Has magic become so abundant it's not magical anymore?

[Schwann145]

Been questioning this recently and came upon this blog:
Fanservice BS: Low Magic, No Problem. Oh, Wait, Problem

And this particular part stuck out to me:

It’s weird because, if you look at the exemplar of the fantasy genre, the Lord of the Rings, you almost never see anyone in the party use magic. Hell, Gandalf uses a sword in most of the fights he’s in. By comparison, D&D is literally bursting at the seams with the fantastic. It’s gone beyond fantasy adventure to magical super fantasy. There is never a moment in D&D when there isn’t something magical happening on screen.

When you consider your class options, literally everything is either 100% magical or has magical options; the Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue are the only ones with non-magical options, and none of them can say exclusively so.

Game designers will tell us that we can play however we wish, whether it's more high fantasy or more sword & sorcery, but that's just not true based on what they actually design and release in final products - all of it is super-high fantasy.

When everything is magical, is nothing magical? If you can expect cantrips or their non-spell equivalent around every corner of every city of every setting... is magic special anymore?

What do you think?

[Grimmnist]

That's a really interesting point, I think I mostly agree with you but I have managed to work around that in the games I DM. A lot of D&D source material likes to pretend it is low magic, which as you pointed out makes no sense, so when I do a homemade world it is of course high magic, cantrips and low level spells are common ways to solve the problems of society. I think there is still room for mysterious magic in higher level spells, as much as we on the forums like planning level 20 characters they are actually incredibly rare in the world so most people would have maybe only heard of such high level magic. In addition spells above the 9th level exist in the lore but at some point were forbidden by celestial intervention, the ruins of an ancient empire with remnants of this magic can capture that idea of really special magic.

[KorvinStarmast]

It’s weird because, if you look at the exemplar of the fantasy genre, the Lord of the Rings, you almost never see anyone in the party use magic.

But D&D wasn't written as LoTR
It was written as Swords and Sorcery, which genre LOTR is not it in. LoTR is an attempt at an epic.

Swords and Sorcery? Yeah. Everything Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser were in. Any book with Elric of Melnibone or Dorain Hawkmoon. A variety of Edgar Rice Burroughts adventure books, Barsoom foremost. All of RE Howard's Conan Books. Three Hearts/Three Lions. The Tritonian Ring (L Sprague DeCamp). Theseus going after the Minotaur. (Greek Mytholody). Ali Baba and 40 Thieves. The Thief of Baghdad. Sinbad the Sailor. Jack Vance's Dying Earth. HP Lovecraft.

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!

While I prefer low magic settings, magic when encountered ought to be rare, powerful, and risky. That combination seems to have gone away ever since WoTC took over.

To a certain extent, the mundanization of magic via at-will cantrips (while very convenient from a game play perspective) is for me a bit of a step in the wrong direction.

[elyktsorb]

I'd be more interested if everyones take on making magic limited wasn't to make it so that things are just like gritty harshness (except with added fantastical/magical monsters). I play dnd because magic is a thing that's neat. (even when I don't play characters that don't have magic at their fingertips) and most of the magic-light/magic non-existant things I've played by people seem to always hit that same 1 note.

Besides, I'm infinitely more interested in settings where magic is more fleshed out and stuff. Like how it really effects the world. Dnd likes to have it's adventurer's but I wager a majority of people, who could study to use magic, would probably use it to do their jobs and not waste all that learning on possibly fighting three goblins.

If you ask me, it seems more like people want a d20 system that's less about magic/fantasy, but since dnd is popular they'd rather just mold it to their desires.

[NorthernPhoenix]

I don't think so, you just have to re-calibrate your expectations for modern influences. A good example would be the Marvel movies, which nearly everyone coming in fresh to DnD will have seen. In these, nearly everyone has some kind of fancy super-power, but the Infinity Gauntlet/Gems, which exist on a higher level of super (magic) is still a big, shocking deal.

