Hey you darn kids get off my edition!

[Knaight]

And, after the battle, when they loot the thing, the fighter gets to add "kukri +2, +5 vs mammals", "arrows +2", and "that thing's skull" to his list of options, while the wizard grumbles about how illiteracy is the default state for the universe, so there's never anything good to read, let alone new spells to learn. He dreams of the day when he collects enough loot to research a custom spell, so that he finally has something to memorize in those 4th level slots that have been sitting there empty for the past 6 months.

Would that be more fun than these modern min-maxed, single-tactic rocket tag fighters adventuring alongside wizards with abundant spells and options?

The whole matter of equipment power versus character power thing aside, it's not like these are the only two options.

[Anonymouswizard]

For martial versus magic options I'd prefer something like Legends of the Wulin: warriors are slightly better in combat, other Archetypes are slightly more versatile out of combat. However everybody is free to dabble in each other's thing if they want. Although the available magic is rather useful, the archetype with the greatest power is really the Scholar (and a clever Courtier can get the same effects as a Daoist priest, unless you bring in Extraordinary techniques).

[Cosi]

Oh, I agree, I just find it interesting that 3e managed to make the Fighter far more incompetent in 'martials only' games.

That's just "different editions are different". Every version of the game has had different classes rock and different classes suck. In 2e, Fighters and Wizards were good. In 3e, Rogues and Wizards were good. In 4e, Rangers and Wizards were good. The constants are basically that Wizards are good and non-casters who have a bunch of attacks (to count damage buffs multiple times) are good.

-Comic Book Setting: I have limits for how fast/strong a 'normal human' can be, but I wouldn't blink at Batman taking a full force punch from Superman and then just standing back up with only a few scratches.

I would. Batman doesn't fight Superman on even terms. He gets speedblitzed unless he has one of the crazier batsuits and/or kryptonite. Because Batman is a guy with a bat fetish, and Superman is a god.

I like to keep magic magical enough to be worth the hassle, and non-magic not obviously supernatural, personally. That a wizard can plane shift doesn't in itself make a skilled, strong "normal person" irrelevant, even outside of combat.

Yes it does. Because the bad guy is on another plane and no amount of strength allows you to do anything to him. Even if you could get to that plane, it is on fire, or freezing, or full of negative energy, or hostile to human life in any number of ways. When the environment you fight in is magic, and the mechanism to get there is magic, you need some damn magic.

Maybe we shouldn't be talking about level 20, but the levels at which campaigns are more likely to be played at? Level 3, or 5, or 7?

Why shouldn't we talk about 20th level? If the game is going to present "20th level Fighter" and "20th level Wizard" as things you can aspire to be, you should be able to be those things without the game breaking down.

Also, we don't need to talk about 7th level, because the game is fine at 7th level. 7th level (in D&D) is within, if at the upper end of, where a guy with a sword can compete with a guy with magic.

You can have magic be magical without it being overpowering, while nonmagical characters shouldn't be left quite so far behind versatility-wise.

You can have magic that isn't overpowering, but I think it's pretty clear that people want D&D magic to scale past the point where "guy with a sword" is not a reasonable life choice.

Would that be more fun than these modern min-maxed, single-tactic rocket tag fighters adventuring alongside wizards with abundant spells and options?

Why not just make the Fighter not suck? The Warblade has a bunch of options he can use, and it doesn't require that you make the Wizard suffer through not getting to cast spells when he gets a new level of spells. 2e treasure is probably better, but even if skewing treasure towards swords and away from scrolls balances the Wizard and the Fighter, it sure doesn't balance the Cleric and the Fighter. Because the Cleric has magic and can also use a sword.

For martial versus magic options I'd prefer something like Legends of the Wulin: warriors are slightly better in combat, other Archetypes are slightly more versatile out of combat. However everybody is free to dabble in each other's thing if they want. Although the available magic is rather useful, the archetype with the greatest power is really the Scholar (and a clever Courtier can get the same effects as a Daoist priest, unless you bring in Extraordinary techniques).

Having Fighters be better in combat and Wizards be better out of combat is stupid. It means the game only works if you have the exact ratio of combat challenges to non-combat challenges the designers did. If you run a hack and slash campaign (where every encounter is a fight), the Fighter is overpowered. If you run an intrigue campaign (where almost no encounters are fights), the Wizard is overpowered. Just have Fighters = Wizards in a fight and Wizards = Fighters out of a fight. Then the game is balanced for any combination of combat and non-combat encounters.

[Anonymouswizard]

You can have magic that isn't overpowering, but I think it's pretty clear that people want D&D magic to scale past the point where "guy with a sword" is not a reasonable life choice.

The problem there is that if 'guy with a sword' is presented as an option than it should be a reasonable lifestyle choice (I believe that 2e wasn't meant to be played for more than a couple of levels past 'fighter is relevant', it just included higher levels and let you choose to use them). Now at this point you need to either restrict the 'guy with magic' to 'guy with a small variety of spells' or let 'guy with sword' become "guy with awesome kung Fu powers'. The wizard can fly? Well you can jump 200 feet in 6 seconds. Wall of Stone? Your expert strikes can pulverise a wall in a full round action. Enervate? Unfortunately you forgot to take energy resistance, but your friend Bob is immune.

