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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    In a setting where magic is common how does society react and provide protections?

    In Forgotten Realms there are, as I recall, a couple of places where practitioners of magic establish local monopolies and vigorously protect their monopolies.

    What I don't see a lot of are actual protections. In the real world people reacted to the perception of hostile magic by seeking various protections, notably charms.

    For the sake of discussion let's say that in a RAW D&D 5e setting charms exist which allow the bearer to roll 1d20 anytime they are subjected to a magical effect. On a roll of 20 they are unaffected by the magic or take half-damage.

    Alternately, let's say that in a RAW D&D 5e setting charms exist which indicate when magic is being used nearby.

    What sort effect does this have on gameplay? Should we simply assume that NPCs exist for the amusement of players and that merchants are there to be swindled?

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?
    start with a mithral condom...
    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    In a setting where magic is common how does society react and provide protections?
    By and large they don't: magic is dangrous.
    What I don't see a lot of are actual protections.
    Ever heard of adventurers?
    For the sake of discussion let's say that in a RAW D&D 5e setting charms exist which allow the bearer to roll 1d20 anytime they are subjected to a magical effect. On a roll of 20 they are unaffected by the magic or take half-damage.
    If you have 4 HP, as a commoner, that's rather pointless.

    The idea that you can have a charm that lets you know that magic is working nearby is probably the better idea, but they'd be rare and expensive.

    As to your other assumptions, I'd drop the snarky attitude.
    Should we simply assume that NPCs exist for the amusement of players and that merchants are there to be swindled?
    Simply put, no.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-11-14 at 03:14 PM.
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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    Ever heard of adventurers?
    I have and they are frequently more dangerous to the general populace than the dangers of the wilds. :)

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    If you have 4 HP, as a commoner, that's rather pointless.
    If I have 4HP as a commoner then something that might prevent me from being killed by the magic I have no control over would be very important to me. And while, mechanically, taking half damage from a fireball won't make much difference to a merchant, being protected from Charm Person, Compelled Duel, Detect Thoughts, Friendship, Glibness, Suggestion, and other effects would make a huge difference. People in positions of political power would be even more highly motivated to protect themselves from such effects and from the people who can manifest them.

    Which is really the point of my question: How do people who can't use magic try to protect themselves from people who can use magic?

    The follow-up question being: Would such efforts significantly affect gameplay to the point that we should simply ignore this issue?

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Often the response of a society to something they can't actually defend against in the moment is to instead make the penalties for abuse of that thing extremely draconian, make investigations involving that thing have a much higher priority, make those capable of wielding it subject to much more oversight and monitoring. Given the 4hp issue, that would most likely extend to high level people not affiliated with a government or certified organization in general, not just magic users.

    Assuming the society has access to a small group of people who can deal with magical adversaries on even or superior footing, they can say 'this group is the inquisition - they are judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to activities undertaken by those known or discovered to have the ability to use magic'. It won't lead to a just society by any means, but practically speaking thats practically going to be the easiest way that a Lv1 commoner could go about trying to protect themselves from e.g. a Lv5 wizard. Of course those societies tend to be the first to burn down when a Lv15 wizard enters the scene and is pissed at the whole anti-caster discrimination thing, so it only works if the society has a monopoly on the ceiling of power.

    Barring that, building settlements around natural antimagic or null magic zones could be a thing. You wouldn't necessarily want the entire settlement to be in such a zone, but you could put things like the jail, the courthouse, banks, high value businesses, etc there. If you're going to sign a contract, you go to the AMF to make sure you're not under any sorts of charm spells/etc. Where such natural resources aren't available, I could see such things being overseen by clerics of deities dedicated to e.g. justice, trade, etc - certifying no standing magical effects or curses on people before they sign anything, etc. Even if the cleric could betray that trust, the organization (and deity) backing them has a reputational incentive to keep them honest, so even if you don't have a 100% guarantee there's reason to believe that it'd more often than not be done in an honest manner.
    Last edited by NichG; 2022-11-14 at 04:48 PM.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    If I have 4HP as a commoner then something that might prevent me from being killed by the magic I have no control over would be very important to me. And while, mechanically, taking half damage from a fireball won't make much difference to a merchant, being protected from Charm Person, Compelled Duel, Detect Thoughts, Friendship, Glibness, Suggestion, and other effects would make a huge difference. People in positions of political power would be even more highly motivated to protect themselves from such effects and from the people who can manifest them.
    It's a matter of resource availability. We somewhat have to assume that the typical commoner isn't going to have the resources to obtain any sort of realistic protection from magical powers/influences/whatever. Um... But on the other hand, there isn't a whole lot a commoner has that would make using such magic on them worthwhile in the first place.

    I would (and have) assume that magical defenses are going to scale with the wealth and capabilities of those attempting to defend themselves against magic, and that those things are going to tend to be in direct proportion to the degree to which said people may be targets of magical attacks/effects in the first place. A random commoner? Probably doesn't need to. Their odds of coming under magical attack are very near to zero. A wealthy merchant? More likely, but also has greater capability to obtain magical defenses, hire people who can protect them, etc.

    And yeah, this scales all the way up to powerful political positions, who would almost certainly employ their own magic users to provide protection and/or items to help defend against magic, at the very least against mental influences.

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    Which is really the point of my question: How do people who can't use magic try to protect themselves from people who can use magic?
    If they can afford it, they hire people to provide that protection (either directly or via some sorts of amulets of defense, whatever). If they can't, then they rely on a band of adventurers coming along to "save them" from the nefarious plots of whatever is controlling/threatening them. That's more or less where the whole "village being controlled by <insert evil thing here> and the party needs to figure it out and save them" bit comes from. I did a really spooky "children of the corn" like scenario many years ago. My players still talk about it.

