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Thread: Why the desire for low magic?
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2021-01-09, 02:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-09, 03:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I'm… genuinely still perplexed.
Or maybe not. Maybe you're saying, "balance to the table", but using really odd ways of phrasing it, and blaming "high magic" for lack of contributory balance.
If so, then yes, this is why "balance to the table" is actually "balance to the table (and the module)". And it explains your anger/frustration/whatever over GMs who fail to give you sufficient information to know where the proper balance range lies.
It does not, however, explain why you think that one balance point is better than another.
So, am I closer to having a clue what you're talking about, or is this another round of taking past one another?
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2021-01-09, 03:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I'm not Crake (obviously), but I prefer to understood the balance point at any given table, as the DM or the Player. It is far easier, and more fun, to scale up than it is to draw back. To that end, I tend to think low magic is the "better" balance point. It is better for the player to have tools added to their toolbox than to have them removed, broken, or locked away, and it is more fun to find or create interesting tools and rewards for the players (or challenges for them) than it is to restrict the play or water down the game.
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2021-01-09, 06:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
This has nothing to do with my personal experiences and frustrations, this is merely the logical explanation to the question "why do people find low magic challenges more meaningful?" that was posed earlier in the thread. The argument that high magic challenges could also be meaningful was posed, but this logic explains that even a perfect high magic challenge introduced into an imperfect campaign results in a less meaningful challenge due to people getting left out. Of course, you're 100% right in that the fault lies in the DM for not setting expectations and boundaries for the characters created, and in a perfect game, that would be the case, and the high magic challenge would be accessible to all the players, but as I said, games aren't perfect.
I suppose another way to say it is that low magic games are more accommodating to imperfection.World of Madius wiki - My personal campaign setting, including my homebrew Optional Gestalt/LA rules.
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2021-01-09, 06:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Except it's not. Because "magic should do everything" isn't what people mean by "high magic". I've seen you make the "Vancian magic doesn't represent the source material well" argument elsewhere, you know that "exactly Wizards" very much isn't what is generally meant by "high magic". Making this exact argument, instead of one that specifically acknowledges the contingent nature of the problems the game has, obscures the issue you have with the situation.
With some preparation a D&D wizard can greatly contribute — often outright solve — pretty much any type of challenge, often easier than the supposed specialists in the area (out-stealth the rogue, out-fight the fighter, etc.).
The Wizard is defined by "academic mage". It's certainly true that the Wizard has finite resources as-implemented, but if you look at, say, WoW's Mage, it's not particularly more resource-limited than other classes, but is still recognizably doing Wizard stuff. The fact that you can't reasonably balance daily and non-daily power schedules is exactly why the Wizard's identity shouldn't be "daily powers guy".
This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of high or low magic, merely with the distribution of answers in a particular system.
That's not a problem with the game, that's a problem with Conan. Conan just isn't a 12th level character. It's not even really that Conan can't play in the 12th level sandbox (though he factually cannot), it's that there just aren't twelve levels to Conan. There's no way to satisfyingly slice what Conan is into twelve (let alone twenty) distinct chunks. It's true that the game isn't as up-front as it should be about "Conan will eventually expire", but that's not really a design problem.
I think you would be hard-pressed to find a definition of "high magic" that well describes low-level play.
When the DM says “Ok, the trap set off a heightened, maximized fireball. Make a Reflex Save vs DC 26 or take 84 damage.” The Warblade says “well, I could take that, especially with my improved evasion halving it, but since I don’t think we are in combat I will use a maneuver to auto succeed” and the beguiler says “smolder”.
I think I’d save him more resources than I cost him.
Except when that imperfection is someone using high-magic tools that trivialize low-magic challenges. Again, you are defining away the equivalent problems in low-magic games by assuming that people will communicate perfectly when setting up a low-magic game (also, this somehow does not count as being excluded, presumably because you don't like the things it excludes), but those problems exist. Low magic games exclude things in just the way high magic things do, and when that genre definition fails they have equivalent (frankly, worse) problems with encounters not being meaningful.
