Problematic Magic: System Agnostic

[Garimeth]

I was reading the thread about Powergaming and Forum therapy, and want to canvas some positions both from players and GMs. I'll open with the premise of the questions, and then explain my stance on it for my group I GM for.

The Questions:

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
5. What systems does your group primarily play?

So to get the ball rolling I will answer my own questions.

1. Yes!

2. See Below:
Resurrection: Easy access to resurrection makes character death only a resource tax, demolishes the verisimilitude of a setting in most cases, and takes away the epic quest to revive long lost heroes or fallen companions.

Detect Lies or Thoughts: Ruins the ability to run a good mystery or intrigue based campaign without everyone an their mom having access to the ability to NOT be read, and to READ others. Its like a psychic arms race.

Mind Control: While this can also be used to fuel many plots, if access to it is easy to come by, powerful, or long in duration it can invalidate entire plot arcs similar to the above.

Teleportation: Along with the obvious travel related adventures, teleportation creates a huge problem for verisimilitude. Knowledge and discoveries can be shared across huge spans of distance instantaneously, which would almost assuredly raise the tech level of a setting very quickly, especially if there is a magical method for reproducing text similar to the printing press or easy access to long range communication. Goods can be easily moved from one location to another, causing entire mission types to become unnecessary, obstacles to be bypassed, and not to mention what would castle, keep, and city defense have to look like!

Magic that Mass Produces Things: See my argument for the tech level, you basically have a magically induced industrial revolution if the access to this type of magic is easy to come by.

3. Resurrection is easy since I run 13th Age (casters have a limited number of times to cast, and people being resurrected can only be raised a handful of times.) and its pretty limited already, I also tend to make the campaigns be a little lower level to make this harder to access, or even sometimes ban the spell in D&D. I'm fine with a raise dead after the battle, but resurrection and TR I tend to limit.

Mind Control and Detect Thoughts/Lies: I don't limit it, but I definitely like settings where it doesn't exist. When it does exist, I just arms race with the PCs.

Teleportation: I limit free destination, long range teleports - particularly if it moves more than the adventuring party and their stuff. I am a fan of stargate style teleportation circles and shadowstep/dimension door style short range teleports.

4. As a player... I never get to play! So I probably wouldn't care, lol.

5. 13th Age and D&D.

[Comet]

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
Of course. That's what an ability does, it circumvents a particular obstacle and traditional D&D sort of gaming is all about obstacles.

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
Any kind of magic and all kinds of adventures. To be more precise, any kind of magic as long as it is reliable enough and all kinds of adventures that are not particularly designed to negate that particular magic.

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
Sure. Usually I rely on the designers of the game knowing what kind of stories they want to tell with it, though, so I don't tamper with their decisions too much.

4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
The discussion bit is important, yes. No fun reading a rulebook and then arriving at the table to find out that that wasn't actually the game you were going to play.

5. What systems does your group primarily play?
Lamentations of the Flame Princess at the moment, since old D&D is really very good at producing fun and excitement with minimal tinkering and having to worry about things like this. Though we're branching out to try different retro systems and then hopefully something that is not so challenge driven eventually.

[Flickerdart]

Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.

"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level. It's just a lot easier to do this for non-magical quantitative type powers because you can just give the enemies equally big numbers behind the scenes.

[Garimeth]

Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.

"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level. It's just a lot easier to do this for non-magical quantitative type powers because you can just give the enemies equally big numbers behind the scenes.

Yeah I agree, magic is just the catch all phrase I am using to indicate a particular set of abilities, you could easily substitute magic with tech for example. I'm more curious about which particular types of "power" people find it problematic to plan around, if they perceive it as a problem at all, how they deal with it, and what systems they are running that inform their opinions.

[Anonymouswizard]

Magic doesn't make plots impossible. Power levels make plots impossible, and magic is just another power ladder. You wouldn't put a max-level teleportation specialist in a race to reach some city, just like you wouldn't put Hercules into a high school wrestling tournament.

"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level. It's just a lot easier to do this for non-magical quantitative type powers because you can just give the enemies equally big numbers behind the scenes.

Also known as the 4e method. *ducks for cover*

To answer the questions:
1) Yes.

2) Any kind of magic can break a plot in the hands of a crafty player. Although some things (resurrection, teleportation, fabricate, mind reading, and so on) are easier to break the plot in two with a smart player can destroy a mystery with a timely charm person or two, while throwing a warning fireball or five might demoralise an army that it becomes less 'great big battle' and more 'mop up those who didn't flee'.

3) I do ban magic, but more for campaign theme than balance purposes. I prefer universal systems because I can pluck spells/powers/extras and build the list of allowed magic from the ground up, allowing me to avoid theme-breaking magic while keeping magic thematic to the setting.

