3.5; Low/Non Magic Game; Tiers, Gestalt, Prestige, and CR

[Vaz]

I am part of a group of players who have recently picked up the Game since we started university and found a pile of books that all in perfect condition; noone has come back to claim them (despite asking around), and with their being the best part of £1200 worth there (guesstimation), we didn't really want to throw
out. Now between the typical student life and work we haven't had much time
to do much with it; but now the time has come to start a campaign over christmas.

So; we had a flat meeting over dinner one night (between admiring - professionally, of course - Natalie Lowe's insane body on Strictly Come Dancing), and we have decided to do a low-to-no magic campaign.

This is one where magic is basically not present. Why? We found it far, far too powerful, just looking at the spell books, and having a quick look-see round here, it seems that everyone else feels the same way. So; the simplest way of doing it was simply banning everything that had a Spellcasting ability, but also
some of the more supernatural creatures; with a few exceptions; essentially the more "humanoid" you are in appearance, the more likely it will be present although more likely as a baddy; for example; a Marilith is perhaps my favourite Demon; I used to play Warhammer, and there was a character called Dechala the Denied One who was essentially a Marilith appearance wise - as such, the Marilith is likely to be our big final enemy. However, exactly how low magic are we? No Elves, Dwarves, Walking Lizards or Lich's will be present.

The general setting of the campaign world is one similar to Rokugan (I think we have all of these books), with Dragons (all of them technically on the same side, but with different factions within them), fighting Demon and Devil hordes; the Dragons are Peacekeepers, neutral arbitrators, while the other two are the evil guys who are fighting each other across the galaxy; having destroyed the last world, they have now come to this one. The magic was drained from the world by the Dragons, who now have a fragment of their prior power, but that same
magic drained into small pockets all over the world. Whenever anyone comes to these pockets; they are rendered able to cast magic and learn a dangerous truth about why it was removed; the last person to do so was corrupted by it, and through this surge in emotions, the Evil hordes had an outlet to this world from their last one; the final boss is the place where our corrupted spellcaster disintegrated into nothingness, leaving only a pulsing hole in the aether; here the Vanguard of the devils and daemons come; not weaklings like dretch, but overlords (so pit fiends, cornugons, mariliths, and balors). It is from here they corrupt the human populace, and the setting of the story.

so Clans, Samurai etc, but no Shadowlands, etc, but without some of the big limitations present. I myself love the Romance of The Three Kingdoms storyline; Dynasty Warriors and all that jazz as a young teenager - and love the style of Chinese martial arts; Jet Li; Jackie Chan, House of Flying Daggers, Crouching Tiger, Hero, etc; so will likely be creating a character around that. Yes, yes, ignoring the whole Bamboo forest and walking on water things, but those are fairly synonymous with the mad feats of Legends; and is far more satisfying to explain to extraordinary talents rather than simply gating in a Great Wyrm Gold Dragon.

We have run a few encounters in preperation to learn the rules, but not a full campaign.

However, this is where we are getting a little stuck; looking at the Tiers; anything without Magical/Psionics is in the 3rd or 4th Tier; and obviously some creatures have lower challenge ratings due to their expected challenge; i.e easy access to Potions and Wands of Cure, Fly, Invisibility, while some creatures have some fairly powerful Magical abilities; like Dragons and Demons, and Devils which buffs up their CR.

So; a Pit Fiend which can no longer at will Blasphemy/Mass Circle v. Good (of which we almost definately will be) or even Wish; or a Green Dragon incapable of Mass Dominating the PC's; what would yountypically rate these characters at? Will there be a significant loss in a Challenge Rating? Or conversely, despite a Gold Dragon no longer able to Discern Gems, thanks to not allowing Greater Invisibility and fly, will that make it go up in CR? For example; there is no quick heal or quick "phoenix down" I can use to restore a character mid/post battle. The only healing is what happens naturally; resting in a wagon with a good healer and a herb poultice to hand, maybe. Having read the SRD and UA about Gestalt CR; all it states is simply give more Save or Die and give them a harder
CR to fight. If there is no quick fix for these high CR creatures, what about "the corrupted"; these do the bulk of any of the 3 D's work and primary foe replacing Orks/Gnolls etc with human samurai/ronin/ashigaru/bandits, as well as puzzles, traps, and the natural environment.

Note that we will be getting some of the Magic Items; due to the nature of using Samurai or Kensai at some point. But none of this blatantly obvous "magic wand of iWin".

