07-28-2013, 10:35 PM | #81 | |
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: South Dakota, USA
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
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There is also a lot others can do. That is where there is the difference of opinion; I think that while change can justifiably occur (and eventually will), I don't expect it to happen easily, and I expect many of the "good" changes will be balanced out by the "bad". Every village probably needs its own mage, because without it what magical protection do they have? Supply lines for armies become different, but do they disappear? At the very least the default setting will have no and low mana zones, where you'll need to supply the army from outside. Some of these ideas are also only obvious to us in the modern world... would they be to the medieval mind? I also want to see the full infrastructure to take advantage of these ideas (and probably run the numbers myself). Again, I am not saying these changes can't be justified... just that so can the status quo. Well, that and a bit earlier I was discussing that I thought ceremonial magic was reasonably balanced.
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My GURPS Fourth Edition library consists of Basic Set: Characters, Basic Set: Campaigns, Martial Arts, Powers, Powers: Enhanced Senses, Power-Ups 1: Imbuements, Power-Ups 2: Perks, Power-Ups 3: Talents, Power-Ups 4: Enhancements, Power-Ups 6: Quirks, Power-Ups 8: Limitations, Powers, Social Engineering, Supers, Template Toolkit 1: Characters, Template Toolkit 2: Races, one issue of Pyramid (3/83) a.k.a. Alternate GURPS IV, GURPS Classic Rogues, and GURPS Classic Warriors. Most of which was provided through the generosity of others. Thanks! :) |
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07-28-2013, 10:51 PM | #82 |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
Looking at this post, it seems the numbers I used in that other post might have been wrong. It's been so long since that thread that I barely remember what I said in it (I was seriously ill for the months following it, which didn't help).
The biggest problem with the magic spells--and I've always contended that this is the case--is that there are so many of them, with such far reaching effects. Every individual spell compounds on all the others, making it exponentially more difficult to figure out what the effects are. If all we had was Bless Plants, it would be difficult to figure out what the resulting world looks like. But we also have Measurement, Find Direction, Tell Position, Test Load, Aura, Beast Summoning, Strike Barren, Bless, Resurrection, Inspired Creation, Mind Search, Communication, Sense Life, Youth, Mass Zombie, Copy, Create Portal, Distill, Enchant, and so much more. There's seemingly a spell in there to duplicate every piece of technology we have in the modern world, plus every piece of technology envisioned in science fiction. Even if we ignore the absurd, such as time travel, we're still going to go mad trying to figure out what the world looks like when they have all these spells available. We could write whole stories about how a medieval world would change with the introduction of any one of those world-altering spells. It's almost paradoxical how much effort it takes to use Magic, when it's intended to be easy to drop into a world. There are lots of personal-scale spells that don't have any effect at all on the world, such as Fireball, but then there's other stuff that smashes the world if you have even one or two guys with access to them, and then there are others that are fine alone, but aren't fine when industrialized by even a handful of wizards (like Bless Plants). There's no guidance to be found anywhere on this.
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"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics My blog. |
07-28-2013, 10:59 PM | #83 | |||||||
Join Date: Jan 2010
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
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If you live in the area you want to eat the food. If you want to control the area you have an army to feed. Quote:
This applies equally well to every profession. Sometimes doctors mess up and people die but doctors stayed in business despite the apparent risk of torch wielding mobs. Last edited by lexington; 07-28-2013 at 11:02 PM. |
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07-28-2013, 11:36 PM | #84 |
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
Commonly they did, actually. Not by way of deliberate vandalism so much as just the effect of a few thousand people, horses, oxen, wagons, etc tromping across the fields.
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07-29-2013, 11:53 AM | #85 | |
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: South Dakota, USA
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
That's good; I struggle with making short, to the point posts and instead tend to try to explain things in great deal, as well as set-up counter arguments ahead of time. I am trying to find the happy medium between extremes.
