Thought experiment: No spellcasting base classes, what changes in setting/gameplay?

[Analytica]

Idle thought experiment: suppose there are no base classes with spellcasting, no warlocks, incarnum, psionics, artificers, shadowcasting, truenaming, binding. The only subsystems remaining thus being Tome of Battle and spellcasting from prestige classes. Let's soft eliminate Ur-Priest and Beholder Mage as well because they'd overshadow otherwise.

What kind of fantasy setting results, who are the mages and priests in this setting and what can they do?

What kind of character builds emerge, what would people who want to play mages or priests play, and how does that play differ?

No real goal with this, just curious.

(My vague thought is that this would be where Assassin and Blackguard mostly shines as they'd be the strongest remaining evil spellcasters?)

[Beni-Kujaku]

Would work weirdly. The game and the whole D&D society are balanced around the fact that divine magic exists and can heal people much faster than natural healing. Diseases are deadly, poisons and afflictions can take weeks to recover from, and undead are rampant. The thing is, evil-oriented prestige classes generally don't grant healing spells, except if they're just using the ranger or cleric spell list. Villains are much more vulnerable than heroes to just a few well-placed blows. A group of heroes can take on a strong villain, fail to beat them up, go back to town, get healed by the resident Apostle of Peace, then go back and the villain will still not have recovered. I feel like that makes such a world much more peaceful but much more casually dangerous.

[AvatarVecna]

What kind of fantasy setting results, who are the mages and priests in this setting and what can they do?

So the thing is, in a given metropolis, you're going to have at absolute maximum 224 people who are 6th lvl or higher, regardless of the total population of that metropolis; assuming 25000 population, that's 0.896%. If we exclude the NPC classes in that mix (people who started as commoners, experts, aristocrats, etc), it drops to 132/25000+ (max 0.528%). The bigger the metropolis, the smaller the percentage of people who get to such a level. Normally you could count on having a minimum of about 849 casters per metropolis, even if most of them were pretty low level. But low level casters can still make things like scrolls and potions and wondrous items of basic spells.

What kind of fantasy setting results? One with basically no humanoids. Getting a prestige class requires living long enough to see 6th lvl, which magic items are generally kind of important for. A bit more to the point, while the various humanoid races no longer have big casters around, this is very much not the case for monsters that are both common and inherently magical. In particular, I think dragons stand the best chance of inheriting the earth, in such a scenario. Unless one of the only NPCs with a prestige class you've ever met happens to be a Divine Crusader of one of a handful of domains, there isn't actually anybody who can cast Magic Weapon, so DR/magic is a significant hurdle to clear. With no easy means of culling the dragon population, they're going to grow numerous and old and have more magic than basically any other faction.

EDIT: Like...congrats! You got rid of magic bows and long range spells! Now the dragon has no reason to land and can just torch the party to death. Or the town. Or the city. Who's gonna stop them?

[Inevitability]

Obviously, higher-level NPCs get exponentially rarer, so 'what is the earliest entry into a casting class' is kind of a relevant question.

Cyre Scout can be entered as 4th level and gives infusions from 5th on, but is exclusive to humans (and a few humans reincarnated into other forms, but that's irrelevant worldbuilding-wise).

Vadalis Beastkeeper gives casting at 5th-level as well, but requires a full BAB class that gives an animal companion or special mount. If Spell-Less Ranger variants are still fair game, those would work. Otherwise, there's no way to enter the class at an accelerated pace.

Bind Vestige + Improved Bind Vestige meets the soul binding requirement of Anima Mage. If you can get 2nd-level spells castable somehow (Greater Draconic Rite of Passage + Bloodline Feat + Versatile Spellcaster?), that lets you enter the class and obtain up to 10 levels of binding (at which point you can enter Scion of Dantalion and Knight of the Sacred Seal to advance further).

There's also a lot of classes that can theoretically be entered one level early with the Primary Contact feat, but this requires getting a feat at level 4, necessitating either retraining or very weird marshal-type shenanigans.


EDIT: Sample build that gets infusions at 4th level.

Human Expert 1 / Marshall 1 / Cyre Scout 2
Feats:
B: Least Dragonmark (Mark of Making)
1: Favored (Explorer's Guild)
Flaw: Skill Focus(Diplomacy)
Flaw 2: Apprentice (Woodsman)
Marshall bonus feat: Primary Contact (Explorer's Guild)

Level 1 you max out Knowledge(Arcana) and Survival.
Level 2 you enter Marshal, Survival is still a class skill so take another rank, get a free bonus feat, get your 6th Survival rank.
Level 3 you meet all the prerequisites for Cyre Scout and enter it immediately.


Such a build can, at least, turn nonmagical weapons magical, which helps with the DR of a number of monsters. You also have a caster level, which can potentially do some fun stuff when combined with your later feats. After three levels in Cyre Scout you also get Detect Magic, after four levels you can take Craft Wondrous Item, letting you create a few magic items that don't require specific spells (Unguent of Timelessness seems abusable and Silversheen has its uses also) and arguably put your infusions in minor magic items as well.

[Darg]

So the thing is, in a given metropolis, you're going to have at absolute maximum 224 people who are 6th lvl or higher, regardless of the total population of that metropolis; assuming 25000 population, that's 0.896%. If we exclude the NPC classes in that mix (people who started as commoners, experts, aristocrats, etc), it drops to 132/25000+ (max 0.528%). The bigger the metropolis, the smaller the percentage of people who get to such a level. Normally you could count on having a minimum of about 849 casters per metropolis, even if most of them were pretty low level. But low level casters can still make things like scrolls and potions and wondrous items of basic spells.

What kind of fantasy setting results? One with basically no humanoids. Getting a prestige class requires living long enough to see 6th lvl, which magic items are generally kind of important for. A bit more to the point, while the various humanoid races no longer have big casters around, this is very much not the case for monsters that are both common and inherently magical. In particular, I think dragons stand the best chance of inheriting the earth, in such a scenario. Unless one of the only NPCs with a prestige class you've ever met happens to be a Divine Crusader of one of a handful of domains, there isn't actually anybody who can cast Magic Weapon, so DR/magic is a significant hurdle to clear. With no easy means of culling the dragon population, they're going to grow numerous and old and have more magic than basically any other faction.

EDIT: Like...congrats! You got rid of magic bows and long range spells! Now the dragon has no reason to land and can just torch the party to death. Or the town. Or the city. Who's gonna stop them?

This is going to be a different setting so those numbers aren't going to work. Not only that, dragons are intelligent creatures. They'll realize at some point overpopulation would be their doom and change their culture to accommodate that factor. Without magic, people might not have magical means of taking down a dragon, but the existence of crossbows and ballista mean they can fairly easily come up with net weapons to bring down dragons. At most they just need something to reach 140 ft for colossal line breaths and nets that can handle larger creatures. Creatures need to maintain minimum speed, being entangled means they move at half speed, and thus need to spend the action to remain flying breaking out of the net. If they do decide to just keep flying, they can only remain in the air if they remain under light load to carry which is easily overcome with just a few heavy persons holding a rope. My groups generally do well enough with just the basic net and size increasing magic. Ranged weapon specialization and far shot combine to allow a net specialist to throw up to 300 ft. So range isn't as much of an issue as the size problem.

