LotR does not completely translate at any PF level.
LotR would require a system with competency and tiered progression paths, and spellcasting would be completely different.
Assigning low/high level or magic when trying to smack PF onto the LotR setting depends on your own personal conceptualization of "level". No answer is really correct, but no answer is really wrong either.
Nope. First of all, no one would have had the Will to toss the Ring.Why not? You only have to hold it for three rounds. Pick up ring, cast greater teleport, toss ring into lava. Roll credits. Hell, bring Frodo along if he's the only one who can hold it.
Next- none of them have ever been there. They dont even have a "least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting." since no one but Sauron has ever been to the spot where Sauron made the Ring.You mean except Elrond, right?
as for "the feelings of mystery, danger, and adventure" I have had plenty of all three for the last forty years, thankyouverymuch, in some very high magic games.Hey man, it's just how I run my games. It can't hurt you.
No one had the Will to destroy the Ring. They'd have had to drop Frodo in, with the Ring. Not cricket, wot?
Elrond wasnt part of the Nine.
You were the one who indicated that you needed low-magic games to preserve the feelings of mystery, danger, and adventure, which indicates that High magic games dont.
Sure, its fine that you like Low magic. But please dont indicate you cant have "mystery, danger, and adventure" with High Magic.
Low or High, it's the DM and the players that make "mystery, danger, and adventure"- it's not the game, the level of magic or even the system.
It's likely The EYE functions as a magic circle vs good, dimensional anchor, and greater scrying spells for all of mordor since it's a greater artifact.Next- none of them have ever been there. They dont even have a "least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting." since no one but Sauron has ever been to the spot where Sauron made the Ring.Greater teleport. Although as noted above it's HIGHLY probable that Mordor is warded against teleportation.
as for "the feelings of mystery, danger, and adventure" I have had plenty of all three for the last forty years, thankyouverymuch, in some very high magic games. Maybe you cant run games with high magic and get those, but many others have been doing so for four decades.Agreed. Part of the issue is that people think teleportation solves the "Journey" issue instantly.
Some people don't understand.
You don't let them teleport somewhere.
You MAKE them teleport where they HAVE to go. Windowless underground buildings where every room looks identical, the dark pits of hell, anywhere you want to go you FORCE them to teleport you don't merely LET them teleport.
T
Great post, but do note that even Greater Teleport requires " at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting.""
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Elrond could have provided "at least a reliable description of the place."
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Elrond could have provided "at least a reliable description of the place."Gah posted too fast.
If I wanted to avoid someone just teleporting into Mt. Doom to destroy the Ring, I wouldn't so much ward Mt. Doom against teleportation as magically alarm and trap it. So if you Teleport to Mt. Doom, you can get shunted off course and wind up in the Dark Tower, in Sauron's throne room. TBH, you probably wouldn't even need a trap. The Ring could exert its will and influence your teleportation spell enough to accomplish that, or it's not much of an artifact. Barring that, you could just rule that teleporting with the One Ring will fail horribly ... maybe you end up shunted off Rhûn, and the Ring stays put, to be picked up by a new unwitting (and unprotected) bearer.
I'd also make it so that use of any powerful magic in Mordor immediately drew Sauron's gaze. And I'd make sure my wizard (or his advisers) knew it.
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No one had the Will to destroy the Ring. They'd have had to drop Frodo in, with the Ring. Not cricket, wot?Nope. First of all, no one would have had the Will to toss the Ring.Why not? You only have to hold it for three rounds. Pick up ring, cast greater teleport, toss ring into lava. Roll credits. Hell, bring Frodo along if he's the only one who can hold it.
Frodo didn't have the will to drop it on only because he'd spent the last few months under it's constant influence. Teleport him to Mt. Doom a couple of minutes after an exposition dump and him taking the ring from Bilbo, and he'd just toss it in without a care in the world.
Or, as others have pointed out, ending Sauron is probably well worth sacrificing a little hobbit for. Same story, except teleport him 2 feet above the center of the lava.
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There's more to the LotR low-magic-ness than failing to teleport the ring to the Cracks of Doom.
There's the ringraiths taking months, if not years to find Baggin's home (or the Shire for that matter).
There's Gandalf failing to fly-out/jump-out/dim door out of Saruman's tower.
There's Radaghast having to search into the wild for Gandalf (and given that he eventually did implies that there is some magic involved, just no scry or message spell).
There's Gandalf relying on a busy innkeeper to relay a message of utmost importance.
There's Gandalf wishing for warmer socks, which any prestidigitation spell would fix.
And there are many more. But there's undeniably magic in LotR. Lots of it too, but it has a lower tone, more subtle uses and less far reaching scope. It's not used as much as a tool or yet-another-app on your i-phone. LotR is one example of low-magic, but not the only one.
Low magic is not about removing magic from the game, it's about reducing its scope.
