@Umbral Reaver, well, yes. There would be magic users everywhere (basically anyone could cast a few spells if they wanted to) so a single wizard trying to take over the world would be like any other single person trying to take over the world.
@Mortuum, low magic isn't the only way to fix those problems. High(er) magic can actually fix those same problems. For class balance, leave the full casters alone and give everyone else magic enough to bring them up to par. Magic item dependence would be reduced if the characters could get the same bonuses from their innate abilities. And if all this mainly applied to the heroes, they'd certainly stand out.
Not so!
You can't give the base fighter his own magic without changing the game into something other than pathfinder. It defeats the point in him and severely limits what people can play. You might as well say "My higher magic game balances the fighter because everybody plays wizards instead".
Replacing some of the functions of the magic item system with innate abilities usually reduces magic rather than increases it. The innate bonuses do not feel magical and it's far simpler to say "You're just better at doing that" that it is to justify it through a new kind of magic that kicks in as you become more experienced.
Applying increases magic only to heroes would either not make them stand out or break the guidelines for encounter building in the core rulebook, because pathfinder is written assuming NPC fighter levels are the same as PC fighter levels and that an NPC with X experience has Y gold.
The problem is not that heroic characters aren't awesome enough, it's that there are lots of them, all with level appropriate wealth and most with astounding capabilities that leave real life people in the dust.
I know these perceived problems I'm pointing out aren't universal and I'm not arguing for low magic here, just pointing out that pretty much all the fixes people talk about reduce magic in one way or another.
Basically it depends on the group on the best solution. Though there certainly are a lot of options available to a GM... and by a lot I mean a LOT... absurd amounts of options.
Personally I prefer high magic settings though even if it is my Fighter gains the ability to use a STR, DEX, or CON boosting spell effect a number of times per day or even a number of rounds per day. It makes my Fighter a wee bit more independent.
Low magic isn't bad if done correctly. My person favorite way of making a low magic world is. All casters must be middle aged to represent the massive amount of training involved and/or all spells require a concentration check (DC=5+Spell Level) to even cast the spell otherwise they lose the spell.
I usually use the first one unless I have a group wanting to have an all caster party in which I might use the second one or both of them. Though as of yet I have only had one full caster party and that was only in a normal magic setting and they actually willing made middle aged characters... well everyone but the bard and magus...
@Mortuum it depends on how the system is implemented.
That is the beauty of Pathfinder. It is adaptable.
Magic use and opinion just happens to vary wildly in my campaign world.
The ability to use magic evolved in my world out of necessity. Some species never evolved these abilities.
Those species have counters though. My orcs never got into magic, as such their technology is far superior to the magic using races because they had no other option.
The idea that an entire planet would share the same opinion on any given subject is kind of ludicrous which is why some campaign worlds were EVERYONE fears magic bugs me.
@Mortuum it depends on how the system is implemented.
That is the beauty of Pathfinder. It is adaptable.
Not sure what "it" you're referring to, I'm afraid.
MUs are very armor poor. If the game starts with a caravan guarding job, the caster should sit with a high hit point person on either side of them. One ambush arrow and they are dying. Mage Armor is no answer because you have to spot the ambush to cast it. I would think the first Wizard to reach epic levels would have changed the rules so defensive magic could be cast and not take effect till combat begins, ambush or not. A normal or high magic campaign is a fair trade. A low magic campaign is not. Just feeding the elephant in the room. :)
I'm working on a setting where even the peasants are spellcasters and magic is as common as bread.
All but one of my home-brew settings have been that way: many over the years. The current one is NAME, which has four "magical" technologies (Alchemy, Chemstry, Machinery, Transmutery) and eight other kinds magic as racial abilities.
Powerful mages are rare. But almost everyone can use Transmutery to help start a fire.
Part of the attraction is how this affects the social order. After a drunken tavern brawl I much prefer the authorities to heal everyone and send them home to be punished by their spouses to dealing with jail time. It seems more fair and empowers those spouses.
