Topic: High Magic vs Low Magic

[markc]

When spells replace a mundane skill, then that is classed as a high magic setting IMO.

Like First Aid? Hard to think of any game with magic where healing is primarily done with skills.

Personally I prefer somewhat low-magic settings.

Note: Edited out a sentence of above quote.


 This would be a very deadly setting and healers, healing skills, herbs and magic herbs would be worth lots of $.


 Since I use the Channeling Companion and some additional rules note every cleric in my game has healing spells or access to healing spells. It does make for a lot more thinking and marshaling of resources when confronted by something.
MDC

[GrumpyOldFart]

Years ago, I had a guy who wanted to play a 1 on 1 campaign, starting at 1st level.

He created an illusionist as his character.  "Yeah okay dude, if you're sure that's what you want... just remember, you have no backup unless you hire somebody..."

There are few PCs to be found in any RPG that can bring a whole new dimension to "helpless" like a 1st level Illusionist. And it's a 1 on 1 campaign, the party consists of him, nobody else. And not being a wealthy 1st level Illusionist, even healing herbs are mostly out of his price range...

...In Rolemaster, where there are crits that leave permanent disabilities unless they are healed by more than mere herbs. Herbs don't set broken bones, for example.

Needless to say, there was more game time spent planning, finding a spot from which to hide and observe, running away, and recovering from previous attempts, than everything else in the game combined.

And yet with the sole PC being an illusionist, and magic (and magically altered herbs) freely available, just outside the budget of a starting character, it hardly qualified as a "low magic setting."

"This would be a very deadly setting..."

Yes it is. And it takes a different kind of roleplay to survive it.

I was proud of the guy, he created a character who thinks his way out of problems instead of fighting his way out of them, and that's exactly what he played. And he knew up front that would have a high cost in many ways, and he charged in gaily and paid it joyfully.

He was a treat to GM for, he really was.

[markc]

You hit it on the head. You have to know what you are in for.


I do not know what I am in for with the new version of RM and I am starting to twitch a bit.
MDC

[providence13]

I not really fond of instant heals, Teleports and easy access  to Lifegiving..
I think it takes away some of the challenge.
 
 My players have these, sure. And I set up the game. But "high" magic will be more tightly controlled/harder to learn in the next campaign. 

[markc]

Yes, life keeping yes, life giving very very rare and up to your divinity as well as other factors.
MDC

[GrumpyOldFart]

I not really fond of instant heals, Teleports and easy access  to Lifegiving..
I think it takes away some of the challenge.
 
 My players have these, sure. And I set up the game. But "high" magic will be more tightly controlled/harder to learn in the next campaign. 

A lot of that kind of thing can be done by the GM setting boundary conditions for his world.

Of course the example that pops into my mind is one I use, that "instant" herbs don't just make the medical benefits "instant", they also make all the collateral effects instant, like how much extra water the herb uses doing its job, the purging of wastes, etc. For spells, if the healer gains his power from religion, then it's not the healer's wants you have to satisfy, it's his God's. And while the availability of Teleport can vastly change a game, if you're not doing the teleporting yourself there's always the question of how much you trust the person who is.

As a game breaker, Teleport can easily have its teeth pulled just by making inaccuracy dangerous.

I suppose doing any or all of those things, or anything like them, counts as tweaking your campaign towards the "low magic" end of the spectrum. Personally I like the idea of limiting magic use by what you dare to attempt. In other words, make it risky enough and, while it will technically still be possible, only a fool will actually try to do it. Adjust the danger and you adjust both how common it is and generally how powerful it is. World-shakingly powerful magic is still possible and may still occasionally happen, when someone gets desperate enough to try it and lucky enough to succeed. But 1) it will definitely be the exception rather than the rule, and 2) magic use will have social consequences, even if you succeed.

[yammahoper]

I always liked the long recovery times for a RM Lifegiving spell.  The lvl 12 spell might not be common but I never thought at such an easily attainable level it would be rare either.  The spell is also less effective than many other systems since the damage that caused death must be repaired or the target will simply die again, which prevents Lifegiving as an answer to old age.  I charge 12sp for the spell if the target is a menber in good standing of the priest casting the spell, though admittedly the situation rarely accurs (most deaths happen to far away for access to the priest).  Access to higher level Lifegivings cost more and are limited to only the more devout of followers.

I ran a campaign that required spell users find crystals to cast specific spell list.  These crystals were inspired by RQ and as such were dried blood of gawds and powerful dimensional beings left from the time of the Elder Wars.  Some crystals were more coveted than others, and I was able to exercise incredible control over access to magic through what crytals I allowed to be discovered and their inherient power/knowledge granted.  This mechanic allowed me to have a high magic background and setting while keeping the effective magic much lower, and in turn keep the scope smaller than would otherwise be expected.