4) As long as I knew by the time the group has started making characters I'm fine with it. Sure, I might need to rethink my concept, but I have the rest of the group to help me with that.

5) Whatever I can convince my players to try. This mainly turns out to be D&D, despite it being my least favourite system.

[NichG]

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?

Yes.

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?

This is really too big of a question to answer in detail - it depends on too many things.

The way I look at it, an adventure is made up of the players determining a sequence of atomic actions in order to resolve or direct a situation in a way they want. Those atomic actions are the things that the PCs can just 'do' - they might take in-world time, but OOC they're a single statement like 'I move to this square' or 'I spend the day crafting' or 'I cast Fireball'.

The actual thing that makes it an adventure is that the players have to figure out the sequence of atomic actions to accomplish their goals. Because it's a sequence and not just one thing, circumstances can change and interact along the way; characters can depend on eachothers' abilities to reach that end point; and there is some element of the players having to actually 'figure out' what to do by engaging with the details of the scenario. This takes OOC playtime in a way that atomic actions do not, and so that kind of thing makes up the bulk of the actual gameplay.

In D&D, for example, abilities tend to be designed to add new atomic actions to a character. This need not be the case in general - abilities which have prerequisites for their usage can give the player a choice between different sequences or more options in the pattern that a given sequence takes instead of just replacing with atomic actions. Anyhow, this is not necessarily a fundamental design problem, but it is a consequence of adding new atomic actions. The result is simply, when a given goal becomes something that can be done via an atomic action, it ceases to be a viable adventure and just becomes an action that a character can do.

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?

I tend to customize systems or write them from scratch as necessary to create the kind of gameplay I want to explore. So its less a matter of banning them and more a matter of not putting them into the system I'm writing in the first place.

Generally what I try to do is favor enablers over solvers in my design. That is, abilities which just do something outright tend to be weaker in games I design than abilities which require some build-up or careful planning or cooperation or creativity to apply. I also favor abilities which allow the player to shuffle around trouble - solve trouble now for different trouble later, that kind of thing. Direct high-end solvers I tend to limit more to one-use items and artifacts and things like that - the idea being, you can still do a huge thing and just solve a problem outright, but you can't systematize that and rely on doing it with regularity. So you still have to make the decision 'is this the problem I solve outright, or should I save this for the future?'

That said, new atomic actions do still accumulate, but I build that into the overall plan for the campaign - which is much, much easier when I'm the one designing the abilities than when I'm given a particular list. The ability list generally evolves over the course of the campaign - players can usually invent and discover new skills and abilities as the game progresses - and so when I want gameplay to move on to a different type of adventure I can do that by seeding new abilities I introduce with the necessary atomic actions to suggest the possibility of those kinds of goals and resolutions.

4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?

If the GM is going somewhere with it and I'm interested in the game, I'm generally okay with whatever. But it is also possible that the GM might be trying to run a game that I wouldn't be interested in. Not specifically because the things were in the rules and then removed.

5. What systems does your group primarily play?

Custom stuff, D&D.

[JeenLeen]

The Questions:

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
5. What systems does your group primarily play?

1. They can but not necessarily in a bad way (see #2)

2. Magic Spell A makes Obstacle A void or so easy it's a non-issue. This is only a problem if Obstacle A needs to be a true obstacle for the group's enjoyment. If the game is about defeating a corrupt mayor, then being able to brainwash him or Detect Lies could be a major issue. But in many other games this might be a stepping stone in the plot and one of many ways to solve the issue. So I think it's fine if the powers available to the players are proportional to the current obstacles. Likewise, teleportation is only an issue if the game demands it's an issue. Resurrection can be an issue, since sometimes you need someone to not be able to rat you out.
In an Exalted game, we found a spy via a Charm that let me detect folks' motivations. It bypassed some obstacles the DM had planned, but that was okay. It didn't hurt the main story arc. If I had a power to instantly kill his master through his link of loyalty, that would've been gamebreaking.

3. I do ban spells that are problematic. If power X defeats too many obstacles or is not in line with other things, I'll ban it. Sometimes I would prefer to ban something just for players (like summon spells--not for gamebreaking reasons, but for 'combat takes too long' reasons), and I try to get the players' opinions about that. I can't think of any real example where this has happened, though. I guess in Mutants & Masterminds I banned a couple powers that would be too strong for the Power Level we were playing at.
Moreso, I try to think of in-game reasons why something makes sense. For example, in oWoD, powers are often balanced by how the setting will screw you over for abusing your powers (Paradox/Technocracy hunts you in Mage, punished for breaking the Masquerade in Vampire, etc.). Not in a GM fiat that you are screwed, but things that flow naturally from the setting (and players can avoid if they act wisely.)

