Low Magic Campaigns (LOTR? GOT?)

[dmhelp]

I was taking a look at the AiME (Adventures in Middle Earth, out of print) rules that use Barbarians, Fighters, Rogues, Spellless Bards, Spellless Rangers, & Scholars and I thought it looked pretty neat (I think the Bards and Scholars are felt to be weak choices unless you are following the spirit of the journey, fellowship, and audience formats closely). The subclasses are a little different but you could probably use most standard subclasses and just remove Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster if you wanted more variety.

I was thinking for a Game of Thrones like campaign you could potentially add Monk and a modified Warlock (ditching all attack cantrips except maybe green flame blade and you could consider gritty realism resting variant).

What rules have people used in the past for low magic campaign rules and how did it play?

[LordShade]

I was taking a look at the AiME (Adventures in Middle Earth, out of print) rules that use Barbarians, Fighters, Rogues, Spellless Bards, Spellless Rangers, & Scholars and I thought it looked pretty neat (I think the Bards and Scholars are felt to be weak choices unless you are following the spirit of the journey, fellowship, and audience formats closely). The subclasses are a little different but you could probably use most standard subclasses and just remove Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster if you wanted more variety.

I was thinking for a Game of Thrones like campaign you could potentially add Monk and a modified Warlock (ditching all attack cantrips except maybe green flame blade and you could consider gritty realism resting variant).

What rules have people used in the past for low magic campaign rules and how did it play?

I have run low magic and all-fighter campaigns in 2e. Despite the lack of customizability in the edition compared to 5th, those campaigns were pretty fun. One campaign was a generic Forgotten Realms where nobody ended up playing a primary caster--we had an elf archer, a fighter/thief, a ranger, a ninja, and someone else. That campaign had plenty of magic in the party through found items, though.

The other campaign was based on a movie/book called the 13th Warrior. That one didn't get much off the ground but was still fun in the early going. 2e still had enough tactical options that low-magic campaigns were fun, and the lack of ready spells forces players to do more creative thinking.

We have run all thief campaigns too, but those usually with multiclassing. Also fun, with the players usually being the guild/henchmen of a high-level PC guildmaster. These require a good DM that understands "roguish" activities well, like planning heists and the like. The movie "The Great Train Robbery" is excellent inspiration for this.

I have run all-mage campaigns as well (I remember one in Birthright, with all the PCs as shared source regents in Djafra) and they did not work out nearly as well as fighter or thief campaigns. Despite a vast abundance of magic specializations in 2e, the mage characters and adventures just seemed more boring and static.

edit: 2e had a lot of sourcebook support for historical, low-fantasy campaigns. A lot of those could be adapted for 5e. If you do want to run a GoT campaign, you may want to consider looking at running it in 2e itself. You can always tweak the 2e rules to allow more customizability. The Combat & Tactics rulebook is a gold mine for these types of campaigns, and gives a lot more tactical options for weapon-based combat to players than the standard 5e ruleset.

[Kane0]

Low magic can mean multiple things.

If I wanted to run a 'low-casting' sort of game I might limit characters to at most half-casting progression (meaning if you choose cleric, druid, bard, sorcerer or wizard you would have to multiclass at a 50/50 rate), limit the range of feats available and otherwise run the campaign as usual finishing around Tier 3 or so.

If I wanted to run a 'magic is dangerous/primitive' sort of game I might increase casting times or reduce spell availability on top of the above, or some other limitation that reduces accessibility or effectiveness of magic but not both.

If I wanted to run a 'magic is not for players' sort of game i'd choose another system.

[strangebloke]

I mean GoT has pretty serious magic characters on the high end. Melisandre summons a storm that drives a fleet for days, lights an army's swords on fire, sees the future regularly, is constantly under disguise self.... that's high level cleric **** although the material components are a bit hmmmm at times. Ditto for Quaithe, Bloodraven, The Ghost of High Heart, Varamyr....

Basically my advice is, make the setting low magic, have the party sign a pact that they'll only have one full caster, and then use "gritty" rest rules to prevent magical sleep silliness. And maybe either refluff or ban certain options (druids' animal forms are just animals they skinchange into, the animal is present with the party but not doing stuff most of the time until the druid trances.)

Honestly the bigger problem for GOT is that you're all boring humans.

[Unoriginal]

I was taking a look at the AiME (Adventures in Middle Earth, out of print) rules that use Barbarians, Fighters, Rogues, Spellless Bards, Spellless Rangers, & Scholars and I thought it looked pretty neat (I think the Bards and Scholars are felt to be weak choices unless you are following the spirit of the journey, fellowship, and audience formats closely). The subclasses are a little different but you could probably use most standard subclasses and just remove Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster if you wanted more variety.

I was thinking for a Game of Thrones like campaign you could potentially add Monk and a modified Warlock (ditching all attack cantrips except maybe green flame blade and you could consider gritty realism resting variant).

What rules have people used in the past for low magic campaign rules and how did it play?

I would never use the 5e ruleset for a low-magic campaign. You have to remove so much and there are so many expectations of the system you have to work around it's just not worth it compared to using a system which is meant for low magic from the start.

Also as an aside, something tells me Adventures in Middle Earth doesn't even remotely use Tolkien's magic system.

[Eldariel]

I've run no magic in 3e focusing on the Tome of Battle subsystem; the campaign journal is actually probably still in my signature. It was a blast and we thoroughly enjoyed it - the system worked extremely well in fact, due to the amount of detail the skill system has. 5e has less of that and less martial flexibility so you'd probably want to do some homebrewing and bringing in guidelines but principally it should be doable: if your players enjoy playing martials anyways, especially with hit dice, there's little issue with not having casters around.

[JonBeowulf]

I would never use the 5e ruleset for a low-magic campaign. You have to remove so much and there are so many expectations of the system you have to work around it's just not worth it compared to using a system which is meant for low magic from the start.

Also as an aside, something tells me Adventures in Middle Earth doesn't even remotely use Tolkien's magic system.

This. I prefer low-magic settings and I tried to run one in 5e. The players didn't like it and neither did I. We abandoned it after 3 sessions.

[Catullus64]

I like to have the party of a low-magic game agree to a formula for the party:

1 Full Caster
1 Partial Caster (Either innately or through multiclassing, in which latter case the caster class can never constitute a majority of levels)
Maximum of 2 Demihumans, one of which must belong to a "common" demihuman race.

Within these limitations, they can pair as they like.

With players controlling demihumans, make sure they're aware of your particular vision of that race in your setting, and make sure they are comfortable playing a character that fits with that vision. (Good advice for any game, indispensable for a low-magic game, in which non-human races are presumably a rarity and of somewhat alien nature, like the source materials mentioned.)

Work closely with the players who controls the casting characters on their spell lists, asking them not to take spells that you think damage the feel of the game. (Goodberry, Create Food & Water, Zone of Truth, Remove Curse, and any spell that raises the dead are typical targets for me.) Encourage selection-casters to choose spells that can be interpreted within a specific theme; Mind, Elements, Healing, Prophecy, Heavens, etc.


These mostly apply to PCs; antagonists and neutral NPCs I generally allow to have more extensive and world-altering magic. But even with this being the case, I like to change up the spells as they exist in the book: the villain may be able to cast Scrying to spy on the heroes, but he can only do so under the new moon, with a vessel of oil drawn from the Sacred Trees of the Uthwe people, of which he has only two vials.

Keep the campaign definitively in Tier 1 of play, with maybe Level 5 for the big climax.

[Kurt Kurageous]

It s session zero pitch to the players. Only one can be a full caster, 1/4 casters after that. The world is mundane and full of fantastic beasts, undead spirits, and lost of fey.

My template was pre-Christian Ireland.

[JackPhoenix]

As someone who tried to run low-magic campaign in 5e, I second (third?) the suggestion to use a different system. Even outside outright spellcasting, 5e has too many magical and magic-like abilities everywhere. You'll either end up with incoherent mess (which, arguably, D&D already is anyway) or have to rewrite so much of the system (what I ended up doing) that just playing something else would be easier.

[Tanarii]

Use a different system. D&D BECMI might do it if you carefully cull the spell lists, but I'd go outside DND all together.

Primary feature it needs is mass combat rules. But also detailed rules for dueling (including knightly style), jousting, assassinations, and poison.