Laurefindel has hit the nail on the head there is plenty of magic in lord of the rings it's just much more subtle than the normal gamers version which is a fireball in the face
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How did this become another thread about LotR in PF?
I'm a fan of both things, but I never really want to live through this thread again.
By way of closing the book on that argument, ANY long-form fiction does not work in the RPG format, because they are different storytelling media entirely.
That's a good thing! RPGs can do things that books cannot, and vice versa, so I love them both.
Professor Tolkien was more concerned with thematic meaning and the languages he was creating than he was with closing simple plot holes. The deepest Tolkien fans must readily admit this. That's the charm of the books! But because of this, it doesn't hold up to the kind of scrutiny that PCs commonly apply when opening a locked door, much less teleporting across the continent in a bid to assassinate the main antagonist.
The Tolkien debate doesn't really inform the Low Magic discussion meaningfully.
A Low Magic campaign is when the Players and GM look at the levels of magic presence in the default Pathfinder rules, think "too much", and try to turn it down a notch.
There are a dozen tools a GM can use to turn UP the magic, I don't see why anyone would resist the option for GMs to turn it down.
Actually, I think it may have something to do with the power fantasy nature of Pathfinder, and that less magic is seen as necessarily weakening certain character types (actually all) ... So we quickly get into the politics of "my powerman is less powerful than Jim's powerman! It's not fair!"
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Laurefindel has hit the nail on the head there is plenty of magic in lord of the rings it's just much more subtle than the normal gamers version which is a fireball in the faceExcept for the part where Gandalf casts fire seeds. That's pretty overt.
Gandalf casts a bunch of spells, including overtly offensive ones (especially in The Hobbit) and makes a powerful display of magic in LotR against the Wargs before attempting the pass of the Caradhras and entering Moria (and also on Weathertop, although it happens "offscreen"). It could be argued that Gandalf is capable of more "overt" magic but restrained himself not to write "Gandalf is here" in big letters in the sky for Sauron to see. Gandlaf is undeniably a power and one of the most "flashy" magic-user in Middle Earth.
But characters like Gandalf don't make or unmake a low-magic setting. He is part of the setting and representative of the fact that in this setting, there are many magical elements sprinkled here and there, some powerful, some less, some overt, some covert, but he is not representative of what the inhabitants of this setting are or can aspire to be. Even if we say that Gandalf is what a player character (as an extraordinary inhabitant of the setting) can aspire to be as the pinnacle of spellcasting, it remains relatively tame compared to a typical D&D/Pathfinder game. That's enough to say "low-magic" for me.
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A Low Magic campaign is when the Players and GM look at the levels of magic presence in the default Pathfinder rules, think "too much", and try to turn it down a notch.
Indeed, it does not have to be more than that.
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I'm positive that the issue of PF and Tolkien has been exhaustively rendered elsewhere.
Let's get back to useful info about low-magic games?
Here's one: can any of you describe a low-magic campaign attempt that went totally of the rails due to the changes to rule assumptions? What happened? Go into detail!
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Low magic, huh?
Setting related, I suppose.
Personally, I don't think magic fits very well in the pathfinder setting.
The ability for a single person to obtain the power to destroy cities without schooling (sorcerer/oracle), completely negates the practicality of forming cities or countries. Walls are very impractical in the setting, as flying or teleportation is too common via magic. Most of the semi-medieval setting really doesn't fit well with heavy magic.
It is very likely that the inhabitants of a mid-high magic setting are nomadic, as they likely have no safety while stationary. You might be able to set up a temporary home near a being of great power, but even that is subject the lifespan (or whims) of said creature.
Most of the engineering skills required to create medieval armor, cities and their way of life, depend greatly on a stationary lifestyle. Nomands won't invent farming or walls. They just will never get invented.
Magic will replace these skills. They'll learn to use magic instead of learning technology. Why learn to fish, when you can conjure meals? Why learn another language when you can just cast a spell and never have to know another language? So on and so forth, magic replaces the need to have community, law, and most technology.
Magic replaces the need that spurs the technological advances required to invent half of the content for the pathfinder setting.
In general, pathfinder's setting reflects a, "what if medieval humans suddenly had magic?" Instead of, "What if medieval humans always had magic?"
That said, if we disregard reality, the pathfinder setting is fun. Not realistic, but it can be fun as a player escape from reality.
I'm positive that the issue of PF and Tolkien has been exhaustively rendered elsewhere.
Let's get back to useful info about low-magic games?
Here's one: can any of you describe a low-magic campaign attempt that went totally of the rails due to the changes to rule assumptions? What happened? Go into detail!
I did before. We had a campaign where casters were hunted down and feared like Witches at one time.
Thus, no in party healing.
We had to do a simple trek across the desert. 5-7 days.
