1) PCs are the exception, not the rule. How easy or common it is to learn magics among PCs has very little bearing on the population at large. People lose sight of this point for lots of stuff, not just magic.
2) The average good aligned cleric probably DOES blow much of their daily resources on healing randos. Have you ever noticed how every 1st level adventure starting town has a cleric several levels higher than the PCs? Ever notice how they don't go and solve the local goblin problem? What do you think they do? (My bet: before the sun sets every night, any townsfolk with injuries gathers at the church and the Cleric channels to heal them all at once.)
3) The idea of a single spellcaster solving all the problems of a large city is impossible. They can't be everywhere at once, and even if they could they don't have enough spell slots. Even covering basic medicine would be impossible-- what happens when the construction worker on the other side of town has an accident and starts bleeding out? But consider trying to replace pack animals with ant haul. Do you know how much transportation occurs to feed a city? Because you aren't just talking about casters in the city, you are talking about casters working at every farm when they ship the harvest off to market, probably employing the casters as cart drivers if it takes more than one day to travel to the city.
4) While clerics may get their spell slots renewed for free each day, making potions costs money. So do wands and staves, and those additional require a caster to use.
5) Clerics get their powers from gods. Gods like to have big expensive churches built to honor them.
6) In light of the above, it is entirely likely that some form of socialized medicine exists. Adventurers simply make too much money to have their prices subsidized; when you buy a wand of CLW you are actually paying for that entire congregation's general well being.
7) Having this access to somewhat affordable magic health care (and some other magic perks) probably has shaped Golarion society in lots of ways that set it apart from historical medieval society. It probably contributes to literacy being nearly universal. Also, I don't seem to recall things like disease and starvation being nearly as big a problem as it was in the medieval period.
8) We actually do have magic which is dangerous to practice: Rituals. This is also the only kind of spells which are available to non-casters by default. So for the average commoner it can in fact be quite dangerous to attempt magic. (The average commoner did not have the opportunity to study magical books for years, is not the favored champion of a deity, and was not born with magic in their blood.)
9) Magic has become super prevalent in Golarion societies before, leading to vastly different worlds than we are used to. Usually some member of that society messes up a ritual and causes a global level apocalypse. Golarion is still working its way out of those dark ages.
I'd chock the higher level cleric staying at home while the PCs deal with a problem as more an instance of genre convention/poor writing than anything else. By any logical stretch of the imagination Pardeux the Holy Man can take a day off from healing people's booboos to deal with the goblins raiding the village. But if he did do that, the PCs are kinda out of an adventure so we tend to look past that.
The way you describe magic is an interesting and strongly thematic way of doing it. It could make the basis of a cool rpg magic system. But not Pathfinder's one, which is very different in feel. You could certainly houserule this kind of thing into your campaign, or perhaps look at a different system altogether that's simpler to customise.
I think this might work better for magic items than magic in general. Casting spells is fine, but carrying around that wand will give you cancer.....
This could solve another problem:
1) remove restrictions on who can use any item.
2) the first time you use an item each day, it costs you 10 hps.
These two changes makes magical items a better fit for magic items. Low level fighters can spare 10 hps more than low level wizards. Casters don't really need any more toys anyway....
1. Magic in those games is still stronger than anything else. In WoD, everyone treats mages as the most OP, given time for preparation. Shadowrun fans are whining about "magicrun". CoC is, well, CoC.
You have played Pathfinder, right? A wizard, given "time for preparation" is easily the most powerful class in the game.
Might be shocking for you, but yes.
thflame wrote:
The issue comes from creating a balanced system. I have heard that magic needs to be costly/dangerous, rare, or trivially weak if you don't want it to completely run your setting.
"Rare" doesn't work well in a TTRPG, because the best way to make magic "rare" is to ban PCs from using it. You COULD let one of your PCs be one of the few casters in the world, but everyone else is going to play second fiddle to them, unless the WHOLE party is casters.
People don't seem to like magic being trivially weak or costly/dangerous because everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too.
I personally love the idea that magic is powerful, but that it is dangerous to cast. Pathfinder lore implies that this is the case, yet we have zero mechanics to represent this.
You're missing my point. Countless games tried that "powerfull, but dangerous" route and in those, magic still trumps everything. Magic is just more flexible than mundane tools. Even with the toning down of spellcasting, like D&D 5e did and PF2 aims for, even with penalizing mecahnics like CoC, even with risk-management mechanics, like Mage and SR, magic is stronger.