[pabelfly]

Idle thought experiment: suppose there are no base classes with spellcasting, no warlocks, incarnum, psionics, artificers, shadowcasting, truenaming, binding. The only subsystems remaining thus being Tome of Battle and spellcasting from prestige classes. Let's soft eliminate Ur-Priest and Beholder Mage as well because they'd overshadow otherwise.

What kind of fantasy setting results, who are the mages and priests in this setting and what can they do?

What kind of character builds emerge, what would people who want to play mages or priests play, and how does that play differ?

No real goal with this, just curious.

(My vague thought is that this would be where Assassin and Blackguard mostly shines as they'd be the strongest remaining evil spellcasters?)

If magic items don't largely exist, Vow of Poverty becomes a much more attractive option and what I'd take if forced to play in this setting. At low-level, you get some great AC boosts which are hard to get without magic, a few good free feats, and the ability to make your weapon a magic weapon. At high level you get a bunch of stat boosts and so forth.

Strongest Prestige casters - Ur-Priest, Apostle of Peace and Divine Crusader all come with 9th-level spells and don't require any spellcasting ability to enter. Apostle of Peace also really goes well with Vow of Poverty since you can pick the prereq feats for it for free once you get VoP.

[Quertus]

Um… are you changing the monsters, too? Do dragons keep or lose casting? Do Illithids keep or loose Psionics?

If monsters keep their powers, what’s the easiest way to get a Mirror Mephit (familiar?)? (You see where I’m going with this, right?)

Do “impossible” magic items still exist, perhaps as relics of ancient civilizations, from back before Mystra’s 420th death? Or is civilization limited to those items that can be created by this hindered populous?

All in all, I expect that “humanity is doomed, monsters have taken over the world” is the most likely outcome. So… most any version of this question, there’s gotta be a reason why that’s false.

Like… humanity lives inside Tippy-approved impenetrable cities (that may not even exist inside “reality”); adventures are the idiot red-shirts that agree to be beamed down into almost certain death in order to collect the kalaxian crystals that Friend Computer insists are essential. Or whatever.

Or humanity fights monsters with monsters, via Mirror Mephit powered copies, or Pokémon trainers, or dragon riders, or whatever other tech they can manage.

Also… does this scenario scream, “this looks like a job for Prestige Paladin / Prestige Ranger”? Or Pun-Pun? Or “don’t ask how it’s possible, I followed RAW and paid for ‘spellcasting services’ to get polymorphed into a race that can do what we need”?

[Inevitability]

If Taint exists in this setting: Mad Faith is incredibly impactful for ensuring access to higher-level divine spells, giving a number of 6th-level builds 3rd-level spells.

Afraid of dragons? Enter the barbarian 5/disciple of thrym 1, who might be utterly mad but also gets Shivering Touch 1/day and has the dexterity score to use it. If you're human or use flaws, you even have the space to go Snowcasting (or any other metamagic feat) into Sudden Maximize!

[NichG]

As an alternative to the dichotomy between 'humanoids in charge' and 'humanoids wiped out', there's also 'humanoids become largely nomadic, occasional groups are wiped out but largely humanoids find a different niche to exist in while dragons go on to build a civilization to their tastes'...

Bacteria can't make guns, but humans have a hard time wiping them out after all. Or even things like rats...

[Anthrowhale]

Without early access to magic characters by default need to really dwell on tactics to stay viable. The team mundane (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?635794-Team-Mundane) builds show a bunch of tricks which can be used to help there. However, even with all the tricks it remains a gritty situation since methods for removing various deleterious status effects are hard to come by.

Amongst spellcasting prestige classes, there are still a few combos which are pretty potent.

Chameleon is the new wizard/cleric with access to L6 spells.

Maho_Tsukai and Nar Demonbinder can provide access to level 8 spells from a special list.

There are various ways to get into Sublime Chord. Something like Rogue 5/Assassin 2/Heartfire Fanner 3/Sublime Chord <n> provides access to L9 wizard spells in a tier 2 style. Another possibility is Marshal 5/Fatemaker 2/Heartfire Fanner 3/Sublime Chord. With access to L9 wizard spells, this is plausibly in the tier 2 range.

On the divine side, Divine Crusader, Apostle of Peace, and Blighter all have access to 9ths from limited lists. Runescarred Berserker stands out due to AMF access on a combat build. Ocular Adept also stands out as providing good access to cleric spells.

W.r.t. psionics, Fist of Zuoken and Warmind provide access to up to 5th level powers from the Psychic Warrior list, which is decent. Access to the Psion list seems to be lost.

Aside from a few big list casters (above), spellcasters generally become more specialized.

[AvatarVecna]

This is going to be a different setting so those numbers aren't going to work.

You're correct. Those numbers are going to be worse, because the idea of someone getting to high levels without access to magic items is pretty far out there.


Not only that, dragons are intelligent creatures. They'll realize at some point overpopulation would be their doom and change their culture to accommodate that factor.

D&D has canonically infinite planes in the wheel. Overpopulation is only an issue if they refuse to move anyone elsewhere. This actually came up in another thread that was about optimized societies, and the goal with dragons is basically to raise their eggs/children on planes more suited to dragons, with the Material being a vacation spot you go to once you're old enough to Plane Shift yourself. In that version of the world, where humanity was vastly improved, this was the kind of thing only the oldest and most experienced of dragons felt like risking, because a great wyrm dragon is a powerful caster in their own right and is far smarter than even the best mortal mages (usually, anyway). In a world like this, they can probably start risking it as soon as Plane Shift becomes available.

About 200 years after dragons start doing this, you start seeing some Mature Adult dragons popping back to the material. Every couple centuries thereafter, even more show up. They have access to the infinitely-large planes, so this is more about colonizing for its own sake - not a desire for resources because they need them, but because they want them, and they can take them, so why not?


Without magic, people might not have magical means of taking down a dragon, but the existence of crossbows and ballista mean they can fairly easily come up with net weapons to bring down dragons.

They can come up with weapons that are theoretically capable of temporarily inconveniencing a dragon, but siege weapons are very difficult to aim at the best of times, and the people manning them generally aren't going to be high level adventurers, or even mid-level adventurers, or even low-level adventurers. They're gonna be Warrior 1s for the most part, and those guys are gonna have a rough time hitting the broad side of a barn even targeting touch if the distance gets too high. That's more of a problem if we're just treating it as a "colossal" net that the siege weapon is letting them fire despite the size differences, but that probably comes with attack penalties (the way a ballista does by default) before we even get into distance penalties. Nets are also 5 HP. Rope is not hard to destroy for a creature basically made entirely out of sharp edges.

(And this is all assuming the dragons aren't using magic to boost their defenses; some miss chance, or turning NA to deflection, or just immunity to ranged weapons shuts down the only thing left for mortals to do.)


