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Thread: Why the desire for low magic?
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2021-01-06, 06:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I mean, I would argue that a challenge where half the party doesn't participate would automatically disqualify said challenge as meaningful, since half the party isn't being engaged. You have half a meaningful challenge, because even if it's awesome fun for the half that get to engage, the other half will associate no meaning with the challenge, because to them it may as well have not existed in the first place.
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2021-01-06, 06:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-06, 06:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Fighter's not the only one though. If your challenge requires magic to solve, there's a whole slew of classes that can't contribute, and if your challenge doesn't require magic to solve, then it's not a high magic challenge, so sounds to me like the limiting factor is more with high magic challenges than with the whole array of non-magical classes.
Also note I never specified fighter, that's your own inclusion.Last edited by Crake; 2021-01-06 at 06:23 PM.
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2021-01-06, 06:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I don't think the problem is necessarily that some challenges require magic to solve as it is that there are few challenges that magic can't solve. At least personally, I'd be fine with the non-casters occasionally standing back and letting the casters do their thing if the roles were reversed about as frequently.
Last edited by Batcathat; 2021-01-06 at 06:35 PM.
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2021-01-06, 06:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
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2021-01-06, 07:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-06, 07:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Sure. There are lots of other classes that implicitly tell other people at the table "you're not going to get to do the things you want". The Fighter is, as you well know, the poster boy for the issue, so let's not do the "OMG so bias y u h8 Fighters" routine this time.
If your challenge requires magic to solve, there's a whole slew of classes that can't contribute, and if your challenge doesn't require magic to solve, then it's not a high magic challenge, so sounds to me like the limiting factor is more with high magic challenges than with the whole array of non-magical classes.
The problem is that there are some characters that aren't magic. In a fantasy setting, magic is just a part of the world. It doesn't make any more sense to talk about a "non-magic" character in a high magic setting than it does to talk about a character who doesn't use gravity or the weak nuclear force in the real world. Which, of course, explains why some people want low-magic settings. Some people would like to play Conan or Aragorn, and for that to be a reasonable character, you have to cap the amount of magic people are allowed to have.
The easy fix is to just do what the rest of the genre does and give everyone in high-magic settings some kind of magic. There's no reason that there have to be some characters who get powers that let them solve high-magic challenges and other characters who don't. Look at any high-magic series, be it Malazan, or A Practical Guide to Evil, or The Stormlight Archive. You see the same pattern: everybody gets magic. It doesn't matter if you're a dedicated mage (like the Warlock or Quick Ben), or a warrior (like Kaladin or Anomander Rake), or even a nominal non-combatant (like Shallan or the Dread Empress). If you're supposed to be a major player, you get powers that let you solve the problems you're faced with.
Now, this doesn't mean that everyone does the same stuff. The ways that Elsecallers, Windrunners, and Stonewards solve problems are all different. To say nothing of Awakeners or Mistborn, which exist within the same (meta-)setting but have entirely separate magic systems. You don't even have to call it all "magic" if you don't want to. A Practical Guide to Evil says that when Cat uses her powers to travel to another dimension, she is using "Winter" or "Night", but that Masego does it by "Magic", and Indrani just uses "Name power". But they're all doing something that is, within the paradigm D&D currently uses, definitely magic.
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2021-01-06, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-06, 08:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Deffently, using your magic in smart ways is something good to have even in high magic games.... so playing a low magic game is good practice.
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2021-01-06, 08:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I'm not sure what point you're trying to argue. You're basically agreeing with me, in that high magic challenges exclude people, wheras low magic challenges are available to all. Kinda proving my point for me in that a challenge is only meaningful for those who participate, and low magic challenges allow for a wider array of participation, thus are more often more meaningful.