Another game I ran set in modern times involved opening the Gate of Time that the gawds of the ancient world had been locked behind, returning both the gawds and magic to the Earth.  Yet another setting defined magic as worlds that intersected with the ethereal plane, which irradiated those worlds with esseance.  Ther half life of such worlds was around 500 years, and the ethereal plane did shift and move.  That was a SM/RM mix going way back to Legacy of the Ancients with RM2/SM2, which I aborted for dead space, only to find I did not like Dead Space very much.

Magic increases scope, but mechanics and plot devices can limit the increase, even for some powerful magics.  Ever hand out a 1xmonth item instead of 1xday, or 1xweek?  Plot devices are even easier as there is no need to explain them with mechanics (and yes, some players need everything to be explainable.  If you have that type of player, it is best to accept it and make it so, or big time pain is on the horizon...or kick hin out...I'm just saying you HAVE options  ).

[GrumpyOldFart]

Personally I like the idea of limiting magic use by what you dare to attempt. In other words, make it risky enough and, while it will technically still be possible, only a fool will actually try to do it. Adjust the danger and you adjust both how common it is and generally how powerful it is. World-shakingly powerful magic is still possible and may still occasionally happen, when someone gets desperate enough to try it and lucky enough to succeed. But 1) it will definitely be the exception rather than the rule, and 2) magic use will have social consequences, even if you succeed.

You can also adjust the social consequences separately from the rest by adjusting whether the danger inherent in failure affects just the caster, his immediate companions, up to everything on his side of the horizon for thousands of years into the future.

Given failure in the exact same spell, failure which sterilizes the ground for 3 miles in all directions is going to have a lot greater social consequences than failure that just turns you into a greasy mist and a lot of high-speed bone shrapnel.

 

[arakish]

First, thanks to whomever split this into a separate topic.

Second, now that I have the time and topic, I guess I should have defined what I mean by high/low magic.

I define high magic on two factors: how many power users are there per capita (1000 persons), and how common are magic items.

I consider SW to be unplayable because (just using what I remember from the 1st Editions) it seemed that there were about 100 power users per capita.  1 in 10!  To me, that is ridiculous.  I prefer settings much like GRRM's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series.  In that setting it seems like there might be about 0.01 power users per capita (about 1 in 100,000).  That is much more to my liking.  Don't get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with settings where everyone can use magic (Piers Anthony's Xanth comes to mind).  I have played in such worlds and found them to be as much fun as a world without any magic.  I just prefer to keep the number of magic users very rare because it means less book work for me as a GM.

It also seemed like almost every person in SW had a magic item.  Much too many for my liking.  I prefer maybe 1 in 10,000 persons may have a magic item.  And the same holds true in this factor.  Less magic items means less book keeping.

On the other factors, I do not consider an abundance of magic to be high magic.  In all my worlds, magic actually existed within everything.  Similar to the Force in Star Wars, it is in the air we breath, in the rocks, the trees, other persons, the grass you walk upon, EVERYTHING.  And, it is everywhere.  It is just that those who can sense it, feel it, tap into it, etc. are very rare.  Wouldn't Star Wars be a very different place if everyone could use the Force?

However, even in my new world of Onaviu, one could say it is a high magic setting due to the number of Hatharnd females that exist and can use power.  However, the Hatharnd are NPCs only, and they have used their power to subdue and enslave the peoples in such a way that only Hatharnd are power users.

OTOH, one can make the case where Onaviu is low magic because there are no power users amongst the playable races.  At least in the beginning of the campaign.  However, in all truth, Onaviu would be considered to be high magic since the empires that existed before the Great Demik were highly organized into developing those who could wield the power.  In fact, before the Great Demik, low powered general magic items were quite common.  And I mean things like the Self Sweeping Broom, the Self Scrubbing Brush for washing dishes, the Self Washing Wash Tub for cleaning clothes, etc.  I think you get the picture.  The list would literally be limitless.  And there would be about 25 power users per capita (1 in 40).  However, most were low level power users, meaning they were limited in the amount of power they could use, like 1-5 level Open Lists spells only.  It was still rare for high level power users (1-50 level of any spells).

Thanks to the Great Demik, however, all that has been lost in the anals of ancient history.  The Hatharnd now rule and keep the surviving peoples upon the anvil underneath their hammer.  Any who may show the slightest signs of being able to wield the power are immediately put to death under pretense of being carriers of the Demik.  Long story and I won't bore you.

I do not hate high magic worlds, it is just that I prefer to start a world as low magic because it does tend to be less book keeping on me.

Thanks for all the comments.  I loved them all.

rmfr

[Dougansf]

I do not hate high magic worlds, it is just that I prefer to start a world as low magic because it does tend to be less book keeping on me.

