PDA

View Full Version : [Idea Sharing] Super High Magic World! :D



Jimp
2008-06-17, 08:44 AM
I've been thinking a lot about different magic levels for settings and was wondering about a place with super high magic. I know about Ebbereon and Spelljammer, they have plenty of high magic ideas in them, but lets try and push the barrier. Given that your average neighbourhood mage is, say, tenth level and that the world is appropriately dangerous enough to make your average spellcaster tenth level, just how much can we/must we do to the world with magic?
First of all, if the setting is dangerous enough to have an average adventurer tenth level then cities and towns will have to be appropriately defended. Floating cities perhaps? Walls with defensive symbols or spells on them?
Also, since magic is readily available it will be used to provide some luxuries and services. Obvious things like using Continual Light (name may be wrong) to light the streets or using Create Water or Purify Water to supply water or water crops. Then again, why even bother with crops? People could rely on the Create Food and Water spells or have them enchanted into machines that make food, Star Trek style.
So, lets come up with ideas for a super high magic world!

veilrap
2008-06-17, 08:50 AM
Well I'd imagine that manual labour would be rare as Labor Golems would be pretty common place.

Also I suspect the standards of living would be higher than you'd normally expect in a Fantasy setting as with magic so plentiful living a decent life seems like it would be pretty easy.

Emperor Tippy
2008-06-17, 09:46 AM
*sigh*

This comes up every month or two. And the answer is that if you go with the 3.5 RAW and create a setting that makes any semblance of sense in terms of said RAW then the world will be high magic.

If you want to be able to have regular D&D adventures in said world then you have to follow, at least generally, a single set up. Points of light in the dark. 4e finally got around to realizing the fact (a few decades late but thats neither here nor there).

What points of light in the dark means is as follows.

Cities are linked by Teleportation Circles. Trade routes do not exist. Shipping lines do not exist. You have very heavily secured cities that don't have to have any geographical relationship to any other cities or even their own settlements. Knowledge is shared between cities instantly. What does this mean? Cities have massive populations and have massive amounts of wealth in them.

Now outside the cities you have wilderness. Vast amounts of trackless wilderness where criminals and people not welcome in the cities live, or their descendants. This is where you have villages and the like. Magic is rare. Wizards are nigh unheard of and most divine casters are Druids not Clerics. People band together for survival. Eventually those individual bands will end up with the ability to create a Teleportation Circle and enough people to create their own city, or they are wiped out by monsters or other bands (much more likely).

The average guard in a City is a high level Warforged with fast response teams made up of wizards and Shade Steel Golems. The average guard in the wilderness is a barbarian or fighter.


That is the only setting the rules support that still allows regular D&D. Most adventuring happens outside the cities, at least until the players reach level 12+. At which point they have real challenges to face. If you attack a shop keeper then he uses his Telepathic Bond to the Guard Dispatch Officer to have them teleport in 5 Advanced Shade Steel Golems and a high level wizard. And when you are caught and convicted the city just Mind Rapes you and makes you a law abiding citizen.

bosssmiley
2008-06-17, 10:18 AM
Super High Magic World? :smallconfused:

The D&D world as written is already ridiculously unstable, with characters rising from goblin kickers (1st level) to warlords (10th level) in a month of hard adventuring (4 encounters/day, 13 encounters/lvl). Anything that would increase the chaos and power disparities in the game world even further (like, oh say, yet more magic) would essentially turn the game into the chaotic perpetual ferment of the Plane of Limbo.

Super high magic worlds in D&D don't look like Star Trek; they look like Alphatia or Netheril (the commons are lowly servitors who live and die at the whims of an untouchable magical power elite). That's if you're lucky.

Valairn
2008-06-17, 10:29 AM
Of course in a High Magic World, you can always assume the balancing factor of a deity of some sort. Deities which are goodly and involved in the world can change the very structure of it by their mere presence and people who worship them.

When discussing a Super High Magic World, you have to ask, how are the gods involved in its daily affairs?

Nemoricus
2008-06-17, 12:49 PM
Tenth level? Dark dreams, now that's a scary high level if you think about. Plane shift is a fifth level spell in 3.5. Clerics get it at ninth level. You could easily travel to another plane in this setting and be back for breakfast the next day. Deities would be involved if for no other reason than to stop an endless stampede of people wanting their aid.

As far as everything else, this setting would just be one wild ride.

Adumbration
2008-06-17, 01:22 PM
Tippy, that actually sounds like a good idea for a setting. Did you make it up, or does it exist? (Seriously, it sounds exciting. Much better than the usual bland campaign worlds.)

Emperor Tippy
2008-06-17, 01:50 PM
Tippy, that actually sounds like a good idea for a setting. Did you make it up, or does it exist? (Seriously, it sounds exciting. Much better than the usual bland campaign worlds.)

I made it up. If you go and search for my old posts you can find a few threads where me and some other talked about magic and settings.