Day one or two, minor bandit ambush. We all took a arrow or two. Stopped to rest. Had a random encounter in the morning. More resting. Did survival checks to get food and water. Repeat ad nauseum. Took us a loooooong time to make the "3 hour tour". Boring as hell.
DM changed the rules to "no overt spellcasting", the monk took a level in cleric. DM Handed out a few potions.
Still no "Ye Olde Magik Shoppe", but just a tiny bit of after combat magic healing makes a huge difference.... assuming you want to have more than one encounter a day.
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I'm positive that the issue of PF and Tolkien has been exhaustively rendered elsewhere.
Let's get back to useful info about low-magic games?
Here's one: can any of you describe a low-magic campaign attempt that went totally of the rails due to the changes to rule assumptions? What happened? Go into detail!
I did before. We had a campaign where casters were hunted down and feared like Witches at one time.
Thus, no in party healing.
We had to do a simple trek across the desert. 5-7 days.
Day one or two, minor bandit ambush. We all took a arrow or two. Stopped to rest. Had a random encounter in the morning. More resting. Did survival checks to get food and water. Repeat ad nauseum. Took us a loooooong time to make the "3 hour tour". Boring as hell.
DM changed the rules to "no overt spellcasting", the monk took a level in cleric. DM Handed out a few potions.
Still no "Ye Olde Magik Shoppe", but just a tiny bit of after combat magic healing makes a huge difference.... assuming you want to have more than one encounter a day.
I'd argue that at least part of that was your GM overusing the whole random encounter thing. Unless you're running a 'points of light' style campaign, they just shouldn't happen very often.
Why learn to fish, when you can conjure meals?
Well just to take this- that requires a 5th level cleric. It makes enuf food to feed 15 humans. I dont have the figures in front of me, but there's far less than one level 5+ cleric per 15 people. And, the food is super-bland. How much money do we spend on getting good tasting food?
I'd argue that at least part of that was your GM overusing the whole random encounter thing. Unless you're running a 'points of light' style campaign, they just shouldn't happen very often.I'm positive that the issue of PF and Tolkien has been exhaustively rendered elsewhere.
Let's get back to useful info about low-magic games?
Here's one: can any of you describe a low-magic campaign attempt that went totally of the rails due to the changes to rule assumptions? What happened? Go into detail!
I did before. We had a campaign where casters were hunted down and feared like Witches at one time.
Thus, no in party healing.
We had to do a simple trek across the desert. 5-7 days.
Day one or two, minor bandit ambush. We all took a arrow or two. Stopped to rest. Had a random encounter in the morning. More resting. Did survival checks to get food and water. Repeat ad nauseum. Took us a loooooong time to make the "3 hour tour". Boring as hell.
DM changed the rules to "no overt spellcasting", the monk took a level in cleric. DM Handed out a few potions.
Still no "Ye Olde Magik Shoppe", but just a tiny bit of after combat magic healing makes a huge difference.... assuming you want to have more than one encounter a day.
Well the bandits were planned. But random encounters occur 50% of the time per day or rest or once per "hex' moved.
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Well the bandits were planned. But random encounters occur 50% of the time per day or rest or once per "hex' moved.
See - that'd just be annoying to me in any game, high magic or low. After all - do merchant trains have to deal with a group of bandits / roving monsters once or twice a day?
If yes - then you're playing a 'points of light' campaign, where logically few people travel much given the risks invovled. (I've never played in one - but it could be good if done well.)
If no - then why the heck are the characters being hassled all of the time, likely by CR relevant enemies? (Especially annoying past the first few levels. Why didn't these high level wandering monsters eat you at 2nd level?)
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I'd agree that across the board, random encounters are pretty lame. I've long since moved to planned "random" encounters, usually only one or two per journey. Basically, I plan out a couple of encounters that are interesting and thematic to the journey, and give them a percent chance of occurring each day that increases over time, maxing at 100% the last day. The encounters are planned, and they WILL happen, the only thing that's random is when they happen.
Overall, I think we need to remember that low-magic isn't no-magic. There is usually enough magic to keep the system chugging along for the low-to-mid levels without too much tweaking. As magic goes down, the ratio of houserules-to-level goes up. At level 1 you can almost remove magic wholesale, only needing to remedy the lack of cure light wounds. At higher levels you generally require a mostly baseline level of magic to function, or else will be rewriting most of the system.
I did before. We had a campaign where casters were hunted down and feared like Witches at one time.
Thus, no in party healing.
We had to do a simple trek across the desert. 5-7 days.
Day one or two, minor bandit ambush. We all took a arrow or two. Stopped to rest. Had a random encounter in the morning. More resting. Did survival checks to get food and water. Repeat ad nauseum. Took us a loooooong time to make the "3 hour tour". Boring as hell.
DM changed the rules to "no overt spellcasting", the monk took a level in cleric. DM Handed out a few potions.