You make everyone "magical", or you penalize magic to the point of being unfun to play, or nerf it to not feeling awesome. Otherwise it'll trump mundane, just on the basis of being infinitely more versatile and the allowance for non-linear, non-conservative problem solving.
As for magic being dangerous in PF (aka, on Golarion), I never took it as magic itself being dangerous in the sense of being inherently corrupting, or health-wrecking, It's just dangerous, because power corrupts and all the trafficking with otherworldly creatures and such.
I'd chock the higher level cleric staying at home while the PCs deal with a problem as more an instance of genre convention/poor writing than anything else. By any logical stretch of the imagination Pardeux the Holy Man can take a day off from healing people's booboos to deal with the goblins raiding the village. But if he did do that, the PCs are kinda out of an adventure so we tend to look past that.
In the olden days, that higher level Cleric could have low STR and low CON, and have spent his life as a Priest largely unsuited to the rigors of going out in the field fighting. 3.5 even had a Cloistered Cleric who was worse at attacking and had less armor/HP but more skills to simulate that. Bonus points if he's old and is taking penalties to physical stats.
Of course, with how stats work in 2e, everyone's stats are so similar that such an explanation doesn't really fly anymore.
I'd chock the higher level cleric staying at home while the PCs deal with a problem as more an instance of genre convention/poor writing than anything else. By any logical stretch of the imagination Pardeux the Holy Man can take a day off from healing people's booboos to deal with the goblins raiding the village. But if he did do that, the PCs are kinda out of an adventure so we tend to look past that.
In the olden days, that higher level Cleric could have low STR and low CON, and have spent his life as a Priest largely unsuited to the rigors of going out in the field fighting. 3.5 even had a Cloistered Cleric who was worse at attacking and had less armor/HP but more skills to simulate that. Bonus points if he's old and is taking penalties to physical stats.
Of course, with how stats work in 2e, everyone's stats are so similar that such an explanation doesn't really fly anymore.
A cool variant they have in 5th Ed, is an unarmored cleric, you get to add your Wis mod to AC (wearing no armour, shield, can only wield a quarterstaff), like a monk, for your staff and sandals type priest.
Now to address the second part of Kong’s piece. How to limit magic.
Traditionally there are many ways of limiting magic, but what happens in my experience is unless the penalties are low, casters are quickly regulated to NPC status. Really who wants to play a caster or even be around that caster, that has a chance to be turned into a toad, get injured, get an extra-plainer entity involved, or even kill the party on a miscue? And yes I have seen all of these happen.
All of these limits take and niche a lot of games because of how bad they treat the casters. I have tried many different games, and those games that use magic and limit magic hard get put into niche slots. D&D from Chainmail on through have put a non-burden limit on magic, and thus those games have remained popular and all other game designers either work off D&D or run away from D&D.
Finally Vanceing magic, I like this magic system due to the ease of use, speed of learning, and versatility of the system. Most other systems are no where near as friendly to do what you want to do.
Personally I have used magic with point buys, with spell points, with other burdens on casting, and with ability drains, etc. I have found that all of these systems are usually harder to learn, do not give the variety of spells and abilities that Vanceing magic does and burden the player with a lot of tracking issues.
You're missing my point. Countless games tried that "powerfull, but dangerous" route and in those, magic still trumps everything.
Just because other systems haven't gotten it right doesn't mean that it isn't possible to get it right.
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Magic is just more flexible than mundane tools. Even with the toning down of spellcasting, like D&D 5e did and PF2 aims for, even with penalizing mecahnics like CoC, even with risk-management mechanics, like Mage and SR, magic is stronger.
If magic has downsides, it SHOULD be stronger. It's a risk-reward system, where being able to incinerate an army comes at the cost that you may accidentally spontaneously combust instead.
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You make everyone "magical..."
This is already a thing. Everyone is expected to use magic items and most classes have magical options attached to them. I'd personally like to see this scaled back to the point where magic items are entirely optional if you want to be an effective character. (It would also be nice to not have to spend 15 minutes rewriting all of your bonuses if you happen to wind up in an anti-magic field.)
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...or you penalize magic to the point of being unfun to play...
