Magic... with consequences?

[Silentman73]

Zurai wrote:

The simplest, and probably best, answer is:

Because Pathfinder is a game, and your friend's novel is a book.

What do I mean by that? Well, every medium has certain strengths. One of the strengths of a book is that the author controls 100% of the actions and consequences within the book. That means magic can have wild and unpredictable side effects for even minor spells without ruining the entire experience. However, games do not share that strength (indeed, they would not be games at all if anyone had absolute control over the entire game; games require actions and consequences, and if you control everything, there are no consequences to your actions). In a game, if your character stands a chance to blow up the local area whenever he casts a spell, basic statistics will tell you that eventually your character will unintentionally blow up the local area. That's not fun (especially to the mage's companions).

Another reason is that mages just plain wouldn't get used. Take a look at Arcane Spell Failure for an example of this: ASF is a small chance for any spell you cast which has a Somatic component to fail. This is essentially the same thing as your "magic with consequences" concept except less dangerous. How many mages have you ever seen in any game ever wear armor with an actual Arcane Spell Failure chance? I've never seen even one unless they had some way to Still Spell most or all of their spells (and thus avoid ASF). It'd be even worse with your idea, because on top of not getting the spell off, actively bad things would happen.

From my perspective, you're coming at this from a view of "Magic should be difficult to use." That's fine if it's how a given GM wants to run things, but the core concepts underpinning magic in Pathfinder are that it isn't comparatively difficult to use. The assumption is that whatever you had to go through to learn to use it (whether that's the formal training of a Wizard or the intuitive casting of a Bard or Sorcerer) was gone through prior to the start of your adventuring career. You're proficient enough with your magic (whatever its source) by the time you're 1st level that you can presumably focus "on the spot" to create a willed effect even in spite of someone running in clanking metal armor to go swing a sword at a beast out of legend and myth (even if it's really just a troll; you're 1st level, your worldliness is definitely lacking, or should be). Past that, the general assumption is you're doing the things that lead to the automatic higher-level spells you get as you go up in character level "between adventures". This glosses over a lot. If you wanted to RP it, the Wizard is probably sitting there at camp every night with a "spare spellbook", an experimental log, trying things out. He/she may be experimenting with different components and channeling "raw magic" through them to see if an effect can be created. It would be both comical and threatening if they discovered Fireball by accident. Or maybe they just channeled a tiny bit of "raw magic" and extrapolated from there that "If I put some bat guano and sulphur together and push the magic through it this way, with my hands forming this focal pattern, I can generate an explosion of magical fire." It's nice fluff, but the mechanics don't require it: they gloss over that stuff to keep players invested in the "fun".

5th Edition seems to use this "raw magic" concept a lot more concretely, since you're no longer required to prepare spells ahead of time. You have spells you know, and you have a certain number of slots of each spell level per day, in which you can cast spells of that level, or insert spells of a lower level for a more powerful effect. It provides a lot more versatility and freedom to spellcasters. It was apparently concluded that too much forethought into what spells to prepare each day was negatively impacting fun. I happen to agree.

But it also brings up an interesting thing: cantrips no longer get "used" when they're cast. Whatever cantrips a Wizard has prepared, or a Sorcerer just knows, can be cast as many times as they like. In that kind of scenario, yes, there's no mechanical reason for a spellcaster doing their own dishes by hand: Prestidigitation would just clean their dishes for them, Light would illuminate things for them, etc.

Which then brings us back to fluff: it's easy to come up with an RP reason for why magic shouldn't be used so casually. The fallback is often "Magic has a price." But if you start implementing a mechanical price above/beyond the fire-and-forget system, you're going above and beyond the rules themselves, and those kinds of house rules should be discussed with your group, as it can have a meaningful effect on whether a given player wants to play a spellcasting class or not.

Me, if I were to encounter a GM who wanted to place additional restrictions on magic beyond what's in the rules, I'd just choose not to play a spellcaster. I think there are more people than I care to think about who just like to nerf magic as much as they can because they just don't want to put in the effort to deal with its effects.

Yes, higher-level play puts a lot of power in the hands of spellcasters: they can fly, teleport, throw around massive collisions of energy, and at the highest levels can speak their desires and see them made manifest. They stand toe to toe with the immortal servants of the gods (if not the gods themselves), they create their own pocket realities, they travel into the afterlife with impunity.

And this is power those players have earned if they started at 1st level: they went through the sucky levels where they could fire off three or four spells and be done for the day, when the martial types never have to do more than swing their weapon. They put up with the fact that martial types get improved efficiency with their weapons such that they can get in multiple attacks in the same period in which a spellcaster can never, without meaningful feat expenditures, cast more than one spell. They put up with being counterspelled, when you can't counterspell a sword: if the Fighter gets past the AC and damage reduction, they always do their damage. Mid and higher levels are their chance to shine.

This is just me: I'm just tired of people constantly trying to find ways to weaken magic. It just smacks of laziness on the GM's part, instead of them being creative enough to use the tools the game provides them to provide challenges to the players, who are using the tools the game provides THEM.

[pickin_grinnin]

In real world magic systems (not saying I believe they work) from various cultures, you typically don't see things like battle mages. There may be ways for a priest, shaman, sorcerer, etc. to affect the outcome of a battle or cause something bad to happen to someone, but they aren't running around with the warriors casting spells and hexes and such during the course of the fight. There are usually costs to learning how to use powerful magic, too, including very steep social ones in some places.

