Low magic campaign mechanics

[FocusWolf413]

I have a few ideas/questions concerning the mechanics of a low magic campaign. 3.5/Pathfinder

1) No full casting classes. Duh.

2) Spellcasting classes such as paladin, ranger, assassin, inquisitor, adept, and bard remain (Pathfinder pally, ranger. 3.5 bard. Assassin undecided). Others can be added on a case by case basis.
2a) No classes with spellbooks.
2b) Only 3.5 spells are used.
2c) Spell components are hard to come by and somewhat expensive. They're essentially 1gp/2 spells. The amount of spells worth of components must be recorded. Expensive materials are as normal.

3) Potions are alchemical and you don't need to be a caster to craft potions.
3a) Potions and alchemical items are 2/3 price

4) Normally magical equipment such as armor and weapons don't normally exist and cannot be crafted. Instead, there are varying degrees of masterwork quality. A weapon has an attack bonus equal to its quality modifier and damage equal to half. A +3 longsword would have +3 to hit and 1d8+1 damage. Armor has an AC bonus equal to it's quality modifier. High quality weapons cost 1500*bonus^2. Armor is calculated as normal. +8 is the maximum.
4a) Weapon/armor enhancements and other magic items will be considered and refluffed on a case by case basis.

5) Pathfinder humans only. Non human prcs will be considered on a case by case basis.

6) All mundane classes are allowed. Tome of battle and path of war classes are disallowed. Feats are allowed on a case by case basis. Classes based off of Su abilities will be (generally) disallowed unless it isn't unbalancing.

7) Spell cheese of any kind is disallowed. Minmaxing is disallowed. Multiclassing must have a good character reason or must fit thematically (ex: a swashbuckler/rogue or bard).

Am I forgetting anything? Should I adapt the cleric and sorcerer to a 6 spell level class?

[atemu1234]

This would balance it for the most part; the only problem I see with it is that it would get a little bit boring after a while. I'm pretty sure a level fifteen fighter getting the same armor but +5 Masterwork would be boring, and the +X with weapons would definitely get tiresome after a while.

I suppose these are meta issues, but I think it'd get more entertaining if you allow PoW.

[BowStreetRunner]

What do you intend to do with the Challenge Rating system (CR) and all of the encounters the PCs will face? Every encounter in the game was designed with the expectation that the PCs would have normal access to magic. With your changes, you will need to recalculate the CR of every encounter to correct for the difference.

[FocusWolf413]

Would pow/tob make more sense if I only allowed the Ex abilities?



What do you intend to do with the Challenge Rating system (CR) and all of the encounters the PCs will face? Every encounter in the game was designed with the expectation that the PCs would have normal access to magic. With your changes, you will need to recalculate the CR of every encounter to correct for the difference.

I would most likely build human(oid) enemies with similar rules. That would probably work.

[Karl Aegis]

Care to elaborate on point 7? Is everyone getting a flat 15 in all stats and have skill ranks equal to level in all skills or something?

[FocusWolf413]

Care to elaborate on point 7? Is everyone getting a flat 15 in all stats and have skill ranks equal to level in all skills or something?

I just meant that optimizing a character so it can, for example, do hundreds of damage on a charge at level 9. Minmaxing leads to rocket tag, which leads to people getting annoyed.

[Karl Aegis]

I just meant that optimizing a character so it can, for example, do hundreds of damage on a charge at level 9. Minmaxing leads to rocket tag, which leads to people getting annoyed.

It still isn't very clear how character generation is handled. Even with fixed stats, one stat has to be maxed while the other ones are mined because humans get a +2 to one ability score. In the very same line it says multiclassing is minimized and single classing is maximized due to the thematic restrictions on multiclassing. Classes without flight still need the minimum 5 ranks in balance to prevent being flat-footed while in the area of a grease spell. Bards still need minimum ranks in performance to use their bardic music and spotters still need to maximize spot to be effective at their job.

[FocusWolf413]

Stats will probably be 4d6. And I'm not sure what you're getting at. There's nothing wrong with putting max ranks in a skill and allocating ability scores sensibly. There IS something wrong with making a character that kills everything in the surprise round.

[Zaq]

You'll need to change the way healing works. Healing potions alone just aren't enough to reliably recover HP, and without magical abilities to end battles quickly and disable opponents before the fight is over, the average combatant is going to lose a pretty hefty chunk of their HP after every combat, especially if HP scales normally. You need to institute an alternate system of healing, accept that you're going to need a week of bed rest to recover from an equal-level encounter, or just accept that PCs are going to die pretty often.

There's a lot of other problems inherent to this as well, of course. The system simply isn't designed for this sort of thing, and it would probably be less effort to use a system that IS designed for this style of play than to try to bludgeon 3.5 into being something it's not. (There are even d20 systems with this sort of thing in mind—have you ever looked at Iron Heroes? It's far from perfect, but at least the whole thing is pretty much designed with a no-magic world in mind.)

You're going to discover a lot of emergent effects that you probably didn't plan on. Difficulty in recovering HP is just one of the more obvious ones. You're going to find others that you just aren't expecting, because when you so fundamentally go against the expectations of the system, stuff ends up getting weird.

If you're just worried about your PCs powergaming, you'll have better luck talking to them like adults and getting them to play nice that way than you will trying to tweak the system so as to try to cut off any powergaming tendencies at the knees.

[mvpmack]

I don't see why you would disallow TOB/POW classes or maneuvers at all if you allow bards. Bard is insanely strong in a world without tier 1 or 2, and even more strong in a world where almost no one can use magic while he can.

Also, obviously, the game is balanced around WBL and denying players WBL is probably bad.

If I was playing in this setting, I'd be pushing my team to run bard/paladin/ranger/skillmonkey.

[FocusWolf413]

It's really not about powergaming. That was only one part of the idea. I was just wondering how I could run an extremely low magic setting. Most of the people I play with don't like playing casters and like the idea of a low magic world.

Perhaps initiators aren't a terrible idea.

[mvpmack]

I guess my big thing is that players should be exceptional, so giving them limited pseudo-magical abilities (as initiators) seems like par for the course, especially since initiators are nowhere near broken, and don't really threaten the same kinds of things that ubercharger barbarians do. Plus, a crusader can cover healing really well and help fix the inherent problems with the setting. Limited healing in the setting doesn't matter as much if the party isn't crutched by it, and having flexible maneuvers lets characters be more than just beatsticks. Honestly I'd ban fighter and monk in any campaign just to remove the false choices, and have the more flexible initiators be the de facto versions of those classes (I'm not familiar with PoW, but warblade and swordsage are just strictly better and more fun without even getting close to the level of power threatened by a sorcerer).

[General Sajaru]

If you're just looking to reduce the amount of magic your players use/have access to, there's some good stuff in the Complete Warrior for that. And things still aren't always going to work the way you expect them to, because there's a certain assumption (in the books) of having a spellcaster or two in the party to do their thing.