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    The follow-up question being: Would such efforts significantly affect gameplay to the point that we should simply ignore this issue?
    Nah. Not really. Again, you need to consider not just how someone can be harmed by the use of magic against them, but also how the magic user may benefit by using it that way in the first place. There's just not a lot of value for someone powerful enough to do stuff like that, to actually run around controlling/killing/whatever random commoners. What? You're going to take over their dirt farms or something?

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    How do people who can't use magic try to protect themselves from people who can use magic?
    Torches and pitch forks.
    Poison in their coffee.
    Ambush.
    Hire an assassin.
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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    This sort of thing is highly dependent upon the specific system in use in a given setting. For example, the vulnerability of high-level characters to mass attack by a low-level mob is much higher in 5e D&D versus 3.5e D&D.

    The precise capabilities of the highest levels of personal power available - in an RPG context this means the highest levels likely to appear with any real frequency - versus the capabilities of societal power to match or contain those powers need to be mapped out, because the resulting contours largely dictate how society will form. If personal power greatly exceeds societal power, as it does in 3.5e D&D, the likely outcome is a society of immortal god-wizards who offer the masses exactly as much protection as their whims dictate, but never enough to allow them to actually become a threat. of the other hand, if the advantage of personal power is marginal, it's possible that casters may try to buy goodwill by providing all the protection they possibly can (especially if, by doing so, they can differentiate themselves from a non-accommodating 'bad caster' group). Alternatively, they may broadly remove themselves from society to avoid scrutiny (this was the traditional 2e AD&D solution).
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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    In a setting where magic is common how does society react and provide protections?

    In Forgotten Realms there are, as I recall, a couple of places where practitioners of magic establish local monopolies and vigorously protect their monopolies.

    What I don't see a lot of are actual protections. In the real world people reacted to the perception of hostile magic by seeking various protections, notably charms.

    For the sake of discussion let's say that in a RAW D&D 5e setting charms exist which allow the bearer to roll 1d20 anytime they are subjected to a magical effect. On a roll of 20 they are unaffected by the magic or take half-damage.

    Alternately, let's say that in a RAW D&D 5e setting charms exist which indicate when magic is being used nearby.

    What sort effect does this have on gameplay? Should we simply assume that NPCs exist for the amusement of players and that merchants are there to be swindled?
    Iirc, I was told that, in (earlier editions of) the Forgotten Realms, various “gemstones” (like onyx or agate) provided various possible protections from magic (much like you describe). And the result was… nobody used them. Even at a couple of gold each, most were far too expensive for the average commoner (even in the Forgotten Realms, where the “average” commoner often had a stat block such that their lowest stat was a 13).

    Irl, what protections do you have against technology? A fallout shelter? Gas mask? Bunker? Bullet-proof glass? Radar? Kevlar vest? Fire-proof walls? Home sprinkler system? Panic room? Even I only have 2 of those, and I’m considered paranoid by some.

    So, afaict, the answer is, it really doesn’t have much effect on the everyday life of the Everyman.

    Still, you can probably expect that “important” people carry expensive talismans that the taxes of the common folk or donations of the faithful have paid for, and con artists likely attempt to swindle the ignorant with their useless “miracle” charms.

    And I guess it’s up to you whether you consider civilians to “exist for the amusement of” armies and mercenary groups, whether that’s the feel you feel the setting should have. Personally, I think that the Forgotten Realms should feel more like “at the whim of the gods and OP DMPC Mary Sue’s”, and “every random NPC peasant has better stats than you” and “idiocracy”, but I’m no Realms scholar.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Irl, what protections do you have against technology? A fallout shelter? Gas mask? Bunker? Bullet-proof glass? Radar? Kevlar vest? Fire-proof walls? Home sprinkler system? Panic room? Even I only have 2 of those, and I’m considered paranoid by some.
    The protections against technology are that technology is society dependent, which means society inevitably manages them. It may not manage them in a way the average citizen would like - ex. an autocratic state may allow the possession of firearms only by the secret police - but the state retains a monopoly on the legal use of force. However, in a universe in which personal power exceeds societal power, as it does in D&D, superhero universes, most wuxia settings, and a variety of other fantasy scenarios it is inherently impossible for the state to maintain a monopoly on the legal use of force - with the exception of states run by all-powerful god-kings and their supernaturally loyal minions in which 'the state' is functionally a single person. D&D, with its typically numerous and powerful forms of minionomancy and mind control, leans heavily toward the 'god-kings' scenario.
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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    Iirc, I was told that, in (earlier editions of) the Forgotten Realms, various “gemstones” (like onyx or agate) provided various possible protections from magic (much like you describe). And the result was… nobody used them. Even at a couple of gold each, most were far too expensive for the average commoner (even in the Forgotten Realms, where the “average” commoner often had a stat block such that their lowest stat was a 13).
    AD&D DMG 1979 revised ed. p.26 "Reputed magical properties of gems".
    Regardless of what qualities gems, herbs, and other substances are purported to possess .... absolutely no benefit of magical nature .... given herein merely as information for Dungeon Master use in devising special formulae .... etc., etc.
    In general it the actual vsMagics depends on how well the game system & setting defines magic stuff, and how much magic is written to be used for non-murder-hobo fighting activities. This refers to all magic in the game system, not just the "i can haz spelz" adventuring bits that are mostly along the lines of 'spells, swords, shields, oh and the occasional boot or ring'.

