I hate MacGuffin magic.

[Lago PARANOIA]

As discussed in this thread, one of the solutions to the dissonance/imbalance towards having a Martial character and a Magic character in the same party was to limit the mojo of what magic can do, like in 4E.

But it doesn't quite work. 4E still wants to tell stories of flying castles and threats of world explosion and mass magical enslavement and all that. So even though 'Magic' (player) characters can't really do much some unforeseen DM-fiat force wills the Eye of Sauron and airships into existence. Since no one in the party or the NPCs for that matter can actually get abilities that stops people they hate from blotting out the sun--even though sun-blotting plots still exist--the solution to any high-level adventure becomes 'find the One Ring and drop it in Plot Device volcano'.

In other words, the 'solution' towards having high-magic plots when there's no way for the players to independently acquire, replicate, attack, or even interact with said supernatural phlebtonium is just to BULLSHIT IT.

Fuck that noise.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I totally agree. I want rules for creating traps, creating magic items, artifacts, and monsters, and dungeons and all the elements that NPCs will use in plot devices.

[Ice9]

Agreed as well. I mean, there can be a few things which are too expensive or otherwise impractical for the players to generally afford ("the world destruction device took 100 years to build, required the sacrifice of 10,000 people, and was designed with the assistance of a demon lord"), but when the majority of interesting stuff you come across is "lost knowledge from the golden age" or "NPCs can make it, but you can't" then that's BS.[/i]

[RandomCasualty2]

Well honestly, sometimes you just want a one shot ritual, device, whatever. I really don't care how the eye of Vecna happened to come into existence, because it really doesn't matter. And besides, one of a kind artifacts are a major fantasy trope.

Honestly if there's one thing I hate about post-2E D&D is that move from major magic items to Diablo style magic items. The "put gold in a jar" method of magic item creation made 3E and 4E magic items come off as really dry and flavorless. 4E especially completely sucked the life from any magic items you may have.

I rather like some one shot, unique magic objects, rituals, whatever.

There are some things that you absolutely should handle this way. The first of which is resurrection. You should not have a global resurrect spell because it makes death meaningless (and in turn makes everything the PCs ever do pretty much meaningless). It is however okay to present some kind of crazy plot device to bring a PC back from the dead, with the idea that it's a one shot. So you get the PC back, without having to worry about how the campaign world is altered by people coming back from the dead.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I guess that's where I disagree cause I don't mind people coming back from the dead. I guess the problem occurs when adventure writers and world builders don't like the idea of coming back from death.

[Doom]

Casual creation of magic items is definitely a killer for D&D, or for DnD4.0.

In AD&D, and even other RPGs, I could use magic items to balance out the party. Fighters suck? Then bring on the magic armor and magic swords until they look good again; wands are downright rare, even scrolls hard to come by. Wizard player is clueless? Toss in a wand of magic missile or something easy to use, with enough charges to have fun, but not enough to make the wizard too dominating while he/she gets a better idea how to play the character.

Now? If anyone in the party optimizes, the whole party optimizes, since they'll just make optimal items, casually. So, if one class is better (with or without magic items), there's really nothing trivial I can do about it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Gee, Doom314, if you're going to take pity on players for bad rules, why not just rule that the sucking character gets a +3 to attack and damage rolls until further notice?

That kind of magical-item subterfuge might have worked in the ignorance/absolute DM power era of RPGs, but honestly nowadays giving someone an artifact sword is pretty much blatantly announcing that they suck and you feel sorry for them. You may as well go whole hog.

I mean, haven't you read the Why Monks thread yet? Everyone was laughing their asses off at Da Vane for not realizing that his tiger polymorph amulet for his monk was his DM taking pity on the dumbass.

[Grek]

In my current project, Monster Hunt, the presented solution is that there are two lists of magic effects. Anyone can learn stuff off of list A. The only requirement is that you pick a class that grants that magic effect.

List B has plot magic. PCs cannot ever learn to do plot magic. You have to be an immortal supernatural superbeing, like a demon or a dragon or something. Just being a vampire or a wizard or a zombie doesn't give you that sort of power.

If the PCs need plot magic, they have to go fight a dragon or summon a demon or commune with their ancestors for it.

[RandomCasualty2]

I guess that's where I disagree cause I don't mind people coming back from the dead. I guess the problem occurs when adventure writers and world builders don't like the idea of coming back from death.

I don't like it because it leads to a zero sum game. High level guys are valuable, to the point that if one dies, someone somewhere is going to resurrect them, like pretty much everytime. Even intelligent monsters like great wyrms are sure to be brought back, because having a great red wyrm owe you a favor is pretty awesome. But it's what you have to do if you want to prevent anyone you kill from coming back (and believe me they will).

So whenever you kill a BBEG, you can reasonably expect him to come back from the dead, which in turn makes everything you do pretty pointless. Your only option is to use thinuan weapons to condemn their souls to an eternity of imprisonment, which honestly for good aligned heroes, seems pretty damn evil.