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When I think of a hegdewizard, I think of a 25-75 point average-to-above-average person, who probably learned his or her spells from the previous hedgewizard, and if it is in a medieval European culture, is illiterate and so can only learn by being taught. At the 25 point level... he might have one spell that is useful and lacks prerequisites. Prerequisites are important, and in 3e a major source of game balance - they had to be at Level 12 before you could learn something that required them! Bless Plants, with its three Prerequities becomes expensive indeed; neither IQ nor points into multiple prerequisites are cheap! Due to the lack of points available, we can't afford to give him many skills at all and if we stick to just knowing Bless Plants plus prerequisites at Level 12, he's possible as a 25 point character... provided he is allowed enough Disadvantages. So... even if Magery 0 is relatively common for a setting, usual point guidelines may keep hedgewizards that are good at more than one spell (preferably one lacking prerequisites) from being common. In turn, this makes this idea that they are increasing yield across large areas (e.g. nations or worldwide) enough to be significant in the face of the extra likely losses due to consumption (you know, feeding the hedgewizard himself - medieval farms didn't have huge outputs to begin with) or damages (mundane plus magical) something you should not take for granted. It could work as has been pitched, but that is a specific design choice, just like orcs aren't inevitable when designing a setting. We also get this concept of an "ideal world" in many arguments presented in this thread and some that I have been linked to. Well... "ideal" isn't how I'd describe some of the totalitarian regimes described in other threads for "what magic can do", but executing even those requires a lot of careful planning and good fortune. This is why I brought up real world concerns. Not every lord of the manor is going to view magic favorably. There is good reason to believe that the Bless Plants route isn't the best use of magical ability, either. Some areas may be in "no mana zones" or "low mana zones" - unless you're building a "heroic" hedgewizard, most won't be able to cast spells (or effectively cast spells) in Low Mana Zones. If real world problems are addressed with magic... what is left to address magical world problems? Your mage only has so much skill and Energy with which to work. Not every Mage 0 person is going to be a hedgewizard... so some villages will go without anyway due to simply not knowing someone has magical potential. Others really don't have much potential; IQ 10 and under hedgewizards will need even more study time to learn spells at a useful level. Others will find that the person would rather make a lucrative career out of learning a few useful spells that allow them to just do things that can't be done naturally. So... even in areas where magic is allowing increased crop yields, that is assuming no interference and ignoring possible increases in demand. Maybe the lord of the manor is the local hedgewizard, but all the extra crops go towards supporting the extra soldiers needed to protect against magical threats. A magical world has more magical threats to protect against. So... if magic is solving the mundane problems, it probably isn't available to combat the magical ones. If it is solving the magical ones, the mundane is probably met with mundane counter measures. TL;DR: The idea that the existence of local hedgewizard guarantees crop production worldwide or nationwide will essentially double is an assumption based on a somewhat idealized world. One can certainly and legitimately state that "this is how it works in my setting!" but you're hand waving many things, like human nature and how if magic exists in the setting, it exists in the setting and not just for the local heggewizard. So again, I find it perfectly plausible that magic can exist in a fantasy/medieval setting without radically altering it from the perceived "norm". The organization required to greatly advance civilization is the kind that, for example, in real world history could have preserved the Roman Empire and lead to industrialization centuries earlier.
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My GURPS Fourth Edition library consists of Basic Set: Characters, Basic Set: Campaigns, Martial Arts, Powers, Powers: Enhanced Senses, Power-Ups 1: Imbuements, Power-Ups 2: Perks, Power-Ups 3: Talents, Power-Ups 4: Enhancements, Power-Ups 6: Quirks, Power-Ups 8: Limitations, Powers, Social Engineering, Supers, Template Toolkit 1: Characters, Template Toolkit 2: Races, one issue of Pyramid (3/83) a.k.a. Alternate GURPS IV, GURPS Classic Rogues, and GURPS Classic Warriors. Most of which was provided through the generosity of others. Thanks! :) Last edited by Otaku; 07-29-2013 at 12:03 PM. |
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07-29-2013, 04:59 PM | #86 |
formerly known as 'Kenneth Latrans'
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Wyoming, Michigan
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
Pretty much the only changed between 3rd and 4th Edition for prerequisites is that now they only need to be known at 1 point, not at absolute skill 12. So you're saved a little bit there, but it's still hard for a 25-75 point wizard to know more than a couple spells at useful levels.
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07-29-2013, 06:08 PM | #87 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
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07-30-2013, 06:06 PM | #88 | |
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: South Dakota, USA
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Re: Standard magic - effect on gameworld, playability etc.
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I don't have a copy of Characters handy (and likely won't for quite some time). I forgot what the range for a "normal" person is in 4e. Remembering point spread is important to such discussions, because we are talking about an in born trait, Magery. So we need to consider that regardless of how much of the population is born with Magery 0, some of it will lack the opportunity or desire to utilize it... and even of those that do wish to become the village mage, they may lack the IQ and points for it. Some will be higher point characters and could be a great hedgewizard... but as they are higher point totals and some of those still might not be in the best 'mage' areas, they might go on instead to be another calling where a bit of magery will take them far; knight, thief, noble... etc. So... just to be clear, unless at least a significant minority (like one in three) people have at least Magery 0 or the average Point Total for humans in the setting is beyond the normal threshold (preferably both), I believe it is just as plausible that magic isn't going to automatically increase food supplies across the board as assuming that it is.
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My GURPS Fourth Edition library consists of Basic Set: Characters, Basic Set: Campaigns, Martial Arts, Powers, Powers: Enhanced Senses, Power-Ups 1: Imbuements, Power-Ups 2: Perks, Power-Ups 3: Talents, Power-Ups 4: Enhancements, Power-Ups 6: Quirks, Power-Ups 8: Limitations, Powers, Social Engineering, Supers, Template Toolkit 1: Characters, Template Toolkit 2: Races, one issue of Pyramid (3/83) a.k.a. Alternate GURPS IV, GURPS Classic Rogues, and GURPS Classic Warriors. Most of which was provided through the generosity of others. Thanks! :) Last edited by Otaku; 07-30-2013 at 06:10 PM. |
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