Like, have you not seen the ten thousand complains about "the Wizard trivialized my adventure"? That's a low magic encounter not feeling meaningful because of a high magic player. Except instead of some of the players having a good time, no one did.
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2021-01-09, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I'm not sure what your point is. I'm well aware that "magic should do everything" isn't the same as "high magic", nor have I ever claimed it is. I've barely weighed in on the OP question of high versus low magic, focusing more on the "should everyone be able to particpate in every challenge" debate that sort of spun off from the high/low magic discussion. And, of course, some discussion about class balance. (Is there an equivalent of Godwin's law about D&D debates and class balance? Probably should be. )
Yes, what am I thinking? Such an odd argument that classes in the same game, intended to work together in a party, should be able to be compared to each other.
It's as if you and I started at the same job, expected to solve the same tasks together, except one of us got the $5,000 gaming PC and the other the $200 laptop.
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2021-01-09, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
World of Madius wiki - My personal campaign setting, including my homebrew Optional Gestalt/LA rules.
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2021-01-09, 07:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Sure. But that's a power argument, not a "beats specialists" argument. Imagine that you had a $200 laptop and a $5,000 gaming PC, and pointed out that the gaming PC had more storage space. Is that indicative of some kind of unfairness? No, because the gaming PC is much more expensive. To show a problem, you'd have to take a system that was designed to maximize storage space on a $5,000 budget and show that it had less storage space than the gaming PC.
If you just want to make the power argument, that's fine. That argument is true, and sufficient to prove that there is a problem. But using the power argument to assert a problem with specialization causes misunderstanding. It makes people identify a problem that isn't there, or at least that you haven't proven is there. Now, maybe there is a problem there. Maybe, in addition to being too powerful compared to a Rogue or a Fighter, the Wizard is too good at stealth compared to a Beguiler. But unless you're willing to control for power, your argument about specialization isn't meaningful enough to be persuasive.
And if someone's playing a low-magic character, it ceases being a high-magic game. The entire "problem" you are identifying is that you define "low-magic" as "doesn't have problems" and "high-magic" as "might have problems". But that's not what those terms actually mean. If you define "high magic" in the same way you define "low magic", the problem goes away. It's not an issue with high magic challenges, it's an issue with you not thinking it's okay to say "no" to low magic character concepts.
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2021-01-09, 07:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
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2021-01-09, 07:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
A problem with the computer metaphor is unlike the two computers, a wizard and a rogue have the same "price". People usually accept that more expensive things are more effective and the cheap option isn't assumed to be equal. But I suppose we shouldn't be too distracted by the anology.
The power difference and the specialization are both part of the (lack of) game balance though. Let's imagine a wizard class that's like the existing one in every way, except it doesn't have any stealth magic (what constitutes that would probably be an entire discussion on its own, but let's skip that for now) . The wizard would still be vastly more powerful than the rogue, but I would be much less bothered by the power difference, since the rogue now could shine in its own element and accomplish things the wizard could not. Probably not everyone's idea of increased balance between the classes, but still.
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2021-01-09, 08:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Putting your low magic party in a high magic setting doesn't make it high magic. If you allow a Forsaker, you're playing a low magic game.
What if we just said "play a Beguiler" to all the people who wanted to play Rogues in a party with a Wizard? It seems to me that there's no particular reason we should be attached to specifically the Rogue. If you can get the dynamic you want, the problem is that the game is user-unfriendly, not that it's unbalanced.
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2021-01-09, 08:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
World of Madius wiki - My personal campaign setting, including my homebrew Optional Gestalt/LA rules.
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2021-01-09, 08:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-10, 09:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
@Crake - I now feel confident that you are saying "balance to the table", and that your issue is with unbalanced parties. I am also fairly confident that you are overestimating how much is communicated by "low magic", and viewing that as a "magic bullet" to solve table balance issues.
