There's no right or wrong side in the debate between high magic and low magic campaigns, only personal preference. If you're lucky, everyone in your group swings the same way. I've always leaned toward low magic campaigns. I don't expect to convert anyone who feels differently, but I can lay out the reasons why I tilt the way I do.
Before getting into the details, though--when I talk about low and high magic, I'm referring chiefly to how many magic items a character can expect to encounter and accrue during a career of adventuring. A secondary concern is the prevalence of magic-using NPCs. Player-character wizards are to be expected, but is yours an exceptional figure, or did he graduate 48th in a class of 650 that year at the wizard academy?
My preference starts with the influences that brought me to FRPGs in the first place. I "discovered" fantasy as an adult genre when an insightful high school English teacher steered me toward The Lord of the Rings, a distinctly low-magic tale. The magic of Middle Earth is subtle and seldom used--so unlike the structure of D&D that it's hard to mirror LotR with the D&D rules.
Tolkien led me to the tales of Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Corum, and Elric. In those stories, magic was more often the problem than the solution. Magic was used by villains, not by heroes. Odds are high that magic was what twisted the villain into a bad guy in the first place. He didn't turn to magic because he was evil; he turned evil because he placed his faith in magic. Elric was a powerful wizard, but even he seldom used magic openly because of the risk involved. With that sort of reputation, it's no surprise that magic users in those fictional worlds were shunned, mistrusted, and rare.
The second reason is that I like plenty of historical seasoning in my fantasy. Pseudohistory plays best when magic can't be had by the bucketful.
Third, restricting the characters' access to magic places greater emphasis on their personal grit. Many obstacles and puzzles become meaningless when characters can just activate their flying boots, turn invisible with their magic helmets, or command their omnipotent swords to sniff out the villain's weaknesses.
Fourth, rare magic is wondrous magic. Things that we're exposed to every day lose their luster; ask anyone who lives in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, or who never had to do Christmas shopping without the internet. If your character has just one or two magic items, you're going to appreciate them a lot more than if he has an entire head-to-toe magical panoply and a magical weapon for every monster, plus a few dozen more enchanted items rattling around in the bottom of the bag of holding like toys that he's outgrown but still keeps in a box in the corner of his bedroom. A dozen magical items are ornaments; one or two magical items define your character.
This doesn't mean that I don't like characters to have access to magic. It means that when I'm the DM, I give out precious few magical weapons and armors. I'm less stingy with wondrous items, because they carry an air of uniqueness and they foster creativity. A gem of seeing or a rope of entanglement generates far more fun than a +2 sword any day.
Consumables are my favorite magical treasures. They won't throw the campaign out of whack, because eventually they'll be used up. If you want characters to fight mummies, don't present them with a rack of +1 weapons; give them vials of blessing oil instead. They'll have a great fight, and you won't regret the mummy thing the next time you try to set up an interesting fight against wolves. Consumables can do anything that permanent items can do; forget the narrow limits in the rules.
Best of all, instead of making players complacent, the way permanent magic items do, consumables force players to make hard decisions. Should you drink the potion of giant strength before fighting the umber hulks, or are even more dangerous things waiting farther down the tunnel? The charm person scroll will get what you want from the king's seneschal, but it might be more useful when you confront the bandit chief. The necklace of fireballs has only three charges; do we really need to use one in this fight?
Those are enjoyable problems for the players to tackle, and they play best when characters are always critically short on magic juice. That's my position, anyway. Where do you stand?
I've always liked the idea of a low magic campaign, but I've never really run one. It's a problem of mine: I'm overgenerous with treasure.
ReplyDeleteFortunately I play with a lot of newbies who don't know they can take advantage of me for it.
I try to tread the line between extreme fantastical elements (particularly religions and powers that rely on them) while still using historical groundwork and a low-magic feel.
ReplyDeleteIn essence, most of my settings (particularly the 10th Age) are an exploration of "what-ifs." What if the Roman religions were real? Well, the Roman priests would have been able to do a lot more in the terms of the supernatural than they could in history.
So in that sense, I DO try to use a somewhat more low-magic setting, but the trappings of high-magic invariably sneak in. There are mid-level mages in most cities and things of that nature.
Certain things, I weed out include: Resurrections, healing magic (only members of the cults can get it), and game-changing magical items.
