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Amiel
2010-03-20, 12:50 AM
So, what happens if you remove magic from D&D. Will it still be considered D&D or will it be a completely different iteration?
Or should it simply not be done? Since it may be deviating markedly from its original premise.
What differences will it introduce? What new imbalances may it create?
Is there a way that it can be done, that is centrally fitting, makes senses and is fun?

Tinydwarfman
2010-03-20, 12:53 AM
Iron Heroes. And it is fun.

the humanity
2010-03-20, 12:53 AM
well it'd solve those overpowered wizards and druids.

a little too well >_>

it'd be simple really, just play fighters, monks, rogues and other magic free classes.

Sinfire Titan
2010-03-20, 01:20 AM
The problem arises when noncasters fight something that is normally incredibly difficult for them to fight. Anything that is naturally Incorporeal, for example, or Air Elementals. Undead like Wights and Wraiths also become much more deadly when you can't remove Negative Levels. And Ability Drain is impossible to remove non-magically.

Hell, even Difficult Terrain is enough to screw some classes outright.

Cisturn
2010-03-20, 02:03 AM
you'd have to call is just "dungeons" but except for extended heal time, and maybe a few less monsters i don't see why it shouldn't be fun

vrellum
2010-03-20, 02:06 AM
I'm guessing most of those things would probably be removed as well and/or there would be alternative ways to deal with them. Though it is a good point that the DM has to be aware of the limits of the PCs under the no magic setting.

I think it would be fun. I've played games with greatly reduced (though never outright removed) magic and they were great.

Reluctance
2010-03-20, 02:18 AM
Removing magic just from the PCs, or removing magic period? Because most "low-magic" concepts I've seen have an awful lot of supernatural bad guys walking around.

Strip magic from everything, and you're throwing out most of the game. It can be an interesting short romp through low levels, but eventually you'll be seeing "impossible" things happening with skills and hit points. 3.5 simply isn't a good base for a gritty game.

Low-magic PCs require a lot of extra work on you as the DM, as you'll have to adjust CRs for a party without the gear or spell backup the rules expect. This goes double when you consider just how powerful magic is, and how carefully you'll have to balance the enemies. It's doable in theory, but in practice there are probably better tweaks to avoid the "casters = gods" than this.

Satyr
2010-03-20, 04:04 AM
Well, there is always Serpents and Sewers (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Serpents_and_Sewers) for all your low magic/high drama needs. I have heard that the author is a descended demigod and a genius, but that might be a bit exagerated.

The problem with D&D is, that mundane characters have too few options by default. Because of the bland, overtly abstract combat system, the imbecile idea of passive defense, and lots of fights which basically come down to "two guys hit each other until one keels over".

Thanks to this actually quite bad game design (magic is an extra. If your system doesn't work or isn't fun when you leave it out, that's not exactly good game design), removing magic from the game would make it even blander, so you'd need some other abilities, mundane, realistic abilities (e.g. hit locations, bleeding, crippling strikes) should fill in the gaps. Thus, it is a good idea to take a set of rules that offer some interesting mundane options, like the already mentioned Iron Heroes, or the somewhat more flexible and less book-keepy Serpents and Sewers (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Serpents_and_Sewers).
It's one of the innane ideas of D&D that supposedly a painful injury does nothing to anyone when it is dealt with an ordinary axe blow, but a lengthy good laugh is absolutely crippling, as long as it is magic(tm).

You could also play something else. Gurps does anything D&D does as well, and usually better, AFMBE with the Dungeons and Zombies splat book is very homebrewer friendly, Burning Wheels is a very fun system, and if you can get a copy of Riddle of Steel, you have a really cool system at hand. D&D is not the only roleplaying game, it''s not even one of the better ones.

krossbow
2010-03-20, 04:06 AM
A ghost goes from being just a nuisance to being an omnipotent god that will rape every single party member in short order.

Vitruviansquid
2010-03-20, 04:19 AM
DnD doesn't have enough in the area of physical combat to hold up well without magic.