At most they just need something to reach 140 ft for colossal line breaths and nets that can handle larger creatures. Creatures need to maintain minimum speed, being entangled means they move at half speed, and thus need to spend the action to remain flying breaking out of the net. If they do decide to just keep flying, they can only remain in the air if they remain under light load to carry which is easily overcome with just a few heavy persons holding a rope.

1) They need to spend a move action to keep flying. Minimum speed is half speed, they're limited to half normal speed, so a normal move action is enough to keep them in the air, leaving them a standard to do things like "casting spells" or "cutting the net".

2) Maybe if you're assuming it's baby dragons attacking the place, in which case yeah it doesn't take much to weigh them down. But even if we're ignoring the part where you've apparently got a bunch of people hanging onto ropes attached to a siege weapon you just fired at a dragon and just...hoping the forces involved in the firing and the dragon dragging them doesn't just yank their arms out of their sockets, dragons tend to reach a 1-ton light load around the time they get DR 10/magic and are have become like 99% arrow-proof. You're gonna need a lot of guys weighed down with a lot of stuff to drag it out of the sky. Past a certain point, even anchoring it into stone walls isn't gonna be enough, realistically - the carrying capacity goes up to 50 ton light loads.


My groups generally do well enough with just the basic net and size increasing magic. Ranged weapon specialization and far shot combine to allow a net specialist to throw up to 300 ft. So range isn't as much of an issue as the size problem.

1) Ranged Weapon Specialization applies to weapons dealing the appropriate damage type. Nets don't deal damage, so there's no version of the feat that can apply to them. That's -100 ft right there.

2) That's really great for a mid-level adventuring party with high BAB, stat-boosting magic items, and size-increasing magic. I'm sure an adventuring party in this world isn't going to be helpless against dragons. That's not the problem. The problem is that the whole of society isn't made up of mid-level adventurers. It used to be that you could count on each big city having like...a handful of archmages and high priests lounging around with 9th lvl spells and piles of magic items. But all that is off the table. Now you've got a handful of legendary thieves and warriors not armed with magic or items. You might very well have four Fighter 20s all specializing in archery, maybe even specializing in nets. And it barely matters, because those four dudes can't cover the whole city. Four nets hit the dragon, and assuming they're even big enough to work, the dragon just flies out of range, shreds the 5 HP nets, pops a Scintillating Scales or a Friendly Fire, and goes back in to blast those fighters out of existence while all their attacks. Or, if you prefer a low-magic solution, it just flies to a part of the city that doesn't have a high-level ranged specialist sitting around, and it torches that part of the city instead. Even with a good horse going at full gallop, the dragon is going about twice as fast and has much better stamina for "running" long distances.

Even if the city has individuals who can maybe bring down a dragon with teamwork, concentrating them all in one place just makes the rest of the city vulnerable. This isn't a problem when those few people can teleport, or have extreme range. But outside that, you've gotta hope that normal guards manning siege weapons can hold them off...but they can't hit a dragon.



And all of this is arguing from an assumption that the magic just...disappears one day. No more magic, the magic items all disappeared, we've still got our cities and infrastructure built up but we gotta figure out a new way to make society work. But if this is the way things have always been? If humanity's one advantage of "masters magic faster than everyone else" is off the table? We never get to the point of building cities. The default world is such a dangerous place that even with thousands of 9th-lvl spell capable mages scattered across the world, and at least one in every major city, most of the world was still dangerous untamed wilderness the average person dare not tread through. But now that we've reduced that number from "thousands" to "maybe more than one?", we're just screwed.

Doesn't even have to be dragons that wreck us - someone upthread already mentioned undead, which civilization has basically no remaining defenses against. We got rid of the people who could cast anti-undead spells, or make anti-undead magic items, or could turn undead, or who could create holy water. There's high level adventurers somewhere (presumably) who could do something about that. Maybe they're even here, instead of a week away by griffon mount! We can only hope. Literally, we can't do anything else. Even zombie apocalypse protocols aren't perfect because the undead that are the biggest threat can walk through walls and are basically untouchable. Assuming shadows hunt for prey, and it takes about an hour to stumble across a humanoid and convert them, within a day 1 shadow will have grown to ~17 million shadows. If only ~1% of people were first level clerics and could do literally anything about this, maybe coordinate with each other in those first few hours when there's still a single-digit number of shadows. Close in, turn undead to trap it between them, magic weapon on some guards, and plink em to death. Oh well guess we're just going to all die and be converted.

[Anthrowhale]

...shadows...

The danger of Shadows applies in the standard setting as well. With an Int of 6, they should be fully capable of both executing nigh-unstoppable ambushes vs. L1 folks and backing off if the ambushed end up having magical protection. Most L1 folks won't have magical protection at the moment of an ambush, so civilization should collapse. The fact that it doesn't implies that Shadows apparently aren't active hunters. Instead, they just lurk most of the time.

With Chameleon still around, I expect humanoids manage fairly well if they survive to higher levels. You can still teleport, fly, polymorph, etc... two levels after a sorcerer could do that. Overall, the proposal strikes me as similar in effect to making all base classes use bard spells/day, except that particularly low level magic items are presumably rarer.

[Telonius]

Innate spellcasting or SLAs become much, much more powerful. Things like Half-Fiend or Half-Celestial give you access to stuff you wouldn't otherwise be able to get.

Classes that give SLAs become more attractive too. I'm thinking specifically about Master of Masks (suddenly you have a fake Wizard or Cleric).

Alchemical items become very hard to come by, since you need a spellcaster to craft them.

Some mundane-ish optimization tricks are unaffected. Changeling Warshapers still get to warshape.

[Elenian]

I ran a game in which, in order to monopolize long-distance travel, a gnomish flying machine company obliterated the equivalent of Mt Olympus on a high holy day, slaying all the gods except for not!Satan. The result was a world in which the only spellcasting classes were ones that used weird alternative magic systems (soul binding, incarnum, shadowcasting, etc.), and ones who sold their souls to the father of darkness in exchange for the power of rock and roll (bards).

But there was still a huge amount of leftover magic items, and lots of people who were formerly powerful spellcasters. Society was going through a tremendous upheaval. So it was quite unlike a world which had strictly limited magic from the beginning.

[Particle_Man]

At low levels a Crusader would be vital to the party. They can both heal their allies and beat DR.

Are Factotums allowed in this scenario?