Still no "Ye Olde Magik Shoppe", but just a tiny bit of after combat magic healing makes a huge difference.... assuming you want to have more than one encounter a day.
So, first, I've run and played in lots of games (both low magic when I run and the regular high magic when I PCed) where nobody had healing magic. Now, usually, the GM doubles natural healing (and Pathfinder makes it easier with the ability of the Heal skill to actually cure HP), but that's usually all that's necessary.
Second, in the vast majority of games I've played, having more than one, MAYBE two fights in a day is nearly unheard of.
Third, the game you described doesn't sound boring to me. Honestly, having a bunch of "trash fights" (to use MMO lingo) every day in order t fill a quota sounds much more boring.
But that's kind of a huge point in this thread--people have different taste. I like low magic, you don't. That's fine. But there's no reason we can't play the same game and just enjoy it differently.
Personally, I don't think magic fits very well in the pathfinder setting.
The ability for a single person to obtain the power to destroy cities without schooling (sorcerer/oracle), completely negates the practicality of forming cities or countries. Walls are very impractical in the setting, as flying or teleportation is too common via magic. Most of the semi-medieval setting really doesn't fit well with heavy magic.
I disagree with this. Even today, single people have the power to destroy cities or even the world, given nukes that are far more powerfully destructive than any magic in pathfinder.
It's all about demographics, though. Granted, Golarion by default has a very high curve of leveled people (though not as much as Faerun), but it's easy to adjust it.
Say for example that only one in five hundred is each of the heroic classes, meaning 3.8% of the total population have heroic classes (and 1.2% are full casters). Say in addition to this 1% are adepts, and the remaining people are commoners, experts and aristocrts.
Let's also say that 1st level is the default, and for heroic classes every two persons of one level there is an additional one of one level higher (so 20 lvl 1> 5 lvl 2 > 1 lvl 3). For adepts we'll do for every four persons, since they're unlikely to get as much experience.
I know this is a pretty rough estimate and not all heroic classes would be equally common and it would depend on where you are and it disregards multiclass etc but this is just for the sake of a simple example. I also disregard the new hybrid classes for simplicity's sake.
Then we can look at Absalom, with it's population of 304 000. It would have this distribution:
Each of the PC classes:
306 1st level, 153 2nd level, 76 3rd level, 38 4th level, 19 5th level, 9 6th level, 4 7th, 2 8th, 1 9th.
Adepts:
914 1st, 228 2nd, 57 3rd, 14 4th, 3 5th.
4 Prepared full caster classes
2 Spontaneous full caster classes
5 2/3 caster classes
Adepts
2 light caster classes
Number of people with access to 5th spell level in the city: 4
Number of people with access to 4th spell level in the city: 28+6=34
Number of people with access to 3rd spell level in the city: 140+32+35=207
Number of people with access to 2nd spell level in the city: 596+146+363+17+14=1136
Number of people with access to 1st spell level in the city: 2432+1216+3040+1216+146=9050
Exceptions to this might exist on a case by case basis, and certain legendary characters would have powers much exceeding this, but they are very rare and exceptional. The High Mage in Absalom might be the only one in the state to have mastered teleportation, but she would bow deep in front The Green Wizard, an ancient transmuter that travels the lands in dragon shape, etc etc.
This way, only about a hundred people could fly in the whole state of Absalom. While spellcasting could definately change things such as availability of information, much more advanced "medicine" than what they had in the 1400's etc, it would not make walls pointless nor would it make diseases a non-issue for the working class.
Granted, this throws the "spellcasting services available per settlement size" chart out the window, but it's an example of how you could modify your setting without actually putting any hard limits on levels or spellcasting, just by changing demographics.
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Let's get back to useful info about low-magic games?Here's one: can any of you describe a low-magic campaign attempt that went totally of the rails due to the changes to rule assumptions? What happened? Go into detail!
Oh yes, I've seen it done badly a few times.
1) The GM set up was there was almost no creatures with any Su or SLA abilites (which leads to almost no magic items). But there were NO limits or modifications placed on the PC's. One of the players made a focused enchantment caster. Almost nothing had a decent will save or any any kind of resistance to enchantment spells. The campaign was just everyone else guarding the enchanter while he enspelled everyone. Army of bandits - charm the leader. They won't give you any info - charm them. Etc... Very easy, very boring, very quickly.
2) Another time the GM set-up didn't allow the PC's to have any casters. If a hybrid class, they had to take other stuff to trade away spell casting. But then the GM was running high magic modules as written. It actually played out fine. The party just made sure their gear defended them from magic and provided the needed utility/recovery effects. But the storyline suffered.
"Wait so any kind of casting is so rare that we can't be, hire, have known, or probably even have heard of real magic users. Ok got that. But there are still all these magic items readily available and every other being we have to fight is a caster?!?"
