Are there any gritty and lethal settings in D&D or other RPGs that are also high magic?

I kind of want to make something like that for a campaign but if there's already something out there I can just use that.

Normally high magic would sound like a 4E style game where you're always kicking ass and taking names, but I think it could be interesting to have a grittier game. It might be impossible in a high magic game though.

Warhammer Fantasy is an often overlooked high-magic setting, in that magic plays a very major role in the game world and in adventures. And it's gritty as fuck. You might have a gritty Game of Thrones RPG where the characters never encounter any magic, in Warhammer the characters will encounter magic and probably utilize it themselves.

Glorantha using RuneQuest is about the apex of gritty and high magic. The combat rules have spears impaling and limbs flying, and pretty much every character has access to magic, which is woven into the very fabric of the setting. Magical buffs are huge, and you've got lightning bolts from the sky, characters flying around, interacting with gods in Hero Quests .... It's very different in flavour from Warhammer, but it's its own special blend of true grit and pervasive magic, if you like that sort of thing.

The Old World from Warhammer and Melniboné from Stormbringer are what first come to mind. Both have powerful magic that is horrific and dangerous, but which profoundly shapes their worlds and enables fantastical, perilous adventures.

Any gritty post-magical-apocalypse settings? I can imagine The Terminator as War Against the Golems.

My Majestic Wilderlands is gritty and has lots of magic.

http://www.batintheattic.com/majesticwilderlands.php

The two main tricks I use are:  made magic part of the culture of the setting and a culture in of itself. In my case there are various magical orders that integrate in their home cultures in a variety of ways. The second trick is that divine magic is superior to arcane magic. However clerics have limits in that they are not free agents in the way mages are. They have to follow the will of their religion in order to have divine power to begin with.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;878363Are there any gritty and lethal settings in D&D or other RPGs that are also high magic?

Non-native English speaker here, so have patience, please. ;]

One thing I learned is that no two people follow exactly the same definition of certain terms to the letter, and therefore rather than using keywords it's far better to give examples of what you're looking for - books, movies, etc.

Take "High Magic" for example. It might be "everyone farts fireballs", but also "it's not that everyone farts fireballs, in fact there's only one, special caste that deals with magic, but man, when they fart, it's enough to kill Tarrasque, also: everyone wears at least 10 pounds of magic artifacts all the time".

Then, there's "gritty". Gritty, in addition to "unforgiving" might be understood as "serious" - "no such bullshit as magical races outside of small, secluded enclaves/ghettos, economy is strong and realistic", but it may mean "sure, you can meet elves and other half-unicorns, half-snotlings in every inn, but the world is balancing on the verge of destruction, it's countdown to Armageddon, so no joking around, guys".

That being said: ARS MAGICA or HARNMASTER might be up your alley. You can also try some "more serious" settings for... bear with me... Pathfinder. MIDGARD is one (it's practically WFRP for PFRPG), so is AMETHYST (fantasy meets SF).

You can also check BURNING WHEEL (with MAGIC BURNER supplement) - I dislike books, because I feel they are poorly written, but the game itself is quite ok.

Quote from: S'mon;878384Any gritty post-magical-apocalypse settings? I can imagine The Terminator as War Against the Golems.

Ditto.

Depending on how you understand gritty/high magic, in addition to MIDGARD/PFRPG, good old DARKSUN matches your criteria. Depending on how much magic your group agrees to allow, you might try DESOLATION (Ubiquity).

Quote from: S'mon;878384Any gritty post-magical-apocalypse settings? I can imagine The Terminator as War Against the Golems.

Ditto.

Depending on how you understand gritty/high magic, DARKSUN matches your criteria. Depending on how much magic your group agrees to allow you might also try DESOLATION (Ubiquity).

The Black Company Campaign Setting by Green Ronin. It's made for 3.x. It's almost a full game by itself with classes, the prototype for the True Sorcery magic system, and a combat system that has been tuned so that straight up fights might take some time, but ambushes can be instantly deadly. It's not bad.

I suppose it all boils down to how you define "grit" — from a gut-feeling perspective, I tend to agree with Glorantha (at least as presented in Runequest), The Old World (WFRP, at least as presented from 2e on) and the Young Kingdoms (Stormbringer/Elric), because those are all games with high-magic settings and brutal combat rules.

For D&D, I dare say Dark Sun fits the bill, even if arcane magic is relatively rare; but there seems to be plenty of divine magic and psionics going around.

Eberron slightly fits this. It's definitely high magic, and on he other hand, it is much grittier than standard fare D&D as Raise Dead is practically unheard of.

Ars Magica is gritty and high magic. A beginning player character can level a castle with a single spell, if he is build accordingly, and if you are a mage, you can solve almost all your problems with magic. But characters are easily injured, and injuries take a long time to heal, and they get worse if not treated.

Role Master.  Very gritty, I almost died of exposure, our NPC guide was competly fried by a fire ball, healing takes along time.  There is magic to do it but it still takes a long time, just not quite as long.  

Elves, dragons, wizards.  It's an old system and can be a bit clunky. But the critical tables are the most leathal, gritty and gruesome I have ever seen.

When you say gritty high magic, are wizards getting lynched by the towns folk in years of drought?

I was actually thinking of "gritty" in the sense of dangerous, high lethality. Not grimdark, though all of the mentioned settings so far are good.

But I can't think of a setting that LOOKS like your colorful high fantasy action romp with magic everywhere but gameplay wise is actually very dangerous.

Usually you only have one or the other.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;878609I was actually thinking of "gritty" in the sense of dangerous, high lethality. Not grimdark, though all of the mentioned settings so far are good.

But I can't think of a setting that LOOKS like your colorful high fantasy action romp with magic everywhere but gameplay wise is actually very dangerous.

Usually you only have one or the other.

High Magic =/= High Fantasy. ;]

I'm kind of lost now. I mean: I don't see what the problem is. Take any given High Fantasy game, raise the difficulty bar by introducing either more stronger opponents or use solutions like "Tucker's Kobolds" (intelligent enemies) and you're done.

Take Darksun for example: do not hesitate to throw a stubborn Rampager stalker-hunter against considerably low level party, when they travel through gorges of some rocky region, or make sure that Silt Horrors spawn just everywhere (including the middle of cities) and you have both High Fantasy and dangerous world.



Same goes for every other high fantasy setting.