Non-Magic Party Advice?

[Gwazi Magnum]

Pretty much as the title says above.

Our current D&D group is ending in a few weeks and when we start a new one starting at level 8 (and change DMs, last one wants to be a player again), we've decided to challenge ourselves by being a non-magical party.

Pretty much our restrictions are currently:

1. Only classes from the PHB (Prestige from the DMG would still be allowed too though)
2. Classes Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric and Druid can't be used
3. If a Ranger, Bard or Paladin talk to the DM to create a class variant where you gain something in exchange for losing your spells.

Note: These are not rules enforced by the DM, but player set restrictions to challenge ourselves.

I am also wondering if we should expand this to include no magic items (or at least no wands, staffs, scrolls & staves) or not.

So any advice for what a party like this can do to stay effective?

Here's some extra/specific info below if you think it would help


What people are playing as

Currently we have 6 players and our general party set up/what people want to be is this:

-2 Martial Rogues (Replace Sneak Attacks with Fighter Bonus Feats) - Focusing on House Ruled Skills (see below)
One of these Rogues is specializing in being an inventor, he wants to craft and make different items and technology.
The other is specializing as a doctor, so taking advantage as skills such as Heal and Surgery.

-A Ranger
What she gains for losing spells I'm not sure yet, or what she plans for her general role to be. Being Ranger I assuming it's being a damage dealer however.

-A Monk
Not much outside of this is known either, I believe it's just a general Monk since we've never got to see one be played by anyone yet.

-Bard...ish (Me)
This is my class. In a sense I'm the face of the party.
But my Bard took some big alterations too it. So it pretty much is a new class which I called 'Captain' since IC I plan to play as either a Guard or Military Captain.

Click the spoiler if you want the specific details, if not though generally it's just a Bard that is more combat focused and relies more on Diplomacy than Perform.

Captain Class details


Hit Dice: d8
BAB: High

Fort: High, Ref: High, Will: High (-1 misc to Ref and Will though for balance reasons)

Skill Points Per Level: 6 + Int Mod
Class Skills: Balance, Bluff, Climb, Craft, Discipher Script, Diplomacy, Disguise, Gather Info, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty), Listen, Move Silently, Ride, Search, Sense Motive, Speak Language, Spot

Weapon Prof: All Martial and Simple Weapons
Armor Prof: Light Armor and Shields

Special Abilities: Bardic Music, but it now relies on the Diplomacy skill rather than a Perform Skill and no longer needs an instrument to be used.


-Unknown
The sixth player has yet to be asked if he wants to be in one this. This variant wasn't fully decided in our d&d group until after he had went home.
So technically if he wanted to, he could say no and go Wizard. But assuming he does want to follow the non-magic challenge we is currently a blank slate.


General World + House/Variant Rules

1. Disease is more strict, if characters are not being clean enough, are where diseases are rampant etc players can and will easily get sick. So Fortitude Saves becomes more vital now.
(Those of you who watch Spoony's Counter Monkey Videos, specifically the one that went on about disease, it's like that)

2. Magic is not rare in this world, infact the opposite. Civilization has a ton of technology now, just off from things such as having flight. But all their technology relies on magic.

3. Renaissance weapons (Pistol and Rifle) are allowed to be used by players, but cost 1.75gp as much as said in the DMG.

4. Rapid Reload feat now expanded to the Pistol and Rifle so reloading them only takes a move action.

5. Dueling Feat: +1 to AC and Attack rolls if wielding a one-handed weapon in one hand and nothing in your offhand.
Bonus increases to +2 once BAB is at +6, +3 when BAB is at +11 and +4 when BAB reaches +16.

6. New/Altered Skills
Invention: Each 10 ranks (yes ranks, not total) increases you by an invention 'level', highest being at 40. Which allows a character to combine more properties and make more complex items.

Pretty much this skill allows people to make custom/homebrew non-magical items for a cost, but still needs to be semi-realistic and can still fail easily.

Surgery: On the field healing. This skill has a base healing of 1d8, how much it scales up I believe is still being sorted out by the DM. But once you run up to a person you can use Surgery to heal someone of a certain number of hit points during your turn.

Heal: This one is just gaining a buff, it allows players to heal a little more HP per day than usual, I believe up 8 or somewhere around that.