I'm sure there are other, better settings you could play if you wanted to do fantasy without magic. I personally use Savage Worlds to play a low magic campaign, but really, Savage Worlds does *everything* well, so I would hardly recommend it if there was a more specialized system somewhere (which I'm sure there is.)

bosssmiley
2010-03-20, 11:08 AM
Mechanically: You end up with GURPS lite.
Thematically: You end up something similar to Pendragon (if you like high fantasy) or Barbarians of Lemuria (if you prefer S&S). At least for a few levels. :smallamused:

ericgrau
2010-03-20, 11:13 AM
It still ends up imbalanced b/c magic items are responsible for different stats than classes. That and monsters expect higher stats in general. Even then you need to take out any monster that flies, is incorporeal and so on. You can use the thing in my signature to keep it balanced at least.

Or at the very least you need an AC progression to keep up with BAB. You'll still need damage, save and etc. boosts unless you eliminate monsters entirely and only put the PCs against NPCs with class levels.

Or, ya, you play another system. D&D hinges on magic.

Lycanthromancer
2010-03-20, 11:19 AM
Every party in existence would need a crusader, since they have the only way to heal that is [Ex]. Otherwise, everyone needs either fast healing or regeneration, or every single fight would need to be less than half the standard CR, and would still require a week or more of downtime to recover from.

Eldariel
2010-03-20, 11:24 AM
D&D hinges on magic.

Does not. Monsters as written do. As long as you don't deal with incorporeals, and ignore CRs (which you should do anyways), you're fine. Though you might want to homebrew something on healing unless you want long periods of healing. WP/VP system makes no-magic games work great though.

I'm playing one right now and it's great fun, so I'd say that alone is a testament to everyone saying it can't be done being wrong.

awa
2010-03-20, 11:29 AM
A low magic game can work but you cant take cr at face value like has been mentioned incorporeal foes are vastly more dangerous as is something like a troll. You will need to be careful fights don't devolve into two guys standing next to each other taking swings at each other. Interesting battlefield can do that to a degree such as fighting in a burning building with the fire spreading round by round forcing players to think about the terrain and even get the opportunity to use it such as trying to force enemies into the fire either by pushing them or just blocking their movement.

Edit their is the reserve point variant rule that would help alleviate the hit point problem but i would agree the fights will need to be weaker both becuase you cant recover from fights as quickly and becuase you are less powerful.
As someone else mentioned some kind of level based defense for all characters is really a necessity if they arnt going to have magical ac boosters.

Starbuck_II
2010-03-20, 11:31 AM
Extraordinary becomes the new magic (they can bypass laws of physics).

Lycanthromancer
2010-03-20, 11:34 AM
You could remove core casting classes easily enough, but if you want to remove magic altogether, you'd be best off trying another system altogether if you don't want to restrict the game to the point where there really aren't many choices that either DM or players can make.

awa
2010-03-20, 11:54 AM
in the grand scheme i agree that just removing magic is probably not the best choice. outlawing the specialized casters can work with little difficulty outlawing all classes with magic works less well but removing all magic items is a bad idea with out heavy home brewing, becuase the game assumes they have them things like ac are very magic dependent and your basically going to have to throw out the normal cr system becuase damage reduction and similar things becomes much more powerful but if you willing to spend the effort it can be rewarding.

grautry
2010-03-20, 11:55 AM
Well, removing magic entirely might not be a bad idea, but it would be a *very* different game altogether.

If I went with this, I'd remove almost all magic but leave the creatures that have innate supernatural abilities and some rare, legendary magical items.

Anyway, in such a game confronting a ghost(the staple of incorporeal creatures) would be more like Call of Cthulhu rather than D&D.

Direct confrontation is suicide - you can't hurt it and it very well can hurt you. So you resort to a different technique - perhaps you set right what once went wrong and therefore, resolve the reason for the ghosts existence.

Alternatively you could chase down the legends and the stories of a legendary weapon, forged in cooperation between the greatest blacksmith of the era and imbued with a part of an essence of the ghost of an Emperor(see? one of the cool things about it is that every single magical thing becomes magical, with a history all its own, while in any other game it would be just a boring ghost touch weapon or even just a +1 weapon) to destroy the spirit once and for all.