Lastly; Gestalt; I love this idea; I have heard warnings about all the wacky things which can go on about a Gestalt; but they are related to magic casters so do not apply. But the Prestige Classes; without access to spellcasting (spellcasting classes banned, or more likely allowed, excluding Requirement for casting spells/psionic powers, and having those Spellcasting/psionic progression ignored), what is the reason for not allowing PrC/PrC, yet C/C or PrC/C is allowed? I know "because it says so" but the DM wanted me to find out if there is some unseen mechanism that would be skewed out the wazoo compared to Wizard 20 shenanigans (Monk with fighter feats/crusader maneuvres sticks out a fair bit).

As an aside, completely irrelevant, I noticed the Living Spell Template; has anyone got a list of spells that work well with it? I am thinking of running a seperate campaign based in the Mournlands full of these oozes, and I'd be interested in seeing any wierd or wacky variants (Like the use of glitterdust, as opposed to pure evocation).

[Kelb_Panthera]

When shooting for a low-magic feel, you're on the right track with stripping out the actual casters, but removing -all- magic items actually dramatically fouls up the way certain basic numbers are supposed to function. At the very least you need all the various +X to Y stat/save/ac bonus granting items. Since this sounds like a casual enough game you don't have to worry about explaining where they all came from, but magic of rokugan has something to say on the matter if you absolutely need an explanation.

I don't know enough about how gestalt actually plays to comment on it, but adjusting the CR's of creatures under these changes will require a case-by-case assessment of the creatures' remaining abilities compared to what you could reasonably expect from the party. You've changed too much for the original CR system to really retain any meaning.

To be completely honest, it sounds like you may be trying to bite off more than you can chew if you're genuinely interested in keeping all the numbers relevant.

Edit: since your entire group is a bunch of newbs, disregard the tier system for now. It's utterly meaningless with the setup you're contemplating and requires at least some system mastery to be more than a heads-up to a new-ish GM.

[nedz]

If you disregard magic, then you are missing the point of the game.

The standard party is Fighter + Rogue + Wizard + Cleric.
Try that first.

Player ability > Build > Class; and as new players you will make lots of mistakes — as you learn. So the classes won't matter too much, certainly not at 1st level.

Also I wouldn't bother with Gestalt until you know what you are doing.

[Endarire]

If you're a stickler for dumping the metaphysical, rely on Tome of Battle. Even if you likes them magics, go for Tome of Battle.

My experience with a group of 3.5 newbs is that, over the course of levels 1 to 21, no one ever tried to break the game with spells. No one cared to research stuff outside game time, meaning no planar binding. The closest anyone ever came to that was me, who mused over it and thought planar binding could be quite powerful, but said nothing to my players.

Talk to your group. Magic is powerful, yes, but magic is the benchmark for the game! D&D is, like it or not, ultimately a game about magic. It's a game about casters and magic items and creatures that wield or are magic.

[Murg]

A no magic campaign is possible.

A thread that addresses taking magic out of the game is here:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=256683

This was a post I made because, like you, I was pondering the ramifications of taking magic out of my game. It is more "low" magic than "no" magic (as discussed in the thread).

[TuggyNE]

I would second (third?) the cautions against diving in too deep; before attempting to fix the game, try playing it first, and your group may not need everything (or even anywhere near) corrected, especially since the best balance is always attained in practice with the aid of just agreeing to play decently.

In particular, gestalt introduces some extra complications that aren't really necessary your first few times around, while genuinely low-magic games tend to have odd and far-reaching consequences (some of which you already seem aware of, and some of which are less visible but not necessarily less important). However, your instinct of substituting basically humanoid enemies (with perhaps a few special abilities) for the SLA-heavy outsiders and special-ability-packed monsters is a good one as far as it goes. Still, keep in mind that PCs need defenses, and nearly all good defenses are magical, and therefore don't auto-scale with level unless you're a caster. (Most of the actively buffing magical gear/spells you need for regular games is there to allow you to match monsters or casters: flight, for example, and DR-bypassing weapons, and sufficiently-high attack bonuses to get past natural armor, and so on. Various immunities are also normally necessary past a certain point, but here that won't be as significant.)