[Zanos]

This is going to be a different setting so those numbers aren't going to work. Not only that, dragons are intelligent creatures. They'll realize at some point overpopulation would be their doom and change their culture to accommodate that factor. Without magic, people might not have magical means of taking down a dragon, but the existence of crossbows and ballista mean they can fairly easily come up with net weapons to bring down dragons. At most they just need something to reach 140 ft for colossal line breaths and nets that can handle larger creatures. Creatures need to maintain minimum speed, being entangled means they move at half speed, and thus need to spend the action to remain flying breaking out of the net. If they do decide to just keep flying, they can only remain in the air if they remain under light load to carry which is easily overcome with just a few heavy persons holding a rope. My groups generally do well enough with just the basic net and size increasing magic. Ranged weapon specialization and far shot combine to allow a net specialist to throw up to 300 ft. So range isn't as much of an issue as the size problem.
Every colossal dragon is also going to have close to full spellcasting, if not epic spellcasting. Not familiar with ranged weapon specialization, but the maximum range, not increment, of a net is only 10ft. Don't see how you're increasing that to hundreds of feet. I find it to be vanishingly unlikely that you can kill any intelligently played adult dragon with just mundane weapons. Not like bows are doing much to it, even if you can hit it, with DR 20/magic.

[StSword]

Huh, guess I'm just not that radical.

A game with no spellcasters, no psionicists, artificers, even shadowcasters, okay, sure.

But I'd keep truenamers, binders, warlocks, and incarnum users.

Anyway no spellcasters doesn't mean no magic items.

It just means that Midgard Dwarves (https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/block/Dwarf,_Midgard) are probably very rich and powerful, what with their racially innate ability to craft magic rings, wondrous items, and magic armor and weapons.

[Metastachydium]

Huh, guess I'm just not that radical.

A game with no spellcasters, no psionicists, artificers, even shadowcasters, okay, sure.

But I'd keep truenamers, binders, warlocks, and incarnum users.

(Yeah, allowing swordsages ("me and my pillar of flame teleport to within 30' of you and strangle you with a shadow!!") and crusaders and not allowing binders (whose whole shtick is that they borrow quasi-magic from places no one's supposed to be able to access) seems a bit arbitrary.)

[zlefin]

One of the tricky things here is that it depends on sources; there's SOO much 3.5 stuff that even under those restrictions, there will be various ways 'around' things that are technically legal; or that require adjudication as to whether they're banned or not.

For example; are the paladin/ranger variants without spellcasting allowed?
Is prestige paladin allowed?

There might be an uptick in evil in the world; as various evil methods are more amenable to providing spellcasting services that might otherwise be hard to get. There's also those blood sacrifice rules in BoVD.

Blackguard/assassin can provide quite a bit of crafting services; especially if they take practiced spellcaster. It allows them to create most of the standard buffing items to give appropriate pluses.

It also depends on what level of 'optimization' the world does; because ultimately, the issue is that 3.5 simply isn't sensible to begin with. The way the world is is simply 'asserted' rather than being a reasonable outcome of the rules. Which makes it hard to say whether, or if, the world would change with these different rules.

Even at level 1; a dragon shaman can pick up a healing aura which can do a lot to provide low level villages with healing.

[Metastachydium]

Also, as far as the "dragons take over and kill everyone" scenario's concerned, some of the strongest dragons are canonically always Good and therefore more likely to provide spellcasting aid/magic items/whatever to some set of chosen wards than to destroy villages for fun.

[Particle_Man]

Depending on how one interprets "Base classes", if the rules for playing monsters using racial hit dice are allowed, there might be no dragons (or only certain non-spellcasting kinds), because the "Racial base class" for true dragons could count as a "Base class that allows spellcasting" which would be against the setting.

I guess pseudo-dragons and faerie dragons would still be there, and dragon turtles and other critters that use dragon racial hit dice but don't have spellcasting.

I would ask the OP to clarify whether spellcasting dragons (indeed, spellcasting mosnters in general) are in or out of this setting.

[Inevitability]

Before we can answer "Would a mundane world be ruled by dragons" we must answer "Would a regular world be ruled by dragons". Most people seem to think the answer to the first one is 'yes', and to the second one is 'no'. But does that actually check out? In the average D&D setting, there were great wyrm dragons when the first mortals were just barely learning magic: if mortals took over, this might've been for different reasons than simply having casters!


In eberron, you could argue that dragons are the ones in charge: they're simply kept from interfering with mortals by greater concerns (quori, aberrations, giants, demons), on top of the dragonmarks making humanoids too interesting to disrupt. It's worth noting that in eberron, there was canonically a continent-spanning goblin empire with no clerics and wizards, only a few druids and sorcerers, and a magical backbone that mostly consisted of bards and artificers.

In faerun, the gods seem to favor humanoids for whatever reason, with most Chosen humanoid, many gods actively interfering to protect their pet humanoid races, etc etc.

In greyhawk... monsters don't really seem to take an active role in the world? I don't know if it's some gygaxian influence where anything with four legs just sits in its little square room all day, but very few important events in Greyhawk seem to have been shaped by nonhumanoids. Again, if wandering monsters aren't interfering with the rise of mages, they won't interfere with the rise of nonmages.

All of these reasons still apply if casters don't exist, mind you! Even in a casterless tippyverse (that is, a setting that shares the tippyverse's assumptions about what beings with magic can and will do, but has no casting classes), you might still end up with humanoids outnumbering most other creatures, just with innate casters as their overlords (a society of several hundred rakshasas, dragons, or spirit nagas will be less stable than one with 10000 specialized humans and one dragon bossing them around).

[Zanos]

Before we can answer "Would a mundane world be ruled by dragons" we must answer "Would a regular world be ruled by dragons". Most people seem to think the answer to the first one is 'yes', and to the second one is 'no'. But does that actually check out? In the average D&D setting, there were great wyrm dragons when the first mortals were just barely learning magic: if mortals took over, this might've been for different reasons than simply having casters!
You can conceive of a world with no supernatural abilities possessed by mortals where inherently supernatural creatures haven't wiped them out. It is difficult to conceive of one where they are particularly relevant, however. In this case, it would simple be proxy wars by whatever supernatural entities are backing respective powers.

[olskool]

Idle thought experiment: suppose there are no base classes with spellcasting, no warlocks, incarnum, psionics, artificers, shadowcasting, truenaming, binding. The only subsystems remaining thus being Tome of Battle and spellcasting from prestige classes. Let's soft eliminate Ur-Priest and Beholder Mage as well because they'd overshadow otherwise.

What kind of fantasy setting results, who are the mages and priests in this setting and what can they do?

What kind of character builds emerge, what would people who want to play mages or priests play, and how does that play differ?

No real goal with this, just curious.

(My vague thought is that this would be where Assassin and Blackguard mostly shines as they'd be the strongest remaining evil spellcasters?)

It sounds like you are asking about a version of RuneQuest. Look into CLASSIC FANTASY from the Design Mechanism. That is BRP mixed with D&D.

[calam]

What exactly it would look like setting wise would depend on the exact makeup of things like geography and what the monsters are like. The general makeup would include a lot of areas under the control/protection of an oligarchy of supernatural and/or high CR creatures not just because of how hard they'd be to counter mundanely but also because of how well they can counter any attacking supernatural creature. Outside of those areas the governments would be the ones that are structured in ways that would be able to repel these attacks, either highly militaristic with the idea of mass or universal training and conscription, controlled by groups who train in tome of battles maneuvers (possibly being the justification for the nobility) or a kind of herocracy where the town survives off attracting high level protectors who specialize in monster slaying.