I prefer game magic systems that are more like that and come with a cost of some kind. That may mean that the spells are unpredictable and/or dangerous to cast, the caster is temporarily weakened after casting them, the preparation and/or casting time is very long, etc. I'm not saying all games that use magic should be that way - it's just my personal preference, probably due to all those years I spent in anthropology grad school.

Getting back to Pathfinder, magic using classes are not inherently more powerful or effective than those that don't use magic, because I design and run my games (and entire campaigns) to make sure that a couple of classes don't dominate everything.

For example, there are just as many opportunities to shine (or fail) as a rogue or fighter as there are for magic wielders. I take things like hand gestures, vocal components, line of sight, etc. into consideration. When intelligent enemies figure out who knows magic, they target them in appropriate ways. Many of the challenges I present simply can't be solved with any of the existing spells. Etc. etc. In my games, actual roleplaying and creative, intelligent decisions will typically get a character much further than simply relying on class-based abilities.

[MMCJawa]

Anzyr wrote:

And even those subtropes are a minority of all fantasy settings. (And equivalent exchange is actually pretty cost free in the manga since the power comes from geothermal energy).

I don't read Manga, but from what I have seen, "Magic has a price" is the predominant trope for powerful magic in TV, and fantasy novels. Maybe Manga/Anime is different.

[JoeJ]

pickin_grinnin wrote:

In real world magic systems (not saying I believe they work) from various cultures, you typically don't see things like battle mages. There may be ways for a priest, shaman, sorcerer, etc. to affect the outcome of a battle or cause something bad to happen to someone, but they aren't running around with the warriors casting spells and hexes and such during the course of the fight. There are usually costs to learning how to use powerful magic, too, including very steep social ones in some places.

I prefer game magic systems that are more like that and come with a cost of some kind. That may mean that the spells are unpredictable and/or dangerous to cast, the caster is temporarily weakened after casting them, the preparation and/or casting time is very long, etc. I'm not saying all games that use magic should be that way - it's just my personal preference, probably due to all those years I spent in anthropology grad school.

Path Magic in GURPS Thaumatology works like that. It's based (loosely) on an amalgam of real world ritual magic practices.

[Arbane the Terrible]

Anzyr wrote:

I'm talking about fantasy settings as a whole. When's the last time Aang traded his unborn child's life to bend? Where is there any indication of the sanity damage that Merlin took?

Airbending isn't magic. Merlin is the son of a demon. (And Aang is Kung-Fu Jesus - the normal rules don't apply to either of them.)

Magicians are rarely protagonists in classic mythology - they're advisors to the REAL heroes, or the villains.

Anyway... fantasy settings a whole. The Black Company has some severely screwed-up sorcerers in it (Howler comes to mind), and a few who really managed to dance through the minefield successfully (The Lady).

Faust is the classic 'sell your soul' wizard. Along with all those people, guilty or not, who got used as kindling in the late Middle Ages.

Jack Vance's wizards (You know, the ones D&D's spellcasting was inspired by) generally couldn't keep more than three or four spells memorized at once, so they had to be good at swordfighting and running away as well.

Discworld wizards spend a lot of time NOT doing magic, since doing too much of it has a non-trivial risk of causing runs in the fabric of reality.

Plenty of fantasy wizards die when a spell they cast or a creature they summoned gets out of control - that's not impossible in PF, but it's REALLY tough to do.

In fantasy RPGs:
Using Call of Cthulhu magic will drive you insane.

Unknown Armies magic requires insanity in the form of an all-consuming obsession.

Sorcerer's only magic is to summon demons, doing so makes you less human, and you have cajole them into doing what you want.

Exalted's Sorcery is potentially world-changingly powerful, but it's long, time-consuming, exhausting, and occasionally risky rituals (and the Essence-powered tricks the other Exalted can do are just as powerful, and a lot faster).

Shadowrun magic is physically tiring to use, as is GURPS's default system.

Ars Magica has immensely powerful magic... and being able to do it makes most normal people want to run away or kill you. (And every player in that game is expected to make a mage character AND a few mundane sidekicks to play.)

There are plenty of ways to do magic in fantasy and fantasy RPGs besides the Caster Omnipotence that Pathfinder inherited.

[Arbane the Terrible]

pickin_grinnin wrote:

In real world magic systems (not saying I believe they work) from various cultures, you typically don't see things like battle mages.

That's because (as far as I know) no real-world magic system is a working substitute for heavy artillery.

pickin_grinnin wrote:

Getting back to Pathfinder, magic using classes are not inherently more powerful or effective than those that don't use magic, because I design and run my games (and entire campaigns) to make sure that a couple of classes don't dominate everything.

For example, there are just as many opportunities to shine (or fail) as a rogue or fighter as there are for magic wielders. I take things like hand gestures, vocal components, line of sight, etc. into consideration. When intelligent enemies figure out who knows magic, they target them in appropriate ways. Many of the challenges I present simply can't be solved with any of the existing spells. Etc. etc. In my games, actual roleplaying and creative, intelligent decisions will typically get a character much further than simply relying on class-based abilities.

How do you manage to keep the spellcasters from short-circuiting entire plots out of combat?

"Bob's been poisoned! We need to find the antidote before-" "Neutralize poison".

"We need to reach the top of Mount Murder to-" "Fly."

"We have to figure out who killed Dr. Lucky-" "Speak with Dead."
"The murderer was masked, so-" "Divination."

"The princess is cursed, and we need to-" "Remove Curse."

And so on, ad nauseam.

I know a lot of these magic short-cuts can be thwarted... but only by OTHER MAGIC.