Why the desire for low magic?

[H_H_F_F]

I wish to reiterate a point that I feel got lost in the discussion. A low magic world with a low magic party allows the telling of different stories, and the introducing of different puzzles, than a high magic one. That was the entire point of my first post here, which gave examples of such stories.

Let's look at "balance to the table", and at the superman discussion. A GM of a game wants to tell a crime mystery in 2040 New York. A rag-tag team of ex-cops, who resigned from the corrupt police force of 2040, hunt down a supernatural serial killer - he can break walls with his bare hands, and can take 10 bullets before slowing down. Pretty free-form.

They offer their players a few guidelines, such as having "the muscle", "the brain" and "the techy", but as they're a frequent user of this forum, they also say "balance to the table".

The gang walks up playing Superman, Professor X, and The Doctor.

Yes, if you call a setting "high magic", and your players find out its basically medieval style sword-and-sorcery but there are two wizards controlling the world from their towers, they'll be disappointed. But if you want to create a low magic world, and your table creates characters that are well balanced with each other, but force you to either: 1/ change your setting, the types of threats and allies found within it, the way its people interact with your PCs, the types of challenges you wanted to present, and the type of stories you wanted to tell together or 2/ Let the PCs completely run over your setting and losing all of those stories and challenges anyway, then congratulations. You just allowed "balance to the table" to ruin your fun.

Saying "literally everyone/almost everyone in my world only has X capabilities at most, a fact which shapes the world, so I don't want you to be able to go way above and beyond that by our 10th session" is absolutely reasonable, IMO, if the stories you're interested in telling are for example "heroes save the realm" and not "new gods ascend".

[Crake]

"A high-X game is a high-X game" is tautologically true, so I'll not even attempt to disagree.

However, it means that your concern is *not* with a single high-X element, but exclusively with having a high-X game when it was billed as a low-X game.

So we're back to the point of, "do you actually have any objections to having a high-X element in an otherwise low-X game?".

Again, it depends. Am I running a campaign where the players are pioneers in whatever X is, and they're making new discoveries and leading this new frontier? Then sure, great. I've run games like that where the players are in a world coming out of a dark age, and are unlocking powerful abilities and digging up ancient, powerful artifacts. But if you come to an e6 table, running a monster-of-the-week hunting game, with the intention of cheesing spells above 3rd level, and making it into a macro game about how you're taking over the region, then im either just gonna say no and either find a player interested in playing the game I'm running, or, if you're a part of my regular group, I'd say "Uhh, that's not what we're running, but does anyone else want to play that? If so, maybe remake your characters to fit into that game style instead (and maybe give me a week or two to come up with somthing to fit that game), otherwise the outlier will need to remake his character".

I also think it's far easier for a DM to recognize and say "No, that's above what I want in my game" than for a DM to recognize and say "That's below what's gonna be enjoyable in this game". The first is setting limitations on the campaign itself and clearly so, while the second, while it is the same in what it's trying to accomplish, it feels much more like being the fun police, and in a way it is. You're telling someone what they will or won't enjoy, when, maybe they enjoy being a cheerleader on the sidelines, who knows?

[Quertus]

I wish to reiterate a point that I feel got lost in the discussion. A low magic world with a low magic party allows the telling of different stories, and the introducing of different puzzles, than a high magic one. That was the entire point of my first post here, which gave examples of such stories.

Let's look at "balance to the table", and at the superman discussion. A GM of a game wants to tell a crime mystery in 2040 New York. A rag-tag team of ex-cops, who resigned from the corrupt police force of 2040, hunt down a supernatural serial killer - he can break walls with his bare hands, and can take 10 bullets before slowing down. Pretty free-form.

They offer their players a few guidelines, such as having "the muscle", "the brain" and "the techy", but as they're a frequent user of this forum, they also say "balance to the table".

The gang walks up playing Superman, Professor X, and The Doctor.

Yes, if you call a setting "high magic", and your players find out its basically medieval style sword-and-sorcery but there are two wizards controlling the world from their towers, they'll be disappointed. But if you want to create a low magic world, and your table creates characters that are well balanced with each other, but force you to either: 1/ change your setting, the types of threats and allies found within it, the way its people interact with your PCs, the types of challenges you wanted to present, and the type of stories you wanted to tell together or 2/ Let the PCs completely run over your setting and losing all of those stories and challenges anyway, then congratulations. You just allowed "balance to the table" to ruin your fun.

Saying "literally everyone/almost everyone in my world only has X capabilities at most, a fact which shapes the world, so I don't want you to be able to go way above and beyond that by our 10th session" is absolutely reasonable, IMO, if the stories you're interested in telling are for example "heroes save the realm" and not "new gods ascend".