Gameplay wise it depends on whether or not you can cheat in magical items as either artefacts from the past, created by magical creatures or if there's simply enough prestige class casters to create them. Either way as others said healing will be tight as the classes that can get it won't get much healing and you can't really rely on potions being something you can buy at the shop. This will require players to go much slower. Any encounter or adventure that brings someone to half health will probably take a half week to recover from, double that if you have to travel. Things like curses, ability damage and disease would be harder to deal with and also would require running away to lick your wounds. As people pointed out this will probably mean far fewer higher level characters as they got run down while running away from a fight, died of a con damaging disease trying to get back to civilization or were left behind after being petrified.

edit: something I forgot to add is that the heal skill becomes far more important. long term healing halves the time in bedrest and provides some of the very few ways to cut diseases and poison short

[Malphegor]

Immediate thought is prestige classes that grant spellcasting becoming venerated as superpowers above the common muck.l. Chameleons are your wizards, lower powered but broad.

most spellcasters (but for sublime chords and the exalted one whose name I forget) only go up to 4th or 5th level spells, making 6th onwards extremely rare to find. Prestigious classes from UA become valued not as latecomers emulating the more common base classes but the only way that paladins, bards, rangers, etc can exist.

(edited: removed ur priest as the opening post mentioned they’re soft removed)

General consensus in the world is probably ‘if you want spells, you’ll need to pledge yourself into divine service’ as most of the spell granting prcs are divine in nature. With arcanists being extremely rare arcane focused societal structures are uncommon and likely naturally form into secret societies hiding from the divine dominance of the world while figuring out how to build power.

Dragons abuse dragonpacts with those of draconic power and bloodline to gain spell slots beyond their capabilities normally, as is normal in any setting, with far fewer able to oppose them, but their pacts are with more skilled, more capable individuals than normal.

Magic continues to be supreme in the world, and it’s harder to get into, requiring dedication and talent from a nonmagical basis to enter it.

with chameleons being the main equivalent to broad learning something approaching wizardry, changelings, doppelgangers and humans get the reputation for being arcanists.

Permament magic items become valued more, with runecasters with a divine casting prc fueling their spells being especially beloved for relatively cheap capability to make permament at will booping buttons of spells normally hard to attain for the talentless to activate for their buffs. You end up buying runes at the market rather than hiring a caster.

[Quertus]

Reading comprehension isn’t my strong suit, but here’s what I heard:
Magic items are still a thing, as
Midgard Dwarves can make magic rings, wondrous items, and magic armor and weapons.
Anything requiring Wizard spells is covered via Sublime Chord (and by monsters, like Dragons and Titans).
Clerics items are limited to…? (Chameleon?) (Apostle of Peace and Divine Crusader?) Really, if monsters didn’t lose their casting, I think that Titans have us covered here, too.

Psionic items are nigh extinct?
Higher level gameplay is much more attractive, as that’s what’s required to have a caster in the party.
Builds look much weirder.
Spellcasting services are much cheaper, as the Sublime Chord / other Prestige class caster level is likely lower.
Things that copy / control monsters look much more attractive.


Did I miss anything important?

[bean illus]

Chameleons are a bit weaker than wizards in some ways, but really just stupid strong in the proposed scenario (if fully optimized).

Not only does chameleon get every 6th level spell in the game, CL20 at 15th level, and accelerated spell level access, but ...

The touchstone + extra spell slot then grants at 17th level every 8th level spell in the game, some 9ths, and miracle.

All while leaving 10 levels open to do literally anything else.

[Quertus]

Chameleons are a bit weaker than wizards in some ways, but really just stupid strong in the proposed scenario (if fully optimized).

Not only does chameleon get every 6th level spell in the game, CL20 at 15th level, and accelerated spell level access, but ...

The touchstone + extra spell slot then grants at 17th level every 8th level spell in the game, some 9ths, and miracle.

All while leaving 10 levels open to do literally anything else.

Ah, my ignorance precludes comprehension: why only some 9ths? Or, heck, how much do touchstones cost, and how do they give access to 8th and 9th level spells to characters that are otherwise limited to 6th level spells? (EDIT: that’s what “Extra Spell Slot” was for, wasn’t it? But… wouldn’t you need to take it at 15, 18, and 21 to get 9th level spells?)

Oh, and is it really every 6th level Spell, regardless of source? Druid, Maho-Tsukai, etc, spells are all fair game? How about in a setting where the GM has built custom Prestige classes with custom spells lists - would the Chameleon get access to those, too?

[Darg]

Catalogues of enlightenment let you cast up to 9th level. Extra slot gives up to 8th level slots. Then all you need is spontaneous casting to get versatile spellcaster to cast your 9th level spells.

[bean illus]

Ah, my ignorance precludes comprehension: why only some 9ths? Or, heck, how much do touchstones cost, and how do they give access to 8th and 9th level spells to characters that are otherwise limited to 6th level spells? (EDIT: that’s what “Extra Spell Slot” was for, wasn’t it? But… wouldn’t you need to take it at 15, 18, and 21 to get 9th level spells?)

Oh, and is it really every 6th level Spell, regardless of source? Druid, Maho-Tsukai, etc, spells are all fair game? How about in a setting where the GM has built custom Prestige classes with custom spells lists - would the Chameleon get access to those, too?

Well, i can't predict a DM's custom setting, but yes, every 6th level spell. That means all ranger, paladin, domain spell, prestige class, every. For instance a Runescarred Berserker gets Divine Power as a 3rd level spell, so chameleons get it as a 3rd level spell (ECL 8).

Check the handbook to better understand. It might also help you understand how the Planar Touchstone feat works. The one you want is nivana, where you get domain access equal to character level.

You only get some 9ths because, there are a few 9ths that are 8ths on the chameleon list, and extra spell slot only grants a slot 1 level below your highest.


Catalogues of enlightenment let you cast up to 9th level. Extra slot gives up to 8th level slots. Then all you need is spontaneous casting to get versatile spellcaster to cast your 9th level spells.

I never thought of that. Now with even more cheese.

[AvatarVecna]

Magic items are still a thing, as
Midgard Dwarves can make magic rings, wondrous items, and magic armor and weapons.
Anything requiring Wizard spells is covered via Sublime Chord (and by monsters, like Dragons and Titans).
Clerics items are limited to…? (Chameleon?) (Apostle of Peace and Divine Crusader?) Really, if monsters didn’t lose their casting, I think that Titans have us covered here, too.


Magic items are still a thing, but there's a few problems. For starters, becoming a Sublime Chord just isn't possible - you need arcane casting and bardic music to get in, so we're talking like...Sublime Chord after Prestige Bard or something similar. Midgard Dwarves can still get it done, but they're not exactly as common as most dwarves. There's a gnomes-only guild that eventually gets to use Craft Magic Arms & Armor, although they're not allowed to replicate spells IIRC? And it's the upper levels of the affiliation that can do that, so it takes awhile to reach that kind of clout. Long story short, magic item production on the normal races side of things is "hope you can cheat your way to the mid-high levels when spellcasting and magic items finally become a thing".