It just didn't make sense and we couldn't get into the story (or really even figure out what it was supposed to be).
3) The last wasn't really a rules problem as it was a clever player vs. slow to react GM.
Had been some war/cataclysm caused by and between casters. No casters are fanatically hunted and lynched before they can become a danger. Every kingdom has special dedicated teams of 'caster hunters' that go after and put down any casters that the locals have a problem with.
Our arcane trickster realized the best way to deal with any opposition was to set the mob after them. Magic aura, bestow spell casting abilities, planting a scroll/potion/spellbook, etc ... And practically anyone is either dead or at least so distracted that they can't oppose you.
1) The GM set up was there was almost no creatures with any Su or SLA abilites (which leads to almost no magic items). But there were NO limits or modifications placed on the PC's. One of the players made a focused enchantment caster. Almost nothing had a decent will save or any any kind of resistance to enchantment spells. The campaign was just everyone else guarding the enchanter while he enspelled everyone. Army of bandits - charm the leader. They won't give you any info - charm them. Etc... Very easy, very boring, very quickly.
2) Another time the GM set-up didn't allow the PC's to have any casters. If a hybrid class, they had to take other stuff to trade away spell casting. But then the GM was running high magic modules as written. It actually played out fine. The party just made sure their gear defended them from magic and provided the needed utility/recovery effects. But the storyline suffered.
"Wait so any kind of casting is so rare that we can't be, hire, have known, or probably even have heard of real magic users. Ok got that. But there are still all these magic items readily available and every other being we have to fight is a caster?!?"
It just didn't make sense and we couldn't get into the story (or really even figure out what it was supposed to be).3) The last wasn't really a rules problem as it was a clever player vs. slow to react GM.
Had been some war/cataclysm caused by and between casters. No casters are fanatically hunted and lynched before they can become a danger. Every kingdom has special dedicated teams of 'caster hunters' that go after and put down any casters that the locals have a problem with.
Our arcane trickster realized the best way to deal with any opposition was to set the mob after them. Magic aura, bestow spell casting abilities, planting a scroll/potion/spellbook, etc ... And practically anyone is either dead or at least so distracted that they can't oppose you.
1 & 2 are quite literally the opposite situations. If you ban it on one side, you might as well ban it on the other, otherwise you get that silly inconsistency and power flux. I'm not a fan of no magic, but if you were gonna have the house rules of #1, you might have the house rules of #2.
3 actually had me chuckle. Seems like your GM had problems deciphering his own world. One thing that always gets me is how a non caster can so easily discern the difference between scroll and scripture, potion and beverage, spell book and novel. Maybe it's a world that's just paranoid, so any sort of writing, brewery, or overt gestures have them running forward with pitch forks and fire.
Seems like the GMs in those games just have a bad sense of balance. I wouldn't want to play games like that, and I'm sure most GMs would prefer to avoid situations like that.
Seems like the GMs in those games just have a bad sense of balance.
Well, yes. But in my experience, well over 90% of the GMs who want a "low magic" game have a bad sense of balance. At some level "bad sense of balance" turns into "isn't a preternaturally good game master."
I mean, yes, the only reason that you get hit by a bullet is because you didn't dodge fast enough, and the only reason it injures you is because you don't have thick enough skin. The reason that you can't lift a car is because you haven't developed your deadlift well enough, and the only reason you aren't a trillionaire is because you aren't wealthy enough.
... but the people I have met have a track record of not being able to meet those standards, which is why I consider the standards to be the problem, not the people who can't make them.
I wouldn't want to play games like that,
Nor would I. And in my experience, "low magic D&D" (and its clones) are "games like that," which is why I recommend you don't do it.
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My point was that I prefer low magic games, and in fact most of the games that have burned me have been high magic games where the magic just got silly and killed my immersion; this is as a player.
The problems with all 3 of those situations above was not "low magic" it was the GM who put in a houserule that skewed who had magic; in fact you can see where it was the magic in the "low magic" game that ruined the fun. Sometimes you have to sit back and look at what you've done and say, "Wow, that was a dumb idea". Or if you're too dense, hopefully your players will let you know.
I am a GM who gives in to his players. When I decide what kind of game I am running, I consider the players' fun. With my players, immersion is important. They want do want challenges, but it doesn't make sense for their characters to walk if they've got a free ride going where they're going. They want to have something powerful to fall back on, but it pulls them out of the game when they realize that every other person can use cheap tricks to live forever, but for some odd reason doesn't. If there is an auto-win button with no consequence, they don't want to insult their own intelligence to have fun.
I can't say I have a great sense of balance, and even my sense of "low magic" can be considered "high magic" based on some of the posts up here. I do know that I like to add 1)Rituals, 2)Rare Important Magical Components, and 3)Side Effects for Powerful Spells. All of these things are tropes in fantasy but strangely missing in D&D.