Well, that certainly sounds like a good explanation for why "balance to the table" was originally "balance to the table and the module".

Again, it depends. Am I running a campaign where the players are pioneers in whatever X is, and they're making new discoveries and leading this new frontier? Then sure, great. I've run games like that where the players are in a world coming out of a dark age, and are unlocking powerful abilities and digging up ancient, powerful artifacts. But if you come to an e6 table, running a monster-of-the-week hunting game, with the intention of cheesing spells above 3rd level, and making it into a macro game about how you're taking over the region, then im either just gonna say no and either find a player interested in playing the game I'm running, or, if you're a part of my regular group, I'd say "Uhh, that's not what we're running, but does anyone else want to play that? If so, maybe remake your characters to fit into that game style instead (and maybe give me a week or two to come up with somthing to fit that game), otherwise the outlier will need to remake his character".

I also think it's far easier for a DM to recognize and say "No, that's above what I want in my game" than for a DM to recognize and say "That's below what's gonna be enjoyable in this game". The first is setting limitations on the campaign itself and clearly so, while the second, while it is the same in what it's trying to accomplish, it feels much more like being the fun police, and in a way it is. You're telling someone what they will or won't enjoy, when, maybe they enjoy being a cheerleader on the sidelines, who knows?

You've failed to consider the possibility of "obtaining spells above 3rd level… and still being balanced". Or even "obtaining spells above 3rd level… yet still being below what's gonna be enjoyable in this game".

You're stuck on this false notion that "high-X" means "high-Y". (EDIT: in this case, "high-magic = high-power / high-capability + highly motivated")

Once you get past that, my questions - aimed at trying to evaluate the exact nature of your concern - might make more sense.

[H_H_F_F]

Well, that certainly sounds like a good explanation for why "balance to the table" was originally "balance to the table and the module".

Well, then I clearly don't understand what the discussion is about.

If I want to create an experience or story that would benefit from being in a low magic world; and I therefore tell my players that playing high magic classes would create balance issues and theme issues; then I've created a low magic world, in which high magic options aren't welcome, and I'm not sure what you're arguing against - except that you want to call it "balance to the module" and not "low magic restrictions".

Am I misunderstanding your position? Could you reiterate what exactly is the issue for you with low magic?

[Quertus]

Well, then I clearly don't understand what the discussion is about.

If I want to create an experience or story that would benefit from being in a low magic world; and I therefore tell my players that playing high magic classes would create balance issues and theme issues; then I've created a low magic world, in which high magic options aren't welcome, and I'm not sure what you're arguing against - except that you want to call it "balance to the module" and not "low magic restrictions".

Am I misunderstanding your position? Could you reiterate what exactly is the issue for you with low magic?

given that you seemed to have one of the *best* understandings of the topic (or best "understanding + ability to express"), I've clearly failed to communicate.

So… pretend I had said, "I would have attempted to communicate the majority¹ of the content of your post with the much more concise/terse 'balance to the table and the module'; however, over the years, it was shortened to the more audience-appropriate sound bite of 'balance to the table'. As that's not entirely unlike a Playground mantra for me, obviously, I agree. And very well explained - kudos!"

Which leaves you still asking, "OK, but… where do we differ", no?

Sadly, my most likely response is the not terribly helpful, "I dunno - you tell me". (Although I would clarify that "low magic restrictions" is explicitly *not* covered under "balance to the table").

But I suspect that, if our stances differ, it is related to my discussion with Crake, in which I am attempting to tease apart the various "high-X" variables.

"Balance to the table" is, ultimately, primarily to exclusively² about level of capability. However, it gets really messy to look at the details, because… well, because (for example) at tables that only count damage as contribution, a "Playground OP" battlefield control Tainted Sorcerer would be considered terribly UP at that table, by that table's metrics. So it's… objective *and* subjective. Like I said, messy.

Perhaps more usefully to your understanding, my issue in this thread isn't with low-magic, it's with seemingly invalid reasons for calling for low magic. "Punch me in the face - there's a gnat in my eye." Um, can we maybe take a step back here, and evaluate the line of thought that leads from this problem to this proposed "solution"?

Whenever there is a "why" thread, I'll tend towards evaluating whether I can get from the stated reason to the stated… whatever… and, if I can't, I'll poke at it until I get an explanation where I can get from point A to point B. Or, as in this case, I'll suggest a point C.

Any clearer?