@Mortuum, I'm not really arguing about Pathfinder RAW, but neither are you. I'm just saying that most or all of the arguments you've given for low magic can be applied equally to high magic. Yes, it would require adjusting encounters, but the same is true for low magic. I will concede that it would very likely require a bit more work to implement these fixes with more magic rather than with less (but I also think that's just because low-magic can fall back on the real world).
A fireball doesn't really feel very magical either, BTW. Flashy, but not special. Plus, a fighter with a few spells isn't a wizard. As for what does feel magical, I had a separate thread for that, though it didn't get much attention. Honestly, for me, magic would feel more magical if it were universal (power level doesn't really factor in here). I really find it weird that such a thing as mundane can exist. (Divine magic has an excuse, but arcane really doesn't.)
To elaborate more on how a high magic system could balance things better, consider the fighter. Basically the arguments that a fighter is weak center around the idea that while the fighter is very good at what he does, outside that one thing, he's pretty useless. In that case, a few magical abilities that give the fighter something useful to do outside of a straight fight would help. Now the question becomes what kind of magic could a fighter learn that would fit the flavor. (Just giving them random spells would devalue them as a fighter, but giving them combat buffs just makes them better at what they're already good at.)
Well, I can think of three ideas off the top of my head (if I can articulate them). Also, I don't often play fighters, so I may be making some unfounded assumptions here. Feel free to correct me.
- AoE. A standard fighter isn't that great at crowd control, but one that could turn that whirlwind attack into a literal whirlwind would be neat.
- Healing. Not on the same scale as a cleric or paladin of course. Really, I'm mostly thinking of self-healing or temporary hit points. This does have the potential to just make the fighter better at fighting though and you'd have to be careful not to step on the monks toes.
- Buffs for others. Their awesome in combat could rub off on their allies. This would have to be something different that the paladin auras to keep things distinct.
Alright. I'd better stop there before I really start rambling.
Edit: Actually, rewriting the classes is beyond what I really had in mind. If you has some feats and traits that allowed characters to learn a few spells, the wizards and sorcerers wouldn't have much use for them (assuming they were worded correctly) but the fighter could pick up a few useful tricks, narrowing the gap a little bit.
Edit again: That or just have some more explicitly magical feats available for martial classes. There's no reason you should have to know spells before you can do anything else magical.
Ok. I'm really going to stop rambling now. :P
One thing I did do in my world was flip the usual "fear of magic" paradigm on it's head.
In lands dominated by the religion of "Cyssianism" in my world, arcane magic is slightly feared, but divine magic is outright hated.
See, the Cyssians follow a dude who literally helped kill the gods. They see him as divine, but not a god, a sort of anti-god. The messiah of mankind.
So Cyssian clerics are trusted, but Keorthi clerics (which is just a catch all word in my world for 'pagan') will be driven out of towns or arrested if they display powers in city limits.
Despite both being divine, the Cyssians claim their magic comes directly from Cys.
Then there's Dyssians, but that's something completely different.
I refuse to play in Low-Magic type campaigns. They get old and boring very quickly.
High magic? I suppose the closest I have come is Eberon. I would love to play in a few of the suggested High Magic campains other posters mentioned. Sounds very interesting.
I had a buddy dead set on Running a Low-Magic(read REALLY low) campaign, where magic is hated and feared, where we all start out as NPC classes, and are pennyless in jail at the start of the campaign.... Dead set on running it until he couldn't get any players. Screw that.
Yeah, a lot of GMs who go low magic crazy forget one of the two most important rules when choosing/designing a session
Question 1) Will I, the GM, enjoy running this?
Question 2) Will they, the players, enjoy playing this?
If either is no, stop immediately and go back to the drawing board.
Every adventure/campaign/session you run should start with those questions and both should be yes, or maybe.
If either is even close to no, don't waste your time.
