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Iliad
2009-02-15, 04:51 AM
For my next campaign I would like to make it more gritty and realistic so I would want a low-magic campaign.

It's going to be a horror campaign so I would want to use magical monsters at times to great effects.

However my question is this-how do you make a low-magic campaign?
The players have said what they want to do and it's
Blackguard
Rogue
Cleric
Fighter

So there will be a spellcaster plus a martial feat with a few spells. Should I just roleplay that magic is rare or should I try to tweak something?

Satyr
2009-02-15, 05:10 AM
Well, you could use some alternative rules. See Serpents and Sewers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102346), for example, which are mine collections of homebrews and houserules which also happen to be mre on the gritty and low magic side, compared to standard D&D.

If that is too much of a change, try this:
Ignore Wealth by level. It is already a horrible idea in a normal game, and only gets worse when you focus on character abilities instead of gimmicks.
Use Gestalt rules, so that characters are competent and can contribute on higher levels without being addicted to magical gear
use penalties for injuries instead of the massive damage rules
Grant character a level based bonus to their AC, as it is both extremely stupid that nobody how to properly defend themselves and ths is one of the more item-heavy categories. +1/2 levels for full BAB, +1/3levels for 3/4 BAB and +1/4 levels for 1/2 BAB classes work fine.
Likewise, you probably add additional bonuses to Saves and skills. My approach is, to base every skill and every save on two instead of one ability bonus.
Don't use magical items. Use artifacts. Every single magical item should be significant, has its own glorious or infamous past and should be a defining part of the character.

Zincorium
2009-02-15, 05:23 AM
The main problem with gritty, low-magic games is that there are so many assumptions made in the rules that contradict that style.

Just with the cleric alone, you're allowing that gods give people who ask nicely enough the power to break reality with a few behavioral limitations. Wounds that should be a major concern end up going away with a few hand gestures and some chanting. Food can be created with similar lack of real effort. These detract from the mood, and either the player has to step back and not use them like that, or you have to alter the paradigm.

Forcing the cleric and blackguard to pay some sort of price, either literally or in acts they have to perform, to access the sort of things that cause problems (healing, most utility spells) will help keep things on a more even keel.

Another thing to think on- if magic items are rare-to-nonexistant, you should provide some sort of alternate rewards that the players can aspire to own. Land, servants, and similar material goods are surprisingly popular when the focus of the game shifts to a more 'realistic' version of adventuring.

I mean, think about why the Norsemen went a-Viking, or why the crusaders fought in Jerusalem. Temporal rewards (gold, slaves, land) and spiritual rewards have proved sufficient to cause billions of people to go to near-certain death and kill other people.


Anyway, talk with your players and make sure they *get it* before doing one of these games. If they think this is D&D, but with some dirt on it, that's how the game is going to end up no matter what you do on your end. On the other hand, if they can cop the verisimilitude and play by the spirit of the setting rather than the writing of the rulebooks, you're going to have a lot of fun.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-15, 05:33 AM
Low magic doesn't work in DND beyond level, let's say, 5-6 - because non-casters depend on magic items much more than casters, it imbalances the game to casters' favour even more. It might be an issue depending on how will your group's cleric play the character - does he prefer to buff and heal, or use self-buffs and wade into melee, outclassing everyone else in the party?

I'd suggest going with what Satyr posted. Using a system actually fit for gritty, low-magic campaign would be even more favorable - GURPS or WFRP would work especially well here.

Reluctance
2009-02-15, 05:42 AM
It's going to be a horror campaign so I would want to use magical monsters at times to great effects.

Be careful how you do this. If most adventures involve mundane bad guys with something supernatural thrown in once every blue moon, you can do okay without too many changes. (The PCs will be weaker, but so will the vast majority of their opponents.) If magical baddies and their minions show in more adventures than they don't, they'll quickly lose their ability to surprise and impress. Horror is never about numbers or setting. It's all about your ability to set tone, and your players ability to play along.