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2021-01-06, 09:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
High magic challenges don't exclude people. People are just as capable of enjoying things that are at a high power level as a low or medium one. What they do is exclude character concepts. But that's not some special property of high magic challenges, that's fundamental to how games (or indeed any form of fiction) works. For something to include things, it has to exclude other things. Low magic challenges aren't less exclusive than high magic ones, they just exclude different things. Specifically, they exclude the ability to overcome high magic challenges. If the thing you want to do is play a character who is "like Kaladin" and faces challenges that are "like The Stormlight Archive", a low magic games excluding your character concept.
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2021-01-06, 10:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Hmm.
Well, one thing that people seem to overlook a bit is that while the ceiling for full casters is indeed that high, it kinda gets really inefficient after a certain point. But that's not really a high-magic/low-magic argument...
Maybe they should have made martials be able to do lots of cool things as well, I guess. Tome of Battle isn't perfect, but it did better on that at least.Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
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2021-01-06, 11:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I kinda feel like you're deliberately missing the point. Character concepts aren't people. When you have four players around the table, and you throw a challenge at the players, and one of the players says "wow, this isn't the challenge I wanted to do", that's the player excluding themselves, not the challenge excluding them. However, when you throw a challenge at the players and two of the players say "wow, there's literally no way I can contribute to this challenge" that's the challenge excluding the players. You're dancing around and mincing words, talking about excluding concepts, but at the end of the day, while low magic challenges may exclude the ability to face a high magic challenge, high magic challenges exclude players from participating, something that a lower magic challenge does not do.
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2021-01-06, 11:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Don't a lot of high-magic settings either give everyone magic or make the ones who don't extremely badass? Among the main cast, I mean.
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
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2021-01-07, 02:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I'm not sure the comparison holds up. Magic may indeed be part of the fundamental forces of a fantasy setting but that doesn't mean everyone could or should utilize it. Most people in the real world can't manipulate nuclear reactions without some fairly extensive training, after all.
Yes, that is one potential solution to the issue, but one that only enforces the paradigm of "magic can do anything" that not all people enjoy (no, not even in a high magic setting).
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2021-01-07, 02:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Vast disparities in character power are generally not viable in TTRPG game structure. All viable PC concepts must maintain a roughly equivalent position on the power curve. That means once one character concept moves significantly past the fundamental limits on the human body and mind's capabilities, others must do so as well. It need not be magic that's responsible, massive technological disparity has the same problem. Conan can't adventure alongside Iron Man either.
The big difference is that the availability of technology to characters in any given setting is usually managed by economic or educational factors. If you 'bamf' Conan into Eclipse Phase he'll need some remedial coursework and a giant pile of dollars to catch up to the average joe, but he absolutely can catch up. Magic, by contrast, usually has gated entry, and the most common form of gatekeeping is exactly the same as most other superpowers: winning the genetic lottery.
However, any setting based around gated powers inherently divides everyone living into the settings into the has-powers/doesn't-have-powers classes (some settings, like exalted and arguably 3.x D&D, have tiers of progressively better types of powers), and unless the powers are very modest - meaning a low magic setting - only the has-powers people are important enough to matter. Which means the setting becomes a supers setting, with all the complications implied by a superhero setting.
And look, fantasy superheroes is perfectly fine. It's very popular, many people love it, it has a thriving literary history that goes back to the literal first recorded piece of fiction we have (Gilgamesh is the literal Ur-super, pun most definitely intended), and it works absolutely great for certain kinds of stories.
However, if you don't want to do supers you have to eliminate the divide. Low magic does this through the simple expedient of making sure the limits on the extant powers mean have-powers group never gets to override the doesn't-have-powers masses (increased technology level helps here by boosting the power level of the doesn't-have-powers group). Trying to do this in high magic means giving everyone powers, but when you do that the result is worlds that bear no resemblance to our own and become massive worldbuilding challenges to put together and tell stories effectively within because you've fundamentally altered the definition of 'person.'Last edited by Mechalich; 2021-01-07 at 02:49 AM.