Personally I'd advise against a campaign tightly tied to a story. Books and film work because of authorial plot. Not because of anything that makes TTRPGs good. C.f. DM of The Rings

[KorvinStarmast]

Here's what I'd suggest for low magic:

Classes:
Arcane Caster:
The only allowed caster is a warlock (Fiend, GOO, Celestial, or Archfey).
Only one in the party. No Wizard, no Bard, and No sorcerer
If you want to add "magic is dangerous" and that's why it's rarely used, maybe allow a Wild Magic Sorcerer and roll the d20 any time a leveled spell is cast.
Divine Caster:
none (They are all working in temples or running cults, or out leading the Back to Nature movement in a grove)
Martials:
Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, Monk: yes
Half Casters:
Ranger: maybe
Paladin: no
Artificer: no

The occasional magic found ought to be common, or consumables. Uncommons become mini quest objectives.
A rare item is never rolled for, it is always placed with a plot relevant NPC or very dangrous quest goal.

Setting notes:

1. The usual reaction to magic by everyone who is not a PC is fear, suspicion, shunning, or general dislike. It takes the PCs doing something helpful and unique to overcome this standard reaction.

2. Your NPCs need to be weighted away from spell casters. Magical abilities, yeah, but an NPC spell caster is very unusual, or is a location bound low level acolyte / priest, or a Cult Fanatic.

3. At about level 6, review whether or not you want to keep it low magic or if at this point the PCs can take on things that are more magical and more dangerous.

4. The BBEG for the campaign can be something like an Archmage: a seriously powerful and dangerous opponent in a magic world.

The campaign will end before Tier 2 is over.

[Tanarii]

Also worth noting GoT isn't really low Magic. It's "southern Westeros is low Magic", and even then only since the dragon kings no longer rule. And when they did rule they burned out all magical opposition, so they were the only Magic around.

[Sparky McDibben]

Rob Schwalb actually made a GoT RPG, called the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. Solves a lot of these problems.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I would never use the 5e ruleset for a low-magic campaign. You have to remove so much and there are so many expectations of the system you have to work around it's just not worth it compared to using a system which is meant for low magic from the start.

Also as an aside, something tells me Adventures in Middle Earth doesn't even remotely use Tolkien's magic system.
I generally agree with the first point, but Adventures in Middle Earth is honestly the best way to manage low magic in 5e because of how it overhauled 5e. It doesn't use any of the same classes, for starters. It's built with the expectation and understanding that no one's going to be slinging magic, so characters had to have suites of non-magical options, especially for things that magic is normally essential for. Like healing: the archetype is taken by the Scholar, who can spend a pool of d8's to quickly treat ills and wounds in combat, but can multiply these out and improve the healing by spending 10 minutes out of combat and/or expending rare herbs. All the other classes, martial though they may be, have a lot more options and utility to cover this overall lack of magic, which is really what 5e needs to function appropriately as low magic.

Expectations are also decidedly different. It's built on a cadence of undergoing an adventure about once a year, where you gather back with your friends after living your life in a kind of extended downtime, possibly much changed by what you've seen and done. The idea is that each session is about the adventure, and in between is this Fellowship phase. While it still appears to function in a more normal D&D way with players having some nonstop epic journey with barely a day to spare in the mean time, doing so is explicitly different from how Adventures in Middle Earth was designed. It's definitely much more realistic, which feels like the point.

[heavyfuel]

I wouldn't call either LotR or GoT "low-magic". Magic is rare, but Gandalf/Saruman/Sauron are all capable of powerful magic. I'm not super familiar with GoT beyond the tv show, but Melisandre has pretty amazing magic, and there's also the dude that can revive people and whatnot.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I wouldn't call either LotR or GoT "low-magic". Magic is rare, but Gandalf/Saruman/Sauron are all capable of powerful magic. I'm not super familiar with GoT beyond the tv show, but Melisandre has pretty amazing magic, and there's also the dude that can revive people and whatnot.

Low magic usually isn't defined by weak magic, but by scarce magic. There are so few casters in those series that as far as your average person is concerned, it doesn't exist. They'll never see anything magical as long as they live. Meanwhile, even backwoods peasants in Faerun have run-ins with the occasional cleric, wizard apprentice, or druid circle, probably have some local minor magical protection, and see adventuring parties bursting at the seems with magic from time to time.

A low magic game doesn't necessarily need weak magic, just rare magic. Rarer than your typical D&D setting, at least.

[Catullus64]

I wouldn't call either LotR or GoT "low-magic". Magic is rare, but Gandalf/Saruman/Sauron are all capable of powerful magic. I'm not super familiar with GoT beyond the tv show, but Melisandre has pretty amazing magic, and there's also the dude that can revive people and whatnot.

When talking about low-magic versus high-magic, it's usually less about how powerful magic is and more about how prevalent it is. Magic in ASOIAF and GoT is rare enough (and inconsistent enough) for many characters in the show to doubt or dismiss its existence altogether. The characters from whose POV the story is told have very limited, very sporadic magical abilities (Dany's awakening of her dragons, the Stark kids' connection to their Direwolves, Victarion Greyjoy's burnt arm). Magic is not a reliable tool that the protagonists can call upon to aid them. In both Lord of the Rings and ASOIAF, magic is fading from the world, a relic of ancient times that remains only in dark and hidden places (though Westeros is much further along in its de-magification than Middle-Earth.)

Low-magic also has to do with perspective. Robert E. Howard's Conan mythos and Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar both contain people and beings with immense magical powers. Conan is low magic because said magical powers are almost always the province of villains and secondary characters; to the hero and therefore the reader, magic is rare and mysterious when it occurs. While I wouldn't call Heralds of Valdemar high magic, exactly, it does tend to center the magic-users more often in its narratives, and thus the magical elements are more familiar and natural to them.

That is the problem with running low-magic D&D; it's hard to say that "magic is mysterious, rare, and unpredictable" when the players have a rulebook that tells them, "there's tons of magic, here's a whole bunch of it that you can use, and here's exactly how pretty much all of it works."

[KorvinStarmast]

Rob Schwalb actually made a GoT RPG, called the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG. Solves a lot of these problems.
is it a good value in terms of a fun and engaging game?

[Man_Over_Game]

My biggest issue with low magic gameplay is that most battleground effects are magic. Most combat manipulation is magic. The entire foundation of 5e's mundane martial combat is "Roll 1d20, deal ~10 damage if you hit", and doing that for an entire campaign seems like it'd make me go mad.

That's kinda why you need something like the LOTR adaptation, since it's designed around not needing magic to be interesting.

And before someone corrects me, yes you can be interesting in combat by improvising actions as a nonmagical martial, but it's not like the books give you any support on the "how", and what exactly is a ruleset for if it's not relevant? Rather than basically rebuilding the game from scratch, just find one that already did what you're going to.

[dmhelp]

I generally agree with the first point, but Adventures in Middle Earth is honestly the best way to manage low magic in 5e because of how it overhauled 5e. It doesn't use any of the same classes, for starters. It's built with the expectation and understanding that no one's going to be slinging magic, so characters had to have suites of non-magical options, especially for things that magic is normally essential for. Like healing: the archetype is taken by the Scholar, who can spend a pool of d8's to quickly treat ills and wounds in combat, but can multiply these out and improve the healing by spending 10 minutes out of combat and/or expending rare herbs. All the other classes, martial though they may be, have a lot more options and utility to cover this overall lack of magic, which is really what 5e needs to function appropriately as low magic.

Expectations are also decidedly different. It's built on a cadence of undergoing an adventure about once a year, where you gather back with your friends after living your life in a kind of extended downtime, possibly much changed by what you've seen and done. The idea is that each session is about the adventure, and in between is this Fellowship phase. While it still appears to function in a more normal D&D way with players having some nonstop epic journey with barely a day to spare in the mean time, doing so is explicitly different from how Adventures in Middle Earth was designed. It's definitely much more realistic, which feels like the point.

Some of the AiME rules are pretty cool. You can't play a Maiar (Gandalf) but they do have some limited magic that elves (auto crit on an arrow [costs a hit die], elf-lights, and enchanted sleep), and dwarves (opening/shutting, exclusion, & item secrecy) take as a feat (most feats are race or culture restricted). Barbarians (Slayers) have a subclass that lets them wear heavy armor and get a dex bonus (overpowered, but limiting it to +2 dex would work and I think would be a good addition to a Battlerager to fix the subclass). Ranger 20 gives max damage on attacks instead of Foe Slayer.

And they get around the humans problem by having 8 different humans by culture. You could do the same thing in a GOT campaign.