[rockdeworld]

Lastly; Gestalt; I love this idea; I have heard warnings about all the wacky things which can go on about a Gestalt; but they are related to magic casters so do not apply.
What you have heard is the tip of the iceberg with gestalt. Casters do not have the monopoly on wacky things there, as the Gestalt Warrior Arena can prove to you (or would, if the main thread hadn't disappeared into a black hole).
Just to give you an idea:
*Gloura Bard//Paladin/CW Samurai/Iajutsu Master/Battle Dancer with Divine Might, Snowflake Wardance, Slippers of Battledancing, and Whirling Blade active gets a ton of Charisma and applies it to ACx2, Savesx2, Hitx4, Damagex4, and Initiative. Not to mention hitting you with 9d6 extra Iajutsu damage.
*Tauric XYZ/Anything//Regular Class gives a monster the likes of which the D&D system was not meant to contain.
Those examples both come from experience :smallbiggrin:

Since you're going for a Low-Op game, you probably want to avoid gestalt. For the first game anyway.

Also, I've heard there's a game called Iron Heroes that's pretty fun and doesn't use magic. If available, your group may want to try that instead.

[Darth Stabber]

Rokugan with d20 rules? Bah! L5R has much better rules for the things that matter in that setting, and allows low magic to work better.

Trying to make low magic work in 3.5 is really tough, D&D is very poorly balanced, but the second you start messing with the game's core assumptions you remove any balance that was ever there, and replace it with a mess. If you are new to the game, just play it like normal to figure out the flow of the system, and do that a while before you start monkying around under the hood.

[Vaz]

It isn't "Rokugan"; it is simply takimg the classes and some ideas from it.

As to playing: while we haven't played a full campagin, we have had several run throughs of adventures using the full core rules; each time we have been buffed to hell and back, or simply had the spellcasters win the battles; either for or against us.

I'm not too sure where it comes from to get balance; when it is "save or die" - even with all good saves and some nice buffs all too often we lost a character thanks to such a spell. Alternatively we simply hovered above the ground, or had the summoned creatures banished in short order before they did anything.

As for Gestalt; while yes, that build may have been a bit powerful; it would have been unlikely to come up; and if it still does; 4x Damage with a d10+15 (lets say) weapon is a) still not too powerful compared to some of the spells (oh heres a random Great Wyrm dragon/Balor/Angel I pulled out of my rear).

There are some things that I think I'm a little wary of- like the Monk/Swordsage capable of lighting an area 55x55ft square on fire, but even so that is a l18 monk, and we are starting off at l1. As to tge Tauric Templatr; yes I had seen that in Savage Species and MM2; I even wanted to make one phrenic and winged. That was before we settled on having a primarily human conflict.

I have given the guys your suggestions, but (sadly, dependent on your point of view) they have said "nope" we spent too much time deciding on it and so we are keeping the gestalt and no magic. So I guess that leaves a thanks but no thanks, respectfully; and more to do with how best to mitigate these factors as oppoosed to "don't mess with game balance you'll mess it up"; how would I? We don't have Scroll of Fly, or whatever, so we are dead against an opponent capable of natural flight (ie has wings as opposed to spell)? That just means we havento houserule in something like a "fly check" with penalties based on damage percentage.

[Eldariel]

No magic functions provided you take care of few things:
- Armor Class does not advance while To Hit does. You need to somehow compensate for this if you want midlevel characters to not get autohit every time. Class-based defense bonus (for instance equivalent or ½ their BAB) functions pretty well in my experience.
- Challenge Rating is fairly useless with or without magic. Instead, look at the creatures' abilities: If a creature has too high numbers (AC, to hit, saves, save DCs) across the board, it's probably too strong. Similarly, if it simply has too much damage or HP so that the party cannot trade with it and expect to come out at least even, it's probably too strong.

Note, high damage low durability encounters are fine as are high durability low damage encounters, and encounters with difficult saves (as long as failed save isn't lethal). Basically tho, use CR as a sort of a monster finder and eyeball the numbers; generally eyeballing is a more exact science than CR Anyways.


You might want to check the campaign I'm writing a journal on in my signature; it's a low-magic campaign (players have basically no access to magic, though some magical creatures and trinkets still exist) and I'm explaining the houserules we're using.

Also, Pathfinder basic rules (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/) (basically it has simplified combat maneuver system, a more streamlined skill system and more feats) are slightly more optimized for a low-magic game. Skills in particular play a huge part in one so in default D&D 3.5 you'd have problem of simply not having enough skillpoints to cover your bases.