had an idea for making a "low magic" 5e campaign. Wants your thoughts on it!

[Rfkannen]

So I have thoughts about trying to run a 5e campaign in a conan like setting, low magic mostly humans, and I think I have come up with a way to do it that would be pretty fun, but I want your thoughts on implementing it.

So setting wise it is an almost all human campaign, almost every npc they will meet that isn't an enemy is going to be a human, but I am not going to limit player options. So the party might be the normal 5e 3 tieflings and an elf, but they are going to have to roleplay people being nervous around them on first meeting. Personally I would find this fun as a player, but I am not sure if other people would.

In the same sense, I'm thinking most people have never seen magic in there entire lives, there are entire countries without a single magic user in them, no magic schools, the entire religion might have 5 clerics in it. But again, not limiting player options. So the players get to walk around and have people be terrified and amazed by them, and depending on the village respect or fear them.

Also slightly different, but I also have an idea for magic items. Basically stuff like bags of holding and +1 swords don't exist in the setting, all the magic items the players encounter would be very powerful and very dangerous (like blackrazor), and most of them are probably at least a little sentient. So they won't encounter any items till they get around level 10, but then they start encounters really strong ones.

What do you think? Have any of you run a campaign like this? Would you find a campaign like this fun? Any tips for makeing it work?

ps. There will be monsters and stuff in the forests, it is mostly just that the humans don't have access to much magic.

[the_brazenburn]

Cough Song of Ice and Fire cough

Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

I do like the idea. Most of my campaigns are very high magic, but I can see your thing meshing easily with a horror theme. All the people are terrified of the horrors that stalk the night, and without magic they have no way to combat it. Enter four magic users, who both frighten and relieve the commoners.

Something along those lines would be my first instinct.

Good luck!

[Tanarii]

I think if your campaign setting is almost purely humans with almost no magic, you need to limit player options.

Also probably slow down XP gain dramatically, and even cap levels at ten or so. Possibly even at level 5.

Otherwise you're going to have magic alien Demi-God PCs in a relatively low power mundane world in no time. They'll either get bored or dominate it and then get bored.

[BeefGood]

You'll have to decide how to deal with monsters with resistance/immunity to nonmagical weapons.
I've been mulling over the idea of granting that resistance/immunity to noncorporeal creatures only. Ghosts. I assume there are few such creatures (if that's not the case then this idea doesn't amount to much.)

[sophontteks]

Love it. I think the players would enjoy npc reactions.

You're going to have many mundane enemies and a few extremely powerful enemies. They could have powerful creatures they have summoned for challenge and the more common enemies could have superior numbers. Like armies.

The PCs may need to raise an army of their own as well and I mean, who doesn't want that? Just narrate the army stuff while the players take on tasks within the fighting.

[banthafett]

... I can see your thing meshing easily with a horror theme. All the people are terrified of the horrors that stalk the night, and without magic they have no way to combat it. Enter four magic users, who both frighten and relieve the commoners.




Otherwise you're going to have magic alien Demi-God PCs in a relatively low power mundane world in no time. They'll either get bored or dominate it and then get bored.


It seems important that the primary antagonist be monsters since they will have access to magic and magic-like abilities. This will be important to maintain the challenge of encounters, and also makes for good world building. It seems like this world would lend itself well to a Masquerade style paradigm where the monsters are widespread, but very much behind the scenes, or a cataclysmic event where monsters are springing up for the first time, and the same event is responsible for the powers of the players.

[Tanarii]

It seems important that the primary antagonist be monsters since they will have access to magic and magic-like abilities. This will be important to maintain the challenge of encounters, and also makes for good world building.Yeah I totally missed the idea is everyone but the PCs and their enemies are normal chumps. That's totally different. It doesn't really matter if the backdrop is purely normal world, so long as the players can suspend disbelief about being alien demigods fighting monster demigods in a normal world. That's a premise many RPGs are based on, so it shouldn't be too hard.

[smcmike]

I think the best way to run a low-magic world is to try and create a surface level expectation of no magic, but to actually allow for lots of magic to intrude into the lives of the characters. They are having an extraordinary magical adventure in a mundane world, rather than a mundanely magical adventure in an extraordinary magical world.