Not "unfun", but just enough to make the caster think twice about whether or not he wants to risk magical backlash to solve a given problem with magic.
To expand on this, I want casters to be able to cast a few spells per day with little to no risk of backlash. At certain levels, I want a caster's lower level spells to be free of risk too. I just don't want every encounter or obstacle to be instantly solved with magic because the caster can.
Spoiler:
I would have every spell have a version at every spell level from cantrip to level 10. Once you learn a spell, you can cast it at any level, but you must be able to make a check to successfully cast.
For example, the caster rolls d20 + level + Mod. + Proficiency vs DC 10 + 3 x Spell Level + Backlash Modifier.
Success: Spell is cast and Backlash Modifier increases by 1.
Critical Success: Spell is cast.
Failure: Spell fails and backlash Modifier increases by 1.
Critical Failure: Spell fails, backlash modifier increases by 1 and backlash occurs.
Backlashes are a list of random effects that scale based on how large your backlash modifier is. You roll randomly on a table for the base effect, which can be anything from taking damage, to being cursed, to being polymorphed into a harmless creature.
Your backlash modifier decreases by a number equal to your level each night after 8 hours of rest.
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...or nerf it to not feeling awesome.
I actually don't want this. I want magic to be powerful, but dangerous. Unfortunately, if the community is dead set on magic being perfectly safe to use, as common as flies on a dead orc, and balanced with non-magical mechanics, it really needs to be toned down to the point that it isn't automatically better than mundane solutions. I would much rather see the community give ground on magic being perfectly safe to use.
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Otherwise it'll trump mundane, just on the basis of being infinitely more versatile and the allowance for non-linear, non-conservative problem solving.
Magical solutions SHOULD trump non-magical solutions. There should just be a downside to CONSTANTLY relying on magical solutions.
For example, the party comes to a canyon that they need to cross. They could climb down, walk across the bottom, and climb back up, or the wizard could cast fly or teleport to get them across. If the wizard chooses to cast a spell, it has a small risk of causing a backlash, or it causes later casts to have a higher risk of backlash, depending on how many spells he has cast so far that day.
If the party is in a hurry, or they think the climb is more dangerous than the expected backlash, or if they aren't worried about needing reliable magic later, they'll ask the wizard to cast the spell.
If they are worried about the backlash, or they think they will need reliable magic later, or the climb isn't that much of a hindrance to them, they get out the rope and pitons and get to work.
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As for magic being dangerous in PF (aka, on Golarion), I never took it as magic itself being dangerous in the sense of being inherently corrupting, or health-wrecking, It's just dangerous, because power corrupts and all the trafficking with otherworldly creatures and such.
Golarion lore references Arcane Universities where 1/4th of the students die before they graduate because a spell backfires/misfires, or they accidentally summon a creature that they can't control.
It also references young sorcerers that accidentally kill their family and burn their village to the ground because they can't control their magic.
Magic IS dangerous in Golarion Lore, it just isn't in Pathfinder, because people would cry if they had to roll for a backfire every time they wanted to go nova.
This is really an instance where, in general, Pathfinder players want balance between Casters and Martials, but they don't want to implement any of the necessary solutions to solve the problem.
What if you have gauge, a tolerance to how much magic you can be effected by over the course of an hour and be okay, instead of a pool. You stay under your tolerance and you are fine, no problems. During fights or challenges, the gauge fills up as magic is used on you or you are exposed to magic. The gauge empties every hour you go without magic being used on you or around you.
Mechanically, this is not very different from the way spell slots and resonance currently play anyway, outside of the faster refresh timer and inflicting extra negatives on the character.
I have always role-played that as my spell slots diminish, it is because I am fatiguing my magic ability. If resonance stays and I choose to play PF2, I will role-play low or negative resonance as stressful (unless I play a Dwarf, in which case I might play it as natural and refreshing to be cleansed of the magic taint that built up while I slept).
A faster refresh timer with a smaller pool seems like an interesting option for Resonance.
Say you start with 3 Resonance + Cha and get 1 Resonance at level 2,4,6,8,10,13,16,19 (this may be too much, I haven't fully thought the idea out).
You Invest your permanent items, leaving you with 0-5 resonance.
During a combat you can use them up, but after an encounter ends they refresh (still minus the invested Resonance, of course). Probably add a short timer for refresh, to have the occasional danger of two fights in a row to encourage people not to constantly blow through all Resonance every fight. Either a flat 10 minutes and they all come back or perhaps they refresh at the rate of 1 per minute.