The main issue, though, is more economic: the ability to craft magic items is the quickest way to create value outside of deep-epic nonmagical crafting; with the mortal races missing like 90+% of what they produced in a different world, their ability to bargain and trade in the magic item economy is basically nonexistent. Even if we're ignoring that the supply has shrunk so drastically the prices would almost certainly skyrocket, there's still going to be severely limited access, because they can make magic items and you can't and that's the main way of making money outside of killing people and taking their stuff. The main source of magic items is now "high level monsters who have their own casting" - which, the way this world is set up, is the group of people with the least need to spend their time making magic items.

The default setting has the two most powerful tools in the game (magic and items) easily available to the most common races, with everyone else largely playing catch up to avoid getting wiped out (which is exactly what happens in higher-op settings people discuss). Drastic reductions to the amount of casting normal races have access to, across the board, is going to result in radical setting shifts...and not shifts that are positive for the people who just got kneecapped.

[Anthrowhale]

For starters, becoming a Sublime Chord just isn't possible...
You go on to describe how it's possible though, right? Something 4/Celebrant of Sharess 5/Prestige Bard 1/Sublime Chord 10?

Heartfire Fanner instead of Prestige Bard allows you to succeed without setting-specific prestige classes.

[Quertus]

By the sacred RAW, the price of things is the price of things, regardless of how convoluted the process of getting there is. The availability of things is the availability of things, and is based on the price of things, both of which are static, regardless of how we got there.

So, assuming that human(oid)s still have cities rather than being nomadic wanderers, Magic Item shops will still be a thing, and will still be stocked with everything… except Psionic items.

In fact, given how relatively dependent upon items this new hobbled civilization is, I expect Magic Item shops to do an even brisker trade. Not that there’s any rules for that, or that that matters outside “fluff”.

Now, if we wanted to ignore RAW, and wander into homebrew territory? At that point, I expect “Scroll of Simulacrum” and “Toenail of Deity” (or, rather, “toenail of pity monster created by benevolent Deity explicitly for this purpose”) to be the most common purchases, allowing cities to have all the healing / Resurrection / whatever that beings from other worlds would call this an inhospitable backwater if it lacked.

Alternately, that the “standard” magic item list (including random loot tables) would look very different, and would focus on granting or shoring up abilities that the civil and adventuring public lack, or that “come online later”. So more “soft” to remove petrifaction, more reflective sunglasses of gaze reflection to prevent petrifaction in the first place, etc. More buff spells muggles can activate for themselves. More sources of Flight.

And probably a whole lot less random trash, especially as random loot. If the world has always been this way, who’s gonna craft (insert stupid item you hate here)?

Of course, this assumes that monsters don’t lose their casting, too (at which point, the custom divine pity monster has its abilities as SLAs or SUs, I guess), and that the world has always been this way. If “suddenly, no casters - and, monsters, that means you, too.”? As much as “I call(ed) dibs on the remaining Scrolls of Simulation”, I’ll have to think very carefully about what monsters to use them on. Such monsters, like the Simulation Phoenix or Simulacrum Beholder, would be national treasures, where looking at them funny would be punishable by death, and any harm to them would merit a fate worse than death.

Or the Chameleon and Sublime Chord just start cranking out the Simulacra once their builds come online. Shrug.

Point is, if everything can be crafted under this rules set, then, if we’re following RAW, nothing changes, item availability stays the same. If we’re ignoring RAW and following reason, then useful item availability increases, where “useful” is defined relative to this particular world.

[rel]

Also, as far as the "dragons take over and kill everyone" scenario's concerned, some of the strongest dragons are canonically always Good and therefore more likely to provide spellcasting aid/magic items/whatever to some set of chosen wards than to destroy villages for fun.


Before we can answer "Would a mundane world be ruled by dragons" we must answer "Would a regular world be ruled by dragons". Most people seem to think the answer to the first one is 'yes', and to the second one is 'no'. But does that actually check out? In the average D&D setting, there were great wyrm dragons when the first mortals were just barely learning magic: if mortals took over, this might've been for different reasons than simply having casters!


In eberron, you could argue that dragons are the ones in charge: they're simply kept from interfering with mortals by greater concerns (quori, aberrations, giants, demons), on top of the dragonmarks making humanoids too interesting to disrupt. It's worth noting that in eberron, there was canonically a continent-spanning goblin empire with no clerics and wizards, only a few druids and sorcerers, and a magical backbone that mostly consisted of bards and artificers.

In faerun, the gods seem to favor humanoids for whatever reason, with most Chosen humanoid, many gods actively interfering to protect their pet humanoid races, etc etc.

In greyhawk... monsters don't really seem to take an active role in the world? I don't know if it's some gygaxian influence where anything with four legs just sits in its little square room all day, but very few important events in Greyhawk seem to have been shaped by nonhumanoids. Again, if wandering monsters aren't interfering with the rise of mages, they won't interfere with the rise of nonmages.

All of these reasons still apply if casters don't exist, mind you! Even in a casterless tippyverse (that is, a setting that shares the tippyverse's assumptions about what beings with magic can and will do, but has no casting classes), you might still end up with humanoids outnumbering most other creatures, just with innate casters as their overlords (a society of several hundred rakshasas, dragons, or spirit nagas will be less stable than one with 10000 specialized humans and one dragon bossing them around).

This is worth repeating. Unless your setting starts from some very unusual assumptions, to the point that, magic or not, you couldn't run any published module or campaign you don't end up with a monsterpocalypse.

Asking questions about why the dragons or the wights or the shadows or what have you, haven't taken is like asking why the quests the 8th level party are doing exist at all when the 18th level wizard next door should be handling everything with an arbitrarily large army of magical servants.

The world is constructed, and whoever constructed it takes exception to that sort of thing.


If I was designing a magic free world I'd set it up like a low magic world, only even more gritty:

Magic items are rare and have to be quested for instead of being available at ye local magic mart.
High level spells have to be stolen or bargained out of powerful gods or monsters, replicated through incantation or dragged out of the deep places beneath the earth.
Curing your friend of an unfortunate case of death, visiting the next continent over, or heading to the underworld will require an adventure rather than a pile of gold and a friendly spellcaster.
The world is mostly mundane but looks more or less as you would expect, There are still peasants tilling the fields although they worry more about drought and bad harvests.
Nobles rule over the commoners from castles and cities, though they worry more about plagues and assassins
The sages and healers are less effective and mostly mundane, the town guard lack magical support, the general store stocks all the unusual mundane items and alchemicals (the alchemist guild is pretty powerful and won't tell you how they're crafting without casters).
The tavern... Looks pretty much the same actually, although no one cast darkness on the shadowy corner, so for once your dark vision equipped PC can ignore the ambiance.
There are still dungeons and the occasional dragon, although you're going to have to be cautious and pay more attention to logistics to take them on.

Honestly, I'd play games in a world like that.