    Just a simple "this ring glows when the wearer is being affected by magic" or what's basically a magic geiger counter, has massive effects how a civilization interacts with magic. If making one requires a 9th+ level wizard, three drops of blood from a sleeping phoenix, and a point of constitution loss, then there won't be many (if any) and they'll cost an arm... literally you'll probably have to hack it off the current owner. If making one requires a recipie, 500 gp of misc. ****, a month of work by one random person, and a rare-but-can-be-gotten-by-a-professional-hunter thingy, then there's no reason someone with 1500 gp (or 3000 on an installment plan) shouldn't be able to get one short of some absolute removal of the source of special ingredient from the setting. If making one just requires a blob of cash for a suitable item to be enchanted and someone who can use any magic at all magic to spend three months working at it... well there won't be assembly lines, but it'd be a good idea for any magic school to require one from a student for graduation and any number of small scale magic using crafters will be willing for living expenses & a bit of profit.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    The specific source for the gem effects was 2e Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. So, bit later.
    Last edited by NichG; 2022-11-15 at 02:48 AM.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    The specific source for the gem effects was 2e Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. So, bit later.
    '96 & FR specific it looks like? Could be. The FR bit would be why I never heard of it, never personally knew anyone in ad&d days who used that setting.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    '96 & FR specific it looks like? Could be. The FR bit would be why I never heard of it, never personally knew anyone in ad&d days who used that setting.
    Yeah, its FR specific.

    The gemstone stuff in Volo is actually really potent. Going through the list, having a thousand or so gp of gems on your person is enough to:

    - Detect ethereal and invisible creatures nearby
    - Reduce all spell damage by 1 point per die and gain +2 to saves vs spells
    - Halve all fire damage
    - Absorb 1d4 damage per stone carried from any explosions (consumable)
    - Gain +1 AC versus physical projectiles
    - Gain +2 to saves vs polymorph-like effects
    - Negate 6 points of electricity damage per unit mass of a certain stone (consumable)
    - Fully block Time Stop and similar time magic within 30ft (expensive - black sapphire)
    - Deal counterattack damage to casters of magic missiles that pass within 10ft of the bearer
    - Neutralize alcohol
    - Fully block Magic Jar
    - Ward against charm magics, unclear how effective (expensive - diamond)
    - Detect falsehood (consumable, expensive - emerald)
    - Casts Flame Strike in response to any magical effect being applied to the bearer (consumable, friendly fire...)
    - Glow in the presence of active spellcasting within 20ft
    - Protection against wyverns (ambiguous...)
    - Reflect spells at the caster (requires the spell to hit the stone directly though...)
    - Prevent rot up to and including magical rot like mummy rot
    - Detect scrying on the holder
    - Immunity to paralysis and hold spells (there are two gems that do this; one requires contact with a magic item, but permanent in effect and doesn't consume the magic item, the other just does it)
    - Totally prevent fireballs and other magical flame effects within 60ft, and a 1 in 4 chance of extinguishing nonmagical fires within that range each round
    - Detect residual enchantments
    - Pierce layers of prismatic effects, one per stone (consumable, risky - not all stones will do and its hard to identify)
    - Reduce damage from undead by 1 per die
    - Partial protection from fear, insanity, etc effects (ambiguous)
    - 1/3 chance of reducing magic missile damage by 1 point per missile
    - Reduce damage from magic missiles by half (consumable)
    - Provides a Resist Fire and Resist Cold effect once (expensive - highest quality of stone only; consumable)
    - (In conjunction with a single high level spell slot cast) creates clothing that grants permanent immunity to nonmagical metal weapons
    - Delay attacks from undead by 1 round
    - Prevent magical darkness within 20ft
    - Reduces damage from draconic breath weapons by 1d4 per die to minimum of 1 (consumable)
    - Reduces damage from lightning by 1 point per die, +4 to saves vs lightning
    - (In combination with holy water) defeat Wizard Lock.
    - Detect active illusions
    - 14% chance of re-targeting spells against the bearer
    - Block scrying within 2ft
    - Immunity to magical curses
    - Random degree of protection against all harmful gaseous or airborne effects (consumable)
    - Immunity to 'withering magics' and the Inflict X line of spells
    - Detect magic on contact
    - Autonomously cast six magic missiles a round for 5 rounds out of every 7, indefinitely, and on mental command by the owner within 30ft (!)

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Given that it is very expensive to make defences against magic, my high magic campaign setting reacts twofold: concentration of force, and retaliation.
    The first means that there is a strong incentive to make alliances. Adventuring groups are affiliated to powerful organizations or nations. Nations form defensive alliances. They firld armirs of golems. They create strongholds rated to withstand the assault of a lecel 20 party. All to ensure that society can face high level threats. If yor society cannot, then you have to subject yourself to a greater power that does. If society as a whole cannot do it, then there will not be a stable society.
    Retaliation means society will be very dogged in the pursue of those who abuse magic - they must make examples to dissuade most potential criminals, because they lack the resources to do it on a large scale. So it doesn't matter that the guy you mind raped is mr nobody. Society will quickly deploy high level divinators to find and punish you at all costs - because if it is understood that you can do that kind of stuff and get away with it, nothing will be safe.
    Society behaves towards high level criminals like a guy with a handful of bullets facing a crowd: it shouts "the first who steps out of line is dead", and hope you don't have to execute your threat too often.

    It's worth noting that high magic changes the severity of crimes. Physical harm is a lot less bad because it can be healed so easily; when the party accidentally killed a civilian, they got away with paying for a resurrection spell and a refund.
    while charms - that will take away people's sense of safety and make them double guess their every thought process - are a red line that must never be crossed. My wizard player decided to take enchantment as banned school because society's harsh response make it too inpractical to use in most situations.