Additionally, you can still overdraw, but each point you overdraw becomes "Invested", i.e. they do not refresh at the end of the encounter and must wait for you to get rest and the next day. Either keep the Flat check or just remove it, since now there is a cost for overdrawing anyway.
Setting speak. This is not antagonistic, but everyone can get cynical about the absolute simplicity of a typical DnD magical system. The fact that the effects of DnD magic is not more deeply investigated and its effects examined, how it will affect societies, how it affects trades, how it gets political, this is not done because old DnD writers were lazy or stupid. You are just meant not to question it.
There will always be settings that are meant to be taken for face value. Is the wizard society in Harry Potter ACTUALLY functional? Is it believable? Do wizards control the parliament, are wizards immune to bullets? Rowling will introduce money, banks, wizard councils, but she will not have armed muggle soldiers fight wizards, because that is not actually part of the setting. You can create new settings by just doing the "twist spinning". I am sure you have not been the first one to think what "oh, what if magic was actually dangerous to use..."
There does exist genre fantasy that interweaves its magic into its world-building much more solidly, and holds together more consistently, than Dragonlance or Harry Potter. It's not all that hard to find, and give that being possible, I am inclined to think it is desirable in a setting; it improves plausibility for some players, and does not that I can see make the setting any less fun for people who can enjoy just taking something at face value without wanting to understand it at a deeper level, which is not my preferred playstyle.
Maybe you should just be playing a low magic game then? Instead of complaining that a high magic game is a high magic game?
Golarion is not a high-magic setting. People are still using agriculture for food rather than magically creating it all, travelling by horse or boat rather than everybody teleporting everywhere, solving mysteries with adventures resolving clues rather than telepathically scanning everyone until they find the culprit, &c, &c, &c.
It's not even a particularly high-magic medium-magic setting, unlike certain settings where it is difficult to go outside your front door in the morning without tripping over Elminster.
You're missing my point. Countless games tried that "powerfull, but dangerous" route and in those, magic still trumps everything. Magic is just more flexible than mundane tools.
And will continue to be for so long as making high-level martials really awesome gets such a howl of outrage from people who object to that being unrealistic.
The magic soft-caps you are mentioning are not going to balance things any better than hard-caps do. People will use magic until it becomes detrimental, then they'll just wait until it's okay to use again, just as if they ran out of spell slots. This doesn't fix the 15-minute adventuring day.
One thing that always comes up in questions about magic is "Why doesn't everyone learn magic if it's so easy to learn?"
People tend to forget three things.
Casters are not selfless. If anything, they tend to be the most self centered, arrogant, self righteous people in the games. Look at how many disasters they cause, for one! It's unlikely they're going to share their spells with anyone else, RAW aside.
Not everyone can learn magic. PC's have an easy time learning magic by RAW, but there is a caveat, stated in the books almost every time: PCs ARE NOT AVERAGE PEOPLE. Sure, a PC can learn magic by taking a level in the spell casting class....but that doesn't mean anyone else can. NPCs are invariably described as having put large amounts of time and effort into learning magic. There are no NPCs who simply 'leveled up' into magic by their descriptions. Pcs are beyond the norm.
Trust. In addition to money, there is another factor - trust. It takes time to do stuff; even a witch, who can literally heal every strange they meet once per day, can only travel so much through a town and take care of these people. She has to talk with them for one - and she has to be allowed to deal with them for another. Not every person is simply going to trust a spellcaster to do what the spellcaster says he's going to do. In fact, your average person is going to be very, very wary of letting a stranger use any magic at all on them. Because spellcasters do weird stuff, like blow up cities, summon demons, try and kill gods, and break continents. This is known fact in the universes where they exist; there's usually at least one disaster area caused specifically by a spellcaster doing something he shouldn't. and you're going to let this strange cast spells on you, or the village well, or enchant a wagon? Not bloody likely.
I look at it like a bell curve 10 is suppose to be an average int. that means like 58% of the population can't cast a 1st level spell cause their not smart enough. a character with a 18 int is probably like 1% if not .1% of the population. then you have to have the want and have the opportunity to be a wizard.
Few people actually want caster nerfs, most just want martials to have good options for out of combat contribution.