(By the way, I plan to one day use the Sorcerer class and take only touch spells and buffs, then play a 'monk')

Having Fighters be better in combat and Wizards be better out of combat is stupid. It means the game only works if you have the exact ratio of combat challenges to non-combat challenges the designers did. If you run a hack and slash campaign (where every encounter is a fight), the Fighter is overpowered. If you run an intrigue campaign (where almost no encounters are fights), the Wizard is overpowered. Just have Fighters = Wizards in a fight and Wizards = Fighters out of a fight. Then the game is balanced for any combination of combat and non-combat encounters.

In Legends of the Wulin every archetype begins approximately equal in combat, dependant on player expenditure on internal an external styles. Characters then get Secret Arts.

Most characters use their secret arts to apply conditions to people, which either gives them a bonus when they act like it describes or gives them a penalty when they don't. These usually aren't related to combat, but can be if it's justifiable. This makes Doctors, Courtiers, and Priests best when influencing people

Warriors instead mainly use their secret art to apply conditions to themselves, which are normally related to combat (which, like other Secret Arts, can apply to out of combat situations if it fits the description). In theory the only case the warrior falls behind is manipulating people, because it's hard to apply their Secret Art to unwilling people.

Scholars apply conditions to the world. This makes them very powerful, but hard to pull it off.

Note that you also can buy other Secret Arts, although it slows your Chi cultivation slightly. It is worth a Warrior starting with basic Courtiers techniques, or a Priest picking up Scholar predictionism.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler

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This is true. It's also bad design even if it is nominally balanced, because it is balanced in exactly one type of campaign: the one where you start at level 1 (where the Wizard sucks) and progress to level 10 (where the Fighter sucks). It's not balanced if you start at high level. It's not balanced if you stop at low level. It's not balanced if you don't progress (a la Conan or Superman). It's limiting the number of potential campaigns the game supports for no reason.

I think the bigger problem is that this kind of "balance" relies on everyone being inadequate for a similar amount of time, rather than, I dunno, avoiding anyone feeling inadequate?

I wasn't thinking supernatural martial arts (although that fits in some cases particularly for some monks & rangers) but rather just cranking it up a lot. "Battle aura" is sort of on the line between supernatural and the merely super, so I'll pull it in even more. For instance what is something real fighters do when fighting each other? They move in and out of range, side to side, bob and weave to get a better position. This seems like a useless skill when a wizard can point at you, say die, and you die. However, a high level fighter should be good enough at weaving back and forth that pointing at them long enough to say die is a non-trivial exercise.

I'm not what you think of when you say "battle aura", but I think of something like this, complete with Goku.

Maybe we shouldn't be talking about level 20, but the levels at which campaigns are more likely to be played at? Level 3, or 5, or 7?

If the game breaks down by level 10, there's no reason to print anything for levels 11+. Creating a game where half of the content is so deeply flawed is nothing short of stupid. Besides, if high levels aren't how the game is "meant to be played," shouldn't they have been prevented as optional rules, the way levels 21+ were in 3.5?
Discussing high levels is relevant, even if most players won't play a 1-20 campaign.

Going with the rant a bit lower in the post, I'd say that the game is balanced between spellcasters and normals at low levels because the game is closer to the low-fantasy end of the spectrum than the high-fantasy end.

So, how about some old school D&D? Where the fighter gets to choose between his flame tongue, his frost brand, his sun blade, his long sword +1 +2 vs lycanthropes, his mace, his dagger, his gem bow, his darts, his poisoned crossbow bolt, his blessed crossbow bolt, his flask of oil, his bag of marbles, and his bag of flour? Meanwhile, the wizard gets to choose between wasting one of his few precious, precious spells... or poking it with a stick. And should generally choose "poke it with a stick"...

Having played a little 2e: That's not old-school D&D, that's the DM giving all the toys to the fighter and nothing to the wizard. And the wizard being unusually stingy with his spells.
To say nothing of how rolling the dice and applying a different set of modifiers to perform essentially the same action isn't exactly a diverse experience in any but the most mechanical sense.

I would. Batman doesn't fight Superman on even terms. He gets speedblitzed unless he has one of the crazier batsuits and/or kryptonite. Because Batman is a guy with a bat fetish, and Superman is a god.

Also levels of insane planning that make a paranoiac look like a naive child, which any Batman fanboy will tell you lets Batman beat anyone "with preparation". (He also has money, the greatest superpower.)

Which ties back to the discussion at hand: If high-level fighters are going to compete with high-level spellcasters, they need something special.

Fighters need to be 100% mundane!

As long as you limit high-level fighters to being really good at hitting people with sharp sticks, and allow spellcasters to be increasingly good at warping the fabric of reality, you're going to have balance problems. One is simply more useful than the other. That's part of why Conan and Gandalf live in separate universes, and for that matter why Raistlin and Crysania in the Dragonlance books never use their powers to the extent they would in a typical D&D campaign.
The only ways to solve this problem are to limit what high-level wizards can do or to give even "mundane" classes the ability to perform supernatural feats. In a literary setting, you can have your mundane characters have skills which the mages don't (like prestige, tactical/diplomatic skills, not being feared by commonfolk, etc), but this is generally a lot harder to pull off in the context of an RPG. Since D&D seems dedicated to high fantasy, where top-tier spellcasters can raise the dead, teleport, see the future, and so on, the "mundanes" need similar tricks.
It isn't just a matter of DPS or HP or evasion or whatever, it's a matter of versatility. Who cares if a well-played fighter can kill a wizard in two rounds if a well-played wizard can predict the fighter's intent before using scry-and-die? In the context of an actual game, who cares if the fighter can kill a demon in a few hits if the wizard can do it with a single Power Word Kill, or if the cleric can banish it back to whence it came? (To say nothing of how superhuman it would be to kill massive supernatural creatures by poking them a few times in the shins.)
This isn't to say that fighters need to be Som Goku, or Kal-El, or anything like that. That's basically the "throw bigger numbers until it balances" approach, and it simply doesn't work. What we need is a reconceptualization of what it means to be a fighter. If the Fighter class is good at nothing but bashing enemies with sharp sticks, it will never be balanced against high-fantasy spellcasters.