    So, the common person do not buy a cloack of resistance +1 to defend from magic. If they can afford magic, they buy stuff that's useful in their everyday life.
    The common person defend from magic by funding some high level organization to protect him
    Last edited by King of Nowhere; 2022-11-15 at 06:14 AM.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    However, in a universe in which personal power exceeds societal power, as it does in D&D, superhero universes, most wuxia settings, and a variety of other fantasy scenarios it is inherently impossible for the state to maintain a monopoly on the legal use of force - with the exception of states run by all-powerful god-kings and their supernaturally loyal minions in which 'the state' is functionally a single person. D&D, with its typically numerous and powerful forms of minionomancy and mind control, leans heavily toward the 'god-kings' scenario.
    Which is why making magic both rare and dangerous makes for an easier to implement setting and campaign, but, one can certainly go all in and let the chaos ensue: which it will. And that can be fun.
    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    Given that it is very expensive to make defences against magic, my high magic campaign setting reacts twofold: concentration of force, and retaliation.
    Spoiler: detailed explanation
    Show

    The first means that there is a strong incentive to make alliances. Adventuring groups are affiliated to powerful organizations or nations. Nations form defensive alliances. They firld armirs of golems. They create strongholds rated to withstand the assault of a lecel 20 party. All to ensure that society can face high level threats. If yor society cannot, then you have to subject yourself to a greater power that does. If society as a whole cannot do it, then there will not be a stable society.
    Retaliation means society will be very dogged in the pursue of those who abuse magic - they must make examples to dissuade most potential criminals, because they lack the resources to do it on a large scale. So it doesn't matter that the guy you mind raped is mr nobody. Society will quickly deploy high level divinators to find and punish you at all costs - because if it is understood that you can do that kind of stuff and get away with it, nothing will be safe.
    Society behaves towards high level criminals like a guy with a handful of bullets facing a crowd: it shouts "the first who steps out of line is dead", and hope you don't have to execute your threat too often.

    It's worth noting that high magic changes the severity of crimes. Physical harm is a lot less bad because it can be healed so easily; when the party accidentally killed a civilian, they got away with paying for a resurrection spell and a refund.
    while charms - that will take away people's sense of safety and make them double guess their every thought process - are a red line that must never be crossed. My wizard player decided to take enchantment as banned school because society's harsh response make it too inpractical to use in most situations.

    So, the common person do not buy a cloack of resistance +1 to defend from magic. If they can afford magic, they buy stuff that's useful in their everyday life.

    The common person defend from magic by funding some high level organization to protect him
    This is an answer that someone can use to apply to their own campaign, well done. FWIW, this part is roughly what I meant by torches and pitchforks and hire assassins
    Retaliation means society will be very dogged in the pursue of those who abuse magic - they must make examples to dissuade most potential criminals, because they lack the resources to do it on a large scale. So it doesn't matter that the guy you mind raped is mr nobody. Society will quickly deploy high level divinators to find and punish you at all costs - because if it is understood that you can do that kind of stuff and get away with it, nothing will be safe.
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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Thank you all for the good discussion points. A few, in particular, stick with me.

    Making magic rarer is mentioned, and it's a good idea that resonates with me, but it's difficult to implement in many settings, particularly D&D where almost every class has ready access to magic and where magic permeates pretty much every aspect of society. Which is why I'm specifying high-fantasy where magic is common.

    Formal and informal societal protection are mentioned.

    In a formal setting the state establishes control of the use of magic and enforces it. If the state can't actively enforce limits on the use of magic (preventing it from being used without license) then it has to react to unlicensed magic use in a draconian fashion (since confining magic users is too expensive you have to kill their ability to use magic, which may or may not involve killing them at the same time; consider the Dresden Files setting). Giving the state the ability to actively enforce magic use (creating areas in which magic cannot be used, establishing common means of detecting the use of magic, providing ready access to anti-magic capabilities down to at least the upper-middle class level of society, and etc) significantly changes game play for some classes and can come as very rude discovery if players are not briefed ahead of time. They don't like having character abilities 'taken away' from them.

    Informal protections, the torches and pitchforks option, is more a sort of large scale aversion and shunning for the most part. But even that can have significant consequences where PCs are denied access to resources (shops, inns, even towns and cities) and incur significant social penalties (mere suspicion to outright shunning) in interactions unless they have a compensatory factor in play (e.g. I'm a magic-user, yes, but I'm a member of the order of XXXXX and here's my uniform/signet-ring/brand/tattoo/union-card to prove it).

    Which brings me to my tentative conclusions that, if we follow any reasonable facsimile of logic, in settings where magic is common:
    -Tools which make magic less effective should likewise be common AND/OR
    -Controls on the use of magic, which employ draconian punishments, should be common AND/OR
    -Society should have evolved significant attitudes towards the use of magic which are probably fear-based.
    -Reducing the ability of players to use all the abilities of their characters will be extremely poorly received; they're playing high-magic because they want high-magic.

    I'm fine with weighting the scales so that players tend to succeed, but it bothers me when we slap high-magic onto a setting and don't consider how that changes things. I'm not arguing in favor of a Tippyverse, but I do think there should be a reasonable middle ground. It's entirely a me issue, of course. I'm not arguing that anyone should be forced to change how they play.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    start with a mithral condom...
    (blue) Isn’t that a plot point from Rings of Power? (/blue)
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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    In the real world defensive measures of almost any sort has to account for the economic feasibility of a form of protection compared to the likelihood of its use.

    That's why you don't see the type of defensive measures you would see in a bank or government facility in a typical retail store.

    Since fantasy settings rarely care about economics, the defensive measures can be whatever you want them to be for the most part.

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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    Thank you all for the good discussion points. A few, in particular, stick with me.

    Making magic rarer is mentioned, and it's a good idea that resonates with me, but it's difficult to implement in many settings, particularly D&D where almost every class has ready access to magic and where magic permeates pretty much every aspect of society. Which is why I'm specifying high-fantasy where magic is common.
    that's a worldbuilding choice, and should not be too tied to the classes and what they do.
    personally i dislike the idea of rare magic because, what's the point of having magic in the setting if your whole concept is "everything works just like if this didn't exhist at all"? may as well skip the whole magic thing. exploring the consequences of introducing magic and superpowered individuals into a setting is interesting.
    but it's indeed a matter of tastes, so if you like a low magic world, you should not feel yourself inhibited because one of your players wants to play a wizard.