I was thinking if you wanted to introduce magic, a mage-light Warlock would be the best choice with the variant rest system (minus cantrip damage). That way people would be doing 2 spells per 8 hour short rest instead of 24 spells per 8 hour long rest. It would also be reasonable to let them change their spells after a 8 hour rest. Even when they do magic in GOT (or LOTR) they aren't constantly slinging spells left and right (from what I recall).

[Guy Lombard-O]

Has anyone tried running a low-magic game by removing cantrips entirely? Possibly in addition to other adjustments (such as half caster progression for full casters)? Something that would seriously remove such ready magic from the table (sort of like AD&D), and also make the martial classes more valuable in combat than a caster?

I do realize, of course, that there are better systems for low-magic. I'm just wondering if the above has ever been tried out.

[Ogun]

Emulating fiction is hard, players characters just don't do what fictional characters would do.
Stealing the ingredients of a setting can let you create a similar flavor, without trying to match the fiction beat for beat.
That being said, the best "low magic" game I've been in was a 5e game that resembled nothing that had ever seen.
It was rogues, monks and warlocks only, included blackpowder weapons and featured a world shattered by its collision with realm of Dream.
Nothing could be expected because the entire setting was new to the players.
Even the warlock patrons were all new for the setting.

This kind of rewrite takes an exceptional DM, and you end up with a game that doesn't resemble dnd much at all.
But damn it was good.

[strangebloke]

In both Lord of the Rings and ASOIAF, magic is fading from the world, a relic of ancient times that remains only in dark and hidden places (though Westeros is much further along in its de-magification than Middle-Earth.)

Actually this is the opposite of true for ASOIAF. Magic is on the rise, following the birth of the dragons. There are loads of people who have been training in magic (even though it didn't work) who are now finding their spells to be potent. This gives a great inciting event for your full-caster character. They could be like Marwyn or Wisdom Rossart Luwin, all of whom attempted magic for years without success.

Melisandre's greater powers (controlling the weather, sending killer phantasms) are limited use and are pretty much restricted by the plot, but her lesser powers (illusions mostly, but also the kiss of life) she pretty much spams constantly.

....But yeah overall I don't think this works very well for DND,

[ImproperJustice]

I would recommend any of the following:

A song of ice and fire rpg

Dungeon World (and modify a few moves for the magic classes).

Savage Worlds

True 20


And run with the latter two’s low magic options.

It will just save so much more time in the long run.

[CapnWildefyr]

My biggest issue with low magic gameplay is that most battleground effects are magic. Most combat manipulation is magic. The entire foundation of 5e's mundane martial combat is "Roll 1d20, deal ~10 damage if you hit", and doing that for an entire campaign seems like it'd make me go mad.

That's kinda why you need something like the LOTR adaptation, since it's designed around not needing magic to be interesting.

And before someone corrects me, yes you can be interesting in combat by improvising actions as a nonmagical martial, but it's not like the books give you any support on the "how", and what exactly is a ruleset for if it's not relevant? Rather than basically rebuilding the game from scratch, just find one that already did what you're going to.

Actually, if you think about it, the game gets more interesting in some ways. Sure, combat might be simple hack and slash, but if you give the players fewer time constraints, then they have more time to plan combats and to employ more colorful stratagems. A party with a wizard might just fireball a pirate ship and watch it burn. A party without magic adventures to learn location of the pirates' base, then slips out there and pulls off a sneak attack to capture the base when the pirates are away, capturing them when they return. Takes more time, it's more involved, but can be more fun. Also you have to give them time to plan combats--plan ways to gain height advantages, use terrain, cut off retreat, use flaming oil or other mundane effects, etc. -- stuff that does not mean as much with magic means more without.


Has anyone tried running a low-magic game by removing cantrips entirely? Possibly in addition to other adjustments (such as half caster progression for full casters)? Something that would seriously remove such ready magic from the table (sort of like AD&D), and also make the martial classes more valuable in combat than a caster?

I do realize, of course, that there are better systems for low-magic. I'm just wondering if the above has ever been tried out.

You could make cantrips work only once between rests (S or L).

I think the big thing is: just don't give out magic, especially spells. Make wizards research them, and make it hard to find ingredients. As others have suggested, limit the number of casters in the party to 1, and yes plan adventures so they take more time in-game so the players can heal. (I like the playability of healing each LR but really I prefer just letting people roll half their HD pool -- that way natural healing takes time, just like real life.) But like you, I haven't tried it.

[furby076]

if you are going to make low/no magic then do not add gritty rules. Doing so means your characters will have LOTS of downtime. That works well in a book (and tv adaptation) where time is very fungible, but it is poor in a game "ok, we fought 3 orcs. the fighter got crit, so we are going to rest in that town over there for 2 months"....not exactly captivating. Heck, can you imagine being the PCs being in rivendell for a few months while one of their team mates is in a coma? Kinda boring for the team mate "bad news joe, you are in a coma and can't play for the next 4 sessions. Good news though, the other pcs will be stuck walking around a town that has no fights, plots, stores to buy things, etc. But it's kind of pretty if you let your imagination run wild. Later!"

[strangebloke]

if you are going to make low/no magic then do not add gritty rules. Doing so means your characters will have LOTS of downtime. That works well in a book (and tv adaptation) where time is very fungible, but it is poor in a game "ok, we fought 3 orcs. the fighter got crit, so we are going to rest in that town over there for 2 months"....not exactly captivating. Heck, can you imagine being the PCs being in rivendell for a few months while one of their team mates is in a coma? Kinda boring for the team mate "bad news joe, you are in a coma and can't play for the next 4 sessions. Good news though, the other pcs will be stuck walking around a town that has no fights, plots, stores to buy things, etc. But it's kind of pretty if you let your imagination run wild. Later!"

...wut?

If your players want to stop their adventure because someone has low HP, they're essentially admitting defeat. The temple they cleared of enemies will see enemies returning to shore up the weaknesses. The artifact they're working to retrieve will be stolen by their rivals, the evil warlord will take over the city the heroes were running to defend. The dragon will relocate the princess to another castle, etc. Time pressure should be a basic assumption of all games. Otherwise the game is going to purely revolve around 5 min adventuring days where resources don't matter and every character should blow through their resources as fast as possible.

Gritty rules work totally fine and I've been running them for years. And yeah, my players have "failed" a few key plot missions because they opted to take a rest rather than fight. It was kind of a downer at the time but its put a lot of pressure on the party to be careful with their resources in later fights, really ratcheting up the tensions and making it all the more satisfying when the party does win.

[JackPhoenix]

Low magic usually isn't defined by weak magic, but by scarce magic. There are so few casters in those series that as far as your average person is concerned, it doesn't exist. They'll never see anything magical as long as they live. Meanwhile, even backwoods peasants in Faerun have run-ins with the occasional cleric, wizard apprentice, or druid circle, probably have some local minor magical protection, and see adventuring parties bursting at the seems with magic from time to time.

A low magic game doesn't necessarily need weak magic, just rare magic. Rarer than your typical D&D setting, at least.

I've recently found a tweet from Ed Greenwood... thus canon per the agreement that allows WotC to publish FR material (https://twitter.com/theedverse/status/1260974930814029830)... on the prevalence of spellcasters in FR. According to him, 1 out of 40 000 people may know cantrips, and 1 out of 70 000 may know a level 1 spell. So even in Faerun, most people are rather unlikely to meet any kind of spellcaster.

The link (https://www.sageadvice.eu/2021/03/04/what-is-the-approximate-ratio-of-spellcasters-to-nonspellcasters-in-the-forgotten-realms-1-out-of-10000-1-out-of-100000/) is to SA, because that's where I've read it, but that's just because SA gathers relevant tweets.


I would recommend any of the following:

A song of ice and fire rpg

Dungeon World (and modify a few moves for the magic classes).

Savage Worlds

True 20


And run with the latter two’s low magic options.

It will just save so much more time in the long run.

I'd add Shadow of the Demon Lord, also by Robert Schwalb mentioned above. There's magic, but it's limited compared to D&D, and the system is even simpler than 5e (also bears some similarities), while still offering some complexity. It's a horror game, though, not high fantasy... for that, Shadow of the Weird Wizard based on the same system should be released later this year.


...wut?

If your players want to stop their adventure because someone has low HP, they're essentially admitting defeat. The temple they cleared of enemies will see enemies returning to shore up the weaknesses. The artifact they're working to retrieve will be stolen by their rivals, the evil warlord will take over the city the heroes were running to defend. The dragon will relocate the princess to another castle, etc. Time pressure should be a basic assumption of all games. Otherwise the game is going to purely revolve around 5 min adventuring days where resources don't matter and every character should blow through their resources as fast as possible.