D&D type games, including Pathfinder, make a lot of (unrealistic, IMO) assumptions about the world in which the game is set. There is strong magic (by which I mean magic which can do spectacular and very powerful things) and everybody knows it. It's all over the place. So not just strong, but high (as opposed to low). There's more gold running around than you can shake a stick at. And yet cities have walls (presumably to keep out the ravening hordes of non-magic using enemies (walls, as someone pointed out above, aren't much use against mages), and most countries are run by non-mages. If you look too closely at these assumptions, they don't make any sense.
So what? If you're having fun in Golarion-as-is, that's really all that matters. If you're not, if you can't get past the inconsistencies, you can try to modify the system, although it takes an awful lot of work to do that without introducing even more inconsistencies. Or you can adventure in someplace like Kethira, where the first law of the Shek-Pvar (mages) is "Bring not the scorn of the Kvikîr [ordinary folk] upon thy brothers, nor make with thyne art a place for thyself above them," the second is "Spread not thy lore, even among thy brothers, without sanction of thy peers," and magic is hard to acquire and hard (and often dangerous) to use.
BTW, Kethira is the center of the "Kethiran Family" of worlds, and has direct connections to six others: Terra, Midgaad (of LOTR fame), the Blessed Realm (also of LOTR fame - aka Valinor), Yashain (domain of many of the gods of Kethira), Losenor (something destroyed the planet - there's nothing left but a cloud of radioactive gas), and Sherem (which is a high magic world, and the site of an early campaign of the creator of all this, N. Robin Crossby). There are more worlds beyond those.
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I would love to play a "low magic" magic game, but i guess i simple don't have the time for it.
I often wonder if what many GMs really wanted is a SLOWER game, where people has time to discuss the lore about that +1 longsword, or tracking over half the kingdom a potion seller who has potions of cure moderate wounds. After years and years of campaing, people deserve to be teleporting around the continent because they already been everywhere.
Some people long for a more literally game how was played back then in 1E. But nowdays everything is fastpaced, you didn't even used that 3rd level spell and you already learning the 4th.
I guess it's sad.
So what? If you're having fun in Golarion-as-is, that's really all that matters. If you're not, if you can't get past the inconsistencies, you can try to modify the system, although it takes an awful lot of work to do that without introducing even more inconsistencies.
But that's what most of us who oppose "low magic Pathfinder" have been saying, and what (by my reading) most of the proponents have been ignoring.
A lot of people are suggesting simplistic and ill-thought out changes that will end up playing havoc with game balance if straightforwardly implemented. For example, "no magic shops" actually makes PCs more powerful, because everyone takes crafing feats and makes their own, so you need some way to prevent this, which unexpectedly nerfs martials because they can't get the toys they need, and so on. All of which is well-discussed upthread.
It's a real problem, and the more the people proposing low-magic handwave this issue a way, the more I realize that they have, as Ragnarok Aeon put it, "a bad sense of balance,".... to the point where I consider wanting "low-magic D&D" to be an indicator of having a bad sense of balance.
D&D type games, including Pathfinder, make a lot of (unrealistic, IMO) assumptions about the world in which the game is set. There is strong magic (by which I mean magic which can do spectacular and very powerful things) and everybody knows it. It's all over the place. So not just strong, but high (as opposed to low). There's more gold running around than you can shake a stick at. And yet cities have walls (presumably to keep out the ravening hordes of non-magic using enemies (walls, as someone pointed out above, aren't much use against mages), and most countries are run by non-mages. If you look too closely at these assumptions, they don't make any sense.
While I think pathfinder assumes high amounts of magic items, there is not as much actual magic as you think. You have to get a small city to even be able to hire someone to cast fly for you.
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I understand the crafting feats helps Martials because they get the tools they need to succeed but why not take away "Pay x amt of gold, craft said item" and put in they actually need the material components, get rid of X gold = item needed to do whatever and you put some balance back in the game.
Casters can't just spend 5,000 gp to cast a spell, they need the actual spell components. Crafting needs the physical materials to make the items and the work space to do so, I know this is all "down time" but the other side is they have to adventure and use their "skills" to get said items. Maybe the Smith won't allow you to use his anvil and hammer but his shop is open to you, now you have to go and find an anvil, carry it back, plus you have to buy a hammer.
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Orfamay, are you saying "a lot" of people have suggested solutions as simplistic and ill-thought out as "just ban magic shops and it's fine"? Because most people I've seen post their lower-magic house rules in these forums have done a fair bit more thinking than that.
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So what? If you're having fun in Golarion-as-is, that's really all that matters. If you're not, if you can't get past the inconsistencies, you can try to modify the system, although it takes an awful lot of work to do that without introducing even more inconsistencies.But that's what most of us who oppose "low magic Pathfinder" have been saying, and what (by my reading) most of the proponents have been ignoring.