    Which brings me to my tentative conclusions that, if we follow any reasonable facsimile of logic, in settings where magic is common:
    -Tools which make magic less effective should likewise be common AND/OR
    -Controls on the use of magic, which employ draconian punishments, should be common AND/OR
    -Society should have evolved significant attitudes towards the use of magic which are probably fear-based.
    -Reducing the ability of players to use all the abilities of their characters will be extremely poorly received; they're playing high-magic because they want high-magic.
    I would point out a few caveats:
    1) regarding draconian punishments, in a world where resurrection is possible, death penalty is just not the same thing. killing someone may well be the dumbest thing you could do. solutions depend on setting and circumstances.
    In my setting, there are a couple evil nations that go for the "executed under fancy torture" stuff with the caveat that if you are resurrected you should stay the hell away from our land, or we'll execute you again. still, even they do employ fancy antimagic prisons where great care is taken to keep the prisoners alive, for when the former approach just does not work. soul binding and related stuff is considered on a level of crimes against humanity, but it is done if it's the only option left.
    1b) still regarding draconian punishments, a functional society also tries to not employ them too easily, else they push people to desperation and violence. society's response should be more balanced, and related to the severity of the infractions. if your party wizard throws a fireball at an ambushing assassin and accidentally catches some civilians in the blast radius, he should get a chance to fix things. if he loses sight of the assassin and starts fireballing everywhere in a crowded area just on the hopes of scoring a lucky hit, that's a one way ticket for maximum security
    2) related to this, reducing the ability of the players to use their ability may or may not be poorly received. My players accepted it without a complaint, because every restriction I placed makes sense in world. because people living into that world would see those restrictions as reasonable.
    in our world we require competence tests before allowing people to use a potentially dangerous object like a car, and we place restrictions on how it can be used, and we prosecute those that violate those restrictions, and nobody complains that being forbidden from car racing while drunk inside a pedestrian area is a violation of their personal freedom. in the same way, when i told my players that they can't go around charming people into being their thralls, robbing banks while invisible, and expect to get away with it, well, it's only sensible. If your players protest that it's a restriction on their freedom as players, then it means your players are the kind that want to go around mind raping people for the lulz; in which case, i would not want to dm for them.
    3) society's attitude towards magic should not be just fear. Magic is also plenty useful; you can use magic to feed the masses, heal disease, build up all kind of useful stuff. indeed, i find an attitude like the one we have towards technology to be more realistic*; sure, this thing is dangerous, but it's also very useful. we don't fear it, as long as it's properly evaluated and regulated. we do fear somebody who may misuse it.

    *you may wonder, if magic has so much in common with technology, what's the point of playing with magic instead of just having a sci-fi setting. however, with magic you have a lot more freedom of what it can do and what it cannot do. using technology brings a lot more issues, but it would require a whole dissertation. anyway, my personal reason for preferring fantasy is that as a science nerd I can spot all manner of scientific inconsistencies and mistakes, and they generally ruin my enjoyment of a sci-fi story. with magic, i can accept that magic just works this way.
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    Default Re: Magical Protection in a High Magic Setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by NRSASD View Post
    (blue) Isn’t that a plot point from Rings of Power? (/blue)
    (blue) As I understand that plot point, it's a ring, or maybe a rooster ring, and I doubt that's going to be protective in nature (/blue)

    (What I had in my minds eye was a very tight micromesh construction, kind of like a chainmail tube sock ... but we are getting waaaaaaaaay off topic)
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    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    Making magic rarer is mentioned, and it's a good idea that resonates with me, but it's difficult to implement in many settings, particularly D&D where almost every class has ready access to magic and where magic permeates pretty much every aspect of society. Which is why I'm specifying high-fantasy where magic is common.
    I also tend to think that making magic rarer may actually make it more likely to be abused in a "how would this setting actually work?" way. If folks walking around with mind control type spells is relatively common, societies would have to come up with ways to manage them. If it's super rare, they wont. And the super rare people who have such abilities will more or less use them at whim because most people wont even know to think they might be used.

    Something to think about.


    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    In a formal setting the state establishes control of the use of magic and enforces it. If the state can't actively enforce limits on the use of magic (preventing it from being used without license) then it has to react to unlicensed magic use in a draconian fashion (since confining magic users is too expensive you have to kill their ability to use magic, which may or may not involve killing them at the same time; consider the Dresden Files setting). Giving the state the ability to actively enforce magic use (creating areas in which magic cannot be used, establishing common means of detecting the use of magic, providing ready access to anti-magic capabilities down to at least the upper-middle class level of society, and etc) significantly changes game play for some classes and can come as very rude discovery if players are not briefed ahead of time. They don't like having character abilities 'taken away' from them.
    I'm not really understanding the first sentence. If the state can't actively enforce limits on use of magic, then how on earth can they use "draconian fashion" to punish those who break the rules (or whatever)? You have to realize that all state power ultimately rests in its ability to enforce its rules. It either has the power to impose draconian punishments on those who break the rules, or it does not. If it does, then it can enforce the rules (and may even be able to avoid having to use those draconian methods most of the time). If it does not, then it may attempt draconian measures, but those will tend to be ineffective, often inconsistently applied (some punished harshly, others getting away with anything), and more likely to be used by the existing powerful magical forces (who can manipulate those imposing the "justice") to prevent up and coming competition than anything resembling true justice.

    That little side issue aside, you are more or less correct though. Just be aware that this always requires that the "state" (whatever form that takes), must have sufficient magical power to enforce its rules. Period. You can't, as a GM, just declare "these are the rules for magic", without also establishing a very real system in place by real powers in the game that enforce those rules somehow. Doesn't matter what those are, but they must exist if you have these sorts of rules at all (unless you really do want them to be quite obviously just unenforced nonsense that no serious practitioner of magic takes seriously).

    The "state" in this case needs to have absolute power to detect, track down, and imprison/punish anyone who steps out of line. And make sure (as you say) that the players know this and maybe even fear it a bit. Again, assuming that this is a world where such amount of magical enforcement and rules exists.

