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Rhaegar14
2015-11-18, 02:03 AM
What's a good system for running a low fantasy game where the players are a small group of thieves? The prospective dungeon master is nervous about us using magic to steamroll the challenges he has in mind past the lowest levels of the game so I told him I'd ask around.

Vitruviansquid
2015-11-18, 05:05 AM
In the heist genre, drama occurs when things go wrong, so you want a system that allows for large swings where "everything's going okay" can quickly dip into FUBAR. The system should also not focus on combat, but allow for combat to be possible, because heists include trying not to engage in combat, but having the possibility of it.

How about Savage Worlds? That game has open-ended dice rolls, is relatively simple to fluff, and it strongly supports combat and non-combat characters.

hifidelity2
2015-11-18, 05:54 AM
There is no reason why you could not use D&D

Just limit the spells levels – if you are having a low majic fantasy setting them allow only spells up to X level (i.e there are only a max of 3rd level spells) or just go through the book and remove any spell you don’t like (invisibility say) or add extra conditions – spell components

You then also have new plot hooks –

e.g. in order to get X we need invisibility. However the material component for invisibility are seeds for a rare flower that is only grown in the Kings Greenhouse, so we need to break into their 1st
or
You have been hired by a wizard to steal a new spell that one of his competitors has “invented” (Any banned spell of your choice)

Comet
2015-11-18, 06:29 AM
Blades in the Dark is not out yet, as far as I know, but it's all about the players forming a criminal gang and planning out heists and other jobs with every member having their own role in the proceedings.

Aran nu tasar
2015-11-18, 03:39 PM
So there are a couple ways to do this within D&D. The first is to keep them at low levels- maybe play E6, so that magic will never become powerful enough to steamroll everything. This means that the security plays by the same rules, though- the defenses are mundane locks, security guards, stone walls, maybe an adamantine vault. There should be basic magical precautions, of course- security guards might have See Invisibility, for instance. D&D is perhaps a little too combat-heavy of a system, but that doesn't mean the game has to be combat-focused; if your players come in intending to play a gang of thieves, then they will build characters focused on stealth, diplomacy, and infiltration rather than casual murderhobo-ing. The second is simply to require the players to play nonmagical characters, so that even at higher levels they can't teleport around or walk through walls. Then you have to think hard about how prevalent magic is in the world, however; if the players are thwarted by magical obstacles that they can't evade because they were forced to be mundane characters, they will be pissed.

If you decide to allow for high-level play, that's when things start getting silly. You probably aren't interested in this, because it is about as far from "low fantasy" as you can get, but I'll ruminate a little anyway. At these sorts of levels, the players aren't robbing from museums and banks anymore; they are breaking into the citadel of the College of Mages, guarded by magical protections impossible to break, walls of force, teleportation blocks, summoned monsters, and watched over by a solar with a personal debt to the mages; they are infiltrating Zeus' personal vault and stealing his thunderbolts; they are disguising themselves as demons and stealing Orcus' scepter. Sure, the players are able to teleport, go invisible and ethereal, modify peoples' memories, shapechange into tiny animals; even the entirely mundane characters are nigh-undetectable and able to talk their way past anything. But the difficulty of the task they are faced with should be comparable, and the people the are robbing should have both the intelligence and resources to build a security system that will account for thieves of the players' immense capabilities.

Beleriphon
2015-11-18, 04:17 PM
I'm going suggest reading Skin Game, the newest book in the Dresden Files series. The eponymous wizard has to rob somebody very powerful, and it is most certainly the kind of stuff that would qualify as D&D styled high level shenanigans.

They have to steal The Holy Grail from Hades.

tgva8889
2015-11-18, 04:52 PM
I'll throw in a suggestion for the Cypher System, which has options to play many types of games and pretty well supports skill-based games rather than combat-focused challenges if that's what you're interested in.

I seriously want to run a heist game soon, though, so let us know how it goes!

goto124
2015-11-18, 09:38 PM
an adamantine vault.

10 levels later: "We go back to that bank and take the adamantine vault."

Mr. Mask
2015-11-18, 09:47 PM
In some ways, it shouldn't change much with an ancient setting. You won't really get as many awesome devices which the heist hinges on, but you can still do stuff like hide people in carts who need to get past the guards while another character distracts them, who need to open the gate at night so your army can rush in and kill everyone--oops, wrong genre.

One thing you'll need is information about where and what your goal is, and how to find that out, and information of the defences in your way. If it's humans like guards, you can try bribing or distracting them, or even eliminating them in some cases. How you sneak people in will depend on the scenario. If there's a faire being held inside the castle or what have you, disguising yourselves and performers or just attending the faire may give you a lot of access to the castle.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what system is best for heists.


Blades in the Dark is not out yet, as far as I know, but it's all about the players forming a criminal gang and planning out heists and other jobs with every member having their own role in the proceedings. That sounds really neat. I'll need to look into that one when it's out.

