The Gaming Den

hyzmarca wrote:It's alright for there to be some things that a caster can do that a non-caster can't. But the converse has to be true as well. There should be things that a non-caster can do that a caster will never be able to accomplish.

If your party is all fighters, then you don't give them any challenges that require casters to beat. If your party is all casters then you don't give them any challenges that require fighters to beat. If your party is mixed then you give them mixed challenges so that both can shine.

The only problem with such a paradigm is that you have to redo practically everything from the ground up to accomplish it.

I propose we look at some actual adventures: books, movies, and D&D modules; and figure out what the challenges are, and whether or not magical skillz (or magic-like skillz) are actually 'required' to defeat any of them. If they turn out to be required, make a note of what has to change in order for magic skillz to not be necessary.

Because I'm sleepy, I'll start with the relatively simple gauntlet at the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

1. Sneak Past Teachers: Canonically they use the invisibility cloak, but mundane stealth is a totally reasonable alternative.
2. Bypass Three-Headed Dog: Canonically put to sleep by playing a flute.
3. Escape the Devil's Snare: Canonically bypassed with a knowledge check, (and maybe a concentration check to stay calm), but apparently 'having fire' works, so possession of a standard torch would probably work.
4. Find/Catch the Winged Key: This is an interesting case. On the one hand, any athletic/gymnastic solution to the problem would probably count as 'magic-like skillz.' On the other hand, the flying devices are provided in the room, and so the only change that has to be made (if it even is a change, I don't even know) is that the brooms will fly for muggles.
5. Wizard's Chess: Know how to play chess, have some guts, done.
(6.) Bypass the Troll: Already unconscious, not actual obstacle.
7. The Potion Riddle: Canonically bypassed with brains & patience.
8. The Mirror of Erised: Canonically bypassed by being 'pure of heart' or something.
9. Quirrell Fight: Difficult to judge given the odd circumstances - but in the broader scheme it's just a fight and I'm pretty sure you can beat him with punching.

So, already I see one concept which needs to change - key effect-generating items cannot be caster-use-only. Casters can be better at using them, but anyone should be capable.

angelfromanotherpin, those characters were children. And Harry Potter magic isn't exactly impressive, even at its height.

Yes, if the power level of the game is low enough you can get through an adventure, even fantastical ones, with nonfantastical abilities. Big fucking deal; Goblin Market was solved by the heroine standing there like a lump and keeping her mouth shut.

If you want non-casters with no implicitly or explicitly supernatural abilities to advance the plot, you either need to keep the power level of the adventure low or baby them through the adventures by dropping a trail of MacGuffins. That's what we've been saying all along and as it turns out many people don't like keeping the power level of the game low or having the DM hold their hand.

Lago, I'm super familiar with your argument, but my point is that there exist a lot of fantasy adventure stories - and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of them don't go into high level D&D territory. Dimension-hopping army-annihilators are kind of troublesome dramatically, so they don't show up that much in fiction that people actually write.

That's why I'm interested in the source material - actual pre-existing stories that we want to be able to tell. If we can handle those, I'm happy to not bother simulating the world implied by the highest-level spells in the PHB.

And so the question is: if you put a mundane hero in place of a magical hero in these stories, could they solve the actual problems presented without most of the readers crying bullshit?

For instance: The Forsaken from The Wheel of Time are badass magicians and can render most swordsmen irrelevant by tying them up in force-fields off the ground and/or Dominating them. That's like CR 11 at a guess. But most of the time they're in disguise and trying to fit in and shit, so a mundane can probably beat a Forsaken by:

i) penetrating the disguise
ii) pretending not to have
iii) stabbing them in the neck while they're asleep.

The only difficulty I have in seeing Conan pull that off is that he's usually not that patient, but none of those things requires magic to do. If the mundane character was the actual heart-reading sneaky ninja assassin Avenger from The Way of the Tiger, that would just be fucking Thursday.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: That's why I'm interested in the source material - actual pre-existing stories that we want to be able to tell.

And so the question is: if you put a mundane hero in place of a magical hero in these stories, could they solve the actual problems presented without most of the readers crying bullshit?