Or that you are positing such ideas as the reason some people call for "low magic" when, in fact, they should be calling for table balance. I'm not sure which.
As confused as I was, stating the obvious is probably a good plan
I'm not following the reasoning here: if it's easier to scale up, shouldn't high-magic be the better balance point? Because it's easier and more fun to scale a concept up to balanced to high magic, than to scale one down to (and remove, break, or lock away all their tools for) low magic?
Strongly disagree. The more tools you have with which to create balance, the easier it is to balance the game.
Semantics. You are technically correct - the best kind of correct. Touché.
The "D&D Wizard" (this is a 3e thread) is, by sacred cows, defined as implemented with finite, Vancian resources.
Bets on how many pages before it will be forgotten?
It need not be high magic tools, though.
Imagine if someone used careful exploration (looking for tracks, checking for traps, listening at doors, using mirrors to check around corners, etc etc etc) to trivialize a set of challenges.
One could then argue, "if everyone just kicks in the door, in a low-caution style, the game will be balanced, and we won't have one player making the game unfun by trivializing all the challenges".
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2021-01-10, 01:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-10, 01:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Nigel has convinced me. I thought I liked High Magic games, but actually they are awful. Move my vote firmly into the low magic camp. I mean I still want games with magic marts and tier 1 casters played up until the mid teens. But high magic is defined as 9th level spells so the rest of us can just play a nice low magic E14 game.
Well, first, the trap finder is the party member MOST LIKELY to eat a trap to the face. Typically going first to check for traps. Poking at the door to disarm. That’s why rogues get trapsense, because they need it. If your minion meat shields are walking in front of you when you scout, then a Beguiler played by Nigel is a worse scout than many tier 5s.
Second, beguiler have trash defenses in general. He goes around a corner and sees a Medusa (or the Medusa comes around the corner). Or a gorgon hears the party clanking and fills the hall with gas. Or an enemy wizard casts maximized fireball in a fight. Yeah your minions also get to save or die. But either way the WB//Rogue spends a maneuver and the beguiler starts chargen.
Then yes, the Warblade//rogue will also save the tier 1 party more resources than if he had played a beguiler. He is good at more of the things that make tier 1s spend resources than a beguiler is. He is less likely to require them to spend resources to protect/raise/restoration/stone to flesh him. He is more likely to be able to end fights without spending resources, with simple tricks like sneaking up to the boss and no save killing him before he gets a turn.
And for the record I think Beguiler/MotAO is worse here than generic beguiler. It’s not bad in a game without T1s where you might really need that high level wiz spell and don’t have a way to get it, but in this case you nerf your own skills and defenses and spend feats for a class that really isn’t fixing your problems until high level and even then not very well. It’s actively worse for a party of high tiers than a shadowcraft gnome or rainbow beguiler.Last edited by Gnaeus; 2021-01-10 at 01:32 PM.
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2021-01-10, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I think that level 14 is already high magic: by that point you already have people able to resurrect other people, to gain immortality(ex: becoming a lich), to take very varied shapes(polymorph), to kill stuff really hard with magic(was possible to do right since level 3), to create long lasting minions in a variety of ways(either with loads of gold as constructs or undead(I assume you banned simulacrum and planar binding or restrict the use of those heavily)) and so on.
Last edited by noob; 2021-01-10 at 01:37 PM.
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2021-01-10, 01:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
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2021-01-10, 04:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
If this is the level of argument you're going to make, I don't see how it's worth engaging with you. There's obviously some room between "the level where you have three spells per day is high magic" and "high magic starts at 18th level". Argue in good faith or don't argue at all.
Well, first, the trap finder is the party member MOST LIKELY to eat a trap to the face. Typically going first to check for traps. Poking at the door to disarm. That’s why rogues get trapsense, because they need it. If your minion meat shields are walking in front of you when you scout, then a Beguiler played by Nigel is a worse scout than many tier 5s.
