low magic campaign notes/ideas?

[blelliot]

I think I may have come up with an interesting world where low magic items could work (I.e. no buying your magical gear, only making it), but I would like to ask the playground if there are any of you who have tried this kind of idea and if so, what kind of pros/cons are there. Also, any cool stories from campaigns where no magic items can be purchased. A little backstory on what I'm shooting for:
- there are only low tech weapons available (club, spears, small blades) and low tech armor ( leather, hide, etc)
- arcane magic is sorcerer only, divine magic is shamanistic ( can't find a class I like yet so if there is one you would suggest, id love one:-))
- and dragons and fey are worshipped as gods. Yup that's about it.
Hopefully this all makes sense. Thanks everyone!

[Zirconia]

I've been in a campaign for some years where the only magic items we could use were ones we made, and moreover we could only use ones we made for ourselves (everyone is wizard/X gestalt). We lock up "magical potential" with things we make, said magical potential coincidentally equaling character wealth by level (sale value of items, not crafting cost). This was in part a response to a previous campaign where characters were largely defined by how well they optimized gear, the DM wanted to focus more on what the characters could do.

An alternative, if you don't want to let everyone be wizard/X, is to have the group associated with one of the rare magicians (government licensed? underground? etc.), who can provide them with some gear, but not much, and it gets better as they bring more components, they rise in rank, or whatever.

Since this kind of approach leaves you lacking some magical equipment the base game assumes, the DM allows a stat point addition every level, in addition to the standard 1 per 4 levels, to make up for it. Other things like extra skill points, feats, etc. could also be used, so that people actually get some use out of things like the Climb skill instead of it becoming obsolete by mid levels.

I would be cautious about letting anyone play a full caster in a low magic campaign (unless everyone is, as we are, but our wizard gestalt ties in with a central theme of the campaign) as they may overshadow the other characters even more. It could be interesting to let everyone gestalt a partial caster, though.

[Blackhawk748]

Well, you may consider having the Mages use Bard Progression, thats to keep them from dominating everything, the Spirit Shaman may be what your looking for, though i cant remember the book its in.

[DEMON]

the Spirit Shaman may be what your looking for, though i cant remember the book its in.

Complete Divine. And seconded, fluff-wise it seems like a good fit for your campaign.

[blelliot]

I was thinking spirit shaman as well. Also thinking of adding favored soul. So all castrers are spontaneous. And a rule to roll a percentage to see if you can be a spellcaster, since only people with magic in them can use it. Any thoughts?

[DEMON]

Hmm, not sure how well you have it all planned, so it might be a non-issue for you in the end, but allowing T2s in a low magic campaign could widen the gap between mundanes and spellcasters even more. Since the former now also lack magic items to fall back to.

[blelliot]

Hmm, not sure how well you have it all planned, so it might be a non-issue for you in the end, but allowing T2s in a low magic campaign could widen the gap between mundanes and spellcasters even more. Since the former now also lack magic items to fall back to.

Well the idea I have is to take a base percentage and then add an increase or decrease in that percentage depending on choice of race. So if you wish to be a human, for example, that race has a flat 15% chance to be born with magic of any kind. Elves would have a 25% chance to be born with arcane, 15% to be born with divine, and 20% chance to be born with nature magic. Those are just starting numbers for now.

[EugeneVoid]

Having random chance determine your magical potential is kind of ****ty a not good idea.
If your player wants to play a race/class then you should let them.
Otherwise don't allow the race/class combination.
Or you could just remove T1s and T2s (or give T2s bard casting)

[macdaddy]

I did something similar.

Italy was human, Greece elves, Gaul orcs&ogres, Germany bugbears&minotaurs, Parthia yuan-ti, Egypt illithid (with plenty of slaves), north Africa as human (carthage) and centaur, helvitti/alps as dwarves, spain as goblins/kobolds, etc

A 9th npc caster would only exist in the major "friendly" cities (Rome, Athens). Some higher in the other locales. Buying spells above 3rd level being all but impossible. I also changed elves favored class to sorcerer.

Dragons were extremely rare, and usually only the ancient super bad ass version instead of the pathetic age groups.

They'd find some magic items, but basically had to make anything they really wanted. I also added in a "craft" check when making an item. DC 10 or 15 + caster level spellcraft check. Fail and you lose the cash. Fail by 5 or more, create a cursed item. Basically a wizard with max spellcraft and +4 int would need roughly an 8 to 10 succeed at the first level at which they could create the item.

By "limiting" the wizard spells, requiring spellcraft checks(clerics don't have lots of skills or int), and requiring all casters involved to make the check, item creation was held in check (i waived the xp requirement, except in rare cases, too much bookkeeping.)

Clerics were the "powerful" spell caster. But without access to other healing, he had to spend many of his spells on healing the party.

I banned the most abusive feats (divine metamagic, etc) and spells (celerity, polymorph, etc). And made spells like divine might available only from the war domain.

End result, the fighter really shined and wasn't over shadowed by the casters when we ended around 12th level.