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    Informal protections, the torches and pitchforks option, is more a sort of large scale aversion and shunning for the most part. But even that can have significant consequences where PCs are denied access to resources (shops, inns, even towns and cities) and incur significant social penalties (mere suspicion to outright shunning) in interactions unless they have a compensatory factor in play (e.g. I'm a magic-user, yes, but I'm a member of the order of XXXXX and here's my uniform/signet-ring/brand/tattoo/union-card to prove it).
    Not bad ideas. But be careful of the "rules for thee, none for me" situation. If this is the method magic abuse may be punished, then it can be an issue due to the PCs potentially having a much harder time of it (assuming reputation and reaction by NPCs matter to them), than the evil bad guys who aren't going to care about this one bit.

    Having said that, I'm more a fan of a somewhat in between method. Not so much "the state", but that certain powerful parties and organizations exist which take it on themselves to manage magic (at least in their areas of influence). Wizard guilds and religious organizations may work together to enforce some common rules on their various practitioners, just as a mater of courtesy and ease of interaction. I tend to like this more than "the king has the most powerful wizards in the land" sorts of things.

    And of course, no matter what method you use, the potential for corruption in any system can make for fun adventure scenarios.

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    Which brings me to my tentative conclusions that, if we follow any reasonable facsimile of logic, in settings where magic is common:
    -Tools which make magic less effective should likewise be common AND/OR
    -Controls on the use of magic, which employ draconian punishments, should be common AND/OR
    -Society should have evolved significant attitudes towards the use of magic which are probably fear-based.
    -Reducing the ability of players to use all the abilities of their characters will be extremely poorly received; they're playing high-magic because they want high-magic.
    Don't directly disagree with any of that. I would point out that magic can be "common", even if only a small percentage of the total population uses it. Certainly common enough to requires some sorts of standards and rules to be put in place, even if it's just "don't mess with the people in my town" sort of things.

    Just making sure that when we talk about attitudes towards magic being "fear-based" that's not necessarily how the general population feels or wants others to feel about magic. Most average people in most settings just aren't thinking about magic on any given day. They're doing their normal average every day jobs. These rules can be in effect, but still only directly apply to a very small (like .1%) of the population or less, but still also have a known and noticeable effect on the world itself.

    You don't need a world chock full of people wandering down the street tossing spells around like they're just juggling balls for these concepts to be needed and useful IMO.

    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    I'm fine with weighting the scales so that players tend to succeed, but it bothers me when we slap high-magic onto a setting and don't consider how that changes things. I'm not arguing in favor of a Tippyverse, but I do think there should be a reasonable middle ground. It's entirely a me issue, of course. I'm not arguing that anyone should be forced to change how they play.
    Absolutely agree. I also think that a lot of this can be abstracted in the background. Unless the players are specifically getting involved in such things, they can often be left vague and undefined. And I'd certainly not use it as a cudgel to make players not use the magic items/spells written on their character sheets (cause that's not fair). It's enough that they have just an idea that really abusing people with magic could have some dire consequences. Be prepared to hit PCs with whatever you have put in your game world, but that should really be rare IMO (unless they are just being magical murderhobos or something).

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    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    I'm not really understanding the first sentence. If the state can't actively enforce limits on use of magic, then how on earth can they use "draconian fashion" to punish those who break the rules (or whatever)? You have to realize that all state power ultimately rests in its ability to enforce its rules. It either has the power to impose draconian punishments on those who break the rules, or it does not. If it does, then it can enforce the rules (and may even be able to avoid having to use those draconian methods most of the time). If it does not, then it may attempt draconian measures, but those will tend to be ineffective, often inconsistently applied (some punished harshly, others getting away with anything), and more likely to be used by the existing powerful magical forces (who can manipulate those imposing the "justice") to prevent up and coming competition than anything resembling true justice.
    It's the difference between making a crime impossible to commit versus punishing it when the crime is uncovered.

    The state might not be able to give every citizen a counter-charm that will prevent them from being mind controlled, because there are a lot of citizens and only a few people capable of making those counter charms. But the state could still send that small group to utterly crush a mind controller once their activities have been discovered.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    The state might not be able to give every citizen a counter-charm that will prevent them from being mind controlled, because there are a lot of citizens and only a few people capable of making those counter charms. But the state could still send that small group to utterly crush a mind controller once their activities have been discovered.
    Maybe...it depends on the information resources available to the state. Extremely harsh punishments have their limitations as a tool of state power, especially once they reach the state where lesser crimes carry the same punishment as extremely serious crimes, as this tends to lead to large numbers of people with 'nothing to lose,' which is extremely destabilizing.

    In general, a state with fewer magical resources than rogue individuals is not going to have the information resources to control those individuals. Now, this changes if there are multiple forms of magic in question, as in D&D. For example, a theocratic state could conceivably ban all use of arcane magic and rely on divine magic to make up the difference. This is extremely common in settings where there's a 'good magic' and a 'bad magic' - for example in Star Wars or the Wheel of Time - and the natural result is that the 'good magic' people spend a huge portion of their resources trying to contain the 'bad magic' people.

    One thing this does lead to is states making affiliation a crime. For example, if a setting has some kind of evil blood magic that's run by the blood cult, then the state is likely to make just being a member of the Blood Cult illegal (and in extreme cases punishable by death) even if the person in question hasn't actually done any blood magic or anything criminal at all. This is especially likely if being a blood mage carries some kind of visible sign that ordinary people can detect. For example, in Exalted, exalts display auras and extremely recognizable marks on their foreheads if they use their powers a bunch - and the Dragon-Blooded Empire that considered all of them threats very reasonably simply declared that anyone displaying such a mark under any circumstance was subject to an immediate kill-on-sight response.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Maybe...it depends on the information resources available to the state. Extremely harsh punishments have their limitations as a tool of state power, especially once they reach the state where lesser crimes carry the same punishment as extremely serious crimes, as this tends to lead to large numbers of people with 'nothing to lose,' which is extremely destabilizing.

