, as they're biased very strongly in some directions (ie fire damage spells) and have huge gaps in other directions, and they're all just ad hoc "this is thing. Which fits very few, if any, of the other guidance."

I actually disagree, or at least I think you're looking at "balance" in the wrong direction. I'd say most spells are, if anything, underpowered (i.e. Sturgeon's Law). There are certainly a number of examples that spike too high (like Simulacrum) or are poorly worded (like Plant Growth) and those would indeed be horrible candidates to brew from - but overall, if you look at just about any caster handbook, you're generally going to see more red and orange at each spell level than blue and green. So I think the install base of viable existing spells to build from and customize something that isn't likely to break the game, even if the end result is slightly stronger, is larger than you might believe.

Good guidance would include design theory--what makes a balanced spell, what the "cost" (in spell levels) is of various non-damaging effects, discussion about spell lists, limits on what should be a spell, what should have concentration, etc. None of those are things that WotC has shown any inkling of understanding themselves, about their own game, based on what they've printed.

Yeah, there's no way to include this kind of thing in the core book without doubling the spell chapter and creating a lot of clutter for players to wade through. Or worse, putting in the DMG, at which point you either have spell text being reproduced in two places or are forcing the customizer to look back and forth between both books, once of which isn't even player-facing. So I still think "look at existing spells" is the only model that really works - and as per the above, there are more viable examples to draw from than not.

NichG

2023-10-16, 02:13 PM

I'm just afraid that the current state is incoherent and getting to anything like a coherent metaphysics of magic requires reworking magic and spells entirely.

Which is why they won't do that, sure. But I do think its worth doing that. At this point I've basically got my own total rewrite of the spell list from scratch I use whenever I run anything D&D. I won't say its no big deal, but it took me maybe a month to do it at no more than about an hour or two a day, for about 500 entries total across spell/maneuver/etc lists.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-16, 02:36 PM

My issue with codifying this kind of research, is that if it's possible for success and failure to be entirely mechanical, that will almost invariably lead to folks gaming the system, stacking every possible means of optimizing their check to get whatever custom spell they want. I understand that optimizingminmaxingmunchkinry is a mini game that some people play. Using the DMG guidance for spell level still helps.

But if you're instead relying on the DM to only let through spells they want to allow, then the codified mechanics aren't actually doing anything, and you might as well not codify them in the first place. I find that kind of defeatist attitude to be non-productive.

I can't think of any time codified spell creation mechanics have ever really worked in D&D I remember one vividly. Created a spell at level 2 called Airball that I worked out with my DM (original game+Greyhawk, late 70's) ... a custom fusion of the ideas behind fireball and magic missile, which had a stun effect like a monk's from Blackmoor) ... it fit OK.
Some years later I discover that a spell very much like it (now called Shatter) is a part of the game with the far simpler effect of thunder damage.
Great minds work alike, I suppose.
I think if you're going to establish that a bunch of powers exist like 'spells' by printing player-facing material, you're already specifying something about setting metaphysics implicitly there. Yes, but that's pretty general.

Psyren

2023-10-16, 03:09 PM

I find that kind of defeatist attitude to be non-productive.

Hey, I'd be happy for WotC (or Paizo for that matter) to prove me wrong. Any decade now...

I remember one vividly. Created a spell at level 2 called Airball that I worked out with my DM (original game+Greyhawk, late 70's) ... a custom fusion of the ideas behind fireball and magic missile, which had a stun effect like a monk's from Blackmoor) ... it fit OK.
Some years later I discover that a spell very much like it (now called Shatter) is a part of the game with the far simpler effect of thunder damage.

Was it truly just the bold you relied on to make it, or did you actually utilize codified spell creation rules? If so, which ones?

jjordan

2023-10-16, 03:18 PM

I'm just afraid that the current state is incoherent and getting to anything like a coherent metaphysics of magic requires reworking magic and spells entirely.Well, yes, but, then again, no. If you look at the current spell lists as being magical ammunition usable by magic-capable units in a tabletop fantasy wargame then it's pretty decent. Ruydard Kipling observed that "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right." It's fairly simple to implement various metaphysics of magic and you can have multiple versions and even contradictory versions existing side by side if you simply cover it in your world lore. The DMG tells us the rules are guidelines to aid in play. I've implemented entire alternate magic systems in games and had them exist side-by-side with the core rules. All doable.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-16, 03:25 PM

Well, yes, but, then again, no. If you look at the current spell lists as being magical ammunition usable by magic-capable units in a tabletop fantasy wargame then it's pretty decent. Ruydard Kipling observed that "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right." It's fairly simple to implement various metaphysics of magic and you can have multiple versions and even contradictory versions existing side by side if you simply cover it in your world lore. The DMG tells us the rules are guidelines to aid in play. I've implemented entire alternate magic systems in games and had them exist side-by-side with the core rules. All doable.

If there's an overarching metaphysics of magic (or anything, in fact), which was what was asked for, having things that contradict it causes problems, at least if you want a coherent world. And if you want to actually have any value out of that metaphysic. If the metaphysic doesn't actually explain anything, it's not a useful metaphysic.

Now that metaphsyic may allow multiple means of access, but the underlying ground rules have to be single-valued and internally consistent unless you just don't care about coherence at all.

The current spells imply metaphysic that is not coherent within itself, even while it pretends to be. That's because D&D's magic system is just a bunch of random effects thrown together across 50 years of people making things up cowboy style with no underlying principles. And that's valid, it's just not coherent. And makes giving guidance about such things really hard. The fundamental root of the caster/martial problem is that there are no ground rules for spells themselves, only spells that haven't been printed yet. There isn't even the concept of "no, spells can't do X". And that's necessary to have a consistent metaphysic.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-16, 03:53 PM

Was it truly just the bold you relied on to make it, or did you actually utilize codified spell creation rules? If so, which ones? I had to expend the gold (in character) after having explained the spell and gettng his input on what would make it a level 2 spell. He was trying to ensure that it wasn't too powerful as he walked through my proposal.

Have you ever read Men and Magic?

Schwann145

2023-10-16, 04:04 PM

My issue with codifying this kind of research, is that if it's possible for success and failure to be entirely mechanical, that will almost invariably lead to folks gaming the system, stacking every possible means of optimizing their check to get whatever custom spell they want. But if you're instead relying on the DM to only let through spells they want to allow, then the codified mechanics aren't actually doing anything, and you might as well not codify them in the first place. I can't think of any time codified spell creation mechanics have ever really worked in D&D, whether we're talking about things like wordcasting, incantations, epic spells, and even more limited/personal things like Create/Modify Spell etc.

Bolded for relevant emphasis:
I find this conclusion interesting, because Epic Spells have built-in mechanics to directly oppose your concern here. If you just throw all the good stuff into the spell you want to craft, then the Spellcraft DC would be impossible to achieve. You had to both limit yourself and throw drawbacks into each crafting in order to have any chance at success.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-16, 04:11 PM

Bolded for relevant emphasis:
I find this conclusion interesting, because Epic Spells have built-in mechanics to directly oppose your concern here. If you just throw all the good stuff into the spell you want to craft, then the Spellcraft DC would be impossible to achieve. You had to both limit yourself and throw drawbacks into each crafting in order to have any chance at success.

Except there were ways to optimize around that by taking meaningless (in context) penalties/restrictions. Just like "Flaws" that give character creation points end up being gamed to heck and back (oh yes, I'll take "cannot swim" in a completely land-locked campaign, thanks for my free feat!).

And @Psyren--I'd fully expect the guidelines for DMs on spell creation to not be in the PHB and be in either a splat or in the DMG. That's what I mean by "DM-facing, not player-facing." It's not hidden from players, but the expectation is that players interact with it via their DM. Players initiate the "hey, I want to create a spell" conversation, but DMs do the heavy lifting. Just like they do with any other homebrew. Because that's what it is--homebrew.

Psyren

2023-10-16, 04:23 PM

Bolded for relevant emphasis:
I find this conclusion interesting, because Epic Spells have built-in mechanics to directly oppose your concern here. If you just throw all the good stuff into the spell you want to craft, then the Spellcraft DC would be impossible to achieve. You had to both limit yourself and throw drawbacks into each crafting in order to have any chance at success.

Epic Spellcasting supports my point rather than refuting it. The entire system is a joke - either you play it straight and end up with a spell that's
worse than most normal high-level spells (cf most all of the printed ones), one you can't cast at all, or else you cheese it with mitigating factors (get a few fanatics to circle with you, or thought bottle/Do The Wight Thing to eliminate an expensive XP cost, or render yourself unkillable by backlash damage etc.)

jjordan

2023-10-16, 05:21 PM

If there's an overarching metaphysics of magic (or anything, in fact), which was what was asked for, having things that contradict it causes problems, at least if you want a coherent world. And if you want to actually have any value out of that metaphysic. If the metaphysic doesn't actually explain anything, it's not a useful metaphysic.