7. Rolled Ability Scores, we rolled like the manual told us too. So we're not spending points. The DM has the totals for the other players but mine was 17, 16, 16, 15, 12, 10. Note: Mine were the highest anyone got, this is somewhat balanced though when I focus on a Charisma like character so I am not over shining everyone else when it comes to combat and other skills.
[/spoilerr]

[Answerer]

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 does not and cannot support the style of play you want. You are strongly advised to fine a new system that was designed from the ground up to support it. 3.5 is one of the highest-magic RPGs available, and does not respond at all well to simply stripping the magic out. It will only work if you rewrite large swaths of the system, at which point you'll be playing a system that is quite different from 3.5. You should, instead, just find a system that starts where you want it.

[ZamielVanWeber]

If you want to do a no (or low) caster game, that can actually work. I have done it. However, there are things that you must keep in mind:

1) Magic items are your friends. Not having access to a +1 Sword/Bow/whatever means that there are enemies that are virtually impossible to hurt.

2) Do NOT restrict yourself to core. This is CRITICAL. A lot of bonus fighter feats are in side rule books, as well as useful character classes. Right now your non-magical bard is just a poor man's Marshal, so why not run the person who fits 100% into your character design and campaign design?

Ignore these rules and enemies will either stale out or just come in and utterly annihilate you. There really is not much room here for other options.

[Karnith]

Don't swear off magic items. Not only will it cripple your characters in a high-magic world, but you're going to make it really hard on your DM when he's planning out encounters. The system assumes some level of magic items (of course, it assumes access to actual spells, too).

You should really check with your DM to see what the monster situation is going to be like; if you don't have spells (or, worse, magic items), it's going to be very hard to deal with a lot of immunities and/or resistances; stuff like damage reduction, incorporeality, flight, regeneration, and invisibility will be difficult.

Without magic items especially, your characters are going to have pretty low armor classes, while everyone's attack bonuses (yours and your enemies') will continue to scale with levels, far above your ACs. So everyone in your party will get hit. A lot.

If this is a high-magic world, your party will have a lot of trouble dealing with any spellcasters that are remotely competent, especially in groups.

Healing will be an issue, unless you're fine waiting for days on end between encounters, or unless you make constant trips to temples.

[Answerer]

Magic items are just a really poor substitute for proper magic unless you are very high-wealth, at which point the concept of "no/low-magic" just does not apply.

3.5 cannot handle low/no-magic. It is not designed for it and changing it to accomodate it requires sweeping changes of the entire system and quite a lot of work.

[CaladanMoonblad]

Can we get more information about your gaming environment? Is it high magic/mid magic/low magic/no magic?

@Answerer- please stop being a Debbie Downer. d20 is just as capable of depicting a high/mid/low/no magic environment of just about any genre. If a GM is willing to tell stories with characters who have wizards and clerics, why can't that same GM craft stories for an all martial group? It seems like an insult to Gwazi's GM.

Some general thoughts for Gwazi

-Explosives will be your friend. Alchemy should be actively pursued and employed as grenades and bombs. In an all martial group, Technology is going to be key.
-Tactics will be another friend. The Martial Rogues can help to lure in enemies for an ambush.
-Allies- Leadership can get you a lot of ranged mooks while the heroes are engaged in combat or simply to soften up the opposition with a hail of arrows.

[Karnith]

@Answerer- please stop being a Debbie Downer. d20 is just as capable of depicting a high/mid/low/no magic environment of just about any genre. If a GM is willing to tell stories with characters who have wizards and clerics, why can't that same GM craft stories for an all martial group? It seems like an insult to Gwazi's GM.
It's not an insult to the DM, and it's not about the stories that you can tell. It's just that D&D is intended to be played as a high fantasy game; it's why there are a lot of spellcasting classes, tons of spells in every splat-book, and lots of monsters and abilities that only make sense in the context of spellcasting. Sure, you can take the spellcasting out of the game, but at that point you've removed a great deal of the system, so why are you playing D&D instead of something else?

I often recommend that people who want to play low-magic games try a different system, not because you can't play a low-magic game with D&D (you can, even if it is a ton of work), but because other systems are much more geared towards those kinds of games. Low-magic games are a lot easier if you use a system that is made for it, rather than trying to adapt another system to it. It's like using D&D to play a sci-fi game; you could homebrew a lot and heavily modify the system, but at that point why bother using Dungeons & Dragons?

That said, since this game is low-magic characters in a high-magic campaign, a suggestion to play another system is probably not helpful (especially if the DM isn't willing). But recommending that the players not limit themselves to low-/no-magic characters is going to save the DM and the players some headaches.