4. I'm generally okay with it, but I like to now upfront before the game starts. Changing what exists in the world changes my character's perception of it (and my build) so I want to know enough to make it correctly. I would get annoyed if I felt I had to play a tactically foolish character, so I prefer stuff banned universe-wide instead of just for the PCs.

5. We veer towards d10 stuff like nWoD or Exalted, but are trying different systems. Played a lot of D&D 3.5 about 5 years ago.

[Garimeth]

Also known as the 4e method. *ducks for cover*

To answer the questions:
1) Yes.

2) Any kind of magic can break a plot in the hands of a crafty player. Although some things (resurrection, teleportation, fabricate, mind reading, and so on) are easier to break the plot in two with a smart player can destroy a mystery with a timely charm person or two, while throwing a warning fireball or five might demoralise an army that it becomes less 'great big battle' and more 'mop up those who didn't flee'.

3) I do ban magic, but more for campaign theme than balance purposes. I prefer universal systems because I can pluck spells/powers/extras and build the list of allowed magic from the ground up, allowing me to avoid theme-breaking magic while keeping magic thematic to the setting.

4) As long as I knew by the time the group has started making characters I'm fine with it. Sure, I might need to rethink my concept, but I have the rest of the group to help me with that.

5) Whatever I can convince my players to try. This mainly turns out to be D&D, despite it being my least favourite system.

OOC, what types of powers do you have the most trouble with and/or do you remove when using a universal system. Also as someone who runs D&D do you find these issues more or less pronounced in 5e vice previous versions? Haven't gotten to play a lot of 5e myself.

[NoldorForce]

1. Yes, but as noted above this is not necessarily bad.

2. Most often it's information-gathering, but in general anything that's capable of getting around some sort of real-world assumption would fit this category. Magical genefixing and indefinite no-effort refrigeration are some of the weirder examples I've seen.

3. It honestly depends on what we're going for. Sometimes the game designer explicitly has a theme in mind for implementing some sort of "problematic magic", or perhaps the use of the magic makes the game itself flow better. In such a case I'm not going to break up what's going on just based on particular views of How Things Should Work. Flow is important, and I generally find that at the end of the day I still have enough ways to challenge the players that I don't mind much. (If society does move on, then everyone's dealing with the upheaval, not just the PCs!)

An obvious example is resurrection magic. Sure, it might seem like it messes around with society, but from the perspective of the mechanics it can be invaluable given a maxim of game design I've mentioned before: permakilling a PC should not be easier for the GM than making a new PC should be for the player.

4. Discussion is important here, but at least I'd be forewarned if my ideas on themes and setting clashed with the GM's.

5. A crazy-quilt collection of RPGs run in short campaigns.

[Garimeth]

1. Yes, but as noted above this is not necessarily bad.

2. Most often it's information-gathering, but in general anything that's capable of getting around some sort of real-world assumption would fit this category. Magical genefixing and indefinite no-effort refrigeration are some of the weirder examples I've seen.

3. It honestly depends on what we're going for. Sometimes the game designer explicitly has a theme in mind for implementing some sort of "problematic magic", or perhaps the use of the magic makes the game itself flow better. In such a case I'm not going to break up what's going on just based on particular views of How Things Should Work. Flow is important, and I generally find that at the end of the day I still have enough ways to challenge the players that I don't mind much. (If society does move on, then everyone's dealing with the upheaval, not just the PCs!)

For 2, how do you usually deal with that? For 3, could you elaborate? In 13th age for example most of the things I find problematic are intentionally not cooked into the system, but it'd be useful to know of other examples.

[Joe the Rat]

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?

Yes, but.

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?

Flight and Teleportation foil many travel hazards, and can make or break combats. Truth magics complicate mysteries, the resource game becomes moot with very basic spells.

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?

No. When plots and tricks become moot, it's time to find new ones. If I can't run a parlor room mystery thanks to mind reading and postcognition, then I simply have to create a different type of mystery, or include hypnotic amnesia and mind control. Sustained flight means no more roadside ambushes, but opens the possibilities of aerial combat.

4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?

With prior discussion, no worries.

5. What systems does your group primarily play?

D&D 5, though we dabble is a couple other OSG types (Basic Fantasy, DCC). I have a secondary group that does 3.5, though we might be shifting away.

[Segev]

As has been mentioned, it's a combination of power levels and expectations.

You generally don't have 10th-level D&D characters trying to deal with a mere corrupt mayor. Not unless that mayor is actually something far more than a mortal demihumanoid politician. Either he's a dragon or something else in disguise who is seeking to use this as his seed for a larger, more vile empire, or he's the puppet of some greater entity (demon, devil, dragon, aboleth...) with similarly grand plans.

