No Magic Campaign - NeeD HelP

[Akennedy]

Okay, the title pretty much the question/statement at hand. I'm planning a NO MAGIC campaign soon... and I wanna know is anyone has done this before, if so, what is the good/bad/ugly about it? thinking redeveloped medieval Europe...

Classes with 4th level spellcasting get revamped to have no magic.

[Temp]

I hate saying it, but D&D is not the game for that--the majority of the system disappears once you remove magic.

How are you dealing with healing? That's going to be very important.

And survivability's going to be incredibly low. ACs probably won't even be relevant (they can't be effectively raised by non-magical means) and there is no way to recover from battle without extended breaks.

[Darkxarth]

Okay, the title pretty much the question/statement at hand. I'm planning a NO MAGIC campaign soon... and I wanna know is anyone has done this before, if so, what is the good/bad/ugly about it? thinking redeveloped medieval Europe...

Classes with 4th level spellcasting get revamped to have no magic.

Might I suggest looking at the Arms and Equipment Guide? Tons of alchemical items that mimic low-level magic, and a huge new selection of general equipment, plus a big poison table. :smallbiggrin:

It's 3.0, but it's almost all fine for a 3.5 game.

Without that book, I'd say stock up on the Healing skill and buy a Healer's Kit. The Ranger class is probably going to be high on your list of good choices, if you're thinking Core only.

[Iku Rex]

DnD does not work well for no-magic campaigns. Something like Iron Heroes or the Conan RPG would be better if you want a d20 campaign.

[Aquillion]

If you want to go for D&D anyway, I suggest at least allowing a few kinds of potions (especially curing potions), and explaining their effects as non-magical alchemy or something.

But really, yeah... D&D has magic. Everything in it is balanced around the idea of magic.

...unless... well, how about Psionics? :smallwink:

[XiaoTie]

I've DMed a no-magic campaign on DnD 3.5 and the players had a good time (I did too). I'm DMing another that is just begining, but it seems that it is going to be fun again. You should give Heal as a class skill to every class and perhaps make the Long-term care task be able to heal triple instead of just double (raising the DC to 20, or just leaving at 15). Instead full 8 hours of rest, make it 7 or 6, the PCs are heroes and can recover a bit faster than the common folk. The use of alchemy to replace magic in the making of healing potions is also a great idea.

The BBEG depends on the kind of setting and campaign you want. Give us some information about that and maybe we can help you out.

[Feralgeist]

or better yet, play iron heroes. It's done really well, and if you take out the arcanist, has no magic.



BOOSH!

[Caewil]

Yeah, Iron Heroes is great. Try that.

[Stormcrow]

No magic kills parties unless you've got a solution for healing.

[Machete]

Alchemy is good, but I sense you are trying for more realism.

Homebrew herbal medicines and teas- Worthwhile effects that are far from instant, actually quite cheap for your PCs Gps, and balanced(as far as I can tell) and free for anyone to use.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60700

[Nostri]

I'd suggest one of three things:
-Go straight D&D without magic and put in alchemical healing that works like poison . (This is an idea from Iron Kingdoms where there <i>is</i> magical healing but if you don't worship the same god as the cleric or the cleric has healed too much that day you might get your soul burned out. Effectively you get healed a ~1/3 the total healing when you first take the 'potion' and then the rest of the healing after a successful Fort save and the passage of a minute.)

-Use Iron Heroes like some people have said. Great system for no magic campaigns though in my opinion you might want to look around for some of the system changes on a site called Iron League. There's a couple of minor balance issues with a couple of the classes but some people over there fixed them up long ago.

-The final suggestion is going to sound odd though I'm not the first to say it. (Actually it was Rich who really said they were going to do this first as far as I know.) It's to use d20 modern for a medieval setting. You won't have the archetypes of 'fighter' and 'ranger' but you do get a bit more versitility and realism then with normal D&D. Especially if you use the Wounds and Vitality Points system with it. The one thing is your either going to have to homebrew and bunch of weapons and armor for it or get Urban Arcana (or a martial arts for d20 book) so you can have more then chain, plate and sword for your equipment...

[the_tick_rules]

well as long as you stick to mostly humanoid opponets it's possible.

[Skjaldbakka]

Check out Iron Heroes. It is a no magic setting. (OK, it has a spellcasting class and system, but that is purely optional, and not very good).

[Tempest Fennac]

Later on in the game, a Dragon Shaman with decent Charisma would be useful due to their Touch of Vitality skill. Another option would be to use Warforged (I'm assuming that they can use Craft checks to repair themselves).