Second, beguiler have trash defenses in general. He goes around a corner and sees a Medusa (or the Medusa comes around the corner). Or a gorgon hears the party clanking and fills the hall with gas. Or an enemy wizard casts maximized fireball in a fight. Yeah your minions also get to save or die. But either way the WB//Rogue spends a maneuver and the beguiler starts chargen.
Then yes, the Warblade//rogue will also save the tier 1 party more resources than if he had played a beguiler. He is good at more of the things that make tier 1s spend resources than a beguiler is. He is less likely to require them to spend resources to protect/raise/restoration/stone to flesh him. He is more likely to be able to end fights without spending resources, with simple tricks like sneaking up to the boss and no save killing him before he gets a turn.
And for the record I think Beguiler/MotAO is worse here than generic beguiler. It’s not bad in a game without T1s where you might really need that high level wiz spell and don’t have a way to get it, but in this case you nerf your own skills and defenses and spend feats for a class that really isn’t fixing your problems until high level and even then not very well. It’s actively worse for a party of high tiers than a shadowcraft gnome or rainbow beguiler.
As far as the alternatives go, you seem to be confused. Shadowcraft Mage isn't even really a trade-off, because you get into MotAO at 6th and Shadowcraft Mage at 9th. The only question is whether you delay Shadow Illusion by one level to get the second tier of Spellpool access earlier. Rainbow Servant, on the other hand, has exactly the problem you attribute to MotAO: it doesn't do anything until high level. Before you hit 16th level and become one of the most powerful characters in the game, gives you three Prestige Domains (none of which are especially good, and one of which is basically just worse than an earlier one) and three minor abilities in nine levels.
Also, MotAO is the least impressive part of that build. The real cheese is Ancestral Relic + Runestaff, which gives you Spirit Shaman-style access to the whole Sorcerer/Wizard spell list.
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2021-01-10, 06:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
The question in the header is already leading us in the wrong direction.
I don't care why. I really don't.
The observed fact is this: I prefer a low-magic game. I start losing (some) interest in D&D around 9th or 10th level.
Now I could try to figure out why, and the answers I come up with (better balance, more mystery, whatever) might successfully match the real reasons. But they might not. I don't know why I prefer chess to checkers, or watching American football to watching baseball, or backpacking to staying home, or Marvel to DC, or Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones. The reasons aren't that important -- even to me.
Now, I can enjoy lots of things whether they are my favorite or not. I can enjoy checkers, or watching baseball, or DC comics and movies, or Game of Thrones. And I can enjoy high-magic games.
But the observed fact is that I prefer low-magic games. And no argument, no matter how carefully worded, will change my preferences.
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2021-01-10, 11:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
If the game advertises that you can play as conan or similar and fails to deliver, that is a design flaw in the game. A failure of the design. this does not mean you cannot have fun in the game, jaust do not say that people can expect to play as conan. advertise the game for what it is, a wizards playground.
the first half of the meaning of life is that there isn't one.
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2021-01-11, 03:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
I don't understand this fixation with Conan advertisement, 3.5 is 20 years old and this is the 3.5/pf 1st ed forum, advertisement from 20 years ago is hardly relevant.
I sure as hell had no expectation of Conan things when i was invited to play a 3.5e campaign from others in my 5e table.
I am still struggling to wrap my mind around on the definition of low magic/high magic challenge, 1st level slot are just as much "solutions", so I strongly disagree that the divide is spell level.
I find low/mid *level* play more fun.
what is low magic anyway? I understand no magic, but not low magic.
any class that do not have magic, is a "no magic", not "low magic", to me
so, what is the distinction?
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2021-01-11, 05:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Low magic in a dnd context either means "infinitely high magic but only for the npcs" or "high magic but I did not realise that if the magic is only in continent exploding artifacts and the gods it is still high magic" or "dnd with no spells for anyone but it is just fine for gods, magical creatures and artefacts to do all their op stuff" or "high magic but scarce" or "no magic but there is a single +1 sword in the entire world" or "E6".