Gritty rules work totally fine and I've been running them for years. And yeah, my players have "failed" a few key plot missions because they opted to take a rest rather than fight. It was kind of a downer at the time but its put a lot of pressure on the party to be careful with their resources in later fights, really ratcheting up the tensions and making it all the more satisfying when the party does win.

The entire point of 'gritty realism', which is neither gritty nor realistic, is to make 5e's suggested resource management work with low-combat campaigns where you deal with only few encounters per day. It's broken in many ways... spell durations being the most obvious example... and it makes the rift between short- and long-rest based classes *worse* if you shove them into encounter-heavy enviroment like your typical dungeon, as there's no time to regain short-rest resources (which are generally fewer in number) without the consequences for delay you've mentioned, while long-rest based classes can proceed as usual, and then rest for a week instead of for the night.

[strangebloke]

The entire point of 'gritty realism', which is neither gritty nor realistic, is to make 5e's suggested resource management work with low-combat campaigns where you deal with only few encounters per day. It's broken in many ways... spell durations being the most obvious example... and it makes the rift between short- and long-rest based classes *worse* if you shove them into encounter-heavy enviroment like your typical dungeon, as there's no time to regain short-rest resources (which are generally fewer in number) without the consequences for delay you've mentioned, while long-rest based classes can proceed as usual, and then rest for a week instead of for the night.

None of these problems are remotely as difficult as people think.

Spell durations of 24 hours are increased to "until the end of the next long rest," durations of eight hours are increased to 24 hours, and durations of 1 hour are increased to eight. This pretty much completely solves the spell duration issue.

Dungeons work fine, you just have to either use shorter dungeons, hand out "Sr in a bottle", or actually set a dungeon up to be "raided" in the sense of the PCs attacking the dungeon repeatedly over several days.

Time pressure just isn't an issue at all. Wanting to have the interval for your campaign be several days is the whole point. Just give the SR classes time to rest.

[Ashe]

if you are going to make low/no magic then do not add gritty rules. Doing so means your characters will have LOTS of downtime. That works well in a book (and tv adaptation) where time is very fungible, but it is poor in a game "ok, we fought 3 orcs. the fighter got crit, so we are going to rest in that town over there for 2 months"....not exactly captivating. Heck, can you imagine being the PCs being in rivendell for a few months while one of their team mates is in a coma? Kinda boring for the team mate "bad news joe, you are in a coma and can't play for the next 4 sessions. Good news though, the other pcs will be stuck walking around a town that has no fights, plots, stores to buy things, etc. But it's kind of pretty if you let your imagination run wild. Later!"

Why would you play out, in actual session time, the characters doing nothing of importance? Like, what?

[Tanarii]

I've recently found a tweet from Ed Greenwood... thus canon per the agreement that allows WotC to publish FR material (https://twitter.com/theedverse/status/1260974930814029830)... on the prevalence of spellcasters in FR. According to him, 1 out of 40 000 people may know cantrips, and 1 out of 70 000 may know a level 1 spell. So even in Faerun, most people are rather unlikely to meet any kind of spellcaster.

The link (https://www.sageadvice.eu/2021/03/04/what-is-the-approximate-ratio-of-spellcasters-to-nonspellcasters-in-the-forgotten-realms-1-out-of-10000-1-out-of-100000/) is to SA, because that's where I've read it, but that's just because SA gathers relevant tweets.
Ed Greenwood is full of crap then, because that doesn't match official demographics from either AD&D or 3e for adventuring classed characters in FR. Of course Ed Greenwood being full of crap pretty much defines him.

That's off by roughly a factor of 10 to 100 depending on where you are in the Realms,

[Sigreid]

Do make sure your players are into it if you do low magic. Speaking only for myself of course, magic is why I play DND. If I didn't want lots of crazy magic, I'd play something else.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I've recently found a tweet from Ed Greenwood... thus canon per the agreement that allows WotC to publish FR material (https://twitter.com/theedverse/status/1260974930814029830)... on the prevalence of spellcasters in FR. According to him, 1 out of 40 000 people may know cantrips, and 1 out of 70 000 may know a level 1 spell. So even in Faerun, most people are rather unlikely to meet any kind of spellcaster.

The link (https://www.sageadvice.eu/2021/03/04/what-is-the-approximate-ratio-of-spellcasters-to-nonspellcasters-in-the-forgotten-realms-1-out-of-10000-1-out-of-100000/) is to SA, because that's where I've read it, but that's just because SA gathers relevant tweets.
The answer is a little more complicated than that. That's 1 in 40,000 are wizards capable of casting cantrips, specifically. 1 in 26,000 fully awaken to being sorcerers, 1 in about 300,000 become warlocks, and 1 in 48m become clerics (which seems a bit... off). That's not a lot better than 1 in 40,000, but there's a little more diversity.

In the same tweets, he also says-
"Thanks to traveling priests and the teachings of shrine and temple... ...clergy, almost everyone has seen minor magic at work (but not personally experienced it), and thanks to bards and talkative traveling merchants and peddlers, nigh everyone has heard tales of spell-duels or spectacular... ...spell-hurlings or awesome feats of magic (those MageFairs, for one!), but your average "just plain commoner" in the Realms never sees or personally experiences magic being cast, or could hope to begin to afford to... ...get trained, or to hire a spellcaster to work one spell for them. Again, be not misled by game lore and rules, which leave the distinct impression that hundreds, if not thousands, of wizards hurl spells down any given city... ...city street in a day."

So it seems like he intended for the world to hew close to those numbers and low magic fantasy in general, but even he admits there's a wild discrepancy with how it's presented in games. That's kind of interesting.


I'd add Shadow of the Demon Lord, also by Robert Schwalb mentioned above. There's magic, but it's limited compared to D&D, and the system is even simpler than 5e (also bears some similarities), while still offering some complexity. It's a horror game, though, not high fantasy... for that, Shadow of the Weird Wizard based on the same system should be released later this year.

This system is amazing and worth tracking down. Big thumbs up, I'm not sure why it didn't cross my mind first. It's fairly easy for 5e players to pick up, too.


The entire point of 'gritty realism', which is neither gritty nor realistic, is to make 5e's suggested resource management work with low-combat campaigns where you deal with only few encounters per day. It's broken in many ways... spell durations being the most obvious example... and it makes the rift between short- and long-rest based classes *worse* if you shove them into encounter-heavy enviroment like your typical dungeon, as there's no time to regain short-rest resources (which are generally fewer in number) without the consequences for delay you've mentioned, while long-rest based classes can proceed as usual, and then rest for a week instead of for the night.

Yeah, I discovered similar when playtesting some ideas I had. I tried using a fairly realistic healing model and banning magical healing. We got through one grueling fight, and the players were already unwilling to continue. Scrapped that idea hard and fast.

If you make recovery too hard and take too long, expect your players to want to avoid combat. Not in the 'only in a last resort' way, but in a 'if we get into a fight I'm going to be annoyed and have a bad time' way. It's too punishing. Figure out some reason why the players can heal quickly enough for your purposes, give up on the idea of lingering injuries for realism's sake, or else switch to a non-combat RPG where any fighting at all is supposed to be game changing. It's too player unfriendly.

[Doug Lampert]

if you are going to make low/no magic then do not add gritty rules. Doing so means your characters will have LOTS of downtime. That works well in a book (and tv adaptation) where time is very fungible, but it is poor in a game "ok, we fought 3 orcs. the fighter got crit, so we are going to rest in that town over there for 2 months"....not exactly captivating. Heck, can you imagine being the PCs being in rivendell for a few months while one of their team mates is in a coma? Kinda boring for the team mate "bad news joe, you are in a coma and can't play for the next 4 sessions. Good news though, the other pcs will be stuck walking around a town that has no fights, plots, stores to buy things, etc. But it's kind of pretty if you let your imagination run wild. Later!"

Why in the world would you play four sessions in Rivendell if nothing is happening there?

"You wait for two months for Joe to recover" takes about 2 seconds to say and covers it as completely as it needs to be covered unless there is something interesting happening.

The BOOK restarts with Frodo waking up, why shouldn't your game do the same?

[Unoriginal]

I've recently found a tweet from Ed Greenwood... thus canon per the agreement that allows WotC to publish FR material (https://twitter.com/theedverse/status/1260974930814029830)... on the prevalence of spellcasters in FR. According to him, 1 out of 40 000 people may know cantrips, and 1 out of 70 000 may know a level 1 spell. So even in Faerun, most people are rather unlikely to meet any kind of spellcaster.