The same is true for (most of) DnD, certainly 5e. With very few exceptions, magic is low scale and only sometimes high impact. You might instantly kill a single individual, but even Meteor Storm, Firestorm and Earthquake will have trouble destroying more than a city block, lacking true large scale impact. The magic that goes far beyond these effects (plot magic, mostly) is the magic of awe. People shooting firebolts and turning into birds nearly every fight doesn't take away from that.

[firelistener]

5e can do "Low Magic" settings just fine for a more Sword & Sorcery feel. You can still have players use caster classes and do this, but just remember that PCs aren't your average person. The most common complaint I see is that magic is too predictable or comprehenible, but I argue that it is okay for casters to predict and understand magic. In Conan stories, the magical people he encounters usually talk a great deal about much they understand the gods or secrets of magic. However, they don't fall into the pattern of repetitive casting we tend to see in 5e. No one in a Conan story is really saying, "I cast fireball", but you might see something like, "and the wizard furrowed his brow, muttering a dark and wicked incantation he stole ages ago from the cultic sorcerers of Stygia. Out from his hand leapt a fiery explosion that engulfed the assailants". To me, those are effectively the same thing but with massively different flavor. To get the latter, you need players to buy in to role play. And to really drive home what I mean: You can spend all the time in the world prepping a low magic dark fantasy sword and sorcery game and it won't be worth a hill of beans when your player comes in saying he's playing a gnome artificer that wears a chicken-shaped hat and shouts bad puns.

The best and easiest thing you can do to set a specific tone for a game is discuss it with your players and have everyone agree to role play it.

[Warwick]

When everything is magical, is nothing magical? If you can expect cantrips or their non-spell equivalent around every corner of every city of every setting... is magic special anymore?

What do you think?

Well magic isn't real, so it can still be cool and fantastical even if it permeates a work of fantasy. A lot of contemporary fantasy fiction has way more magic (or at least way more magic in the hands of the protagonists) than classic fantasy without losing the sense of the fantastic. It feels less esoteric, but that's not quite the same thing.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

One thing I find funny is the idea that magic has been forced on ever since WotC. 2e required the DM to make sure certain magic items get into the hands of every character or else you're screwed against certain things since those rules allowed critters to be completely immune without magic.

As others have said, D&D isn't based on LotR. It's based on the other things. Want a good example? Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (and Rafe Judkins doing the movie version for Amazon). Of our main characters (I'd argue the 8 from the original plus Elayne, Min, Aviendha) 6 out of 11 are magic users outright. Of the other 5 three have outright superpowers of a different from and one of the others has a magical sword.

#1: That's an imbalanced view of the world since this is our main characters, the rest of the world doesn't have this ready access to magic.

#2: This magic in whichever form it takes is what puts our heroes ahead of everyone else and lets them thrive and succeed in what they face.

As an aside, some D&D settings outright do push magic everywhere. That's where you get something like Eberron.

[NovenFromTheSun]

It’s worth remembering that by the time of LotR magic was already supposed to have left Middle-Earth and is basically being kept on life-support by the elven rings. Also, Gandalf is under command to hold back his full power when acting against Sauron, because the last time the Valar and Maiar went full throttle a large landmass was sunk, and Gandalf’s bosses want to keep things from escalating to that point.

When everything is magical, is nothing magical?

I don’t think so, it still emphasizes that this is a world not like ours.

If you can expect cantrips or their non-spell equivalent around every corner of every city of every setting... is magic special anymore?

Are the devises used in bleeding-edge scientific experiments less special because everyone has a toaster?

[Willie the Duck]

One thing I find funny is the idea that magic has been forced on ever since WotC. 2e required the DM to make sure certain magic items get into the hands of every character or else you're screwed against certain things since those rules allowed critters to be completely immune without magic.

And for that matter, in AD&D and basic-classic, there was magic all over the place, just not necessarily in the class features list of fighters and thieves (and... , nope that's about it). At high levels a fighter would have a small bevvy of magic swords that had X/day special powers (and might be riding the dragon he subdued, etc.).

When you consider your class options, literally everything is either 100% magical or has magical options; the Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue are the only ones with non-magical options, and none of them can say exclusively so.

