The lethality of a RPG’s spell system has repercussions beyond combat.
Meet the Spellslingers
I recently read the novel Spellslinger (and successors) by Sebastian de Cretien. In this story novice spellcasters (adolescents about to take the “tests”) can kill one or more people with magic quickly and easily, provided they are not afraid or in pain. And they have lots of spells. Not surprisingly, their “tribe” tends to dominate in international affairs.
This lethality of novice/low level magic users is not what I’m used to from older versions of Dungeons & Dragons, where they’re not exactly harmless, but not very dangerous. Magic missile can sometimes kill an ordinary person, but most low-level spells do little damage. That changes drastically around fifth level, when “artillery spells” (e.g., fireball, lightning bolt) are added to the mix. Ordinary people, and some adventurers, fail to survive one such blast. The two spells also become important in small battles (in large battles, they have much less effect barring “unlimited ammo” such as a fully charged wand).
How does that influence the view of NPCs in the campaign world and, by proxy, the game overall?
What Makes a Spell Lethal?
We should always keep in mind that spells can benefit society without affecting combat, but lethal spells are, well, deadly. Lethality must include consideration of how fast it happens, and how easily a spell is nullified by attacks, and other conditions. This varies greatly from one rule set to another. Even within different editions of D&D, tactics have changed when available spell lists were modified from one edition to another. If you want to have characters to choose non-violent means of settling disagreements in an RPG, you might need to reduce the lethality of magic.
Spells Grouped by Lethality
Thinking about all of this, I decided to try to group spells according to their uses, in the glaring light of lethality. Someone has surely thought about this at much greater length than I have, and categorized spells in terms of what they do for their society as well as for their wielders, but here are my categories:
- Battle. Here we have spells that make a difference in full-scale battles (as opposed to the skirmishes typical of FRPGs). These might include information gathering/reconnaissance spells, mass area of effect spells including the proverbial fireball, spells that obscure vision, and many others. Many of the old D&D spells are of this type, perhaps not surprising insofar as D&D derives from the Chainmail miniatures battle rules. These spells will sometimes be lethal, though spells that assist the general in some way (such as the obscuration spells) may be more common than the spells that kill.
- Buffs. These are spells that help temporarily improve the capability of someone. This needn’t be only in combat terms of course. A spell that gives you increased stamina when you’re on a long walking trip would be very welcome. This kind of spell could lead to lethality depending on what the buffer is and how it’s used, but there’s no lethality inherent in the category.
- Communication. These are spells that help a governor or the noble ruler of a domain, whether the domain is a town or a castle or an entire county or country. Crystal ball spells might fall into this category. Communication spells might make a big difference, compared with the slow communication of historical settings.
- Convenience. These spells that take care of everyday chores, like the enchanted mop mopping the floor from Sorcerer’s Apprentice. There is no lethality at all in this kind of spell (other than pure accident, as in drowning!).
- Skirmish. These are the spells that are often used in skirmishes that occur during RPG adventures. Some of these will be lethal. But I think of web and stinking cloud, in particular, big influences that are rarely lethal.
- Other Categories. Information Gathering could be a category, though such spells are included in the other categories. And there are others such as Transformational spells. But I wanted to focus on lethality.
GM’s can affect lethality by tweaking how spells work, their frequency, and their accessibility (e.g. banning fireball and lightning bolt or interpreting spell descriptions in less lethal ways). But the rule set will normally have greater influence.
Why This Matters
Lethality is an abstraction, but the longer magic wielders have been around in the world, the more likely their presence will influence how people treat spells. If any arcane caster can eventually gain access to fireball or lightning bolt, every caster, novice or otherwise, might be treated with more or less respect according to their levels of lethality. If magic is wild and unknown, where spell lists and acquisition of spells are a mystery, casters might be broadly grouped into one of the above types (“hedge wizards” for convenience, battlecasters for battle spells, etc.), which will undoubtedly affect how they interact with society at large. And of course, once those assumptions are in place, people will act accordingly, targeting battlecasters out of fear of what they might do, or asking hedge wizards for help assuming that all casters can communicate across distances.
What’s unlikely in games like Dungeons & Dragons with codified spell systems is that anyone is surprised when someone casts a spell. Understanding a spell system as a player and as a character are different things, and the interplay of the two can spell the difference between every archer aiming for the guy in robes … or running in fear as soon as he casts magic missile.
Your Turn: How much do your societies understand the lethality of magic in your game setting?
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