¹ importantly, thematic issues (such as "low-magic" - and exactly *which* of the numerous possible definitions for those words the GM is using) is *not* covered under "balance to the table".
² easily arguably about spotlight sharing, too

[Crake]

Well, that certainly sounds like a good explanation for why "balance to the table" was originally "balance to the table and the module".



You've failed to consider the possibility of "obtaining spells above 3rd level… and still being balanced". Or even "obtaining spells above 3rd level… yet still being below what's gonna be enjoyable in this game".

You're stuck on this false notion that "high-X" means "high-Y". (EDIT: in this case, "high-magic = high-power / high-capability + highly motivated")

Once you get past that, my questions - aimed at trying to evaluate the exact nature of your concern - might make more sense.

It's not about that though. By creating an outlier in the setting, you instantly bring into question everything about the setting, and it drastically changes the atmosphere, because if a player can do it, so too should the npcs, and if you can get 4th level spells, why stop there, let's go for 5th, and 6th etc etc, and then the game and setting cease to be what the DM envisioned.

I guess that's why it's not just about "balance to the table". Because sure, you can maybe balance a 6th level spellcaster firing away blasting spells to match the other low magic characters, but the fact that a 6th level spellcaster exists is significant. It means that other 6th level spells that aren't blasting spells exist, it means that lesser planar binding exists, that teleport exists, that polymorph exists, and so on. Such spells change the landscape of a campaign, which is why there is a significant difference between saying "sure you can cast 6th level spells, but keep it in line with the party" and "no, 6th level spells aren't available in this campaign".

The other option is of course, going on a spell-by-spell basis and determining "does this spell exist? yes/no" and that's just far more of a pain, when you can just instead say "You're e6, use your feats to amp up the 3rd level spells you have instead of gunning for higher level spells".

As a side note, I don't have any concerns, this is just a discussion about why people prefer low magic over high magic, and we've kinda veered off topic into some side area.

[H_H_F_F]

given that you seemed to have one of the *best* understandings of the topic (or best "understanding + ability to express"), I've clearly failed to communicate.

So… pretend I had said, "I would have attempted to communicate the majority¹ of the content of your post with the much more concise/terse 'balance to the table and the module'; however, over the years, it was shortened to the more audience-appropriate sound bite of 'balance to the table'. As that's not entirely unlike a Playground mantra for me, obviously, I agree. And very well explained - kudos!"

Which leaves you still asking, "OK, but… where do we differ", no?

Sadly, my most likely response is the not terribly helpful, "I dunno - you tell me". (Although I would clarify that "low magic restrictions" is explicitly *not* covered under "balance to the table").

But I suspect that, if our stances differ, it is related to my discussion with Crake, in which I am attempting to tease apart the various "high-X" variables.

"Balance to the table" is, ultimately, primarily to exclusively² about level of capability. However, it gets really messy to look at the details, because… well, because (for example) at tables that only count damage as contribution, a "Playground OP" battlefield control Tainted Sorcerer would be considered terribly UP at that table, by that table's metrics. So it's… objective *and* subjective. Like I said, messy.

Perhaps more usefully to your understanding, my issue in this thread isn't with low-magic, it's with seemingly invalid reasons for calling for low magic. "Punch me in the face - there's a gnat in my eye." Um, can we maybe take a step back here, and evaluate the line of thought that leads from this problem to this proposed "solution"?

Whenever there is a "why" thread, I'll tend towards evaluating whether I can get from the stated reason to the stated… whatever… and, if I can't, I'll poke at it until I get an explanation where I can get from point A to point B. Or, as in this case, I'll suggest a point C.

Any clearer?

¹ importantly, thematic issues (such as "low-magic" - and exactly *which* of the numerous possible definitions for those words the GM is using) is *not* covered under "balance to the table".
² easily arguably about spotlight sharing, too

Much clearer, thank you.

It's hard for me to determine if (and how much) we would disagree on any given "low magic" decision, but I think I have a better understanding of your position now. Thank you for the explanation.

[Quertus]

Much clearer, thank you.

It's hard for me to determine if (and how much) we would disagree on any given "low magic" decision, but I think I have a better understanding of your position now. Thank you for the explanation.

No problem! After your exceedingly clear post (kudos again, btw), explaining myself was the least I could do.

Given the number of different definitions of "high magic" floating around, if we both dogmatically and blindly stuck with just one definition (which I probably would), and didn't explain ourselves, *and* chose different definitions? Then we'd probably disagree a lot.

It's not about that though. By creating an outlier in the setting, you instantly bring into question everything about the setting, and it drastically changes the atmosphere, because if a player can do it, so too should the npcs, and if you can get 4th level spells, why stop there, let's go for 5th, and 6th etc etc, and then the game and setting cease to be what the DM envisioned.