Ed Greenwood is full of crap then, because that doesn't match official demographics from either AD&D or 3e for adventuring classed characters in FR. Of course Ed Greenwood being full of crap pretty much defines him.

That's off by roughly a factor of 10 to 100 depending on where you are in the Realms,

Rime of the Frostmaiden states that the spellcaster ratio is about 1 out of 200 people... in Icewind Dale, which is pretty isolated.

[AsuraKyoko]

is it a good value in terms of a fun and engaging game?

I've played a fair bit of the system, and it's... okay? It has some neat rules regarding things like damage, mass combat, and a rather in-depth social system that is actually pretty cool, but the organization is frankly terrible (more on this below), and there's some other concerns to be careful about.

A brief overview of the system:


It uses a d6 Roll-and-Keep dice pool system. (For example, on a given roll, you may have 4D3B, which mean you roll 7 dice and keep the highest 4)
The game (sometimes) cares about how much you succeed by, and cares about "degrees of success"; you get 1 additional degree of success per 5 you exceed the target number.
On that same note: there is no bounded accuracy. If you heavily invest in something, you can basically guarantee success in anything involving that thing. Whether this is a good or a bad thing really depends on your preferences.
It does not differentiate between skills and stats, they are all the same thing.
The Social system works similarly to combat, but, y'know, social. Your "attacks" are things like bribes, intimidation, seduction, and "defenses" are things like counteroffers, bluffing, etc. IF people are interested in hearing more, let me know, and I'll elaborate.
Mass combat works like regular combat, but treats units of soldiers as single combatants. It also has rules for PCs or other "hero units" to attach themselves to units, or even fight enemy units independently. It also has a morale system, and rules for tactics.
Character Creation is interesting, your starting age determines the number of points you get for abilities, with the older you are the more you have. However, being older comes with increasingly many drawbacks, while being younger gets you more Destiny Points, which you can use to grab feats qualities, or give rerolls on checks and stuff.
Qualities are cool, there's a bunch that give varying bonuses to different things, and some that are very over- or underpowered. The system doesn't really have anything resembling balance.


Combat Overview:


Combat capability is entirely determined by how much you invest in it, so it's possible to make a complete noncombatant.
Damage is determined by the degrees of success of your attack roll, multiplied by your weapon's base damage number.
Hit points explicitly represent combat positioning, rather than health. when your HP reaches 0, you are defeated, and your opponent can decide what happens to you (ie. killed by the blow, maimed, knocked out, etc.)
When you take damage you can reduce or negate it by taking Injuries or Wounds, respectively. An Injury reduces the damage a bit, but you get a -1 penalty on all rolls until it is healed. A Wound negates any amount of damage entirely, but inflicts -1 kept dice on all rolls you make until it is healed.
Armor makes you easier to hit, but reduces the damage you take.


Now for the problems I've found with the system. These are very roughly ordered by how big of an issue they are in my experience:


Book organization is utterly abysmal. I cannot stress enough just how bad it is. You want the mounted combat rules? Great, they are hidden in 3 different chapters and contradict each other. Weapon tables? That's cool, there's 2 of them, one for prices, availability, weight, etc. and one in a different chapter that has the relevant combat stats. You want to know how carry capacity works? Well, that's cool, there's a pretty simple bulk system that handles it... and it never tells you how to determine the bulk you are carrying. There's many, many other things that are terrible about the organization, but that could easily be a whole post of its own.
Balance isn't a thing. Mechanically, the game expects you to not hyper-specialize in one thing, but it provides no barrier to doing so (increasing stats does not scale up cost, so raising a stat from 3 to 4 is the same cost as raising it from 6 to 7). If you do specialize in one thing, you will be bad at the others which is a drawback, except that having a party means that the combat monster doesn't have to ever worry about social, since the lord character can just handle it, and vice-versa.
Normally, I would not stress balance this much, since a lot of this has to do with personal preferences, however, it is very, very easy to do this on accident, in particular because it never really tells you that you shouldn't.
The suggested difficulties in the book are hilariously low. Characters can routinely hit the "impossible" difficulties on most of the rolls for the things they specialize in.
Because of the balance reasons, the game can easily miss the tone of ASoIaF, which is supposed to be about gritty low fantasy, whereas the game in practice lends itself to being, well, basically superhuman at anything you invest heavily in.
The game doesn't really have any sort of magic system, aside from greensight/warging, so if people want to do actual magic, you're going to have to come up with that on your own.
The book formatting as unbelievably terrible.


To elaborate on the balance issues, by way of example:

I have a character who is a Braavosi duelist. She learned how to do water dancing and the dueling qualities, and invested in her skills at dueling. She spend some more points in being acrobatic and nimble, and then later took a quality that lets her use her acrobatics to dodge around in combat.

These are all natural choices for this archetype of character to make, but as a result, her combat defense is so insanely high, she can solo fight army units without having a chance of getting hit. (When you choose to engage an enemy unit alone, you can just treat it as a single enemy with a massive bonus to hit and HP). To cap it all off, one of the dueling qualities allows you to make a free attack against anyone who misses you with a melee attack...

For a good portion of the game, I would basically solve any sort of combat that wasn't on the mass battle scale, and for mass battles I functioned as an entire unit. This happened more or less unintentionally. The GM has taken this in to account, and I'm content to get some combats that I can just handle narratively without bothering to actually roll it out, with the occasional fight that is actually challenging. The other players do their areas that they focus on, be it mass combat, social, leadership, scholarly pursuits, etc. so our game is still quite fun for everyone.

That being said, the game can be fun, but you have to be very on your toes as a GM to make sure you know what your players can and can't do, in order to appropriately challenge them. My biggest impression of the system is that it really needed some more playtesting and editing, so that the major problems could be ironed out.


I would recommend any of the following:

A song of ice and fire rpg

Dungeon World (and modify a few moves for the magic classes).

Savage Worlds

True 20


And run with the latter two’s low magic options.

It will just save so much more time in the long run.

Savage Worlds is my favorite system, and it handles low (or even no) magic incredibly well. I'm probably a bit biased towards it, but it's my go-to game suggestion for anything that breaks the D&D mold that isn't a horror game. (For Horror, my first suggestion is always Dread)

[JackPhoenix]

The answer is a little more complicated than that. That's 1 in 40,000 are wizards capable of casting cantrips, specifically. 1 in 26,000 fully awaken to being sorcerers, 1 in about 300,000 become warlocks, and 1 in 48m become clerics (which seems a bit... off). That's not a lot better than 1 in 40,000, but there's a little more diversity.

Yeah. He's at least two orders of magnitude off. Unless he means actual PC classes, and NPC spellcasters don't count into that, which would make some sense. Mages aren't wizards, priests aren't clerics. I also find weird how rare are warlocks supposed to be, I'd expected them to be the most common form of spellcasters, certainly more common than wizards or sorcerers.

[Tanarii]

Rime of the Frostmaiden states that the spellcaster ratio is about 1 out of 200 people... in Icewind Dale, which is pretty isolated.
Traditionally (meaning in demographics provided) frontier areas in D&D have a much higher ratio of adventuring types (be they PC-classed or some kind of NPC above the curve of normal man), usually by about a factor of 10.

Wizards with book learning (or any similar background) would be a different matter of course. OTOH they used to say spell books could be written on bark or even knotted rope for a reason.

[Unoriginal]

Traditionally (meaning in demographics provided) frontier areas in D&D have a much higher ratio of adventuring types (be they PC-classed or some kind of NPC above the curve of normal man), usually by about a factor of 10.

That would mean 1 out of 2000 in areas that are neither spellcasting hotspots like Waterdeep nor adventurer-attracting areas.

[Eric Diaz]

AiME proves that this is possible, I guess, but it ain't easy IMO.

5e has more magic weapons than ordinary one. You'll find a flametongue before you find a buckler, and adamantine armor before you hear "brigandine" or "gambeson".

The spells chapter is way bigger than the chapter on combat, not to mention intrigue, exploration, etc.

So, if I were to run a low magic campaign, I'd start by using another versions (AiME, maybe Dragon Heresy) or system (for example, Low Fantasy Gaming, or the Sword Chronicle RPG (http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/08/sword-chronicle-asoiaf-rpg.html)). If I wanted to run 5e as written, I'd probably keep to the basic rules and add a few non-magical options as needed.

[Sorinth]

The fact that there are tons of magic options in 5e is irrelevant for whether it can be used for a low-magic world since if the players are on board with playing a low magic world they won't be choosing the high magic classes/feats/etc...