I really do not understand what the existence of Eldritch Knights or Arcane tricksters or whatever means to some people. Yes, they put a 'fighter-wizard' and 'wizard-thief' option right there in the rules (such that even those who play without the actual multiclassing rules can do so). What exactly does that prove*?
*Actually I think I know -- it proves that the designers were catering to the OSR crowd, who would want a 'elf' class to play and a Grey Mouser to play, without the tack-on rules like Multiclassing and Feats.

When everything is magical, is nothing magical? If you can expect cantrips or their non-spell equivalent around every corner of every city of every setting... is magic special anymore?

What do you think?

I will say that there is some truth to this-- Casters having at-will spells; casters not having a few, hard-to-get-off-successfully spells, and then hiding behind the front line with simple, low-effect weapons; heck, wizards being able to pick which spells they got as they level up (as opposed to having to discover them as treasure)… they all do make magic seem more ubiquitous and commonplace. I remember bitd the local townsfolk fearing wizards greatly, and I don't think I could sell that as well today (they and the whole high level adventuring party? Yeah, they're all dangerous--fighters and rogues too).

The thing is, like Pixel_Kitsune was mentioning, it has always been that way in D&D. The needle has moved from 100 to 110 or something like that. More of it is prescribed. There is more customization. But it isn't that different from how it has always been.

[Evaar]

Yes and no.

First, depends on your setting.

If you're in Forgotten Realms, reality is constantly being rewritten by the gods and there are magical cataclysms every decade or two, big cities have magical features from impossible architecture to mythals. Maybe there are a few places where it's much less common, like rural or tribal lands, but the setting is meant to bleed magic.

In Eberron, low level magic is the lifeblood of the economy. High level magic is rare and represents either the stuff of legend (e.g. the binding of the Overlords) or massive coordinated efforts on the part of the most advanced magical organizations on the continent (e.g. the invention of airships or the use of undead in Karrnath) or something mysterious that no one really even understands that well (e.g. the Warforged). But a Fireball is about as common as a rocket launcher, not a handgun. Once you get past cantrips and 1st level spells, things really do become more rare. So there's a bit of a fuzzy line for when magic goes from mundane to fantastic, but it's around level 5 or 6.

Now if you want to do a low magic setting, it is going to be a bit more challenging in 5th edition and you need buy-in from your players. Yes it is hard to square magical rarity with a party composed of an Eldritch Knight, a Warlock, a Bard, and an Artificer. That can still work - perhaps they get a reputation for having sold their souls for dark powers. But the problem is that magical rarity works best when our perspective characters don't understand the magic. If our characters understand the magic and everyone else doesn't, then everyone else seems ignorant and superstitious. If our characters don't understand magic but someone else does, that someone else seems wise, mysterious, and maybe dangerous. So you need to know what kind of story you're telling, how you want your players to interact with the world they're in, and their buy-in. It is completely reasonable to run a game with Battlemasters, Thieves, Berserkers, and (Revised) Hunters. So long as your players agree first.

[Joe the Rat]

There really are two questions of magic here.

How commonplace is magic in the world?

How pervasive is magic in the party?

One is a question of setting, the other a question of party focus - and yes, you can be a high exception as a group.

Originally I wrote the first is "How pervasive is magic in the world?", but that kind of calls to LotR - while there aren't enchanted button polishers or automated verge trimmers in play, the world as a whole is steeped in magic. Magical creatures, magical races (Elves!), secret doors of magical form, exceptional artefacts of ancient power... and also the enchanted toys the dwarves produce, and the fragments of spells they say over treasures to keep them hidden. But we call it "low magic." Magic exists, magic is known, but there's not a lot of it in every day life. Even what the heroes encounter is limited. A party of all casters in a low magic setting is going to be an exceptional and potentially frightening group. That much magic says you are a significant concentration of power, and will draw notice. It also means that potion vendors, magic libraries, and buying items are not in the books. If you want it, you are going to have to go find it. Welcome to AD&D.

