High Magic Settings in 5e Dungeons & Dragons - Web DM 

Hey where you get your dm screen at?

Any chance of adding subtitles to the videos?

Thats funny as hell

Funny as hell and would be a fun adventure

lol. that would be a gm with the finger on the pulse :P

Population is so high there are settlements on ground, low level off the ground, and floating higher as you get into the more wealthy settlements with the great view. Sounds like a fantastic world to go explore.

V Star 1300 Adventures *Shaaaaaaarn*

Sounds pretty much like a Ravnican world to me :)

or... constant threat from rogue wizards and mystical kaiju's

Edgy teenagers summoning fiends and devils....

This is true! If enough low level casters focused their efforts...

Same could be said for cleanse/purify food and drink, it's gone bad? No problem let me fix that for you. Clerics and Druids are MVP for solving world hunger, but you never see them doing so in a D&D setting, may have to gm a world like that - it's expected if you play that class that you help if you're good/neutral aligned, evil would have another motive but maybe still do it; perhaps for indentured service. If you do that mages must have a role in society, preferably against the norm of a nation of their own. Thanks for getting me started..... now it won't stop XD bye-bye sleep

Maybe the reverse would be fun, where it's a dystopia and the magic users are the ones who rebel to make life better for others. Helping the oppressed in a shelter in a safe zone, avoiding capture or oppression. Think 1984 but with people who can make that difference.

Until the mean DM (read...me) rules that you can only survive on Goodberries for about a month before a lack of some nutrients gets you.

Not all mages have the same ethics and motivations. Going around the world and feeding everyone prevents mages from spending time learning better spells to make bigger differences. Some have tried this before, but what it ended up doing was creating a culture that took magical food for granted, so some industries were dying, economic ramifications occurred, people were unappreciative, and some helpful mages were killed in order to prevent them from modifying the world like that any more. You have ways to make hunger and disease still an issue in a high magic setting. You just have to be thoughtful about it.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

In my homebrew setting all State Troops (read: special forces) get mandatory wizard training, because it's one thing to flashbang a room before you breach, it's another thing entirely to Deeper Darkness a room and pick off targets through Detect Thoughts.

Or a warlock based secret police would be terrifying with silence/darkness and dark vision

Cloudkill and fireball would lead to battlefields being absolute hellscapes

"I cast Mass Blight."

Sounds kind of like the Tevinter Imperium from Dragon Age. Although in Dragon Age all mages are born with magic so you cant really learn it, you either have it or you dont.

Pretty awesome, though balance wise Wizards are waaaay more powerful, especially in higher levels because -more spells known -wizard exclusive spells are amazing

That may be, but in a world where a wizardly education is very hard to come by, sorcerers will have the advantage of greater numbers and higher spellcaster level than the wizards.

See, I imagine a setting that's the opposite of this - where Wizards or Warlocks rule the roost in a nation and Sorcerers are the ones having to go underground. Rank in society is determined by your family's ability to afford the costly lessons and components, not to mention the sheer amount of time it takes to advance in magic - maybe even to the point that if your servants know a little magic (emphasis on _a little_ like, maybe a cantrip or two and a couple 1st-level spells) you're just like 'I can't even hold all this magic.' Noble families aggressively seek out and try to buy out any magic tutors they can (especially elves, if they have wizards) either still out on the market or else stealing them (or assassinating them, a last resort) from their rivals. Sorcerers and Warlocks would be anathema to such a society, since they don't need tutors to grow or pass on their power, which makes them exceedingly dangerous. But likewise, Sorcerers are a threat that can be stopped fairly quickly, especially if eliminated early (and hence why they would _have_ to go underground to survive) before they can spread their bloodline powers. I feel like a society of Sorcerers just wouldn't last unless the secrets of wizardry and warlocks were lost somehow for a long, long time - long enough for the sorcerous lines to propagate to the point of being able to remain stable. Putting an end to a sorcerous line is just a lot easier, since you can either assassinate the existing sorcerers (or their offspring while they're young and weak) and/or else render them such that they can no longer have children. Whereas wizards and warlocks don't have that offspring restriction - they can just find an apprentice or whatever to teach their ways to them. Especially if it's a setting that has a god of knowledge or arcane traditions would take steps to ensure wizards continue to exist (Warlocks go without mentioning, since any sufficiently powerful otherworldly entity can make one). Then again, I guess I am making a lot of assumptions about your setting. Maybe the secrets of Wizardry haven't been discovered, or whatever god or maybe even Fey creature that might teach it to the first mortals hasn't done it yet. Likewise, maybe no one has ever tried to reach out to otherworldly creatures for warlock powers or likewise, such beings either haven't taken an interest in the material realm or maybe _couldn't_ do it for some reason that may have changed recently. Having a Sorcerer-only magic society would make more sense in that kind of context.