You definitely need magical/monstrous enemies. You characters will be able to run roughshod over most mundane people with their magic, and even high-level mundane human enemies will get bland in combat after a short while. On the other hand, the mundane setting makes high-level magical enemies more threatening, since there are no allies or safe harbors to turn to against them.

The biggest challenge is NPC reactions to devil people and spells and such. This would attract a LOT of attention in amostly mundane world. I would give the players some built-in knowledge and cover for dealing with this - a tiefling isn’t going to make it to adventuring age without knowing how to deal with social situations.

[Space_God]

One of my most used homebrew settings is very similar to this; though I haven't actually run it in 5e yet. I mostly ran games in this setting back in the 3/3.5 days, used a heavily customized d20 system with no character classes. I feel 5e would work pretty well for this kind of game, however, as it seems to be far less balanced around magic items. In my games, I usually limited character selection to human-only, aside from the occasional odd character with demonic blood. It worked fine enough, with no complaints. If you wanted to make everyone human while still providing mechanical options, it's easy enough to re-flavor the different D&D races as different nations of humans. What you're proposing (allowing all the standard races and classes) could also work, if the PCs are all outsiders to the setting, and not natives.

I feel that your idea could work wonderfully if you do it right and it's something your players are into. Make sure that they're all on-board. If they just want to play a standard D&D game, maybe this isn't the right game to run. And I WOULDN'T try to play this like a typical D&D campaign. Low-magic games work great for story-focused campaigns that might be heavy on things like character development, politics, romance. You could delve into horror themes, theology, the lore of your world. I would recommend developing the lore a bunch. Since you will be removing a lot of the standard D&D tropes--the elves, magic items, etc., you'll need to add things to make your game-world interesting. You'll need to really flesh out the nations, the history, the religion, to make it stand out and draw the players in. It may be useful to consider exactly why your world is low-magic. Was there an ancient catastrophe that wiped out most of the magic-users? Is there an oppressive religion that outlaws sorcery? Maybe there is a lot of magic in the setting, just hidden from plain view, in the hands of secret societies, oppressive governments and demonic manipulators.

Oh yea, I see that you mentioned a Conan type setting. It might be worth looking at the Dark Sun material from previous editions, since it is rather Conan-like and is quite rare in magic items.

[Davrix]

I think you have a good idea but maybe need to expand on why the players have the powers they do. Maybe they are from another plane, maybe they wake up in this world and don't know how they got there and why? Lots of plot hooks you could do so the party is already together and you don't have to worry about that tid bit.

I applaud you though on this idea because more times then not when I here low magic world I groan on the inside because its just the DM at the table not wanting to deal with wizards and spells. This however sounds more like a setting I could really get behind and would adore. Its fun to feel special or wander in a strange land, not knowing how people are going to react to you at any given moment.

Anyway as an example of how I would set this up just to give you ideas.

I would suggest the party at session 0 think of being maybe a bit more diverse. Encourage but don't require everyone picking a different Race for fun that isn't human by default. Express a desire to make it a Diverse party with say like a fighter or paladin, A barbarian, cleric and wizard. Depends on how many players you have. I'm not saying to require any of this but expressing to the players what your world is and what your going for might convince them to branch out. (At least this has been my experience at a table when your open with your players)

Anyway the set up

You all awake to a biting chill that permeates every part of your body. You try to move but your arms and legs feel sluggish. Your muscles scream from disuse and when you try to open your eyes, you are only greeted by blackness.

For those with dark-vision.

You make out the outline of several stone slabs all around you, gray outlines of people slowly sitting up all around with a large gray pedestal at the center of the room.

Maybe someone casts light at this point and you can describe the chamber in more detail.

Why is the party here, what is the chamber. Is there something on the pedestal at the center. The world is a strange dangerous place and the party doesn't remember anythings ave their own names. Or maybe they do know, maybe the last memory they had was racing to fight some great evil. It really depends on how you want to spin things or set things up for your world. But this is just my 2 cents on the matter.

[Aett_Thorn]

Just a few other things that you might need to take into consideration:

1) Wizards: While they learn two new spells per level, they can also add spells found to their spellbooks for more spells known. In a very low-magic world, how will this impact any Wizard characters?

2) Warlocks: Similarly, Pact of the Tome Warlocks can get an invocation that lets them learn Rituals that they find. You might need to either bar this option or think of a way for them to add rituals to their Tome.