If you want PC magic to be rare and limited compared to what normal PCs of their level could pull out, insist that characters can have no more than half their levels in any spellcasting class, and that all items must be intelligent on some level. It's still D&D with many rules meant to encourage heroism, but powerful spells will be rarer and items will be both pricier and less mechanical.

xPANCAKEx
2009-02-15, 05:59 AM
I was also going to suggest GURPS

having been introduced to it recently, theres a lot more to take in (its a lot more mechanically heavy than DnD) - but far more grittier. Every battle has some fear in it. Even a lowly mook can seriously dent your health if you're not careful

Arcane_Snowman
2009-02-15, 06:46 AM
Another thing you can do is make some of the essential magical bonuses (magical item, attribute, resistance etc.) something that the character acquires automatically with character levels (look at Vow of Poverty for the general gist of it.), a bit of reflavoring here and there would be in place, for example, the +1 enchantment bonus to items is not actually magical, but your character is simply so well trained that any weapon he/she picks up is better than if it's wielded by a mundane npc (more so than normal). The actual magical items are the weapons that have something other than enchatment bonuses added onto them, like the Blade of Holy Fire or somesuch.

I also think it works well in general, since it makes the characters more heroes and less robocop.

Cheesegear
2009-02-15, 06:54 AM
Once upon a time, in the land of Homebrewia, mages sought to screw with with the laws of nature, they failed miserably, and a catastrophic event took place, which masively backfired killing and maiming most of the magic-adept practioners at the time. The 'normals', then, at the time, rounded up all magical texts they could find, and burned them. They found all the wands they could find...And snapped them in half. Then the 'normals' went on a witch-hunt and killed all mages that they could find.

Scrolls and Books, rare. Wands; Extra-rare. Potions would still exist, because you can rule that they're just herbs and such...Or something. Magic Arms and Armour would still exist, because they're not exactly easily found - or recognised - as magic items. Especially if most of the people who are able to detect magic items are all de-powered or dead.

And that's why magic is rare. Plus, toying around with the idea of magic will make you hated by most of the NPCs. It also should be noted that the 'Monstrous' (evil) races have no such restriction on magic and use it with reckless abandon (just because the players can't use magic, doesn't mean you can't).
And, thus, the law of "Kill the monsters, take their stuff." will allow magic items to be found. Easy.

Kiero
2009-02-15, 07:02 AM
E6 is an option.

Bill King had a sword and sorcery-variant of 3.x online somewhere as well.

PinkysBrain
2009-02-15, 07:08 AM
Just with the cleric alone, you're allowing that gods give people who ask nicely enough the power to break reality with a few behavioral limitations.
Just because there is a cleric doesn't mean there are a lot of clerics.

Maxymiuk
2009-02-15, 08:04 AM
E6 is an option.

I second this. PC's can still be big damned heroes if you remember to pace the challenges accordingly, but without any of the reality-shattering magic being flung about left and right.

The biggest downside is that due to the level limitations, any given character can have at most 1-2 PrC levels, so your Blackguard player would be disappointed.

charl
2009-02-15, 08:41 AM
I was also going to say E6. E6 with armour as damage reduction (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm) and class defence bonus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm) (though you want to look over those bonuses, I halve them) makes for a pretty good classic low magic style of fantasy gaming, sort of Bilbo-like. I use that for my admittedly untested Victorian setting (http://gremlinsandgaslights.pbwiki.com/), but in theory it seems feasible.

EDIT: As for the PRCs, they aren't really essential. You can just make your specialized character concepts with ordinary classes, feat selections and good old fashioned roleplaying.

poxjedi
2009-02-15, 11:06 AM
Low magic doesn't work in DND beyond level, let's say, 5-6 - because non-casters depend on magic items much more than casters, it imbalances the game to casters' favour even more. It might be an issue depending on how will your group's cleric play the character - does he prefer to buff and heal, or use self-buffs and wade into melee, outclassing everyone else in the party?

You seem to think that the game is a competition. The point of the game is to have fun, and you do that by taking part in the action. The other players might not be as good as the Cleric at one small aspect of the game (murdering things) but they are still contributing and an important part of the group, even if their main duty is to fight back the cleric's flankers so he can kill the dragon or what have you.