Thanks for all the comments.  I loved them all.

rmfr

You bring up an interesting option: high magic world with very limited access.  Similar to the social repercussions mentioned above, but your example takes it to another level.

How would you deal with a player who wants to play a caster of some kind?  Would you allow them to change professions later in life?  Or would they suffer through low levels in a caster profession without spells?  Or is everyone some kind of Pure Arms profession and they gain access to magic items.

I'm also curious what book keeping you're avoiding here.

[GrumpyOldFart]

RPGs tend to have nothing inherent in the mechanics to keep spell users rare. I mean yes, there are minimum stats that need to be met (in most systems)... which limits it to about 1 in 4 people. The GM can and sometimes does throw in cultural/social minima needing to be met, such as education, etc. Still, that hardly cuts the rarity to any more than the number of people in your apartment complex who work in electronics.

 

I consider SW to be unplayable because (just using what I remember from the 1st Editions) it seemed that there were about 100 power users per capita.  1 in 10!  To me, that is ridiculous.

See above.

It also seemed like almost every person in SW had a magic item.  Much too many for my liking.  I prefer maybe 1 in 10,000 persons may have a magic item.

But you can't sacrifice the internal logic of the game for it. If the potential is there to use magic, but hardly anyone ever does, there has to be a reason why not. Otherwise the players characters can't really be made to make sense in the context of the world.

OTOH, one can make the case where Onaviu is low magic because there are no power users amongst the playable races.

There you go. There has to be a reason why not, and if it isn't in the mechanics it has to be in the setting.

At least in the beginning of the campaign.

After magic using PC races become available, will there still be a reason to play any of the races incapable of using magic? Or will the setting go the "everyone always plays an elf, because they're better magic users and they live forever" route?

In fact, before the Great Demik, low powered general magic items were quite common.  And I mean things like the Self Sweeping Broom, the Self Scrubbing Brush for washing dishes, the Self Washing Wash Tub for cleaning clothes, etc.  I think you get the picture.  The list would literally be limitless.

Then there has to be a reason why the current culture isn't using their hand-me-downs. Do magic items wear out?

Any who may show the slightest signs of being able to wield the power are immediately put to death under pretense of being carriers of the Demik.

Exactly. The mechanics don't provide a "brake" on magic use, so you install one in the setting.

I prefer maybe 1 in 10,000 persons may have a magic item.

Really to make any sense, how common this is should be fairly reflective of how common magic use is in the current culture or the one that preceded it. The problem is all your variables make items more common, never less so. If in the present magic items are cheap and common then they're cheap and common, even if they weren't in the previous culture. Likewise if they were cheap and common before, they're still fairly much so even if magic use is now uncommon unless they a) wear out, b) run out of power or c) become taboo in some fashion, possibly to the extent of being deliberately destroyed.

[VladD]

I feel a high magic campaign is bound to happen as time progresses, given magic capabilities that can be taught and magic items that are eternal.

I've ran many campaigns in Middle Earth in every Age. I've always kept a balance between many magic users and less magic items in the 1st and 2nd age and more magic items and less magic users in the later ages.

But with the spread of teachable magic in the world, there are bound to be more tomes written and schools started and even lesser gifted students will receive magic training. Its only logical in my view, but in Middle Earth, the waning of the Elves and the downfall of the Numenoreans caused a great hiccup in the spread of magic and in fact it became frowned upon.

Eternal magic items, however, are still being built in every age and culture and they survive in one way or another. Although many might only be thought of as nice looking items, or lucky shields or family heirlooms, they become part of the world.

[markc]

  Another limiting factor might be that only magic users can teach magic users. Books help to learn if you have a rank  in the spell list but it is almost impossible to learn a spell list from a book on your own. This is sort of like ancient lore and lost knowledge in many books.
MDC

[jdale]

RPGs tend to have nothing inherent in the mechanics to keep spell users rare. I mean yes, there are minimum stats that need to be met (in most systems)... which limits it to about 1 in 4 people. The GM can and sometimes does throw in cultural/social minima needing to be met, such as education, etc. Still, that hardly cuts the rarity to any more than the number of people in your apartment complex who work in electronics.

That's what you get when you assume the character generation system generates "normal" people for the world. This is always a dangerous assumption....  There are some games where it is explicitly false, e.g. in Mage the Awakening the players all have magic (and magic is super powerful) but it's still rare in the setting. But even in RM, I would never presume that characters are "normal." They are exceptional, and magic is one of the aspects of that. At least for the kind of setting I prefer.

[Dougansf]

That's what you get when you assume the character generation system generates "normal" people for the world. This is always a dangerous assumption....  There are some games where it is explicitly false, e.g. in Mage the Awakening the players all have magic (and magic is super powerful) but it's still rare in the setting. But even in RM, I would never presume that characters are "normal." They are exceptional, and magic is one of the aspects of that. At least for the kind of setting I prefer.