3) Would characters be able to multi-class into spellcasting classes? If so, how can they go about this later in their careers? Nothing in the rules stops this, just more of a flavor-building exercise possibly.

4) Be careful with you monster selection. Fighting a monster with damage immunity or resistance to nonmagical weapons is going to suck for martial classes.

[mephnick]

So setting wise it is an almost all human campaign, almost every npc they will meet that isn't an enemy is going to be a human, but I am not going to limit player options. So the party might be the normal 5e 3 tieflings and an elf, but they are going to have to roleplay people being nervous around them on first meeting. Personally I would find this fun as a player, but I am not sure if other people would.

Honestly I think limiting character options is very important to promoting a theme you want. As a player I'd find it very confusing that the world is 99% human but the party can be whatever they want. I think being the few humans that can access magic makes you special enough to be fun to role-play, you don't need to be the one tiefling anyone's ever seen. You're already special. Hell, I'd consider just banning full casters. If no one can use magic, then 1/3 or 1/2 casters are still superstars. I think your intent is good, but without some serious restrictions it will feel like any other D&D game and people will forget the atmosphere you're trying to emulate almost immediately.

[Sigreid]

An option you could use is to keep the races but use them to represent the different races of humans. Elves aren't elves, they're the people of this other nation with different cultural priorities, environments, maybe residue of ancient magics, etc.

[smcmike]

There isn’t really any problem including full casters or weird races, so long as the DM is willing to put in some work on the front end. In fact, I’d say some of the classes are more flavorful if they are rare or unique in the world. Warlocks and Sorcerers, in particular, are very special snowflakes per their standard fluff, and it seems pretty weird to me when they are popping up all over the place. Similarly, acquisition of wizard spells or rituals make for easy plot hooks when rarity is assumed.

[Laserlight]

My first 5e campaign was AD1600, in which the Mayaztecans had been hit by the pseudo-Spanish, influenza / smallpox, and an invasion of evil elves from the north; they had consequently had a lapse in sacrifices and the Sun was dying. The PCs were all human or half-orc-refluffed-as-barbarian-human, and initially they were all martials; as they discovered the New World and the magic there, I allowed them to MC into other classes. For the locals, I drew on goblin and hobgoblin stat blocks but refluffed as human.

The barbarian became a servant of his tribal patron god and gained a magic axe (+0 but could hit weapon-resistant monsters, as I recall). The rogue was ridden by Baron Samedi and as a consequence found a +1 rapier, the blade of which was engraved with "The Gift of Death" (and the rogue buried it when he MC'd into paladin). That was about all they had for magic items.

That campaign lasted about ten months and the players had fun with it. I told them all in Pre-Session-Zero what my campaign concept was, and they all bought into it.

[JackPhoenix]

As someone who loves the idea of either running or playing in a low-magic campaign, I second the opinion that you *should* limit player choices somewhat, unless you have a good reason why they have powers and origins nobody else in the world has.

But I think monsters immune to weapons do have their place even if you don't have spellcasters... especially if you don't have spellcasters in the group, in fact. Then it's not "half the party is useless on this one" but "find out how to deal with this, the usual solution doesn't work". Even Conan found things he couldn't kill and he had to outsmart or run away from. It could be that the monster has specific weakness: werewolves and silver and everything vampires are vulnerable to are already in the books, but so is using holy water to stop zombies from getting back on feet. What is important is to give the players the ability to found that weakness. Perhaps demons are made vulnerable if you shout their true name as you attack, or if you inscribe it on the blade. What if a wraith could be destroyed by whatever killed him in the first place? Perhaps the villain was prophecied that no man can kill him... but what about a woman? If the monster instantly regenerates any wounds... well, how about applying a poison that stops the regeneration, or just one that kills it when it's delivered by a cut, even if the cut itself heals? What if a golem or other construct can be stopped by stealing gem powering it? And simply pushing the unkillable thing off a convenient cliff or burrying it alive may at least buy you time.

[Ellisthion]

I played a 4E wizard in a campaign where magic was rare and considered super-evil. The party had another wizard and a warlock; all other characters eschewed magic (fighter, warlord, rogue, ranger).

No player options were restricted. But we had to be very careful about what magic we used, and where. Subtle magic like illusions and enchantments were much safer than flashy fireballs and the like. There was mistrust and suspicious even in the party as other characters realised we had magic and we had to convince them that it was safe and not evil.