As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.

Eldariel
2008-06-17, 02:06 PM
Also, criminals would be extremely low in numbers due to the ease of controlling people entering the city, and due to the ready access of mindreading magic. The few that exist are of course so tough that they're nigh' impossible to catch and extremely dangerous.

On the other hand, people abusing the system from inside would be commonplace and indeed probably encompass majority of the relevant people in the world, making life inside the cities all the more dangerous.

Project_Mayhem
2008-06-17, 02:14 PM
As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.

Ah but surely all the relevant gods would have stupidly high wizard levels - in a world with level 20 wizards, you'd have to be pretty powerful to be worth worshiping - in fact the gods would probably be the more powerful wizards.

Roderick_BR
2008-06-17, 02:19 PM
Heh, now I feel like making some rules for a high magic world. Heck, I could incorporate it to my homebrew system. The only real problem is that magic in 3.x is too reliable, and most magic itens have no maintenance cost, or even need for.
For example: Teleportation circles. Have them require expensive material to activate, making it something only richer companies can afford, and only adventurers would risk.
Instead of several armies of high level wizards and golens teleportating suddenly, have groups with elite soldiers lead by very small groups of wizards as shock troops sent for the most dire cases.

Illiterate Scribe
2008-06-17, 03:39 PM
I made it up. If you go and search for my old posts you can find a few threads where me and some other talked about magic and settings.

As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.


Notes
The deity can duplicate any spell of 9th level or lower as a standard action. The duplicated spell has no material or XP component, and the DC of its saving throw (if one is allowed) is 20 + the deity’s rank + the deity’s Charisma modifier.

The deity also can duplicate a spell with any metamagic feat (so long as the metamagic feat is available to characters of 20th level or lower). This use of the ability requires the deity to rest for 1 round for each level that the feat would normally add to the spell. It still takes a standard action to use this ability, so there is no point in using the ability to duplicate a quickened spell.

The deity can render a magical or supernatural effect permanent. The rest requirement varies with the effect: 10 minutes per level of the effect.

Hi.lolspace

mostlyharmful
2008-06-17, 05:39 PM
Hi.lolspace

Meh. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

since you can reduce the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting the only real limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.


To the OP, the thing to bear in mind about high magic environments isn't high level (5+) casters, they're realitively rare in any WOTC type setting and any setting I set up.

In order to get to that level you need to focus your life into developing this understanding of magic, think abstract professors in modern academia. Now factor in that there is nothing that you can offer them that they can't provide for themselves at a moments thought and no threat that governments or vested interests can present to them that's credible. Add in that their base qualification is either a very VERY high Int or complete devotion to something other than themselves and you get a very small population that can't be pushed around, thinks in the long term and intelligently, and naturally co-operates with each other.

Now this is all rather irrelivent since the things that will completely change the way a world works are the 0 and 1 st level castings, the stuff you need a 10 or 11 to cast and a single level in adept to cast. or magewright if you're interested in Eberron type thought (yes, given the threads gist). Have a look at what Orisons and 1st level divine stuff opens up, instant industrial revolution in a way we've yet to manage in the real world since it has no negatives (infact it has big positives given you're strengthening a Good, socially approved god that has vested interests in making sure you prosper since you clearly worship GodX). No famine and endless fresh drinking water are the two biggest "Holy Crap on a Gold Plated STICK!!!!!"

Oh, and virtually no plague (although that might be tricky depending on how divine magic interacts with the immune systemm (Death to all catgirls!!!)

And that's without touching on foolproof methods of information aquisition (think about that from a scientific point of view for a few seconds..... )

EDIT: proof reading for clarity is your friend:smallsmile:

puppyavenger
2008-06-17, 05:54 PM
And that's without touching on foolproof methods of information aquisition (think about that from a scientific point of view for a few seconds..... )

scientist.Pelor, what are subatomic particles? and is string theory correct?
Pelor. Umm.. well..., heh look, a cookie!

mostlyharmful
2008-06-17, 06:00 PM
scientist.Pelor, what are subatomic particles? and is string theory correct?
Pelor. Umm.. well..., heh look, a cookie!


And that's what happens when you ask the big dumb beefcake nurse, now try asking a god of knowledge, or just using magic that doesn't ask a specific extraplaner but rather comes up with answers all by itself (how that one works?????) :smallwink:

Illiterate Scribe
2008-06-17, 06:01 PM
Hi yourself. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

Ah, but, without the shadow seed (which is, shock horror, non-core, and setting specific ;p), you can't get it all. Some of the most powerful effects - timestop, quintessence, gate, temporal regression, and so on - are on the 1-9 lists.


since you can mitigate the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting. the only limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.

That, and operating in a timestop. Deities - if they're optimising their abilities - live in a constant timestop, since they have it as an at will ability.

Roderick_BR
2008-06-17, 06:02 PM
Meh. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

since you can reduce the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting the only real limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.