You can already tell those stories in D&D. Just run the game as intended and keep it at low level. Hell, it's not even very hard to craft an adventure where a barbarian or rogue is the MVP.

Lago, I'd appreciate it if you could either participate in my thought experiment or at the very least say something that hasn't been said one million times before.

For instance, do you agree with my Forsaken example? If not, why not? If yes, why are you dismissing a conflict with a CR11 enemy as part of a 'low-level' adventure?

What a broad question! Several things come to mind. I'm assuming that you don't want excessive plot fellatio, are looking for general case answers rather than edge case ones, and by non-caster you mean nothing a preternaturally but not impossibly skilled human being can do. So nothing like a Warblade.

So to answer your question, literally speaking, yes. Now, why do I dismiss a conflict with a CR enemy as part of a 'low-level' adventure?

Because D&D physics and storytelling logic doesn't quite mesh up. For example in 4th Edition D&D a small squadron of children can tear through adamantium walls unarmed faster than a catapult can unless the DM rule zeroes it. Is that a reflection of the paradigm that non-fantastical characters can accomplish great things? Most people would say 'no', finding that absurd. But while it's an exceptional case of internally-consistent yet immersion-breaking mechanics, it's certainly not uncommon.

The reason I bring that up is just because something is allowed in a game doesn't mean that it should. And worse it's hard to tell when it's a break in the physics engine or should be something that's physically allowed. In 3rd Edition D&D, people in the mundane range of play (like level 3 or 4) can one-shot a CR 11 guy with equipment not too far out of the norm without too much plot fellating. In 4th Edition, after a certain point in the game one-shot kills from ostensibly mundane people don't really happen without an engine-breaking rules exploit.

So which one is the way things are supposed to be and which one is a breaking of the physics engine? If we're playing Fist of the North Star or One Piece, the former is a break in the physics engine. No mook, no matter how the stars align or how flat-footed they catch him, are going to be able to complete the adventure of 'kill Kenshiro'. If we're playing Avatar: The Last Airbender the latter is. Comet-powered Fire Lord Ozai is also a high-CR character but no one would object to the idea of him dying due to a well-placed knife in the heart from a plain-jane consort during Victory Sex.

That's why your question is unanswerable as-is.

D&D, even 3rd Edition D&D, had that kind of potentially physics-breaking crap all over the place even without resorting directly to spells or supernatural abilities. It's not even consistent with itself. D&D tells us that a frost giant is more deadly in direct melee combat than a stone golem, even factoring in survivability issues, but I have a comic where Conan one-shots a frost giant and where he does donkey dick against a stone golem. So your question, while answerable, doesn't give anything meaningful unless you're saying that, with these detailed fixes or without any of them in case you're lazy, you're accepting the engine as-is.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:And so the question is: if you put a mundane hero in place of a magical hero in these stories, could they solve the actual problems presented without most of the readers crying bullshit?

For instance: The Forsaken from The Wheel of Time are badass magicians and can render most swordsmen irrelevant by tying them up in force-fields off the ground and/or Dominating them. That's like CR 11 at a guess. But most of the time they're in disguise and trying to fit in and shit, so a mundane can probably beat a Forsaken by:

i) penetrating the disguise
ii) pretending not to have
iii) stabbing them in the neck while they're asleep.

The only difficulty I have in seeing Conan pull that off is that he's usually not that patient, but none of those things requires magic to do. If the mundane character was the actual heart-reading sneaky ninja assassin Avenger from The Way of the Tiger, that would just be fucking Thursday.

The problem is, a non-magical character can be assassinated just as easily, but can't contribute on the battlefield.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:The problem is, a non-magical character can be assassinated just as easily, but can't contribute on the battlefield.

Well, he could probably sneak up and neck-stab on the battlefield too, but that's beside the point. The point is 'solving problems,' and most frequently in the actual story the problem is not 'Forsaken on the battlefield,' it's 'Forsaken in disguise, keeping a low profile and manipulating politics.' That's a top-tier enemy in a stupidly high-powered setting where casters are the only ones who get access to the top shelf - a prime candidate for a 'casters needed' problem if ever there was one - but they are still just people with squishy neck parts if you catch them off guard, which you plausibly can.