Now that metaphsyic may allow multiple means of access, but the underlying ground rules have to be single-valued and internally consistent unless you just don't care about coherence at all.

The current spells imply metaphysic that is not coherent within itself, even while it pretends to be. That's because D&D's magic system is just a bunch of random effects thrown together across 50 years of people making things up cowboy style with no underlying principles. And that's valid, it's just not coherent. And makes giving guidance about such things really hard. The fundamental root of the caster/martial problem is that there are no ground rules for spells themselves, only spells that haven't been printed yet. There isn't even the concept of "no, spells can't do X". And that's necessary to have a consistent metaphysic.Good points. I can't give you an overarching metaphysics of magic. But I'm trying to suggest that this isn't a problem, it's an opportunity.

either you play it straight and end up with a spell that's worse than most normal high-level spells (cf most all of the printed ones), one you can't cast at all, or else you cheese it with mitigating factors I think that's a feature, not a bug. Just about every non-standard spell should be less powerful/useful than a standard spell.

Psyren

2023-10-16, 05:45 PM

I think that's a feature, not a bug. Just about every non-standard spell should be less powerful/useful than a standard spell.

Even if I agreed with this in every single case, Epic Spells still take that to an extreme. Compare Ruin to Disintegrate - costs almost the entire WBL of a 20th level character and a week of downtime to develop, a boatload of XP, and twice the casting time to ultimately do half the damage, with a chance of fizzling and wasting your epic slot to boot. The only thing the former has on the latter is range, and the vast majority of the time Enlarge Spell on the latter will get you all the range you could possibly need from it. It's a joke.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-16, 06:00 PM

1. Good points. I can't give you an overarching metaphysics of magic. But I'm trying to suggest that this isn't a problem, it's an opportunity.

2. I think that's a feature, not a bug. Just about every non-standard spell should be less powerful/useful than a standard spell.

1. I prefer when my metaphysic is central to the setting and internally consistent. Having a built-in incoherence is absolutely a problem, at least for me. Call it professional pride--it's a form of sloppiness that offends me. And D&D magic is full of it, since it's just a bunch of random "hey, this is cool" slapped together with a thick mortar of tradition.

2. Why? I'd say that, in a system where non-standard spells are a meaningful part of the game, non-standard spells should be
a) not significantly different in power or utility than standard ones in the abstract (not taking into account present circumstances)
b) capable of filling niches that are both valid within the system constraints AND not currently filled
c) often more specifically useful (ie more narrow) than existing ones.

If anything, standard spells should be broad(er) but (less) powerful. They're the swiss army knife of spells, which if you've ever tried to use a swiss army knife for anything meaningful, is both a crappy knife and a crappy multi-tool. Certainly better than no tool, but not nearly as good as a specialized tool for that same job. Non-standard spells should be crafted for one particular thing--they're the fish deboning knife of the spell world. Great at one thing, not applicable most of the time. A spell to take down vampires should be more powerful at taking down vampires than one not so specialized. But worse at taking down non-vampires.

jjordan

2023-10-16, 06:25 PM

1. I prefer when my metaphysic is central to the setting and internally consistent. Having a built-in incoherence is absolutely a problem, at least for me. Call it professional pride--it's a form of sloppiness that offends me. And D&D magic is full of it, since it's just a bunch of random "hey, this is cool" slapped together with a thick mortar of tradition. We're down to the bedrock of personal preference here so I'm not arguing your point, I'm just saying that I see that as an opportunity, not a drawback. My metaphysics *are* central to the settings, the more so because I don't have to use a default that WotC has foisted on me or backtrack over it with my players. I *HATE* 'The Weave'.

2. Why? I'd say that, in a system where non-standard spells are a meaningful part of the game, non-standard spells should be
a) not significantly different in power or utility than standard ones in the abstract (not taking into account present circumstances)
b) capable of filling niches that are both valid within the system constraints AND not currently filled
c) often more specifically useful (ie more narrow) than existing ones. I strongly agree with c. I agree with b. I disagree with a. Again, personal preference. I like the standard spells to be the best general use spells for a lot of reasons (encouraging the players to stick to them, keeping the game balanced, ensuring that non-standard spells don't get OP, and etc...). And I hope I've addressed Psyren's point here.

If anything, standard spells should be broad(er) but (less) powerful. They're the swiss army knife of spells, which if you've ever tried to use a swiss army knife for anything meaningful, is both a crappy knife and a crappy multi-tool. Certainly better than no tool, but not nearly as good as a specialized tool for that same job. Non-standard spells should be crafted for one particular thing--they're the fish deboning knife of the spell world. Great at one thing, not applicable most of the time. A spell to take down vampires should be more powerful at taking down vampires than one not so specialized. But worse at taking down non-vampires.Agree in general. We'd probably disagree on specifics but, again, personal preference.

Rukelnikov

2023-10-16, 07:06 PM

Epic Spellcasting supports my point rather than refuting it. The entire system is a joke - either you play it straight and end up with a spell that's
worse than most normal high-level spells (cf most all of the printed ones), one you can't cast at all, or else you cheese it with mitigating factors (get a few fanatics to circle with you, or thought bottle/Do The Wight Thing to eliminate an expensive XP cost, or render yourself unkillable by backlash damage etc.)

The system was very breakable, but if you didn't try to break it, the spells you got were good, definitely more powerful than non uber optimized 9th level spells.

My Bladesinger Elven High Mage (28th level), had ritual-like epic spells (that emulated how elven high magic worked) that would require multiple participants and granted everyone in a rather large area, enough to fit 100 to 200 people, "minor" permanent boni (+4 Armor AC, +4 Nat AC), or a single creature a more powerful permanent boon (DR 10/epic, +2 Inherent to an attribute) he would roam the High Forest spending time with small communities in the area and doing these rituals with them.

Psyren

2023-10-17, 09:38 AM

The system was very breakable, but if you didn't try to break it, the spells you got were good, definitely more powerful than non uber optimized 9th level spells.

My Bladesinger Elven High Mage (28th level), had ritual-like epic spells (that emulated how elven high magic worked) that would require multiple participants and granted everyone in a rather large area, enough to fit 100 to 200 people, "minor" permanent boni (+4 Armor AC, +4 Nat AC), or a single creature a more powerful permanent boon (DR 10/epic, +2 Inherent to an attribute) he would roam the High Forest spending time with small communities in the area and doing these rituals with them.

I think that being able to permanently buff 200 people via secondary caster mitigation isn't something that would universally fly.

Sorry, missed this earlier:

I had to expend the gold (in character) after having explained the spell and gettng his input on what would make it a level 2 spell. He was trying to ensure that it wasn't too powerful as he walked through my proposal.

Have you ever read Men and Magic?

No, but it looks like it's up on archive.org.

If the extent of the codification is "homebrew something, no we won't tell you how, here's how much you could charge for it afterward we guess?" then that's not nearly enough to count as a research mechanic or guidance in my eyes.

Bohandas

2023-10-17, 11:48 AM

We're down to the bedrock of personal preference here so I'm not arguing your point, I'm just saying that I see that as an opportunity, not a drawback. My metaphysics *are* central to the settings, the more so because I don't have to use a default that WotC has foisted on me or backtrack over it with my players. I *HATE* 'The Weave'.

Even in D&D canon the weave isn't essential to magic. It's just something that exists in that one crystal sphere.

Rukelnikov

2023-10-17, 12:50 PM

I think that being able to permanently buff 200 people via secondary caster mitigation isn't something that would universally fly.

Rhistel could have made the area smaller (20 ft radius) and cast it by himself (not the powerful single target buffs though), but one of the points of high magic being ritual-like was it united the community, its as much functional as it is a way of keeping a bit of elven tradition alive.

Even then the fact you think not many would let it fly means you think its not a bad spell.

Psyren

2023-10-17, 01:23 PM

Even then the fact you think not many would let it fly means you think its not a bad spell.

I appreciate you telling me what I think :smalltongue:

Even in D&D canon the weave isn't essential to magic. It's just something that exists in that one crystal sphere.

No - that name for it only exists in Realmspace, but PHB 205 is clear that the same phenomenon exists in all other printed settings too.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-17, 01:31 PM

Even in D&D canon the weave isn't essential to magic. It's just something that exists in that one crystal sphere.

It is as of 5e.

Grim Portent

2023-10-17, 03:00 PM

I tend to take the stance that if the party as a whole wants to learn how to do Big Magic, like the rites that ward an entire city so that no one can bring in baked goods with raisins in them or summon an army of demonic weevils to conquer the world, then sure, great, that's the plot now. Can they master and complete their dread rituals before anyone can stop them, or can they protect the place they want to ward until the ward is done or when a threat the ward doesn't prevent comes by to threaten their investment.