We had to flee a few towns because either the locals found out we had magic, or we were worried that they had suspected.

[Corsair14]

I like the idea. Definitely agree with a couple people on limiting races and class options. Would not make sense for PC wizards or tieflings for example. Here are some further ideas.
1. Limit fantastical creatures to being out on the frontiers. Kind of hard to imagine people disbelieving in say dragons when one lives in the woods next door. Make encounters more mundane with wolves and natural animals unless there is a reason.

2. Have fun with the Fey. No one believes they exist but are very superstitious when things go missing. Time to leave out a bowl of milk for the pixies and brownies that may or may not exist that only that 6 year old kid claims to have seen.

3. Play on the superstition thing. If a PC has magic ability some how and uses it in sight of people in a village, or you allow a tiefling as a character and a child gets hurt or someone gets sick, then its time to pull out the pitchforks and burn the witches who obviously caused it.

4. If your more common demi-human races do exist then place them in their own regions where humans do not go to very often or at all. Make them insular and equally distrustful of humans so if one I seen outside of their lands then it is a momentous occasion and is met with awe and foreboding, and of course stereotypes of what the people have heard. By this I mean "The elf has left their lands, something bad must be afoot."

[JellyPooga]

You'll have to decide how to deal with monsters with resistance/immunity to nonmagical weapons.
I've been mulling over the idea of granting that resistance/immunity to noncorporeal creatures only. Ghosts. I assume there are few such creatures (if that's not the case then this idea doesn't amount to much.)

To my mind, monsters with resistance/immunity to non-magical weapons aren't a bug of a campaign like this, but a feature. Under "normal" circumstances, that resistance/immunity is a side-note of the foe. In a campaign like this, it's a terrifying prospect, a real problem to circumnavigate. If you can't kill it, it poses the question of what to do with it; do you capture it and imprison it? Try to drown it? Burn it? Drive it off? Negotiate? It adds a level of gameplay to those monsters other than "let's just kill 'em all".

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

As someone who loves the idea of either running or playing in a low-magic campaign, I second the opinion that you *should* limit player choices somewhat, unless you have a good reason why they have powers and origins nobody else in the world has.

But I think monsters immune to weapons do have their place even if you don't have spellcasters... especially if you don't have spellcasters in the group, in fact. Then it's not "half the party is useless on this one" but "find out how to deal with this, the usual solution doesn't work". Even Conan found things he couldn't kill and he had to outsmart or run away from. It could be that the monster has specific weakness: werewolves and silver and everything vampires are vulnerable to are already in the books, but so is using holy water to stop zombies from getting back on feet. What is important is to give the players the ability to found that weakness. Perhaps demons are made vulnerable if you shout their true name as you attack, or if you inscribe it on the blade. What if a wraith could be destroyed by whatever killed him in the first place? Perhaps the villain was prophecied that no man can kill him... but what about a woman? If the monster instantly regenerates any wounds... well, how about applying a poison that stops the regeneration, or just one that kills it when it's delivered by a cut, even if the cut itself heals? What if a golem or other construct can be stopped by stealing gem powering it? And simply pushing the unkillable thing off a convenient cliff or burrying it alive may at least buy you time.

I spent a year running an E6 3.5 campaign with source of PC casting banned and 1/10th treasure. I agree with both of these things. The more powerful the players relative to the game world, the more likely they are to do things that don't really fit the tone of the game. I do think in a low-magic environment it's important to have your party at or only slightly above the baseline for the rest of the world.

And using monsters that can't be stabbed to death has a place as well. Use them not as combat encounters but as combat puzzles, dynamic traps that need to be bypassed rather than defeated.

[smcmike]

To my mind, monsters with resistance/immunity to non-magical weapons aren't a bug of a campaign like this, but a feature. Under "normal" circumstances, that resistance/immunity is a side-note of the foe. In a campaign like this, it's a terrifying prospect, a real problem to circumnavigate. If you can't kill it, it poses the question of what to do with it; do you capture it and imprison it? Try to drown it? Burn it? Drive it off? Negotiate? It adds a level of gameplay to those monsters other than "let's just kill 'em all".