I always liked the idea of low magic campaigns. Ive run Harn and Ars Magica because I liked the more mideavel low magic setting- the problem is that my players never did. Even now Id never get them to play anything but high magic. As they put it " we live ina no magic world, I dont want to play a fantasy game that with little or no magic- whats the point. Its not fun. Fantasy to me is high magic".... whats a DM to do.....
ReplyDeletePlayers always want more magic items, just like children always want more ice cream. Parents say "no more ice cream" only partly out of concern for the kids' health; mostly they're thinking about how much they don't want to deal with the stomach aches and sugar mania all that ice cream will lead to. The same things goes for DMs. But as I noted about, YMMV. No campaign is perfect for everyone.
DeleteI generally agree with your preference and the potions and scrolls advice is a good reminder, but it is really interesting to hear this from someone who worked on IV for so long. It's not a game that particularly lends itself to a low magic game. Did you ever DM it yourself?
ReplyDelete(btw, I DM and play IV, so I ain't hating)
I have DMed 4E, though not nearly as many hours as I've played it. Even as a player, I thought I had too many magic items.
DeleteThe point about consumables is a really good one.
ReplyDeleteI think it can be particularly fun to give low level characters a relatively potent but charge limited magic item. Then it becomes a real choice when they want to use it. For example, one of the wizards in my campaign found a wand of 6d6 lightning bolts at first or second level; I think it had 6 charges.
Giving players an item that is obviously way above their pay grade can be highly entertaining. The more outlandish it is, the more likely they are to hoard it instead of using it.
DeletePersonally, I'd rather not find myself an ancient dotard in the nursing home one day, flipping through a crumbling DMG and looking back on all the crazy fun I *didn't* have with all those cool magic items.
ReplyDeleteLike the classes, monters, and spells, they're there to be used and enjoyed. So bring on the toys!
There's a lot to be said for that viewpoint. I love that type of play ... occasionally. It's just not something I want a regular diet of.
DeleteMy early years of gaming resulted in high magic indigestion. Too much magic makes it banal and unmagical. It leads to magic inflation, which devalues it. I prefer magic to be awe-inspiring, which means it needs to be relatively rare.
ReplyDeleteThere are some occasions where high magic is more acceptable to me, such as a Dying Earth type of setting, but most campaigns are more enjoyable to me when magic items and magic-users retain their mystery.
I enjoy lower magic settings when the magic is actually interesting like that Gem or Rope you mentioned
ReplyDeleteThe only issue with them is with Armor Class in D&D. Some method of keeping to the To Hit to AC ratios in balance without assumed items is a must IMO.
In 3e and up its easy, 1/2 of level but other editions are a bit more complex and I haven't found a method I really like that can work equally well with standard magic levels.
That whole constantly ascending AC thing is a complication all its own. I've addressed it a few times before. My feeling is that the game would benefit by moving away from it--dumping it entirely isn't necessary, but scaling way back and taking a more naturalistic approach would be more to my liking. That's obviously a low magic approach. In a high magic game, AC needs to ascend to keep pace with all the magical armament characters are packing. My feeling is that if all that magic is just letting you keep pace, then what's the point, really?
Delete3e and 4e were built with the assumption that a character MUST get magic items to remain viable at high levels. Not so with the older editions. So even in the rules there is the seed for the low-magic vs. high-magic dichotomy. Personally, I prefer low-magic campaigns, where magic sounds like MAGIC and not a cheap replica of technology; that's one of the worst offences in 4e (besides putting magic items in the PHB; WTF?!) Luckily the systems described in DMG2 and Dark Sun can help avoid this problem. In my latest 4e campaign I reduced the number of magic items in half, and it has worked quite well. Still I missed all the cursed items and things which could go wrong in 1e and 2e (and sometimes 3e.)
DeleteMy 4e characters either had to have the magical Christmas tree or didn't care about items at all. For me there was no middle ground. Most of my characters would have been fine with just inherent bonuses.
ReplyDeleteExcellent article. As pointed out elsewhere, one of the main pleasures of the gaming is using your creativity to overcome challenges. Thus, the "right amount" of magic would be that which players more interesting ideas for solving problems. "Too much" magic is when the magic items solve the problem for you. For example, a low level party encounters a pack of Goblin Warg riders: "we use our staff of lightening to kill them all." Boring! However, if instead of that: "Our fighter, Elric jr., pulls out his cloak of camoflage before they get in range, once they pass he can sneak in behind them and we can surround them for flanking bonuses." Much more potential here.
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