The problem being that no one agrees on what those options should be.
No anime Fighters! (Balsa from Moribito looks around wondering why her very mild set of abilities is unacceptable.) Only anime casters! (because frankly high-level D&D casters peers are most commonly found in high-power shonen anime/manga and superhero comics).
There does exist genre fantasy that interweaves its magic into its world-building much more solidly, and holds together more consistently, than Dragonlance or Harry Potter. It's not all that hard to find, and give that being possible, I am inclined to think it is desirable in a setting; it improves plausibility for some players, and does not that I can see make the setting any less fun for people who can enjoy just taking something at face value without wanting to understand it at a deeper level, which is not my preferred playstyle.
There is always a cost to a more deeply explained systems. You have to spend lot of energy and time building them, and they have to be incorporated to the rules to matter, and if the players do not care for them, they get in the way because they still come up every now and then and are probably pain in the butt to resolve. I can just say SHADOWRUN, let it float in the air for all to see. Not everyone wants to know how the sausage is made. It is not even always relevant.
This is why one ruleset can never ever satisfy all bases, because some desires are mutually exclusive.
Few people actually want caster nerfs, most just want martials to have good options for out of combat contribution.
The problem being that no one agrees on what those options should be.
It's another "have your cake and eat it too" issue. People want martials to compete with casters, but they want martials to be mundane.
When you start suggesting stuff on the level of Beowulf, Hercules, or virtually any anime character, people complain that those changes would break their immersion or make martials too magical.
I'd chock the higher level cleric staying at home while the PCs deal with a problem as more an instance of genre convention/poor writing than anything else. By any logical stretch of the imagination Pardeux the Holy Man can take a day off from healing people's booboos to deal with the goblins raiding the village. But if he did do that, the PCs are kinda out of an adventure so we tend to look past that.
In the olden days, that higher level Cleric could have low STR and low CON, and have spent his life as a Priest largely unsuited to the rigors of going out in the field fighting. 3.5 even had a Cloistered Cleric who was worse at attacking and had less armor/HP but more skills to simulate that. Bonus points if he's old and is taking penalties to physical stats.
Of course, with how stats work in 2e, everyone's stats are so similar that such an explanation doesn't really fly anymore.
I agree with you on a town priest having stats like that in PF1. Having a mid level cleric that is optimized for treating boo boos and leading sermons rather than adventuring makes sense both in game and in narrative.
However, there's nothing stopping that from still being the case in PF2. People keep acting like all NPCs function as PCs. They don't. Paizo has been open about this, and the limited NPC Stat blocks we have seen back it up.
Check out the variation in stats and skill modifiers during part 6 of Doomsday Dawn. NPCs have whatever stats make the most sense for their role in the story. An 8th level can have +17 to social skills and only +6 to untrained skills like athletics, for example. Heck, even 5th level NPCs can have a 9 point swing in part 2.
PCs are competent in a much more well rounded fashion than NPCs this edition.
I look at it like a bell curve 10 is suppose to be an average int. that means like 58% of the population can't cast a 1st level spell cause their not smart enough. a character with a 18 int is probably like 1% if not .1% of the population. then you have to have the want and have the opportunity to be a wizard.
Even cantrips and first level spells dramatically change your way of life - there's plenty of incentive to learn a bit of useful everyday magic with a primary casting stat of 11.
PCs are exceptional, but that doesn't preclude a lot of unexceptional people from doing the things necessary to live a better life.
I look at it like a bell curve 10 is suppose to be an average int. that means like 58% of the population can't cast a 1st level spell cause their not smart enough. a character with a 18 int is probably like 1% if not .1% of the population. then you have to have the want and have the opportunity to be a wizard.
The thing is, they stomped on that bell curve in this edition: even those with a 10 in their casting stat can work fine. Secondly, they removes the stat requirement to learn spells. Even the village idiot with 3 in every mental stat can learn a 9th level spell if they raise their level enough: their spell roll and DC's might suck but that has no impact on learning or casting. [it MAY impact learning the non-free level up spells learned with arcana].
Captain Morgan wrote:
PCs are competent in a much more well rounded fashion than NPCs this edition.
I think a lot of people aren't thrilled with that.
I look at it like a bell curve 10 is suppose to be an average int. that means like 58% of the population can't cast a 1st level spell cause their not smart enough. a character with a 18 int is probably like 1% if not .1% of the population. then you have to have the want and have the opportunity to be a wizard.