Of course, non-magical characters are not necessarily as easily assassinated. Many warrior-types in fiction have a 'sixth sense' that keeps them from going out like chumps in their sleep, and that does not cause people to cry foul.


Lago, stop talking about mechanics, it's confusing the issue. This is 100% about flavor. Actual problems faced by magical characters in the source material, and how they can be defeated by nonmagical characters without setting off the weeaboo alarm. Going on about how any edition of D&D does or does not model these stories is irrelevant. The point is building a conceptual framework where muggles can compete.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:This is 100% about flavor. Actual problems faced by magical characters in the source material, and how they can be defeated by nonmagical characters without setting off the weeaboo alarm.

The problem is that the source material is inconsistent. (Most) ninjas in the first half of Naruto and high-level benders in Avatar: TLA have about the same power level. It's not clear at all who would win a fight between a Toph at the top of her game and Gaara. At the same time, while a fully mundane character in Avatar: TLA can with a shiv and a stroke of luck take out even a top bender the same is not true for Naruto.

D&D isn't any help either. In 3rd Edition D&D midnight assassinations are such a potentially huge gamechanger for the mundane that when the stars align correctly many mid-level not-so-mundane characters will actually worry about it. In 4th Edition D&D it's not an option. Even if you sneak into the Shadow Lord's bedroom and get off a successful attack with your biggest and baddest weapon coated in the best poison money can buy, he then wakes up and nukes your ass. If you asked me whether a 1/6th of the way into the game level fully-mundane character could assassinate a mid-level (CR 11 or level 17) creature I can't give you a clear answer.

This doesn't just apply to combat. It also applies to things like skills as well. A mundane character in 4th Edition D&D has a better chance at completing fantastical skill challenges than his 3rd Edition counterpart but a worse chance at conducting a stealth assassination.

The ironic thing is that it's easier to reckon what kind of generic challenges a fantastical character can complete from campaign to campaign. When a firebender is ported over to the early-series Naruto or JLU universe, what they can accomplish with their schtick is less in flux because their special effects can be fudged to gloss over the differences in the physics engine. A purely mundane character can't fudge their schticks because they're tied to an objective measure of power and effectiveness -- namely, what can be accomplished in the real world. A highly talented but still mundane bodybuilder just plain accomplishes different feats in the Naruto and JLU and A:TLA universes. The same bodybuilder with no fudging in stats would be turned to pink mist by a bodyslam from a super-strong ninja in the Naruto-verse but could potentially survive a bodyslam from a super-strong alien in the JLU.

So until you say what kind of fictional universe you want this exercise to take place in, figuring out what generic challenges a mundane can complete is a meaningless thought experiment.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: I propose we look at some actual adventures: books, movies, and D&D modules; and figure out what the challenges are, and whether or not magical skillz (or magic-like skillz) are actually 'required' to defeat any of them. If they turn out to be required, make a note of what has to change in order for magic skillz to not be necessary.

Oh boy, and here's me with a stack of sketchy licensed D&D novels.
http://books.google.com/books/about/Oat ... GJAAAACAAJ

Oath of Nerull:
The party is 1 or more monks in a fairly reputable D&D monastery, plus friends of the monastery and/or monk PCs.

1. Evil Death Cultist Monk Attack
The party gets ambushed by a bunch of martial artists, one of which has an evil demon baby strapped to his/her back. The demon baby shrieks something about hating the PC monastery. First the monks need to be fought off. Thankfully, they are pretty easy to beat if you have real weapons and armor (and know how to use them). Then, after the battle's outcome is clear enough that the rest flee, the party needs to take one or more prisoners to bring back home. With rope, no magic is needed for any of this.

2. Ruined Monastery
It turns out that the monastery got taken out by the rest of these jerks while you were out. This is lame, and pretty much all of your non-party homies are dead. Thankfully, this was a branch chapter of a larger monk order, so you can still report to the kung fu bosses in the motherhouse. Before you go, you can interrogate your prisoners for info, and look for the special treasure of your monastery. It turns out your prisoners have their tongues cut out. Magic might help here, but you can proceed without info from them. Finding the monastery treasure involves looking for hidden levers in a fancy fountain. No magic needed there if you have a monk that knows vaguely where to look.