[Xanyo]

Let's take a look at what kind of spellcasting is available through PrCs, ignoring any classes that don't get higher than 4th level spells.

9th level spells
Ur Priest
Beholder Mage (not really available to humanoids without serious shenanigans anyway)
Apostle of Peace - limited spell list, but not bad. They could probably start a religion.
Divine Crusader - only from one domain, maybe more if they find ways to get bonus domains. This gives more choice than Apostle of Peace, as there's numerous domains.
Maho-Tsukai - setting and taint specific, I dunno, gonna ignore it.
Sublime Chord - requires getting 3rd level spells, far from impossible. Spontaneous, so fairly limited versatility.

8th level spells
Nar Demonbinder - casting prerequisite again, but it's possible to fulfill. Limited selection, thematically limited, but it's planar binding. Why cast your own spells when you can summon someone else to cast them for you?

6th level spells
Chameleon - already discussed, I love these guys, they even get CL 20 by 15th level
Court Herald - spontaneous, limited list
Knight of the Weave - spontaneous, limited list

5th level spells
Disciple of Thrym
Fiend of Blasphemy - only for [evil] outsiders, but if you can manage to swing that they have the unique ability to sponsor clerics. Would that override the premise?
Psionic Fist - psionics
Flame Steward
Mask of Johydee
Nentyar Hunter
Psi-Hunter
Runescarred Berserker
Suel Arcanamach
War Mind - psionics


Another prestige class of note is Eldritch Master [Dr280]. You have to already be a caster, through one means or another, but it doesn't truly advance casting. It advances CL and gives bonus spells known up to 5th level and, more importantly, it has the feature Spell Boost every 3 levels. Spell Boost gives you a spell slot one higher than you can cast, and a spell known of that level if you have none. As long as you choose a PrC with access to a spell list that extends beyond the spell levels it provides, that's a way to get higher level spells.

Another trick is that, you don't necessarily need a class to get spellcasting. It takes a lot of feats and maybe a spell-like ability to meet a CL prerequisite, but you can get spell slots all the way to 9th without a single level in a casting class. Your CL will suck, but who cares when you can cast 9ths? Oh, and whatever you do with your class levels I guess.

Another method is abusing Shadowcraft Mage, metamagic reducers, effective heightening, etcetera to mimic spells of whatever level you care to.

If you wanted to create a setting with more limited spellcasting, you can't just take away the standard methods of getting higher level spells. You'd probably have to hard ban entire spell levels. No 9ths, probably no 8ths or 7ths. Chameleons definitely are in the best position, as has been mentioned. Up to 6th level spells without shenanigans, access to all arcane and divine spells, one at a time until 7th level (ECL 12) at which point they can get both at once. There is one tiny hiccup - they get their arcane spells from spellbooks, usually stolen ones. Without a wizard to steal from, things get... complicated. Well, until they rob an Ethergaunt or other creature with innate wizard casting. Or bargain with fiends to get spellbooks.

[Crake]

Could go the Garlemald route: Invent technology that competes with, or even surpasses magic. For those who don't get the reference, in final fantasy 14, there's a race of humanoids called Garleans who, due to a mutation, are utterly incapable of using aether (magic), while the rest of the world is completely fine and able to weild it. As such, they were pushed back into the frozen, northern wastes, where they were forced to live for generations. Over time though, they discovered a substance called ceruleum that was a very potent fuel source, and they quickly went through an industrial revolution and then built a powerful empire as they spread and conquered with powerful, never before seen technology that even powerful magic had trouble contending with. It basically took the combined forces of three city-state nations to repel just a single legion of this empire.

Sufficed to say, sufficient technology could place itself on par, or even surpass low to even mid-level magic.

[Quertus]

By the sacred RAW, the price of things is the price of things, regardless of how convoluted the process of getting there is.

One caveat to this: the price is based on the cheapest price to make the item. If all monsters lose their casting, too, then the cheapest version of an item possible in the world might change, and therefore affect RAW pricing.

[Xanyo]

One caveat to this: the price is based on the cheapest price to make the item. If all monsters lose their casting, too, then the cheapest version of an item possible in the world might change, and therefore affect RAW pricing.

Those prices tend to be based of CL and spell level. Standalone casting PrCs often have pretty low CLs. Some could probably make it cheaper than normal, such as Trapsmiths. It’s not based on character level, so even though there are fewer people that can make the item the formula still gives a low price. Realistically though there would be significantly lower supply and thus prices would go up.

[Particle_Man]

(My vague thought is that this would be where Assassin and Blackguard mostly shines as they'd be the strongest remaining evil spellcasters?)

Or go this route hard and say that the only source of anything not utterly mundane is Blackguards and Assassins. As in you have fighters, warriors, aristocrats, experts, commoners, rogues, Blackguards and Assassins? No monsters that are not mundane, just animals and vermin that you might find IRL (or maybe dire or larger versions, like gargantuan scorpions).

Now evil suddenly looks a bit tempting, but those assassins and blackguards are terrifying! No one else can do what they do and no one knows a way to counter what they do.

Edit: The evil outsider the Blackguard encounters would be unstatted for this purpose, and really only exist to empower Blackguards. ;)

[pabelfly]

I feel like the best build in this situation is Barbarian 1/Fighter 6/Divine Crusader 1. After that, start adding various classes that give out bonus domains to expand your spell list and get a bunch of domain powers while advancing caster level. You can get into Divine Crusader by spending a bonus feat, which leaves all of your feats and three spare levels to gain access to a bunch of other prestige classes that grant extra domains by level 20.

The other build of interest is Apostle of Peace, which has Turn Undead for Divine Metamagic shenanigans, but that has the drawbacks of having to be non-violent, not having magic items, and without having a domain, it's very difficult to add more domains to your build and expand the spell list.

[ericgrau]

To avoid mucking up the highly magic dependent system I'd up WBL 25-50% and pile on a bunch of magic items, especially cheap ones. Make it easier to use scrolls due to the lack of native users, and probably give a way for non-casters to craft magic items so it makes sense. Finding exotic ingredients for magic in the treasure piles might be part of the fun. Essentially the same WBL value as getting gold and buying components in town, but fleshes out the fluff and explains where the town gets it. Plus many towns aren't that rich.

[Harrow]

At character level 15, someone with 10 chameleon levels should be able to cast Planar Binding three times a day pretty easily, even without wealth by level. They can then use this to call efreet and farm them for wishes, which can then be used for magic items that improve the process (and everything else). If they wish for a scroll of Planar Binding, then anyone with an appropriate Use Magic Device modifier can continue the process without the chameleon's further involvement. Gods forbid someone instead wishes for a staff or a schema with Planar Binding on it.