Meaning that a deity can still do all that and more. I don't see why a deity need to worry epic mortals (that are not 40+, thus rivaling with the lesser gods).

Collin152
2008-06-17, 06:38 PM
As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.

But Epic Magic + Salient Divine Abilities...
As if an Epic Mage could be a threat to a god of magic, though.
Remember how their portfolio sense lets them know weeks in advance when things mess with their portfolio?
This god gets to know about every spell cast, depending on how many people it affects, several weeks in advance.

Jack_Simth
2008-06-17, 07:22 PM
Meh. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

since you can reduce the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting the only real limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.

You're forgetting: The D&D Dieties pretty much all qualify for Epic Spellcasting. There's no particular reason why they don't have Epic spells themselves. They're actually better at it, what with most of them having an arbitrary number of spellcasting minions already, and having the ability to create spellcasting minions pretty much at whim.

As to the OP:
Assuming that the spellcasters at the top are reasonably intelligent and reasonably wise (they should be), a high magic society will look like whatever the spellcasters at the top want it to look like.

If we limit ourselves to Core spells and tactics (including custom traps, but not custom items, for now), and put a "common use" cap at things you can reasonably do with a few 10th level characters (figure a Wizard-10 and a Cleric-10 working together), there's very little an individual needs that can't be done by spell.

Create Food and Water is a Cleric-3 spell. A periodic trigger automatic reset "trap" of Create Food and Water means that, for a market price of 15k, you can feed a fairly arbitrarily large number of creatures until some stupid Rogue disables it (or it gets smashed). Tasteless, but that's why you have the Wizard include a Prestidigitation "trap" to give it some flavor (Heroes' Feast is, unfortunately, out of range). Create Water, in and of itself, is just a cantrip.

Wall of Stone is Cleric-5, Wizard-5 - and handles most of your housing needs. You need the actual caster at each build site, but that's okay - they don't exactly wear out quickly. Tack on Stone Shape (Cleric-3, Sor/Wiz-4) or Fabricate (Sor/Wiz-5) and you can even build in doors and windows if you like. Illusory Wall (Sor/Wiz-4) makes the place look nice.

An Endure Elements Automatic reset "trap" has a market price of 1,000 gp, and removes most of the need for clothing and shelter for a very large number of people.

Continual Flame gets you all the light you need, and is Cleric-3, Sor/Wiz-2. You can bypass the expensive component if you're doing a lot of them by using Lesser Planar Binding on a Lantern Archon.

Capping at character level 10 for building society, travel isn't perfect - you'll still need armed caravan guards and the like for moving lots of goods around. It isn't until you get Teleportation Circles and Permanency (requires 9th level spells and a caster level of 17) that travel is really reliable enough for the merchant that's going to do it a few hundred times before they retire (even with a teleport master that is "very familiar" with the target location, you still have a 3% of arriving off-target or in a similar area).

So you can get food, water, shelter, and light, all by magic. There's very little reason to go anywhere, but if you do, you either risk being stranded away from society (no need to farm, so other than the walls, the rest of the world is wild) or you risk the wilds (and need guards).


There's some catches, though.
1) People don't like to be bored. You need to keep most peopleworking in one way or another, or you'll eventually have a riot or revolt of some nature on your hands. And at 10th, you can't just hand-wave it away with magic (although you can at 17th, depending on permitted sources).
This aspect is why the society looks like whatever those who control the magic gismos that make it all work want it to look like. If you can't do this yourself, and if I charge a small fee for use of the Endure Elements trap and the Create Food and Water trap, you have to get a job eventually. Most the money will end up in my hands (or the hands of someone very much like me; once I've set things up, I have no real maintenance costs) which means you're either working for me (or someone very much like me), working for someone who works for me (or someone very much like me), working for someone who works for someone who works for me (or someone very much like me) (and so on), or getting along by some manner of theft. This is the means by which I (or someone very much like me) controls society - you're doing what I tell you to so that I give you the money you need to buy food and shelter from me. If I like marching troops around, most people will be soldiers (or support for soldiers). If I like art, most people will be various types of artists (or support for artists). If I like pretty gems, most people will be various types of miners (or support for miners). If I like a religious feel to things, most people will be chanting prayers (or support those doing so). If I like to watch heads fall off shoulders, most people will be involved in kidnapping and execution (or getting kidnapped and executed). Whatever. What the place looks like once you've got a small handful of people that have nearly-perfect control over the essentials depends on what those people who control the basics want. Anyone who doesn't like it votes with their feet, and moves out of my domain.