3. Hidden Cult Base
Stopping at an inn/tavern on the way to the big city, you meet some more people with PC T-shirts. There is a creepy murder in the night, and it is likely one or more PCs witness clues. Possibly a PC is abducted. In the morning, the tavern keeper guy looks suspiciously freaked out, and can be interrogated for info. Whether the PCs get him to fess up or not, he eventually tries to make his way to the evil death cultists living in the basement complex behind a secret door in the kitchen to tell them he can't be having with this feeding of guests to their pet demons. PCs can find the base through talky skills, or through noticing the guy is gone, checking out where he went, and then finding the slightly ajar secret door. Inside, there's a bunch of evil cultists getting ready to sacrifice someone, who summon a demon baby more threatening than the last one. This one participates in the fight. Magic is kind of useful for fighting the demon, but a hail of arrows and holy water flasks should be able to disrupt the enemy casters and kill a bunch of the trash mobs working with them. Team Fighter could do this easily.

4. Mysterious letter
The monk PCs get a letter from one of their mentors at the motherhouse. Perceptive people notice some stuff subtly off about the letter, such as the amount of time they spent together with this dude investigating an old temple in the undercity of the place the motherhouse is built in being clearly, repeatedly stressed, but for a wrong length of time. It turns out that there is a hidden cipher in the letter, containing a message to meet his in the aforementioned temple. Since the message is a cipher, it is unlikely that magic will be helpful figuring things out.

To be continued.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Lago, I'm super familiar with your argument, but my point is that there exist a lot of fantasy adventure stories - and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of them don't go into high level D&D territory. Dimension-hopping army-annihilators are kind of troublesome dramatically, so they don't show up that much in fiction that people actually write.

That's why I'm interested in the source material - actual pre-existing stories that we want to be able to tell. If we can handle those, I'm happy to not bother simulating the world implied by the highest-level spells in the PHB.

And so the question is: if you put a mundane hero in place of a magical hero in these stories, could they solve the actual problems presented without most of the readers crying bullshit?

For instance: The Forsaken from The Wheel of Time are badass magicians and can render most swordsmen irrelevant by tying them up in force-fields off the ground and/or Dominating them. That's like CR 11 at a guess. But most of the time they're in disguise and trying to fit in and shit, so a mundane can probably beat a Forsaken by:

i) penetrating the disguise
ii) pretending not to have
iii) stabbing them in the neck while they're asleep.

The only difficulty I have in seeing Conan pull that off is that he's usually not that patient, but none of those things requires magic to do. If the mundane character was the actual heart-reading sneaky ninja assassin Avenger from The Way of the Tiger, that would just be fucking Thursday.

Forsaken have CRs in the teens. If memory serves, balefire in the WoT is something like a level 9 weave (maybe level 7. It's been a while). With overchanneling and angreal, you can push balefire relatively well around level 15.

However, the odds of a mundane getting the better of a forsaken is pretty rare. You need "something special". Ta'verin, Mat's "Devil's Own Luck" or his past memories, whatever...

In fact, throughout the series you see instances of all kinds of people twisted and manipulated by the Forsaken.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So until you say what kind of fictional universe you want this exercise to take place in, figuring out what generic challenges a mundane can complete is a meaningless thought experiment.

Obviously the rules of the story in question are in effect. If you're looking at challenges from Harry Potter, Potterverse rules are in effect. If you're looking at challenges from Avatar, Avatarverse rules are in effect.

for instance...

TheFlatline wrote:However, the odds of a mundane getting the better of a forsaken is pretty rare. You need "something special". Ta'verin, Mat's "Devil's Own Luck" or his past memories, whatever...

Yes, it is fortunate that Ta'veren, also known as being a PC is a recognized in-setting trait.


Av, thank you for participating.