Forgotten Realms keeps selling itself as lowish magic, but then they turn around and have every major city literally glowing with power. Casters are common enough that the cities have wizards on the payroll, and in the city watch to deal with the spellcasting criminal element. Eberron just moves from "sorcerers and streetlights" to "industrial-magical complex" with arcana replacing hydrocarbons. You can buy simple magic items, and Wand of Magic Missiles made all men equal. But you can scale up from there. Higher magics may be more regulated or access controlled, money is the limiting factor for many researches, but Fireball still exists.

The game plays either way. If you don't intend to have a lot of findable magic, make it known (so wizards can accommodate expectations), and watch your creature mix so that you don't create impossible encounters without telegraphing that knowledge. having a creature that can only be defeated by magic in a low magic setting is perfectly fine - they are the unstoppable monsters everyone runs from. If that's what the party is up against, give them the tools: Dusty tomes and old lore, treasure maps and rumors of enchanted weapons, or even build the One Weakness into the combat design. But also remember this means that if the party needs restorative magics, odds are they're the ones who will have it - none of this G1,250 for a raise dead from the local temple, because odds are the temple priests don't have any magic at all.

If instead you want magic everywhere, you can still set the limits - what's the highest level of caster likely to be found? Are clerics more likely to be found than arcanists? Are temple priests always clerics, or is the village priest merely an acolyte, and the most potent priest in the county is a Magic Initiate with some ritual casting? Do wizard schools exist, or are they highly secretive fringe weirdos? How specialized is a library that has the resources to actually research magic spells? Are sorcerers a known and countable population? Are they the X-Men? Are they the Fantastic Four? Are they Olympic Athletes - what anyone can learn to do, but they have the training and capacity to excel? Or is a 5th-level caster party essentially the G7 of magic power?

[Sparky McDibben]

Been questioning this recently and came upon this blog:
Fanservice BS: Low Magic, No Problem. Oh, Wait, Problem

And this particular part stuck out to me:


When you consider your class options, literally everything is either 100% magical or has magical options; the Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue are the only ones with non-magical options, and none of them can say exclusively so.

Game designers will tell us that we can play however we wish, whether it's more high fantasy or more sword & sorcery, but that's just not true based on what they actually design and release in final products - all of it is super-high fantasy.

When everything is magical, is nothing magical? If you can expect cantrips or their non-spell equivalent around every corner of every city of every setting... is magic special anymore?

What do you think?

My highly unnecessary, strictly personal spicy opinion on the Angry GM is that some of his designs are solid, but most of his fluff is myopic. <<This is not an attack on you for reading the Angry GM; if he's your guy, that's perfectly OK>>

With that out of the way, here's how I do low-magic:

1.) First step 'cuz it's the most important: TALK TO YOUR PLAYERS. Spell out exactly what you mean by low-magic. New players would usually see a really awesome high-fantasy setting, and more experienced players might hear "low-magic" and equate it to "gritty nihilistic setting where the DM can enact revenge fantasies." I actually see that a lot.

2.) With your players on board, gather their information. I don't restrict any classes, but I highlight what might change about the base assumptions. If you're a wizard, for example, you might be the only wizard within a 600-mile radius. Good luck finding scrolls except through adventures. And if you want to gain more spells than the basic 2 per level, we're going to need to build out some basic spell research rules. Maybe 1 month of downtime per spell level up to 5th level, and one year of downtime per spell level for 6th level and up. And of course, that also means spelling out your downtime assumptions. Again, it's not about limiting player choices, it's about defining the consequences.

3.) I prefer a sandbox-style game, so I construct an area, populate with dungeons, monsters, and towns, then seed rumors leading to those dungeons and monsters throughout the setting. I also try to figure out what my players want. One of them is a witch hunter who had a run-in with a hag? I want to create at least three but probably five clues about that hag somewhere in this area. Some of them could be adventures in their own right. But I want to highlight that this world doesn't have a lot of magic running around, so maybe there are no spells known above 3rd level anywhere in this area. No. Zilch. Zippo. Even a scroll of chromatic orb is invaluable. That means the village priest is likely not a spellcaster, and if they are a spellcaster, nothing above first level spells once or twice per day. And those spells shouldn't be combat spells, but stuff like create food and water, etc. That also means these villagers live a lot closer to the poverty line, with highly unstable communities that could crack at the first hint of trouble. Which means that they shouldn't be a friendly sort of bunch, but they honor hospitality (or let the priest honor hospitality).