2) Why bother? I'm a great and powerful wizard/cleric, so I spend all my time and vital energies... pandering to a very large crowd of peons? Why? Seriously, I can just cast Wall of Iron and use the trade-goods to get them to do what I want anyway. Why bother bringing them up out of the squaler? It's a lot of work for what I get.

mostlyharmful
2008-06-18, 02:13 AM
You're forgetting: The D&D Dieties pretty much all qualify for Epic Spellcasting. There's no particular reason why they don't have Epic spells themselves. They're actually better at it, what with most of them having an arbitrary number of spellcasting minions already, and having the ability to create spellcasting minions pretty much at whim

In which case the gods and a level 21 character are on the same level and the prize goes to whoever is the most ruthless and inventive. With an openended system of casting just starting out ahead in the minion stakes isn't that big an advantage since you can make, call, bind, whatever an arbitrary amount very, very quickly, add in planes with time traits and an epic casting fortress filled with a near infinate number of powerful minions and even angry gods can be managable for a prepared enough epic caster, that is if they don't just make themselves an overdeity or build a new universe.

Collin152
2008-06-18, 06:46 PM
In which case the gods and a level 21 character are on the same level and the prize goes to whoever is the most ruthless and inventive. With an openended system of casting just starting out ahead in the minion stakes isn't that big an advantage since you can make, call, bind, whatever an arbitrary amount very, very quickly, add in planes with time traits and an epic casting fortress filled with a near infinate number of powerful minions and even angry gods can be managable for a prepared enough epic caster, that is if they don't just make themselves an overdeity or build a new universe.

Again Gods = precognitive.
If it comes down to Wizard vs Gods, Gods win because they know you'll try and what before you know it yourself.

Jack_Simth
2008-06-18, 06:52 PM
Again Gods = precognitive.
If it comes down to Wizard vs Gods, Gods win because they know you'll try and what before you know it yourself.
Plus they start earlier. The dieties in D&D are (in the vast majority of cases), going to be a lot older than any character you'll make. By a lot.

Randel
2008-06-19, 01:55 AM
Ideas for a high magic setting:

Spells like Rope Trick are put into permanent magic items creating extra dimensional space for housing or storage. Low income tenants get a closet with a rope ladder that leads into a single room to sleep in.

Central Create Food and Drink "traps" manufacture lots of flavorless but nutritious foodstuffs. Prestidigitation traps flavor it in a number of ways. One free for everyone device could have a path of Tensers Floating Disks moving along in a conveyor belt fashion with dishes and cups of food on them (sort of like a Sushi-go-round). People just get a plate and walk over to a flavor station to flavor their gruel or breadlike food.

Magic items that heal wounds and cure disease/poisons are available. Mundane medicine skills could take a hit if these are too easily accessible. People might be less worried about wounds or injury if they are they can afford magic to cure them. Soldiers who are backed up with magic healing or resurrection magic could be truly vicious in battle if they don't fear for their safety and their training consists of fight-to-the-death battles with each other and they can all learn from their battles.

Existance of illusion or transmutation magic that can disguise people makes identity theft a problem. Could also allow cosmetic changes (prestidigitation spells changing ones hair color for an hour... even allowing anime hair of weird colors).

Perverts are commonplace. (Belts of Femininity/Masculinity, healing and regeneration magic, illusion spells, polymorph... and all sorts of other stuff).

Some monsters used instead of magic items to perform tasks. Like Brown Molds used for refrigeration, Green Slime or Ochre Jelly for dissolving organic waste, Shocker Lizards used to generate electricity...

Locked in cities are full of magic and pollute the wilderness outside. Water from Decanters of Endless water could leak into the environment and slowly cause climate change or flooding. Create Food and Drink machines could result in lots of sewage. The manufacturing of magic items and spells may leave arcane pollution and it may be that having lots of city-dwellers creates 'psionic pollution' that causes demons to flourish or something.

Since high-magic settings could have magic provide the ability to sustane huge populations in an area, there are more people. These people then worship gods and provide more worshipers than in a setting with less people. If you add mass-media through crystal balls, moving paintings, speaking stones like radios and other things then you could get people believing in all sorts of stuff. Celebrities could ascend to godhood by having a million psychotic fans. Fictional characters could become real though the combined will of the masses. If a cosmic horror comes to destroy the planet, someone might send out an announcement to all the people of the civilized world to concentrate on the enemy and through combined willpower of billions to WISH the monster out of existence or to power up those who can fight it.

If extra planar or interplanetary travel is possible than conjuring up air and water to live in the new world could make completely alien worlds habitable. Sealed in bubble cities in the plane of fire could house people while streams of water from decanters or gates from the plane of water cool the fires. Once humanity/elves/halfling/dwarves start numbering in the trillions and exponentially gating to other planes then things could get really intense.

If an infinatly expanding number of the sentient races run into some other supposedly infinite population like devils/demons/modrons/angels then there could be some nasty battles. Devils can be nasty tough, but humans reproduce rapidly... goblins and orcs moreso. An alliance with the goblins and orcs with humans could give the goblinoid races infinite food from the create food and drink machines and let them produce massive armies quickly. Training-from-hell camps make those troops tough enough to swarm more powerful monsters effectively (even if actual magic items are soly reserved for those with PC class levels.)