[Matticussama]

In my experience D&D can be perfectly playable at low- to mid-magic settings; although it is high magic by default, it doesn't have to be. However, that sort of thing has to work across the board. Having a low-magic party versus a high-magic work simply does not work. Likewise, having a high-magic party in a low-magic world doesn't work. It needs to be consistent, both for mechanical balance as well as narrative flow.

If your group is dead-set on being entirely martial, you might want to ask your DM to limit enemies to Tier 3 magic-users and below (and alter monsters with casting to fit in line with T3 class casting). Either that, or at least consider ToB instead of sticking to Core - which, as has been said, isn't very good for martial characters.

[Kiero]

Does 3.x not have an analogue to 4th edition's Inherent Bonuses that allows you to ignore all the boring maths-fixing magic items?

Just vaguely on that topic, 4th edition would do this much more easily, and with less houseruling than 3.x. Not that this isn't do-able as is, just that it does take some work. I do think it a laudable goal.

[Answerer]

@Answerer- please stop being a Debbie Downer. d20 is just as capable of depicting a high/mid/low/no magic environment of just about any genre. If a GM is willing to tell stories with characters who have wizards and clerics, why can't that same GM craft stories for an all martial group? It seems like an insult to Gwazi's GM.
d20 System, yes. There are numerous d20 System games for no/low-magic. D&D 3.5 is not one of them. You will be recreating one of those other systems by the time you finish houseruling everything in 3.5 to make up for the lack of magic, and there's just no point in doing so when existing systems do it.


Does 3.x not have an analogue to 4th edition's Inherent Bonuses that allows you to ignore all the boring maths-fixing magic items?
Noooope.

[Karnith]

Does 3.x not have an analogue to 4th edition's Inherent Bonuses that allows you to ignore all the boring maths-fixing magic items?
There is Vow of Poverty, which is an Exalted feat (that comes with a whole lot of role-playing baggage), but unfortunately it's crippling to most characters, is generally much worse than magic items, and the classes that it's not terrible for tend to be spellcasters.

[Matticussama]

Well, a lot of it also depends upon the level of play. D&D 3.5 can handle low-magic quite well until level 5 - 7 or so. Up until then, most of your major threats can be handled without magic (especially if you're not having to worry about countering hostile magic). There are some exceptions of course (ghosts, or anything else that specifically needs magic weapons) but for the most part it works.

Now, it definitely doesn't handle mid to high levels well without magic. That is absolutely true. But when someone talks about a low magic campaign, I don't imagine them starting off at level 15; I imagine them starting at level 1 and pushing their way up until 5 - 7 when they become the Aragorn/King Arthur/Odysseus of their world.

It also means that the very few magic items you do introduce into a low-magic campaign are meaningful. When common soldiers have mundane weapons and knights have masterwork weapons, statting out Excalibur as a +1 longsword means a whole lot since you're now the only person who can take on a gargoyle, wraith, etc.

[CaladanMoonblad]

In my experience D&D can be perfectly playable at low- to mid-magic settings; although it is high magic by default, it doesn't have to be. However, that sort of thing has to work across the board. Having a low-magic party versus a high-magic work simply does not work. Likewise, having a high-magic party in a low-magic world doesn't work. It needs to be consistent, both for mechanical balance as well as narrative flow.

If your group is dead-set on being entirely martial, you might want to ask your DM to limit enemies to Tier 3 magic-users and below (and alter monsters with casting to fit in line with T3 class casting). Either that, or at least consider ToB instead of sticking to Core - which, as has been said, isn't very good for martial characters.

Exactly. Take the British TV show Merlin for instance; Camelot is a no magic zone. The main characters are expected to pit themselves against all manner of foes, and Merlin is a behind the scenes caster who only employs magic as a last resort (because he could be executed if anyone knew his secret). Why did Camelot not fall prior to Merlin helping out?

I came in to D&D 3.5 from Star Wars 3.0-3.5 and d20 Modern. It wasn't that hard of a change (difference on AoOs). The characters in a world should reflect the environment's challenges. However, some stories are "hard mode" when heroes don't reflect the challenges. Look at Odysseus... he lost numerous men against all sorts of magical foes without any magic himself, but it was his wits that carried him home eventually. Gwazi and his players will just have to be more inventive (and desperation is the mother of invention).

[Gwazi Magnum]

If you want to do a no (or low) caster game, that can actually work. I have done it. However, there are things that you must keep in mind:

1) Magic items are your friends. Not having access to a +1 Sword/Bow/whatever means that there are enemies that are virtually impossible to hurt.