The point of this is that permanent magic items shouldn't be too much more rare than they are in a standard setting. Yes, the people that can start generating them are rare, but once they do, it really takes off. Oh, sure, individuals may fall afoul an efreeti that doesn't like how it's being treated, or, if this starts to be done on too large of a scale, I could see an entire army of efreet showing up one day to try to wipe out the civilizations that keep calling them, but that sounds to me more like a campaign than a problem. Or, maybe that did happen, civilization is still recovering, but all the permanent magic items made during the civilization's hey-day are still kicking around because they made a ton, they last forever, and the efreet were only concerned with tracking down anything capable of using Planar Binding and left he rest (because, why bother?). Which... sounds a lot like a regular D&D setting, albeit with fewer scrolls and potions. Probably not none, though, just less, because there are still prestige casters, like those chameleons mentioned earlier, that can make them.

[Quertus]

Those prices tend to be based of CL and spell level. Standalone casting PrCs often have pretty low CLs. Some could probably make it cheaper than normal, such as Trapsmiths. It’s not based on character level, so even though there are fewer people that can make the item the formula still gives a low price. Realistically though there would be significantly lower supply and thus prices would go up.

Realistically? Realistically, demand is higher, which leads to more impetus for things like this:



At character level 15, someone with 10 chameleon levels should be able to cast Planar Binding three times a day pretty easily, even without wealth by level. They can then use this to call efreet and farm them for wishes, which can then be used for magic items that improve the process (and everything else). If they wish for a scroll of Planar Binding, then anyone with an appropriate Use Magic Device modifier can continue the process without the chameleon's further involvement. Gods forbid someone instead wishes for a staff or a schema with Planar Binding on it.

The point of this is that permanent magic items shouldn't be too much more rare than they are in a standard setting. Yes, the people that can start generating them are rare, but once they do, it really takes off. Oh, sure, individuals may fall afoul an efreeti that doesn't like how it's being treated, or, if this starts to be done on too large of a scale, I could see an entire army of efreet showing up one day to try to wipe out the civilizations that keep calling them, but that sounds to me more like a campaign than a problem. Or, maybe that did happen, civilization is still recovering, but all the permanent magic items made during the civilization's hey-day are still kicking around because they made a ton, they last forever, and the efreet were only concerned with tracking down anything capable of using Planar Binding and left he rest (because, why bother?). Which... sounds a lot like a regular D&D setting, albeit with fewer scrolls and potions. Probably not none, though, just less, because there are still prestige casters, like those chameleons mentioned earlier, that can make them.

Which, since everything now costs the same to make, produces a very interesting economy…

[Quertus]

9th level spells
Maho-Tsukai - setting and taint specific, I dunno, gonna ignore it.

Ah, sadness - I can’t seem to lay my hands on my book, and I was hoping someone would summarize this for me.

Also… you mentioned Spell books - how do Chameleons usually handle duplicating classes that traditionally don’t use books?

[Anthrowhale]

Ah, sadness - I can’t seem to lay my hands on my book, and I was hoping someone would summarize this for me.

Maho-Tuskai is a taint caster which can convert spellcasting ability in another spellcasting class into Maho-Tsukai spellcasting ability which provides spell access as a wizard with casting as a sorcerer using taint instead of charisma or intelligence from a spell list composed of a unique Maho-Tsukai list + the list of the other spellcasting class. Thus, you could do something like:
Base 4/Celebrant of Sharess 1/Maho-Tsukai 15 to get 16th level Maho spell access providing 8th level spells. Getting 9th level spells is more challenging, but maybe doable via (for example) contracting lycanthropy, entering a spellcasting prestige class, and later getting lycanthropy cured.

[Xanyo]

Also… you mentioned Spell books - how do Chameleons usually handle duplicating classes that traditionally don’t use books?

I dunno, maybe they get scrolls and scribe the spells themselves? Maybe the non-spellbook-users can still write stuff into a spellbook if they care to? Maybe they bargain with fiends that canonically have all the spellbooks ever? Maybe they bind an efreeti and wish for a spellbook?

[bean illus]

Ah, sadness - I can’t seem to lay my hands on my book, and I was hoping someone would summarize this for me.

Also… you mentioned Spell books - how do Chameleons usually handle duplicating classes that traditionally don’t use books?


I dunno, maybe they get scrolls and scribe the spells themselves? Maybe the non-spellbook-users can still write stuff into a spellbook if they care to? Maybe they bargain with fiends that canonically have all the spellbooks ever? Maybe they bind an efreeti and wish for a spellbook?

All arcane spells are handled the same way, whether spontaneous, class specific, etc. They all were somehow learned by someone with a spellbook, and written down.

The thing is, though it's usually handled as "chameleons don't have spellbooks", I'm not aware of any rules other than the ability description.




Arcane Focus: You gain the ability to prepare and cast arcane spells, which may be chosen from the spell list of any arcane spellcasting class. You prepare and cast these spells just as a wizard does, including the use of a spellbook (chameleons often use stolen or borrowed spellbooks; see page 178 of the Player's Handbook for details).

It's easy (for me) to see the bolded sentence as granting chameleons a spellbook, without the parenthetical part being in contradiction.

A spellbook gets expensive, and an extensive one even more so. If you were a chameleon 1, you would be hoping not to spend every penny for the next several levels on your spellbook, hence you buy/borrow/steal one.

Now, in a world where there are plenty of wizards (many who are dead and don't need theirs), it's a less important rules distinction between whether chameleons do or don't have a spellbook of their own to start with, but in this scenario the question is more important.

Of course, asking a supernatural buddy for one is an option, as mentioned. This eventually leaves a bunch of dead chameleon's spellbooks laying around. See?

Honestly, without banning chameleon the entire concept falls apart at ECL 6.
Chameleon is stupid. Easy entry, anyspell, greater anyspell, divine power, turn undead, CL 20, floating feat, miracle, everything, all handed to you in 10 levels.

Imagine any optimized 10 level melee character. That's fully developed melee build, and near effective limit of melee builds. Stack Tier 1 on that, and flavor to taste.

[Inevitability]

Interesting factoid: Spell Turning has a small chance of causing a . The effect can be obtained via Dragonmark Spellturning, which can be taken at level 1 (3 for nonhumans) but requires action points. Residual Rebound is another way, but obtaining 'exposure to Spell Resistance' is difficult without casters. 7th-level Occult Slayers and 8th-level Moonsea Skysentinels should also work, and an 8th-level Chameleon can learn Backblast to get a restricted version of the effect.

Using a pair of dvati, which "can communicate via telepathy at an unlimited range and across the planes", this lets you explore other dimensions. There's probably other ways to exploit this!

[Ramza00]

If we refactor the ratio of npcs of various levels.

All you did was make spells take 5 levels more to get similar spell effects via prestige classes such as Suel Arcanamach and similar classes. (But no Ur Priest.)

Likewise the monsters who are notable (leaders and so on) have 5 free CR to play with, and the fighter and tome of battle classes get their class abilities 5 levels earlier than similar spellcasters.

Thus the everday npc in society, and the everday monster in the wilds (or whatever us vs them you use to create challenges) will have more pc levels that are non spellcasting and thus be less squishy for if everyone is level 6 that is 6 HD instead of the bare minimum being level 1 HD.

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In sum it really matters how we refactor (or not) the various underpinnings of what level every character, npc, monster, etc.