By the time resurrection is a casual/simple option for the party to consider, you should expect that it will be a tool used both to resolve plots surrounding deaths and to reduce the risks involved in life-threatening situations. "Chautsu died again; go get the Dragonballs," is perfectly valid, and makes the party more open to tactics that might involve such things as a self-destruct attack to be used as a deterrent.

Generally speaking, just always have a potential bigger bad or new problem awaiting, in case the party thwarts something too quickly. Don't be afraid to improvise, or, if you don't feel up to it, don't be afraid to let the players know, "Well, that went a lot faster than I'd planned; do you have anything you want to do in some downtime?" or "see you next week!"

When you see them use a power you hadn't considered, think about who the enemies are and what their options are. Think about why they're supposed to be threatening. And consider how they'll react to knowing the party has these options available. In some cases, have them use similar tactics. Watch to see how the party reacts and deals with it.

Remember the limitations of problematic powers, as well. Teleport requires knowing where you want to go, for example. If you like the notion of the dungeon-maze that requires thorough exploration, there's both the fact that the PCs don't know the central room's appearance, and the bonus option of having the "dungeon" be an investigative romp where they have to find clues to ultimately discover WHERE to go. Once they know where, sure, they might curb-stomp the enemies guarding it, or even circumvent them, but their challenge was even knowing where the excessive force should be applied.

And let them have a few trivial trompings of foes. Their cool powers make one or two adventures easy...and that's how their reputation expands to reach those in need of such powers just to have a shot at victory. King Richard Thanheck just doesn't have the power to teleport around and raise people from the dead. If you could raise his slain heir, however, that's be awesome, and also, his heir's body is currently being held in full view by a dastardly villain who delights in pitting his death-trap laden gauntlet of evil against any foolish enough to try to approach.

Later, when scrying makes teleport "easy," remember that this is also a tactic whose word will get around. Foes will trap the rooms where scrying targets are located. Kidnapped princess? The scry will show you she's in a plush chamber. What it won't show you is the 30 dozen murder holes with highly-trained kobold crossbowmen ready to shoot anybody who enters without authorization. Not to mention the identical room that's filled with vocanic gasses, which will catch those who accidentally get "similar location" as a teleport result.

And the princess has been made into a time bomb of her own, whether via explosive runes, necrotic cyst, or other effects. So rescuing her is only part of the problem!

[Eisenheim]

I think easy resurrection makes for bad world building, but none of the others are deal beakers, if they're genre appropriate. teleportation can bypass some problems, but I don't find "can the heroes get to the rest of the adventure?" to be a super interesting problem, and some teleportation systems add more interesting challenges than they remove, like 7th sea's Porte magic.
I don't think that detecting lies or some mind reading kills a mystery plot: if knowing who's lying is all you need to solve the mystery, it wasn't a very interesting mystery to begin with.

My group primarily plays fate.

[Segev]

The tricky thing with easy resurrection magic is what defines "easy."

In D&D, for example, people often act as if it's easy and thus strains belief in some way. However, the absolute lowest level that anybody can pull off even the simplest raise dead spell is 9th.

A 9th level cleric is firmly in the mid levels, and is not going to be common. And he has very few raise dead spells per day, assuming he even prepares it in every single slot.

Add in the 5000 gp material component, and only the very wealthy can afford it with anything resembling casualness. But the truth is, that 9th level cleric is the rarer commodity. Depending on the setting, he could be the sort of holy man of legend which people travel months just to lay eyes on him from a distance for a few minutes. Or he could be so common as to be the high priest of a fairly large city's central temple. But he's hardly somebody that even most wealthy merchants can easily command the time of.

It again depends on the setting, but it's possible that there are more ruling kings than there are 9th level characters in the whole setting. A lot of kings in fantasy settings either rule the "entire land" (in which case this won't be true) or rule, effectively, a city-state with at most 2-3 smaller towns on the outskirts.

[Garimeth]

Segev, you raise a good point about the power level of a campaign, and it is also very system dependent. One of the benchmarks I try to use when establishing my setting, is what ECL other powerful individuals in the campaign are. For my current 13th Age (max level of 10, with incremental advances in between levels) game I established at the outset that the most accomplished of NPCs in the setting are level 6-7 with only legendary figures being an 8, only one documented resurrection has occurred in the past several hundred years, etc. So now because of this I limit the number and aggression of some of the more powerful types of creatures in the setting, and the main antagonists are orcs, ogres, undead, and other members of society - this way they are not constantly outclassed by their opponents. By the time they reach that level they will be legends of their own, having significant impact on the setting (to be held to in future running of the setting) and are dealing with problems on a multi-kingdom level.

In most campaign of D&D (3.5) I've run 5k diamond is not a difficult thing to get, and you are absolutely right - it becomes a valid tactic and needs to be baked into the world. For my part that's simply not the story I'm interested in telling. I'll run tippyverse and have fun, but for me that fun has a quick expiration date lol.

