Why the desire for low magic?

[Crake]

There's a certain tendency to assume that only low-magic characters can be meaningfully challenged, and to conflate "meaningful challenges" with "low magic" as a result. It's entirely inaccurate, but it infects a lot of thinking, because accepting that you need high-magic challenges for high-magic characters would mean accepting that low-magic characters (like the Fighter) can't contribute to every challenge.

I mean, I would argue that a challenge where half the party doesn't participate would automatically disqualify said challenge as meaningful, since half the party isn't being engaged. You have half a meaningful challenge, because even if it's awesome fun for the half that get to engage, the other half will associate no meaning with the challenge, because to them it may as well have not existed in the first place.