Even cantrips and first level spells dramatically change your way of life - there's plenty of incentive to learn a bit of useful everyday magic with a primary casting stat of 11.
PCs are exceptional, but that doesn't preclude a lot of unexceptional people from doing the things necessary to live a better life.
I agree. If anyone of average intelligence can learn how to cast cantrips, and there is no risk in casting spells, then a large number of people would know how to cast cantrips.
Heck, a sufficient portion of the population would be smart enough to learn mid tier magic and craft magic items, to the point that supply and demand would make having wands of low level spells trivial for all but the poorest of peasants. Owning a wand of Fireball would be like owning a gun. There would be "pharmacies" with potions and wands of CLW.
You HAVE to make assumptions about the qualities of magic, and handwave numerous mechanical "plot holes" in how magic works to justify half the peasantry not having access to basic spells.
DnD has a setting called Ebberon where they took the implications of the magic system of 3.5 and made a world based on the logical conclusions of that system.
Basically magic = technology. It's effectively fantasy sci-fi.
As much as I don't care for that setting, I can respect it for pointing out the fundamental flaw in 3.P's magic system.
It's another "have your cake and eat it too" issue. People want martials to compete with casters, but they want martials to be mundane.
There seems to be a lot of this double standard. If you say 'we should make martials better', you get a lot that agree. It's when you get down to the nuts and bolts of HOW you do that and some that just agreed with you do a 180 and disagree with any suggestion that involves anything that an asthmatic 3rd grader couldn't do as too 'fantastic' for their fantasy world. In a world that has a class that's all about magic in someone's blood, the idea that people in such a fantasy world are just different and more capable [and maybe a bit magical] is strangely a bridge too far and is something I struggle to understand.
I'd chock the higher level cleric staying at home while the PCs deal with a problem as more an instance of genre convention/poor writing than anything else. By any logical stretch of the imagination Pardeux the Holy Man can take a day off from healing people's booboos to deal with the goblins raiding the village. But if he did do that, the PCs are kinda out of an adventure so we tend to look past that.
In the olden days, that higher level Cleric could have low STR and low CON, and have spent his life as a Priest largely unsuited to the rigors of going out in the field fighting. 3.5 even had a Cloistered Cleric who was worse at attacking and had less armor/HP but more skills to simulate that. Bonus points if he's old and is taking penalties to physical stats.
Of course, with how stats work in 2e, everyone's stats are so similar that such an explanation doesn't really fly anymore.
Though the alternative way to look at that is that the high-level Cleric with 8 or 9 in Str/Con/Dex is able to fight just as well as the one with 14 in each of those stats, at least if it was AD&D (if it was BECMI then an 8 would be a penalty, and a 13 a bonus). It takes significantly low scores to be so disadvantaged that you couldn't at least make an attempt at adventuring.
What cost? Seriously, what cost? None of those spells truly costs anything to cast
A peasant only earns a few silver pieces per week. They would have to spend all of the money they earn for a whole year to be able to afford to pay a teacher to learn a single first level spell.
Potions start at 50GP. That's more than your average peasant family has ever had.
It also requires tireless dedication and training to be able to cast spells at all. Most peasants are "commoners", very few are "experts" or "warriors" and even fewer are "adepts". Spellcasting player classes are so rare as to be nearly unheard of in most smaller villages.
You aren't born a Wizard, most prepared casters spent their entire adolescence learning to control magic. It's like asking why everyone isn't a doctor or lawyer - most people just never have the opportunity.
I agree. If anyone of average intelligence can learn how to cast cantrips, and there is no risk in casting spells, then a large number of people would know how to cast cantrips.
The Azcans in Mystara's Hollow World are basically this. Most people can cast what you could call mini-cantrips. They are so miniscule they are measured in tenths of a 1st level spell.
thflame wrote:
Heck, a sufficient portion of the population would be smart enough to learn mid tier magic and craft magic items, to the point that supply and demand would make having wands of low level spells trivial for all but the poorest of peasants. Owning a wand of Fireball would be like owning a gun. There would be "pharmacies" with potions and wands of CLW.
This is basically Alphatia in Mystara. Ca. 25% of the population are casters. Down from 99%.