However, I think that D&D is not very conducive to horror gaming. I have no experience on the subject, but giving the player hit points and leaving them with such a sky-high damage threshold makes them much less fearful of anything- "I know that I have 22 of my 27 hitpoints, and I know the DM won't send anything of way to high CR against us, so I can take this thing"

Lower the damage threshold (the player's constitution score?), put SEVERE limits on the Cleric's healing ability (maybe he can't heal himself, and healing others causes him to lose half as many HP as he heals?).

The only other advice I have is that players should always feel that their actions are important, so don't make any of them weaker than the others to an extreme. Focus on story, not combat. Make sure everyone is having fun (and scared, in your case.)

Tengu_temp
2009-02-15, 11:11 AM
You seem to think that the game is a competition. The point of the game is to have fun, and you do that by taking part in the action. The other players might not be as good as the Cleric at one small aspect of the game (murdering things) but they are still contributing and an important part of the group, even if their main duty is to fight back the cleric's flankers so he can kill the dragon or what have you.


Sorry, you're not a very good telepath. It's not about competition, it's about being completely outdone in your chosen field by another character who can do other things I can't on top of that. If the cleric can fight both the dragon and its mooks and win then I do not feel to be contributing by killing the mooks. I feel like a fifth wheel.

Douglas
2009-02-15, 11:40 AM
(though you want to look over those bonuses, I halve them)
You realize those bonuses are instead of, not in addition to, actual armor, right? Cut them in half and they might as well not exist, just about.

Eldariel
2009-02-15, 11:42 AM
We're playing a game with just no caster-classes allowed (half-casters like Ranger, Paladin, etc. are replaced with Sublime Way-variants gaining ToB maneuvers instead) with a party of Sublime Way Ranger, Rogue & I-have-no-idea-what-yet. So far things have been progressing smoothly with the ½ level to AC bonus (as you don't gain any Nat Armor, Deflection, Armor or Shield-enhancements, that's still behind the normal curve).

Really, you can play such a game all the way to 20 as long as the DM is willing to ignore CR and assess the game in context. It can be a crapton of fun. I wouldn't play such a game without non-Su sections of ToB allowed though.

Yahzi
2009-02-15, 11:55 AM
Just because there is a cleric doesn't mean there are a lot of clerics.
But having few spellcasters in your world s even worse, because it makes the PC spellcaster even more powerful.

Remove Disease is a powerful, world-changing spell. But if the PC is the only one who can cast it, then the PC automatically gets to be King of the Popes.

Lycanthromancer
2009-02-15, 01:19 PM
Once upon a time, in the land of Homebrewia, mages sought to screw with with the laws of nature, they failed miserably, and a catastrophic event took place, which masively backfired killing and maiming most of the magic-adept practioners at the time. The 'normals', then, at the time, rounded up all magical texts they could find, and burned them. They found all the wands they could find...And snapped them in half. Then the 'normals' went on a witch-hunt and killed all mages that they could find.

Scrolls and Books, rare. Wands; Extra-rare. Potions would still exist, because you can rule that they're just herbs and such...Or something. Magic Arms and Armour would still exist, because they're not exactly easily found - or recognised - as magic items. Especially if most of the people who are able to detect magic items are all de-powered or dead.

And that's why magic is rare. Plus, toying around with the idea of magic will make you hated by most of the NPCs. It also should be noted that the 'Monstrous' (evil) races have no such restriction on magic and use it with reckless abandon (just because the players can't use magic, doesn't mean you can't).
And, thus, the law of "Kill the monsters, take their stuff." will allow magic items to be found. Easy.

"And the mundane folk died by the thousands, nabbing, at most, a few hundred 1st level adepts.

"The first time any mob attempted to do this to any mage above level 5, they all died. Or worse. And then the higher level mages decided to defend themselves, and before you can say "Jack be nimble," the populace was enslaved using any number of tricks, from domination to intimidation.