In battles against outsider races, security measures like scrying and True Sight spells are needed to detect intruders/scrying/mind control.



Some sample societies include:

The forgotten city: In a city in the desert, big central buildings house the Create Food and Drink machines that provide the most of the food and water. The inhabitants have forgotten how to make or maintain such devices. The machines themselves have limits to the number of meals they can make a day which are made known with corresponding glowing rods. The Rods are like permanant sunrods which glow green, they are then touched to the Food machines and a meal is created, the rod changes to red until the following morning and cannot be used to make a meal until then. The Rods are used as a very valuable currency since just one ensures the user can eat forever. Unfortunatly, the population grew larger than the number of rods so they must hunt in the barren desert, learn to grow food, or deal with the excess population. Rumor of a Yellow rod that may constantly make the Food machines work are told in legend. The inhabitants must also deal with the monsters and forgotten undead and constructs of the past civilization.

The city in the fire: A colony in the plane of fire. Most of the city is underground where its slightly cooler and a large tower projects an endure elements dome that makes the city habitable in the midst of the flames. A big stone wall protects from occasional lava flows and fiery outsiders curious about this strange loction. The gate connecting to the material plane doesn't work always due to shifts in the planes, so there are regular intervals where they receive supplies from home and import 'fire gems' or whatever they harvest from the plane. Water is valuable and endless decanters try to distribute it through the city but the planes nature cause the magic items to shut down at times and the water inevitably evaporates. Experiments on local flora and fauna have resulted in a special ritual that can transform a human so that they may survive in the fiery environment outside. Will the colonists be able to survive with the water they get from home or though magic... or will they slowly transform themselves in order to live in this new world.

The City in Hell: Humans and the sentiant races have discovered the plane of ultimte evil... wether it is the home of devils and demons or even the plane to which all souls go after death. They have found it and dug out a home and built a city to live in. Every man, woman, and child knows how to fight and defend themselves from the horrors outside. The city is less a place to live than a base of operations to wage a war... a war against an idea made flesh. Be it the ultimate extermination of the fiends or an attempt at freeing every soul lost to the land of the dead, the sentiant races are ready to seriously beat the snot out of the fabric of the universe. High-powered military weapons, insurmountable defences, and the combined intelligence of countless soldiers, warlords, warmages and crazy mad scientists are rearing to do some fighting and hopefully avoid falling for the trickery/insanity/mind melting power that permeates this planes monsters and very air... and hopefully avoid backstabbing eachother in the process.

The Utopia:

An attempt at making everyone happy. Housing in Rope Trick rooms, Gruel from free Food and Drink machines and healing from fountains of health are all available to the common folk. Money is used to purchase better fare so that artisans and skilled laborers can get better housing (like ones in real space) and fine food (stuff that is actually grown). Crimminals who commit murder are found through scrying spells and turned to stone statues (since they may be found innocent or rehabilitated later and just mindraping people isn't very nice). Education and access to information is available to all. Many grow up skilled but there are always those who are below average or worse. Rickshaws and manual labor is used often instead of magic to make use of the 'unskilled folk'. Everything is beautiful and freedom is universal.

Or so it seems...

Outside the walls of the city are the polluted lands where the cities waste goes, the monsters outside are kept at bay though 'adventurers' and guards. Perversion and infighting in the upper classes cause trouble for those below them and numerous conflicting philosophies make this utopia difficult to maintain. When those people outside the city hear of the riches within, expect goblins/orcs/and barbarian hoards to lay siege and attack the city either through sword, deception or attacking from within.

Tempest Fennac
2008-06-19, 02:31 AM
That sounds well thought out, Randel. What would healing magic have to do with perverts, though?

Dhavaer
2008-06-19, 05:55 AM
That sounds well thought out, Randel. What would healing magic have to do with perverts, though?

Don't google 'guro'.

mostlyharmful
2008-06-19, 01:24 PM
Again Gods = precognitive.
If it comes down to Wizard vs Gods, Gods win because they know you'll try and what before you know it yourself.

They are precognative but within limits. Epic casting should be able to work up a mages sanctum that blocks deific senses, wait around a couple months and your Lab is a big blind spot for any snooping deity. This doesn't even need to be focussed against any one particular God, it's just standard procedure for a paranoid batman wizard that racks up big stonking enemies with access to Divination magic.

The point that the gods were around first (at least in some settings) is far harder to get around, but then once any caster gets hold of Epic casting one of the most important things for them to do is squash everyone that seems likely to manage the same, so really its much the same idea that Epic Casting beats anything else so whoever gets it first wins.

monty
2008-06-19, 02:17 PM
They are precognative but within limits. Epic casting should be able to work up a mages sanctum that blocks deific senses, wait around a couple months and your Lab is a big blind spot for any snooping deity. This doesn't even need to be focussed against any one particular God, it's just standard procedure for a paranoid batman wizard that racks up big stonking enemies with access to Divination magic.