Taking the place of a dark lord with a mega spell like 'Raise All the Undead' is a fun story idea, and one that I'd be happy to run with if the players vote in favour of it. Of course if there's another dark lord with the same ambitions still runnng about then they're still a natural enemy of the party, only one group can rule the kingdom/world after all, but I'm down with them doing dark lord vs dark lord stuff while racing to complete their evil plan.

In theory they could also try to learn Big Magic that's not evil, but really there's a lot less of that and it's kind of boring unless the party is really into building their ideal fantasy city and defending it against all manner of challenges. Which is also fine, a game centered around the PCs as political figures in a city or kingdom is A-ok, and an excuse to throw a literal army at them without it being insane.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-17, 03:47 PM

If the extent of the codification is "homebrew something, no we won't tell you how, here's how much you could charge for it afterward we guess?" . No. Suggest you read it before commenting. I don't write movie reivews on films I have not seen.

Psyren

2023-10-17, 04:44 PM

No. Suggest you read it before commenting. I don't write movie reivews on films I have not seen.

I did go read it. What did you think "It appears to be up on archive.org" meant? :smallconfused:

King of Nowhere

2023-10-17, 05:27 PM

Injecting myself into the metaphisics argument, I also want to have something coherent, and for that I describe magic as akin to writing a software, or building a machine.

Magic is a force that can be manipulated with thought, including unconscious one - giving space for both math-like wizardry and emotion-based magic. Writing a new spell is basically akin to running a science project, you have to perform calculations and put all your places correctly - I often describe magic runes as akin to electric circuits. And within that framework, you can do almost anything.
However, magic is also limited by some sort of energy conservation. there is a magic energy permeating the world, and normally you just tap into that, but it has limits. Effects of greater power require more energy - a higher level spell, or perhaps a material component. Ultimately, for the really powerful effects you are limited by how much energy you can tap. This energy conservation limitation also prevents all "infinite X" combos that break a campaign world.
So, a skilled magic user that spends years or centuries crafting a really complex ritual, with an appropriate power source, can achieve almost anything. it's the perfect explanation for how some npcs can do something that cannot be replicated - but it also works for the party; if the party wizard wants to spend time and resources doing something beyond normal limits, I let them. In fact, finding ways to tap especially powerful magic sources has been a key plot point and quest in my last campaign. It involved entering the realm of a dead god and pilfering the leftover divine energy, so that the party could achieve a powerup above what could normally be accomplished, and use it to defeat and undefeatable villain - herself powered by a unique connection that allowed her to channel a vast magic storm.

In additon to that, the gods watch over the mortals and don't want to risk the mortals getting too powerful, else they could be challenged. so they occasionally "revise" the rules of reality to make something impossible. So, sometimes you can do some extreme effect once. then the gods interfere and decide it can't be done anymore. it stays done that one time, but it's no longer possible in the future. some unique rituals are explained in this way. but just like there are thousands of different ways to build a working car, an enterprising wizard with enough time can always find another way to achieve something similar.
In the end of the campaign, the wizard acquired knowledge to create a nuclear bomb. He had a sanctuary protected by the interference of other gods (courtesy of tapping the power of the dead god mentioned before), so nobody interfered with that creation. So I told him, ok, you have this spell, but the moment you use it the gods will notice and immediately ban it. Probably also declare a crusade on you, depending on how you use it. So it was a once-in-a-campaign thing. It ended up being used to blow up another god, after infiltrating his private demiplane. which was a very satisfying way to end a campaign.
Finally, I mention emotion can also have a role in it. At one point the church of nerull took 1000 children, subjected them to prolonged torture, extracted their blood, and forged a scyte from the iron collected from their blood, quenched in their tears. It resulted in the most powerful evil artifact ever. They tried to do it again, to mass produce the thing, but at this point it was no longer some unspeakable act of cruelty to fuel the most profane magic; no, it had become an industrial process. And as such, it had lost a key part of its emotional impact, and it didn't work anymore.

Brookshw

2023-10-17, 05:58 PM

Schwann145

2023-10-17, 06:50 PM

No - that name for it only exists in Realmspace, but PHB 205 is clear that the same phenomenon exists in all other printed settings too.

I'm sure Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Troy Baker, David Cook, Richard Baker, et al. are all thrilled to have WotC telling them how their settings *actually* work. :smallbiggrin:

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-17, 06:52 PM

Never saw the point of this type of argument personally, magic breaks the rules, so people turn around and say, okay, so let's make more rules so it can't break them, i.e., can't be magic. I understand and support needing to balance abilities as well as a narrative harmony, but translating that into a heavily structured rules set just reduces magic to a science, which it's not. Explicitly.

If magic is allowed to break the rules, then the setting is incoherent (ie does not have a coherent set of natural laws that can be reasoned from). Which is fine...but if you're going there, there are no rules anymore. There is no "magic system", there is only "everything is magic because there are no rules."

Magic is "science", but it's not our science. And it may not even be understandable in-setting. But it has to have rules metaphysically, otherwise we don't have any way to reason about the world as a whole. It's the equivalent of what computer scientists call Undefined Behavior--the compiler (ie the universe) is allowed to do anything at any time, including nasal demons. You lose all predictability.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-17, 07:37 PM

I'm sure Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Troy Baker, David Cook, Richard Baker, et al. are all thrilled to have WotC telling them how their settings *actually* work. :smallbiggrin: +1 :smallsmile:

If magic is allowed to break the rules, then the setting is incoherent (ie does not have a coherent set of natural laws that can be reasoned from). Which is fine...but if you're going there, there are no rules anymore. There is no "magic system", there is only "everything is magic because there are no rules."

Magic is "science", but it's not our science. And it may not even be understandable in-setting. But it has to have rules metaphysically, otherwise we don't have any way to reason about the world as a whole. It's the equivalent of what computer scientists call Undefined Behavior--the compiler (ie the universe) is allowed to do anything at any time, including nasal demons. You lose all predictability. Magic isn't a science, it is metaphysics and it follows its own logic and limitations. Things like sympathetic magic are embedded in D&D magic, and in a lot of magic systems in fiction. And in some systems, TANSTAAFL applies to magic (The Dragon and the George books to use but one example, and in Robin Hobb's Farseer books (particularly the opening trilogy). Just two examples of many.

Magic is also dangerous, particularly to those who have not mastered it. The lore of the world needs to be replete with stories of those who tried magic and it backfired drastically. And that's how owlbears came to be, eh? :smallyuk: Mad science magic run amok.

This is where the Wild Magic Sorcerer is a great theme for All Sorcerers, but unfortunately WotC screwed the pooch on the Wild Magic sorcerer sub class.
Why?
Besides some basic design mistakes, they read their audience badly. A non trivial number of their fans and players have similar character flaws to the garden variety of control freak. The "not sure what happens next" theme is lost on that part of the player base. This behavior, or maybe "this approach", IME stands out among those who prefer to argue rather than play ... and that's been the case since as far back as I can recall playing the game.
Related to this is "The Build as a mini-game" in many CRPGs, TTRPGs, and Video Games. Now and again there is a synergy that doubles down on the effect that this can have among players. I still see evidence of it in some playes, but NOT in others. It's a personality trait that crops up. And I watch some players enjoy the game in a very different way and those are the ones who seem to enjoy the rare Wild Magic Sorcerer that I've seen in play.

Which is, in my view, a darned shame. The Wild Magic Theme (5e's WMS needs a few tweaks) for Sorcerer, the class, ought to be a core attribute.

If every Sorcerer in D&D 5e had an aspect of Wild Magic as an embedded part of that class, rather than it being fenced off to a single sub class, then Sorcerer would be a far better class and have a far better core theme. It would also attract, I think, a particular style of play. (And it's one that I have enjoyed in a number of different games...but I digress).
The "a wizard with fewer spells and no book" approach is a massive missed opportunity by WotC designers.

Oh, what could have been.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-17, 08:02 PM

+1 :smallsmile:
Magic isn't a science, it is metaphysics and it follows its own logic and limitations. Things like sympathetic magic are embedded in D&D magic, and in a lot of magic systems in fiction. And in some systems, TANSTAAFL applies to magic (The Dragon and the George books to use but one example, and in Robin Hobb's Farseer books (particularly the opening trilogy). Just two examples of many.

Point of definition--science and metaphysics are not disjoint sets. Metaphysic, the way it's being used, is the rules that define how the physical laws (the physic) are designed. So magic has a set of laws (a logic and limitations, as you say) that it obeys. Those laws may be difficult or even impossible for mortals to comprehend, and may appear chaotic (in the non-technical sense of that word). But all that means is that the metaphysics (the set of laws about how those laws are generated) is a particular one.