Only if the GM changes the content of their setting. As that way lies madness, i encourage not doing that.

On the other hand, I can see trying to stop it a step earlier in the process. For reasons that are too complex and off-topic to go into in this thread, I believe that this is a highly suboptimal choice, but I can *at least* see why those who haven't thought it through could make this choice (not unlike "no wealth 3e").

I guess that's why it's not just about "balance to the table". Because sure, you can maybe balance a 6th level spellcaster firing away blasting spells to match the other low magic characters,

One can balance a *specific instance* of most anything to most anything.

but the fact that a 6th level spellcaster exists is significant. It means that other 6th level spells that aren't blasting spells exist,

Not if no-one exists who possesses them. That is your choice to make. I know how I would choose in that scenario. How would you choose?

it means that lesser planar binding exists, that teleport exists, that polymorph exists, and so on. Such spells change the landscape of a campaign,

Last I checked, even in e6, gods and ancient dragons and such exist. Your landscape is already not what you envision. This change is insignificant compared to the power of the dark side… or whatever it was we were actually discussing.

which is why there is a significant difference between saying "sure you can cast 6th level spells, but keep it in line with the party" and "no, 6th level spells aren't available in this campaign".

Sure.

The other option is of course, going on a spell-by-spell basis and determining "does this spell exist? yes/no" and that's just far more of a pain, when you can just instead say "You're e6, use your feats to amp up the 3rd level spells you have instead of gunning for higher level spells".

This - limiting options - actually makes balance harder, not easier.

As a side note, I don't have any concerns, this is just a discussion about why people prefer low magic over high magic, and we've kinda veered off topic into some side area.

Have we?

[Mechalich]

As a side note, I don't have any concerns, this is just a discussion about why people prefer low magic over high magic, and we've kinda veered off topic into some side area.

To get back to this, I think it's a matter of different types of storytelling. Traditionally, storytelling conflict is codified into a small number of conflict types (5 or 7 usually). Person vs. Person, Person vs. Nature, Person vs. Society, Person vs. the Unknown, and Person vs. Self being one list.

Person vs Nature and Person vs Society conflicts, notably have pretty high verisimilitude requirements (unless they are explicitly allegorical, but that's not really doable in tabletop anyway) and are difficult to handle once individual power levels scale past a certain point because both nature and society recede into irrelevancy as antagonists. Person vs Self is challenging to do at extremely high power levels because the 'self' of god-like nigh-immortal being is so vastly different from that of a normal human. Mythology and high-powered superhero settings, often approaches this by reducing the mentality of deities to the mortal level but this has its own problems because it basically requires ignoring the implications of character powers. If character knowledge scales alongside character power - which it broadly does in D&D in terms of spellcasters because of divinations and some other stuff - then high magic also hinders Person vs. The Unknown stories because the 'unknown' box is continually contracting (Pathfinder gave Cthulhu stats which makes this point rather explicitly).

So that leaves you with, in the end, Person vs Person. There's nothing wrong with stories like that. 'We're going to take down the BBEG because they're evil and we hate them,' has an awful lot of successful mileage behind it. As does 'God X cheated on Goddess Y.' In fact, high powered stories, by stripping away all the distractions, may in fact work better this way. The good old-fashioned shounen tournament arc is actually a quite effective framing device if the villains are sufficiently hateful and you're perfectly willing to cheer while they get their faces pounded in utterly devoid of context. However, if the goal is some other kind of story, then high magic is tough.

Related to this is the issue of scarcity. If you actually take sufficiently advanced magic (or tech) to its logical conclusion you end up with a post-scarcity world. Unfortunately, post-scarcity storytelling is hard, not impossible (see Culture, the) but very challenging, especially given the relative simplicity most RPGs are bound up dealing with. Even a game like Eclipse Phase, which is right at the post-scarcity economic threshold of technological progress, makes a very deliberate effort to push post-scarcity out of reach for the overwhelming majority, and in fact cranks up the suffering arguably past the point of believability for the sake of giving the PCs jobs to do. In tabletop, of course, if you give the PCs the power to produce a post-scarcity world, or just a post-scarcity bubble for themselves, there's a very good chance they'll do so and then the game will stop happening. This was a problem for games like VtM, where a viable solution to all your problems was just to bug out and go live forever on a cattle ranch in Wyoming while flipping the bird to vampire politics on your way out of town. This is also an issue in video games that allow a player to produce an OP build, which has the problem of turning the game into the grind. High magic D&D has this problem too, because the solution to anything you can't solve right now is actually to go level up fighting something you can easily defeat with no risk and then use your new powers to solve it with trivial ease (V's little soul splice experiment in OOTS is actually a pretty good example of this, as they almost solved the entire storyline in under an hour through brute force application of magical power).

