Setting wants to be taken seriously

>let's casually assume magic is by default so superpowered it destroys regular fighting
>let's not actually specify this
>let's call it "pandering" to think that magic might not actually destroy regular fighting

You know, magic might be easy to learn and use and risk-free and still do piddly damage or consist mostly of spells for cheating at card games.

Assuming you're complaining about dnd, since every form of complaining usually is, magic is most often reserved for those with great minds. While this isn't exactly well communicated by the number 18 on a sheet of paper, that's generally a pretty big deal in real terms. If you talked to your average hundred or so soldiers in an army they wouldn't have a clue what you've written in your fancy book, nor would their distinct averageness have any impression on the gods. Just because you're playing some special snowflake with an awe-inspiring amount of luck and power doesn't mean there aren't less fortunate souls that have to rely on the more mundane methods to defend themselves should they have to. Now of course it's a sensible question to ask in dnd and all the similar d20 systems why would players want to be a martial when they can sink their precious points in shooting flames out of their hands? Beats me.

Also feel free to correct me if you weren't talking about that type of system, but I'd be mighty entertained to find one that allowed all peasants in a small town to be wizards. Heck, I'd love to play a setting like that.

He is correct if he's talking about modern (3rd/4th/5th) D&D tho.

3rd is the most restrictive, and you can still make a full caster with like 12 in its casting stat, and then just equip magic items and put the stat-ups you get into it and be able to functionally cast spells.

>3rd is the most restrictive, and you can still make a full caster with like 12 in its casting stat, and then just equip magic items

Oh, equip magic items? Just equip magic items? Why don't I strap on my magic helmet and squeeze down into a magic cannon and fire off into magic item land, where magic items grow on magic item trees?!

A house costs 1000gp in 3rd. A +2 INT item costs 4000gp. You're paying FOUR HOUSES for the very barebones of "just equip magic items". I don't think people understand the extent to which PCs are fucking rich. Like, "peers with Charles V" rich. (King of Burgundy, Austria, Spain, half the New World as Spanish colonies, and eventually Holy Roman Emperor after spending _seven tons_ of gold bribing the Electors.)

I can't think of any setting where magic is available to everyone and easy to learn and melee fighters don't use some kind of magic.

Not saying they don't exist but they are so few that it's hardly an issue worth talking about.

You only need to equip magic items if you want to cast spells 4-5th level spells (you can put a stat up into INT for 3rd level ones); by which time you are an accomplished adventurer, or like, a court wizard or some shit.

I mean, by that time you could cast teleport/fabricate and be a merchant emperor.

But how would peasants even become a first level wizard? Every magic casting class in D&D requires either excessive study, having a rare talent or getting magic from a higher being.

Very easily, user: you only need excessive study if you enter it at level 1. Instead you start as something easy, like a Rogue, and use the retraining and/or multiclass rules to get it then. Now you've learned magic years sooner than the fools who started as Wizards.

Hogwarts is a scam.

I honestly don't really care about that kind of setting, it usually takes extremely little effort to justify melee fighting as being a thing and none but the most autistic would complain.

What pisses me off about fantasy settings that want to be taken seriously is slightly different:
>magic exists, is easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the caster
>there are more gods than you can shake a stick at, literally anything of relevance is in someone's portfolio, and there's even more gods out there that have things you never thought would be important to anyone
>the shittiest apprentice cleric can instantly and magically cure wounds and create litres of water out of nowhere
>the shittiest apprentice wizard can do a whole village's laundry perfectly while actually focusing on something else, magically befriend people and light fires without fuel
>even the dirtiest shithole in bumfuckistan has at least one expert of the "Art" and at least one cleric of at least one of the billion gods with at least one apprentice under him
>everyone but "barbarians" is literate
>GM insists that the setting is "medieval", everyone is ignorant and stupid, people shit in pots in the best case scenario and hygiene pretty much doesn't exist in general and people regularly die from colds and tiny cuts or domestic accidents because medicine wasn't "invented" yet

I'm not even mad at how ludicrously misrepresented anything "medieval" is, but I cannot fucking believe that you're throwing daily, easy, risk-free and ubiquitous access to magical healing, magical heating, magical cleaning and magical obsoletization of technology in general and refuse to take this into account when designing your "medieval" setting.

Fucking make a fucking token effort or don't try to grimderp it all holy shit.

I find that the problem isn't that magic is too powerful, it's that mundane weapons aren't powerful enough. The solution to this is to make mundane weapons more useful, make them ranged, make them have options. Easiest way to do this is to bring magic into a modern day or futuristic setting.