Also, in such a game almost all supernatural creatures will invariably have to have a history. There will be no Troll #24 or Vampire #36, there will be the Terror of the Woods, Ula-Tek, he who terrorizes the country. The vampire instead will be Lord Blackwood and an entire story will resolve around searching for the scraps of hidden lore and forgotten weapons in order to finally arrive at a method of killing him.

Anyway, it wouldn't be such a horrible idea as long as you don't mind a vastly different game than normal D&D is, but, there are probably better systems to use for such a game.

Optimystik
2010-03-20, 12:12 PM
I have to agree with Lycan, Sinfire etc. It strips too much out of the game to really make it D&D anymore.

It's Dungeons & Dragons. Are we removing them too?

Not to mention aberrations, outsiders, elementals, even planes...

Roderick_BR
2010-03-20, 12:39 PM
Depends what you want to do. Removing full casters puts the game's focus on warriors and magic items (and half-casters, if you keep them). Removing magic at all, as was pointed out, makes the game turn into Gurps lite, with it's "realistic" system, where fighting a single lion is a whole campaing, and fighting anything supernatural is simply impossible. And healing becomes very important and slow.

Healing could be dealt with:
* Armor Damage conversion (wearing armor makes lethal blows less dangeous) (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/damageConversion.htm)
* Injury (makes attacks be either deadly, or harmless, regardless of magic healing or not) http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/injury.htm
* Reserve points (technically, you have twice HP that is healed twice as fast on a daily basis) (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/reservePoints.htm)
* Tome of Battle's HP recovery maneuvers.
* Non-magic healing items (there's some in some books around)
* Having half casters (paladion, ranger, maybe bard) that can still handle healing.

Remember that natural healing, while slow, is still useful. A character recovers 1 HP for each character level/day, twice that with full day rest, and twice that with treatment. So a 2nd fighter with treatment (heal skill) can heal 8 HP (4 for each character level) everyday. To go from 1 HP to 20, it'll be 3 days, nearly half a week.

Ah, ability point damage can be healed with treatment too, but not status (a -4 penalty to strength instead of 4 points of strength damage)

Optimystik
2010-03-20, 12:50 PM
Removing magic at all, as was pointed out, makes the game turn into Gurps lite, with it's "realistic" system, where fighting a single lion is a whole campaign

This line had me LOLing :smallbiggrin: Why would I want to play a system like that? It would probably be less trouble to go out and fight a real lion!

Knaight
2010-03-20, 12:55 PM
Depends what you want to do. Removing full casters puts the game's focus on warriors and magic items (and half-casters, if you keep them). Removing magic at all, as was pointed out, makes the game turn into Gurps lite, with it's "realistic" system, where fighting a single lion is a whole campaing, and fighting anything supernatural is simply impossible. And healing becomes very important and slow.

Hardly. Mundane animals remain fairly easy to drop once you get to high enough levels. A party of warriors could take down a single lion by level 2 or 3 if optimized, an elephant by 7 or 8. Once you get into the 10+ levels you can take down entire hordes. Healing time is just extended. Even in GURPS Lite, a lion isn't that huge a problem. Ganging up is much, much nastier in that system, as are weapons, and the Lion is pretty mortal too. Sure, it probably won't be easy to fight a lion in one on one, but it is doable.

Were I to remove magic from D&D, I would make a few other changes as well.
1) Use E6, if going for anything even resembling realism.
2) AC needs serious changes. A bonus at the very least.

That said, I would probably end up doing this with another system. Gurps, Fudge, and Savage Worlds are all decent generics for this, although Savage Worlds has some major issues.

krossbow
2010-03-20, 01:00 PM
holy $#@*; monks might actually become useful

Knaight
2010-03-20, 01:04 PM
Nah. Unarmed Fighters are still better, and TOB continues to blow them out of the water. Not to mention armed Fighters, Rogues, and such.

Satyr
2010-03-20, 01:07 PM
Removing magic at all, as was pointed out, makes the game turn into Gurps lite

With a lot of wishful thinking, at best, but more likely a slight case of hybris.

Gurps will always do a better job in replacing D&D than vice versa. Including Gurps light.

Starbuck_II
2010-03-20, 01:36 PM
This line had me LOLing :smallbiggrin: Why would I want to play a system like that? It would probably be less trouble to go out and fight a real lion!