[Crake]

Only if the GM changes the content of their setting. As that way lies madness, i encourage not doing that.

You encourage people to... what, not make custom campaign settings? Im not sure what you mean by "changing the content of their setting".

On the other hand, I can see trying to stop it a step earlier in the process. For reasons that are too complex and off-topic to go into in this thread, I believe that this is a highly suboptimal choice, but I can *at least* see why those who haven't thought it through could make this choice (not unlike "no wealth 3e").

Well, some people prefer to make thematic choices rather than purely balance ones. Not every choice is necessarily about balance. If you frame that it's a suboptimal choice when it comes to balance, that can be argued, but if you're going to argue that there's an objective "optimum" for subjective thematic decisions... People are entitled to their preferences, and if one of their preferences is "low/no magic" as a thematic choice, not a balance choice, then you can't tell someone their subjective opinion is "suboptimal".

One can balance a *specific instance* of most anything to most anything.

That's... literally what I said, sure, it can be done, but it's beside the point of whether it can or not.

Not if no-one exists who possesses them. That is your choice to make. I know how I would choose in that scenario. How would you choose?

So you're advocating for the "cherry pick which spells do and don't exist" option? To me that sounds far more annoying for both the player and the DM.

Last I checked, even in e6, gods and ancient dragons and such exist. Your landscape is already not what you envision. This change is insignificant compared to the power of the dark side… or whatever it was we were actually discussing.

Not necessarily? I've run a dark ages setting where there were no gods, no ancient dragons, and celestials and fiends were locked away on the planes, unable to access the material.

This - limiting options - actually makes balance harder, not easier.

I feel like you're continuously arguing past me. It's not. Always. About. Balance.

Have we?

Well, yeah, we're talking about high vs low magic balance rather than why people prefer playing one or the other. The reason we got onto the talk of balance is because someone asked why people generally found low magic challenges more meaningful, and I explained that it's because low magic challenges tend to (emphasis, not always) be easier for the entire party to participate, and people who don't participate don't find a challenge meaningful. This then flowed into a discussion about balance in a low or high magic game.

So to sum up: Yes, balance is totally possible in every range of games, with sufficient system mastery, anything can be balanced to anything else as you said and I agreed, and then you agreed again. But a low magic game has a more narrow band of power level so it naturally creates an environment where players are closer to each other in power, wheras a high magic game (or even just a normal dnd game) has a vastly larger gap between the top and the bottom, and so people can create vastly different power levels without even meaning to, because not everyone has the same system mastery as those of us who discuss on forums like these.

That however, is itself an entirely side point to the main discussion of why people want to play in a low magic setting. Because I can almost entirely guarantee you that people aren't wanting to play in a low magic setting "because it's more balanced". When I've run low magic games, it's because I wanted to tell stories that only worked in low magic scenarios, or, at the very least, were much easier to tell in such a scenario. Some of those games stayed low magic the whole way through, others evolved into higher magic games as different themes became available, but none of it ever had anything to do with how balanced (or not) the magic level of the setting was.

This is also why I've personally taken a liking to more narrative based, story-oriented systems as of late, though I'll likely never stop wanting to discuss 3.5 on the internet, as it holds a special place in my heart.

So that leaves you with, in the end, Person vs Person. There's nothing wrong with stories like that. 'We're going to take down the BBEG because they're evil and we hate them,' has an awful lot of successful mileage behind it. As does 'God X cheated on Goddess Y.' In fact, high powered stories, by stripping away all the distractions, may in fact work better this way. The good old-fashioned shounen tournament arc is actually a quite effective framing device if the villains are sufficiently hateful and you're perfectly willing to cheer while they get their faces pounded in utterly devoid of context. However, if the goal is some other kind of story, then high magic is tough.