I'd rather just avoid that whole affair and say that resurrection doesn't happen as a commonplace event. When it happens, it's because of some kind of macguffin that pretty much goes away at the end of the adventure.

[Lokathor]

Well then just disallow True Resurrection (or any other "resurrect without level loss"), and eventually they'll stay good and dead. Probably.

[ubernoob]

From a storytelling standpoint I agree with RC - Jesus took 3 days to respawn. Death should be fairly hard to circumvent. In order to make this work in a game that has a lot of paperwork per character, you need to make defeat without death not only possible, but the norm.

[koz]

From a storytelling standpoint I agree with RC - Jesus took 3 days to respawn. Death should be fairly hard to circumvent. In order to make this work in a game that has a lot of paperwork per character, you need to make defeat without death not only possible, but the norm.

Capture without killing also.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But more than half of the monsters in D&D actually want to eat the PCs and can't be reasoned with because they don't got no brains.

Either you guys are going to have to completely rewrite the bestiary, accept rolling up new characters frequently, go the 4E route and have all battles be curbstomps, or accept resurrection.

[ubernoob]

But more than half of the monsters in D&D actually want to eat the PCs and can't be reasoned with because they don't got no brains.

Either you guys are going to have to completely rewrite the bestiary, accept rolling up new characters frequently, go the 4E route and have all battles be curbstomps, or accept resurrection.

Making retreats workable lets the PCs lose, but not die. How to make retreats workable, don't ask me because I have no fucking clue how to implement that mechanically.

[hogarth]

I totally agree. I want rules for creating traps, creating magic items, artifacts, and monsters, and dungeons and all the elements that NPCs will use in plot devices.

That's all well and good, but why does the "artifact creating and world-destroying" game have to be the same as the "stab an orc with a rusty knife and steal his pie" game? Because once you try to cram those two sets of rules into the same game, things start unravelling quickly. But if you separate them into "D&D" and "Amber Diceless" (or "Basic D&D" and "Immortal D&D", if you prefer), then you don't have to worry about challenging characters who are level One and level Omnipotent Minus One with the same set of rules.

[Kaelik]

That's all well and good, but why does the "artifact creating and world-destroying" game have to be the same as the "stab an orc with a rusty knife and steal his pie" game? Because once you try to cram those two sets of rules into the same game, things start unravelling quickly. But if you separate them into "D&D" and "Amber Diceless" (or "Basic D&D" and "Immortal D&D", if you prefer), then you don't have to worry about challenging characters who are level One and level Omnipotent Minus One with the same set of rules.

Fuck you up the ass you piece of shit!

You can call them "Warhammer Fantasy Quest" and "D&D" because that's what they are.

[Username17]

Casual resurrection works fine as long as there exist methods in the setting to keep people from being resurrected. If people dying is a minor inconvenience unless someone else inconveniences themselves to keep them from coming back - that's fine.

The only problem comes when resurrection cannot be circumvented or cannot be predicted in its availability. That runs into some seriously frustrating bullshit where DM-Penis NPCs can't die and there's nothing the PCs can do about it. But you really don't want players to suffer permanent character death from frickin random encounters in any case.

-Username17

[Apalala]

I think I remember reading Keith Baker talking about how resurrection magic in 4e doesn't work on everybody. PCs can come back from the dead because they're literally special, connected to the weave or whatever in some special way, such that until they fulfill their destiny or somesuch, they can keep coming back. Most every other thing isn't, so when a king dies, his cleric isn't bringing him back in the morning and BBEGs stay down. Of course, this is all subject to DM Fiat.

This was before 4e was released though, and I don't remember ever reading about it again. Still, if you don't mind PCs being special little snowflakes--and let's be honest, they are--it's a good way to bring about some logic to the afterlife.

[mean_liar]

First, I completely agree with Lago's initial statement that MacGuffin blackbox magic sucks. Personally I enjoy finding odd tricks and combos and creative explanations for plot-driving mechanical effects, and I'm certain that it enhances player involvement in the setting since once they parse through all the smoke and mirrors they get the eureka moment, which is almost always tied to discovery of a way to counter the plot-driver.

I also like the idea of a ritual to prevent resurrection - something that severs the tie between the dead soul and the living world. It'll almost certainly have consequences for your setting's afterlife which deserve contemplation. I usually use a standard "characters without PC classes cannot be resurrected" that ties into an Exalted-style PCs-are-special setting, but taking it one step further is worth doing.

I'll add that in my games I usually don't see much resurrection. Players tend to just write up new characters or Revivify gets pulled out of someone's ass.

[tzor]

From a storytelling standpoint I agree with RC - Jesus took 3 days to respawn. Death should be fairly hard to circumvent.