"In the few areas of the world that were, for some insane reason, successful at the purging of magic, they were either conquered by neighboring magocracies, or were completely wiped out by eldritch creatures that would not have been a problem had there been a magic-user to destroy them in turn."

...D&D doesn't work that way unless the entire setting was low-magic from the beginning, with very few monsters (just look at the MM1 to see that this is virtually never the case). Of course, this also doesn't rule out cataclysmic forces that alter the campaign world (such as killing off the gods and smacking the world with widespread impeded- or dead-magic areas).

Iku Rex
2009-02-15, 02:09 PM
Use the Conan RPG (http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Roleplaying-Game-Gareth-Hanrahan/dp/1905850069/) or Iron Heroes (http://www.amazon.com/Monte-Presents-Heroes-Fantasy-Roleplaying/dp/1588467961/).

Knaight
2009-02-15, 05:22 PM
Of course, you can also use E6 with some modifications. For instance, you need to have twice as many non-caster levels as caster levels. So you can't become a level 1 sorcerer until you are at least a level 2 martial class combination(ie fighter 2, rogue 2, fighter 1/rogue 1, barbarian 1/rogue 1) and you can't take a second level of a magic class until you have at least 4 levels of martial class(and are total level 5). So this means that at level 6 the most magic you could have would be something like cleric 2, druid 2, wizard 2, etc.

Half caster classes need only 1 non caster class, but don't count as one(so you could be a fighter 3 bard 3).

Quarter caster classes count as martial classes, and need no other martial classes to help them, however it takes 3 of them to justify 1 caster level, which in E6 makes it impossible to get 2 caster levels when using them, but it is possible to get spells from 2 classes with them.

Or just ditch D&D, pick up Fudge, GURPS, d20 modern, etc.

masamonkey
2009-02-15, 08:38 PM
Use the Conan RPG (http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Roleplaying-Game-Gareth-Hanrahan/dp/1905850069/) or Iron Heroes (http://www.amazon.com/Monte-Presents-Heroes-Fantasy-Roleplaying/dp/1588467961/).


Seconded; Conan is deliciously low magic while still maintaining plenty of mythical goodness on the monster side of things.

Cthulhu might be another option for you also, though it takes a -lot- shoe-horning to adapt to a D&D setting.

Prometheus
2009-02-15, 09:59 PM
I agree. D&D isn't the best system designed for this sort of thing. You might still want the PCs to be capable of magic, but you shouldn't want it to be reliable and versatile.

For unreliable:
1) spell casting takes a long time to cast (hours)
2) spell casting costs xp, sanity, or ages the caster
3) spell casting has a small chance of going very, very wrong.
4) each spell requires specific components that have to be gathered for a small number of uses.
You could use 1&4, unless someone tries to go around those restrictions in which case you get 2&3 as well. The point is to have magic be very powerful, but only used when you really need it. If the world really is that dangerous, a PC will be a caster just so the PCs have a contingency plan.

For unversatile:
A PC has only one thing that they can do magically, and they simply progress in that. For example, grow plants. In the beginning this just simply helps some farmers with crops, helps find food to forage, help cover trails, or creates some very light cover (that last one might take a bit of time). When the PC progresses to higher levels, he or she might eventually be able to ensnare several foes at once with foliage, generate powerful herbal cures or toxins, ride around on a traveling wave of roots, cause a tree to fall on someone, make significant improvements to wooden structures, and create wooden objects from scratch.

In either case you are flying blind and are going to have to balance the character as time progresses as well as come up with a lot of homebrew material.

Inhuman Bot
2009-02-15, 10:55 PM
Look into the Iron kingdoms setting, which has exactly this sort of thing.

It achives this by adding guns to make a powerfull, nonmagic ranged weapon, adding a ruleset called "the pain of healing" so that all healing spells past your level times your wisdom bonus (or something like that) that heal more then that sum make a roll on the pain of healing table, which has results from being stunned, to being struck by the wrath of your god.