Related to this is the issue of scarcity. If you actually take sufficiently advanced magic (or tech) to its logical conclusion you end up with a post-scarcity world. Unfortunately, post-scarcity storytelling is hard, not impossible (see Culture, the) but very challenging, especially given the relative simplicity most RPGs are bound up dealing with. Even a game like Eclipse Phase, which is right at the post-scarcity economic threshold of technological progress, makes a very deliberate effort to push post-scarcity out of reach for the overwhelming majority, and in fact cranks up the suffering arguably past the point of believability for the sake of giving the PCs jobs to do. In tabletop, of course, if you give the PCs the power to produce a post-scarcity world, or just a post-scarcity bubble for themselves, there's a very good chance they'll do so and then the game will stop happening. This was a problem for games like VtM, where a viable solution to all your problems was just to bug out and go live forever on a cattle ranch in Wyoming while flipping the bird to vampire politics on your way out of town. This is also an issue in video games that allow a player to produce an OP build, which has the problem of turning the game into the grind. High magic D&D has this problem too, because the solution to anything you can't solve right now is actually to go level up fighting something you can easily defeat with no risk and then use your new powers to solve it with trivial ease (V's little soul splice experiment in OOTS is actually a pretty good example of this, as they almost solved the entire storyline in under an hour through brute force application of magical power).

Having had some (relatively) recent experience running an ultra high magic post scarcity world, I can confirm that pretty much all of these points apply. It was incredibly hard to motivate the players when their characters could honestly just settle down and not care about anything. The main way I achieved this was by essentially having the post-scarcity be fueled by XP-as-something-tangible, and the players weren't comfortable giving up their essence to fuel the machine.

To that point though, player vs society is totally doable in high magic, if the setting has a sufficient density of powerful characters, though then you need to start introducing plot armor because otherwise the 5th level players would just be scry-and-fry'd by 15th level investigators who come after them.

Again, why i prefer more narrative focused, story-oriented systems these days, having this huge disparity between starting and finishing power creates this issue of why aren't the players picked off before they get strong enough to defend themselves issue in the story.

[Calthropstu]

My character in an ap I played is powerful. I was able to tank 5 combats SIMULTANEOUSLY while the rest of the party worked their way through the enemy 1 by 1. Had I instead focused fire, I would easily have killed all 5 blocks easily. It was like a miniature battlefield.

Low magic campaigns prevent precisely that. The battlefield should be a tactical engagement of all the players, not "throw the caster at it and call it a day."

I am an avid fan of fighters, but my years of defending them on this forum have greatly made me realize how absurdly overpowered some of the casting really is. I see people in my group swearing by a set of feats talked about on here, such as weapon focus/specialization, and I remember what some of you guys have said about it, long hours of crunching numbers to make builds work and then realising how much work it was vs "I cast a spell."

Low magic games allow for builds that would be virtually unplayable otherwise. Fancy magic items that make grappling impossible like the ring of freedom of movement? Gone. Super gear that will let anyone cast all the spells? Gone. High powered unkillable casters controlling the cosmos from their private demiplane? Gone.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE high magic games. My own campaign world contains some SERIOUSLY powerful creatures, monsters and casters, and I loved creating every one of them. But I definitely see the appeal to someone who wants to play a wrestler type or a nigh undetectable sneak, or the worlds greatest swindler using trickery, or just about anything that isn't "I throw the caster at it."

[noob]

My character in an ap I played is powerful. I was able to tank 5 combats SIMULTANEOUSLY while the rest of the party worked their way through the enemy 1 by 1. Had I instead focused fire, I would easily have killed all 5 blocks easily. It was like a miniature battlefield.

Low magic campaigns prevent precisely that. The battlefield should be a tactical engagement of all the players, not "throw the caster at it and call it a day."

I am an avid fan of fighters, but my years of defending them on this forum have greatly made me realize how absurdly overpowered some of the casting really is. I see people in my group swearing by a set of feats talked about on here, such as weapon focus/specialization, and I remember what some of you guys have said about it, long hours of crunching numbers to make builds work and then realising how much work it was vs "I cast a spell."

Low magic games allow for builds that would be virtually unplayable otherwise. Fancy magic items that make grappling impossible like the ring of freedom of movement? Gone. Super gear that will let anyone cast all the spells? Gone. High powered unkillable casters controlling the cosmos from their private demiplane? Gone.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE high magic games. My own campaign world contains some SERIOUSLY powerful creatures, monsters and casters, and I loved creating every one of them. But I definitely see the appeal to someone who wants to play a wrestler type or a nigh undetectable sneak, or the worlds greatest swindler using trickery, or just about anything that isn't "I throw the caster at it."

