Would this be balanced?

[SlashRunner]

I'm planning on running a lower-magic campaign some time in the future, and I had an idea.
What if you gave all full-casting classes Bard spellcasting progression instead, and added some real class features of a calibre similar to the Bard's. Bards would get casting up to 4th level, like Paladins and Rangers, and their other abilities would be somewhat buffed up. Paladins and Rangers would lose all spellcasting ability in exchange for better class features.
Would this be fair and leave everyone somewhere around T3, or would this need major revision?

Also, I was thinking that I could give the Sorc 7th level casting in keeping with the Bard spell progression to even the playing field between him and the Wizard a bit.
What I mean is that they would gain only their bonus 7th level spells at 19th level, and 1 7th level spell at 20th level.

[kardar233]

There are already non-spellcasting ACPs for Ranger and Paladin that you could use.

Dunno on the rest.

[Glimbur]

You've probably already thought of this, but a lower magic game requires some careful looking at numbers. Between 80% and 100% of the AC boosts that happen after people get whatever armor they want in MW style come from magic. Some of that can come from friendly spellcasters, but it saves spell slots and actions in combat (which are super valuable) to have magic items. Enhancement bonuses to AC and weapons directly are pretty long term already, but stat bonuses are much better from items than from spells. Other capabilities, like flight and dealing with incorporeals and healing stat drain and raising the dead kind of require magic. If you avoid monsters which use such things, and keep an eye on AC's and to-hits it can work out. But 3.5 assumes a lot of magic all over the place, and if you change it you need to follow the effects of that.

tl;dr Low magic requires rejiggering of numbers, especially AC and to-hit, for monsters to avoid killing PC's willy-nilly.

edit: in fairness to Veyr, I stole the ideas of this rant from a post he made in an earlier thread.

[Veyr]

I'd caution you that 3.5 is designed around an extreme ubiquity of magic, and while you can force a square peg through a round hole, so to speak, and make it do this, it should require a lot of work. You sound like you're on the right track, except that to make classes Tier 3 without magic is very, very hard — in all of 3.5, only the Warblade has managed that. Note that the Paladin and Ranger both were not Tier 3 despite their magic, and like Glimbur said, there's a lot of numbers you'll need to fiddle with. This is going to be a big undertaking (it has to be, considering how much of the system you're overhauling; this is a basic assumption at the core of the game, so everything built upon that also needs to be changed). If you're not doing all that work, I think, it probably means that you're cutting corners and you're likely leaving in some serious problems (which may not necessarily be the end of the world; 3.5 has a lot of serious problems to begin with, but it's going to be a lot harder to know where those problems are because of how much you've changed).

In all seriousness, I'd suggest trying to find another system to try this with. I believe Iron Heroes is D20-based, which means much of the same things should apply, and it gets suggested enough on these boards to suggest to me that it must have some merit (though I know nothing, personally, about the system).

[SlashRunner]

Note that I'm not going for an EXTREMELY low-magic setting like so many others where casting a spell has a 95% chance of killing you in a creatively gruesome way. I just want to significantly lower it from the level where it's currently at, which means 20th level Wizards altering reality with a thought and your average peasant buttering their toast with +5 Vorpal butter knives.
That being said, I tend to like to challenge my players in a way that each encounter carries a chance that they might have to run away or approach the situation in an intelligent manner, so maybe an increase in difficulty might not be such a bad thing. However, some adjustment in the difficulty of monsters could be in order.
As for the Paladin and Ranger: I'm sort of aiming for all the classes to sit comfortably within the tier 3-4 range. I'm sure there are tons of spell-less Paladin and Ranger homebrews that fit my parameters. If not, I'm sure I could whip something up myself that would be half-decent.

[kardar233]

I'm a big fan of Iron Heroes personally. However, it doesn't have casting at all except for one optional class whose magic is both dangerous to himself and fairly unpredictable. Magic items are extremely rare, but the base classes are pretty cool. Haven't looked at the DMG of it, so I can't speak for prestiges.

[Veyr]

Note that I'm not going for an EXTREMELY low-magic setting like so many others where casting a spell has a 95% chance of killing you in a creatively gruesome way. I just want to significantly lower it from the level where it's currently at, which means 20th level Wizards altering reality with a thought and your average peasant buttering their toast with +5 Vorpal butter knives.
Reasonable enough; that's a major issue with 3.5 in my mind, but it's not going to be entirely trivial.


As for the Paladin and Ranger: I'm sort of aiming for all the classes to sit comfortably within the tier 3-4 range. I'm sure there are tons of spell-less Paladin and Ranger homebrews that fit my parameters. If not, I'm sure I could whip something up myself that would be half-decent.
Well, Paladin can be replaced, full-stop, with a Crusader, which is vaguely mystical but not out-right magical, for the most part. Warblade can handle TWF Ranger well enough (Tiger Claw), but archery... you'll need to think of something for archery. There are some homebrew archery disciplines in the Homebrew section, maybe?

Warblade also, obviously, handles the Fighter nicely.

Barbarian would be usable as-is, maybe with some supplement from Crusader or Warblade... Rogue, too, again perhaps with some supplement from Swordsage, which can also handle the Monk. The Psychic Warrior also makes a good Monk, and is nicely Tier 3.

You could replace Druids with Totemists, to differentiate them some more, perhaps. Incarnate can also make a decent Paladin-type.

If you gave them a few more Invocations Known, the Warlock and Dragonfire Adept could replace Wizard and Sorcerer, respectively, if you wanted to do that instead of tweaking the spell progression tables. They're currently kind of Tier 3/4, and really would appreciate a few more Invocations Known. One per level would seem appropriate to me.

The Cleric is harder. Incarnate, again, maybe, maybe adding Turn Undead? Or, a heavily refluffed Binder could work. This is probably the best candidate, though, for your reduced spell progression, though.

[Darth Stabber]

Sounds like you are going to a lot of effort to build something that exists elsewhere. Most other midevil rpgs offer exactly what you are trying to make D&D do. The Riddle of Steel is easily one of the best out there, casters are rare, though powerfull, but with a tendency to die of old age before they're 25. And holy crap is combaat fun in that game.