To answer your question: no. Game worlds are full of people, but that doesn't make playing a human feel generic. It makes it feel awesome when you can freaking fly, dude. Game worlds feel boring when they are too much like ours. The answer to a boring game world isn't "less magic," it's magic that sees a creative use. Check out Avatar: the Last Airbender for examples of this in all the cities.

[Tanarii]

No. But the default speed of advancement and magic item treasure gain has accelerated greatly. From experience I know with multiple times a week play, you can hit level 11 in less than 3 months. I've heard that you can reach level 20 with weekly play in a year. The former is something like 5-8x faster than the original rules intended, as per Gyxgax's rant against power level gamers and the levels of characters in the O.G. Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns.

Remember, "name" level, level 9 or so, was the cumulation of a PC career, when it was time to semi-retire.

Also he apparently never intended level 9 spells to be used.p:

https://dmdavid.com/tag/the-dungeons...t-for-players/

*Actually I think I know -- it proves that the designers were catering to the OSR crowd, who would want a 'elf' class to play and a Grey Mouser to play, without the tack-on rules like Multiclassing and Feats.

Agreed, clearly there for elves.

[MaxWilson]

No. But the default speed of advancement and magic item treasure gain has accelerated greatly. From experience I know with multiple times a week play, you can hit level 11 in less than 3 months. I've heard that you can reach level 20 with weekly play in a year.

You can do it much faster than that if you power-level by fighting the right monsters, especially in a sandbox. E.g. a single Iron Golem can boost you from 1st level to 6th level all in one fight, and at that point taking on further Iron Golems is pretty trivial if you're e.g. a Shepherd Druid.

You may or may not survive to reach 20th level if you push the envelope repeatedly, but if you do you'll hit 20th level very rapidly. It's only 355,000 XP after all. In AD&D you'd only be ~9th level at that point but in 5E you're 20th level.

[Tvtyrant]

I think a more Conan style campaign is pretty easy (especially in 4E.) No casting classes, rituals are in the game, make it so magic items can only be made in places of power or make monster parts ingredients for them. Immediately becomes more like early Buffy or other urban fantasy genres where spells aren't easy to find or cast.

[NorthernPhoenix]

You can do it much faster than that if you power-level by fighting the right monsters, especially in a sandbox. E.g. a single Iron Golem can boost you from 1st level to 6th level all in one fight, and at that point taking on further Iron Golems is pretty trivial if you're e.g. a Shepherd Druid.

You may or may not survive to reach 20th level if you push the envelope repeatedly, but if you do you'll hit 20th level very rapidly. It's only 355,000 XP after all. In AD&D you'd only be ~9th level at that point but in 5E you're 20th level.

I'd be impressed if more than 1% of the 5e playerbase actually play that way.

[MaxWilson]

I'd be impressed if more than 1% of the 5e playerbase actually play that way.

I doubt that more than 1% of the player base ever reaches 20th level at all. It's a niche within a niche. From what I gather on the Internet, most people seem to play adventure paths instead of modular adventures, and DMs just don't create enough content to last until 20th level.

[Trask]

In my opinion, yes. I wish magic was restricted to a few classes that were the magical classes, or just one magical class. The wizard. I think the cleric and the druid could both be wizard archetypes. I dont think the bard needs to be magical and could probably have been a rogue archetype. I dont think the ranger needs to be magical and could be a fighter archetype. I'm skeptical that the sorcerer or warlock need to exist. I dont think the barbarian needs ANY magic and shouldnt have ridiculous things like ancestor ghosts or magic rage storms.