I don't know that my own homebrew is low-magic per se, however the item creation feats are completely banned. I stick to my 2E roots where crafting a magic-item is an adventure unto itself. There is no XP component to crafting magic items, HOWEVER there is the potential of a cost occuring - a % chance, upon the Spellcaster completing the item that they are permanently drained of 1 point of Constitution, it's not a cumulative chance with each item, just a once and done based on the type of item made and the power involved in regards to +'s. Otherwise you must research to find out what you need - spell and material wise, gather your companions and go get it. There is a magical economy of sorts that is not based around Gandalf's Magical Gizmos, Widgets, and Whatnota where magic items are for sale; rather it is based around exotic materials used to make magic items.
I don't know that my own homebrew is low-magic per se, however the item creation feats are completely banned. I stick to my 2E roots where crafting a magic-item is an adventure unto itself. There is no XP component to crafting magic items, HOWEVER there is the potential of a cost occuring - a % chance, upon the Spellcaster completing the item that they are permanently drained of 1 point of Constitution, it's not a cumulative chance with each item, just a once and done based on the type of item made and the power involved in regards to +'s. Otherwise you must research to find out what you need - spell and material wise, gather your companions and go get it. There is a magical economy of sorts that is not based around Gandalf's Magical Gizmos, Widgets, and Whatnota where magic items are for sale; rather it is based around exotic materials used to make magic items.
Sounds ok except for the permanant constitution loss. Can you tie up a goblin and use them as a human shield when crafting?
@boring7, I like the astrological signs (good trait fodder), but not many people likes to roll for random powers.
One city state was able to feed Hannibal's elephants. I think they enslaved a lot of foes they vanquished. No wonder the gods sent the Spartans to wipe them out.
Call the history channel. They'll know how Carthage fed the elephants.
Assuming you've got access to the fuel for those tanks. Elephants, or even horse, eat a lot, but you don't need an entire separate industrial infrastructure, possibly outside of your home country, to get special food for your elephant."Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science." Or something like that.
Thing about magic and tech is it *is* more powerful, straight-up non-stop unavoidable. An army with M1A1 tanks is going to be stronger and be less of a drain on its society than an army fielding war elephants (no really, have you SEEN how much an elephant eats? Or how little a farm with no technological solutions produces?). This is reality as we know it, and switching from gunpowder and electricity to gemstones and sorcery won't change it.
Yes, but you do need a fairly advanced agricultural and transportation infrastructure to feed a large standing army of horses or elephants. If you build this infrastructure, you have built a comparatively wealthy society. When you have such a society, you tend to get a somewhat large intellectual class. This in turn brings more innovation, and therefore better technology, or, in the case of wizard-style magic, spellcasting.
Thinking about it, my swords and sorcery setting isn't truly low magic. Well, kind of; there will be very few overtly magical disciplines to choose from (in that setting; the disciplines exist but are restricted from the setting). But all the PCs will have access to things which are essentially magical.
So there'll be nobody throwing around fireballs (but there would be in a different setting using the same system), but a fighter might well be supernaturally tough, or have abilities that are well beyond mundane. Essentially for this setting I just block any discipline that grants supernatural or spell-like abilities... but at the same time, I aim to ensure that overall, extraordinary abilities, supernatural abilities, and spell-like abilities are on par in power.
Though for the most part I intend for the overwhelming majority of NPCs to be, essentially, Commoner 1. That's because one of the mission statements of the setting is "The PCs are exceptional". A significant goal of the introductory adventure I've spec'd out is to show that the PCs are just more capable than average, right out of the gate.
By the same token on the power level of magic... the Atlantis setting, albeit capped at level 8 plus feats... one of the major reasons Atlantis conquered everything it did is because they had so much more magic than anyone else. Simply put, they were putting up smaller armies, but with far more magical capability in the army than their opponents. A fireball or two makes a big dent in a group of warrior 1s.
Why is it that most people, when they try to come up with a homebrew setting, they always seem to go for the no magic/limited or wild magic/casters are persecuted for performing magic approach?