Guns, bombs, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Magic is just another tool in the arsenal compared to those.

>>magic exists, is easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the caster
>melee fighting is still a thing
Two words: Phys Adepts.
No, actually, one more word: wuxia.

What I'm hearing is that all magic using elite need to have their magic taken away for the equality of all

High fantasy is a thing, friend.

I mean, the martial dudes get to do blatantly impossible things which are magic by any other name, but they're still essentially martial dudes. In high fantasy, EVERYONE is ridiculous. All the major characters do absurd things that would be impossible without some form of magical assistance. Does that dilute the 'martialness' of it? Maybe, but I really don't see why it matters. Hitting something with a sword is still hitting something with a sword, throwing a fireball is still throwing a fireball. The high personal powerlevel is kind of what defines the genre.

Look at Malazan Book of the Fallen for good examples. Some of the mages are retardedly powerful, but then there are also dudes who can literally smash mountains into creation with a big hammer, dudes who kill everything within a 20 meter radius simply because of how fucking angry they are, and blokes who shrug off having their entire shoulder caved in and then retaliate by smashing a dinosaurs head into pulp after wrasslin' it.

Swap out "magic" for "science" just for a minute. The guy who designed the rifle or fighter jet or ICBM probably wouldn't be most effective person to use them in combat. We have professional soldiers for that.

...

>setting wants to be taken seriously
>firearms exists, is easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the gunman
>melee fighting is still a thing

What is this unrealistic bullshit?

>setting wants to be taken seriously
>magic exists, is easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the caster

Sure, if your setting is aimed at 12-year-olds you can get away with it, but there's no excuse otherwise

>magic is easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the caster

In which settings is this the case? The only one I can think of is Harry Potter and melee fighting is not a thing there.

>play a martial class
>be pretty good at plenty of things
>join with party, wizard guy is a bro
>even offers to have a practice fight, good thing I've got Saves for days to put him down fast
>We don't talk as much after that
>Slowly realize that magic does literally everything from finding someone's location to altering emotions to putting someone to sleep to shapeshifting to fucking food flavoring
>get kind of sick of the mages using magic to substitute good hard work
>fuck it, I'll learn magic too, then I can be a better utility and STILL beat the shit out of them
and that's why a good Gish is best.

Anything D&D 3.PF, 4e, and 5e.

>magic is easy to learn
>D&D
Nigga, spellcasters make up less than 1% of the population in D&D.

Only in some settings.

High fantasy mages aren't real engineers, they are Ironman.

>magic exists, is easy to learn
Where do you all get this from? Just because it's easy for a player character to make a magic caster doesn't mean it's easy to learn.

>there are more gods than you can shake a stick at, literally anything of relevance is in someone's portfolio, and there's even more gods out there that have things you never thought would be important to anyone

So you hate greek/roman gods?

>the shittiest apprentice cleric can instantly and magically cure wounds and create litres of water out of nowhere

The create water spell is useless outside of survival scenarios from an economic point of view. If you were to remember and cast it everyday you'd only be able to water roughly 15-20m2 of farmland.

>the shittiest apprentice wizard can do a whole village's laundry perfectly while actually focusing on something else, magically befriend people and light fires without fuel

I agree the befriending thing is stupid

Lighting fires without fuel is kinda useless because for it to continue to burn you still need fuel.

>everyone but "barbarians" is literate
>GM insists that the setting is "medieval", everyone is ignorant and stupid, people shit in pots in the best case scenario and hygiene pretty much doesn't exist in general and people regularly die from colds and tiny cuts or domestic accidents because medicine wasn't "invented" yet

That's a shitty GM not the fault of the setting.

>>GM insists that the setting is "medieval", everyone is ignorant and stupid, people shit in pots in the best case scenario and hygiene pretty much doesn't exist in general and people regularly die from colds and tiny cuts or domestic accidents because medicine wasn't "invented" yet
This pisses me off too, even low level magic should massively improve the quality of life in a setting

Though I'd blame it more on grimderp's popularity nowadays

Does magic work everywhere, no antimagic fields?
Can spells be disrupted?

Do you understand what a faggot you are OP?

>playing in "European medieval fantasy" settings
There is your problem.

Arabian Nights doesn't have these problems.
Scandinavian viking shit doesn't have these problems.
Hell, even pure steampunk doesn't have these problems.

>I don't know how 15th century combat worked

>the point
>the ISS
>your head

Because maybe magic has limit orations elsewhere? Because maybe you're not plays DnD or something derived from it?