[GungHo]

Sometimes I introduce complications or change "physics" to match whatever paradigm I want to present... such as the only thing resembling teleportation being done by Stargate or replacing it with something like a plane shift to "subspace"/"hyperspace" that requires traversal (and has its own obstacles) instead of instantaneous transport. Or, you can teleport/resurrect, but failure is quite possible for anything (no such thing as teleport without error), and critical failure is REALLY bad (such as having the resurrection grab the wrong soul or since it's a quantum effect, having the time part of spacetime displacement come into effect rather than just the space part...)

However, when you come up with these complications, you need to address why you're adding the complication. Is it because the teleportation/resurrection is really the problem or is it because you planned poorly? You need to be careful not to look like you're trying to punish ingenuity or fun simply because it led to a solution you didn't anticipate. Additionally, you need to make sure you're not trying to use the same obstacles for a 15th level party that you did when they were at 3rd level. If you're just providing stronger and stronger versions of the same 7 orc grunt party they were fighting months ago, that's on you, not on them.

[Garimeth]

I think easy resurrection makes for bad world building, but none of the others are deal beakers, if they're genre appropriate. teleportation can bypass some problems, but I don't find "can the heroes get to the rest of the adventure?" to be a super interesting problem, and some teleportation systems add more interesting challenges than they remove, like 7th sea's Porte magic.
I don't think that detecting lies or some mind reading kills a mystery plot: if knowing who's lying is all you need to solve the mystery, it wasn't a very interesting mystery to begin with.

My group primarily plays fate.

I think for my part it depnds on how much of the setting is a game feature. By way of an example. In Morrowind I could not fast travel anywhere I wanted to go, even if I had been there, this caused me to see much more of the world and in so doing be more immersed. In later TES games this was not the case. Even if as the DM I elapse time and simply say it takes you XXX time to get to XXX place, I'm telling you about the places you see and visit along the way, places you may find interesting things in, or meet interesting people, or find cool opportunities for side quests etc. As soon as teleportation (or anything similar) is on the table, that's one less story-telling tool at my disposal. That's why I don't mind teleportation circles much, I even find them interesting.

I've heard interesting things about 7th Sea, I may look into that game.

Detecting lies in and of itself may not thwart the plot, but related magics certainly can. You can know somebody is playing you, or planning on betraying you, or any number of things. We recently had an awesome session where an apparent mentor of the party betrayed them and tried to kill them, it was awesome. The player were shocked and outraged, and when they defeated said person their satisfaction was immense. Go back and give the party's Wiz/Rog those kinds of abilities and the only way to pull that off is give everybody relevant a trinket that protects against those abilities, but that means they aren't rare, which mean magic items can be easily made, which mean that....and so on.

In my 13th Age game though, non-charged magic items can not be made, items become permanently magic based off of being used to do heroic things and the "imprint" of those deeds and the wielder leaving their mark on the object.

[Garimeth]

Sometimes I introduce complications or change "physics" to match whatever paradigm I want to present... such as the only thing resembling teleportation being done by Stargate or replacing it with something like a plane shift to "subspace"/"hyperspace" that requires traversal (and has its own obstacles) instead of instantaneous transport. Or, you can teleport/resurrect, but failure is quite possible for anything (no such thing as teleport without error), and critical failure is REALLY bad (such as having the resurrection grab the wrong soul or since it's a quantum effect, having the time part of spacetime displacement come into effect rather than just the space part...)

However, when you come up with these complications, you need to address why you're adding the complication. Is it because the teleportation/resurrection is really the problem or is it because you planned poorly? You need to be careful not to look like you're trying to punish ingenuity or fun simply because it led to a solution you didn't anticipate. Additionally, you need to make sure you're not trying to use the same obstacles for a 15th level party that you did when they were at 3rd level. If you're just providing stronger and stronger versions of the same 7 orc grunt party they were fighting months ago, that's on you, not on them.

Agreed! I personally always feel any of these kinds of complications need to be baked into the setting before we even start the game, and clearly communicated to the players. Otherwise even if I've always felt that only stargate-esque teleportation exists, or that resurrection is XXX the players may feel like I'm just trying to shut them down, which is never good!

[Eldan]

I think certain types of magic just fall under "system basics". Like, some kind of settings and systems just don't do certain plots well.

Like, resurrection. I could write a setting/system where it was normal that everyone just came back when killed. In a superhero system where everyone can fly, a wall isn't an obstacle.

I think the same goes for, say, teleport. yes, it invalidates travel plots, but I think you just have to plan for that, if you play with it.

[Garimeth]

I think certain types of magic just fall under "system basics". Like, some kind of settings and systems just don't do certain plots well.

Like, resurrection. I could write a setting/system where it was normal that everyone just came back when killed. In a superhero system where everyone can fly, a wall isn't an obstacle.