2) Do NOT restrict yourself to core. This is CRITICAL. A lot of bonus fighter feats are in side rule books, as well as useful character classes. Right now your non-magical bard is just a poor man's Marshal, so why not run the person who fits 100% into your character design and campaign design?

Ignore these rules and enemies will either stale out or just come in and utterly annihilate you. There really is not much room here for other options.

1) Noted, and after discussing it with some of the other players we decided eliminating magic items outright is overkill.
We will limit/not use stuff like wands and scrolls just so we don't have a loop hole character who works like a spell caster without actually being one.

2) Most people are sticking to core classes because their knowledge to d&d amounts to little outside of it. Only me and 2 other players out of the 6 typically look in non-standard manuals to add stuff. Though, if I knew of a specific feat, variant etc that might help another player who sticks with core well and brought it with me to the group they might look it over and pick it up.

Like I did with martial rogue, the two rogues we currently have are 2 who typically stick with the core books.

As for Marshall, I should note another concept/image I had with the area the Marshal doesn't match. Part of how I wanted my guy to work was to be decently skilled (Not Rogue level, but still pretty skilled) and be agile. Such as someone in light armor who can move around the battle field and be fast with his sword (Imagine a High-Dex build for combat). Marshall to me just seems a bit too much of, sit around in plate, shout orders, repeat.


Can we get more information about your gaming environment? Is it high magic/mid magic/low magic/no magic?

@Answerer- please stop being a Debbie Downer. d20 is just as capable of depicting a high/mid/low/no magic environment of just about any genre. If a GM is willing to tell stories with characters who have wizards and clerics, why can't that same GM craft stories for an all martial group? It seems like an insult to Gwazi's GM.

Some general thoughts for Gwazi

-Explosives will be your friend. Alchemy should be actively pursued and employed as grenades and bombs. In an all martial group, Technology is going to be key.
-Tactics will be another friend. The Martial Rogues can help to lure in enemies for an ambush.
-Allies- Leadership can get you a lot of ranged mooks while the heroes are engaged in combat or simply to soften up the opposition with a hail of arrows.

Not being the DM I can't be that specific, infact the DM is still ironing the details as well.
But it is confirmed this will be a high-magic world.

Also, beat me to it when you told Answerer to not be bringing the whole concept down. Thank you for being open-minded. :)

For the general thoughts
-Indeed, but this is a tricky area because our last experience with explosives was feeding horses filled with explosive arrows to a dragon and killing it... at level 3. Plus the player who likes making these things has a bad tendency to destroy stuff IC.
-Agreed, Tactics is defelently something we'll need to be mindful of
-Strong, I agree and originally my Bard like character had Leadership. But I scrapped it because combat already annoys some members of our group as it is for being too long (though this partly cause people don't prepare for combat, which we are trying to remedy) and I don't want to slow it down even further with a bunch of NPCs.
Plus our group does typically end up solving problems in a way where if a bunch of NPCs were following they would be given away automatically.


In my experience D&D can be perfectly playable at low- to mid-magic settings; although it is high magic by default, it doesn't have to be. However, that sort of thing has to work across the board. Having a low-magic party versus a high-magic work simply does not work. Likewise, having a high-magic party in a low-magic world doesn't work. It needs to be consistent, both for mechanical balance as well as narrative flow.

If your group is dead-set on being entirely martial, you might want to ask your DM to limit enemies to Tier 3 magic-users and below (and alter monsters with casting to fit in line with T3 class casting). Either that, or at least consider ToB instead of sticking to Core - which, as has been said, isn't very good for martial characters.

I'll talk to the DM about it, but I'm not sure if he would restrict it as much as your suggesting.
I'll defelently give ToB another read though.


Does 3.x not have an analogue to 4th edition's Inherent Bonuses that allows you to ignore all the boring maths-fixing magic items?

Just vaguely on that topic, 4th edition would do this much more easily, and with less houseruling than 3.x. Not that this isn't do-able as is, just that it does take some work. I do think it a laudable goal.

I don't believe it does.

4th ed isn't possible though, no one in our group knows enough on 4th ed to run it.

[Matticussama]

Exactly. Take the British TV show Merlin for instance; Camelot is a no magic zone. The main characters are expected to pit themselves against all manner of foes, and Merlin is a behind the scenes caster who only employs magic as a last resort (because he could be executed if anyone knew his secret). Why did Camelot not fall prior to Merlin helping out?

The BBC Merlin is actually exactly what I was envisioning while thinking of a low-magic D&D setting. =D Especially when you consider that against several of the big enemies all he is doing, in a D&D context, is casting "Magic Weapon" upon their weapons.