So 5e can perfectly handle the "rare magic" version where spellcasters are extremely rare since that is mostly an RP thing anyways.

What 5e doesn't handle well is the whole magic is taxing/dangerous. It's not too hard to homebrew something fairly simple but it's more getting things balanced that is problematic. But when you remember that things aren't exactly balanced anyways it becomes a lot easier.

[JackPhoenix]

The fact that there are tons of magic options in 5e is irrelevant for whether it can be used for a low-magic world since if the players are on board with playing a low magic world they won't be choosing the high magic classes/feats/etc...

It's not irrelevant if you have to throw 80% of the options away.

[Sorinth]

It's not irrelevant if you have to throw 80% of the options away.

But those options that are being thrown away are options that nobody wanted to take since everybody was on board with a low-magic world. So how is throwing away options that weren't going to be chosen matter?

[Unoriginal]

But those options that are being thrown away are options that nobody wanted to take since everybody was on board with a low-magic world. So how is throwing away options that weren't going to be chosen matter?

Those options are still parts of the game system connected to other parts of the game.

Let's say you did something like remove all the AoE spells. You've just completely changing how combat works, because you've removed the most accessible ways for PCs to handle hordes of enemies without getting swarmed.

Now try removing all the healing spells. You've completely changed how combat works again, because you've removed the most accessible ways for PCs to endure successive encounters.

Rinse and repeat for every kind of spells.

Sure, there is nothing saying you *need* those spells, as many adventurer groups do without. But they all do feel it one way or another, same way as an all-bard party will feel what they lack one way or another.

Removing something has consequences, as no part of the game exist in a vacuum.

And that's not talking about all the NPCs you're removing from the game as they don't fit low magic.

[Sorinth]

Those options are still parts of the game system connected to other parts of the game.

Let's say you did something like remove all the AoE spells. You've just completely changing how combat works, because you've removed the most accessible ways for PCs to handle hordes of enemies without getting swarmed.

Now try removing all the healing spells. You've completely changed how combat works again, because you've removed the most accessible ways for PCs to endure successive encounters.

Rinse and repeat for every kind of spells.

Sure, there is nothing saying you *need* those spells, as many adventurer groups do without. But they all do feel it one way or another, same way as an all-bard party will feel what they lack one way or another.

Removing something has consequences, as no part of the game exist in a vacuum.

And that's not talking about all the NPCs you're removing from the game as they don't fit low magic.

And you'd end up in the exact same situation if you didn't remove anything and the party's wizard simply didn't like those types of spells and chose other ones. Yes the game is going to play and feel different if you don't have a cleric to heal the party after fights. It's also going to feel different if your cleric is a frontline tank vs a backline support character.

Unless your argument is that not having certain specific magic based characters is basically a trap option for the party that will ruin the game/balance by not having them then I don't see your point.

[Eric Diaz]

I'd avoid having to reference, let alone carry, 1200 pages of text in order to use about 200.

But it is a matter of taste, we might as well burn some calories.

[Telwar]

I'd avoid having to reference, let alone carry, 1200 pages of text in order to use about 200.

Yeah...while I'm never really going to be a fan of low-magic games, if I *were*, I'd really want to use a system built specifically for that, instead of trying to sand off most of the magic stuff that PCs aren't going to get to use, and inserting features they would use. That's work, and I'm old and lazy.

The problem, of course, is that everyone wants to have their cake (the game to their tastes) and eat it too (using a system they already own and have buy-in on). And even if you want to go ahead and find a new system that'll meet your needs, it's a lot harder to review the various systems out there without purchasing each one, and that gets annoying really fast.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Yeah...while I'm never really going to be a fan of low-magic games, if I *were*, I'd really want to use a system built specifically for that, instead of trying to sand off most of the magic stuff that PCs aren't going to get to use, and inserting features they would use. That's work, and I'm old and lazy.

The problem, of course, is that everyone wants to have their cake (the game to their tastes) and eat it too (using a system they already own and have buy-in on). And even if you want to go ahead and find a new system that'll meet your needs, it's a lot harder to review the various systems out there without purchasing each one, and that gets annoying really fast.

There are no end to the number of wonderful systems that any given person would enjoy.

There are then dozens of times more than that in awful systems that any given person would despise.

Finding the right one can be a chore, especially since your "D&D group" might not necessarily agree with your next system of choice; they are your D&D group because they like D&D, after all. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

I've had a similar problem myself. I own several systems, and love many of them. But my players aren't always up for something different, and rarely agree on what different thing they would enjoy were there a change. While I can advocate for many systems I've managed to force down my players' throats, there are many more that I might never get the chance to even try. (Oh, Lancer, you beautiful game. Truly we are starcrossed)

If this is your case, modding 5e isn't the better alternative. It's the only choice available. You have my sympathies.

[Democratus]

I've been running the 5e version of Adventures in Middle Earth for a couple of years now.

It has:

No spellcasting PCs
No long rests outside of civilization
8-hour short rests
Very rare magic items



Despite all of this, it is probably the best version of 5th edition I have ever run. It emphasizes the danger of the "Shadow" (power of darkness and despair) and the role of the heroes to hold back such forces both in the world and within their own hearts.

[Sam113097]

I've been running the 5e version of Adventures in Middle Earth for a couple of years now.

It has:

No spellcasting PCs
No long rests outside of civilization
8-hour short rests
Very rare magic items



Despite all of this, it is probably the best version of 5th edition I have ever run. It emphasizes the danger of the "Shadow" (power of darkness and despair) and the role of the heroes to hold back such forces both in the world and within their own hearts.

I've been interested in giving that a try, glad to hear it. How do the non-magical replacement classes like the Scholar handle in actual play? I feel like having a "wizard alternative" for players that still want to fulfill that role is important for low-magic games.

[Unoriginal]

What I read in this thread really makes me think the Adventures in Middle Earth's writers didn't try to emulate the magic of Middle Earth as Tolkien describes it.

One could hardly be blamed for trying to adapt it in a RPG format and not succeeding, but not trying seems... eh.


The magic in Tolkien's legendarium is a question of imposing your will on the world and others, generally through words, and the effects are dependent on you personal power, or authority, because power is authority in Tolkien's world.

So yes, it would be difficult to create a satisfying game system where someone of enough authority could say something and have it happen, but it's still possible.

[warty goblin]

What I read in this thread really makes me think the Adventures in Middle Earth's writers didn't try to emulate the magic of Middle Earth as Tolkien describes it.

One could hardly be blamed for trying to adapt it in a RPG format and not succeeding, but not trying seems... eh.


The magic in Tolkien's legendarium is a question of imposing your will on the world and others, generally through words, and the effects are dependent on you personal power, or authority, because power is authority in Tolkien's world.

So yes, it would be difficult to create a satisfying game system where someone of enough authority could say something and have it happen, but it's still possible.

Having read through AiME, I'm not sure that's exactly accurate. I think they do a pretty good job of the more world or item based magic effects, which is to say there's a lot of room for things like heirloom weapons and armor having extra "magical" effects, even though the game pretty rarely actually uses the term magic. That seems pretty in keeping with the various wonderous effects that, say, elven made things can have even though the elves themselves clearly don't consider what they do to be magic. Really, I think the game does a very good job with this, making them both rare enough to be interesting and special, but also pretty achievable if you want such an item to be a key part of your character concept. I can't remember if there's explicit rules or not, but integrating stuff like the magical dwarf doors in the Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring would be entirely trivial as well.

What it doesn't do is give a lot of rules for spellcasting. I think this too is entirely appropriate, since IIRC Gandalf is the only person in any of the books to cast a spell, and he only does it a very few times - lighting a fire on Caradhras, super-sizing a fire to fight off the wargs outside Moria, attempting to seal Balin's Tomb against the Balrog, breaking the Balrog's sword (which may not even be a spell he cast so much as Glamdring just being maximally swordy), the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, and Saruman's staff, and potentially something when breaking Grima's control over Theoden. I really can't see building a class around that amount of magic use, particularly since it's done by a Maiar spirit with a Ring of Power and both an elven blade of immense lineage and a Wizard's staff; the game just isn't oriented towards playing beings like that. It really can't be, because we don't see how Gandalf works, just what Gandalf does, and even for the more subtle maybe-it's-magic willpower sort of stuff there's not enough there to operationalize into a game mechanic. This is again, I think, the right move. Magic in LoTR always feels pretty rare and out of reach, and is usually very, very subtle, more of an atmosphere and sense than a bunch of flashy lights. I don't think it's possible to maintain that feel if Bob is unleashing firestorms or bending things to his will every game session; even if basically nobody else has those powers anywhere it'll still end up feeling pedestrian and commonplace. And game mechanics simply don't do subtle maybes the way you'd need to really get that feel right.