Not because these things are inherently bad but they dont gel with my (and many peoples) idea of a fantasy world. Pretty much any fantasy world. Its endemic of D&D becoming so navelgazing and self referential that it locks out players from playing anything else. And that would be ok if D&D actually committed to a setting (or at least one that wasnt the definition of stale, tasteless pablum in the Snoregotten Realms). But as it stands the game doesnt commit itself to anything except its implied setting which ends up in this weird place where the game simultaneously has a lot of genre freedom and yet none at all because whatever you do, the macro level worldbuilding ends up being the exact same because of all the world-breaking spells D&D has. All the old D&D settings just arent a good fit for it anymore because of this. I admire what 4e tried to do in creating a ground up setting for their game and I think that it would be to the benefit of the game to do this again so people can stop making a thousand threads about how to do low magic in D&D. You cant. D&D is a game about gonzo ridiculous anime characters burping magic from every orifice. Thats the facts, get over it already.

So to answer the OP soundly, I think its pretty unarguably true that magic has become less "magical". Because to be "magical" it would have to be something in contrast to mundanity, it would have to be fantastical and special. It isnt. Its more like science, or superpowers now. Were playing a superheroes game, only faux medieval Seattle rather than Metropolis.

[Grod_The_Giant]

D&D, at this point in its evolution, has become its own beast. It's not trying to emulate Lord of the Rings, or Conan, or Jack Vance, or really anything that exists outside its own confines. D&D exists to be D&D-- to have Wizards and Clerics, Fighters and Rogues, Fireballs and Bags of Holding, natural 20s and spell levels and all the rest. Following its rules and logic through to the conclusion isn't going to get you a consistent world because that was never the goal. It exists for dungeon crawling and dragon slaying, not world-building.

(Which, let me emphasize, is not in any way shape or form a bad thing)

[Tanarii]

You can do it much faster than that if you power-level by fighting the right monsters, especially in a sandbox. E.g. a single Iron Golem can boost you from 1st level to 6th level all in one fight, and at that point taking on further Iron Golems is pretty trivial if you're e.g. a Shepherd Druid.

Yes well DMs giving away easy kills and XP have been around since the old days too. Thus Gygax's rant. That's why I specified default.

[MaxWilson]

Yes well DMs giving away easy kills and XP have been around since the old days too. Thus Gygax's rant. That's why I specified default.

I thought you were talking about the default speed of advancement, not the default difficulty. The point is that if you crank the difficulty way up to the point where most combats are life-and-death stakes, you automatically inherit fast level advancement too, and there's no way to change that without actually rewriting 5E's XP tables or abandoning XP-based levelling.

[Spiritchaser]

Been questioning this recently and came upon this blog:
Fanservice BS: Low Magic, No Problem. Oh, Wait, Problem

And this particular part stuck out to me:


When you consider your class options, literally everything is either 100% magical or has magical options; the Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue are the only ones with non-magical options, and none of them can say exclusively so.

Game designers will tell us that we can play however we wish, whether it's more high fantasy or more sword & sorcery, but that's just not true based on what they actually design and release in final products - all of it is super-high fantasy.

When everything is magical, is nothing magical? If you can expect cantrips or their non-spell equivalent around every corner of every city of every setting... is magic special anymore?

What do you think?

I think there are caveats and provisos, ways in which mundane magic is at least alien, but in general I agree with you.

I would note that the way rest mechanics work in 5e, it is surprisingly viable for a sufficiently pyromaniacle party to run without any magic at all, at least in the low to mid levels (no experience higher than that)

That said, the DM can still make the magic of each campaign strange, interesting, different and unexpected.

It’s just a lot of work to do, and still leap it somewhat balanced

[Sorinth]

Keep in mind that if you want to create a system that can support both high magic worlds and low magic worlds it's a lot easier to create the rules for high magic worlds, and then simply restrict certain things in order to create a low magic setting.

But it's true that they marketed 5e as a low magic by default settings and it really isn't. I find the biggest failing of the DMG is that they didn't provide guidance for how and what to limit to create the type of campaign you want to create. Even beyond just low/high magic worlds, if a DM wanted to create a survivalist game there's no guidance in the DMG when their really should be sections for most of the standard worlds/campaigns.

[Trask]

Anyone who wants to play low magic 5e should just play the "Adventures in Middle Earth" supplement. Its basically perfect for it.