[Grynning]

If you're going to run this in 3.5 D&D rules, Complete Warrior is probably one of the books you should have. I ran a very low magic campaign (it didn't last long due to scheduling issues, but it was fun), and what I did was basically gave everyone the Faster Healing feat from there for free, and re-worked alchemy and Heal so they could be used to cure HP and conditions (out of combat of course, the idea of performing first aid or minor surgery on someone who's swinging a sword is ludicrous). The book also has a lot of recommendations on low-magic games (although most of them still depend heavily on magic items :smallyuk:)
Also, I recommend reading some Robert E. Howard for inspiration for low-magic settings. Conan doesn't have a Cleric feeling him up all the time but still manages to come out on top. Just make sure that the encounters are not overwhelming and the PC's should be fine. Fight mostly humanoid baddies, and throw one really horrible monster at them per adventure. Look for monsters without a lot of spell-likes or supernatural abilities, like Ogres.

[Dhavaer]

d20 Modern is a pretty good no magic system.

[Grynning]

So is D20 CoC, but those characters die....a lot....

[Rad]

Several people gave good ideas for healing (I vote for the free rapid healing feat). There are alternate rules in UA that introduce a defence bonus (parallel to the AB); since one big problem is that without magic AC does not scale up while BAB does I'd look into that.

[Kiero]

I hate saying it, but D&D is not the game for that--the majority of the system disappears once you remove magic.

The majority of a system disappearing isn't something intrinsically bad. That's the game much simpler from one perspective.

[cupkeyk]

We are currently in a no magic campaign. So far at levels, 4 to five our ACS are at high 20's and we rest the full days of weeks of recovery. it has been good, realistic, with more focus on defense than anything. Sword and board, Two weapon defense, mobility; anything to stay out of harms way without gimping yourself totally. We have me, a scout/ranger, a knight, a swordsage, a monk/swashbuckler, and a marshall.

Heroism is more obvious when you know that you may not live through any of your encounters.

[Roderick_BR]

I remember that the Complete Fighter's Handbook (AD&D) had suggestions for it. Don't know where I could find it now, but most games would either be intrigue/investigation or about warlords and army invasions.
An alternative, as people suggested, is to keep minor effects (potions, some magic weapons), and maybe some npc with a minimal casting effect. If you use monsters with magical powers, I suggest you to take this alternative.

[TheSteelRat]

In addition to the above suggestions of a heavier reliance on alchemy and new potions / salves / etc., I think the easiest system to go with is the Vital Point System from Unearthed Arcana. Quicker healing times, and boosts overall damage the characters can take too.

The problem with low-magic is D&D 3.5 is basically designed to be "balanced" by wealth at each character level. You're going to have to either allow lots of magic weapons (perhaps artificers are allowed? Warlocks?) OR produce a handy-dandy conversion chart for most of the magic items and effects. Many of them are easy to justify (a +5 Sword is just basically the best gosh-darn sword anyone on the planet could make, Wounding is a weapon with strange shapes that takes out chunks of the enemy, returning has a boomerang shape, +5 armor is just really good armor, Sleak is armor with special alchemical substances that allow it to be great for escape artist, silent has padds or rubber on edges of overlapping plates, etc.) while others are impossible (Vicious couldn't be done, for example)

Generally also realize that the monster CR's are assuming you have buffers / healers in your party, so you'r enot getting that +4 to deflection or that heal every other round.

[Ossian]

Been there, done that, loved it. Two campaigns actually. One with NO magic whatsoever. No magic items and no gold either. Stumbling upon a full plate was like Disneyland and a mastercraft longsword could really rule.
Classes were: fighter, monk, rogue (2 characteres), with various martial NPCs.

Second campaign: only recently become more magic, it started as a pretty poor setting with not so much in the way of firect spell casting anyway. That one campaign was...I suppose a lucky and well made one. Reason is: tehy started level 1, and now they are level 7 or 8, and it took them 14 years of gaming. Since they haven't abandoned me as a GM it means that level advancement matters little. (they moved through at least 3 editions of D&D).

It works fairly well if you just give the magic to the NPCs. I.e. mages are generally older than teenager PCs, are powerful and live a life of study and research in their "ivory towers", with magic which goes a lot in the way of summoning, illusion, mind control and divination (which rulesrs love so much for political affairs). Only direct magic would be in items crafted to suit a specific scenario, i.e. ven a wand of magic missiles becomes a plot device.

Ossian

[Fax Celestis]

The majority of a system disappearing isn't something intrinsically bad. That's the game much simpler from one perspective.

Simplicity is not the be-all end-all of gaming, otherwise we wouldn't even have gaming systems.

[Mordokai]

d20 Modern is a pretty good no magic system.

And like it was mentioned, with some redoing it could be made to work in standard dnd. But I find the system good enought as it is. Ofcourse, if you want mediveal setting, than some redoing is mandatory.


So is D20 CoC, but those characters die....a lot....

Those characters usually fight The Great Old Ones... or at least their servants. Hight mortality rate is almost mandatory for those games :smallsmile: Along with a lots of botched sanity checks(in and out of game), but that's another issue.