Earth has consistent metaphysics, but no magic. D&D claims to have a consistent set of metaphysical principles (although those haven't been fleshed out). They're not earth's metaphysical principles, because magic, but they exist and are internally consistent. Lacking consistent metaphysics means that there are no physical laws, that science (as a process) is null and void. That magic has no logic or principles or limitations at all. And that's a choice, but not one D&D has made.

Brookshw

2023-10-17, 08:21 PM

If magic is allowed to break the rules, then the setting is incoherent (ie does not have a coherent set of natural laws that can be reasoned from). Which is fine...but if you're going there, there are no rules anymore. There is no "magic system", there is only "everything is magic because there are no rules." Balderdash and poppycock, rules can still exist with exceptions, pretty sure there's a saying about that.

Magic is "science", but it's not our science. And it may not even be understandable in-setting. But it has to have rules metaphysically, otherwise we don't have any way to reason about the world as a whole. It's the equivalent of what computer scientists call Undefined Behavior--the compiler (ie the universe) is allowed to do anything at any time, including nasal demons. You lose all predictability.

Or there's predictability to a point which can be disrupted at anytime, which enables reasoning while knowing there are unknowables. The extent of which it's even a 'science' in settings is very suspect given many settings speak of different traditions methods and practices leading to the same result (and then glossing over what all that means mechanically). Looks like you're undermining your own position, last I checked Undefined Behaviour hadn't crippled computer science or destroyed general predictability somehow. At any rate, I'm happy to agree to disagree.

Witty Username

2023-10-17, 08:50 PM

Balderdash and poppycock, rules can still exist with exceptions, pretty sure there's a saying about

That and a rule being broken is not the same as rules cannot exist.

For a real world example impetus has long been violated and disproven, but that does not follow into physics is impossible.

I only chime in here because magic being summed up in about three rules that are always true and everyone knows without question is immersion braking for me.
Competing models, truisms that are practically useful but not absolute, or skeptics and philistines that attempt to violate the laws of magic should all exist, even in a world that doesn't work in a logical sense.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-17, 09:28 PM

That and a rule being broken is not the same as rules cannot exist.

For a real world example impetus has long been violated and disproven, but that does not follow into physics is impossible.

I only chime in here because magic being summed up in about three rules that are always true and everyone knows without question is immersion braking for me.
Competing models, truisms that are practically useful but not absolute, or skeptics and philistines that attempt to violate the laws of magic should all exist, even in a world that doesn't work in a logical sense.

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what physical law is. Unlike legal law, (proposed) physical laws can be disproven, but not violated. Because if it can be violated, then it wasn't physical law to begin with. Definitionally, the real physical laws underlying reality cannot be violated, otherwise they weren't the real physical laws. Physical laws describe, they do not prescribe. That is, a physical law that doesn't fully describe what it claims to describe is simply wrong, so counter-examples serve as proof that we haven't gotten that one quite right yet. Not as proof that someone "broke a rule".

Now that doesn't mean that our understanding of physical laws (ie the things we write down as proposed laws) are coincident with the actual underlying physical laws that describe reality. But when I speak of having a consistent (fictional) metaphysics, I'm talking about the underlying laws being consistent. Not that someone in-setting knows what they are or has any particular access to them. They may be shrouded in mystery. They may be incomprehensible to mortals. They may even have subjective elements (the sun rises whenever the sun god feels like it), as long as those descriptions are good, consistent descriptions.

So yes, if you don't have (ie there do not exist) a consistent set of rules about what the underlying rules of magic (or anything else) are, you can't reason about them. Because there's no underlying order to reality.

Hurrashane

2023-10-17, 09:33 PM

If every Sorcerer in D&D 5e had an aspect of Wild Magic as an embedded part of that class, rather than it being fenced off to a single sub class, then Sorcerer would be a far better class and have a far better core theme. It would also attract, I think, a particular style of play. (And it's one that I have enjoyed in a number of different games...but I digress).
The "a wizard with fewer spells and no book" approach is a massive missed opportunity by WotC designers.

Oh, what could have been.

Yeah, they tried a bit of that with the One D&D playtest. At least they had always prepped chaotic magic spells and that version had class abilities that modify and use those spells. I guess it didn't test too well because they reversed course on that (and many other interesting ideas).

Psyren

2023-10-17, 09:34 PM

I'm sure Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Troy Baker, David Cook, Richard Baker, et al. are all thrilled to have WotC telling them how their settings *actually* work. :smallbiggrin:

Uh, nobody forced them to sell at gunpoint :smalltongue: Clearly cashing that check meant more to them than whatever attachment they had to their baby(ies).

If a creator values their creative control over a payday then the solution is clear.

Never saw the point of this type of argument personally, magic breaks the rules, so people turn around and say, okay, so let's make more rules so it can't break them, i.e., can't be magic. I understand and support needing to balance abilities as well as a narrative harmony, but translating that into a heavily structured rules set just reduces magic to a science, which it's not. Explicitly.

Or there's predictability to a point which can be disrupted at anytime, which enables reasoning while knowing there are unknowables. The extent of which it's even a 'science' in settings is very suspect given many settings speak of different traditions methods and practices leading to the same result (and then glossing over what all that means mechanically). Looks like you're undermining your own position, last I checked Undefined Behaviour hadn't crippled computer science or destroyed general predictability somehow. At any rate, I'm happy to agree to disagree.

+1

Bohandas

2023-10-17, 11:02 PM

Uh, nobody forced them to sell at gunpoint :smalltongue: Clearly cashing that check meant more to them than whatever attachment they had to their baby(ies).

If a creator values their creative control over a payday then the solution is clear.

The problem is that I imagine they also value being able to create RPGs professionally, and in order to actually get anywhere in any industry that creates content you have to sell your soul to the devil, whether that devil be a movie studio or a record label or a software company or, in this case, a publisher

Psyren

2023-10-17, 11:19 PM

The problem is that I imagine they also value being able to create RPGs professionally, and in order to actually get anywhere in any industry that creates content you have to sell your soul to the devil, whether that devil be a movie studio or a record label or a software company or, in this case, a publisher

It's... really not that deep. We're talking about a sidebar in the book that says the made up energy field in this game of make-believe we're playing works the same no matter which pretend world we use it in. If you think Weis and Hickman are broken up over the notion that the energy field in their world is the same one Greenwood calls "Weave", I have a bridge in Sigil to sell you.

Batcathat

2023-10-18, 01:11 AM

Never saw the point of this type of argument personally, magic breaks the rules, so people turn around and say, okay, so let's make more rules so it can't break them, i.e., can't be magic. I understand and support needing to balance abilities as well as a narrative harmony, but translating that into a heavily structured rules set just reduces magic to a science, which it's not. Explicitly.

Meanwhile, I've never understood this (admittedly fairly common) view on magic. Turning magic into a science (or something similar to it) doesn't reduce it, it makes it into something that's actually interesting to me, unlike "magic does whatever because it's magic".

That said, I don't think the rules necessarily has to be completely explicit, as long as I get the sense that there is some sort of structure and limitation, rather than magic just being capable of whatever the designer/author/GM/etc thinks would be cool right now.

NichG

2023-10-18, 01:50 AM

I think the word 'science' has been injected here incorrectly.

Something can have constraints and structure without being 'a science' either from the perspective of people in the setting, or even from the perspective of players playing the game. If the metaphysics of magic in a setting is 'reality is just the dream of Azatoth, and magic is the practice of influencing that dream through symbols and metaphors' that's a consistent metaphysics, but its going to be hard to do anything like a repeatable experiment because you don't have the sort of invariances that we exploit in the real world in order to say that two separate experiments can constitute a repetition of 'the same context'. The dreamer, in that case, provides a global memory - showing them a metaphor once will influence the way they react to that metaphor when they see it a second time.

But that doesn't mean that it can't have consistent rules and limits. The persistence of a dreamer's attention and memory might fall within a certain band, meaning that two people performing magic in quick succession might interfere with one another more than if they perform magic years apart. Maybe Azatoth happens to be obsessed with goat-like things and its just a knowable pattern that for whatever reason it's much easier to polymorph/shapeshift/spirit animal attune/whatever someone with goat-like characteristics than bird-like characteristics. Maybe while in principle Azatoth could dream whatever, the limits of humanoid expressiveness via the symbology available mean that if you want to actually have the effect you're going for rather than something random you have to keep the metaphor sufficiently simple - so setting someone on fire is possible but magically giving someone a day's worth of memories is effectively impossible.

The existence of things that magic cannot do (or that people cannot get magic to do) does not make magic as a whole into 'science'. The existence of an underlying explanation for 'why is magic?' also does not make it into 'science', it just means that magic isn't totally arbitrary. 'Arcane magic can never heal no matter what' doesn't now mean that everyone is programming spells as if they were computer code or that the practice of wizardry is now all about doing systematic experiments aimed at hypothesis testing. It may just mean that if you ask Azatoth to 'heal someone' via suggesting healing-y themes in its dream, you get Azatoth's idea of what body morphology is supposed to look like rather than your own.