[JAL_1138]

I said Fighters you're calling mundane need to be mundane, and if they become demigods, there needs to be a point where that's openly acknowledged, so that the system can be neatly divided between "badass normal is feasible" and "now they're demigods." I'm asking that a system not break the verisimilitude of mundanes as mundanes and also give me a system where badass normal is viable without stripping magic of its magicalness and wonder. I didn't say any edition of D&D has done that perfectly. I'll grant you it didn't come through too clearly due to a bit much Wild Turkey. I did not mean to imply that the balance in 3.X (which I didn't even mention, and is so far beyond simply "broken" that it's been hit with a metamagic'd Disintegrate) or even 5e (which goes a long way toward addressing the issue but not far enough) is somehow exactly right.

I also said casters need scaled back a bit (and neglected to mention I think magic needs to be more onerous to use than it is in current editions), to keep magic as something remarkable and wondrous but not be vastly out of parity. I also said that the Fighter could use a boost in utility, like an Expertise. 5th went a fair distance toward addressing it but still has some major issues, e.g., Moon Druid class features (and some Druid features generally). And I'm also of the opinion that there are several problem spells that need reworked from the ground up or scrapped outright.

(Tangent on Plane Shift--it's too easy to use, but in the Great Wheel cosmology, there are three non-soellcasting ways to achieve the same thing: Portals to Sigil, the Infinite Staircase, and Yggdrasil. Leaving the Great Wheel skews it one way or the other--it can be rendered useless, e.g. Athas or Ravenloft, or the mundane can get screwed over if your setting doesn't include portals, Yggdrasil, or the Staircase.)

That a class can do something another class can't is not inherently a problem, nor is the fact that magic can do something nonmagic can't. But the execution is often sorely wanting.

Hope that clears up my views a bit.

[Mordar]

I'm asking that a system not break the verisimilitude of mundanes as mundanes and also give me a system where badass normal is viable without stripping magic of its magicalness and wonder.

I also said casters need scaled back a bit (and neglected to mention I think magic needs to be more onerous to use than it is in current editions), to keep magic as something remarkable and wondrous but not be vastly out of parity. I also said that the Fighter could use a boost in utility, like an Expertise. 5th went a fair distance toward addressing it but still has some major issues, e.g., Moon Druid class features (and some Druid features generally). And I'm also of the opinion that there are several problem spells that need reworked from the ground up or scrapped outright.

That a class can do something another class can't is not inherently a problem, nor is the fact that magic can do something nonmagic can't. But the execution is often sorely wanting.

Hope that clears up my views a bit.

I think there's a really important point here...magic in all versions of D&D I've seen/played has been utterly stripped of magicalness and wonder (great words, btw). The expectation of magic-users in every group flinging spells with great frequency really does make magic just another stick in the toolbox. That in some editions those same magic users become so powerful and flexible that they bypass any "mundane" options (scry-and-die) or do things better than another class that really only does that thing (CoDZilla) makes magic such a force as to be the default "norm" and other options to be utterly secondary. The components necessary for a spell were once intended to help manage magic...but became ignored/trivial for all but the most powerful of spells. Removing this kind of cost or limitation furthers the "magic is the answer to everything" mindset.

My experience with 4e kind of leveled the field here...but now everyone is kind of a "magic user", doing resource allocation management (encounter/daily powers) and so again it strips magic of magic.

Some of the Chaosium games (Call of C'thulhu and Stormbringer) seemed to do a nice job of keeping magic magical, with different levels of consequence and effort required to enact magic. That keeps magic magical...but is it too far the other way? Healing can be a real chore in these games...that seems to be a necessary component of dungeon-crawl style games.

So, what to do? Can a game with a wizard and cleric in every party have a system that keeps magic magical? Or keeps mundanes as important as wizards and clerics? How much can broadening the skills available to "mundane" characters accomplish - make every non-caster a skillmonkey? What kind of spell list hits the sweet spot and keep casters from being one-trick-ponies or perfect toolboxes? What system requires "enough" cost to doing magic to keep it from being the answer to every question? It kind of looks hopeless sometimes...

- M

[Cluedrew]

I'm not what you think of when you say "battle aura", but I think of something like this, complete with Goku.

Yeah, there is a couple of differences between my vision and your more standard comics book "battle aura". Which is part of the reason I switched to a different example, because I realized other people would think something else.

I also agree with a lot of your points. But I would like to say something about "D&D 3.5e Level 20 Theoretical Optimization Wizard Power Level Characters" which shall be referred to from here on out as OP. First I would like to point out that most high-fantasy spellcasters don't even approach OPs in strength. In fact the only examples I could think of were the Planeswalkers from Magic: The Gathering.

Also I'm not sure if fighters should be 100% mundane (although if you have a 100% mundane class might as well be the fighter), rather there should be plausible deniability that it is 100% mundane. What is the difference? Glad you asked. That means that there is a connection from the ability back to mundane (physical, mental...) skill through a series of links that make a kind of intuitive sense.

