Why the desire for low magic?

[Morgaln]

Sure. There are lots of other classes that implicitly tell other people at the table "you're not going to get to do the things you want". The Fighter is, as you well know, the poster boy for the issue, so let's not do the "OMG so bias y u h8 Fighters" routine this time.



Who cares if there's a whole slew of classes that can't contribute? It's not like there's some fundamental moral obligation to allow people to write "Monk" or "Rogue" on their character sheet. For a story to include anything, it has to exclude some things. That doesn't mean that those things are bad, or that other stories can't include those things, or that people who like those things are evil. But genres impose constraints. And a high-magic setting requires that you have abilities that are appropriate to that idiom, just as a Noir, or Western, or a Superhero story requires that you have abilities that are appropriate to those idioms.



The problem is that there are some characters that aren't magic. In a fantasy setting, magic is just a part of the world. It doesn't make any more sense to talk about a "non-magic" character in a high magic setting than it does to talk about a character who doesn't use gravity or the weak nuclear force in the real world. Which, of course, explains why some people want low-magic settings. Some people would like to play Conan or Aragorn, and for that to be a reasonable character, you have to cap the amount of magic people are allowed to have.

The easy fix is to just do what the rest of the genre does and give everyone in high-magic settings some kind of magic. There's no reason that there have to be some characters who get powers that let them solve high-magic challenges and other characters who don't. Look at any high-magic series, be it Malazan, or A Practical Guide to Evil, or The Stormlight Archive. You see the same pattern: everybody gets magic. It doesn't matter if you're a dedicated mage (like the Warlock or Quick Ben), or a warrior (like Kaladin or Anomander Rake), or even a nominal non-combatant (like Shallan or the Dread Empress). If you're supposed to be a major player, you get powers that let you solve the problems you're faced with.

Now, this doesn't mean that everyone does the same stuff. The ways that Elsecallers, Windrunners, and Stonewards solve problems are all different. To say nothing of Awakeners or Mistborn, which exist within the same (meta-)setting but have entirely separate magic systems. You don't even have to call it all "magic" if you don't want to. A Practical Guide to Evil says that when Cat uses her powers to travel to another dimension, she is using "Winter" or "Night", but that Masego does it by "Magic", and Indrani just uses "Name power". But they're all doing something that is, within the paradigm D&D currently uses, definitely magic.

It's somewhat funny to mention Malazan Book of the Fallen here since a lot of the series focuses on the ways non-magical fighters (the Malazan marines, especially the Bridgeburners) have developed ways to deal with magical opponents.

But if I understand your argument correctly then you're saying in a high-magic setting, everyone should play someone with magic. Which begs the question, since 3.x's concept is high magic, why are there non-magical classes in the first place? That question will lead right back to the "guy at the gym" problem that has been discussed a million times without any conclusion.


Personally, I don't care so much whether a setting is high or low magic. What bothers me about D&D 3.x in particular, however, is how it makes magic items feel like they get mass-produced. You shop for items, and can have any number of items with any abillity you choose. It's like going into walmart and picking out a new shirt. Plot-relevant magic items should be unique; they should have a name and history (even if those are emergent properties of the story, like the Hobbit's Sting); they should be more than a tool you just discard or sell once you find a better version. I think that is the kind of mystery and special-ness that many people craving low magic settings are actually looking for.