Magnitude of Magical Power and its Effect on Setting Design

[Cheomesh]

I feel like the magnitude of magical power in something like D&D, taken to its logical end, destroys what the setting is supposed to be about

This was something posted in another thread, and I'd like to give it a venue for discussion.

I don't know exactly what ST means by her statement there, but I thought it would be good to bring it up to see how others react to it.

Personally, it always seemed a little weird that you can have mages / sorcerers with any commonality and have anything like the Standard Medieval European Fantasy.  Cure Light Wounds isn't exactly Stop Chronic Disease, but access to medical magic can really change things around, even today.  So does the ability to transmit air into gold (thank you GURPS:  Magic  :weirdo: ).  Heck, even Explosive Fireball makes me question how easily you can retain your Feudal cavalrymen or even professional infantrymen alive, which changes up the social model a bit.

I suppose you can have the Standard Medieval European Fantasy if the figures who cast that are one per five million kind of rare, as their limits on how much Explosive Fireball they can wreck people with may be limited, but I'm not certain why D&D's default government isn't the seemingly more logical Magocracy.  Armies of petty mages (or those who can be trained to use wands/rods/staffs of X) going at it would seem to make more sense than bodies of feudal heavy horse or Renaissance pikemen.

You?

M.

[Seraph]

I agree that in a medieval setting, having more than a couple mages past level 4 on a D&D scale would start to mess with the social structure of the whole kingdom, and presumably, if that kingdom functions as a fitting sample, the entire world.  In Arthurian legend, for instance, Arthur's whole army only had one wizard, and Merlin certainly didn't do most of the things that we think of Mages doing.  In the battle against Mordred, for magic, they had to contend with Morgan Le Fay, which brings the total number of known witch/wizards known in England at the period to 2.  That is an acceptable model of spellcasting not drastically effecting the social structure.

In Lord of the Rings, the only wizards we hear about in the whole world are Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and the two blue wizards.  Wizards are just crazy uncommon.

But in a setting like Faerun, which is supposedly pseudo-medieval fantasy, where you have the Red Wizards of Thay, and Zhentarim mages, and Harper mages; where you have evil liches, and demi-liches, and good elven liches, and Calimshite sorcerers, and all that shit, it becomes amazing that there are still kingdoms like Cormyr around, that seem to run essentially on traditional medieval armies with swords, axes, and bows.  If there is that much magic around, the mages, especially the powerful ones, should be dominating and enslaving the entire world, and everyone else should at least be subservient, if not straight-up enslaved.

[Ghostman]

If the ramifications of magic are to be downplayed then there has to be heavy constraints in place. Typical constraints are to the potency and/or rareness of the magic. But other kinds of constraints are possible, that don't seem to be used as often:

- Magic is so dangerous that magicians use it only when they have a very pressing reason to.

- Magic is socially unacceptable/abhorrent to vast majority of people, possibly for perfectly valid reasons.

- Magicians are not people of ordinary goals and ambitions, but rather they are weird beings focused on uncanny pursuits, detached from such vulgar concerns as material wealth and political power.

- Magic is just painfully inconvenient. Perhaps a magician could blow up an entire city, but only by reciting a lengthy holy book backwards, in it's original (now long dead and obscure) language, on the night when the stars are aligned right (happens once in a 1000 years) and provided that he has first ritually powered himself by abstaining from drink and sex for seven years.

- Magic takes a heavy toll on the magicians, irrevocably draining their longevity, sanity, humanity, luck, or virility. Who wants to cast a fireball to kill some knights when it literally costs you a year of your lifetime?

[Seraph]

- Magic is so dangerous that magicians use it only when they have a very pressing reason to.

I sometimes like this option.  In one TV series I like there is a character who used to rule over all the fae, and who is capable of making just about anything happen that he needs to have happen, which he accomplishes by writing it in his blood.  However, he almost NEVER does this, because there is always a horrible consequence to doing so.  The one time he does it in the show he attracts the attention of a monster that feeds off of (and inspires) aggression, and is coming to start a war so he can feed off the carnage.

[khyron1144]

One thing I've said somewhere about Terra, is that life in the big cities, where there will be enough people able to make the Intelligence 9 or Wisdom 9 necessary for basic Wizard or Cleric ability to make a difference, is about as comfortable as life in a modern large city because of the combination of actual technology and magic as technology.  In fact, I think the influence of magic as technology has slowed the progress of actual technology; after all, do you need the germ theory of disease transmission if you've got clerical Cure Disease spells?

- Magicians are not people of ordinary goals and ambitions, but rather they are weird beings focused on uncanny pursuits, detached from such vulgar concerns as material wealth and political power.

This is an interesting idea, and I might yoink it for some degree of incorporation into Terra.  For instance, it could help explain why Arcanum is small, weird, and doesn't seem to project global power in the way the Terran Empire does.  If you're a Necromancer in the Department of Questionable Activities at the Great University of Arcanum, maybe you don't want enough Gold Pieces to swim in and a trophy wife like any sane man in D&D-land, maybe you want to just keep probing at the Mysterious Forces of Life and Death.

In Lord of the Rings, the only wizards we hear about in the whole world are Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and the two blue wizards.  Wizards are just crazy uncommon.

I thought that in Unfinished Tales, either in "The Istari" or "Concerning Gandalf, Saruman, and the Shire", there was an implication that there are non-Istari mortal sorcerers, occultists, or hedgewizards.  I could be wrong.

[Seraph]

I thought that in Unfinished Tales, either in "The Istari" or "Concerning Gandalf, Saruman, and the Shire", there was an implication that there are non-Istari mortal sorcerers, occultists, or hedgewizards.  I could be wrong.

It's possible, but they don't seem to show up at all.