A lot of people are suggesting simplistic and ill-thought out changes that will end up playing havoc with game balance if straightforwardly implemented. For example, "no magic shops" actually makes PCs more powerful, because everyone takes crafing feats and makes their own, so you need some way to prevent this, which unexpectedly nerfs martials because they can't get the toys they need, and so on. All of which is well-discussed upthread.
It's a real problem, and the more the people proposing low-magic handwave this issue a way, the more I realize that they have, as Ragnarok Aeon put it, "a bad sense of balance,".... to the point where I consider wanting "low-magic D&D" to be an indicator of having a bad sense of balance.
That is starting to sound really rather needlessly insulting.
Some of us have thought about it quite a bit. I have not hand waved away any problems. I thought carefully about them and discussed them with my players. Then we tried it to see what would happen.
Some things worked some didn't. We kept what did and changed what didn't. A few things were issues that were not expected and we had to add in something to deal with them. Generally speaking we did not find the need to make nearly the sweeping changes that I have repeatedly been told HAVE to be made or it will fail. There was no havoc with game balance. The game isn't really balanced now and it didn't seem that much worse with our modifications.
We have had very successful games that have not had all the problems that the gloomers assure us will happen. I have had several players request me to run another low magic campaign (unfortunately I had to move for work).
I do not inflict it on anyone that doesn't want it. My current group is not at all interested in a low magic campaign, so I won't try to run one. If I end up in another group that is interested, I probably will.
I will not claim to be a great GM. But I am far from the worst I have encountered. I have only had one campaign crash and burn, but that was due to out of game issues between several of the players.
Orfamay, are you saying "a lot" of people have suggested solutions as simplistic and ill-thought out as "just ban magic shops and it's fine"? Because most people I've seen post their lower-magic house rules in these forums have done a fair bit more thinking than that.
I ban magic shops in all my games, including high magic games - which comprise the majority of my games. I've played low magic, but very rarely, only twice in 30+ years. Magic shops were banned in my 1e games too.
Perhaps there's an expectation of magic shops in Pathfinder APs, but then I wouldn't know, nor care, as I never run APs only homebrew campaigns ever.
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But that's what most of us who oppose "low magic Pathfinder" have been saying
So why are you even here? This thread is called "Why low magic?" Why are you here complaining, acting defensive, and lashing out at people who describe their own personal playstyle to you?
Better yet, let me put you at ease. I promise you that no Paizo employee is going to read this thread and say, "Great idea, let's immediately recall all Pathfinder products and rewrite the entire game system to be low magic so we can force it on everyone!"
If low magic isn't your thing, good for you. Move on. Hey, why not start another thread about high magic campaigns? There's really no point to you even being here if all you're going to do is insult people by insinuating they're bad DMs or try to belittle their opinions.
1 & 2 are quite literally the opposite situations. If you ban it on one side, you might as well ban it on the other, otherwise you get that silly inconsistency and power flux. I'm not a fan of no magic, but if you were gonna have the house rules of #1, you might have the house rules of #2.
3 actually had me chuckle. Seems like your GM had problems deciphering his own world. One thing that always gets me is how a non caster can so easily discern the difference between scroll and scripture, potion and beverage, spell book and novel. Maybe it's a world that's just paranoid, so any sort of writing, brewery, or overt gestures have them running forward with pitch forks and fire.
Seems like the GMs in those games just have a bad sense of balance. I wouldn't want to play games like that, and I'm sure most GMs would prefer to avoid situations like that.
Not so much a bad sense of balance as an inability to extensively abstract the non-immediate results of a set of initial conditions.
The first didn't consider what could happen when you only limit one side of the conflict. His world/setting actually worked pretty well and made sense within itself. But the players simply didn't fit into it sensibly since they didn't follow the same rules.
I think the second just didn't have his world plans finalized before he started things compounded by wanting to use 'kool' published material even if it didn't fit his world.
The 3rd didn't realize some of what could be done with even low level magic that the other side has no way to discover when they have no magic. The limiting magic because it is hated is a fairly common attempt. But you have to then give the mundanes some way to tell magic is being used against them.
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I would love to play a "low magic" magic game, but i guess i simple don't have the time for it.
I often wonder if what many GMs really wanted is a SLOWER game, where people has time to discuss the lore about that +1 longsword, or tracking over half the kingdom a potion seller who has potions of cure moderate wounds. After years and years of campaing, people deserve to be teleporting around the continent because they already been everywhere.
Some people long for a more literally game how was played back then in 1E. But nowdays everything is fastpaced, you didn't even used that 3rd level spell and you already learning the 4th.I guess it's sad.