+1!!!

PC's are the exception to the rule.  And it helps to treat them as such.


In our game, casters are a dime a dozen.  Arcane capable casters are much more rare.  And Agents of Fate (able to use Fate Points) are quite rare.  Even very old beings that are very powerful, may no longer be Agents of Fate, and rely on the current generation to affect real change.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Sure, but that's the point. The game mechanics are to create and interact with "normal" player characters. This may or may not be, and usually is not, equal to or even that close to what GMs want as "normal" for NPCs and "scenery peoples", the ones that are there but you don't really interact with them.

So if you want your party of 6 (2 spellcasters, 2 semi spellcasters and 2 non spellcasters) to logically fit into your setting, there has to be a reason why 2/3 of the party uses magic in an environment where magic users are 1 in 1000 or so. In short,

The mechanics don't provide a "brake" on magic use, so you install one in the setting.

So you end up doing things like

Any who may show the slightest signs of being able to wield the power are immediately put to death under pretense of being carriers of the Demik.

It doesn't change the minima required to be a spellcaster under the game mechanics in the slightest. There's no reason at all that 4 of your party of 6 can't still be magic using.... if they dare.

But because the GM has thought that through and made that tweak, things make more sense within the setting. If spellcasters are no more common in any one area than lightning strikes, and the locals see a group of 6 containing 4 lightning strikes coming down the street, their reactions now have a context in which they make sense. The guy playing the spellcaster may still be annoyed that he gets treated like a pariah (at best), but while he's annoyed he's not surprised or confused by it.

[markc]

  My players start out as normal people and then progress from their, it is their experience after this normalcy that makes them "adventures".


 On magic, I have in the past charged TP to become a semi and more TP for pure and more TP for Hybrid and it was a fun game. I got the idea from Shadowrun PC gen and from a custom home brew system a friend of mine created.
MDC

[GrumpyOldFart]

There is that... what if your PCs start out as "scenery people"?

For that matter, what do you do if a PC dies and the player just wants to take over one of the NPCs already in the game? Having a distinction in the mechanics between PCs and everybody else creates its own problems. But if the distinction is in the setting as above, the only difference between PCs and everybody else is that PCs are being played by people who dare to take the risks PCs take. The problem solves itself.

[RandalThor]

How would you deal with a player who wants to play a caster of some kind?  Would you allow them to change professions later in life?  Or would they suffer through low levels in a caster profession without spells?  Or is everyone some kind of Pure Arms profession and they gain access to magic items.

This is one of my big problems with class/level games; they are hard to fit with the natural progression a person goes through in life. Just because I started out my career life in the USMC, doesn't mean all my skill costs are of a fighter. I picked up the tech skills for film and video production quickly and well (according to my teachers, graduating at the top of my class) and currently have a job in that field at a major company. (Scripps Networks) So, those types of games do not take into consideration the fact that we change as we grow, they keep us "locked into" a "set" way of learning, that is entirely for two reasons: carry-over/concervativism, and for the sake of ease. But, it destroys realism. And, it ruins any sort of heroic story telling where the young hero starts out as a farmer, but ends up becoming the greatest magician in the land. (Unless you played him as a Magician pretending to be a farmer the whole time - which is just silly. And no, I dont' think that the adolescent development is enough to say a person has gotten to his "majority" (approx. 15-18 yrs of age) prior to gaining their "true" profession, there are just too many skills they need to know and know well.)

I'm also curious what book keeping you're avoiding here.

Me too.

That's what you get when you assume the character generation system generates "normal" people for the world. This is always a dangerous assumption....  There are some games where it is explicitly false, e.g. in Mage the Awakening the players all have magic (and magic is super powerful) but it's still rare in the setting. But even in RM, I would never presume that characters are "normal." They are exceptional, and magic is one of the aspects of that. At least for the kind of setting I prefer.

I am with you here, 4-show! I don't mind it if the character's think of themselves as normal people, but they are the ones who will be going out and dealing with the big-bad world and getting into all manner of dangerous situations and hopefully succeeding. They need to be above average (n either capabilities or luck, preferrably both) to have even the slightest of chances of survival. This is another thing RM doesn't do well, as everything in the game "rounds" against the PC.

[markc]

IMHO what makes a PC more then average is the skills they pick and why they picked them.


In my RMSS game I recently decided to add a youth level with about 100DP worth of skills that I pick based on environment, status, family and events. I have also upped the adol to 100DP again most of the skills are picked by me the GM. So most everyone has ranks in sprinting, climbing etc as IMHO a kid would have in RL.
MDC