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2021-01-07, 04:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
In dnd you can just wizard with WBL the way you can use tech with wealth: buy a lot of magical(technological) items that replicates casting(iron man).
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2021-01-07, 05:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I have to kinda diagree with you here, because challenges in general are party solvable ( or should be ), but not every character can solve every challenge
even if it was a no magic world, there are some challenges that have "this is obviously directed at player X" regardless of the existence/solvability of it.
The simplest example is trapsmithing, "only" rogues can do it.
party needs to overcome a physically demanding challenge, example "defeat 1vs1 barehanded against the tribe champion to be allowed passage in their lands" -> the strongest/most martial character of the party is the one that will attempt it.
these "not for the wizard" challenges are just as excluding as a challenge that would require a magic solution (the magical batteries of the portal needs to be powered)
I find it very unrealistic that every challenge a DM prepares for the party needs to be politically correct and be somehow solvable by every player of the table. Different players will have the spotlight in different encounters.
it should be a matter of table etiquette that the magic dude don't upstage the martial dude on a martial-themed challenge by summoning a beatstick
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2021-01-07, 05:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I agree with the sentiment that not everyone has to be able to contribute equally in every situation, but the problem is that in D&D some classes can contribute in a whole lot more situations than others. A GM can create situations where the wizard can't contribute for some specific reason (such as the "must defeat the champion barehanded" example you give) but using that alone to make sure everyone contributes a roughly equal amount would probably feel quite contrived and railroady.
A system where some characters have to intentionally limit themselves in order to not always outshine other characters is not a very good system, I think.
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2021-01-07, 06:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-07, 06:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-07, 06:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
The other problem is that that probably means a land where no one can challenge a high level caster.
City: we don’t allow casters here
Druid: oh? Well what happens if I fly off and park a hurricane on you until you change your mind?
Also, this last page has a lot of false claims presented as facts. Stuff like “Vast disparities in character power are generally not viable in TTRPG game structure”. Flat out wrong. There are plenty of games that allow for wider spreads of character power than D&D. Games like Elric (AKA, I’m a melnibonean fighter sorcerer with bonuses on all my stats and you are a beggar with -1d4 Cha and a roll on a crippling deformity table). Or Rifts (AKA You are a wilderness scout with 20 hp and a gun that does 100-400 hp damage and I am a spellcasting shapeshifting dragon with better stats and 10,000 hp). Or WoD (AKA you are a human kinfolk who doesn’t go crazy when they see magic and I am a wizard who rewrites reality with my brain, and also has better stats than you). If you are in a game where a power level mix isn’t beneficial, you can set the power level where you want it. The problems with 3.PF, generally solved over time, are that characters don’t make it clear what power level they are at (a newb doesn’t know he is in kinfolk/beggar/wilderness scout mode when he plays a monk) and there don’t happen to be many high power first party non-casters or low power first party casters. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t write a Gilgamesh/Heracles or a hedge mage class easier than creating a low magic setting. A simple gestalt Warblade(using only ex maneuvers)//Rogue is no effort on the DMs part and will more than hold his own as a Conan type at most tables with full casters.Last edited by Gnaeus; 2021-01-07 at 08:12 AM.
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2021-01-07, 08:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
PF2 is best compared to 4e that looks like D&D while having the breadth and depth of choices approaching 5e. Rigidly balanced, fights are almost exclusively HP attrition, you encounter plenty of non choices like ‘do I take a ribbon or an actual class feature this level?’
It still does not give martials plot abilities, as those have remained in the hands of casters. Spells are nerfed five different ways, sure, but that only manages to split casters from Martials in a way reminiscent of Shadowrun deckers and street sams. At least the casters resolve stuff quickly.
The one thing pf2 does best is low level adventure paths, as it seems to be designed such that players are incapable of influencing the world beyond poking things with sticks or clicking over to the next scene.If all rules are suggestions what happens when I pass the save?