    In general, a state with fewer magical resources than rogue individuals is not going to have the information resources to control those individuals. Now, this changes if there are multiple forms of magic in question, as in D&D. For example, a theocratic state could conceivably ban all use of arcane magic and rely on divine magic to make up the difference. This is extremely common in settings where there's a 'good magic' and a 'bad magic' - for example in Star Wars or the Wheel of Time - and the natural result is that the 'good magic' people spend a huge portion of their resources trying to contain the 'bad magic' people.
    I'm talking about a state that has, say, 100 Lv10 characters in service to it but a population of 5 million, of which maybe 50000 are casters of some form or another, of whom maybe 50 are engaged in criminal acts, and of whom maybe 49500 are lower than Lv10.

    You can't make 5 million people immune to magic with the resources of 100 high level enforcers. You can't defeat a coalition of the 400 independent high level casters with the 100 loyalists. But you could absolutely crush the 50 casters engaged in criminal acts, most of whom would be less than Lv10. What you'd be aiming for is the logic of 'don't bring a gun to a burglary, because having a lethal weapon on your person during a minor crime bumps it up to a major one'.

    Someone steals a loaf of bread, they get a fine or a day in the stocks if they can't pay. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Mage Hand and they have their spellcasting materials confiscated and destroyed and go to jail for five years. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Dominate Person and they're exiled on pain of execution.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    I'm talking about a state that has, say, 100 Lv10 characters in service to it but a population of 5 million, of which maybe 50000 are casters of some form or another, of whom maybe 50 are engaged in criminal acts, and of whom maybe 49500 are lower than Lv10.

    You can't make 5 million people immune to magic with the resources of 100 high level enforcers. You can't defeat a coalition of the 400 independent high level casters with the 100 loyalists. But you could absolutely crush the 50 casters engaged in criminal acts, most of whom would be less than Lv10. What you'd be aiming for is the logic of 'don't bring a gun to a burglary, because having a lethal weapon on your person during a minor crime bumps it up to a major one'.

    Someone steals a loaf of bread, they get a fine or a day in the stocks if they can't pay. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Mage Hand and they have their spellcasting materials confiscated and destroyed and go to jail for five years. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Dominate Person and they're exiled on pain of execution.
    Yes, but you have to actually catch the magic using criminals in the act for that to work, which is why I said it depends on the information resources available. Notably, crimes conducted using magic are generally significantly more difficult to detect than conventional ones. Proving someone abused mind control is not simple. Also, those enforcers are going to be expensive, especially since they'll probably insist on operating with overwhelming force when deployed (like actual SWAT units do). You'd need a huge investigate apparatus in order to make this work.

    Now, there are ways to do this. The easy one is the Dragon Age route. Acceptable mages belong to the Circles and owe service to the state in perpetuity with a third-party monitoring force watching them constantly, and unacceptable mages can be killed on sight. Doing this essentially co-opts all casters as state resources. Now, this is highly likely, over time, to turn the state into a magocracy (especially in the absence of some sort of Dragon Age style, 'mages can go insane at any time' bit of grimdark) with casters holding functionally all positions of importance in the bureaucracy and a huge amount of corruption, but this is generally considered acceptable. In fact, in most human societies this was broadly assumed to be how things worked even in the absence of any actual powers.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Yes, but you have to actually catch the magic using criminals in the act for that to work, which is why I said it depends on the information resources available. Notably, crimes conducted using magic are generally significantly more difficult to detect than conventional ones. Proving someone abused mind control is not simple. Also, those enforcers are going to be expensive, especially since they'll probably insist on operating with overwhelming force when deployed (like actual SWAT units do). You'd need a huge investigate apparatus in order to make this work.
    The main point is that you don't need an apparatus proportional to the size of the society, and you don't have to prevent every (or any) crimes, or even catch every crime. You just have to make it so that those cases which are caught are punished to the extent that for the most part, casters aren't going to find it a worthwhile proposition to try to become local tyrants. Similarly, you don't need to police or constrain every single caster - they can have full freedom to self-license and whatnot, but the consequence of that is that the hammer comes down hard if they're even tangentially involved in something. So it becomes on them to mitigate their risks by being more careful than the average person might be about what they get involved with - exploiting an intentional chilling effect.

    Yes, you will still have magecrime. But you already had roguecrime and fightercrime and so on presumably. What you won't have is open, overt, repeated magecrime.
    Last edited by NichG; 2022-11-16 at 01:36 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    It's the difference between making a crime impossible to commit versus punishing it when the crime is uncovered.
    Like speeding or tax fraud.
    The state might not be able to give every citizen a counter-charm that will prevent them from being mind controlled, because there are a lot of citizens and only a few people capable of making those counter charms. But the state could still send that small group to utterly crush a mind controller once their activities have been discovered.
    They could even create special investigative units to try and find the practitioners and take them down (kind of like the narco squad in a metropolitan police department).
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    Simple, either the witch hunters kill them before they get good enough at it to stop them or you yoke them to the service of the state.

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    I do agree with MechaLich that trying to yoke all (powerful) casters to the service of the state is likely to lead to either corrupt magocracy or open rebellion. A draft like that is just putting a lot of people you've wronged in one place together and then relying on them to provide an important function for you that you can't provide for yourself...