My favourite example is "mastery of the two layers", which is a striking technique works by striking something twice in rapid (<1/75 second) succession. The first strike removes its physical resistance and the second demolishes it. Now the physics behind this simply does not work, but is sounds like it could.

Another is "dance of the falling leaf" in which you disappear by standing in an enemy's blind spots. That one makes sense, except people manage to pull it off while standing in front of their target and that I don't understand.

This to me feel mundane, even though you would have to bend reality to make them work.

[Bohandas]

Reminds me of Grod's Law. This is a little better since some of the annoyance is more in-character than out-, but it still applies.

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use.

Speaking of spellcasters and grod's law, does anybody else think the whole vancian magic + must rest the full eight hours to regain spells is a violation of this? It's meant as a balancing factor but In practice it just leads to clearing dungeons in a series of semi-comical but annoying 5 minute raids

[Mordar]

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use.

Speaking of spellcasters and grod's law, does anybody else think the whole vancian magic + must rest the full eight hours to regain spells is a violation of this? It's meant as a balancing factor but In practice it just leads to clearing dungeons in a series of semi-comical but annoying 5 minute raids

Sicne we're in the "Get off my lawn" thread...back in the day there wasn't free-and-easy rest via 'porting home...none of this "save and log out" stuff, anyway. Rest meant fortifying a space in a hostile environment, posting guards and hoping for good luck on the by-goodness-random-encounter tables. Sure, there were a few rope-trick like things out there, but camping in the dungeon was a thing that you had to do and for which you had to be prepared.

So sure, it might no longer be a concern (sadly much like casting time and spell components), but that doesn't mean the rule/mechanism didn't have at least decent logic supporting the implementation. At least that's how my doddering old mind remembers it...

- M

[LibraryOgre]

Sicne we're in the "Get off my lawn" thread...back in the day there wasn't free-and-easy rest via 'porting home...none of this "save and log out" stuff, anyway. Rest meant fortifying a space in a hostile environment, posting guards and hoping for good luck on the by-goodness-random-encounter tables. Sure, there were a few rope-trick like things out there, but camping in the dungeon was a thing that you had to do and for which you had to be prepared.

AND you didn't just study for an hour and get all your spells back. You studied for 10 minutes per spell level. The Teleport without Error you used would take an hour, by itself... two, if you wanted to go there and back. So your "Ten minute work day" became a "ten minute work week", as you returned home to recover the spells you spent in that ten minute work day.

[Milo v3]

magic in all versions of D&D I've seen/played has been utterly stripped of magicalness and wonder (great words, btw).

The only way you can stop this is either basically have freeform rules for magic, invoke grods law and add in something really annoying like 1 in 20 chance to summon orcus or explode, while also saying "No dave you cannot play a magic class because steve picked one already".

Also, considering how when realworld individuals did occult rituals and stuff, they don't see it something that "has to be magical and wonder filled" since that directly goes against the whole point of practicing and studying magic...

[Cosi]

I said Fighters you're calling mundane need to be mundane, and if they become demigods, there needs to be a point where that's openly acknowledged, so that the system can be neatly divided between "badass normal is feasible" and "now they're demigods."

I agree with this. This is one of the issues where 4e actually had the right idea. You should just have Tiers. And LotR or GoT can be Heroic Tier, while Chronicles of Amber or Mistborn is Paragon Tier. And Planeswalkers or Pretender Gods can be Epic Tier. And then we can stop having this conversation about how Conan should be able to adventure with Dresden or whether teleport is acceptable to have in the game. Conan can adventure with Gandalf, Dresden can adventure with Jace, and you can get teleport when "a really long trip" is no longer something you care about.

And I'm also of the opinion that there are several problem spells that need reworked from the ground up or scrapped outright.

The only spell I've seen that is conceptually unworkable is ice assassin. I would be interested in your explanation of what needs to be scrapped.

(Tangent on Plane Shift--it's too easy to use, but in the Great Wheel cosmology, there are three non-soellcasting ways to achieve the same thing: Portals to Sigil, the Infinite Staircase, and Yggdrasil. Leaving the Great Wheel skews it one way or the other--it can be rendered useless, e.g. Athas or Ravenloft, or the mundane can get screwed over if your setting doesn't include portals, Yggdrasil, or the Staircase.)

Those aren't mundane solutions. They're low level solutions. The entire point of Sigil is to let you have planar adventures when you are too low level to cast plane shift, so proposing it as a solution to the problem of "eventually, the Wizard becomes hard core enough to cast plane shift and the Fighter doesn't" is missing the entire point.

I think there's a really important point here...magic in all versions of D&D I've seen/played has been utterly stripped of magicalness and wonder (great words, btw).

What does it mean for magic to be "magical"? I don't think things that are "hard to use" or "prone to failure" are wondrous or magical, I think they are crappy. When the wi-fi network I'm using crashes, it doesn't feel "wondrous". It feels cheap. The fact that you can use magic to raise the dead, speak with the gods, or teleport across the world feels totally wondrous when the chance of being eaten by a demon for trying it is 0% and it does not feel any more wondrous as that chance rises.

Removing this kind of cost or limitation furthers the "magic is the answer to everything" mindset.

Magic is an answer to whatever the set of things you can do with magic is. And it is the answer to those things if it is the best answer or there are no other answers. So "use magic" will always (barring some transhuman settings), be the solution to "how do I bring this dead guy back to life". But the limitations on the effects of magic (rather than the ease or the consistency of magic) influence what things it is a solution to. If teleport can't transport a large group, it will never be the solution when you need to get an army somewhere. If magical stealth is inferior to mundane stealth, it can be trivial to use without ever being the solution to "sneak into the castle".