Akav Akaku I’ve had a similar idea recently, and made a character based on it. He’s a descendant of a noble house of sorcerers, but he inherited no gift. As a result, he has been mocked and ostracized by his peers; additionally, he has had no claim to any land or part of the estate. So he had to learn magic the hard way and turned to the life of an adventurer to make a living. His dread is to make magic available to everyone. This is bound to have some negative consequences, but he does not care, he’s obsessed with this idea.

"There ain't no teleportation circles, and there never was!" *pulls down shutter on Teleport Cafe*

Check out the 3.0/3.5 Tippyverse

Top Comment.

Beat me by 54 seconds. :| You win this time Alex.

Alex McCullough ayy

Alex McCullough Dope.

LIT AF

Lawrence Salcido that sounds awesome.

Have you heard of the PC game Silverfall? It has something similar, going with a heavy Tolkein base of Nature vs industry and the world evolves based on the players choices. Reproducing something similar for tabletop sounds great, best of luck to you

See, I've always found the magic vs technology thing to be a bit of a false dichotomy, because technology can use magic. At the end of the day, the combustion engine in your car just spins a rod around at high speeds, so why couldn't you have an 'engine' that consists of a magic gear enchanted to turn quickly and with great force on command?

+AGrumpyPanda I actually don´t think that technology and magic would compete, because especially in high-magic settings magic basicly becomes just another kind technology. So unless you have science-fantasy and go the "Shaddowrun" route where you say that having technology in you makes you worse at casting spells there is no reason why they should compete. However: I do think that having magic as a very convinient solution for most things would make people less interested in developing new technologies. People are convenient and mostly came up with new technology to make some part of life easier. So if magic could solve the problem, why bother with chemistry, steam, and gears?

DRESDEN!!!!

"Don't want to have to deal with the white council"... Yes!

NightWatchersPet damn straight! Bunch of pretentious A-holes!!!

Discworld is so cool. It would be hard to integrate that into a D&D setting though

I think one of my fave discworld scenes is in one of the witches books. Granny Weatherwax asks a young witch to knock her hat off and she tries to do it with magic, then she asks nanny Ogg to do it and she just picks up a rock and throws it at the hat. That lesson of “magic isn’t for everything” is pretty prevalent

TheMatloch thanks! This was one of my fav videos to shoot!

Nolinquisitor Wisdom reducing handcuffs

Wisdom reducing blows to the back of the head. Still, the spell does say that the caster knows if the person makes their saving throw so they'd probably see people making their saves (you can choose to fail) as a sign of guilt - like repeatedly pleading the fifth.

Magic counters magic, so if Zone of Truth is a common trial method then organized crime has tools in place to deny it or manipulate it... Spells such as Compulsive Liar for example.

The caster knows when someone is unaffected or makes the save, also anybody can choose to fail a save, so everyone agrees to a signed document that everybody present chooses to fail a will save vs the zone of truth spell and done.

Of course, if organized crime starts trying to subvert the Zone of Truth, the courts are going to bring in minor wizards (or even Wizard Initiates) to Ritual cast Detect Magic. Them detecting any magic _other_ than Zone of Truth will be considered as proof of duplicity.

Bjørn Windlover Game of Thrones is a great example of a low-magic setting. Even weak magical items are treasured heirlooms that are found only in the most ancient and wealthy of families (the Valyrian steel swords). Any magic, regardless of how strong it is, is a huge deal for everyone in it's vicinity (Bran and Melisandre). And when a being or threat of a magical nature rears its head (the dragons or the White Walkers), people LOSE THEIR FUCKING MINDS, pardon my French

The question is are there still trolls and giants and dragons or Low magic as in just Humans and Animals?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand I imagine trolls and giants would still be around, since they can be brought down without magic (albeit with more difficulty, especially with trolls). Dragons would have to be rare if they were there at all, since they resist non magical weapons. Maybe the few dragons that are around are worshipped as gods, or noble houses seek them out to make alliances with them because they're nearly unstoppable

It could work but I think youd have to talk to the players and explain you cant be mages, otherwise the power imbalance would be to great. But it could be done, youd want alternatives to magic weapons and instead have Mithral Adamantine Onyx and other materials be made into weapons to still have the rare ass weapons and cool equipment. But it could work yeah.

Middle Earth (Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit) is pretty low-magic when you look closely. Magic exists, but very few people have access to it or have even seen it.

Now I'm just picturing a higher level spell that causes impotency that can't be fixed by normal means, which would be perfect to blackmail royalty with.

Constitution save or Cough for 1 min.

The most useful use of magic...

Christopher Handy-Honeycutt Aye, but what kind of pizza?

Hawaiian pizza. He's chaotic evil.

Arrowstorm122 *lawful good

Finnian Quail *Chaotic Good

That wasn't him giving up, that was him staying in character as a mindless stoner.

Jim's on Indica and Pruitt is on sativa

"PRUITT CAN DO IT!"

"My fellow Americans, ready your character sheets!"

Yeah we should do that in the real world. All we need to do is make magic real. Somehow.

I don't really remember it...

Favorite opening of all your videos.

Chaotic D&D that's high praise for High Magic!