Also, there are accumulators, which can achive some of the effects that magic can do, and for higher levels, things like Warjacks and steam powerd armor.

Human opponets are common, and the monstorous ones are really, REALLY scary, with nasty tricks hidden beyond the obvious.

elliott20
2009-02-15, 10:58 PM
echoing everyone else's advice: use a different system or a different setting. D&D core doesn't do low magic very well as all the creatures are balanced around the notion that you will have sufficient access to equivalent level magic.

JonestheSpy
2009-02-16, 04:27 PM
I greatly prefer low-magic settings, for a number of reasons. They are much closer in feel to classic fantasy and mythology. It keeps magic interesting andwell, magical, and not just a mundane aspect of life no different than car mechanics or shopping at the mall. And characters' abilities and feats become much more relevant - no more of the munchkins' "X feat/ability/skill is useless because you can duplicate it by buying Y magic item".

I disagree that you need to use another system, you just need to ignore wealth-by-level (which you should do anyway, no matter the setting) and adjust the threat level of monsters to your players' abilities. For instance, a troop of orcs is still going to be dangerous to mid level characters who don't all possess magic armor and protective devices. That's one of the big pluses of a low-magic game IMO actually - monster inflation is much much slower.

I usually play that player character classes are unchanged - they're the special ones, right? It's not out of line for asking some extra roleplaying from your players to justify this, however - there will probably be priests and worshippers of a given diety, for instance, but the cleric PC is one of the incredibly rare people who's faith is so great that they can perform miracles. Some classes may need some actual tweaking - the monk, for instance, seems written that it's mandatory for them to have AC-boosting magic and a Monk's Belt.

Magic items should be rare, but powerful and worth keeping for the length of the campaign when they do - not constant "trading up". They don't have to be artifact-level, just powerful enough to stay useful. A powerful Metamagic Rod, for instance, can be found by mid-level characters and that's fine because they can't actually make use of it's full power until they get to higher levels; it grows in power as they do.

One thing to watch out for - since magic items are the most common and tmost tangible rewards for success in most campaigns, you'll want to have something to replace them to keep players happy. Some of that can be roleplayed - fame, the satisfaction of saving innocents from horrible doom (don't know if that'll be too keen with a blackguard in the party though...), blowing a pile of treasure on wine, woomen, and song, etc. But character-improving rewards are always very much appreciated. Tomes of lore that give a bonus to Knowledge or other skills after being studied; an encounter with a sensei who can teach a particular bonus feat as a reward for rescue, achieving a quest, etc; or quickening ability gain to every three levels instead of four are all valuable bennies that still preserve the "Magic is rare and special" feeling of the game.

Mina Kobold
2009-02-17, 12:52 PM
Hmm. I think the cost for magic and long time casting is good but what about something in the lines of the Bartimaeus trilogy. Then you need time to summon the spirit/demon for the job but both the summoning and the keepng of it cost energi (like mana I'll say, but it affect your combat abilities too) and you had to be sure they don't get a change to find loopholes in your orders (the better demon, the better they are at it) and you'll have to make better pentagrams for the bigger demons or difficulter assignment (in the books most wizards use imps (weakest, then Foliots, then djinns, then afrits and marid) for protection and the normal tasks (it's safer) and stronger demons for the special stuff) magic items need a demon inside to work (imps for scrying and djinns for blast weapons) and so on. The better the spirit the better the effect (a strong djinn might be quick with scrying and show what magic stuff the subject has, how powerful it is or a staff of scorcing ray while an imp would only show the person and might get caught or a wand of ONE magic missile.) The more demons used the harder it is to control them (maybe one imp is DC 5 but 3 is DC 15 +1/imp then it's not so easy) The pentagrams would allow a certain amount of spells or deeds (regular ones might be 3 0level spells 0r 1 first level but stronger ones might give 5th level spells) This would make spells difficult but still useful (DC 5 for a magic missile and no dayly limit for example) there could even be feats or skills for it (a skill giving bonuses in this would be a good thing for example)

Just my two gp's :smallbiggrin:

valadil
2009-02-17, 01:42 PM
The option I've always wanted to try for a low magic game is to not change the rules in any way shape or form, but be anal about material components and limit the availability of interesting material components. Don't want your PCs throwing fireball at every fight? Give them 2 doses of bat guano and that's all they get until the next level.