Yeah, this goes for almost all of the objections to this sort of campaign - the monsters are scarier, the caster fluff is more meaningful, the characters are more heroic..... oh no?

[mephnick]

I spent a year running an E6 3.5 campaign with source of PC casting banned and 1/10th treasure. I agree with both of these things. The more powerful the players relative to the game world, the more likely they are to do things that don't really fit the tone of the game. I do think in a low-magic environment it's important to have your party at or only slightly above the baseline for the rest of the world.

That's all I'm saying. If your main setting conceit is "low magic world of humans" then your party should be a low magic group of humans.

If the main theme is "Super powered gods in a low magic world of humans" then sure, have a full caster party of tieflings and elves, but that's not actually the feeling I got from the OP.

[Eric Diaz]

I don't think it is a bad idea. Having a group of superheroes living among mortals can work well. This is an x-men, avengers campaign. What's wrong with those?

Or even Dark Sun. Most people despise spellcasters. This gives then lots of drawbacks, but also some good stuff: they can intimidate and surprise with ease.

I would even say that I prefer this to the high-magic version of D&D with "Ye Olde Magic Shoppe" in every corner and trains powered by magic. Ah, well, I like both very low (GoT) and very high (Ravnica) more than, say, Forgotten Realms.

If you want a human-centric setting, allow PCs to be refluffed races. Not and elf or orc, but a distant people that might have come in touch with faeries or trolls in the past.

But then again, you don't need even that, you can have a single kriptonian or martian manhunter in the story and stuill have a good story.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I don't think it is a bad idea. Having a group of superheroes living among mortals can work well. This is an x-men, avengers campaign. What's wrong with those?

Nothing's wrong with that, and it could be a very nice campaign. But if I as a player were pitched a low-magic campaign with limited common magic items and the possibility of powerful, dangerous artifacts, my expectation would be a bit more Fellowship of the Ring and a bit less Infinity War. I think I'd be fairly nonplussed if I sat down at a table with a human rogue and the other dudes at the table were an eladrin bladesinger, a winged tiefling hexblade and a yuan-ti pureblood divine sorcerer.

I also think that if your dudes are superheroes, you're going to get superhero behavior, by which I mean diva behavior, from the characters. If you want to run a campaign that looks a bit like the Warriors Three walking down the street of a little town in New Mexico or Loki sawing someone's eyeball out in front of the Hamburg Philharmonic, that's fine and that campaign could be really fun.

Edit: And agree with your other point: if you're going to enforce everyone as human, I do recommend allowing also those races that have nonmagical abilities, refluffed to be humans as well. That will increase the differences between characters at the table even if racially everyone is technically the same.

[banthafett]

I disagree with idea that character creation options should be limited. Many posters concerns seem to be a combination of fear that the players will take advantage of the world, and incredulity that certain classes could exist in a world were societies lack magic. Both issues can be addressed in a session 0 where the expectations for the campaign are laid out, and the DM and players collaborate on character creation.

The first issue is partly one of character motivation/morality and partly one of world building. Work with the players to create characters that will be interested in the story you will be creating and won’t become sidetracked trying to abuse society. Also make it clear to them that just because societies don’t have magic doesn’t mean they are pushovers. Purely martial characters can still be quite threatening to the party, and flagrant use of magic might attract the attention of powerful entities that would otherwise ignore them.

The second issue is simply one of backstory. You’re the DM, and you know your world. How might one become a wizard? Is magic a new phenomenon that only a few are studying and even fewer are learning to harness? Is magic ancient, but lost to memory, and its secrets only revealed to scholars of the utmost patience and dedication? Is magic feared and its practitioners hunted, so that only a few survivors remain to pass on their arts? You will know what explanation fits into your larger world and its ramifications for character creation. Explain the context of classes within your world to the players and they will be able to fill in the details.

Finally, make sure the conflicts are interesting for the players. A big draw of this campaign will be the setting. Leverage it. Magic, monsters, and the fear and distrust of the common folk for both make up a large part of the Witcher III, and the world oozes character as a result. Your setting will be one where the players shape the world just by existing. Explore that. Ground the characters actions in the impact they have on the common folk. Let them be seen as heros, but also monsters. Emphasize the otherworldliness of their appearance/abilities. Try to get the players to see their characters as a real human being would. If your players care about the world and are invested in it I think it will be a huge success.