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2021-01-07, 08:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Playing D&D excludes Shadowrun character concepts like Hacker, Rigger, and Street Samurai. Should we all play Shadowrun instead of D&D? Of course not. Shadowrun's a fine game, but it's doing a different thing from D&D ("cyberpunk fantasy" v "epic fantasy"). While it's trivially true that choosing a particular genre excludes things that aren't in that genre, that's not a problem, because if you want to tell a story that's in that genre, you definitionally don't want your story to include things from outside that genre. Maybe you like the "low magic" genre better than the "high magic" one. That's fine. You can play low magic games, and no one is going to stop you. But this notion that people are "excluded" by the fact that genres contain specific things is nonsense.
Sure they can. The things your body does are a result of the fundamental forces. That doesn't mean you can do anything those forces allow automatically, but the fact that everyone in a fantasy setting can do magic doesn't mean they can all individually do every single thing magic does.
Yes, that is one potential solution to the issue, but one that only enforces the paradigm of "magic can do anything" that not all people enjoy (no, not even in a high magic setting).
You dramatically overestimate both the degree to which this is true and the degree to which people care enough about world-building to notice when it doesn't work. Eberron is one of the most popular D&D settings, and it was released with the premise "people do magic at the economy" in an edition where that causes the world to explode.
"It's a trap, everyone shut up while the Rogue rolls a bunch of dice" is a pretty classic example of problematic game design. "Don't split the party" is good advice for a reason, and while a challenge that is specifically for one player may leave everybody in the same physical place, it has the same deleterious effect of leaving most of the party unable to do anything for large stretches of time.
I find it very unrealistic that every challenge a DM prepares for the party needs to be politically correct and be somehow solvable by every player of the table. Different players will have the spotlight in different encounters.
it should be a matter of table etiquette that the magic dude don't upstage the martial dude on a martial-themed challenge by summoning a beatstick
Which seems to me like an indication that the problem is non-casters not having a wide enough range of abilities. If one group gets shut out accidentally, but the other only gets shut out by rail-roading, it seems like the former is probably the problem we want to start with.
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2021-01-07, 08:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Again, that is one possible solution but not the only one or necessarily the best one. To use the typical examples, I would prefer if fighters could contribute more but also if wizards could contribute less. I prefer characters who are specialized and have weak spots, rather than characters who are like Silver Age Superman and has super-everything.
The mundane classes have more natural limits, I think. It's reasonable that the sneaky rouge is less useful on an open battle field or that the heavily armored fighter isn't the best in a stealth mission, but aside from very specific situations (like an anti-magic field or something) there's not really the same thing with casters.
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2021-01-07, 08:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Casters have limits too. A Druid, a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Dread Necromancer are all at a pretty similar power level, but play in different ways. It's just that the power level is higher than the mundanes, and people tend to anchor their assessments to what mundane characters can do. If you compare apples to apples, casters can't "do everything" even now.
Now, that's not to say there's anything wrong with more specialized casters. There are good reasons for doing that, but they're not power level reasons. The Dread Necromancer is a better class than the Wizard not because "Necromancy" is some how inherently more balanced than "Magic" as a character concept, but because people like consistent themes. People want to be able to say "I'm a Necromancer, I do Death Magic" or "I'm a Shaman, I do Elemental Magic" because that's better for establishing a character. Insofar as it does improve game balance, you'd get basically the same effect by just having there be eight or ten Wizard classes that were all nominally as versatile as the Wizard is now.Last edited by NigelWalmsley; 2021-01-07 at 08:40 AM.
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2021-01-07, 09:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Sure, they have limits but the sheer versatility of magic mean that most casters can handle almost any type of situation. A fighter isn't capable of doing every kind of violence imaginable, a skill-monkey can't master every skill, why should a caster be capable of (almost) every kind of magic?
Yes, thematic classes are nice. I personally find wizards fairly boring in part because "I do magic" is a pretty flavorless concept. But it can also help with class imbalance, if every caster isn't capable of so many different kinds of magic. I'd prefer if they had to specialize, for both flavor and balance.Last edited by Batcathat; 2021-01-07 at 09:22 AM.