Your premise is basically junk. While it is true that you don't actually need to be a necromancer king to beat Lord of the Rings, you do need to be arbitrarily descended from one so that there is an entire kingdom of ghost warriors that are word bound to serve you personally in your hour of need. You don't need to be a wizard to beat Narnia, but you do need to have fucking Lion-Jesus take a personal interest in your progress and help you out at every point where your personal abilities are insufficient - up to and including giving you a bottle of resurrection pills so that you can reuse the magic army that he already gave you. You don't need to be a wizard to beat Sleeping Beauty, but you do need fairies to counterspell the death of your girlfriend and then teleport into your prison so they can break you out of a cell and then give you a magic sword and shield that can overcome the fucking dragon that is otherwise going to kill your ass.

And so on. While the protagonists of most single-author fiction don't have impressive magical abilities and are often as not blank everymans or even fucking children, they get through their adventures through ludicrous 1 in a million contrivances or the blunt assistance of fantastically powerful creatures. Neither is an acceptable solution for cooperative storytelling with alter-ego protagonists.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:The problem is, a non-magical character can be assassinated just as easily, but can't contribute on the battlefield.

Well, he could probably sneak up and neck-stab on the battlefield too, but that's beside the point. The point is 'solving problems,' and most frequently in the actual story the problem is not 'Forsaken on the battlefield,' it's 'Forsaken in disguise, keeping a low profile and manipulating politics.' That's a top-tier enemy in a stupidly high-powered setting where casters are the only ones who get access to the top shelf - a prime candidate for a 'casters needed' problem if ever there was one - but they are still just people with squishy neck parts if you catch them off guard, which you plausibly can.

So the balancing factor on Forsaken PCs is that the DM can have expert assassins kill them in their sleep? How Gygaxian can you get?

FrankTrollman wrote:Neither is an acceptable solution for cooperative storytelling with alter-ego protagonists.

I don't quite follow your logic here. PCs routinely get assistance from more powerful creatures - sometimes by DM fiat, sometimes through wrangling of their own (diplomacy/plotting/blackmail/trickery). I don't think that option itself is intrinsically flawed, but I do agree it shouldn't be the only option.

echo

FrankTrollman wrote:While it is true that you don't actually need to be a necromancer king to beat Lord of the Rings, you do need to be arbitrarily descended from one so that there is an entire kingdom of ghost warriors that are word bound to serve you personally in your hour of need.

I don't believe that's true. The actual problem is just a fleet of pirates, and (for example) Conan has a long history of cold taking over pirates, by either killing or seducing the leader. Summoning the dead is cool and thematic and all, but it's just a method.

You don't need to be a wizard to beat Narnia, but you do need to have fucking Lion-Jesus take a personal interest in your progress and help you out at every point where your personal abilities are insufficient - up to and including giving you a bottle of resurrection pills so that you can reuse the magic army that he already gave you.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with some of the details there, but your main point certainly stands. On some level this suggests that the Pevensie children are effectively clerics - they solve problems by asking a more powerful entity do it - which is kind of lame, but it would at least give their hypothetical players some agency if Aslan is a collective class feature. But if the siblings were just personally cool enough enough to raise an army themselves and hack Jadis' head off in the battle, instead of having an enormous lion do those things, I think that's a valid solution to the problem. You do get a somewhat less happy ending if her death doesn't un-stone her victims et al, but there is still an enormous party afterwards.

You don't need to be a wizard to beat Sleeping Beauty, but you do need fairies to counterspell the death of your girlfriend and then teleport into your prison so they can break you out of a cell and then give you a magic sword and shield that can overcome the fucking dragon that is otherwise going to kill your ass.

What? Are you seriously telling me that a nonmagical dude escaping from a prison cell breaks your suspension of disbelief? Don't even get me started on dragonslaying, because it is generally accepted that badasses can kill dragons with no hoojoo involved. That Prince Phillip gets assistance is no reason to suppose that if he had succeeded without it people would cry foul.

The counterspell is just a strange example; when that happens, Prince Phillip isn't even involved yet, it's not an obstacle for him at all. It's just setup.

While the protagonists of most single-author fiction don't have impressive magical abilities and are often as not blank everymans or even fucking children, they get through their adventures through ludicrous 1 in a million contrivances or the blunt assistance of fantastically powerful creatures. Neither is an acceptable solution for cooperative storytelling with alter-ego protagonists.