However in low magic you should also avoid challenges meant to be countered by spells or abilities like colossal scorpions which are countered by flight and freedom of movement(Or speeds beyond 50 feet but not everybody gets that) but which exceeds any normal mundane super strong fighter character grapple check by 30 and the ones of exceptional ones of 20(and only ones that are close to being epic can basically succeed in a grapple check)

[Crake]

However in low magic you should also avoid challenges meant to be countered by spells or abilities like colossal scorpions which are countered by flight and freedom of movement(Or speeds beyond 50 feet but not everybody gets that) but which exceeds any normal mundane super strong fighter character grapple check by 30 and the ones of exceptional ones of 20(and only ones that are close to being epic can basically succeed in a grapple check)

Not true. Those encounters instead become far more about the party's planning and preparedness. I had my e6 low magic players get stranded on a deserted island, and one of the island's apex predators was a T-Rex. They spent a good portion of time avoiding it through the island's jungle environment until they managed to set up a trap for it, lured it into a gully, swiftly peppered it with ranged attacks and dropped a boulder onto it to finish it off.

[Xervous]

So I’m still seeing low magic games defined as a narrower range of degrees of power and competency... and then it gets highlighted as exhibiting those qualities when compared to high magic. Still feeling like a tautology at this point.

In the sky knight scenario I was asking in so many words if the game’s conformance to expected norms was the true definition of low magic. If it’s about telling stories grounded in reality the sky knights fail to qualify by simply being fantastical. If it’s about nobody rocking the setting / party balance boat then we do have a low magic setting. Is it somehow one or both as needed to fit the current speaker’s desires?

[noob]

Not true. Those encounters instead become far more about the party's planning and preparedness. I had my e6 low magic players get stranded on a deserted island, and one of the island's apex predators was a T-Rex. They spent a good portion of time avoiding it through the island's jungle environment until they managed to set up a trap for it, lured it into a gully, swiftly peppered it with ranged attacks and dropped a boulder onto it to finish it off.

And a t-rex is not an unstoppable grappling machine that stays in its own underground dungeon designed by people who had giant scorpion access in mind.

[Crake]

And a t-rex is not an unstoppable grappling machine

In an e6 campaign, +30 grapple, improved grab and swallow whole is basically a death sentence, soooo.... kinda is actually.

that stays in its own underground dungeon designed by people who had giant scorpion access in mind.

That's... where the planning part comes in? You need to lure it out of it's den somehow, lead it away. 50ft movement speed is easily doable in low magic by simply having a horse.

Sure, if you, as a DM, just make the PCs stumble into the scorpion's lair with no forewarning, and the scorpion blocks off escape, then it's gonna be a fubar challenge. You as the DM need to put in some work too into making the challenge fun, but by no means do you need to avoid such a creature entirely.

[Calthropstu]

In an e6 campaign, +30 grapple, improved grab and swallow whole is basically a death sentence, soooo.... kinda is actually.



That's... where the planning part comes in? You need to lure it out of it's den somehow, lead it away. 50ft movement speed is easily doable in low magic by simply having a horse.

Sure, if you, as a DM, just make the PCs stumble into the scorpion's lair with no forewarning, and the scorpion blocks off escape, then it's gonna be a fubar challenge. You as the DM need to put in some work too into making the challenge fun, but by no means do you need to avoid such a creature entirely.

Heh. I put a group of level 5s into an epic dungeon filled with high level outsiders. They quickly figured out they weren't meant to fight any of them. Scared the crap out of them when a trap went off and one landed near a high level qlippoth. It merely planeshifted the unfortunate one into a planar prison, but they thought the character was dead. Heh, good times.

So, yes, a lot can be done with talking, planning and appropriate use of skills other than "I stab it."

[Quertus]

I feel like you're continuously arguing past me.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of miscommunication going on between us.

Not true. Those encounters instead become far more about the party's planning and preparedness. I had my e6 low magic players get stranded on a deserted island, and one of the island's apex predators was a T-Rex. They spent a good portion of time avoiding it through the island's jungle environment until they managed to set up a trap for it, lured it into a gully, swiftly peppered it with ranged attacks and dropped a boulder onto it to finish it off.

OK, great example. Had a party of "not actually e6" characters (ie, they were built to and able to advance to higher level, but they were *currently* level 6 or lower) beat a T-Rex.

"Oh, they had lots of powerful casters, who…"?

No. We had 1 healbot (mostly racial HD, and potentially already tapped out), and one Bard (also potentially already tapped out for healing, long story).

"So you dropped a boulder on it?"

No. We went toe to toe with the beast in melee, and powned it.

"Because you had lots of magical items that…"

No. We probably would have been better off had the GM given us free "Vow of Poverty" - we were severely under equipped.

"But how…"

Because we were just that good.

You can't - that is, the GM at the time couldn't - tell a story about a scary T-Rex apex predator that the party needs to run from and strategize against when the party's power and tactics reduce the encounter to the equivalent of ripping apart a plushy.

No "high magic" necessary.