Schwann145

2023-10-18, 02:37 AM

Uh, nobody forced them to sell at gunpoint :smalltongue: Clearly cashing that check meant more to them than whatever attachment they had to their baby(ies).

If a creator values their creative control over a payday then the solution is clear.

I'm sure WotC doesn't have full, autonomous, control over those IPs, and the fact that said blurb in the PHB doesn't mention any other setting by name is telling. The recent-ish lawsuits that Weis and Hickman brought against WotC shows that, yeah, they do still care about their setting.

Even the Realms is a point of contention. Contractually, anything Ed writes about the Realms is canon. So it's no surprise that WotC is pushing so hard this narrative of, "canon? there's no such thing as canon!" as a pretty blatant attempt to backdoor their way out of contractual obligations they don't like. :smalltongue:

Brookshw

2023-10-18, 07:12 AM

I'm sure WotC doesn't have full, autonomous, control over those IPs, and the fact that said blurb in the PHB doesn't mention any other setting by name is telling. The recent-ish lawsuits that Weis and Hickman brought against WotC shows that, yeah, they do still care about their setting. Publishing contracts do generally give the publishers massive control over IP, though more importantly in TSR's case almost everything they printed was under a work for hire agreement which makes them the defacto author and without the actual physical author having the option to reclaim the IP after 35 years. Iirc, the lawsuits you reference were a contractual issue where WoTC wasn't going forward with publishing several works they were obligated to rather than an IP issue. In contrast when there was a IP issue where Weis and Hickman didn't like what was happening (Lord Soth in Ravenloft) they did not sue and instead, once they had a chance to start writing for TSR/WoTC again, just pretended the Ravenloft thing never happened (I seem to recall they killed him off when the big dragons showed up but its been a long time, not sure if it stuck, never paid much attention to the setting). I'd be very surprised if WoTC doesn't have full, autonomous, control over that IP.

Even the Realms is a point of contention. Contractually, anything Ed writes about the Realms is canon. So it's no surprise that WotC is pushing so hard this narrative of, "canon? there's no such thing as canon!" as a pretty blatant attempt to backdoor their way out of contractual obligations they don't like. :smalltongue: Ed's contract sure is a unique one ain't it :smallbiggrin: I hear a lot of speculation about what it allows him to do, it would be great to actually read it at some point.That aside, I'm more inclined to believe WoTC is pushing against canon (1) to offer DMs flexibility in the types of campaigns they want to run, and (2) its almost impossible across so many decades and authors to ensure what you put forth is actually consistent.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-18, 07:56 AM

It's... really not that deep. We're talking about a sidebar in the book that says the made up energy field in this game of make-believe we're playing works the same no matter which pretend world we use it in. If you think Weis and Hickman are broken up over the notion that the energy field in their world is the same one Greenwood calls "Weave", I have a bridge in Sigil to sell you. Indeed. For 5e, it's part of the magic system.
But wait, is there even a river in Sigil? (Maybe an overpass ...)

That aside, I'm more inclined to believe WoTC is pushing against canon (1) to offer DMs flexibility in the types of campaigns they want to run, and (2) its almost impossible across so many decades and authors to ensure what you put forth is actually consistent. (1) Which s the better path forward and (2) back to the incoherence inherent in the system.

Psyren

2023-10-18, 09:17 AM

The recent-ish lawsuits that Weis and Hickman brought against WotC shows that, yeah, they do still care about their setting.

I never said they don't care about their setting; I'm saying that minutiae like the pretend word for the made-up magic field applied to that setting is unlikely to keep them up at night the way it does folks here.

Furthermore - "all settings / planes have the same fundamental magic field" is not new to 5e. 3e introduced that concept via the Normal Magic (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#normalMagic) Planar Trait. Folks who don't like that notion have had at least 2 decades to complain before now.

Even the Realms is a point of contention. Contractually, anything Ed writes about the Realms is canon. So it's no surprise that WotC is pushing so hard this narrative of, "canon? there's no such thing as canon!" as a pretty blatant attempt to backdoor their way out of contractual obligations they don't like. :smalltongue:

I'm glad you brought this up because, hilariously, we have a very recent example of Greenwood cosigning a lore update (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658982-Petitioners-Divine-power-Illithids%85-wait-what&p=25890271&viewfull=1#post25890271) made by WotC and Larian themselves. They're not as misaligned as you're attempting to imply.

Anymage

2023-10-18, 12:29 PM

Magic isn't a science, it is metaphysics and it follows its own logic and limitations. Things like sympathetic magic are embedded in D&D magic, and in a lot of magic systems in fiction. And in some systems, TANSTAAFL applies to magic (The Dragon and the George books to use but one example, and in Robin Hobb's Farseer books (particularly the opening trilogy). Just two examples of many.

Magic is also dangerous, particularly to those who have not mastered it. The lore of the world needs to be replete with stories of those who tried magic and it backfired drastically. And that's how owlbears came to be, eh? :smallyuk: Mad science magic run amok.

"Magic is more art than science" is certainly a take, but it requires a fundamentally different ruleset than D&D. In D&D you spend a spell slot to gain an effect, and that effect simply goes off. Attack rolls or saving throws may apply, but magic is still more reliable than nonmagical effects which have to contend with attack rolls and skill checks. Effects have little variability except for the wild magic subclass which stands a chance of replacing your action with a wholly random effect. And aside from "wizards can't heal" there are very few conceptual limitations to the magic system beyond asking if someone published a spell for that yet. With quite a few spells having the in-universe effect being an ad hoc justification for the mechanical effect the author thought was nifty and wanted to tie to some resource somehow.

I could see a setting where magic could do things that nonmagic couldn't do, but was also riskier/costlier/less certain and had a wider range of effect. Especially if that system laid out clearly what sort of things were metaphysically easier/harder or even outright impossible. Mundane methods would be quick and reliable while magical ones would retain the impressive effects. D&D players have historically pushed back hard against anything resembling those ideas (see threads about NPCs having powers that the players can't easily poach), so concepts we normally find satisfying in magic systems aren't necessarily reflected by how D&D magic works.

RSP

2023-10-18, 12:32 PM

I certainly could be wrong, but isn’t the Weave just Mystra!s implementation of how she chooses to share the magic that she controls?

Isn’t magic both a) a science; and b) not a science, in that magic a) is given structure in how Mystra or other gods choose to divvy it out (whether the Weave or whatever), while also being b) not science in that any of the powers-granting entities can choose to change, circumvent, or deviate from any of their self-imposed rules at any time?

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-18, 02:46 PM

I certainly could be wrong, but isn’t the Weave just Mystra!s implementation of how she chooses to share the magic that she controls?
That's previous edition lore.
There is no direct linkage to Mystra in the 5e PHB which describes the weave, and that is in part due to FR not being the only place where magic works.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-18, 02:48 PM

"Magic is more art than science"
Is not what I wrote.
(Interesting post nonetheless, thank you).

Witty Username

2023-10-18, 08:23 PM

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what physical law is. Unlike legal law, (proposed) physical laws can be disproven, but not violated. Because if it can be violated, then it wasn't physical law to begin with. Definitionally, the real physical laws underlying reality cannot be violated, otherwise they weren't the real physical laws. Physical laws describe, they do not prescribe. That is, a physical law that doesn't fully describe what it claims to describe is simply wrong, so counter-examples serve as proof that we haven't gotten that one quite right yet. Not as proof that someone "broke a rule".

Now that doesn't mean that our understanding of physical laws (ie the things we write down as proposed laws) are coincident with the actual underlying physical laws that describe reality. But when I speak of having a consistent (fictional) metaphysics, I'm talking about the underlying laws being consistent. Not that someone in-setting knows what they are or has any particular access to them. They may be shrouded in mystery. They may be incomprehensible to mortals. They may even have subjective elements (the sun rises whenever the sun god feels like it), as long as those descriptions are good, consistent descriptions.

So yes, if you don't have (ie there do not exist) a consistent set of rules about what the underlying rules of magic (or anything else) are, you can't reason about them. Because there's no underlying order to reality.

Eh, while I don't disagree, fiction almost never actually bothers with that depth, not in a complexity sense but in terms of what layer the fiction presents. Almost no fiction presents metaphysics, beyond the direct observations the reader can make, they present physical laws and theories, usually in the form of exposition from characters or background concepts like truisms. Even the rules of magic as presented are given to whatever is needed for the reader to grok a particular scene, rather than anything that could possibly be a full rule set. Which makes sense, as metaphysics don't really have value on the author end, the goal of magical laws is for the reader to be able to understand what is going on, not really as a procedural setting generator that the author can plug into a neat world building equation. And given that, we can't really say metaphysics can be contradicted in a fiction, inconsistency between rules by the presented situation, and periodically contradictory concepts that happen to work in their own practical spaces, is the expectation.