Ninjadeadbeard
2015-11-18, 11:14 PM
So there are a couple ways to do this within D&D. The first is to keep them at low levels- maybe play E6, so that magic will never become powerful enough to steamroll everything. This means that the security plays by the same rules, though- the defenses are mundane locks, security guards, stone walls, maybe an adamantine vault. There should be basic magical precautions, of course- security guards might have See Invisibility, for instance. D&D is perhaps a little too combat-heavy of a system, but that doesn't mean the game has to be combat-focused; if your players come in intending to play a gang of thieves, then they will build characters focused on stealth, diplomacy, and infiltration rather than casual murderhobo-ing. The second is simply to require the players to play nonmagical characters, so that even at higher levels they can't teleport around or walk through walls. Then you have to think hard about how prevalent magic is in the world, however; if the players are thwarted by magical obstacles that they can't evade because they were forced to be mundane characters, they will be pissed.

Building on this, you could always simulate a much lower fantasy feel by not allowing Full casters. Barring the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard, and maybe the Warlock (I'm biased but I think they're fine) means most of the worst spells your DM is worried about won't be an issue since Half casters top out at 5th level magic. Fluff it as Fullcasters are whisked away by their respective Guilds and would never be found "in the wild" as it were, and knowledge of their respective Lore is restricted. Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters are basically hedge-wizards. Paladins could be played as Clerics who never moved past their acolyte stage, Rangers and Elemental Monks as mere apprentice Druids. You might allow Warlocks or Bards due to their narrower focus in magic, though banning them as well is fine.

The partial casters lose a lot of access to high magic, which sounds like what OP wants, while allowing characters to reach higher levels, which unlocks more of their cool features and allows the DM to reward them with nicer loot. This means more and better magic gear can be found during heists or "purchased" during delves into the local black market, which in my experience is all Players want when it comes right down to it. Or it's at least a significant percentage of why they play.

So, non-fullcasters have drastically reduced magical resources to wreck your DM's plots and challenges, allow the game to be played at higher levels relatively unscathed which allows the DM more freedom in granting "teh phat lootz", and largely create a lower fantasy atmosphere.

Knaight
2015-11-19, 04:33 AM
It might be worth looking into Leverage for this. It focuses more on the heist end than the fantasy end, but getting it to do fantasy well will be a lot easier than getting most fantasy games to do heists well. Other than that, there's always the suite of generic systems, from GURPS for the meticulous, detail oriented heist game to something looser like Fudge, Savage Worlds, or Cortex Action for something a bit less technical.

Reboot
2015-11-19, 08:21 AM
Building on this, you could always simulate a much lower fantasy feel by not allowing Full casters. Barring the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard, and maybe the Warlock (I'm biased but I think they're fine) means most of the worst spells your DM is worried about won't be an issue since Half casters top out at 5th level magic....

Frankly, if you want a "low fantasy" setting, I think you need to ban cast magic entirely. Healing to come exclusively from potions - fluffed as herbal brews, rather than anything "magical" - and the only other 'magic' stuff existing basically to simulate tech in a medieval setting. Have a very Rogue-heavy game, based much more on stealth & assassination rather than hand-to-hand combat.

And, yes, the ultimate result of this may well be that D&D isn't a good system for it. But that's why he's asking!

hifidelity2
2015-11-19, 09:17 AM
Something like GURPS lets you set the level of magic (just a low manna world makes magic far more challenging)

MrZJunior
2015-11-19, 11:02 AM
I would recommend reading Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, many of the stories invole heists and the setting is very low fantasy. AD&D actually had some supplements specifically tailored to playing in Lankhmar, the city where many of the stories take place.

Ninjadeadbeard
2015-11-19, 12:10 PM
Frankly, if you want a "low fantasy" setting, I think you need to ban cast magic entirely. Healing to come exclusively from potions - fluffed as herbal brews, rather than anything "magical" - and the only other 'magic' stuff existing basically to simulate tech in a medieval setting. Have a very Rogue-heavy game, based much more on stealth & assassination rather than hand-to-hand combat.

And, yes, the ultimate result of this may well be that D&D isn't a good system for it. But that's why he's asking!

That's certainly one way to do it. Might be neat to smash the two together. Or maybe drop all but quarter casters and throw in your suggestions. D&D is a surprisingly robust game, no matter the edition.

LnGrrrR
2015-11-19, 12:26 PM
Frankly, if you want a "low fantasy" setting, I think you need to ban cast magic entirely. Healing to come exclusively from potions - fluffed as herbal brews, rather than anything "magical" - and the only other 'magic' stuff existing basically to simulate tech in a medieval setting. Have a very Rogue-heavy game, based much more on stealth & assassination rather than hand-to-hand combat.

And, yes, the ultimate result of this may well be that D&D isn't a good system for it. But that's why he's asking!

You could always place it in a D&D world with a few tweaks... maybe magic is banned in a certain kingdom under pain of death. Or maybe due to some in-universe reason, magic comes with a penalty/side-effect, which causes people to only use magic for highly important reasons.