Like, my group likes dragonquest. Yeah, just about anyone can learn magic. There's little personal risk in using it. Most spells take minutes to hours to cast, so are useless in combat. The ones that aren't are pretty much all inferior to the "stab him already" option.

>magic is easy to learn and use by anyone
name one setting

Any game where someone with average stats can become an adventurer.

The only thing preventing it is your GM.

>first four years of Hogwarts are actually about stabbing things

Consider the population of planetouched; Even if they are less than 1%, their genes would spread to at least 25% of people over generations. Even if the gene is not strong enough to create especially visible characteristics(10 generations down from a fire elemental, you might only see red hair, for example) that is well enough for someone to become a sorcerer. And that's just for planetouched, not even considering that the most common sorcerer bloodlines are Arcane(for the children of prominent wizards) and Draconic. You could easily be looking at half the population being a potential carrier for sorcerous power.

So, given a positive charisma score(which most people will try to cultivate in any civilized setting) you have an enormous amount of potential sorcerers. Any world where magic is prominent, they could figure out a way to draw power out.

The other half of the population without any sort of magical gene can still become a cleric if they are devout and strong of will, a wizard if they have an IQ of 130+... And we're not even getting into psionics. Pretty much anyone in the WORLD could learn a few cantrips one way or another.

But to answer your question? Fucking real life, dude. Folk magic. Fishermen would return some of their catch as a sacrifice to the spirits of the river. Farmers would whisper charms over their best cattle. The best hunters would give thanks to the wild for good fortune next time. Everyone uses a little magic if they can.

Let's also not forget that entire races have innate magical power. Not just limited to cantrips in some cases either.

I mean, any race with a bonus to charisma, intelligence or wisdom has a population that about 90% of could theoretically learn some form of magic.

That's just because in most settings casters are secretive orders (or random stuff like sorcerers).

In settings that take how great spells are to their natural conclusion (say, Eberron) you see a lot more mage schools popping up that get you civilian mages who can like, mend, clean, and craft things all day long, even if say, a sleep or magic missile spell is beyond them.

>xianxia
>weeabo
I thought weeaboo is reserved for nippon-lovers?

There is absolutely nothing in your three lines of greentext saying magic is able to simply point and shoot. If magic is time-consuming, it is only practical in defense and support roles.
A mage in some settings might not be able to spam fireballs, but he might be able to mass teleport soldiers into a fortified city, or prevent enemy mages from doing so. Magic is fictional and has whatever limits the author wants.

>That's a shitty GM not the fault of the setting.
Literacy is a feature of the setting. Saying "it's the GM's fault" is true, but saying "it's not the setting's fault" is not because the GM is responsible for the setting in the first fucking place. You might as well claim that the GM isn't responsible either, because the reason the GM is a shitty GM is because he's a stupid git, so his being-a-stupid-git is at fault, not him.

>magic is fictional and has whatever limits the author wants
Remember that badwrongfun thread from this weekend? Holy shit this woul be the grail of triggering to say in that thread.

Well you see, user, oftentimes the desire to have a setting be taken seriously is secondary to the desire to make an entertaining game.

but cartoons are chinese user

>free education exists, is easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the learner
>a global network that holds majority of worlds knowledge exists and is free to use by anyone
>there're still people who work at min wage jobs

>4e
That doesn't count since all the martial guys are wizards too in that game.

Also D&D magic is "easy to learn and use by anyone"? Then why do you have to have intelligence within the range from "Einstein" to "Superhuman" to wizard properly, and why are low level spellcasters only able to cast a few spells per day before having to stop and reload?

1) AMF is still a form of magic
2) There are spells that cannot be affected by AMF and cannot be disrupted.
3) AMF fucks over martials twice as hard due to the bulk of their growth comes from having shitloads of magic items equipped.

>from "Einstein" to "Superhuman" to wizard properly,
You don't. Average intelligence (10) is enough to cast cantrips, which on their own would revolutionize society if they were widely available, and then the chunk that are slightly over (11) pull the rest of the weight.

> and why are low level spellcasters only able to cast a few spells per day before having to stop and reload?
Because that's how spells work. Intelligence is only a small factor there, as demonstrable by the fact a level 20 Intelligence 18 wizard has far more spell slots than a level 1 wizard with Intelligence 50.

Are you implying people at the top of the social ladder are trying to keep the lowborn from realizing their full magical potential?

Because not everyone wants to use magic, good luck using your magic missile when you have come face to face with a basilisk.

>teleport

Wew, that was a close one.

Better do some research and hire some meatshields before going back there.

Because in some systems/settings ranged/melee is just as effective as magic?