So blunt are our fans with their loyalty.

JPruInc so LIFTED their spirits

nazgulpenguin the Planeshift series has been great so far.

Every Wednesday is made better by comments like this from you guys! Keep it up!

I imagine a really high magic setting would near-certainly be a kind of communist utopia as envisioned in Star Trek: nobody ever goes hungry because food and water can be cheaply and easily magicked up on the spot, nobody has to do menial work because jobs can be automated through magic, everyone has perfect health because healing magic is so available, even money as we understand it might not need to exist. The problem I think is this kind of world does not lend itself well to adventuring. There's a reason most D&D worlds are quite crapsack and most adventurers are homeless and broken individuals with little chance at normal life. However you could take another leaf out of Star Trek's book, and have adventurers be hired by the government and concerned with exploring and charting the planes of the multiverse. You could also have this high magic society face a Y2K-style magic crisis and suddenly have to find ways to procure food and treat sick people with conventional methods that haven't been in use for centuries. Those are just two ideas.

@@IAmTheStig32 I tend to rule that magical food of weaker levels just doesn't provide the nutritional value needed to survive. Sure, goodberry will "feed" you, but its like living off of only lettuce. At some point, you'll need protein or something. Magical food keeps you going but it wouldn't keep you healthy for prolonged periods.

Don't be sorry.

DamascoGamer he is Canadian. It's physically impossible to not apologize

I'm British. Moron. (I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, you're not a moron, you're probably a very nice person)

Alasdair Goudie haha no, I am American. I am just average for an American. I figured ou weren't Canadian, but I wanted to make a joke about the Canadian racial feature of having to apologize. They also get the feature of their banks never crash so it's a trade off

Canadian: DnD Wiki Edition +2 to Charisma, +1 to Con. Darkvision. Due to many years peaceful habitation in the dense maple forests, you can see in dim light as if it were daylight, and darkness as if it were dim light, for a range of up to 60 feet. Aggressive Politeness. Whenever an opponent makes an attack roll against you, they must make a Charisma saving throw, or be affected by the spell 'Calm Emotions'. Similarly, you may cast 'Calm Emotions' at will as an action, such is your natural diplomacy. Single-Payer Healthcare. You automatically heal yourself of any disease or illness whenever you make a long rest, as long as you pay 10% of your current income to a body of legislative government once per month. Similarly, when you roll hit dice on a short or long rest, Free Education. You gain expertise in any one skill, and either fluency in any one language or proficiency in any set of artisan's tools, as part of your glorious state-funded college experience. Cultural Sensitivity. You have disadvantage when making Deception checks against any creature whose alignment is not any form of Evil, and may not attack any being that has not attacked you first.

"Cure Disease spells cause autism!"

I'm dealing with this now I'm my campaign. I'm a wizard and the best town for trade and stuff outlawed magic... Tragic

Advice? Planning on selling scrolls there. Figured get more bang for buck if they are outlawed haha wish me luck

NiLowther Assuming human biology works exactly the same, the body would potentially not have the time to create an appropriate immune response depending on the disease. On the other hand, you could potentially create magical vaccinations. It depends on the disease and biology. There is also the potential for a more extreme outbreak due to everyone having their diseases magically cured allowing for an unadvanced immune system. Like a parallel to real life, we over use antibiotics and sanitation where super viruses and infections are now possible so you could create an interesting campaign where a city was germ free due to healers but a disease had lived to become immune to normal magic so now a massive city is in ruins and your party needs to find a way to help. Or something.

NiLowther course with magic being so prevalent there’s also a good chance you could throw in “magic” diseases, basically a normal disease that over time has adapted to be resistant or outright almost immune to magic, or directly target magic users and mutate to correspond to it lol

Also, Jim said "pervasive" 7,369 times. In case you were wondering xo

Mind you, I love what you say about a justice system using a "Zone of Truth" spell. It clarifies a nebulous idea I had for Nightlands justice. I am of the mind that it is however dependent on which race is available, with it needing a certain level of magic user to cast the like, plus governments have to keep control of them.

Also, on teleportation for commerce - I already had the idea of a permanent portal system that is the public transit system for the northern Nightlands. It is run by the Quendár who decided to make it available as a way of making themselves indispensable as humans were expanding. The portals can only be reliably run by the Quendár, so none of the other humanoid races could take the system away from them (there are a few other high-level races who would be able to, but they are non-humanoids like unicorns, dragons and phoenixes and all of them prefer to live in wildlands) but they offset their monopoly by only asking small fees for it's usage. One of the biggest side effects of this is every town with a portal hub will have at least one Quendár family residing there, to run the hub. The Quendár also use portals for other purposes, like plumbing that doesn't need pipes being put through walls and floors, heating and cooling, even mass filtering where a portal separates stuff put into it and deposits the components in different storage containers.

Theres the obvious question of abuse of that portal ability, what stops a rogue Quendár from robbing businesses, disrupting existing portals by redirecting them or becoming an evil overlord that can just drop an army wherever he wants?