Schwann145

2023-10-18, 08:45 PM

Furthermore - "all settings / planes have the same fundamental magic field" is not new to 5e. 3e introduced that concept via the Normal Magic (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#normalMagic) Planar Trait. Folks who don't like that notion have had at least 2 decades to complain before now.
That is not what the "Normal Magic" trait implies, at all.
The trait simply offers clarity on expectations based on your planar location. If your spells function as written, with no extra or unexpected limitations or allowances (such as a deity banning certain spells in their own planar home), even if there is no such "Weave" between you an the primal arcane power of magic, it's still "Normal Magic" at work.
A Weave or no Weave has nothing to do with any of it.

I'm glad you brought this up because, hilariously, we have a very recent example of Greenwood cosigning a lore update (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658982-Petitioners-Divine-power-Illithids%85-wait-what&p=25890271&viewfull=1#post25890271) made by WotC and Larian themselves. They're not as misaligned as you're attempting to imply.
Illithids have existed longer than WotC has. Nothing about this tweet quote suggests that there is any reason to believe this is new/updated lore. Do you have anything to show that this lore was different prior to this tweet?

I certainly could be wrong, but isn’t the Weave just Mystra!s implementation of how she chooses to share the magic that she controls?

Isn’t magic both a) a science; and b) not a science, in that magic a) is given structure in how Mystra or other gods choose to divvy it out (whether the Weave or whatever), while also being b) not science in that any of the powers-granting entities can choose to change, circumvent, or deviate from any of their self-imposed rules at any time?

The lore is that Mystra is the Weave. She exists to maintain the function and stability of magic in the world, and she acts as a filter between the raw power of the universe and the people who would wield it.
The Weave, however, is not the only way to access magic. There are many ways to access magic, and the Weave is simply the most common and stable way to do so.
(When 5e says that the Weave is the way to access magic, and leave it at that, they are contradicting well-established Realmslore.)

Claiming that all settings have a "Weave" is weird, because not all settings have a "Mystra." Most settings don't go through the trouble of deeply detailing how magic interacts with their worlds; they just take it for granted as a fantasy setting.

Psyren

2023-10-18, 08:49 PM

A Weave or no Weave has nothing to do with any of it.

"Weave" is literally just a label. That is RAW for 5e, regardless of your wishes.

Illithids have existed longer than WotC has. Nothing about this tweet quote suggests that there is any reason to believe this is new/updated lore. Do you have anything to show that this lore was different prior to this tweet?

Judging by this question, I'm guessing you haven't played Baldur's Gate 3 yet?

Schwann145

2023-10-18, 08:58 PM

"Weave" is literally just a label. That is RAW for 5e, regardless of your wishes.
That's missing my point entirely.
If (A) there is something like a "weave" and spells work as described in the book, as written, that's the "Normal Magic" trait at work.
If (B) there is nothing like a "weave" and spells work as described in the book, as written, that's also the "Normal Magic" trait at work.
If A, and all fire spells are automatically Empowered and alter the RAW of spells in the book, then the "Normal Magic" trait does not apply.
If B, and all fire spells are automatically Empowered and alter the RAW of spells in the book, then the "Normal Magic" trait does not apply.

The Weave (or anything like it) has no impact on the function/meaning of the "Normal Magic" trait you linked to. That's my point.

Judging by this question, I'm guessing you haven't played Baldur's Gate 3 yet?
I haven't, but I don't see how that's relevant?
Do you have prior lore that suggests that Illithids have souls that fuel Realmsian Gods' power the way mortal souls do, and that this "update" that their souls are different is, in fact, new lore?
Or are you claiming this to be new lore without basis?

Psyren

2023-10-18, 09:39 PM

That's missing my point entirely.
If (A) there is something like a "weave" and spells work as described in the book, as written, that's the "Normal Magic" trait at work.

Right. Because of the common phenomenon known in FR as "the Weave".

I haven't, but I don't see how that's relevant?

When you do you'll understand.

Witty Username

2023-10-18, 09:52 PM

The Weave, however, is not the only way to access magic. There are many ways to access magic, and the Weave is simply the most common and stable way to do so.
(When 5e says that the Weave is the way to access magic, and leave it at that, they are contradicting well-established Realmslore.)
Sorta, broadly speaking there are only 2 forms of magic, The Art and The Power. The Art uses magic by manipulating the Weave as governed by Mystra (there is the Shadow Weave under the domain of Shar but it was destroyed in 4e lore, and is more or less the same) and The Power is using the gods as a direct conduit, using magic based on that relationship and whatever God's portfolio involved.
While Psionics do exist, how they conform to this or not has varied greatly on writter, and had tended towards similar to the Art for the sake of game balance.

5e doesn't really contratict any of this, Psionics was cut for gameplay but transparency was already a balance concept, and the Weave is made less setting specific in terms. FR is fundamentally the same.

Anymage

2023-10-18, 09:52 PM

And given that, we can't really say metaphysics can be contradicted in a fiction, inconsistency between rules by the presented situation, and periodically contradictory concepts that happen to work in their own practical spaces, is the expectation.

Genie from Aladdin has three rules; can't bring back the dead, can't make people fall in love, and can't grant wishes for more wishes. We don't need to know about the deeper metaphysics of the setting to know more than that.

There's also the bit where at least a rough idea how things work is incredibly useful in an open ended game so both DM and players can have reasonable expectations. If everybody winds up cribbing from the same spell list it becomes harder to make a group of characters feel cohesively themed or to make plans around them.

Do you have prior lore that suggests that Illithids have souls that fuel Realmsian Gods' power the way mortal souls do, and that this "update" that their souls are different is, in fact, new lore?
Or are you claiming this to be new lore without basis?

It's new lore because the topic hasn't been raised either way before. It doesn't contradict old lore because there is no relevant old lore to contradict. If you want to dispute that I encourage you to find prior statements on the topic instead of expecting somebody else to prove that the issue has never been broached over the entirety of D&D product history.

Schwann145

2023-10-19, 05:21 AM

Right. Because of the common phenomenon known in FR as "the Weave".
See, if you quoted the rest of the example, it explains clearly how this is, in fact, wrong.

Sorta, broadly speaking there are only 2 forms of magic, The Art and The Power. The Art uses magic by manipulating the Weave as governed by Mystra (there is the Shadow Weave under the domain of Shar but it was destroyed in 4e lore, and is more or less the same) and The Power is using the gods as a direct conduit, using magic based on that relationship and whatever God's portfolio involved.
While Psionics do exist, how they conform to this or not has varied greatly on writter, and had tended towards similar to the Art for the sake of game balance.

5e doesn't really contratict any of this, Psionics was cut for gameplay but transparency was already a balance concept, and the Weave is made less setting specific in terms. FR is fundamentally the same.
It's a contradiction between what the game D&D limits on the classes it provides, and what the setting has designed for itself from a narrative standpoint.
Access to arcane power in Faerun is not limited to the Weave. Access to arcane power in D&D is limited to the Weave, because the 5e developers have decided not to design any other styles of magic a player might be able to use.
Blood magic, soul magic, name magic, heavy magic, rune magic, etc etc and on and on... Faerun has them all and more. But none of the D&D classes do (except in rare, unrelated ways - for instance, the Rune Knight knows "rune magic" but it's not necessarily the same rune casting that is known in FR lore).
So when the PHB says that magic "cannot" be accessed in any way except through the Weave, this may be true for D&D rules, but it is absolutely not true of the Forgotten Realms as a setting. This is the contradiction I'm accusing them of.

Psionics is an interesting sticking point, because minor psionic traits are rather common in the Realms, and do not involve magic or the Weave in any way, yet they just don't exist at all in D&D any longer.

RSP

2023-10-19, 06:12 AM

That's previous edition lore.
There is no direct linkage to Mystra in the 5e PHB which describes the weave, and that is in part due to FR not being the only place where magic works.

?? Per the Weave blurb: “The spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms call it the Weave and recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra, but casters have varied ways of naming and visualizing this interface. By any name, without the Weave, raw magic is locked away and inaccessible; the most powerful archmage can’t light a candle with magic in an area where the Weave has been torn.”

I find it difficult to say that’s previous edition lore and/or that there is no direct linkage to Mystra…

Psyren

2023-10-19, 09:52 AM

See, if you quoted the rest of the example, it explains clearly how this is, in fact, wrong.

It's not wrong, you just don't want it to be right. The interface called "Weave" in FR is common to all published settings. Accept it or houserule it.