Edit:


I'll talk to the DM about it, but I'm not sure if he would restrict it as much as your suggesting.
I'll defelently give ToB another read though.

ToB helps you bypass many of the weaknesses of a low-magic group. The maneuvers presented in it give you a plethora of tactical options above and beyond core; some allow you to bypass an enemy's Damage Reduction, others allow you to replace saves with a Concentration check, etc. You only get a limited number of maneuvers you can use per encounter, but you can use the class refresh mechanic to get them back for other fights. It gives you the versatility of spells by allowing you to respond to numerous encounters with more than just "I hit it with my sword" - or, if you do, you can prep maneuvers let you attack better/harder/more often.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Well, a lot of it also depends upon the level of play. D&D 3.5 can handle low-magic quite well until level 5 - 7 or so. Up until then, most of your major threats can be handled without magic (especially if you're not having to worry about countering hostile magic). There are some exceptions of course (ghosts, or anything else that specifically needs magic weapons) but for the most part it works.

Now, it definitely doesn't handle mid to high levels well without magic. That is absolutely true. But when someone talks about a low magic campaign, I don't imagine them starting off at level 15; I imagine them starting at level 1 and pushing their way up until 5 - 7 when they become the Aragorn/King Arthur/Odysseus of their world.

It also means that the very few magic items you do introduce into a low-magic campaign are meaningful. When common soldiers have mundane weapons and knights have masterwork weapons, statting out Excalibur as a +1 longsword means a whole lot since you're now the only person who can take on a gargoyle, wraith, etc.

The world itself for our campaign it high magic.
We're just doing low magic characters as:

1) A challenge
2) It's been becoming annoying how much more powerful a spell casting PC is to everyone else. We want both legit challenge and all characters to stay on a even footing without resorting to spell slinging.

Note though, this campaign is starting at level 8. One level above you're suggesting such a campaign should end at.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Exactly. Take the British TV show Merlin for instance; Camelot is a no magic zone. The main characters are expected to pit themselves against all manner of foes, and Merlin is a behind the scenes caster who only employs magic as a last resort (because he could be executed if anyone knew his secret). Why did Camelot not fall prior to Merlin helping out?

I came in to D&D 3.5 from Star Wars 3.0-3.5 and d20 Modern. It wasn't that hard of a change (difference on AoOs). The characters in a world should reflect the environment's challenges. However, some stories are "hard mode" when heroes don't reflect the challenges. Look at Odysseus... he lost numerous men against all sorts of magical foes without any magic himself, but it was his wits that carried him home eventually. Gwazi and his players will just have to be more inventive (and desperation is the mother of invention).

I love Merlin! :smallbiggrin:

Though this campaign seems to be one step further, no Merlin.
But we're not all Knights either... a bunch of Fighters would just be... bad.

Though, if we did go the Merlin route, one or two select spell casters, that runs into the same issue highlighted above. One or two characters overshadowing the rest, low magic or not.

I am honestly looking forward to taking down magical threats without using spell casters of our own.


The BBC Merlin is actually exactly what I was envisioning while thinking of a low-magic D&D setting. =D Especially when you consider that against several of the big enemies all he is doing, in a D&D context, is casting "Magic Weapon" upon their weapons.

In truth, a D&D campaign like Merlin where magic is useable but seriously nerfed is a campaign I would like to play in one day. However, for this campaign I am admitingly dead set on the idea of no magic for the PCs.

[Eldariel]

It's just a matter of using the right enemies and offering some sort of bonuses instead of the magic item bonuses. For instance, you can find a game in my signature that's going along those lines. Basically just, scaling AC bonus, faster stat scaling and, as ever, using enemies that make sense for the campaign. If enemies have DR/Magic, well, no need to have them keep it.

Monsters in MM are only suggestions anyhow, and (monstrous) humanoids with class levels are the vast majority of enemies in a normal campaign in my experience. So those are easily customizable anyways, and custom enemies are not troubled by the system anyways. As long as you don't try to use CR or random monsters, non-magic D&D works fine. Tho why you'd want to use it is another question personally; for me the answer is "Tome of Battle".

[jedipilot24]

Consider the Charlatan (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=6543.0).

Also consider the alchemical items in Dungeonscape, Complete Scoundrel, and the A&E.

[PurpleSocks]

My advice,

Tome of battle is your friend, however if your not using magic for the challenge then I can see why you'd put it off.

Seriously don't limit to core, the others books have better feats, and the best ACF. Also if your starting at 8 prestige already.