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2021-01-07, 09:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I agree that theming is better for shoving classes into more manageable boxes. The bigger point of contrast that should be drawn on the concepts each class is built around is their scalability. “Sneaky skill dude” and “hits things with pointy stick” are definitions of what the character can do, while “trained in war magic” or “blessed by the gods” are merely explanations that can yield a wide range of degrees of capability.
I can have my zealot who defies killing killing blows by the power of his faith and can produce light from his ears, eyes, nose, mouth and... And he’d be fine in a setting with pointy stick users and sneaky standby conmen. Let the power of faith lift a carriage with one hand or run through the sky, mundane concepts get left behind past a point because they’re about What not How. The What of the game can shift in scope, and if your How doesn’t fit you don’t get a seat.
Low magic is about limiting the Hows in order to produced desired Whats. My innate, mundane skills are How I do What I do because there’s no Christmas tree on me, nor are we all as special as a gaggle of magical girls.Last edited by Xervous; 2021-01-07 at 09:53 AM.
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2021-01-07, 10:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
It's somewhat funny to mention Malazan Book of the Fallen here since a lot of the series focuses on the ways non-magical fighters (the Malazan marines, especially the Bridgeburners) have developed ways to deal with magical opponents.
But if I understand your argument correctly then you're saying in a high-magic setting, everyone should play someone with magic. Which begs the question, since 3.x's concept is high magic, why are there non-magical classes in the first place? That question will lead right back to the "guy at the gym" problem that has been discussed a million times without any conclusion.
Personally, I don't care so much whether a setting is high or low magic. What bothers me about D&D 3.x in particular, however, is how it makes magic items feel like they get mass-produced. You shop for items, and can have any number of items with any abillity you choose. It's like going into walmart and picking out a new shirt. Plot-relevant magic items should be unique; they should have a name and history (even if those are emergent properties of the story, like the Hobbit's Sting); they should be more than a tool you just discard or sell once you find a better version. I think that is the kind of mystery and special-ness that many people craving low magic settings are actually looking for.What did the monk say to his dinner?
SpoilerOut of the frying pan and into the friar!
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2021-01-07, 10:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Why not? You're asking the wrong question. It doesn't matter if you can do every type of magic, or only one, or somewhere in between. It matters what range of problems you can solve with magic, and that's more a function of how long your spell list is and how you select spells than the range of things that are on it.
Yes, thematic classes are nice. I personally find wizards fairly boring in part because "I do magic" is a pretty flavorless concept. But it can also help with class imbalance, if every caster isn't capable of so many different kinds of magic. I'd prefer if they had to specialize, for both flavor and balance.
That's the other thing. The Barbarian's concept is "like Conan". Even if you lock the Necromancer down not just to "Necromancy", but to a specific set of tactical niches (perhaps "minions, debuffs, and light blasting"), her ability to call on the souls of the damned simply scales farther than the Barbarian's ability to be strong.
The Malazan Marines aren't really "low magic". They certainly have tactics for dealing with mages, but those tactics involve things like "their own mages" and "modern explosives". They're basically doing modern combined-arms tactics with magic. Also, the way the setting works is that if you are personally bad-ass enough (which is what's relevant in a D&D-ish TTRPG), you eventually become a superhuman Ascendant. A Practical Guide to Evil has pretty much the same deal with Names.
But if I understand your argument correctly then you're saying in a high-magic setting, everyone should play someone with magic. Which begs the question, since 3.x's concept is high magic, why are there non-magical classes in the first place? That question will lead right back to the "guy at the gym" problem that has been discussed a million times without any conclusion.
What bothers me about D&D 3.x in particular, however, is how it makes magic items feel like they get mass-produced.Last edited by NigelWalmsley; 2021-01-07 at 10:54 AM.