?? Per the Weave blurb: “The spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms call it the Weave and recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra, but casters have varied ways of naming and visualizing this interface. By any name, without the Weave, raw magic is locked away and inaccessible; the most powerful archmage can’t light a candle with magic in an area where the Weave has been torn.”

I find it difficult to say that’s previous edition lore and/or that there is no direct linkage to Mystra…

This. It's black and white 5e lore.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-19, 09:59 AM

?? Per the Weave blurb: “The spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms call it the Weave and recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra, but casters have varied ways of naming and visualizing this interface. By any name, without the Weave, raw magic is locked away and inaccessible; the most powerful archmage can’t light a candle with magic in an area where the Weave has been torn.”

I find it difficult to say that’s previous edition lore and/or that there is no direct linkage to Mystra…

One tiny distinction I see that could be made is that spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms...recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra but that it's not fundamentally tied to Mystra (at least more multiversally). That is, in FR, it's identified as being Mystra. But outside of FR, it's present in some fashion and under some name, but Mystra has nothing to do with it.

I agree that this is new for 5e and that for FR, at least, it's tied to Mystra.

Psyren

2023-10-19, 10:13 AM

One tiny distinction I see that could be made is that spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms...recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra but that it's not fundamentally tied to Mystra (at least more multiversally). That is, in FR, it's identified as being Mystra. But outside of FR, it's present in some fashion and under some name, but Mystra has nothing to do with it.

I agree that this is new for 5e and that for FR, at least, it's tied to Mystra.

Yes - it's tied to Mystra in FR, just like it's tied to Solinari/Lunitari/Nuitari in DL. Gods can be linked to the interface in a given sphere, but the interface itself is extant in all of them.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-10-19, 10:19 AM

JackPhoenix

2023-10-19, 01:40 PM

Yes - it's tied to Mystra in FR, just like it's tied to Solinari/Lunitari/Nuitari in DL. Gods can be linked to the interface in a given sphere, but the interface itself is extant in all of them.

And there's nothing suggesting it, or anything like it, exists in Eberron outside WotC's pointless attempt to force FR crap where it is neither wanted or needed. Again.

Psyren

2023-10-19, 01:45 PM

And there's nothing suggesting it, or anything like it, exists in Eberron outside WotC's pointless attempt to force FR crap where it is neither wanted or needed. Again.

Eberron is "a world within the D&D multiverse." And you not wanting something doesn't mean other people don't, especially the designers; you have the tools to change it for your table if you wish.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-19, 02:00 PM

Eberron is "a world within the D&D multiverse." And you not wanting something doesn't mean other people don't, especially the designers; you have the tools to change it for your table if you wish.

Considering the number of times WotC's new lore had blurps in the spirit of "X is how things are, except in Eberron", that claim has a lot of holes. Elves originated from Corellon and drow from Lolth, except in Eberron, the multiverse was created by Tiamat and Bahamut, except in Eberron (and all published settings), all giants originate from Aman, except in Eberron, gods work like this, except in Eberron, monsters are like this, except in Eberron...

Really, WotC should bite the bullet and actually publish the 5e default setting, if they keep printing fluff that isn't true anywhere else.

Silverblade1234

2023-10-19, 02:23 PM

JackPhoenix

2023-10-19, 02:45 PM

If we're trying to say that something like the Weave doesn't exist in Eberron, I don't think Keith Baker would agree. "Arcane magic involves the manipulation of vast, ambient mystical energies that permeate Eberron" (source (https://keith-baker.com/dm-arcane-science/)). AKA... the Weave, even if they don't call it as such in Eberron. But it remains a consistent multiversal concept, even if its manifestation, usage, etc. in specific settings look different.

No, that's the equivalent of the raw magic the Weave is supposed to be an interface for. Unlike what Keith refers to, the Weave isn't a source of magical energy, it's the middle-man between the caster and the actual source.

Rukelnikov

2023-10-19, 02:50 PM

No, that's the equivalent of the raw magic the Weave is supposed to be an interface for. Unlike what Keith refers to, the Weave isn't a source of magical energy, it's the middle-man between the caster and the actual source.

Not entirely, dead magic areas don't mean you don't have magic coverage, but rather that almost all magic ceases to function.

Bohandas

2023-10-19, 03:11 PM

Eberron is "a world within the D&D multiverse."

IIRC That depends on which sources you go by

Anymage

2023-10-19, 06:34 PM

Not entirely, dead magic areas don't mean you don't have magic coverage, but rather that almost all magic ceases to function.

The problem here is that vast swaths of the MM would either die quickly on our nonmagical earth due to biomechanical failings, or simply stop existing due to there being no nonmagical way for them to function. It's one thing if an antimagic field can shut down a lich's spellcasting. It's another if it just autowins against the lich because there is no nonmagical reason for a corpse to keep functioning. Distinguishing background magic from The Weave allows you to do things like explaining why you can't just disable a dragon's flight, breath weapon, and ability to not be crushed under its own weight. It's a kludge, but the alternatives are even messier.

Psyren

2023-10-19, 07:34 PM

Considering the number of times WotC's new lore had blurps in the spirit of "X is how things are, except in Eberron", that claim has a lot of holes. Elves originated from Corellon and drow from Lolth, except in Eberron, the multiverse was created by Tiamat and Bahamut, except in Eberron (and all published settings), all giants originate from Aman, except in Eberron, gods work like this, except in Eberron, monsters are like this, except in Eberron...

"All drow come from Lolth" is Lolthite propaganda. The mere existence of drow in other settings proves it wasn't true.
She wants all drow tied to her, certainly, but they never have been (universally).

Really, WotC should bite the bullet and actually publish the 5e default setting, if they keep printing fluff that isn't true anywhere else.

They did, it's called the Multiverse.

If we're trying to say that something like the Weave doesn't exist in Eberron, I don't think Keith Baker would agree. "Arcane magic involves the manipulation of vast, ambient mystical energies that permeate Eberron" (source (https://keith-baker.com/dm-arcane-science/)). AKA... the Weave, even if they don't call it as such in Eberron. But it remains a consistent multiversal concept, even if its manifestation, usage, etc. in specific settings look different.

Indeed.

Rukelnikov

2023-10-19, 08:43 PM

"All drow come from Lolth" is Lolthite propaganda. The mere existence of drow in other settings proves it wasn't true.
She wants all drow tied to her, certainly, but they never have been (universally)

All Drow come from Corellon, and it has been true for many years, now they want to rewrite history to change it.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-19, 08:45 PM

All Drow come from Corellon, and it has been true for many years, now they want to rewrite history to change it. All drow came from Gygax. All else is denial of Truth. :smallyuk:

Psyren

2023-10-19, 09:53 PM

All Drow come from Corellon, and it has been true for many years, now they want to rewrite history to change it.

Does that include Eberron Drow? And if not, how can it be "all Drow" then?

Witty Username

2023-10-19, 10:57 PM

Schwann145

2023-10-20, 12:13 AM

Consolidation for consolidation's sake might be the goal of the company, but that doesn't mean it fits with the lore of the actual settings involved.

Aquillion

2023-10-20, 12:40 AM

The Weave is an entirely FR-related concept and only exists in the Forgotten Realms. Saying that fact that there are other things very very vaguely similar in other concepts doesn't mean anything; by that logic the Weave is the Force and every wizard is actually a Jedi. Obviously every setting with magic is going to have its own rationale for how that magic works and where it comes from, and the fact that all D&D settings use the same mechanics for magic means that those setting-specific rationales are going to have similarities; but the terminology and aesthetics do matter.

The Weave is very much specific to what makes the Forgotten Realms what it is, and it doesn't make sense to talk about it in relation to other settings.

Rukelnikov

2023-10-20, 01:47 AM

Does that include Eberron Drow? And if not, how can it be "all Drow" then?

Considering the creation of the Elves was a story that already existed before 3e, yeah, all elves came from Corellon, and then WotC decided to rewrite stuff.

Psyren

2023-10-20, 01:54 AM

Considering the creation of the Elves was a story that already existed before 3e, yeah, all elves came from Corellon, and then WotC decided to rewrite stuff.

If that's the case, it sounds like Eberron was always part of the multiverse then. So what's the issue?

Rukelnikov

2023-10-20, 02:19 AM

If that's the case, it sounds like Eberron was always part of the multiverse then. So what's the issue?

You seemed to have an issue with the fact that all Elves came from Corellon, not me.

Mastikator

2023-10-20, 02:33 AM

Does that include Eberron Drow? And if not, how can it be "all Drow" then?