Dude, didn't you write the Pokemaster class which is all about being a fairly unimpressive dude relying on the blunt assistance of fantastically powerful creatures (in a cooperative storytelling etc.)? Now, I'll cede that people like that (and like the Pevensies) should totally count as magic-users for our purposes; but that just means you have to write out their Pokemon when coming up with nonmagical solutions.

I'd like to have a longer discussion about the one-in-a-million contrivances thing, but I'm not sure where to start on that just now.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:So the balancing factor on Forsaken PCs is that the DM can have expert assassins kill them in their sleep? How Gygaxian can you get?

There's a whole bit in one of the Tomes about how there are things that are legitimate to have as threats that are not legitimate to have as PCs. Like fey-types, Forsaken seem to hit like high-level wizards if they catch you unawares and die like low-level wizards if you catch them unawares.

Honestly, the part where channelers seem to be self-absorbed and not good at identifying traitors creates a nice dynamic. Protagonist Channelers can fight Forsaken but have to get clever to identify them. Protagonist VAHs can identify them but have to get clever to fight them.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Obviously the rules of the story in question are in effect. If you're looking at challenges from Harry Potter, Potterverse rules are in effect. If you're looking at challenges from Avatar, Avatarverse rules are in effect.

So why is it that hard to understand that coming up with a list of mid-to-high level challenges that a mundane should be able to accomplish is meaningless unless you specify which universe you're using?

I could cherry pick examples from all over the place from source material and books. But when we actually settle on a particular setting you have to throw out most of the examples. Because while we have examples of mortals being able to assassinate creatures much more powerful than them through a well-placed sneak attack, in 4th Edition D&D or Mutants and Masterminds or Bleach or Spawn those stories cannot be replicated.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
I don't believe that's true. The actual problem is just a fleet of pirates, and (for example) Conan has a long history of cold taking over pirates, by either killing or seducing the leader. Summoning the dead is cool and thematic and all, but it's just a method.

The "problem" is that with all the armies of the free peoples combined they did not have enough forces to win. That is the problem. They needed to magic up additional forces because they already had all the armies available by diplomacy.

What? Are you seriously telling me that a nonmagical dude escaping from a prison cell breaks your suspension of disbelief? Don't even get me started on dragonslaying, because it is generally accepted that badasses can kill dragons with no hoojoo involved. That Prince Phillip gets assistance is no reason to suppose that if he had succeeded without it people would cry foul.

The counterspell is just a strange example; when that happens, Prince Phillip isn't even involved yet, it's not an obstacle for him at all. It's just setup.

Yes. Without the fairy's counterspell, the hero loses the entire adventure in the prologue. That's really the end of the discussion. Scene 1 is that without the intervention of powerful good spellcasters, the princess dies. End of story, everyone sad. Thereafter there's the thorns and the witch and he apparently needs magical boosts to get through that shit, but the question to whether he needs casters to complete the mission is fucking over. He actually fails the mission as a toddler without spellcaster interference.

Dude, didn't you write the Pokemaster class which is all about being a fairly unimpressive dude relying on the blunt assistance of fantastically powerful creatures (in a cooperative storytelling etc.)? Now, I'll cede that people like that (and like the Pevensies) should totally count as magic-users for our purposes; but that just means you have to write out their Pokemon when coming up with nonmagical solutions.

This is just a nonsequitur. Summoners are not relying on the blunt assistance of more powerful creatures. Their magic operates through summoned creatures. That's completely different.

I'd like to have a longer discussion about the one-in-a-million contrivances thing, but I'm not sure where to start on that just now.

Start with: in a book you can have the answer to the riddle happen to fall on some random character while they are looking for a book or some shit and have that only seem fairly contrived. In an RPG it is fucking insulting because it's the DM railroading you and giving the show away that the risks are fake.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:The "problem" is that with all the armies of the free peoples combined they did not have enough forces to win. That is the problem. They needed to magic up additional forces because they already had all the armies available by diplomacy.

Aragorn uses the army of the dead to defeat the pirate fleet, after which the dead vanish into thin air. If he had used some other method to defeat the pirate fleet, the story would continue more or less unchanged. The question is 'are there plausible nonmagical ways to defeat that fleet,' and I maintain that there are.