A guy did that with his hands in Africa. Killed the thing by pulling out its tonque. Was very manly.

Greenish
2010-03-20, 01:44 PM
A guy did that with his hands in Africa. Killed the thing by pulling out its tonque. Was very manly.Ha, so that's the secret weakness of lions, their tongue! No wonder I haven't managed to kill any yet.

Optimystik
2010-03-20, 05:40 PM
Were I to remove magic from D&D, I would make a few other changes as well.
1) Use E6, if going for anything even resembling realism.
2) AC needs serious changes. A bonus at the very least.


Why would you remove spells AND go E6? I thought the point of E6 was to put the casters more in line with everyone else.

Set
2010-03-20, 06:25 PM
Monsters with unbeatable abilities (incorporeal) need to be removed, or tweaked so that they can be beaten (although it doesn't have to be easy!).

Non-magical enhancements to the current healing rules need to be added, such as a use of the Heal skill that allows one to repair a limited amount of hit point damage per day (perhaps points per day per subject equal to your ranks in the Heal skill, and perhaps even simply converting lethal damage to nonlethal damage, as opposed to making wounds just 'go away'). No one person can be healed in this manner more than Con mod + HD hit points per day, so if the whole party has 4 ranks of Heal, they can't take turns and pass bandages around until everyone is healed.

Mundane skills should have some higher levels of effect. A master weaponsmith should be able to create a MW weapon that does +1 damage, or a suit of MW armor that confers a +1 armor bonus, at even greater cost than the usual MW weapons or armor, representing the closest thing the Mundane Realms have to 'magical weapons.'

There are 'tiers' of 'removing magic,' as well.

1) All magic gone is one level.

2) All magic becomes slow ritualistic stuff usable by NPCs (or PCs with a special feat) to perform various 'plot' things (less D&D, more Call of Cthulhu, or Conan, where PCs won't use magic, save as the story calls for it, and nobody 'casts spells' in battle).

3) Spells don't exist, but alchemy does. Alchemist's Fire becomes the new 'fireball.'

Deca
2010-03-20, 07:23 PM
Then Psions will rule.

Evard
2010-03-20, 09:04 PM
Save points that give you full HP + Only martial classes would be cool

Psionics can be considered a form of magic (like divine magic is actually arcane magic except you are channeling it from a god)

Knaight
2010-03-20, 09:04 PM
Why would you remove spells AND go E6? I thought the point of E6 was to put the casters more in line with everyone else.

It also brings the incredibly powerful heroes more in line with the peasantry. Granted, more in line with means that they can now be stopped by say, entire small villages, but it is still pointless. If magic is being removed, I assume a more down to earth game. It isn't necessarily the case, but it is still a safe assumption.

Deca
2010-03-20, 09:10 PM
Psionics can be considered a form of magic (like divine magic is actually arcane magic except you are channeling it from a god)

Eeerh. Power/Magic transparency aside, Psionics isn't considered magic.

So, all of the Psionic classes will wake up to find that the other caster classes are gone. Thats world domination right there.

HunterOfJello
2010-03-20, 09:14 PM
if you remove magic from d&d you'd also have to remove 90% of the monsters from the Monster Manual since you'd only be left with Animals

WarKitty
2010-03-20, 09:19 PM
Could actually get an interesting campaign going this way...makes me think of doing a more war-type campaign, where the players fight mostly humanoid NPC's rather than lots of monsters. That could be fun.

krossbow
2010-03-20, 11:53 PM
I think this brings to light a very important thing about D&D; magic IS D&D. Removing it removes almost all the intricacy and flavor from the game.

awa
2010-03-21, 12:48 AM
Theirs a difference between removing all magic from the game and removing the pcs access to it. And the psionic things is just nitpicking the words.
Unless of course he is replacing magic with psionics in that case he needs to do very little to make the game viable.

Their are a huge number of monsters that don't have supernatural abbilities much less magic it might be a very limited game but you could make a campaign out of killing orcs, ogres, and giants

Hawriel
2010-03-21, 01:45 AM
Dont see a problem. It would make players plan more carfuly. You could also look into folk lor for ways to combat undead, warewolves and other classic monsters.