If your all melee then a level adjustment isn't to terrible, find yourself a template with fast healing or something. Go half vampire and build your character to be like Blade or something.

Get poison use and some way of reliable creating it on the cheap, theres a really good handbook somewhere.

And finally I would beg your DM for these, normall I would outright ban the following but as your low magic, then maybe your DM will be sympathetic and allow these.

Ditherbombs, (see races of the dragon page 122)

Ditherbomb: These are spherical explosive devices created by kobold alchemists to reduce large boulders to rubble during mining operations. They have also been adapted for military purposes. Activating a ditherbomb is move action that involves violently shaking the device, which explodes 1d3 rounds later. (Violently shaking the bearer of a ditherbomb often sets the bomb off as well.) Throwing a ditherbomb is a standard action. Ditherbombs come in three varieties, each of which deals a different amount of damage and has a different blast radius. Weak ditherbombs deal 1d6 points of acid damage to creatures and objects in a 5-foot-radius burst (Reflex DC 10 half). Strong ditherbombs deal 1d4×1d6 points of acid damage (Reflex DC 12 half) in a 10-foot-radius burst.

The most potent ditherbombs, called wyrm ditherbombs, deal 1d6×1d8 points of acid damage in a 15-foot-radius burst (Reflex DC 15 half). The damage dealt by a ditherbomb ignores the hardness of stone.

The more powerful ditherbombs are inherently unpredictable, as reflected in their variable damage values. To determine the damage dealt by a strong ditherbomb or a wyrm ditherbomb, roll two different dice and multiply the results. For example, a strong ditherbomb deals 1d4×1d6 points of damage, which means that you roll 1d4 and 1d6 and multiply the result together to determine the damage it deals when it explodes. The strong ditherbomb is thus just as likely to deal 1 point of damage as it is to deal 24 points of damage (but is most likely to deal somewhere around 9 points of damage). A wyrm ditherbomb’s average damage is about 16 points

[Gwazi Magnum]

Note: I am looking to be an effective face to the party, social talkative guy.

However, with spells being avoided I found that Charisma loses almost all it's use outside of small skill buffs for things like Diplomacy. So I've finding myself putting Charisma on low priority... for a face of the party.

Do people here know of any classes, feats etc that take high advantage of Charisma in ways that don't involve spell casting?


Consider the Charlatan (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=6543.0).

Also consider the alchemical items in Dungeonscape, Complete Scoundrel, and the A&E.

Charlatan looks fun, but honestly I'd rather not try to be a character whose entire job is to trick people into thinking he's magic. Which wouldn't mean much anyways considering how much magic there is in the world we'll be in.

+Although not actually spells, Charlatan being able to 'fake' a number of them is pushing a fine line there in our situation.


My advice,

Tome of battle is your friend, however if your not using magic for the challenge then I can see why you'd put it off.

Seriously don't limit to core, the others books have better feats, and the best ACF. Also if your starting at 8 prestige already.

If your all melee then a level adjustment isn't to terrible, find yourself a template with fast healing or something. Go half vampire and build your character to be like Blade or something.

Get poison use and some way of reliable creating it on the cheap, theres a really good handbook somewhere.

And finally I would beg your DM for these, normall I would outright ban the following but as your low magic, then maybe your DM will be sympathetic and allow these.

Ditherbombs, (see races of the dragon page 122)

We'll be a mixture of ranged and melee (archery/renaissance guns, & swords).
Probably everyone would have at least one of each.

Plus LA = Less Class Levels & HP.

Less Class Levels = Less Skills, Less Class features etc which is a game that works heavy on RPs could be pretty hurtful.

Less HP = There's been plenty of times where we don't need to be in combat to have to worry about our current HP total.

Ditherbombs look cool, but those things can potentially destroy cities... and considering who in our group would end up using them if we got them... I fear every city we would so much as look at.

Clarification: Our planned Inventor/Alchemist guy, has a way of labeling himself as a good alignment (even though none of us buy it), and poisoning cities, setting them on fire, blowing them up, breaking into places etc. and the excuse he always has is 'He was curious'.

So note, whenever something poison, potion, alchemy or explosion related is suggested. I may like it a lot, but I am also worrying about the the result will be if it's introduced and he gets his hands on it.

[Eldariel]

Do people here know of any classes, feats etc that take high advantage of Charisma in ways that don't involve spell casting?

Marshal from Miniatures Handbook; small dip gets you Cha to something. X stat to Y bonus (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125732) thread should have some good options for you, too.