I think the same goes for, say, teleport. yes, it invalidates travel plots, but I think you just have to plan for that, if you play with it.

Well, of course! I'm interested in seeing which other things people run into problems with, how they handle them, and what systems they use, lol.

[Segev]

It also doesn't have to invalidate travel plots. It just means you need a reason to traverse that path. Perhaps there is literally searching going on. Teleportation won't help you learn about the road. Perhaps the party is supposed to be making a map. Perhaps the party is actually scouting for a good location to build a fort, or lay an ambush, or just to find a new mining spot. Or maybe they're trying to trace where the bandits that stole the phylactery of the lich they just defeated went, and they don't know anything about the bandits so can't begin to scry them out. They do have the Ranger's tracking talents, however, and know where the robbery occurred. Now they have 1d10 days to find and destroy it before the lich returns!

[Garimeth]

It also doesn't have to invalidate travel plots. It just means you need a reason to traverse that path. Perhaps there is literally searching going on. Teleportation won't help you learn about the road. Perhaps the party is supposed to be making a map. Perhaps the party is actually scouting for a good location to build a fort, or lay an ambush, or just to find a new mining spot. Or maybe they're trying to trace where the bandits that stole the phylactery of the lich they just defeated went, and they don't know anything about the bandits so can't begin to scry them out. They do have the Ranger's tracking talents, however, and know where the robbery occurred. Now they have 1d10 days to find and destroy it before the lich returns!

Hmm. I don't disagree with you, but consider the following adventure (actually this is the next couple of sessions in my game!)

The party has to find passage from their land locked kingdom across a nearby sea. this will be the first time that their characters have ever left the kingdom, and most people in the kingdom have never left either, as travel in this region is long and dangerous, and the relationships with other kingdoms is strained. First they will have to get passage to the new kingdom, from which they can get passage to their actual destination. The intial passage will be handled by their employers (a council of knights). In this new city they will hire a crew to drop them off near some uninhabitated ruined necropolis that is excessively dangerous for normal folk. This gives me the opportunity to tell them about this new kingdom and the people they meet etc. Gives the world more of a lived in feeling and opportunity for a recurring NPC (the crew captain). They get dropped off and fight their way through the ruins for the McGuffin. Afterwards they have to extract on foot. They will run into a group of "adventurers" looting one of the towns they will most likely go through (the whole region has been abandoned due to a calamity centuries ago) if they try and get a ride with the adventurers, who have their own ship, the adventurers will try and rob them once they are out to sea. any other interactions with the NPC group I'm leaving fluid based off of the party's actions, but with the basic rule that the NPCs are non-law-abiding looters who want the PCs' stuff.

Now if the party had access to scry and teleport, the first portion (getting there, which will only take 15 minutes or so real time) and the third portion (getting home, which is now a mini adventure) would be invalidated. Its not necessarily that its a BAD thing per se, its that it gives me as a DM less tools to tell the story with. Of course in some cases these same things can be used to FEUL stories - invaders from another plane, teleports gone wrong, a scrying that reveals the OTHER, all kinds of things.

Sidenote, I like that bandit/lich idea.

[Segev]

Have whatever reason they are going to the far-away land require them to stop off at a few places in Nearby Kingdom (including that necropolis) to gather some information, some special supplies, or any other second- or third-order MacGuffins needed to operate successfully in the far-away land.

Also, again, remember that they've never been to this place; how will they teleport there? On whom or what will they scry to get a view of it? They don't know where the MacGuffin is, specifically; at best, they have a(n outdated) map to where they THINK it is. Here, overland flight will be more trouble than teleport: it will let them cover more ground safely.

Of course, flying draws its own attentions; plan your adventure to include things that fly rather than merely things which lurk on the ground. Dragons, harpies, even couatls and bow-using bugbears could be trouble.

Getting home won't be such a challenge, no. So don't plan for it to be. Spend that effort on improving the challenges once they are home that will prevent them from using the MacGuffin. If you must have them go through the additional exploration phase, have the "slot B" for which the MacGuffin is "tab A" have been stolen, a la the bandits-with-lich-phylactery plotline, and send them searching through that area.



Of course, this is, again, a higher-level party. What you described would be an excellent low-level adventure, culminating anywhere from level 5 to level 8. Before teleport, scry, and overland flight are available.

[oxybe]

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
5. What systems does your group primarily play?

1 - yup

2 - Magic as plot disruption tool. While convenience-based magic is fine, when your spells seem to exist to tell the plot "no" and you constantly need to work around it or ban it, it gets frustrating. This tends to be an issue when you haven't really nailed down the scope of the magic you want the players to have regular access to. doubly so if this magic is only in the hands of some players and not others, or at least easily accessible to some and very hard for others.