The point that the gods were around first (at least in some settings) is far harder to get around, but then once any caster gets hold of Epic casting one of the most important things for them to do is squash everyone that seems likely to manage the same, so really its much the same idea that Epic Casting beats anything else so whoever gets it first wins.

So epic magic automatically makes you evil, because you'll want to do whatever it takes to stop anybody else from getting it?

Also, epic magic + divine abilities > epic magic. And most gods have 20 outsider HD in addition to their class levels, which, assuming they've maxed the appropriate skill, gives them two more epic spells per day than a 21st level caster. Still better.

Blanks
2008-06-20, 05:22 AM
The world depends a lot on the amount silliness in the campaign:

Not silly:
con. light street lighting and divination magic courts

Silly:
Greased streets for fast transportion, decanter of endless water powered boats and weird summons everywhere :)

elliott20
2008-06-20, 11:31 AM
I always see magic settings in two scales: power and proliferation. and these are largely dependant upon the settings flavor. Power determines how powerful magic is, and proliferation determines how widespread and common you'll see it.

So, depending upon how you define those terms, you'll get drastically different settings.

One thing is for sure though, that if you were to do a high enough powered game with high enough proliferation, you'll stop seeing people doing things the mundane way and probably a good half of the D&D classes will never be seen again.

mostlyharmful
2008-06-20, 11:51 AM
So epic magic automatically makes you evil, because you'll want to do whatever it takes to stop anybody else from getting it?

Also, epic magic + divine abilities > epic magic. And most gods have 20 outsider HD in addition to their class levels, which, assuming they've maxed the appropriate skill, gives them two more epic spells per day than a 21st level caster. Still better.

It doesn't make you evil, just cosmically powerful in very very short order. It's natural to horde power when the levels you're talking about are high enough that any conflict between those with it will lead to universal meltdown, think MAD on a multiversal scale. Limiting stuff that can reorder reality to whatever the user wants isn't evil, anymore than nuclear nonproliferation is. Also when you have access to full Epic casting "whatever it takes" can just be a big suggestion effect to stop research into this kind of casting coupled with a warning system for when someone is likely to achieve it anyway.

and While yes Epic casting + salient divine is > than just plain Epic casting the real advantage is that you can pump up your minion numbers faster to crank out the really big stuff (and that the Gods were likely to have been around first). The big advantage it gives you is lead time, I'd say that a Wiz 21 with Epic Casting and a few weeks prep could take on any god you care to name, provided they could block the Deity senses. After a few days it doesn't matter how many epic slots you have yourself since you can make totally loyal minions with as many as you need.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2008-06-21, 03:07 AM
I once had a player use Animate Object and Permanency on his wagon. Fun times.

I'd handle epic levels the same way I did in my low-magic world. Nothing could become epic, though monsters could get more than 20 racial HD as normal as long as they didn't have any class levels, but they weren't considered epic. Nothing could take epic feats, or make epic items, or use epic magic. This was because the world was broken, and the PCs would have to eventually figure out what was broken, how to fix it, and then carry that out in order to advance past level 20. One set of characters actually came really close to figuring out what was broken with the world, but someone else wanted to DM for a while and we never got back around to it.

Maybe there's a wound in the magical fabric that stretches across the world (the Weave in FR), or a wound in the barrier that protects the world from a rampaging magical sub-realm. Magic flows into the world through this hole, causing a high presence of magic, but it also drains the weave/magical realm which epic characters normally tap into for their power. As long as this wound exists epic levels will be impossible, and there would likely be many powerful individuals and organizations which would seek to prevent that from happening for whatever reason, be it balance of power, or sources of revenue, or a belief that mortals should not wield epic power. Anything that was already epic would have lost that status when the wound occured, though it would have been so long ago that only something like a dragon or lich would remember what it was like to be epic.

dyslexicfaser
2008-06-21, 03:33 AM
So, lets come up with ideas for a super high magic world!
What would happen is probably what the mind flayers already do.

To quote FrankTrollman (Cut for length):

"The illithid have a bad reputation among the other sentient races: the mind flayers see them as food, and most races take offense to that viewpoint. It should be the fuel for a war of extinction on the illithid race, but three things protect the illithid as a race: each is a powerful artillery piece surrounded by hordes of charmed minions; the race is led by powerful elder brains who are each the equal of a powerful sorcerers; and they make good neighbors…. that’s right, they’re good neighbors.