Or keeps mundanes as important as wizards and clerics?

D&D postulates that you will eventually go to Hell and fight Demons (well, Devils). Once you are fighting in a place that is magic, which you traveled to using magic, fighting enemies who are magic and fight with magic, the idea that you can simply not be magic is basically absurd.

I also agree with a lot of your points. But I would like to say something about "D&D 3.5e Level 20 Theoretical Optimization Wizard Power Level Characters" which shall be referred to from here on out as OP. First I would like to point out that most high-fantasy spellcasters don't even approach OPs in strength. In fact the only examples I could think of were the Planeswalkers from Magic: The Gathering.

Couple of things.

First, you haven't defined your terms well enough. Even within the group "optimized 20th level 3e spellcasters", there are a bunch of different power levels. The guy who is running around with a suite of personal buffs and using AoE save or dies is powerful, but not nearly as much so as the guy abusing wish/gate/shapechange/ice assassin.

Second, while the effects of D&D magic scale quite impressively, the scope basically doesn't scale at all. wail of the banshee can kill more than a dozen people at the level you get it. But it can't kill an army. Both because it can't kill twenty people and because it can't kill two people who are more than 80ft apart. So while a 20th level 3e Wizard would face-crush a Second Apocalypse mage, it would actually be harder for him to blast an army apart.

Third, there are actually a bunch of settings with characters that powerful. Osiris (from Creatures of Light and Darkness) controls the flow of life across the universe. Ruin and Preservation (Mistborn trilogy) have the power to reshape the surface of the planet, alter human genetics, change planetary orbits, and create magic just by existing. Rand al'Thor (Wheel of Time) uses balefire to retroactively un-create people. Supposedly, Anomander Rake (Malazan: Book of the Fallen) fully unleashing his power could destroy the world. Various comic-book magicians (who are for some reason all Doctors) including Doctor Fate (Respect Thread) and Doctor Strange (Respect Thread). Pretender Gods from Dominions can summon demon lords or dead gods and turn off the sun. I assume some people from the Dresden Files can throw down on this level, as well as various characters from Riftwar novels, but I think you get the point.

If you relax the constraints somewhat, there are an even larger number of characters who are merely "very powerful" and capable of adventuring with competent casters in the 7th level spells and up range. High Lords (Codex Alera), the Lord Ruler (Mistborn trilogy), Kellhus (Second Apocalypse), Predeii (Powder Mage trilogy), and Elric (Elric stories). Mid-high grade mages from The Dresden Files, The Codex Alera, Malazan, Wheel of Time, Riftwar, Second Apocalypse, or The Chronicles of Amber probably can too.

AND you didn't just study for an hour and get all your spells back. You studied for 10 minutes per spell level. The Teleport without Error you used would take an hour, by itself... two, if you wanted to go there and back. So your "Ten minute work day" became a "ten minute work week", as you returned home to recover the spells you spent in that ten minute work day.

So? Either the enemy's plan advances constantly (in which case you don't pull 5 minute work-days in 3e, and why do I care?) or it doesn't (so there's no penalty for resting in AD&D, and why do I care?). Or maybe you actually need that firepower, and you rest regardless of penalties. If you want PCs to rest less you need to put them on a clock or give them abilities that can be recharged during the day.

[JAL_1138]

The only way you can stop this is either basically have freeform rules for magic, invoke grods law and add in something really annoying like 1 in 20 chance to summon orcus or explode, while also saying "No dave you cannot play a magic class because steve picked one already".

Also, considering how when realworld individuals did occult rituals and stuff, they don't see it something that "has to be magical and wonder filled" since that directly goes against the whole point of practicing and studying magic...

Things that are ordinary in-universe may still be extraordinary to the audience. Take FTL travel or transporters in Star Trek (to borrow Extra Credits' example from a tangential topic). These are things that are wondrous and amazing pieces of technology to 20th and 21st century viewers, but in-universe are just how you go to work in the morning.

[Cluedrew]

First, you haven't defined your terms well enough.

Fair enough. The best way I can put it is "Emperor Tippy Level Optimization" does that help?

Second, while the effects of D&D magic scale quite impressively, the scope basically doesn't scale at all.

So a D&D wizard can't kill an army. They are still really strong compared to many other representations of magic users.

Third, there are actually a bunch of settings with characters that powerful.

Oh undoubtedly, the Planewalkers were the only ones I could think of at the time (just remembered the Anti-Monitor). Still they are relatively uncommon. I've written a few myself and if you don't do it right they just break the setting.

However you actually hit an aside point, the main thing I was going for was the plausibility deniability thing.

[Milo v3]

Things that are ordinary in-universe may still be extraordinary to the audience. Take FTL travel or transporters in Star Trek (to borrow Extra Credits' example from a tangential topic). These are things that are wondrous and amazing pieces of technology to 20th and 21st century viewers, but in-universe are just how you go to work in the morning.

That may work with mediums where the authors of the stories are not simulatenously the audience, but I don't think it works when the people who know the "Rules behind the setting" are the audience. That's the reason why "magic in all versions of D&D I've seen/played has been utterly stripped of magicalness and wonder" because the players need to know the rules in order to use the magic rules, meaning they (The audience) know the stuff that is meant to be extraordinary. There is no mystery, because it's right there on pages that you have to read if you want to play as a caster.

[obryn]

The only way you can stop this is either basically have freeform rules for magic, invoke grods law and add in something really annoying like 1 in 20 chance to summon orcus or explode, while also saying "No dave you cannot play a magic class because steve picked one already".