Having never attempted this type of game, I realize that this much bean counting may be a little too tedious. If I were to attempt this, I'd probably reduce the number of components out there. Maybe have 20-30 basic components plus a couple here or there for specific spells. I'd also print up component cards to pass out to the players instead of relying on them to take notes on their char sheet. If I was feeling really overzealous, each component card would include the names of the spells it powers.

For the technical minded, I'd probably do this by downloading the SRD as a mysql DB. I'd query for lists of spell components just to see what's out there, and merge accordingly with some text replacement. From there it's trivial to query for each component type, the spells it makes, and its price, and dump this into a PDF. I could probably reduce the work by limiting the spells dealt with either by level or by PC spell selection.

TheThan
2009-02-17, 03:08 PM
Standard dnd 3.5 is not really geared for low magic. Because it is designed for high fantasy, dungeon tromping dragon killing (and hoard stealing) adventures.
Just take a brief look in the monster manual. Most of the creatures in there with a CR over 3 will have some form of damage reduction (bypassed by magic or some alchemical substance), or some magical ability that requires the party to use magic (or magical items) to defeat. At that level, the game assumes you are starting to hand out magic gear and wondrous items. It’s built into the game system, and is very hard to modify.

In order to make dnd 3.5 into a low magic system, you have to adjust the core set of rules to reflect the low magic settings. Creatures should have less powerful magic, lower damage reduction and magic resistance. Few creatures should have magic gear.

Zen Monkey
2009-02-17, 04:49 PM
If you are insistent upon running D&D for this, you might look at the Midnight campaign setting. It's not low-fantasy, but it is low on magic and certainly dark. Wizards and Druids are prestige classes there. It's basically LoTR if Sauron had won.

bosssmiley
2009-02-19, 05:29 AM
Easy fix?

No metamagic, and all full caster classes use the Bard spell progression table (max. spell level 6 across the board). Yes, that reins the power of the 'big 3' in. No, I don't see a problem with this.

Hey, if it's good enough for Holmes B/X D&D... :smallwink:

Oh, and the 3E magic mart doesn't exist. You either find magic items or make them yourself.

Curmudgeon
2009-02-19, 07:00 AM
If you want low magic, do two things:

1) No access to full casting classes, including prestige classes. That means no Clerics.

2) Just say "no" to most magic items.

Piedmon_Sama
2009-02-19, 10:33 AM
And without the healbots, I suggest you look at some of the variant rules offered in Unearthed Arcana:

Defense bonus to AC (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm) will help compensate for a lack of defensive magic items and armor, especially if it's combined with Armor as DR (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm). Regardless of what it says, I allow my PCs to enjoy the (reduced) armor bonus to AC in addition to their Defense Bonus--so a 1st-level Fighter in full plate has an AC of 20 (+6 class, +4 armor) straightaway. This will make characters difficult to hit at lower levels, but again as they level up BaB will leave AC in the dust. That's why DR for everybody who puts on some armor is a good idea. It also makes it a good idea, when you don't have Clerics-on-demand, to use Damage Conversion from Armor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/damageConversion.htm). This will make it so your PCs can take gobs of damage in combat, as usual, but still manage to heal up fairly well even without magical assistance.

By combining all three of those rules, my PCs can just about compensate for a lack of spellcasting and material support. Of course "just about" isn't quite as reassuring as a Scroll of Town Portal in your back pocket, but then I like to make my games suspenseful as possible anyway.

EDIT: Forgot to mention one other variant I like to use, Combat Facing (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/combatFacing.htm). It allows Rogues to pull off solo-backstabs by rolling behind their enemy, turning battles into much more mobile (and admittedly more complicated) duels for positioning and giving the PCs a viable alternative to "lumbering tank" in the low-magic universe.