Those are all great suggestions.  But I don't think you are playing in the default post d20 revolution setting any more.  

Make sure your players especially your casters know you are crippling mages.  

It's going to have some major effects.  No easy healing.  No shopping.  What would you buy with nothing magical for sale.  

If you do have a caster they will always be pulling the party in search of magical research.  Or looking for ruined wizard towers.

If the party gets magic items some one will try to steal it or take it through taxes.  

Most players want magic.  Most casters want to fling invisible death bolt flying charm person fire balls.

Quote from: Headless;919071Those are all great suggestions.  But I don't think you are playing in the default post d20 revolution setting any more.  

Make sure your players especially your casters know you are crippling mages.  

Anytime you do anything, like make counter-magics common, you run the risk of being accused of "crippling mages".

Quote from: Headless;919071It's going to have some major effects.  No easy healing.

Good  

QuoteNo shopping.

Also good. Shopping is fucking boring.

QuoteWhat would you buy with nothing magical for sale.

Hirelings to carry all your ritual equipment and to run interference for you while you cast.

QuoteIf you do have a caster they will always be pulling the party in search of magical research.  Or looking for ruined wizard towers.

Is that a bad thing? Sounds like built in adventure hooks to me.

QuoteIf the party gets magic items some one will try to steal it or take it through taxes.

sounds like more built in adventure hooks.

QuoteMost players want magic. Most casters want to fling invisible death bolt flying charm person fire balls.

Some players would just like a big red button that says, "WIN!"... doesn't mean they'll enjoy it much when they get it.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;919072Anytime you do anything, like make counter-magics common, you run the risk of being accused of "crippling mages".

Well since the OP said mages were too powerful help me cripple them, I think that's a fair accusation.   Nothing wrong with that just a different flavour.  

Same with the comments directly above.  Yeah all those changes could be cool.  As long as the players know what they are in for.  And as long as you know what you are doing.  I hardly ever give spells for treasure.  But you will have give a spell in every couple of hordes.

Oh, if you play 5th ed get ride of at will cantrips.  Which will be fine since mages can use weapons and have the same bonus to hit as a fighter.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;918986Thing that has been seriously bugging me lately: The average D&D setting (not the player characters, the setting itself) seems strangely lacking in the resources necessary to remain functional in the face of what casters can actually do.

It called religion. Clerics are not free agents but are agents of their deities. The most successful cultures of a D&Dish setting will also have various religious hierarchies supporting them. And it is perfectly plausible to have religions who don't want to turn their culture into a theocracy.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;918986Meanwhile, who's looking out for the merchant emporiums ripe for plundering by any two-bit shmendrik with a Charm Person spell and a little patience?

Think about it. What it takes to learn to cast Charm Person? How they get from childhood to that point? Either they are born with the abilities i.e. sorcerers. Or they have to enter the life of a scholar and be supported while they first get an education and then learn to cast charm person. In the case of Sorcerors there will be a period of life where they are an inexperience novices in a culture that been dealing with this stuff for centuries. If they attempt something they will eventually get caught after a few initial success.

Note it doesn't matter where my take is the most likely outcome. What matter is that my answer is plausible. There are a number of other possibilities that are likewise plausible.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;918986I do recall that over the course of D&D's history a large crop of spellcaster counter-measures have been devised and presented in various core and splat books. Can anyone recommend some particular tricks of this sort worth digging up and adapting to 5e?

Yes put some thought into the background of setting. If you don't want to bother with that because you are focused on dungeon crawling then this is what you do with the implied setting.

Assume that they been dealing with magic 'as is' for centuries. That there are vastly more mundanes then special folks. That like in our history there is a bunch of folklore and superstitions hat people have developed to cope with the world. Obviously if we are using the system 'as is' none of it would be a counter spell but what it would do is make  knowledge of the most abusive spells, Charm Person for example, widespread. Unless the caster is very smart, the abuse will get noticed, the baron and his allied clerics will get called in. Questions will be asked, and rogue mages will have their hands cut off, tongues cut out, and possibly hanged.

And too boot because other wizards don't want their good time to get fucked up by peasants in pitchforks, will gleefully help the baron and the cleric bring the rogue to heel.

And if the rogue wizard is that smart why he is dicking around with mechants, there are bigger payoffs that he can use this abilities for.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;918986The goal with this spell here is to offer a cheap way for mundane NPCs like merchants or goblin tunnel scum to know something is up without completely blocking the PC caster's fun. Thoughts?

In general it is better to fix the campaign than to fix the rules. You have multiple players with their thinking caps on. They can and will find a way through the rules to outwit you. It is harder to outwit a setting with some thought into it without becoming part of the setting yourself.

Quote from: Necrozius;9190581. Wizards are RARE. Like super heroes. There simply isn't one in every town, village or hamlet. Finding one to work for you, let alone convincing them, is a challenge.

And you don't even need to add in some magical "gene" to make it rare. It is sufficient to not that it is a scholarly profession in a society at the medieval level of development. Hell all you need is anything pre-industrial for it to matter.

Also the effective way of neutralize any wizard of any power level is to take their spellbooks, cut off their hands, and cut out their tongues. D&D 5e take demands all three, while AD&D 2nd and earlier can make do with just losing the spellbook if you are sure that the wizard burned through most of his spells. Otherwise it off with the hands and out with the tongue.

I would note, without drastically changing the topic, that many of these violent social measures were commonly used on our good ol' planet Earth in regards to dealing with magicians and sorcerors. If you were not sanctioned, though often feared and marginal in society, you'd often bring upon the wrath of a community tout de suite. And other spellcasters ("spellcasters") embedded within the locale would gladly sell out the interloper to solidify their community standing.