I don’t want to pick Biblical nits, but it looks like the nits have big implications for a fantasy role playing game. The basic notion at the time was that if you were dead for more than 3 days you were really dead. The implication is that raising a person from the dead who wasn’t over 3 days old was trivial; Jesus does this several times and gets less reaction than he does from giving sight to a man born blind. When he raises Lazarus (3+ days) he raises a big stink and in effects writes his own death warrant.

So the notion actually makes PC resurrections (most happen on the same day) more trivial, not less trivial. The delayed conditional spell of resurrection was simply a way to emphasize how super powerful that spell was.

[FatR]

Unfortunately, about 80% of fantasy literature runs on McGuffin magic. Read: practically any book where main characters without magic oppose baddies with magic, as well as any book where magic is inherently chaotic and unpredictable (in this case, character's own magical ability is a black box McGuffin). And most of the rest still runs on asspulls. So, I'm afraid, McGuffins are in DnD to stay.

[RobbyPants]

Unfortunately, about 80% of fantasy literature runs on McGuffin magic. Read: practically any book where main characters without magic oppose baddies with magic, as well as any book where magic is inherently chaotic and unpredictable (in this case, character's own magical ability is a black box McGuffin). And most of the rest still runs on asspulls. So, I'm afraid, McGuffins are in DnD to stay.

Even if you create rules on how to handle stuff so the PCs can do what the NPCs do, you'll still have lazy DMs who don't want to bother creating a Blot Out the Sun spell, so they'll just take this route.

The DM will just make a wizard that somehow blots out the sun, and then lead the PCs by the nose to either break the Orb of Sun Blotting, or to find the Torch of Sun Re-Lighting.

He'll think it's an awesome plot, and because he doesn't want the PCs to blot out the sun, he won't turn it into a spell or let the PCs create the Orb of Sun Blotting.

[mean_liar]

That's actually a decent plot. Inventing the spell is arbitrarily difficult as are its material and focus requirements, even more so since its probably Epic by DnD rules. In fact, Epic spells are MacGuffin's by design - they're effect-driven with very loose rules and are heavily influenced by GM fiat. Not only that, but learning them is not as simple as copying a scroll down.

It could also be a Planar Touchstone ability or something else difficult to achieve but open-ended.

There's a line that needs to be drawn between "I bet you can't imagine how they did this" and "you're incapable of ever doing this". DnD has a general assumption that if a spell is written somewhere then its generally known - there's no real secret knowledge in the game and so if A can cast Blot Out the Sun, then B-Z also know it. That may not be the case at all, but the basic assumption of free and accessible knowledge within the DnD setting leads one to assume that's the case.

It's not good for magic in general for it to be that way - sects need spells that they don't share or else every spellcaster (especially divine spellcasters) tend to be the same.

[hogarth]

There's a line that needs to be drawn between "I bet you can't imagine how they did this" and "you're incapable of ever doing this".

There's a nuance that you're leaving out. "You can eventually be powerful enough to blot out the sun" is not the same as "you can eventually be powerful enough to blot out 1/2^20 of the sun, then you'll be powerful enough to blot out 1/2^19 of the sun, then you'll be powerful enough to blot out 1/2^18 of the sun, [...] then you'll be powerful enough to blot out half the sun, then you'll be powerful enough to blot out the sun". Having a bunch equally sized incremental steps on the way to "you win the game" makes for a clunky system (see the "DC Heroes" RPG for an example).

Note that your suggestion of "making it a Planar Touchstone" is almost the exact definition of a magical MacGuffin.

[Judging__Eagle]

Jesus also respawned in a game setting where owning a magical weapon means that you seriously own Excalibur, a sword that can pretty much auto-kill people, or CuChullain's spear of "Die. No Save" if it so much as scratches you.

However, no one, ever owns a mundane magical weapon in any story on earth. If it's magic, it's probably also an artifact, and has a name.

It's also a setting where some people had a cauldron where dead bodies go in; and living people come out, right away. So fast in fact that destroying the cauldron was a tactically better option to defeat the Irish army that had said Cauldron of Resurrection, than trying to kill them faster than the cauldron could res people.

Jesus' ability to self-res is more along the lines of a Phoenix re-spawning after X amount of time has passed. Elisha or Elijah didn't walk up to him and say "I awaken you!" and brush his eyes and lips with an olive branch. He just, you know, got up on his own, without anyone casting any spells on him. Meaning that it's an innate ability.

If you want to see what a ressurection looks like, use an actual ressurection that Jesus performs. He doesn't even need line of sight to the body. He just says "Lazarus! Come out of your tomb!"; not even using a valuable material component, or somatic components.

So, in the D&D version of Earth, Favoured Souls are automatically outsiders that have the ability:

Voice of Life (Su): A sixth level Favoured Soul can speak to the dead, calling them back. The Favoured Soul may cast True Resurrection as a supernatural ability once per adventure. If the body is not where you are, the creature is resurrected at the location where its body currently is.