Non Magic Character

[suvasam]

Hey there, I'm running a level 15 campaign and I was wondering if there is a way to make a character that shuns/hates magic work?

By that I mean I want this character to be wearing fullplate, and to wield a great-mace but not use magic items or magic itself, but still be effective and I was wondering if there was a non-homebrew way to do it that is viable?

[mattie_p]

There is really no way to do this and be as effective as anyone else in your party. The best way (but still a less effective way) is to take Vow of Poverty from Book of Exalted Deeds. Requires good alignment, and it gives benefits that don't quite make up for voluntary poverty. But it is what you are looking for.

[Segev]

I know you said "no home-brew," but refluffing the Vow of Poverty to be some sort of sacred oath against using magic items would not be inappropriate. Might be able to bypass the "good" requirement, in exchange for some other behavioral restriction relating to benefiting from magic.

[Captnq]

Hey there, I'm running a level 15 campaign and I was wondering if there is a way to make a character that shuns/hates magic work?

Psionics. Then all your equipment is psionic crafted too.
Be an Aberration. All your equipment can be made of flesh grafts. Living, pulsating, fleshy plate mail. Mmm...

It's all just semantics, anyways.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

No, you're playing a game that's built around magic. Building a character who shuns magic, including magic items, would be trying to make a fish viable outside of water. Even if it could survive, there's no way it could thrive or even be useful.

Your best bet would be to make a Warblde from Tome of Battle, and take the feat Vow of Poverty from BoED. You wouldn't be able to wear armor or use anything but simple weapons, but you would get bonuses equivalent to very basic magic items. Even then it would be extremely weak, especially at level 15.

[John Longarrow]

I'd look at Tome of Battle and I'd adjust their effective character level based on what their usable wealth is.

Tome of battle can overcome hitting monsters that have DR and can aleviate the reduced bonus to hit, but won't help as much with BAB compared to a charcters normal gear. If you treat them as being lower level when computing what CR they can face and their share of XPs, this can mitigate their lack of high quality gear/buffs.

This will require a lot of fudging on your part to make them equal, since they will have gear normally used by a 5th or 6th level character instead of 15th, but if they are build from the start to avoid magic dependacy they can work out.

[asdflove]

Is 3rd party material allowed? If so you could always get alchemic items like the craftsman (http://fletcherrpggames.com/?page_id=26) makes.

[Psyren]

There is really no way to do this and be as effective as anyone else in your party. The best way (but still a less effective way) is to take Vow of Poverty from Book of Exalted Deeds. Requires good alignment, and it gives benefits that don't quite make up for voluntary poverty. But it is what you are looking for.

Hell, the Vow itself is magical. Exalted feats are Supernatural, and several of the benefits are Su as well. So after all that effort spent to ignore magic items he would still be completely shut down in an AMF.

[Tvtyrant]

Hey there, I'm running a level 15 campaign and I was wondering if there is a way to make a character that shuns/hates magic work?

By that I mean I want this character to be wearing fullplate, and to wield a great-mace but not use magic items or magic itself, but still be effective and I was wondering if there was a non-homebrew way to do it that is viable?

If you would accept one magical ability this can be done, but otherwise I do not know how.

With a ring of Telekinesis or an item of Servant Horde and the ability to craft alchemical items you can make 15-30 alchemical attacks a turn, which works pretty well even at higher levels. There a lot of no-save debuff alchemical items you can have the telekinesis/servants drop onto the enemy (blinding dust) and then drop acid and fire bombs onto them (10 pound limit on a servant is 9 oil flasks and 1 alchemical fire flask for 9d3 damage a turn per servant.)

Without breaking the action economy none-magic items lose a lot of their luster unfortunately. Grabbing the Master of Masks Gladiator mask for proficiency with everything helps, but it still won't be very optimized.

[ranagrande]

Take Vow of Poverty. Become a Forsaker from Masters of the Wild.

[Dusk Eclipse]

In short: No
In more detail: 3.5 was designed with higher level characters having magic items to survive, shunning them is tantamount to suicide at what... level 4-5ish? I can't remember when does DR/Magic starts to be the norm.

[ZamielVanWeber]

It first pops up relevantly as low as CR 3, and DR itself becomes totally common by CR 7ish. 4-5 seems like a good range.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Basically, you're not going to function without Vow of Poverty. Even then, there are very few classes that can properly function with Vow of Poverty, and most of them are casters-- a druid will hardly notice the loss, while a monk will be crying in the corner.

There are a few supernatural classes that can do Vow of Poverty OK, but they rely on supernatural effects to make up the difference. A totemist, for example, can pick up most relevant abilities-- magic weapons, flight, immunities, and so on-- through his class abilities... but they're magic in nature.

For something that fits your character... Biffoniacus_Furiou has the only even slightly workable solution. Take VoP for the raw numbers. You can get some of the options you need from maneuvers. (More if you dip into Crusader and Swordsage-- go Master of Nine). Take Wild Cohort to get a flying mount; you need flight at higher levels, and you need your mount to be something that's not going to get insta-gibbed.

[Samalpetey]

Out of interest, why no suggestions of raptoran for race? Solves the flight problem pretty well in my opinion. Also, can't dragonborn get flight too?

[Grayson01]

I have to look at the books again, but Occult Slayer from the Complete Warrior sounds like it might be close to what you want if not exactlly. Mix it with a ToB Class and see what you can get.

[Urpriest]

In general, hatred of magic doesn't really make sense as a character motivation in 3.5. It's part of the world's physics, and casting a spell isn't really any different from swinging a sword qualitatively speaking. Being opposed to particular forms of spellcasters is certainly a thing, but being opposed to magic in all its forms, including magic items, doesn't really make character sense.

[gooddragon1]

In general, hatred of magic doesn't really make sense as a character motivation in 3.5. It's part of the world's physics, and casting a spell isn't really any different from swinging a sword qualitatively speaking. Being opposed to particular forms of spellcasters is certainly a thing, but being opposed to magic in all its forms, including magic items, doesn't really make character sense.

Isn't there a PRC (could be 3.0) that as one of the entry requirements you need to fail a save against a spell or something and they can't use magic items at all but they gain lots of benefits? Forsaker I think.

[Waker]

Isn't there a PRC (could be 3.0) that as one of the entry requirements you need to fail a save against a spell or something and they can't use magic items at all but they gain lots of benefits? Forsaker I think.

Forsaker. It has some decent benefits, like +1 to an ability score every level and slippery mind, but nearly everything is defensive in nature. The one ability you get that has offensive purpose is treating your wielded weapons as having an enhancement bonus equal to the amount needed to overcome your DR. Of course since DR no longer has a graded DR/+1, DR/+2 and so on, instead being DR/Magic, this loses some of its luster.

[Gavinfoxx]

You're going to need to play something other than D&D to do this. Sorry. This game does not allow for badass normals without extensive homebrewing.

[gooddragon1]

You're going to need to play something other than D&D to do this. Sorry. This game does not allow for badass normals without extensive homebrewing.

Or an accommodating DM+accommodating players.

[ArcturusV]

Well, it's all dependent on the adventures in question. A lot of the "Must haves" aren't really must haves unless you follow certain adventures. Like Flight. Flight isn't really a must have. It's a Really Nice To Have. But presuming you go fairly old school and most of your adventures are dungeon crawls, it becomes a lot less important when there is a literal ceiling keeping you from effectively flying about.

So it's definitely something to talk to your DM about and see how many of those things you can nix off as "Not really as necessary as they say" for the campaign before you go into it.