3 - if the game or it's setting don't address the issue, i won't run it. I want adjust things, not rewrite it. I have better things to spend my energy on.

4 - Depends on the game. If I sign up for a Mage the Awakening game and I'm told "don't break reality" I likely won't play. If I sign up for a non-supernaturals WoD game, I never planned on using that stuff, so W/E. In a game like D&D, this is a big "it depends".

5 - pathfinder for the main game, but between modules or when the gm can't make it, it tends to be fair game.

[Honest Tiefling]

1. Do you find that certain types of magic and/or abilities render certain types of plot elements and/or quests irrelevant?
As said before, any ability will make obstacles go away. I think the problem is that certain systems have enough magic to make too many go away compared to other characters. But, as said before, this depends greatly on the power level of the game. In a game where the fighter is basically a demigod of destruction, that noble isn't so much an obstacle as a fresh coat of red paint on the walls. In these high powered games, such an approach is not an issue, but a feature.

2. If yes, what types of magic and what types of adventures?
I think it depends less on the type of adventure, and more on the power level of the game. With broken magic in a low power setting/game style, any sort of adventure becomes a problem. Intrigue-based? Charm person. Nature-based? Nature is now burning with Hellfire. Combat? Now the baddies are fighting for us, and I summoned a flying, invisible juggernaut. So long, mundane suckers!

3. TO GMs: If so do you ban or limit access to them apart from what the setting you run does? In what way do you limit them?
I honestly haven't found a happy medium with house rules nor have a dedicated set of players to really answer this. Best I can do is to say I'd like to move away from big, flashy spells that have daily limits to spells that are more limited in their function but are limited to encounters.

4. TO PLAYERS: How do you, or would you, feel if your GM banned or limited these things with the assumption that it was discussed and made clear prior to the start of the game?
Depends. If they go too far, I'm less likely to find it appealing as I primarily play casters. However, I do try to keep an open mind. What would also help is if the DM makes it clear they are open to discussion in case a house rule backfires or they want to prohibit certain uses of spells. In turn, I'm willing to ditch spells and abilities mid-game with a bit of retconning if they prove problematic after talking about it. I do prefer talking about it instead of ripping it from my character sheet, however...

5. What systems does your group primarily play?
Pathfinder/3.5, with some Whitewolf, but not frequently enough for me to understand it or the settings well.

[Knaight]

While I wouldn't define any magic as inherently problematic, I would say that particular classes of magic have disproportionate setting and thematic implications, and should be handled more carefully. Permanent enchantments have a much bigger setting implication than temporary effects, mind affecting magic tends to have a major setting implication, widespread healing has a major setting implication, resurrection has a major setting implication, easy flight has a major setting implication. There are things that can be plopped down in an otherwise non-magical setting which wouldn't necessarily alter it too dramatically, and those are significantly easier to deal with and generally things that I put less careful thought into the matter of including or excluding.

[SimonMoon6]

I think it's not just the existence of a particular magical power.

I think the problem is when every party has *every*power available to them. Yeah, of course, every wizard knows teleport *and* detect thoughts *and* so forth *and* so on. Every party has access to resurrection. Well, they have to, because every monster has a chance to insta-kill the party. Blah.

But then, I come from a background of superhero games, where each character may have powers, but they are limited, and they don't change every day, and if you need to resurrect somebody, you don't just go to town and pay people. Superheroes tend to be way less powerful and way more balanced than any D&D (3.x) party, in the context of what adventures they can ruin.

[Fiery Diamond]

Yes.



This is really too big of a question to answer in detail - it depends on too many things.

The way I look at it, an adventure is made up of the players determining a sequence of atomic actions in order to resolve or direct a situation in a way they want. Those atomic actions are the things that the PCs can just 'do' - they might take in-world time, but OOC they're a single statement like 'I move to this square' or 'I spend the day crafting' or 'I cast Fireball'.

The actual thing that makes it an adventure is that the players have to figure out the sequence of atomic actions to accomplish their goals. Because it's a sequence and not just one thing, circumstances can change and interact along the way; characters can depend on eachothers' abilities to reach that end point; and there is some element of the players having to actually 'figure out' what to do by engaging with the details of the scenario. This takes OOC playtime in a way that atomic actions do not, and so that kind of thing makes up the bulk of the actual gameplay.

In D&D, for example, abilities tend to be designed to add new atomic actions to a character. This need not be the case in general - abilities which have prerequisites for their usage can give the player a choice between different sequences or more options in the pattern that a given sequence takes instead of just replacing with atomic actions. Anyhow, this is not necessarily a fundamental design problem, but it is a consequence of adding new atomic actions. The result is simply, when a given goal becomes something that can be done via an atomic action, it ceases to be a viable adventure and just becomes an action that a character can do.