PCs are competent in a much more well rounded fashion than NPCs this edition.
I think a lot of people aren't thrilled with that.
They can be not thrilled about it, but they shouldn't ignore how the system actually works when they argue against it. Which is what people do regularly when they complain about how the +level stuff breaks their immersion and act like the entire world runs on this principle rather than just PCs.
If you are going to complain, at least make sure your complaints are accurate.
I look at it like a bell curve 10 is suppose to be an average int. that means like 58% of the population can't cast a 1st level spell cause their not smart enough. a character with a 18 int is probably like 1% if not .1% of the population. then you have to have the want and have the opportunity to be a wizard.
The thing is, they stomped on that bell curve in this edition: even those with a 10 in their casting stat can work fine. Secondly, they removes the stat requirement to learn spells. Even the village idiot with 3 in every mental stat can learn a 9th level spell if they raise their level enough: their spell roll and DC's might suck but that has no impact on learning or casting. [it MAY impact learning the non-free level up spells learned with arcana].
Captain Morgan wrote:
PCs are competent in a much more well rounded fashion than NPCs this edition.
I think a lot of people aren't thrilled with that.
Depends on if you make the assumption that every NPC and person go through the same character generation process as the PC's
Depends on if you make the assumption that every NPC and person go through the same character generation process as the PC's
Character creation is meaningless for this argument as the spell/magic section has no stat requirement for casting. So there is no barrier to learning magic. "you have to have the want and have the opportunity to be a wizard" makes no sense as there is no built in opportunity cost for being able to cast spells. As such, it's up to the DM what percentage of the population can use/cast spells as NPC's can be thrown together with just abilities without the need for PC character creation: want and opportunity don't come into it.
Depends on if you make the assumption that every NPC and person go through the same character generation process as the PC's
Character creation is meaningless for this argument as the spell/magic section has no stat requirement for casting. So there is no barrier to learning magic. "you have to have the want and have the opportunity to be a wizard" makes no sense as there is no built in opportunity cost for being able to cast spells. As such, it's up to the DM what percentage of the population can use/cast spells as NPC's can be thrown together with just abilities without the need for PC character creation: want and opportunity don't come into it.
Huh? if a person want to become a wizard they still need the opportunity I'm not sure if your talking about role playing reasons or mechanical reasons at this point. I would assume not everyone wants to be a wizard just like in real life not everyone wants to be a doctor or a ceo etc. etc.
PCs are competent in a much more well rounded fashion than NPCs this edition.
I think a lot of people aren't thrilled with that.
They can be not thrilled about it, but they shouldn't ignore how the system actually works when they argue against it. Which is what people do regularly when they complain about how the +level stuff breaks their immersion and act like the entire world runs on this principle rather than just PCs.
Monsters run on the same treadmill, and it's transparent and lame to dismiss those that don't dig +Level as ignoring how the system actually works. It's because they know how the system (treadmill) actually works. It's not like it's a new thing (been tried before, several times, and failed). Simply because one might personally think it's great (opinions and all), is no reason to tar those that don't, as ignoring how the system works, or what-have-you.
The OP seems to want an entirely new game that isn't Pathfinder. The argument that magic should be free makes little sense to me. Magic, in almost every setting is rare, requires lots of training and usually arbitrary restrictions on top of that (such as natural talent, magical lineage, or favor of the gods. IRL hiring a highly educated specialist is always expensive. Why doesn't a surgeon work for free? It only takes him an hour or two, plus some minor material components. Why doesn't a gemologist identify stuff for free? Well, people don't like going to years of schooling, spend a lot money on equipment, and then get nothing for it.
An average town in PF might have only one or two clerics. Hiking out to a farm to treat a sick kid or cow could take hours (because hiring a specialist to make house calls always takes hours and costs money). I would generally assume that most of time of low level casters is spent studying, running their Church (for clerics), and attending to the needs of the local government or wealthier folks that are willing and able to pay for a quick fix.
If you compare hiring a caster to hiring a surgeon (cleric), chemical engineer (alchemist), or electrical engineer (wizard) then the reason for why it is expensive should quickly vanish. This isn't to say that good clerics might not offer free healing for worshippers, but it's going to be at the cleric's schedule, not the supplicant (similar to churches in my area that offer a free clinic one day a month.) Maybe only available to the first three supplicants, in the hour before the cleric goes to bed.