You'll have a hard time finding a spellcaster as effective at putting dudes in the ground as a Twin Strike Ranger or protecting people as a Warden.

>You don't. Average intelligence (10) is enough to cast cantrips, which on their own would revolutionize society if they were widely available, and then the chunk that are slightly over (11) pull the rest of the weight.
That's assuming people capable of becoming wizards with average or below int aren't an extreme anomaly. Consider how often PCs or NPCs or anyone else is an int caster with a bad main stat.

All but one barbarian archtype, two rogue, and one and a half figter archtypes in 5e don't have access to magic.

Ki is fucking magic btw.

And yet 5e is worshiped as the savior of D&D.

In 5e your ability to cast spells isn't dependent on your casting stat. It's just enhanced by it.

So in 5e it's even easier for people to learn magic.

>dont have access to magic.
fuck me, meant do have access to magic.

Waaay back in the day, that was also true of D&D. Int affecting what spells you could know was mostly a thing invented for AD&D 1e, and continued to be used up through 4th.

But you know what older editions of D&D also had? 0 level people. They weren't adventurers. They were the normal everyday people who did the labor to keep civilization running.

It wasn't until 3rd edition gave us the crapsack of NPC classes that made you wonder why NPCs didn't just pick any other class to be in the world. I mean, can you imagine why anyone would choose to be an Aristocrat over a Bard?

Truth is, NPCs shouldn't have class levels unless they're exceptional, like that retired barbarian who is now king by his own hand.

The implied setting behind D&D has changed every time the rules did. Sure, in 3.pf, everyone should probably be a spellcaster of some stripe, except, there aren't rules for being a commoner with cantrips unless you multiclass.

Also, stat blocks would be a nightmare to write out. Can you imagine it? This NPC is 10 levels of Expert, 1 level of Sorcerer because he doesn't have enough Charisma to cast anything more than cantrips, and because his day job is making wagon wheels, he's somehow power leveled to 11th level by flooding the market with wagon accessories.

Does that really seem like a compelling setting to you? Does this seem fun?

Magic it's a childish thing anyways.

I got this "issue" where I'm only happy when everybody else is unhappy.

>mostly a thing invented for AD&D
Is it not in Supplement 1: Greyhawk?

For the same reason we still have martial arts today, retard. Guns are super simple to get a hold of and use and nongun combat is one of the ways in which it is possible to get a hold of a gun, despite gun combat being generally better than any other kind of combat, save for missile/bomb combat.

It might be. But I don't have Supplement 1. But, I do know that it was a very big inspiration for AD&D 1e. Most OSR games do away with Int influencing spellcasting for pretty good reasons. It's not a good thing for ability scores to affect too many things. Makes them more important than your class choice.

Get back in your grave, Jordan.

Just thought I'd check my RC, just in case I was being a complete knob, but Intelligence only affects languages known. Doesn't affect spellcasting whatsoever. It's also somewhat more recent than Supplement 1.

Admit it Veeky Forums, the setting with the most realistic magic combat in modern fiction is goddamn Harry Potter as depicted in the movies. Search your hearts, you know it to be true.

>look at that idiot. He dropped out of Magic School to go stabbing monsters in fields.
>Guffaw! I hardly bet that he even has his Magic G.E.D.

High Magic isn't a gun. It's a computer, washer, car, food dispenser, predator drone, body armor, riot shield, AND gun.

>0 level people.
So they can take any class they want. Awesome.

You know what sounds fun to me? A setting where every child is required by their Lord to study their faith, where every man of able body is required to spend time practicing with spear and bow. Where the fishermen understands that he takes the watch every Saturday evening along with the farmer and the hunter. Where if an uppity outsider tries to rape the barmaid and murder a patron, he gets the shit stabbed out of him for being a cunt. A setting where the people have a culture and aren't just dumb malnourished commoners, but a proud and capable people that have carved their society from the same savage wilds that the players are adventuring through.

None of this walking demi-god stuff. If I wanted that I'd start people as a demi-god and you'd be surrounded by other demi-gods.

The point of 0 level people is that they don't have classes or stats. In fact, they can have whatever the DM says they have. If you want normal people to have some minor prayers that work, or a cantrip of two, know how to fight with a spear, and know something about agriculture and animal husbandry, you can.

What there ISN'T is a bunch of rules codifying what they can and can't have.

And there's literally nothing saying that PCs can't have some of these things too. What they don't need is a pile of skill points to have them.

But y'know, if it's not on your character sheet, you can't have it, right? If it's not codified in the rules, it's cheating, fluff, fiat, or nonsense.