I tend to customize systems or write them from scratch as necessary to create the kind of gameplay I want to explore. So its less a matter of banning them and more a matter of not putting them into the system I'm writing in the first place.

Generally what I try to do is favor enablers over solvers in my design. That is, abilities which just do something outright tend to be weaker in games I design than abilities which require some build-up or careful planning or cooperation or creativity to apply. I also favor abilities which allow the player to shuffle around trouble - solve trouble now for different trouble later, that kind of thing. Direct high-end solvers I tend to limit more to one-use items and artifacts and things like that - the idea being, you can still do a huge thing and just solve a problem outright, but you can't systematize that and rely on doing it with regularity. So you still have to make the decision 'is this the problem I solve outright, or should I save this for the future?'

That said, new atomic actions do still accumulate, but I build that into the overall plan for the campaign - which is much, much easier when I'm the one designing the abilities than when I'm given a particular list. The ability list generally evolves over the course of the campaign - players can usually invent and discover new skills and abilities as the game progresses - and so when I want gameplay to move on to a different type of adventure I can do that by seeding new abilities I introduce with the necessary atomic actions to suggest the possibility of those kinds of goals and resolutions.



If the GM is going somewhere with it and I'm interested in the game, I'm generally okay with whatever. But it is also possible that the GM might be trying to run a game that I wouldn't be interested in. Not specifically because the things were in the rules and then removed.



Custom stuff, D&D.

This sounds really interesting. I'm having some difficulty wrapping my mind around abilities that do not add new atomic actions, though. Could you give some examples and how they work? I assume from what you've described you're talking about something more complex than just making the numbers bigger, and what you've said sounds intriguing, but without any frame of reference I'm having trouble envisioning it.

[Psyren]

"There is an anti-teleport field!" is just a crutch that GMs resort to when trying to shoehorn the party into a plot that's inappropriate for their power level.

I don't know about how other games treat teleportation, but in D&D there is plenty of reason for it not to work without the GM relying on a "crutch" or arbitrary "field." An oft-overlooked line in the spell says:

You must have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination. The clearer your mental image, the more likely the teleportation works. Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

Bam. Even if you have a crystal-clear idea of where you're headed (inside the bad guy's dungeon, with shifting walls, where none of you have set foot before), "strong energy" can still screw you over.

In short, teleportation gets you to the doorstep safely, and from there you're following the rogue in - like a damn adventuring party instead of a delivery service.

[NichG]

This sounds really interesting. I'm having some difficulty wrapping my mind around abilities that do not add new atomic actions, though. Could you give some examples and how they work? I assume from what you've described you're talking about something more complex than just making the numbers bigger, and what you've said sounds intriguing, but without any frame of reference I'm having trouble envisioning it.

So, for example, in my current game there's a skill for Summoning. This allows the user to call forth from nothingness the manifestation of a particular legend or myth. The summoned creature is not automatically compelled, and must be negotiated with and placated with appropriate offerings or deals. This can potentially give the user the ability to solve many different problems, but not in a single step - instead, they have to figure out what myth to summon, gather the resources necessary to make an appropriate offering, etc. Using a very powerful summon is a mini-adventure in its own right. So given a particular goal, the players could choose two broadly different paths to resolve it - one path would be to just do things the 'normal' way, the other path would be to figure out how to get a summon to deal with it for them. Both paths still require multiple atomic actions to resolve.

A simpler example would be an ability that allows one to obtain a lead for a given mystery once per game or something like that. It doesn't promise to solve the mystery (it isn't an atomic action that resolves the conflict), but rather it helps prime the player into coming up with what to do next. So it helps the adventure continue rather than causing it to come to a quick end.

Another example would be something like an ability that lets one take the party on a journey into the inner world of an item or person in order to learn their history or knowledge. So if you want to get information from someone, you now have a choice - do you do it normally (interrogation, investigation, bribery, etc), or do you do it by journeying into their head and navigating a dungeon made up of their subconscious instead? So it gives the players a choice of the type of gameplay and methods they want to use to resolve the situation, but it still requires an adventure in either case. It may even require more of an adventure to do the journey-inside thing than it would just to work out how to negotiate with the person.

The thing is, if these abilities aren't very powerful, players will just not use them because they seem like trouble. So the art is in balancing that aspect - making the abilities powerful enough to entice the players to use them despite the fact that they take time and aren't just automatic. Furthermore, you have to be careful about the sequence they require becoming repetitive, since then they effectively do become atomic actions. That's part of the reason why the summoning ability doesn't transport a particular entity from somewhere but actually creates them out of nothing each time - it allows for the summoned entities to be resilient to threats of force without just being stupid, since otherwise it'd open up the automatic procedure of 'summon into a cage and then threaten with death to ensure cooperation' or things like that.