I'll chime with some of the above posters: the answer to "why home-brewed settings are always low-magic?" is often "because if you want to play in a low-magic setting you have to make it yourself".
There are several rich and well developed published high magic / high fantasy settings for D&D/Pathfinder, while there are few low-magic ones. Yet as some have mentioned, many inspiration sources would be considered low-magic fantasy: Middle Earth, Conan, mythology (even celtic and scandinavian mythology has few magicians other than gods and races that would be considered out-of-reach for the purpose of player characters).
Before anyone goes with the "then you should find another game" argument, I find that d20 is a strong and versatile system. It can be used in full (as the default Paizo / WotC settings) or in part to play E6 or low-magic and remains equally enjoyable.
A few years ago, I started to work on a homebrewed setting that didn't alter availability of magic but availability to races: humans, elves, dwarves and the usual character races are simply non-existent. Now that the Advanced Race Guide is out, this setting could become pertinent again...
'findel
If a magic item is going to cost part of your life, there are some things to consider.
1: Only make stuff when you are dieing. This is especially true with books that add to abilities.
2: Forget wands and potions. There will simply be no wands of cure light. It's not worth the risk. Not for something that gets used up.
3: Retributive strike. When some bum sunders your magic weapon, it better cost their worthless life.
4: Revenge. You could design your character about wiping out the race of monsters that one of them destroyed your father's holy avenger.
Not sure what "it" you're referring to, I'm afraid.@Mortuum it depends on how the system is implemented.
That is the beauty of Pathfinder. It is adaptable.
It: the changes resulting from the increased magic.
System: what makes the setting have higher magic.
@Fleshgrinder: your orcs sound similar to i believe it is called Alkenstar in Golarion.
Personally i like the feel of a Fighter can use crystals that hold mana to cast spells but cant cast spells without a charged crystal. Unlike a Wizard who can and then can use the crystals to supply even more spells.
Heck i created a Mana Drive based system for a Tech-Fantasy world i made. It allowed a Fighter to cast a small list of "pseudospells" that were flavored like spells from Final Fantasy. Technology/Science allowing a non-caster to have a little bit easier access to a powerful attack.
The spells were a sliding scale power level based on the number of spell levels used out of the mana drives pool. They functioned as either a Fireball-esque spell, a ray, a cone, or a line. Buff spells are still being worked out for a redesign of that setting...
Alkenstar is a similar idea, but where as Alkenstar does it by necessity, my orcs decided that magic in general is cowardly.
The only magic they do use is religious necromancy. They believe the greatest honour one can do for the dead is to raise them to fight in battle.
They even have their own custom vampire variant called a "gorezerker" who feeds through their skin by shedding blood in combat.
A gorezerker is rare and random as to when one is risen, but he actually can eat his way back to life and basically become a living orc again, though usually they're more cruel and twisted than the first time around.
They don't see this all as magic as much as they see it as their ancestors willingly rising from the dead. The clerics know it's magic, but they kind of hide it behind ritual.
So it is something like a bloodgorger from The Black Keep Series of Stories.
The bathe in blood absorb the life force of their slain foe in order to be a living being again not just a infrastructure enslaved by a savage hunger.
And I can see orchestra forgoing Arcane magic but embracing divine magic... it fits the tribal concept even for my "civilized" orcs...
When it comes to science and magic relations... they are closely linked. Heck, modern chemistry evolved from the alchemy performed in medieval times.
Don't forget tanks evolved from a farm vehicle that they had retrofitted for mine clearing duty...
So, you guys tell me what you guys think about my three home-brew campaign settings!
High Magic? Low Magic? How would you define them?
(Okay, so one isn't exactly a "home brew", as it is a thought-experiment. Still: add to those things!)
At a quick glance:
They all are about normal powered... the twilight seems to be more Magic is common place. While the Hellenistic one seems about average with maybe slightly higher divine magic. And the APG one is actually about normal powered... though probably leans more to magic being support based rather than the damage dealing reinforced glass cannon magic users. Meaning less 'Wizard snaps their fingers enemy army goes boom' and more tactics...I really wanna try a non-core class campaign...