I think only the last one actually makes sense: beware of tables saying they are low magic but not playing with capped level.Last edited by noob; 2021-01-11 at 05:27 AM.
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2021-01-11, 07:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
This statement is the prime example of a false equivalency.
I'm not advocating for anything, merely explaining a phenomenon.
Well, I mean, cutting out the things that don't fit within the margin of balance you're aiming for doesn't hinder your ability to balance, it is, in fact, a method of balancing itself. Low-magic games do this by happenstance, but as we've discussed, high magic games tend to need this to be explicitly performed, something GMs don't always do.
I mean, to me "trivialize" means to bypass the encounter with little to no effort. Putting in effort to be careful with your exploration requires actual considering and thoughtfulness rather than for example, just saying "I cast arcane eye and scout the whole place". Naturally, in a higher magic setting there may very well be countermeasures to scrying about, but in a low magic game it would likely have no counter.
I suppose that's yet another thing to consider. Low magic challenges are easier on the DM to make meaningful. High magic challenges requiring thinking on a whole different level on the various different kinds of magic you'd need to counter, lest you create a hole that can make a challenge trivial, or else merely fiat things retroactively.World of Madius wiki - My personal campaign setting, including my homebrew Optional Gestalt/LA rules.
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2021-01-11, 08:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
What in the definition of a low magic game excludes a party of identical or near mechanically identical characters that have a variety of powerful tools, would be swiftly classified as level 10+ characters or of comparable power through their equipment? In this case they aren’t able to step on each other’s toes by trivializing scenarios that would be challenges for other party members.
As we’re on the 3.5 forum last I checked, most of the commentary makes more sense when it’s taken as reflecting on 3.5e. Crake seems to be taking aim at some classes being mechanically bankrupt in comparison to others, rather than things like the pervasiveness of magic / fantastical elements in a setting. Lets say everyone in the setting had magical/grafted wings and lived on floating cities with all kinds of luxuries medieval Europe lacked; that does not preclude the narrow range of mechanical competency that illustrates his desire for no party member to trivialize / fail to engage with challenges. Magic mart is an acceptable thing in these concerns given there’s equal access rather than the fighter having an expiration level in the higher single digits.
Is it because D&D has defined magic=options that we see the interchangeability of ‘magic’ and ‘mechanical capability’ when discussing party members getting left out or behind?If all rules are suggestions what happens when I pass the save?
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2021-01-11, 08:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Good thing I pointed it out then huh?
I'm not following the reasoning here: if it's easier to scale up, shouldn't high-magic be the better balance point? Because it's easier and more fun to scale a concept up to balanced to high magic, than to scale one down to (and remove, break, or lock away all their tools for) low magic?
I guess the most concise way to put it is that lower magic games tend to have far fewer complexities. In an effort to find the appropriate level of complexity for any given table, I find it more effective to start at the lowest level of complexity and grow from there to the point where you can engage everyone meaningfully, but you're not losing the players in the complexity of a game.
Does that make sense or at least better explain where I'm coming from with my thought process?
EDIT:
In the world with everyone having wings, you can no longer really use any sort of terrain challenges, at all, and you've obviated the existence of most cover all together. You've directly reduced the number of challenges you can present to any given party. You've also added the complexity of a third dimension of movement that is not easily represented on a 2D battlemap (or in most, if not all, online game methods). For the people I've played with over the past year, that would be too much to keep track of. Classes can fine tune the character to the player, but the overall magical influence on the setting will affect all of the players and their characters.Last edited by AnimeTheCat; 2021-01-11 at 08:59 AM.
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2021-01-11, 10:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Good. Then we can agree that there is no inherent conflict between “high magic game” and Warblade//Rogue is perfectly valid in a party of tier 1s until 9th level spells are in play. Your arguments are mutually exclusive.