Whereas you probably *could* have told that story with Quertus in the party, despite him being an epic level, high magic Wizard.

Heck, you could literally say, "surprise! I'm from an alternate reality / timeline, and epic Quertus actually was in that party", and "Quertus being in that story" would be the readily believable part of the tale.

That seems very strong evidence to me that "what stories you can tell" is much more a matter of other factors than just "high magic vs low magic". Quertus was balanced to that story, my party was not. (Of course, I prefer my story of low-level characters powning a T-Rex in melee to the story of Quertus running from one until the party figures out how to beat it (by dropping a rock on it), but to each their own) (EDIT: and that's despite the fact that I literally have multiple stories of "ran away from scary monster(s), and then went Scooby-Doo and dropped a rock on them".)

[KoDT69]

I have agreed and disagreed at times with Crake and Quertus, but this time I'm landing in the middle. Drake's party avoiding the threat type scenario is a lot more fun IMO. It gives the players a reason to think about their actions. I have also experienced the party just wrecking stuff way over CR with less than optimal gear. I think a huge consideration that is not being mentioned here is party size and overall ability scores. You get some high ability scores and a party of 3 or 4 can do a lot more than you'd expect, but let's say there are 8 players... Now you have what I faced last campaign. Powerful characters combined to a wrecking crew from sheer number of dice hitting the table. Straight up big dumb monster with a bajillion hit points just wasn't a challenge.
FWIW I prefer medium optimization with a lower magic setting to get more of an old school feel. Some of the most fun games we had were low op low magic.

[Crake]

I have agreed and disagreed at times with Crake and Quertus, but this time I'm landing in the middle. Drake's party avoiding the threat type scenario is a lot more fun IMO. It gives the players a reason to think about their actions. I have also experienced the party just wrecking stuff way over CR with less than optimal gear. I think a huge consideration that is not being mentioned here is party size and overall ability scores. You get some high ability scores and a party of 3 or 4 can do a lot more than you'd expect, but let's say there are 8 players... Now you have what I faced last campaign. Powerful characters combined to a wrecking crew from sheer number of dice hitting the table. Straight up big dumb monster with a bajillion hit points just wasn't a challenge.
FWIW I prefer medium optimization with a lower magic setting to get more of an old school feel. Some of the most fun games we had were low op low magic.

Well, for context, the characters in my game were a party of three, one ranged and two melee. No magic in the party, so no healbot to heal up large chunks of damage that were taken, though to alleviate this I used the wounds/vitality system, so the party regained vitality at a pretty good rate while resting to make up for no magical healing, but that still made direct conflict very dangerous, as there was no in combat healing available.

In Quertus' example, the party had a heal bot as described, meaning the players could take severe blows and be healed while continuing to fight toe to toe, a luxury my players didn't have, and one not to be expected of in a low magic game.

[Quertus]

In Quertus' example, the party had a heal bot as described, meaning the players could take severe blows and be healed while continuing to fight toe to toe, a luxury my players didn't have, and one not to be expected of in a low magic game.

Well, the point of calling him a "heal bot" was to explain that the entirety of the use he got out of his single class level (OK, maybe 2 class levels by the time we faced the T-Rex - still just 1st level spells) was healing - and healing that didn't even figure into this particular fight (not that combat healing is ever considered anything but suboptimal around these parts), as he was probably running on empty at that point.

So the fight itself was low- to no-magic.

[quinron]

I understand the point of D&D and Pathfinder being games and systems familiar to many people and I know they're versatile, but at least for me, I'd rather play higher magic in these systems since they're intended to be played with the assumption that magic, at least for PCs, is fairly common. Action RPGs like Diablo were inspired by Monty Haul campaigns with lots of magic items!

Emphasis mine.

This is exactly how I run my "low-magic" games, modeled on what's considered by many to be the low-magic ur-text, Conan the Barbarian. In Conan's world, magic isn't weak, nor is it unheard-of; otherwise he wouldn't be getting into near-death scrapes with sorcerers every month. But powerful magic is rare.

And that's how I run my games. PCs have access to whatever they can get from their class; magic items are available, but they're going to have to either make their own or trek through ruins to find them; and if someone outside the party is a magic-user, they're probably trying to kill you. Sure, monsters and dragons and outsiders have some magic, too, but those creatures' lives are so fundamentally different from humans' that they can't meaningfully interact as equals; they're either going to be villains or aloof, pseudo-deific figures. (This is also why I either reduce elves to human lifespans or make them NPC-only)

You don't have to choke the power of all magic-users to make magic feel special and powerful; you just have to reduce the number of people able to throw around powerful magic.