If you want to brainstorm on how societies would deal with magic users in their midst, planet Earth has plenty of cultural examples for brainstorming.

Here's a start: talismanic charms imbued with "abjuration" (apotropaic) magic is extremely popular, even until today. It's nigh ubiquitous now, especially as tourist tchotchkes. Now imagine when belief was even greater!

Quote from: Opaopajr;919096Here's a start: talismanic charms imbued with "abjuration" (apotropaic) magic is extremely popular, even until today. It's nigh ubiquitous now, especially as tourist tchotchkes. Now imagine when belief was even greater!

If I read you right you are suggesting cheep easy dispell magic, charms, fettishes and tokens?  I suppose superstitions, and warding gestures could work too.  Cool Idea, I don't think you would end up with the balance for magic you are looking for.  

I still don't think it's D&D.

Why don't you play a different system?  Seriously.  I don't think D&D is the game you want.

Another thing you can do, which is not part of the setting as written, but does fit in with real-world lore, is to make certain clerical abilities into a defense against arcane magic. There's a lot of folklore around people using holy water to make a circle of protection. Heck, my dad's side of the family is Catholic, and my grandmother used to sprinkle holy water around the house during serious storms. Treat it as a Protection spell that gives a +2 save, but the protection disappears if a 1 is rolled, or after three rolls in any case.

Let an actual cleric use Turn Undead on any spell with a physical manifestation, like Wizard Eye. Use spell level as hit dice equivalent, so turning a Wizard Eye is like turning a wraith. Illusions can only be turned if the cleric is high enough level to get the Automatically Destroy Undead result, but because Phantasmal Forces is 2nd level (equivalent to a ghoul,) a 6th level cleric can dispel it.

There are folktales about blessed objects dispelling illusion. I remember one story about illusionary gold coins turning into leaves when they touched a blessed anvil.

Quote from: Headless;919104Why don't you play a different system?  Seriously.  I don't think D&D is the game you want.

Because D&D is a very flexible system. It can be adjusted to a variety of power levels.

Quote from: Headless;919009I think you want a system other than D&D.  

Pretty much this.  From all the buffing spells to the damage to heals to the fight enders (AKA Save or 'Die'), magic is the central focus of the game.  Even I've given up trying to change it.

Quote from: Omega;919016Best caster counter: Fighters.

Other best caster counter: Surviving to level up.

Other other caster counter: depends on edition.

Casters arent the be-all-end-all you think.

Not sure if serious...

Quote from: The Butcher;919026The best caster countermeasure is another caster.

This.  Which pretty much defeats the Op's wishes, if he still wants to run D&D.

In OD&D, I don't have to worry about caster supremacy. They are awesome, but since they have less spells per day in OD&D and less HP than in later editions, and less ability to have dozens of magic items, the fighter isn't notably behind the curve. For me, that's one of the reasons our crew greatly enjoyed 4e as well.

A few responses to some of the points brought up so far.

Regarding mundane spell-blocking measures, that’s a good but difficult path to tread. There’s only a little precedent for it, but it’s worth thinking about.

Regarding making NPC casters rare; I believe that actually worsens the problem. As a few people have mentioned, the best defense against society warping spells is other spells. If you have only a handful of doddering eccentric Merlins around in your world then your PC wizard will have pretty much free reign to make a mockery of your pseudo-European kingdoms, especially as he rises in levels.

I’m actually thinking of statting up two types of specialized NPCs in the future to deal with this arms race. The first would be some kind of witch finder, and they would be about as common as sheriffs or guard captains. Their entire function would be to watch for magical crimes and prevent them if possible. They wouldn’t be combat monsters necessarily, but would be trained to resist mental subversion, be highly sensitive to signs of alter-self style magic, and possess a few low level spells to make caster trickery difficult, like Detect Magic or the Magic Alert spell I put up for consideration.

The other type, more controversial, would be spell-breakers, elite soldiers who can use Dispel/Counterspell once per day. Aside from that one trick they would otherwise be regular fighters. Their function would be to make medieval style warfare plausible in a world of nuclear flying/teleporting PC mages.

To Headless’s suggestion that I just not play D&D, I shake my head and chuckle. D&D is THE game, whether I like it or not, and often I do like it, my occasional meltdown over shit like Wild Shape aside.

Regarding Opaopa’s “tchotchke” suggestion, that’s actually pretty good and has historical resonance. The 5e DMG even includes a very suitable one that blocks divination on the wearer. Of course, these shouldn’t be too ubiquitous or the caster PCs will feel screwed over, and despite what a few people here have said I don’t want to totally screw casters over. Just reined in a bit.

Regarding Talysman’s idea about blessed objects dispelling illusions, I’m a bit nervous about that because despite their potential I feel illusion spells are underused as it is because of their vulnerability to GM fiat, so I wouldn’t want to single them out. The big offenders are…

Divination (fuck exploration and fuck the time you spent preparing that dungeon),
teleportation (fuck exploration and danger and encounter-based attrition and overland adventures),
Enchantment (shut up king, you’re all my bitches now),
and disguising effects (fuck your helpless NPCs trying to bring me down, I am John Carpenter’s The Thing)

Quote from: Simlasa;919073Some players would just like a big red button that says, "WIN!"... doesn't mean they'll enjoy it much when they get it.

I'll bet the second or third most common cause of high level campaign collapse is the queasy realization that the godlike plot-killing powers sucked most of the fun out of the proceedings and there's no way to go back.

Go back to the original edition of D&D.