Each mindflayer can potentially control a small army of charmed slaves, can defeat a small army with their powerful stunning blast ability and resistance to magic, and can negotiate any conflict into peace with the ability to telepathically communicate and read minds, but their best ability is the ability to plane shift. As a race that can naturally use this ability, they can hop between planes and be within five miles of any location that they can imagine on their own plane or any other. This key fact means that when they go rampaging for brains and slaves, they not only do it in some place far from their home, but they might do it on some other plane entirely. Due to the fact that few races can mount an extraplanar war, the flayers generally are too far and too difficult to find to ever face retaliation for their acts. Because of the limits of their travel ability, the mind flayers will clear and patrol an area about ten miles from their home, removing any potential threat and keeping dangerous predators away. In this way, they can return to their homes in relative peace, and by scrupulously not preying on their neighbors, they avoid any retaliation on single illithid walking home. Add in their mind-reading and telepathy ability, they are naturally suited to making mutual defense pacts with nearby races so that they can establish a peaceful dominance in their own territory.

The fact that every mind flayer enclave is controlled by a powerful elder brain is another fact that makes their enclaves safe and their culture vital. As a powerful, but generally stationary creature, it has every incentive to make its home as well-defended as possible, drawing on its own powers to equip its home with wondrous architecture and traps befitting a powerful sorcerer (or psionicist). Add in the hordes of slaves and the illithid themselves, this means that even moderately-sized enclaves can bring to bear enough force to make taking the city an extremely unprofitable enterprise.

One final note about the illithid: as planar travelers with an innate ability to travel to any plane, they often gain access to technology and magic from cultures beyond counting. While the mind flayers are geniuses in their own right, they often store knowledge of these devices in the minds of their slaves, a practice that leads them to losing that knowledge when hunger or carelessness takes that slave away. Even so, expect the average illithid to be a font of secrets dredged from dozens of extraplanar cultures, its home filled with odd artifacts and devices culled from those far-off places. If their own powers and hungers weren’t so great, they might even be drawn to the exploitation of this knowledge. Luckily for the races of the worlds, the mind flayer’s total confidence in their own abilities and need expend time feeding on difficult-to-acquire fare makes them ignore all but the most obviously useful things stolen from other cultures."

Essentially, every illithid is an artillery platform in itself (and the elder brains are an order of magnitude stronger), they use their planeshift to acquire mind-burned slaves and high tech and everything else they could conceivably need from other planes of existence. Sounds a lot like the world you describe.

In a world where practically everyone can planeshift, I can't help but think that they would war with other dimensions rather than in their own backyard, because their backyard is boring. With a multiverse out there ripe for the pillaging? Avast, me hearties.

Battlefield
2008-06-22, 08:10 PM
I have an idea: Click Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynastic_cycle)

In this setting, every few hundred years, the gods join together and crush a civilization/plane the becomes too powerful or magically advanced.

The reason is due to the attention a great concentration of magic brings.

When magic is concentrated enough, it weakens reality in the area. This eventually causes reality to peel back and it forms a gates to the Far Realms. Then the Other Things from the Far Realm discover our universe and procede to go to town on our wailing, bleeding, god-forsaken corpses (if we are lucky). This is assuming the higher level mages were not stupid enough to open a gate there for "research" or use a magical "nuke" to speed up the process.

The gods don't want this to happen. So when the fabric of reality gets weak, the burn the place to the ground. But, they always save a few people to make sure they still have followers.

Afterwards, The entire world is in shambles, but eventually fixes itself. Then it happens again...



After this happens several times, a few high-level wizards realized the pattern. So when they made thier empire, they hid it from the eyes of the gods, so that they will not be destroyed and may practice magic as much as they want. Eventually, their's became the greatest civilization, but the gods could not see the region. They begin to worry...

A Plot Hook: Guess what the stupid wizards did!. :smallfurious:

Grey Paladin
2008-06-23, 03:37 AM
The problem with such a setting is that the gods would never let any wizard get to level 21. Ever.

Given the Omniscience of all gods with all things concerning their domain (this is not a Scrying effect, or magic) the God of Magic would have to be a total moron to allow any wizard to gain enough power to topple him.

Honestly, the bastard has twice the amount of Intellignece your character had when he thought of the idea, and over 6 times the amount of yours, do you truly believe he wouldn't see it coming?

Blanks
2008-06-23, 03:53 PM
Given the Omniscience of all gods with all things concerning their domain (this is not a Scrying effect, or magic) the God of Magic would have to be a total moron to allow any wizard to gain enough power to topple him.
Everybody seems to think that all gods are either very evil or very very powerhungry...
What if the wizard was your greatest follower - wouldn't you WANT him to become epic?


Honestly, the bastard has twice the amount of Intellignece your character had when he thought of the idea, and over 6 times the amount of yours, do you truly believe he wouldn't see it coming? So anytime anything becomes a threat you kill it, no benefit of the doubt?
Intelligent=ruthless?

chiasaur11
2008-06-23, 05:02 PM
The problem with such a setting is that the gods would never let any wizard get to level 21. Ever.

Given the Omniscience of all gods with all things concerning their domain (this is not a Scrying effect, or magic) the God of Magic would have to be a total moron to allow any wizard to gain enough power to topple him.