Lots of reasons you stupid wizard playing sperglord.

>setting wants to be taken seriously
>cellphones exist, are easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the user
>speaking to someone in person is still a thing

This is why.

>setting wants to be taken seriously
>magic exists, is easy to learn and use by anyone and carries no/little risk to the caster

Magic tends to need brains to work, and getting smacked in the back of the head with a big rock gets rid of brains good. There then evolves an arms race between no-rock magic protection and double-rock magic offense, but the principal remains the same.

>Magic tends to need brains to work
I'm ok with this being a thing in settings, and I assume the studious nature of magic in some settings and systems such as D&D is based on the proto-sciencetific practices of alchemy and the Western tradition of venerating especially prolific inventors and innovators. On the other hand, magic doesn't need to be portrayed this way. Thousands of people around the world perform rituals every day that reflect none of the academic tradition we see in d&d, I'd be pretty happy to play in a setting where magic is low key and accessible to anyone who could perform the required rituals correctly, it would reflect the real world practices of most cultures that believe in magic more for starters, but it would also just be pretty fun.

Of course, there's lots of people who want to play wizards to be superman or to shit on people who want to roleplay a warrior, so I guess it would be an acquired taste.

Most people on Veeky Forums only make characters so they can imagine how awesome they would be in a game where everything is handed to them on a golden plate while their waifu's massage their cock and balls. It's just a self insert power fantasy that most of them never actually play.

Hopefully they'll grow out of it, most just drop the hobby after having made a portfolio of characters and never actually playing.

I'm not sure what your image has to do with the topic but I suspect those hippies over in the Warehouses are somehow involved.

I know right OP

Also all militaries should drop CQC training aswell

>But how would peasants even become a first level wizard?
In 3.5, among the NPC classes, there are no wizards. There's the adept, a divine caster who, at max level, only attains 5th level spells. The spell list is sort of a low-impact grab bag of wizard and cleric spells. It's meant to represent the untrained, uninitiated Timbuktu village shaman, who has a feel for the Weave. Starting at a totally average 10 wisdom he'd still be able to cast all his spells if he sank every attribute increase into wisdom. No magic hats necessary.

Never said you have to be a scholar to do magic, just that you needed a brain. Same as breathing.

Rock stop brain go good.

I've never understood people who make this oversight when building campaigns. Whenever I run DnD things tend to be pretty close to modern conveniences in your richer places, minus the ability to tame the world we have these days. Magic is sure as heck gonna make your lifestyles a little comfier, but when mother nature is also filled with magic-jacked creatures you're gonna make progress about as slowly anyways.

Well, SOMEONE has to do the dishes, or they won't get done.

SOMEONE has to clean the hallways, or they'll get covered in filth and grime.

A lot of these low-wage service jobs are ESSENTIAL to society's continued ability to barely function.

Elder scrolls.

Just go to your lo al mages guild and buy a novice/apprentice tome.

For Veeky Forums anything eastern and high fantasy is weaboo anime crap despite being distinctly different.

I like how some xianxia stories do magic:
You got ki/magic power as a quantifiable reservoir you use on spells that belong to a school/Dao (general spell skill path) and as you get better at it all related magics also improove.

Same as asking why doesn't everyone has a bow.

/thread

>carries no/little risk to the caster
I don't think I've encountered a good system, and by "good system" I mean one that isn't cumbersome and is actually fun, that makes magic extremely dangerous to use while still being worth using.

Shit like CoC where you can permanently destroy a character by using magic once is just dumb.

Yeah, but people still know martial arts. Even with all that shit. They know how to operate all those machines and still choose martial arts.

It's a bit of a shame that in most xianxia all the MC's dao revolves around swording/punching/etc things, rather than more esoteric magics. Even when they have some skills (formations in MGA, symbol mastery in WDQK etc) they're shoved aside.

Lore wise TES actually uses magic (mostly) properly though.

Yeah, in fantasy settings people could still practice sword fighting for sport between reading magical tomes of awesome power.

Way I always see it in such settings, whIle magic is common, there are two ways it normally manifests. Outside of the body is the way of wizards and clerics, those who change their external environment. Within the body is more a saturation of the body tissue with magic, which leads to those individuals more like what monks and fighters were likely intended to be. The wuxia monks, the fighter meant to be more akin to Hercules, Achilles, Beowulf, or the like than any mortal man. That is how I think it is meant, just not how it is necessarily used.

Hi Virt. Enjoying your time back?
Just a thought, might not want to post in multiple threads on the same day about the exact same subject matter in the exact same way.

Since when did Slayers want to be taken seriously?