Also, considering how when realworld individuals did occult rituals and stuff, they don't see it something that "has to be magical and wonder filled" since that directly goes against the whole point of practicing and studying magic...

Why not look to other RPGs with more "magical" magic systems instead of D&D's rather static one?

Dungeon Crawl Classics, for example.

[Cosi]

Fair enough. The best way I can put it is "Emperor Tippy Level Optimization" does that help?

That's fair, but I don't think it's typical. Also, I think most people won't defend shapechange stacking or ice assassin chains as intended, so using them as a benchmark is kind of lame.

So a D&D wizard can't kill an army. They are still really strong compared to many other representations of magic users.

I didn't mean that. They can totally kill an army. It's just that they can't really kill an army with magic. A 20th level Wizard can cast shapechange and turn into a dragon which will have no trouble killing an army. Or he can cast gate and summon something which kills an army. But his options to actually blast an army apart are fairly spare. Off the top of my head, it's basically the locate city nuke or that spell from BoVD that turns artifacts into huge AoE magic damage.

Compare that to, say, the Second Apocalypse. Against enemies without Chorae a schoolman can fly up into the air and kill an essentially unlimited number of foes with magic. That same schoolman will get smacked down pretty hard if he tries to step to even a mid-op 20th level Wizard, but his magic is much better suited to blowing up an army.

Oh undoubtedly, the Planewalkers were the only ones I could think of at the time (just remembered the Anti-Monitor). Still they are relatively uncommon. I've written a few myself and if you don't do it right they just break the setting.

Nothing about high-powered characters is inherently dangerous to the setting. The problem is adding things to the setting without thinking about their implications. Governments, for example, work rather radically differently if the king is powerful enough that he doesn't care about the people rebelling (see: Mistborn).

That may work with mediums where the authors of the stories are not simulatenously the audience, but I don't think it works when the people who know the "Rules behind the setting" are the audience. That's the reason why "magic in all versions of D&D I've seen/played has been utterly stripped of magicalness and wonder" because the players need to know the rules in order to use the magic rules, meaning they (The audience) know the stuff that is meant to be extraordinary. There is no mystery, because it's right there on pages that you have to read if you want to play as a caster.

Pretty much. In any game, you have to understand things well enough to predict what will happen. If anything can happen at any time for no reason, I'm not playing a game. I'm mashing buttons.

I'm also not sure how you're supposed to capture the "feel" of magic in a game. Magic is, by definition, stuff that does not actually exist. As such, I don't really know how anything that exists (in the game) could be said to feel "like magic".

[Cluedrew]

Nothing about high-powered characters is inherently dangerous to the setting. The problem is adding things to the setting without thinking about their implications. Governments, for example, work rather radically differently if the king is powerful enough that he doesn't care about the people rebelling (see: Mistborn).

That is the danger though, characters like this add things to the setting that people forget, and the world (that D&D games seem to be played in) doesn't really seem to account for high- (or even mid-) level characters. In all the D&D books I read, very few of them had characters that were even close to 20 (Elminster and some others were exceptions).

The portrayal of D&D characters in literature could be its own thread, I was just trying to skim over it. But there is a lot you can say.

[Bohandas]

without stripping magic of its magicalness and wonder.

Personally I would say that having a setting where magic exists and is real but isn't stripped of it's magicalness and wonder would constitute a plot hole and an inconsistency. The most believable fantasy setting I've ever encountered is Ghostbusters, because that's the only one where the supernatural is handled in a realistic manner; it's investigated, understood, and tamed and it becomes controllable, just like rivers or lightning

[JAL_1138]

That may work with mediums where the authors of the stories are not simulatenously the audience, but I don't think it works when the people who know the "Rules behind the setting" are the audience. That's the reason why "magic in all versions of D&D I've seen/played has been utterly stripped of magicalness and wonder" because the players need to know the rules in order to use the magic rules, meaning they (The audience) know the stuff that is meant to be extraordinary. There is no mystery, because it's right there on pages that you have to read if you want to play as a caster.

There's no mystery to the warp drive or the transporter either. Trek goes to great pains to explain how they work. For instance, they detail how the warp drive uses matter and antimatter reactions mediated by nonreactive dilithium crystals to create a high-energy plasma that gets shunted into the warp coils to generate a bubble of warped space-time to allow a ship to move faster than light without violating relativity (which, although Trek's version is not 100% accurate to real-world physics, works on the same principle behind the Alcubierre drive, a real-world theoretical system which would use exotic forms of matter to create the same kind of space-time bubble and allow for FTL, although it's currently unfeasible to produce because it would take an amount of matter the size of Jupiter under Alcubierre's original calculations, since modified by NASA/JPL's Harold White to require a vastly smaller amount about the size of Voyager 1)...and it's still remarkable.

Knowing how it works isn't necessarily a factor in how wondrous something is. "Wondrous" in this context is not meant to indicate mystery in any way, as if in "I wonder how that works." "Marvelous" or "remarkable" are the applicable synonyms for "wondrous" in this context, rather than "mysterious."

To use an exaggerated example, I don't wonder how the Grand Canyon was made; the Colorado River carved it out through erosion over millions of years, in essentially the same way as heavy rain creates rivulets that wear trenches in my yard, except in rock instead of soil and over a much longer time frame. There is precisely zero mystery to it. But I feel a sense of wonder when I observe it, because it's a marvelous and beautiful geological formation.