Honestly, the bastard has twice the amount of Intellignece your character had when he thought of the idea, and over 6 times the amount of yours, do you truly believe he wouldn't see it coming?

What about Pun-Pun or other guys who get a little power, than ditch to out of the gods' sphere of influence till they can clobber everybody? There are ways around any limited beings knowledge, and DnD god have very real limits.

mostlyharmful
2008-06-23, 05:24 PM
Everybody seems to think that all gods are either very evil or very very powerhungry...
What if the wizard was your greatest follower - wouldn't you WANT him to become epic?

So anytime anything becomes a threat you kill it, no benefit of the doubt?
Intelligent=ruthless?

Whichever god he follows there will be gods oppossed to him. Controlling access to world-shattering power isn't evil or powerhungry it's basic common sense. With Epic casting (+Salient Divine) there'll rarely be a need to kill anything nor necessarily act in ruthless ways, it's only once two or more people/gods/whatever get access to this kind of power without being in an already interdependant relationship (ie a pantheon) that you get disagreements that have the potential to spiral.

Randel
2008-06-23, 10:44 PM
How gods react depends a bit on who they are:

If they are themselves mortals who gained arcane power to acend to godhood then they might very well try to stop others from gaining enough power to ascend... or might form criteria and judge those who look promising and then 'give them a hand'. Wizards who get close to Epic levels are approached by the gods and given a chance for REAL power. If they accept, they join the gods on even footing and the others have a good idea where they are at all times. If they refuse or seem evil... they might get disintegrated or stripped of their magic or something.

If they are primordial creatures from before time... then who knows what they do. For all intents and purposes they are tetradimensional horrors with an irrational number of eyes and an imaginary number of senses. The gods feed on the faith of mortals and all their decrees exist only to increase their yield of sweet succulent faith and possibly improve the health and number of livestock. The sanctity of marriage is preached because virgin sacrifices give more power to them than mere devotion. Don't expect them to show their true faces to their followers (just looking at them makes your brain implode) and anything that threatens them receives the full force of their gibbering pre-cosmic wrath.

If the gods are merely physical manifestations of mortals dreams then there will be plenty of infighting to keep them off of powerful wizards. The gods of luck and faith fight for supremacy while the god of death kills those who fear him most... and get weaker because he needs faith to live. Atheists create their own supernaturally skeptical god who firmly denies his own existence while putting up philosophical arguments to the other gods. If a goddess of love exists... expect her to be very popular until the god of decency starts waging holy wars against her followers (ie everyone with a pulse). Divine spellcasters gradually convert to the god of "U gets pellz 4 free" and wizards eventually discover buddism that results in No Faith in Anything and therefor doesn't make gods powerful. The gods retaliate when they find their followers getting mindraped into non-believers (literally people who learn to avoid belief in anything) and eventually they are eliminated as all sentient races become nillists.

or...

The gods don't exist. It turns out that divine magic is just powered by the casters belief in something as arcane magic is powered by knowledge of the worlds fabric. Sentient races have been making up stories to explain things long before they learned to actually figure out how stuff works and they learned to belief made-up stories before the first lie was even told. Churches and religions consist of spellcasters who study stories of non-existent gods and wage battles based on the 'decrees' passed down by prophets and leaders. Attempts to actually scry on the gods or attack them always fail because they aren't there. Various random disasters or lucky events are decreed to be the curse or blessing of one god or another. Wizards are hated for treading in the domain of the gods... mostly by powerful clerics who don't like people muscling in on their turf. If a cleric ever begins to doubt the existence of these gods who can't be seen or heard, they 'fall' and cannot cast spells again until their faith is restored. Certain powerful clerics are powerful because they are convinced of their OWN divinity and therefore don't fall for rational arguments (Fool! I have the power of the gods themselves in my veins! The powers of creation are mine to command... your pitiful 'logic' is but the lie of the unbeliever! I SMITE THEE WITH FIRE!!). Epic wizards get their asses kicked by even more epic clerics... who can wear armor and heal their martially inclined minons who include Paladins.

Blanks
2008-06-24, 04:36 AM
Whichever god he follows there will be gods oppossed to him.
But the god he follows will protect him - if a god cannot protect his followers, the office of high priest will always be empty, as the god's nemesis kills whoever attains it. The entire system would break down.


Controlling access to world-shattering power isn't evil or powerhungry it's basic common sense. Agree, but everybody seems to accept the logic "power=willingness to kill"


With Epic casting (+Salient Divine) there'll rarely be a need to kill anything nor necessarily act in ruthless ways, it's only once two or more people/gods/whatever get access to this kind of power without being in an already interdependant relationship (ie a pantheon) that you get disagreements that have the potential to spiral.
Thats how I mostly run my campaigns because it makes sense for the players. The gods rarely interferes because they are too busy keeping the others from interfering. If one of the gods earthly followers can strengthen him, he has excess power which means he can help his followers more.