[Unoriginal]

What it doesn't do is give a lot of rules for spellcasting. I think this too is entirely appropriate, since IIRC Gandalf is the only person in any of the books to cast a spell, and he only does it a very few times - lighting a fire on Caradhras, super-sizing a fire to fight off the wargs outside Moria, attempting to seal Balin's Tomb against the Balrog, breaking the Balrog's sword (which may not even be a spell he cast so much as Glamdring just being maximally swordy), the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, and Saruman's staff, and potentially something when breaking Grima's control over Theoden. I really can't see building a class around that amount of magic use, particularly since it's done by a Maiar spirit with a Ring of Power and both an elven blade of immense lineage and a Wizard's staff; the game just isn't oriented towards playing beings like that. It really can't be, because we don't see how Gandalf works, just what Gandalf does, and even for the more subtle maybe-it's-magic willpower sort of stuff there's not enough there to operationalize into a game mechanic.

This isn't quite accurate. While it's true that the elves don't call what they do "magic", they do recognize they have power that can be used to assert their will on the world, and several elves famously lost duels of such power against Sauron.

As for spells, the Dwarves in "the Hobbit" and the Witch-King in "Return of the King" (or perhaps the smiths who crafted Gond) are explicitly both said to use spells.

We also see magic-as-authority-over-the-events quite a lot, although as you say it's more subtle. Gandalf making the Prancing Poney's beer exceptionally good, Gandalf placing words of protection on Bill the poney, Gandalf forbidding the Balrog and the Witch-King from advancing, or Saruman from leaving, Isildur cursing the Oathbreakers to undeath and Aragorn gathering them, about half of what Tom Bombadil does, etc. Even Frodo managed to make the Nazguls flinch with a few Elvish words, and it wasn't just the words themselves that did it.

But of course the most obvious and explicit instance of magic-as-authority is when Frodo directs the One Ring to place a geas on Gollum, declaring that if he ever touches Frodo again he will be cast in the flames of Mount Doom.



This is again, I think, the right move. Magic in LoTR always feels pretty rare and out of reach, and is usually very, very subtle, more of an atmosphere and sense than a bunch of flashy lights. I don't think it's possible to maintain that feel if Bob is unleashing firestorms or bending things to his will every game session; even if basically nobody else has those powers anywhere it'll still end up feeling pedestrian and commonplace. And game mechanics simply don't do subtle maybes the way you'd need to really get that feel right.

You have a point, but I dunno, I feel there is a way to recapture the impression through game mechanics. May be too much of an hassle to attempt, granted.

[Composer99]

Also, apropos of Adventures in Middle-Earth, the default setting is Wilderland (the region east of the Misty Mountains, stretching out to around the Lonely Mountain, and running as far south as around Lorien and the Brown Lands) in the time period starting a few years after The Hobbit and running up into the War of the Ring.

Insofar as magic, as the term is broadly used (by hobbits), was more commonplace in other times and places in Middle-Earth, it's not likely to be that way in the game.

[warty goblin]

This isn't quite accurate. While it's true that the elves don't call what they do "magic", they do recognize they have power that can be used to assert their will on the world, and several elves famously lost duels of such power against Sauron.

True enough. On the other hand, if the feel of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings is difficult to render into an RPG, the Silmarillion is either actually impossible or the next best thing. The power level of most of the major players is left extremely nonspecific and is also often completely off the charts. You could maybe do something with a very small group playing an essentially freeform system, where everybody had an encyclopedic knowledge of the text and were committed to maintaining that tone, but I can't see putting it into a hardback book with a chapter on combat options and a table of Exert Willpower effect DCs.

As for spells, the Dwarves in "the Hobbit" and the Witch-King in "Return of the King" (or perhaps the smiths who crafted Gond) are explicitly both said to use spells.


We also see magic-as-authority-over-the-events quite a lot, although as you say it's more subtle. Gandalf making the Prancing Poney's beer exceptionally good, Gandalf placing words of protection on Bill the poney, Gandalf forbidding the Balrog and the Witch-King from advancing, or Saruman from leaving, Isildur cursing the Oathbreakers to undeath and Aragorn gathering them, about half of what Tom Bombadil does, etc. Even Frodo managed to make the Nazguls flinch with a few Elvish words, and it wasn't just the words themselves that did it.

But of course the most obvious and explicit instance of magic-as-authority is when Frodo directs the One Ring to place a geas on Gollum, declaring that if he ever touches Frodo again he will be cast in the flames of Mount Doom.

A lot of these are either out of the scope of what AiME is doing (Isildur and Aragorn), or so subtle as to be arguable whether it's even there. I know the popular interpretation is that Gollum fell into Mount Doom because of Frodo's command, but there's nothing beyond an implication that this is true. Ditto Gandalf barring the Balrog and the Witch King; you can say Gandalf forbid them to pass so they could not, you could say he foresaw that they could not pass and it was correct, or that he said a thing, and it came true for other, disconnected reasons. While Gandalf clearly broke the bridge, did he have to say the Balrog could not pass? Did Gandalf know in some way that Theoden would arrive at precisely that time, or that something would turn the Witch King back? What exactly would you be turning into a mechanic, let alone a player facing one?


You have a point, but I dunno, I feel there is a way to recapture the impression through game mechanics. May be too much of an hassle to attempt, granted.
My take is that this sort of implied sense of a power maybe doing something is be impossible to capture in any mechanic set down in a rulebook, for the simple reason that once you print it out in p.253: Exerting your Will, it will no longer be a subtle sense of the shape of the world, but the rules on p.253 for exerting your willpower to make that orc run away or whatever. Which isn't to say you have that in a game, but I think to do that you need a lot of coordination in goal and tone between the players and the GM, which isn't the sort of thing you can write out explicit mechanics for.

[Tanarii]

Lots of D&D spells are subtle mechanics that narratively would raise a question of if it even contributed, and yet they have mechanics. E.g. Bless, Bane, Shield of Faith.

[Rafaelfras]

Also I like to point out that Middle earth isn't low magic vs high magic but soft magic vs hard magic.
In D&D we have a hard magic system. With very detailed rules, limits and how it works. In Middle Earth we have soft magic, we dont know the rules and what its capable of until is shown to us on the pages and a lot of times is way more subtle.

[furby076]

Why in the world would you play four sessions in Rivendell if nothing is happening there?

"You wait for two months for Joe to recover" takes about 2 seconds to say and covers it as completely as it needs to be covered unless there is something interesting happening.

The BOOK restarts with Frodo waking up, why shouldn't your game do the same?
Because that works in the books where it is the author and thats it. in game it doesn't work. For example, the fighter is low hp and the group cant heal him, so they need to exit and rest for a week or month. Now come back to the dungeon/area, and oops, reinforcements arrive or the evil ritual is finished or some other mishap in the course of a week. It takes a lot of adjustments on the dm and storyline to make it work - for what, to say you have gritty rules?

There are better ways to make D&D more deadly then gritty realism. Otherwise, play a different game. When alternate rules, of a significnt nature, are given a paragraph or two, they are probably not the best rules to run. It's basically intended for games that are not intended for much fighting (says it right in the DMG) and are poorly planed for D&D.

Better options to increase difficulty
1) npcs actually follow up and attack downed enemies. Oh, don't worry about rolling 3 death saves, I'm just gonna attack you 3 times. Better hope your allies come here to distract me
2) Feeding healing potions to a downed pc is a trained skill. You can only do it if you are taught how. I actually hate this option, but my DM uses it
3) High level NPCs, who can cast raise dead is really hard to find. Yea you can find clerics, maybe there are level 1-2 clerics (and spellcasters in general) everywhere. They can provide CLW spells...and that's about it. You want to raise dead, then either you need to be high enough level or find a scroll or get lucky to find that rare cleric who can
4) Going to 0, maybe on a crit, leaves you with perm disability unless you have restoration

So many more house rules that give that game a little extra spice, without being incredibly annoying on a daily basis

[Ashe]

Because that works in the books where it is the author and thats it. in game it doesn't work. For example, the fighter is low hp and the group cant heal him, so they need to exit and rest for a week or month. Now come back to the dungeon/area, and oops, reinforcements arrive or the evil ritual is finished or some other mishap in the course of a week. It takes a lot of adjustments on the dm and storyline to make it work - for what, to say you have gritty rules?