[Milo v3]

Why not look to other RPGs with more "magical" magic systems instead of D&D's rather static one?

Dungeon Crawl Classics, for example.

I wasn't just considering D&D, I simply haven't found any that didn't count as "taking away the magic" that doesn't do as I mentioned. In what way does Dungeon Crawl Classics make it more magical.

I'm also not sure how you're supposed to capture the "feel" of magic in a game. Magic is, by definition, stuff that does not actually exist. As such, I don't really know how anything that exists (in the game) could be said to feel "like magic".

There are a few different feels that magic could have. Strangely "Mysterious and wondrous" isn't actually one that exists anywhere but fantasy novels. Doesn't exactly exist in mythology or occultism, which prefer for their practices to work than "Be dramatically mysterious".

Knowing how it works isn't necessarily a factor in how wondrous something is. "Wondrous" in this context is not meant to indicate mystery in any way, as if in "I wonder how that works." "Marvelous" or "remarkable" are the applicable synonyms for "wondrous" in this context, rather than "mysterious."

To use an exaggerated example, I don't wonder how the Grand Canyon was made; the Colorado River carved it out through erosion over millions of years, in essentially the same way as heavy rain creates rivulets that wear trenches in my yard, except in rock instead of soil and over a much longer time frame. There is precisely zero mystery to it. But I feel a sense of wonder when I observe it, because it's a marvelous and beautiful geological formation.

In that context, I don't know why something like D&D magic wouldn't apply, since whether that context applies is 100% subjective and how you use the magic system.

[JAL_1138]

What I'm looking for is to keep that feel instead of toning the wizard down by reducing them down so far that there is essentially no point to magic. Have it be something marvelous without making it simply tacking on "oh, er, but it's magic" to what is mechanically identical to a mundane crossbow bolt or an AC boost from a shield or what have you. It needs to be more than a somewhat pointless weapon or a worse (or even just functionslly identical) way of doing things normally done the mundane way.

To have it still do phenomenal and amazing things...but without going so far as, say, breaking the economy by abusing Fabricate; or self-buffing to the point there's no reason to bother training in weapons or armor instead; or (picking on the 5e Moon Druid) being able to turn into an elemental that can evade anything a Fighter could possibly do, at-will, instantaneously, an unlimited number of times per day (so that even if you do get stabbed, you can't get killed that way); or simply pop into another dimension whenever a combat starts going south; or turn into an ancient dragon in the span of a six-second combat round and lay waste to cities; or bring back the dead with no effort or drawback besides (a relatively paltry amount of) money; or flood the world with Simulacra of yourself; etc., etc.

Resurrection in recent editions (and even in 2e, despite the Con penalty and system shock roll) of a problem in the implementation but not the idea itself. It should probably be possible in the system. But the way it's handled currently, death is cheap. Literally. It costs less than middlin' armor. There's no reason a ruler of a powerful, prosperous nation should ever fear mundane assassins when he could simply hire some mid-level clerics for bodyguards. A knife in the kidneys or a slit throat or a crossbow bolt from the balcony can just be solved by a diamond and a spell slo from one of his clerics. Even with relatively low-level clerics, in 5e, you've got to take an internal organ with you and fend off the clerics for a full ten rounds to prevent easy, cheap, instant resurrection with a third-level slot. (Heck, you can't poison his food either, because his cleric bodyguards can just Purify Food and Drink his every meal for a first-level slot).

Speak with Dead should probably be possible, because it's cool and to some extent a staple of the fantasy genre. But it shouldn't be so easy and so reliable that no murder mysteries are possible unless the party doesn't have access to someone with that spell, the killer wears a mask or something, or the killer isn't seen at all.

EDIT: Or heck, a low-level example. Removing poison from food and drink should probably be possible, but you shouldn't just be able to take a level of cleric and never fear poison in your wine again. Likewise, divine magic should be able to cure diseases and heal people, but not to the extent of a second-level spell slot curing literally any disease, giving sight to the blind, letting the paralysed walk, letting the deaf hear, and curing any poison under the sun, in six seconds, for no other cost.

[Bohandas]

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use.



Sicne we're in the "Get off my lawn" thread...back in the day there wasn't free-and-easy rest via 'porting home...none of this "save and log out" stuff, anyway. Rest meant fortifying a space in a hostile environment, posting guards and hoping for good luck on the by-goodness-random-encounter tables. Sure, there were a few rope-trick like things out there, but camping in the dungeon was a thing that you had to do and for which you had to be prepared.

So sure, it might no longer be a concern (sadly much like casting time and spell components), but that doesn't mean the rule/mechanism didn't have at least decent logic supporting the implementation. At least that's how my doddering old mind remembers it...

- M

I've heard (secondhand) of some published tabletop modules explicitly describing rather preposterous places as being safe to rest in. Like, any place in the dungeon that's already been cleared, just like in a videogame.

EDIT:
And also, in terns of editions and videogames, the 3e games I've played have been more sensible in regard to resting not being convenient than some of the 2e videogames. The 2e game Champions of Krynn has probably the best example I've seen of resting being too convenient; towards the end of the first dungeon all the minions are described as frantically packing everything up and the place being abuzz with activity, but despite this you can rest in that area with no more than the usual chance of being accosted, and no matter how long you rest they'll never finish their packing and get away

EDIT:
Also, it could be argued that, for most types of dungeons (anything that's in a building inhabited by living people), camping inside the dungeon is if anything even more preposterous than commuting there

[Bohandas]

I didn't mean that. They can totally kill an army. It's just that they can't really kill an army with magic. A 20th level Wizard can cast shapechange and turn into a dragon which will have no trouble killing an army. Or he can cast gate and summon something which kills an army. But his options to actually blast an army apart are fairly spare. Off the top of my head, it's basically the locate city nuke or that spell from BoVD that turns artifacts into huge AoE magic damage.