Without the fairy's counterspell, the hero loses the entire adventure in the prologue. That's really the end of the discussion.

Okay, so we move on to part 2: what has to change in order for magic skillz not to be necessary. You know, like I posited in the OP. And all that's required is for Malificent's curse to inflict death not by 'fall down dead,' but with an only somewhat slower wasting effect with the 'true love's kiss' caveat inherent to it. So to the 'item non-exclusivity' we add: 'plot magical effects must have mundanely accessible loopholes.' Those loopholes can involve great difficulty or destined elements to keep out the NPC riffraff, but they must exist. Solid?

Summoners are not relying on the blunt assistance of more powerful creatures. Their magic operates through summoned creatures. That's completely different.

I think this is turning into a separate discussion, but you'll have to unpack this for me. What do you see as the key differences between a Jesus-lion who shows up when you pray, and an electric mouse who shows up when you yell 'I choose you,' and a celestial dire weasel who shows up when you recite an incantation?

Start with: in a book you can have the answer to the riddle happen to fall on some random character while they are looking for a book or some shit and have that only seem fairly contrived. In an RPG it is fucking insulting because it's the DM railroading you and giving the show away that the risks are fake.

Are you opposed to character abilities which explicitly put that sort of thing in the players' hands one way or another? If people are willing to accept something like FAT3's fate points or GURPS' serendipity (and they are), that seems like a readily-addressible issue.

I was thinking along the lines of how the whole dead men of Dunharrow thing kind of shows up kind of out of nowhere in book 3, and what level of improvisation is acceptable to create that kind of situation at the table. I see three levels:

1) Pregenerated: The dead and their connection to the player are established in the adventure's setup as a possible resource for Aragorn's player. Other players might have similar background-related hotspots, if the Fellowship went through Mirkwood, Legolas has a chance to do something comparable, etc.
2) Co-opted: 'Here be ghosts' is written on the map from the beginning, but the player uses some sort of narrative leeway mechanic to retcon them into his background and make them a possible resource.
3) Conjured: The whole thing; the secret pass, the ghosts, the connection to Isildur; is made up by the player and inserted in the setting through a narrative leeway mechanic.

That example is magical, but the question of how best to work in those sorts of contrivances is germaine to nonmagical characters.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Okay, so we move on to part 2: what has to change in order for magic skillz not to be necessary. You know, like I posited in the OP. And all that's required is for Malificent's curse to inflict death not by 'fall down dead,' but with an only somewhat slower wasting effect with the 'true love's kiss' caveat inherent to it. So to the 'item non-exclusivity' we add: 'plot magical effects must have mundanely accessible loopholes.' Those loopholes can involve great difficulty or destined elements to keep out the NPC riffraff, but they must exist. Solid?

Wait, so this whole thread boils down to pointing out the fact that you can change the challenges that a character faces? So where magic is necessary, the situation can be modified such that magic is not necessary?

Profound.

NineInchNall wrote:Wait, so this whole thread boils down to pointing out the fact that you can change the challenges that a character faces? So where magic is necessary, the situation can be modified such that magic is not necessary?

Profound.

No, it is not about pointing that fact out; don't be dumber than you can help. It is about exploring exactly what changes need to be made to accommodate nonmagical characters. Ideally this will create a conceptual framework for fantasy adventure which doesn't require a character to sit around with a thumb up their ass waiting for someone else's fairy friends to solve their problems, while at the same time not reducing all magicians to mere apothecaries and hypnotists.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: No, it is not about pointing that fact out; don't be dumber than you can help. It is about exploring exactly what changes need to be made to accommodate nonmagical characters.

'Change' is a meaningless concept without a idea of what's being changed.

What is being changed? What are we changing? Complete non-empowered characters are a pile of crushed snails in D&D 3E, 4E, M&M. They can't meaningfully affect a mid- or high-level plot without being author-fellated in any and all of these systems. But the changes necessary to accommodate non-casters will be different for each system and will mostly be non-overlapping. If you were focusing on 3rd Edition D&D, you'd be looking for ways to make skill DCs more reasonable and more applicable because that system can be plenty lethal as-is. If you were focusing on 4th Edition D&D you'd be looking for ways to bump up the damage curve because the skill DCs required to advance the plot are attainable by mundanes.