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    Quote Originally Posted by jjordan View Post
    In a formal setting the state establishes control of the use of magic and enforces it. If the state can't actively enforce limits on use of magic (preventing it from being used without license) then it has to react to unlicensed magic use in a draconian fashion (since confining magic users is too expensive you have to kill their ability to use magic, which may or may not involve killing them at the same time; consider the Dresden Files setting).
    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    You can't make 5 million people immune to magic with the resources of 100 high level enforcers. You can't defeat a coalition of the 400 independent high level casters with the 100 loyalists. But you could absolutely crush the 50 casters engaged in criminal acts, most of whom would be less than Lv10. What you'd be aiming for is the logic of 'don't bring a gun to a burglary, because having a lethal weapon on your person during a minor crime bumps it up to a major one'.

    Someone steals a loaf of bread, they get a fine or a day in the stocks if they can't pay. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Mage Hand and they have their spellcasting materials confiscated and destroyed and go to jail for five years. Someone steals a loaf of bread using Dominate Person and they're exiled on pain of execution.
    Ok. That explains the misunderstanding I had. I read jjordan's post and didn't at all get the idea of "the state somehow magically makes the entire population immune to harmful magic" from the first bolded statement. And the follow up just seemed to me to be the normal "this is how you enforce magical crimes" methodology. Didn't at all get that "actively enforce limits on use of magic" meant "hand out amulets to every commoner in the land to make them immune". I took "enforce limits on the use of magic" to mean "enforce" in the normal law enforcement way: You discover crimes, investigate them, track down the perpetrator, and the capture, try, and punish them. Just with magical crimes.

    So yeah, was confused by the whole "if the state can't do this, then it must do <exactly what I thought he was saying the state should do in the first part>".

    Uh. Yeah. I'd be hesitant to even consider a game world with that much extreme controls on magic and ability to prevent magic from harming a pretty huge population. It's not just practical. If "the state" could proactively prevent magical harm to every single citizen in the first place, then surely everyone in the setting with even moderate personal resources could be even more protected (and what exactly does that even mean?). You'd be essentially making magic useless because everyone you'd ever try to use it against would be protected because "the state" is handing anti-magic amulets out like candy or something.

    I suppose you could use certain anti-magic zones or something, set up in cities to prevent such things. That's somewhat doable, but extremely problematic, if you consider the "cost" to protect every Inn, public square, palace, and farmers market in the kingdom from such things and then extrapolate that into the ability of any "bad guys" the PCs are going to face having the same ability. You're still left almost having to make these sorts of anti-magic effects rare and expensive and only accessible to the most powerful/wealthy in order to make the game actually "work" (and allow magic powers/spells/whatever to be useful at all in the setting).

    I still heavily lean towards some sort of "regulation after the fact" method. Again. Just introducing the ability to eliminate magic as a threat in a game setting can warp things in ways you may not consider fully when first implementing it. I'd go with "block magic with magic", and then try to build up reasonable systems for doing this in a way that makes the game setting work well.

    As an interesting anecdotal aside on handling magic power ranges in a game setting, the setting I run was actually mostly inherited from a previous GM. It's a fairly magic heavy world, but somewhere along the line he had introduced this one empire in which the entire population does not use magic. It's just forbidden. He based it on a blend of Feudal Japan (with other asian like influences), complete with samurai class, ninjas, etc. Very cool, and I didn't want to just erase it, but it presented a very basic problem in the form of "how on earth could this empire have not been wiped out by its magic using neighbors ages ago"? I "bent" the description a bit to just say that they didn't cast active spells, but didn't consider ritual magic and enchantment as "magic". They were already described as ancestor worshippers, so I pushed them heavily into a shamanic focus, where nearly everyone does things like summon friendly ancestor spirits, who (because they were also part of the same culture) are super friendly and just kinda hang out and protect them. They don't consider such summoning "magic" at all. Just honoring their ancestors ritually. And if such friendly spirits helped protect their homes and businesses and would have the ability to detect mental influences on their worldly descendants (but also can't directly cast spells, cause they didn't have them when alive), it still created some protection and balance.

    I added in some artificing by their skilled blacksmiths to make special enchanted armor and weapons (mostly used by their Samurai class), with some interesting abilities. No active spell casting, but enchantments that would make them pretty powerful on the battlefield. Toss in some mystical attunement of certain items to ancestral spirits to give additional combat bonuses when fighting on behalf of family, clan, or empire, and it brought them up to a level where they could compete with the surrounding world and actual exist as a viable civilization and culture.

    Having done that bit of balancing, it naturally lead me to examining similar spirit powers by "outcasts" to their society based on animal spirits instead of ancestors. So the ninja clans worshipped friendly animals, again not directly casting spells either, but being imbued with aspects of their clan's favored animal spirit type when necessary (Ok. I totally cribbed this from the otherwise cringeworthy Electra film, sue me). That lead to thinking about imbuing items with elemental spirits in the same way as well. So a whole bunch of "alternative" magical uses that aren't really "standard" (but still more or less allowed in the rules with some slight modifications) arose from simply considering how one culture would handle magic differently than others, in a magic heavy world, while still being viable.

    Oh. And this lead to an incredibly ridiculously fun adventure that I just had to run. Complete with malevolent spirit from an ancient time where some did use sorcery, floating around possessing successive generations of unknowing descendants and causing havoc (and perhaps seeking a bride or two in the process, cause... reasons). Added in a "good" heretic shaman who used different forms of spirits than just ancestors, which in turn would use actual magic spells (but he didn't cast any directly because his heresy could only go so far), and his band of street gang buddies, tracking down this evil spirit and the party helping out. There may have been some "special tea" that they drank that made them feel really good and provide a slight boost to abilities (and protection from fear). Bad guys lieutenants had weapons imbued with elemental abilities (and of course, had to show them off), as well as a cast of ninja gang guys on his side as well. Yes. It was a total rip off of Big Trouble in Little China. And it went off spectacularly.

    All more or less deriving from me just sitting down one night and thinking "how could this culture actually exist in this setting". Not sure how this fits into a broader "how do you handle high magic power settings", but it does touch on the idea that you can balance out factors, without having to make them equal and opposite all the time, and sometimes come up with really cool ideas in the process.

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