Magimaster, Low magic classes, settings and rules sets need not be low options or low power. Magic is a thematic thing and one can always adjust the Power knob without touching the Theme knob. Slapping on magic can't fix things; it can only replace them.
A fireball doesn't really feel very magical either, BTW. Flashy, but not special.
See, there we disagree. If a guy makes a fireball out of rodent excrement by using hand gestures and chanting, you'll have to convince me that's not magic (convincing explanations can be found in Warhammer 40k, or the novel Lord of Light).
However, if a guy shoots arrows 5% more accurately, that looks and seems normal. People shoot arrows 5% more accurately than expected thousands of times every day. You'll have to go the extra mile to convince me that's magical. The same goes for moderate self-healing (given the abstract nature of hp) and a whole bunch of other stuff.
- AoE. A standard fighter isn't that great at crowd control, but one that could turn that whirlwind attack into a literal whirlwind would be neat.
- Healing. Not on the same scale as a cleric or paladin of course. Really, I'm mostly thinking of self-healing or temporary hit points. This does have the potential to just make the fighter better at fighting though and you'd have to be careful not to step on the monks toes.
- Buffs for others. Their awesome in combat could rub off on their allies. This would have to be something different that the paladin auras to keep things distinct.
You're talking about adding more stuff to the fighter. Ok, that might work if we were trying to fix pathfinder, but you're making a huge mistake in assuming that more power and adaptability means more magic.
Instead of becoming a whirlwind, the fighter could spin like a blender, evade attacks so well it's like fighting the wind or whatever.
Take a look at 4e, if you haven't already. Obviously its methods of balancing the classes aren't to some people's tastes, but it demonstrates how easy it is for fighter-like characters to recover, hit multiple things at once, buff allies and otherwise imitate the mechanics of casting while remaining on-theme. I'd go so far as to say it's no easier to do those things with magic than without.
Not only can many effects usually associated with casting in pathfinder be non-magical, in the case of the fighter, they must.
You can't give a class new abilities that don't resonate with its soul. The base fighter isn't blessed by the gods of light, becoming a dragon or acting as a living doorway to the plane of air. That's not who he is. If you want to make him into something else, sure. But in creating his new identity you destroy the old one. If your fighter-equivalent class turns into a wolf there are no fighters in your game, let alone fixed fighters.
So, you guys tell me what you guys think about my three home-brew campaign settings!
High Magic? Low Magic? How would you define them?
(Okay, so one isn't exactly a "home brew", as it is a thought-experiment. Still: add to those things!)
At a quick glance:
They all are about normal powered... the twilight seems to be more Magic is common place. While the Hellenistic one seems about average with maybe slightly higher divine magic. And the APG one is actually about normal powered... though probably leans more to magic being support based rather than the damage dealing reinforced glass cannon magic users. Meaning less 'Wizard snaps their fingers enemy army goes boom' and more tactics...I really wanna try a non-core class campaign...
I'm glad for a response! I was (and remain) genuinely curious to know what people think of them and how they look at them.
See, I would have said Twilight is standard PF due to it being Golarion-based.
I would guess that (both of) the Hellenistic one(s)* is strongly skewed toward the divine, but because of the dispensation of classes by region, instead of just being generally available, the nature of the campaign is going to vary greatly depending on where you play.
I'd tend to define the APG as extremely high-magic, considering the fact that all the world runs off the stuff, and society can't exist without it. But because it's a modified E6-like (with ways around level caps to make it E12, E24, and E-infinite), I really wasn't sure what it would look like to others. Add that to the fact that divine magic had a definite "good" feel to it, while arcane had a definite "evil" feel, it could have been perceived as one of those "anti-caster hate the arcanists" campaigns (which is not how I conceived of it at all).
Anyway, I appreciate any feedback at all!
By the way, I'd really like more feedback on 'em, as, you know, I'm interested in making them better. So you people who'd like to comment, don't comment on my descriptions here: they're hopelessly skewed toward my own bias and views, I'd much rather you look at what I wrote!