This applies to both TTRPGs and source material. The question of what it takes for a non-fantastical character to have an impact in One Piece and Justice League Unlimited are lead to two different conversations with little in the way of transferable lessons learned. If you don't tell me what the base assumptions (I will accept a rules-set or a setting) are then we can't discuss changes. If I told you what needed to be changed in 3rd Edition D&D in order to elevate noncasters outside their default range of competence and then you told me that you were thinking of fixing WHFB or Exalted or Ars Magica then that brainstorming session was a complete waste of time.

There is no generic fix you can implement to include noncasters more, because there is no generic setting!

Seriously, how are you not getting this?

Right now we have the conceit 'magic can shut mundanes out completely.' That is a pan-setting conceit. The changes are ultimately to that conceit.

I'm looking for some specific things to put in the design document for fantastic settings nonetheless intended to support the nonmagical character.

The OP is an open invitation to examine any relevant story for this purpose. But sure, I can pick one for you.

Let's see, The Sword of Truth series feels like it would be super challenging to crack, but 1) I don't want to think about that setting, and 2) I also don't want to emulate that setting in a game at all.

So let's talk about the super-awesome Avatar series: what situations do the gaang face that muggles need not apply for? How could they be adjusted to allow muggles to participate?

I am totally at my wit's end as regard your casual dismissal of a character waving his arms and having a ghost army eliminate an enemy army. That is a really big deal, and while I grant that there are non-magical means to do something like that, they mostly involve having another army and pulling one of those out of your ass without magic is pretty weird.

As for Lion Jesus versus conjuration: if the plans being hatched are made by Lion Jesus, then you are being led along by the nose by a DM Penis NPC. If the plans are being made by Ash Ketchum, then Charizard is a class feature.

Sleeping Beauty is simply no contest. Without the intervention of magic by Merryweather at the start of the movie, the PCs lose. Any magic that makes you lose without magic, whether it's Maleficent's death curse or a direct casting of MotW Miasma is something that well, makes you fucking lose if you don't have magic. Maybe it's mages turning all your beat sticks into pigs or holding your swordsmen up in the air with telekinesis only to drop them onto pikes when they get bored like in Willow, or maybe it's a ghost who can only be hurt by magic like in fucking everything. Magic does "stuff" that physical shit does not do, that is why it is magic. And once that shit happens, you need magic to fight back or you fucking lose.

Your whole plan of making it so magicians are unnecessary in a world that has them is stupid. Of course you need magic if it's available. Otherwise why fucking bother playing in a world that has magic at all?

The available game balance options are to either make every player character magic to one degree or another (Earthdawn, WoT), or to allow the non-casters to provide some other thing that is nonetheless necessary to advance the plot (Shadowrun, Conan).

The option of putting magic into the campaign world and then pretending you can play without any of the players actually having it is just herp. And also derp, I suppose.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin wrote:No, it is not about pointing that fact out; don't be dumber than you can help.

Firstly, you should rename the thread, then, because you know the answer to the question. Its rhetorical value is nil in this case.

It is about exploring exactly what changes need to be made to accommodate nonmagical characters. Ideally this will create a conceptual framework for fantasy adventure which doesn't require a character to sit around with a thumb up their ass waiting for someone else's fairy friends to solve their problems, while at the same time not reducing all magicians to mere apothecaries and hypnotists.

You're asking the impossible. No, really. The magical dependence is, well, dependent upon each given situation. The parts of each situation that a mundane can't overcome will be different based on setting, narrative assumptions, genre, tone, mood, and any number of other variables, so ultimately the general framework that you are going to get is this: "Don't require things that mundanes can't do." And that is just worthless.

I mean, we can sit around masturbating and come up with an infinite list of things not to allow, because the list of magical things not available mundanes is in fact infinite. That won't help. The only thing to do is handle each thing as it comes up, removing requirements that a fighter can't meet, or giving those same fighters easy access to shit that replicates the thing that magic provides.

Seriously. There is no conceptual framework hiding in Plato's cave for you to find that will do what you want.