Wow. It’s like you looked at CR 10 traps, found the lowest DC, and assumed that that was the toughest thing you could encounter. He needs a 14 to find 2 other traps on that same page. Nor is it impossible that you can face traps with CR>CL
Beguilers don’t actually get minions as a class ability. They get Diplomacy, which the rogue could also abuse if played RAW. RAW diplomacy abuse is trivial for any class with diplomacy as a class skill and plenty of skill points, ESPECIALLY in a high magic game where we are both walking into Magic Mart and buying +skill items. And they get Dominate. So at 10th level, if your group is ok with slaves, and the world environment is ok with slaves, you can command any humanoid without dominate defenses. There is nothing that makes it particularly likely that you will even have access to minions that are worthwhile in a dungeon crawl. You might. You might not. And if those mind flayers decide that dispel magic is a better plan than 2 SOLs, your minions are killing you. And of course the wizard can do the same thing one level earlier so it isn’t like you are bringing anything new to the table there.
So at level 6, we can pull out 3 levels of spells. In combat, this is pretty awful, because you spend 2 rounds of actions to recover and cast that spell. The simple fact is that in combat, the exact right spell isn’t usually better than 2 generally good spells. Outside combat, you have gimped your own skills, hp and class abilities to do what any wizard can do by leaving a slot open. I’d rather buy some scrolls than spend 2 feats and half my skills on that.
For that matter, if the question has changed from Can a WB//Rogue get comparable screen time in a group with T1s below level 17, into is a beguiler with PRC better than WB//Rogue, I don’t see any reason why the muggle side couldn’t also be optimized. You are talking about 5 levels of beguiler, so I could WB//shadow creature/rogue 5/bard 1/fighter 2/Eternal Blade 6.
At the same level, the WB has White Raven Tactics. So while you are spending 2 rounds recovering and casting one spell, as little as once per day, every single combat he is giving an extra action on Turn 1 to whichever PC happens to be the best suited to win that fight. And on every subsequent round, he will always have at least the ability to recover maneuvers with adaptive style and give another extra turn to whichever PC is best that round. He should literally never take an action that is worse than the second best thing the Wizard, Cleric or Druid can do in that situation.
And no it doesn’t. And if it did the good requirement probably prohibits your mob of dominated slaves.Last edited by Gnaeus; 2021-01-11 at 12:30 PM.
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2021-01-11, 11:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
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2021-01-11, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
Within the context of the question, do you contest my claim that it fits Crake’s definition of low magic where generally no scenario for which one character can trivialize others will struggle? There never was a quantity put on the meaningful challenges, just that disparities between characters would get in the way of meaningful challenges. Meaningful challenges here defined by Crake as events most/all characters can participate in without one or more trivializing it. In other words stuff that’s worth table time for detailed resolution.
Four sky knights flying over a monster infested expanse isn’t a challenge, it’s scenery. One sky knight flying to pluck the golden apple while bob the rogue, Tim the fireballer, and Jessica the merchant Queen stare on from the safety of a distant cliff is potentially anticlimactic.
‘Reducing the number of challenges’ here is a trivial statement. Of course taking a general system and drilling down to a single setting is going to limit our possibilities by definition. That’s not what we’re talking about. A challenge for a sky knight is different from a challenge for a town guard is different from a challenge for an anthropomorphic squirrel archer (actual squirrel size). I am not addressing player competency, that’s not relevant to my immediate question.
On what point of the currently operational definition of a low magic party/setting does the band of sky knights fail?
If the sky knight campaign is indeed low magic by the above standards, yet we find something urging us to reject it as high magic, we have identified the existence of an as yet unlisted requirement for our definition of low magic.If all rules are suggestions what happens when I pass the save?
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2021-01-11, 12:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why the desire for low magic?
"Everyone has wings? Well that kinda sucks for you guys. The arch villian has his base in the underdark."
Did that to a party where everyone had gained flight. It didn't completely negate flight (massive caverns, etc) and flight actually solved some problems, but the underdark is a pretty good flight foil.