Yup, pcs can hit 20th level in a couple of months of adventuring. I love a slower paced game. I liked the years of campaigning to get a character to grow. Everyone seems to be on a "1-20 in as quick a timeframe as possible then onto the next PC". We used to cherish the journey and now it seems to be all about the destination. It is sad...and I have seen quite a few times where I got new shiny abilities without using the ones gained 2 sessions ago when I leveled before. I want a slow burn, lots of downtime, not gaining 2-3 levels in one adventure/dungeon. Even on slow XP rate it isn't slow enough for me. I want to play once a week for 3-4 hours each time and take a year to get to level 6. Another year to get to 12....I want to invest in my PC instead of keep wishing for more and more faster and faster until I wish my PC into retirement because the campaign was over so quick....
Yup, pcs can hit 20th level in a couple of months of adventuring. I love a slower paced game. I liked the years of campaigning to get a character to grow. Everyone seems to be on a "1-20 in as quick a timeframe as possible then onto the next PC". We used to cherish the journey and now it seems to be all about the destination. It is sad...and I have seen quite a few times where I got new shiny abilities without using the ones gained 2 sessions ago when I leveled before. I want a slow burn, lots of downtime, not gaining 2-3 levels in one adventure/dungeon. Even on slow XP rate it isn't slow enough for me. I want to play once a week for 3-4 hours each time and take a year to get to level 6. Another year to get to 12....I want to invest in my PC instead of keep wishing for more and more faster and faster until I wish my PC into retirement because the campaign was over so quick....
Even that seems pretty fast to me. Getting to level 20 should require a lifetime of dedicated training. If a character is entirely focused on advancing they should maybe gain a level a year at most. Maybe a level every four years for less dedicated NPC types. If leveling is so easy why isn't that reflected in the NPCs? Every basic orc warrior should be at least level 5 or higher. At the standard leveling rates I don't see how anybody but teenagers would be level 1.
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Yup, pcs can hit 20th level in a couple of months of adventuring.
D&D society is essentially impossible. Not because Wizards are producing expensive items with their minds or because high level Clerics can raise the dead, but because the character advancement is so fast that it is literally impossible for anyone to keep tabs on what the society even is. High level characters are the military, economic, and social powerbases of the world. And they apparently rise from nothing in about 2 1/2 months. That means that if a peasant goes home to plant his crops, then when he gets back to the city with his harvest in the fall the city will have seen the rise of a group of hearty adventurers who attempt to conquer the world and achieve godhood four times while he's gone. The city will have been conquered by a horde of Dao and sucked into the Elemental Plane of Earth and then returned to the prime material as a group of escaped Dao slaves achieved their freedom and themselves became powerful plane hopping adventurers who graduated to the Epic landscape. Then a team of renegade soldiers from the Dao army will have run into the countryside and survived in the Spider Woods long enough to return with the Spear of Ankhut to return the city to the Dao Sultan in exchange for a gravy train of concubines and wishes. Then a squad of frustrated concubines will have turned on their masters and engaged in a web of intrigue culminating in the poisoning of the Dao Sultan with Barghest Bile and ultimately turned the city into a matriarchal magocracy run by ex-concubine sorceresses. So when the peasant returns with his harvest of wheat, he returns to a black edifice of magical stone done up in Arabian styles and bedecked with weaponry from Olympus that is all controlled by epically subtle and powerful wizards who are themselves the masters of a setting created from the fallout of the destruction of a setting that is itself the fallout of the destruction of a setting that was in turn created out of the destruction of the setting that our peasant walked away from with a bag of grain come planting time last year.
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A lot of the "hurry up and hit 20" is really more like "hurry up and hit 5 or so" simply because there's a point where many builds start to get mechanically interesting. I'd be satisfied with a faster progression at low levels than mid and high levels. So hitting 5 might only take a few weeks of adventuring, but hitting 20 could still take a lifetime of heroics.
But some of it really is "hurry up and finish this character so we can move on to the next"--if for no other reason than people want to play a variety of characters during their (real world) lifetime.
So hitting 5 might only take a few weeks of adventuring, but hitting 20 could still take a lifetime of heroics.
Way back when, the XP needed for 3rd level was twice as much as you needed for 2nd. And the amount for 4th was twice as much as you needed for 3rd. By the time you hit 9th, you needed to complete multiple large-scale adventures to gain a single level.
So hitting 5 might only take a few weeks of adventuring, but hitting 20 could still take a lifetime of heroics.Way back when, the XP needed for 3rd level was twice as much as you needed for 2nd. And the amount for 4th was twice as much as you needed for 3rd. By the time you hit 9th, you needed to complete multiple large-scale adventures to gain a single level.
But that was before the game became what is essentially deckbuilding with superpowers.
That's what the game is now. And it's fun, when you take it on its own terms.
The pace of advancement used to bother me a great deal, but then I realized that it's just one of the many disbeliefs I must suspend in order to enjoy this game.