That's just DMing style. If you can't improvise and change up things to react to how the players have interacted with the world on the fly then obviously you won't like gritty rules?


There are better ways to make D&D more deadly then gritty realism. Otherwise, play a different game. When alternate rules, of a significnt nature, are given a paragraph or two, they are probably not the best rules to run. It's basically intended for games that are not intended for much fighting (says it right in the DMG) and are poorly planed for D&D.

Gritty Realism as written is pretty weak, doesn't mean you can't expand the rules to fit your game?


Better options to increase difficulty
1) npcs actually follow up and attack downed enemies. Oh, don't worry about rolling 3 death saves, I'm just gonna attack you 3 times. Better hope your allies come here to distract me
2) Feeding healing potions to a downed pc is a trained skill. You can only do it if you are taught how. I actually hate this option, but my DM uses it
3) High level NPCs, who can cast raise dead is really hard to find. Yea you can find clerics, maybe there are level 1-2 clerics (and spellcasters in general) everywhere. They can provide CLW spells...and that's about it. You want to raise dead, then either you need to be high enough level or find a scroll or get lucky to find that rare cleric who can
4) Going to 0, maybe on a crit, leaves you with perm disability unless you have restoration

So many more house rules that give that game a little extra spice, without being incredibly annoying on a daily basis

1 and 3 are practically automatic assumptions the game makes about how the world works if you're not playing AL. If you're running them any differently that's almost training wheels for your players. Also, it's two attacks if the enemy is within 5 feet because a crit is two failed death saves :smallwink:
2 I can't say I've ever heard of, but if you're relying on action potions to keep people in the game you have too many potions and not enough... anything else.
4 is always laughably bad, I can't say I have ever seen a player who enjoyed having their character get significantly weakened just because something the system assumes will happen, happened. I've seen people toss around the "levels of exhaustion" for this which is less severe but still punishment for something that's, yknow, meant to happen. Generally I've found its not necessary at all, especially if we're talking about a low magic 5e campaign, but as others have said 5e isn't exactly built for that anyway.

[Composer99]

Because that works in the books where it is the author and thats it. in game it doesn't work. For example, the fighter is low hp and the group cant heal him, so they need to exit and rest for a week or month. Now come back to the dungeon/area, and oops, reinforcements arrive or the evil ritual is finished or some other mishap in the course of a week. It takes a lot of adjustments on the dm and storyline to make it work - for what, to say you have gritty rules?

There are better ways to make D&D more deadly then gritty realism. Otherwise, play a different game. When alternate rules, of a significnt nature, are given a paragraph or two, they are probably not the best rules to run. It's basically intended for games that are not intended for much fighting (says it right in the DMG) and are poorly planed for D&D.

Better options to increase difficulty
1) npcs actually follow up and attack downed enemies. Oh, don't worry about rolling 3 death saves, I'm just gonna attack you 3 times. Better hope your allies come here to distract me
2) Feeding healing potions to a downed pc is a trained skill. You can only do it if you are taught how. I actually hate this option, but my DM uses it
3) High level NPCs, who can cast raise dead is really hard to find. Yea you can find clerics, maybe there are level 1-2 clerics (and spellcasters in general) everywhere. They can provide CLW spells...and that's about it. You want to raise dead, then either you need to be high enough level or find a scroll or get lucky to find that rare cleric who can
4) Going to 0, maybe on a crit, leaves you with perm disability unless you have restoration

So many more house rules that give that game a little extra spice, without being incredibly annoying on a daily basis

Gritty realism amounts to the 5e version of how natural healing worked in the TSR era of D&D right through 3.X - in other words, for almost the entire game's history - and a generous version, at that. (For instance, the 1st edition AD&D PHB describes hit point recovery as 1 per day for the first 30 days, and 5 per day for each subsequent day.) Recovery of all your hit points after what amounts to a single night's rest started with 4e.

What is more, your first paragraph described exactly what was meant to happen if you had to go back into town to rest for days on end in older editions of the game. It's nonsense to say "it doesn't work", because it worked well enough for years.

In the TSR era of the game, avoiding fights was as much a part of the game as getting into them. If anything, it's easier to play that kind of game in 5e than in past editions, because (a) it's easier for more characters outside of domain specialists to have relevant proficiencies (Perception, Stealth, and Survival), and (b) group checks means it's easier for parties to succeed at efforts to avoid fights as a team.

As for the ostensible "better" options:
- Option (1) is not better if adopted universally; it strikes me as the DM acting unnecessarily adversarial, especially considering how many monsters have multiattack.
- Option (2) stretches verisimilitude past the breaking point. I can't really see how you can call this "better" than gritty realism, especially when you admit to hating it.
- Option (3) is not far off from being an assumption of the PHB, going by the Equipment chapter's description of spellcasting services - that is, it isn't really an option so much as a default.
- Option (4), a variant rule of the DMG, amounts to the same thing as gritty realism: a paragraph or two of rules (plus a look-up table!) that drastically alter the nature of the game. I'm not really seeing how you can view it as better than gritty realism given the criteria you described for rules you consider "not the best [...] to run".

If you dislike gritty realism for whatever reason, well and good; if, however, you are trying to assert your views on gritty realism as being natural facts of gameplay, you are mistaken.

[Tanarii]

Gritty Realism as written is pretty weak, doesn't mean you can't expand the rules to fit your game?Theyd be okay if the ratio wasn't possibly viewed as 1 LR: 7 LR. OTOH the default is theoretically 1 LR : 16 SR.

Just like the default rest rules, it's absolutely fine if you assume the DM controls the pacing of rest, not the players. If you assume the players control resting and will always attempt to maximize their available resources, the rest rules are potentially FUBAR no matter which rest rules are used.

The only way player control of resting works is if you assume they're only rest if they feel low on resources. There's a couple of ways to do that, but good ones are extra limitations of some kind.

For example:
- Long rests happen in between sessions. Which means if you long rest early, the session ends. Everyone packs up their stuff and goes home.
- you can only long rest in a safe location (Adventures in Middle Earth rule.)
- if you long rest in a non-safe location, or time for the session runs out without making it to safety, the party is automatically lost / captured. Better put together another party to send in to rescue them.
(Works best in multiple PC per player campaigns, like open table / gygaxian dungeon / west marches. But would also work in character tree campaigns a la 2e Dark Sun.)



1 and 3 are practically automatic assumptions the game makes about how the world works if you're not playing AL. If you're running them any differently that's almost training wheels for your players. Also, it's two attacks if the enemy is within 5 feet because a crit is two failed death saves :smallwink:Yeah, the typical AL player is appalled when they realize a DM is willing to have enemies attack a downed player. They practically consider it cheating! :smallamused:



4 is always laughably bad, I can't say I have ever seen a player who enjoyed having their character get significantly weakened just because something the system assumes will happen, happened. I've seen people toss around the "levels of exhaustion" for this which is less severe but still punishment for something that's, yknow, meant to happen. Generally I've found its not necessary at all, especially if we're talking about a low magic 5e campaign, but as others have said 5e isn't exactly built for that anyway.Thats the entire point. The game doesn't assume it'll happen. Players just do. Like adjusting their perception of resting by making it harder, or of staying at zero hps by enemies being willing to attack downed characters, extra penalties at 0hp make players either retreat earlier or heal earlier.

[JackPhoenix]

What is more, your first paragraph described exactly what was meant to happen if you had to go back into town to rest for days on end in older editions of the game. It's nonsense to say "it doesn't work", because it worked well enough for years.

It doesn't work in 5e. AD&D was a different game with different assumptions and resource management mechanics.

[Tanarii]

It doesn't work in 5e. AD&D was a different game with different assumptions and resource management mechanics.
Gritty Realism works fine as long as the assumption isn't that encounter pacing will happen far more frequently than usual per short rest or long rest when using it.

Or more accurately, it assumes you'll only use it if encounter pacing already happens too infrequently for normal short rest / long rest.

[Composer99]

It doesn't work in 5e. AD&D was a different game with different assumptions and resource management mechanics.

"The game world changes in response to player character actions", "actively inhabited dungeon and other sites change in between visits", and "oops, you left before stopping the Evil Ritual of Doom, guess it's going to go off, then" all work perfectly well in any edition of (A)D&D.

[Democratus]

It doesn't work in 5e. AD&D was a different game with different assumptions and resource management mechanics.

It works fantastically in 5e. We've been doing it for years.

[greenstone]

The Primeval Thule book has a rule suggestion of "one caster per party" that gives an interesting feel.