* It's actually two. So, you know.
@Mortuum, I never mentioned anything against low magic settings. As for what is magical, I think the idea that a fireball is the definition of magic is a little sad (see my earlier link). Of course, it is magic, but it's not really magical. Does the +2 sword created by the "mundane" blacksmith using Master Craftsman count as magic or not? To people watching it in use, it just looks like a very nice sword.
Characters above 10th level or so are well beyond what we'd consider humanly possible IRL. That could easily be because of the magical nature of the world they live in. They may not be tapping into that magic directly like a wizard does, but that doesn't have to make it any less magical.
I also think that giving the fighters more explicitly magical abilities would not cause them to cease being fighters, especially if those abilities were available to literally everyone.
Basically, the idea that it's not magic unless a wizard did it just doesn't sit right with me.
Also, slapping on magic can fix things just as much as hacking it out can. To fix things you need a lot more than such bandages either way and both are valid starting points.
Basically this all depends on how one defines High and Low Magic
Basically this all depends on how one defines High and Low Magic
There's more than high/low magic; there's also high/low fantasy and high/low "super-heroism".
If you accept to play up to higher levels (regardless of the campaign's level of magic), you accept that the characters are going to do unrealistically amazing things; that goes without saying. If you don't, then cap at 6th/8th/10th level depending on how unrealistically amazing you want your players to be.
Basically this all depends on how one defines High and Low MagicThere's more than high/low magic; there's also high/low fantasy and high/low "super-heroism".
If you accept to play up to higher levels (regardless of the campaign's level of magic), you accept that the characters are going to do unrealistically amazing things; that goes without saying. If you don't, then cap at 6th/8th/10th level depending on how unrealistically amazing you want your players to be.
I whole heartedly agree...
I'm absolutely in agreement with pretty much everything getting said here. Nobody seems to be bashing low magic and I'm certainly not trying to bash high.
What I don't get is what's so magical about being harder to find that an invisible person. We're verging on discussion of one of the more bizarre mechanics in pathfinder, but off the top of my head, a stealthy rogue could be quieter, disturb the air less, avoid being accidentally touched better and blend in so exceptionally well that the human eye doesn't have the resolution to recognise him.
That may be extreme, but it's much less extreme than jumping through a plate-glass window while emptying two pistols into a car, causing an explosion.
It's pretty clear that I am indeed operating on a different definition of "magical" here.
To me, magic, wonder and extreme capability often go together but aren't the same thing. I don't think a fireball is the definition of magic, because to me, magic is never about what happens. It's all in the how and why.
I'm all for characters becoming unrealistically good at stuff and doing whatever the game needs them to do, but I feel they should do it in a way that reflects their nature. Part of the reason the fighter is there is so people can choose not to be overtly magical.
If you ask me, slapping on magic does indeed help just as much as hacking it out, which is to say not at all, give or take.
@Mortuum: I think what most are getting at is by giving say a Fighter access to some form of basic ranged attack spell. You can give the feel of slightly higher level of magic in the world. Now this can be as simple as giving them access to a small list of Buff spells and attack spells and a spell progression similar to a Paladin or Ranger. Say access to magic missile, fireball, bull's strength, magic weapon/magic fang, etcetera.
Heck you could make it a archetype. I would be willing to sacrifice Heavy Armor Proficiency and bravery in favor of casting some self-buffs and/or ranged attack spells.
@Tacicslion: that was just a quick glance critique. I am planning on going back and looking over them in more detail. APG classes only seems to lean magic towards support spells rather than a Battlefield control & maximum DPR.
Hey, fine by me! I was just curious! :)
Hey, fine by me! I was just curious! :)
Though I could be totally wrong. BTW love the avatar. And Final Fantasy Fan?
YEP! (FFT especially!)
YEP! (FFT especially!)
One of the best games ever... and one of the best examples of a lower magic setting, no?