In Eberron elves originate from Thelanis (AKA feywild) and were brought to the prime material plane by giants who enslaved them. Their origin story beyond that point is up to the DM, but they may well be made from an arcfey named Corellon.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-20, 08:08 AM

The problem here is that vast swaths of the MM would either die quickly on our nonmagical earth due to biomechanical failings, or simply stop existing due to there being no nonmagical way for them to function. It's one thing if an antimagic field can shut down a lich's spellcasting. It's another if it just autowins against the lich because there is no nonmagical reason for a corpse to keep functioning. Distinguishing background magic from The Weave allows you to do things like explaining why you can't just disable a dragon's flight, breath weapon, and ability to not be crushed under its own weight. It's a kludge, but the alternatives are even messier.

Creatures created by magic disappear in AMF. So yes, a lich would wink out of existence. It's hardly a victory, as it would be right back the moment the field is removed.

"All drow come from Lolth" is Lolthite propaganda. The mere existence of drow in other settings proves it wasn't true.
She wants all drow tied to her, certainly, but they never have been (universally).

Is the WotC spreading the propaganda for a fictional character in their splatbooks, then? Because per MToF (and it's stated as truth, not some propaganda), all elves are the result of Lolth's trickery, and drow specifically originated from those who followed her even after her rebellion. Seems you agree with me the "multiverse" is stupid nonsense, because that lore doesn't apply to any actually published setting. That's not the origin of elves (and drow) in either Eberron, FR or DL, I don't care enough about Critical Role to check their origin there, and I highly doubt it's true in any of the MtG settings.

They did, it's called the Multiverse.

Where can I find a setting book for this "Multiverse"?

Does that include Eberron Drow? And if not, how can it be "all Drow" then?

By WotC's incompetence at keeping their lore straight. Is that supposed to be a trick question?

I mean, Krynn exists in the Multiverse and has since AD&D, and Corellon, Lolth and Drow don't exist at all on Krynn. Eberron being different doesn't mean anything in its ability to fit with other things.

Exactly my point. The "multiverse" is meaningless, and not every setting has to follow every stupid idea WotC puts onto paper, like needing a Weave-analogue.

In Eberron elves originate from Thelanis (AKA feywild) and were brought to the prime material plane by giants who enslaved them. Their origin story beyond that point is up to the DM, but they may well be made from an arcfey named Corellon.

Sort of. ELADRIN are mortal fey from Thelanis, and the feyspires they live in switch places between Eberron and Thelanis (they also each seem to have ties to one other plane). Giants attacked the feyspire Shae Tirias Tolai, also known as City of Silver and Bone (which is also apparently tied to Dolurrh, which explains the elven penchant for various forms of necromancy) when it manifested in Xen'drik and enslaved the local eladrin. Eventually, either through spending too long in Eberron, or through deliberate action on the giant's part, the enslaved eladrin turned into elves. Even later, when Aeren's rebellion happened, the giants took some elves and further changed them into drow (by "binding an essence of shadow" to them) to fight the rebels in places where giants couldn't follow them.

Psyren

2023-10-20, 09:46 AM

You seemed to have an issue with the fact that all Elves came from Corellon, not me.

I'm trying to reconcile your claim with this one:

Elves originated from Corellon and drow from Lolth, except in Eberron, the multiverse was created by Tiamat and Bahamut, except in Eberron (and all published settings), all giants originate from Aman, except in Eberron, gods work like this, except in Eberron, monsters are like this, except in Eberron...

So do Eberron elves and drow come from Corellon or not? It seems that you and JackPhoenix disagree.

Is the WotC spreading the propaganda for a fictional character in their splatbooks, then? Because per MToF (and it's stated as truth, not some propaganda),

MToF is Legacy content and thus "doesn’t reflect the latest lore, mechanics, or the current state of Dungeons & Dragons."

Where can I find a setting book for this "Multiverse"?

The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and MPMM.

Exactly my point. The "multiverse" is meaningless, and not every setting has to follow every stupid idea WotC puts onto paper, like needing a Weave-analogue.

Your settings and your versions of their settings don't, but they control theirs.

Mastikator

2023-10-20, 09:46 AM

Wouldn't Monsters of the Multiverse be "the multiverse book"? In Eberron Rising chapter 4 there is "Eberron and the Multiverse" sub-chapter that says "It is theoretically possible to travel between Eberron and other worlds in the multiverse". If you ask me Eberron is the default setting Rising is the main book :smallcool:

LibraryOgre

2023-10-20, 10:04 AM

TBH, I've always been most comfortable calling Krynn and Eberron completely alternate worlds... not connected to the standard cosmology or history.

Brookshw

2023-10-20, 10:24 AM

TBH, I've always been most comfortable calling Krynn and Eberron completely alternate worlds... not connected to the standard cosmology or history.

I don't mind each setting being their own world and don't see a problem with them all sharing a multiverse, but I don't see the need to paint them with a 'one size brush' , there's no need for the gods of place A to be the same as the gods of place B, same creation myths, etc. Kinda goes back to the 'you can use your people in any setting' thing - which is fine - but I'm not sure there's a particular value to trying to integrate them more than that.

JackPhoenix

2023-10-20, 01:18 PM

MToF is Legacy content and thus "doesn’t reflect the latest lore, mechanics, or the current state of Dungeons & Dragons."

So the WotC is a band of morons who can't keep their lore straight, and whose books are not worth the paper they are printed on. Glad that's settled.

KorvinStarmast

2023-10-20, 01:40 PM

By WotC's incompetence at keeping their lore straight. Is that supposed to be a trick question? And the lore they bought from TSR wasn't exactly coherent ... :smalltongue:

Exactly my point. The "multiverse" is meaningless, and not every setting has to follow every stupid idea WotC puts onto paper, like needing a Weave-analogue. True enough.

Sort of. ELADRIN are mortal fey from Thelanis, and the feyspires they live in switch places between Eberron and Thelanis (they also each seem to have ties to one other plane). Giants attacked the feyspire Shae Tirias Tolai, also known as City of Silver and Bone (which is also apparently tied to Dolurrh, which explains the elven penchant for various forms of necromancy) when it manifested in Xen'drik and enslaved the local eladrin. Eventually, either through spending too long in Eberron, or through deliberate action on the giant's part, the enslaved eladrin turned into elves. Even later, when Aeren's rebellion happened, the giants took some elves and further changed them into drow (by "binding an essence of shadow" to them) to fight the rebels in places where giants couldn't follow them.[/QUOTE]

The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and MPMM. An allusion to the multiverse does not make it a setting.

TBH, I've always been most comfortable calling Krynn and Eberron completely alternate worlds... not connected to the standard cosmology or history. Yes. Their is no need to try and cram all of the settings into one conceptual phone booth.

So the WotC is a band of morons who can't keep their lore straight, and whose books are not worth the paper they are printed on. Glad that's settled. The bolded part isn't a new revelation, and it puzzles me why attempts to rationalize WotC's sloppiness keep being regurgitated.

Psyren

2023-10-20, 03:05 PM

So the WotC is a band of morons who can't keep their lore straight, and whose books are not worth the paper they are printed on. Glad that's settled.

Only you can decide for yourself the worth of the paper or pixels you purchase, as does everyone.

Wouldn't Monsters of the Multiverse be "the multiverse book"? In Eberron Rising chapter 4 there is "Eberron and the Multiverse" sub-chapter that says "It is theoretically possible to travel between Eberron and other worlds in the multiverse". If you ask me Eberron is the default setting Rising is the main book :smallcool:

It's probably the main source now, but Crawford said in a recent interview that the 2024 core books will bring the D&D Multiverse even more front and center as the primary setting of 5e D&D. This was also stated during the Content Creator summit and UA6 Overview video earlier this year, so it seems they're going full steam ahead with that.

(Hmm, that might actually be a topic for its own thread.)

An allusion to the multiverse does not make it a setting.

This comes down to how you define a setting, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setting_(narrative)) Crawford sees it as one:

"Something that we're able to do as we knit together the revised version of the Player's Handbook, is inject a bit more of the game's broader setting into the flavor text - and that broader setting of course is the Multiverse. And so, yeah, there are intentionally more nods to the game's macro-setting than ever before; and that's why you'll now see a mention of the Shadowfell where maybe you didn't before, or you'll see a reference to the Feywild or the Nine Hells, that wasn't in the previous version.

"Planescape is, in many ways, is my favorite D&D setting, because Planescape IS D&D; it's the one setting that touches every other setting, because Planescape is the backdrop for the entire D&D Multiverse. We talk about Planescape directly when we talk about the City of Sigil in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide - but also indirectly when we talk about the great cosmic wheel that underlies all of existence in D&D...Planescape is the setting that encompasses all other settings.
...
As we worked on Planescape, we were preparing it at the same time we were working on the 2024 rulebooks, and we see it as a critical setup for those books, because those books are going to have the D&D Multiverse even more front-and-center than in 2014. The Multiverse was a big deal in the 2014 core rulebooks; it's going to be even more in our minds as players and DMs as we look through the new rulebooks next year."