It changes at level 21 though, with epic spellcasting and he Rain of Fire spell

I'm also not sure how you're supposed to capture the "feel" of magic in a game. Magic is, by definition, stuff that does not actually exist. As such, I don't really know how anything that exists (in the game) could be said to feel "like magic".

I don't think that's actually an essential part of the definition. It doesn't exist; there are many popular concepts of magic that can't exist, in any possibly world due to being self contradictory and/or inherently absurd (such as definitions that rely on it being unexplainable and/or outside the rules of the universe); It is not necessarily however defined by not existing

[goto124]

How to balance magic and mundane?

How about making magic defeatable by mundane? Teleportation requires an open sky since it relies on the stars. Flight fails when there's fire nearby. Smack wizards when they're in the middle of casting their spells and said spells go poof.

Which systems do variations of these?

[Anonymouswizard]

There's no mystery to the warp drive or the transporter either. Trek goes to great pains to explain how they work. For instance, they detail how the warp drive uses matter and antimatter reactions mediated by nonreactive dilithium crystals to create a high-energy plasma that gets shunted into the warp coils to generate a bubble of warped space-time to allow a ship to move faster than light without violating relativity (which, although Trek's version is not 100% accurate to real-world physics, works on the same principle behind the Alcubierre drive, a real-world theoretical system which would use exotic forms of matter to create the same kind of space-time bubble and allow for FTL, although it's currently unfeasible to produce because it would take an amount of matter the size of Jupiter under Alcubierre's original calculations, since modified by NASA/JPL's Harold White to require a vastly smaller amount about the size of Voyager 1)...and it's still remarkable.

Knowing how it works isn't necessarily a factor in how wondrous something is. "Wondrous" in this context is not meant to indicate mystery in any way, as if in "I wonder how that works." "Marvelous" or "remarkable" are the applicable synonyms for "wondrous" in this context, rather than "mysterious."

To use an exaggerated example, I don't wonder how the Grand Canyon was made; the Colorado River carved it out through erosion over millions of years, in essentially the same way as heavy rain creates rivulets that wear trenches in my yard, except in rock instead of soil and over a much longer time frame. There is precisely zero mystery to it. But I feel a sense of wonder when I observe it, because it's a marvelous and beautiful geological formation.

To (mis)quote CPG Grey, Trek is full of technobabble that means nothing. The warp drive does follow physics to a certain extent (although the explanation I heard had to do with subspace), and while we can extrapolate how the transporter must work it's still unclear how it does what it does. (For that matter teleportation of any kind is problematic, unless there's a speed of light delay)

[obryn]

I wasn't just considering D&D, I simply haven't found any that didn't count as "taking away the magic" that doesn't do as I mentioned. In what way does Dungeon Crawl Classics make it more magical.

Three main ways - (1) There's a percentile table (mercurial magic) which makes it so that two wizards with the same spell hardly ever actually have the same spell in all the details. (2) Casting requires rolling with variable results, so that it's not consistently insert coin/get fireball. (3) On certain failures, corruption and mutation are possible.

These combine together to make magic really feel like something that's violating the rules of reality.

[martixy]

There is that. However, I'd argue that a lot of the depth in a good RPG comes more from playstyle than rules. I mean, sure, you can find depth in building the perfect OP Batman Wizard or Hulking Hurler or Pun-Pun or whatever, but in my opinion RPGs are better-suited to more abstract depth (particularly now that they need to compete with video games, which can have as much or more or that kind of depth with less bookkeeping and more engaging play).

I agree - you work with the strengths of the medium. That kind of abstract depth is a unique thing for TT games(not even RPGs specifically).

However, these aspects are not mutually exclusive.

It just requires you manually do, what someone else did for you in video games.

Excel, Javascript and Python, I've found are excellent tools for the job.
Obviously, not a playstyle suitable for everybody, but it is one that's possible.

Didn't expect to see another EC fan.

On that note, on the off chance you're not aware of it, let me plug All Your History.

[JAL_1138]

How to balance magic and mundane?

How about making magic defeatable by mundane? Teleportation requires an open sky since it relies on the stars. Flight fails when there's fire nearby. Smack wizards when they're in the middle of casting their spells and said spells go poof.

Which systems do variations of these?

AD&D has the "smack them while they're casting" thing. Spells had a casting time, and if you're hit at all before it goes off, the spell fizzles and you lose the preparation of it for the day.



I like your idea, quite a bit. Magic can still do amazing, marvelous things, but only situationally. This actually crops up a lot in myths, so it doesn't diminish the "magicalness" of it.

For example, in Scottish folklore, why should you seek shelter when the Cú Sìth howls? (If it was out hunting, and bayed three times, you would die on the third howl). But even if you can still hear the howling through the walls of your house, being indoors keeps the howl from killing you.

Or in various legends an unbroken line of salt can't be crossed by a ghost or evil spirit (maybe any ethereal creature, in a game?).

And of course cold iron wards off the Fair Folk. (So perhaps in such a magic system, meteoric iron could disrupt certain types of magic favored by them in a radius around it? I dunno).

I suppose the trick to such a system would be balancing it out so magic still retains some utility at all. But it'd be a good way to restrict it from being the all-powerful force it often is in D&D.