Things like dragons would be fun to play against. Rethink a dragon as if its a rare predator or a highly inteligent animal, if not actualy scentiant. Breath weapons like fire and acid can be biologicly explaned. You can also creat new ones based off of real animals, such as the spitting cobra and the kamoto dragon.

You can then sneak a little magic back in the game. Im thinking Norse and Greek myth type stuff. Very subtle are a little goes a long way. Or like the TV show supernatual, when there not doing the big meta plot stuff.

Kelb_Panthera
2010-03-21, 01:51 AM
Unfortunately the way BAB and AC work, make taking magic out altogether completely non-viable unless you also put a hard cap on character level, like E6. Actually..... a no magic E6 game could work......

Anyway, here's some numbers to look at. LvL 10 fighter. BAB 10 str 22 and a masterwork sword gets you an attack bonus of +17 vs a level 10 rogue, dex 22 + leather armor has AC 18. The fighter automatically hits on anything but a natural one. 3 or higher if the rogue fights defensively, 8 or higher if he also has combat expertise and uses it to full power. I didn't include a shield because combat optimized rogues are usually twf'ers. Full bab classes will never miss humanoid target beyond about level 6...... oddly enough. Monsters on the other hand will either be complete push-overs, or nightmare creatures that can't be stopped. The system just doesn't work for anything but low-level play without magic.

Satyr
2010-03-21, 02:27 AM
And that's why a class-based defense bonus which scales by level is such a good idea.

It's not impossible to turn D20 into a working low magic or no magic system - I know it, I've done it (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Serpents_and_Sewers) - but it includes a lot of work and effort.
+In the regard of magic, D&D is not a very good designed game, because the rules work only really clumsy by default if you leave the supernatural out of the game. Yes, I conscider this to be a fault, and a bad one at that. Rules are supposed to be sensible and intutitve and that requires that they work well enough in a completely mundane environment. Magic is an extra, something exotic, and it deserves to be treated like that.

Deca
2010-03-21, 03:47 AM
And that's why a class-based defense bonus which scales by level is such a good idea.

It's not impossible to turn D20 into a working low magic or no magic system - I know it, I've done it (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Serpents_and_Sewers) - but it includes a lot of work and effort.
+In the regard of magic, D&D is not a very good designed game, because the rules work only really clumsy by default if you leave the supernatural out of the game. Yes, I conscider this to be a fault, and a bad one at that. Rules are supposed to be sensible and intutitve and that requires that they work well enough in a completely mundane environment. Magic is an extra, something exotic, and it deserves to be treated like that.

You just have to keep plugging that don't you? :smallbiggrin:

Nah, it's fine. Had a look at it. Seems pretty good.

Satyr
2010-03-21, 04:12 AM
In this discussion, Serpents and Sewers is a meaningful contribution, because a) it is basically D&D, albeit with a few changes, and b) it would work without magic. Hell, it works with magic, which is more than D&D can firmly claim when it comes to the fringes of the game.
It is just a different variety of the rules, comparable to Iron Heroes or Arcana Unearthed, but with a less professional writing staff.

I am usually not trying to promote this stuff for all means, but when it is relevant to a discussion, I think it is fair play to mention alternatives.

Optimystik
2010-03-21, 09:59 AM
Eeerh. Power/Magic transparency aside, Psionics isn't considered magic.

So, all of the Psionic classes will wake up to find that the other caster classes are gone. Thats world domination right there.

"Domination" is right. Balance-wise, you'd still have some modifications to make - Three psionic classes are Tier 2, one is Tier 1/0, and the psionic melee classes are tiers 3, 4, and 5 respectively. It's still too spread out; there's just as much imbalance in a psionics-only system as there is in regular D&D.

Perhaps the most balanced system "out of the box" would be ToB classes for melee, Incarnum classes and Binders for divine magic, and Warlocks, DFAs, Dread Necros, Factota and Beguilers for a more arcane/rogueish feel. Season to taste. Everybody would be Tier 3. There isn't a monster in the MMs that a party composed of any 3-5 of these couldn't handle, provided the levels are appropriate.