Jargon Guide or similar ?

[Legacy_MrZork]

               I'm not sure if this is what SHOVA was referring to, but when I think about terms like "low magic module", I am thinking about power and availability of magic items, not character levels. Obviously, a world in which half of the NPCs are epic characters (particularly casters) is going to be a world with a lot of magic in terms of the presence of magical or pseudo-magical effects, even if the best item a level 40 character can get is a +3 dagger. But, I would think of that world as "low magic" because the term is more commonly used to refer to items and because we already use another term ("epic level") to refer to the level range of the module. So, in my mind, there no contradiction in someone describing their module for characters of level 30-40 with +3 max items as an "epic level, low magic" module.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               The following is pure opinion and nothing more:

In brief, to me, low magic connotates an environment where any magical properties, even small ones have a significant impact on the game play, yet does not infringe upon the effectiveness of the class-specific capabilities built into the default rule set.  Since I have only ever played 3.0 in video form, and we never needed to categorize our games in pre-3.0 PnP games, I am totally blind to the impact of other D&D versions, including Pathfinder.  Most all my playmates are as equally near-sighted about versions that were never implemented into the default NWN gameplay.

High magic, to me, is any environment that has run amok and has created an artificially unbalanced usage of those same magical adjuncts that worked so well to produce a balanced environment in the less "saturated" case above. These environemnts typically create special monster AIs with elevated saves, SRs, DRs and HP levels near 1K or better, I suppose, to give some relevance to the unmanageable properties of the available items.

Mid magic is a mixed bag where one has no clue what they will experience until they've make a few trips though themselves.  The +X categorization has little significance to anew player until he/she experiences the monster and environmental (like uber trap DCs) customizations.  It is quite possible for a +10 blanket enhancement to play like low magic if the monster skins have been modified to completely balance the increased enhancements (HPs, AC, DR, etc.).  What can tip the mid magic scale toward high magic is the introduction of those properties that imbue class abilities or feats.  Once any class asset is compromized or neutralized it has become a high magic environment.  So mid magic is a catch-all category which can be much wider than either low or high depending on how the environment has been designed around the enhancement levels.

As far as I am concerned, character level has no direct  impact on the relative effectiveness of item enhancements. However, the way many of the prestige classes are designed tends to force a higher magic enhancement level, like SD's HiPS, AA's +15 innate enhancement and PM's crit immunity to name only 3.  In epic levels, the capacity of some prestige features and availability of potentially-unbalancing feats (like Epic Dodge, Epic Warding, DevCrit to name 3 of those) may cause a higher magic capacity to be implemented just to "keep pace" with the standard default progression of that potential.  But I believe the issue becomes more related to providing equally progressive capabilities across all the classes, inclucing the prestige ones, rather than figuring out what properties to place on items.

God!  How can they stand trying to balance PRC worlds?  Seems like a nightmare to me. '> 

So now that you've suffered to read this far, we get to my REAL question...
Besides the eternal debate about low/mid/high magic, what other "Jargon" is worth trying to define in this thread?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_SHOVA]

               Spot on Mr Zork. As for other jargon, most terms are already defined and agreed to. A hak is a hak, and all that. the one confusing thing for NWN has always been magic levels, availability and so forth.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

FunkySwerve wrote...

Because otherwise you'll have severe imbalance in some aspects of play. If you have, for example, +15 weapons, you'll either make nearly all soak completely worthless, and make low physical resistances far less impmortant, and make most weapon buffs nigh irrelevant, or you'll have to upgrade other things to preserve those game mechanisc. Even then, you will have severe imbalances, both between certain build choices and between various game mechanics, which lead to still further imbalances, for example in the difficulties of certain types of bosses. Epmyre is completely correct - while it is POSSIBLE to do this, there are very good reasons it's generally not being done - reasons I could fill a book with, given time and inclination.


Funky

Perhaps this isn't necessarily the best thread to discuss it, but I'd be curious about why you think some of those things.

Regarding soak, I presume you're referring to spell soaking (Stoneskin, Greater Stoneskin, Premonition, Visages, etc)?  Yes, +15 weapons would make those worthless (anything +5 or better would, or +3 for Ethereal/Shadow Shield), but I'm not sure that's even a bad thing for a number of reasons we could get into.

I agree that it would also decrease the benefit of low physical resistance, but I think resistances are problematic in a number of ways regardless, so again I'm not sure that's a bad thing.  Heck, I experimented with turning Barbarian and Dwarven Defender reduction into immunity instead.

What weapon buffs are you referring to?  Specifically Greater Magic Weapon/Holy Sword?  Keen would still be as useful, elemental damage debuffs would still be nearly as useful (if a fighter does 33 average damage with a +5 sword versus 43 average damage with a +15 sword, extra elemental damage is still quite useful).  I admit I don't get the fascination with making GMW/Keen/whatever key buffs at the end game.  Haste is often replaced by items, stat buffs are replaced by items, what makes GMW special?  If you're going for a super low magic world where fighter = buff received and caster = buff bot I guess that could work, but I don't think that's what you mean.

I guess a large part of this also depends upon what kind of AI you're using and whether you're trying to encourage aspects of the "holy trinity."  Note that "encourage aspects of" doesn't necessarily mean "make mandatory" but rather that *having* a person who is trying to tank is useful and *having* a druid/cleric trying to heal is useful.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_SHOVA]

               I think the hardest thing for some folks to take into account when talking about magic item levels vs. magical spell enhancements, is that items tend to be permanent, spells are limited. In the example above, a stone skin/greater stone skin, shadow shield wears off, has set number of damage it takes before it collapses, and the +15 stays +15 forever. While in your ideal world that works just fine, in some it makes the bravest shudder.

As a builder I know NWN is not really balanced as a multi-player game, at out of the box settings if you go PnP style. Bio made to many tweaks for the OC to make it playable. That's why so many nerfs were done by the community to get it playable as "Low end magic" however, one thing is true, no mater what magic level you build with, it remains out of balance as you go higher, the points at the imbalance shows up just changes. It doesn't mater how hard you try and make it balanced either, at some point one class will outshine another, either with class abilities, or items vs other class abilities.

The real difference is how the builder wants to keep the "math" in the game. a low end, +3 vs whatever, the high end +20 that seems to come out as the main focus for the lower ended builder is group vs encounter, and the higher focus builder solo vs encounter or PvP. (not always but usually in my experience.)