[Akal Saris]

I was thinking about this topic a little while ago, since I'm playing a dwarven barbarian/fighter in a high level 5E game at present, and I felt like I practically had to work not to have any mystic/magic abilities for the character, because I wanted to try and capture a '2E' feel for a frontline dwarven fighter. My DM, meanwhile, has been a friend for ~30 years, and I've never seen him play a character that didn't have some level of magic, typically a fighter/mage, so he was completely mystified that I didn't want to splash in some levels of X spellcaster to be more effective :P

[HPisBS]

If you want a low magic setting, then all it takes is to use the gritty / slow rest rules -- where short rests take 8 hours and long rests take all week. That forces everyone to cast FAR fewer spells. So much so that it discourages players from even playing full casters, or anything else that relies on long-rest-based abilities.

(This doesn't appeal to me, personally. And our group didn't like it when it was tried. But if you feel like magic gets tossed around too often for your tastes, then this would definitely put an end to it.)

[NaughtyTiger]

Yes, magic is so commonplace, that it's meh.

No one should be impressed that the charleton can do card tricks that look like magic, cuz the guy next to him is literally doing magic.

Not to mention, the economy should reflect it.
any worker who doesn't do magic should be unemployed.
a 5th level wizard isn't that special, and she could literally build a 3x 40ft bridges in a day.

[Dr. Cliché]

When everything is magical, is nothing magical?

An interesting thing to note is that whilst magic seems to have become much more prevalent on PCs, it's actually diminished greatly on the monsters. Many creatures that used to be fearsome spellcasters in their own right now have barely any spells to their name, and even the ones that have retained their casting are mere shadows of their former selves.

As an example, a Horned Devil in 3.5 had:
Spell-Like Abilities:
At will—dispel chaos (DC 21), dispel good (DC 21), magic circle against good, greater teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects only); persistent image (DC 21)
3/day—fireball (DC 19), lightning bolt (DC 19)

In contrast, a Horned Devil in 5e has:
[Error: "spells" not found.]

Even the monsters that have come off better have still generally lost out. Take, for example, the spells of the Death Slaad:
At will: detect magic, detect thoughts, invisibility (self only), mage hand, major image
2/day each: fear, fireball, fly, tongues
1/day each: cloudkill, plane shift

This seems pretty good . . . until you look at the 3.5 version:

Spell-Like Abilities:
At will—animate objects, chaos hammer, deeper darkness, detect magic, dispel law, fear, finger of death, fireball, fly, identify, invisibility, magic circle against law, see invisibility, shatter;
3/day—circle of death, cloak of chaos, word of chaos;
1/day—implosion, power word blind.

Note also the quality of the spells. The 5e Slaad has just 5 at-will spells, compared to 14 for the 3.5 version. But on top of that, 2 of those 5 spells are basic cantrips and the others are all fairly weak, low-level spells. Meanwhile, the 3.5 one can throw out Finger of Death at will.


I suppose the only point I'm making is that there's a weird trend wherein PCs in 5e have become significantly more magical, yet monsters have gone the opposite route.


As to the original point, at least as far as PCs are concerned, I think this is a logical consequence of having magic that's free of both (meaningful) costs, as well as risk and consequences. There's a dozen different ways for a PC to gain magic, and even magic involving dark pacts and forbidden lore has no significant side-effects or negative consequences.

The obvious answer then is why wouldn't you use magic?

[HPisBS]

I suppose the only point I'm making is that there's a weird trend wherein PCs in 5e have become significantly more magical, yet monsters have gone the opposite route.


As to the original point, at least as far as PCs are concerned, I think this is a logical consequence of having magic that's free of both (meaningful) costs, as well as risk and consequences. There's a dozen different ways for a PC to gain magic, and even magic involving dark pacts and forbidden lore has no significant side-effects or negative consequences.

The obvious answer then is why wouldn't you use magic?

On the other hand, haven't a lot of PCs' spells gotten weaker? Didn't stuff like Dominate ___ used to last multiple days at a time?