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Tura
2008-01-03, 05:56 PM
What different ways are there to define/create a low magic setting in D&D 3.5? Some options could be:

1) Fluff: Magic is illegal/ immoral/ evil.
...This is OK, but doesn't work for all settings.

2) Fluff: Casters are really rare. [Which is already the case according to the SRD population statistics, but that doesn't hinder every adventuring party from having a few and bumping into others all the freakin' time.] They are so rare that whenever a caster appears, he is immediately surrounded by swarms of people, who shout "Bless me!", "Help me!"and "Good evening, Sir, the Lord requires your presence, please follow me and the 100 soldiers I command to the castle".
... this sounds extremely impractical. :smalltongue:

3) Fluff: magic items are rare.
Crunch: Get rid of item creation feats, and characters don't receive magic items according to level.
...this completely ruins the balance between the classes (casters Vs non-casters).

4) Fluff: magic is not so advanced.
Crunch: Casters have to multi-class. You get one spell level (known) for every 4 levels, so if you're level 20, you can cast 5th level spells. Magic item progression is halved, so a 6th level character can't have more than a +3 weapon. (or something).
...I've been toying with this idea today, but it seems kind of daft. The only reason behind it is that I wanted middle-level PCs, but no spells above 5th level in the world. And I'm not sure the classes will be balanced. Any input is welcome.

5) Fluff: low magic, low everything
Crunch: run a low level game, switch to 6E if it goes past that.
...this works too, but again, it's not for all settings (or players, for that matter).

So, what do you think? Comments for any of the above? Other ideas?

CASTLEMIKE
2008-01-03, 09:52 PM
I'd suggest limiting source books and losing most of the primary casters just use Adepts, the Battle Sorcerer variant (but limited to the Witch spell list) and limit other arcane spellcasting to the Magewright NPC spellcasting mechanics and require them to be focused specialists (Prohibited from using 2 schools if a Diviner and 3 for others) fewer known spells and tops out at fifth level.

I'd limit psionics to the Psychic Warrior and the standard Wilder if you use them at all and double the chance for a Psychic Enervation to 10% per Wild Surge Plus. No ToB, No caster PRCs except the DMG unless they are toned down.

I do like the Cunning Man and the Natural Magician form Green Ronin's Medieval Player's Manualalthough the Natural Magician would probably still be to powerful.

Toning down suggested wealth by level down to NPC suggested wealth guidelines helps a lot.

No magic stores. The scroll sellers are rare and charge more. Finding a scroll should be a nice treasure not I already have that one. Original spell research rules or bartering with the DM for extra spells from NPCs.

Give all the PCs except casters an open bonus feat and give the casters a School Focus feat.

Noncasters can take 2 Flaws for bonus feats and choose the second Flaw. All PCs can take a Flaw but the DM chooses or rolls for the First Flaw.

In a low level game the casters are still pretty powerful and can dominate an occassional encounter with Color Spray or Sleep.

Limit the crafting feats to Brew Potion and Scribe Scroll. Instead of the other Crafting feats use require the PCs to learn the Craft Arcana skill and limit crafting items to learning 1 freebie permanent item (Or single plus item) a level and treating the others like original spell research. The PC can't learn to making Flaming Swords until he can make basic +2 swords (3 levels).

Pronounceable
2008-01-03, 10:31 PM
6) Finding another system more suitable to low magic would be less painful than trying to demagic DnD.

Sure, this has its own problems like convincing the players, learning new system, etc. But demagicking DnD is quite impossible. And DnD settings are by definition unsuitable to low magic. Imagine a low magic Faerun, if you can...

Draz74
2008-01-03, 11:12 PM
If you read Rich's "The New World" series under the Gaming tab on the left, you can find his solution: make all caster classes into PrCs. A la d20 Modern.

Easier said than done, of course.

Chronicled
2008-01-03, 11:35 PM
You could try something like Iron Heroes if you're looking for an especially low-magic (even less than E6) d20 system. I've read through its Player's Handbook, and it seems really well done.

TheThan
2008-01-04, 12:04 AM
One problem is dealing with monsters. Most monsters have SR, DR and spell like abilities. These should be curved greatly, I suggest dropping DR and SR completely (as you won’t need the SR) and loosing the DR will make it easier to damage a monster with a non-magical weapon. Something melee classes have a hard time with anyway.

Now the biggest problem is dealing with creatures that are all about their spell like abilities (or out right spells). Short of simply not using them I haven’t come up with a good way to deal with that yet.

marjan
2008-01-04, 12:44 AM
Low-magic settings are for low levels. As you advance in level equipment dependency becomes big problem. Without some serious house-ruling your noncaster PCs (probably most of them) will have problems dealing with CR "appropriate" monsters and it will make it difficult for you to determine what is CR appropriate monster for the party.

Matthew
2008-01-04, 08:24 AM
6) Finding another system more suitable to low magic would be less painful than trying to demagic DnD.

Sure, this has its own problems like convincing the players, learning new system, etc. But demagicking DnD is quite impossible. And DnD settings are by definition unsuitable to low magic. Imagine a low magic Faerun, if you can...

A new system is certainly an option, but D20 can work fine with low magic settings; Conan D20 might be considered something of a half way house.

Telok
2008-01-04, 10:37 AM
I had a go at this once. I wanted a setting where magic was rare, powerful, scary, and dangerous. I eventually stripped spell casting from everything but wizard, sorcerer, cleric, priest, and psion. Then I started them out at first level with one bonus feat, Cast 0-level Prepared/Spontaneous Arcane/Divine Spells. Nobody gets bonus spells from attributes and you need the feats Cast #-level Spells in order to cast spells of that level. Everybody got one caster level per two class levels, and all spells were cast at minimum caster level unless using the Heighten Spell feat.

I didn't have to change wizards (except requiring them to all be specialists with no extra spell gained from it and those two free spells per spell level had to be in their specialty), added the wizard bonus feats to sorcerers and gave then Heighten Spell instead of Scribe Scroll. Made the sorcerers be specialists too. Clerics lost turning, spell converting to cures, and the bonus domain spell. In exchange they gained the ability to convert any prepared spell into a domain spell. Clerics with Sun or Glory got undead turning as the domain ability. Priests were like sorcerers except that they got their god's four domains as the spells known and the granted powers, they also got the armor spell failure too. Wizards could not have familiars, sorcerers had to have familiars and got Improved Familiar as a bonus feat somewhere in the 8 to 10 level range. The familiars got a boost too, as they were the representatives of the powers and the pact with those powers that gave the sorcerer his spells.

All that made casters rare, but it didn't make magic scary or dangerous. The half caster levels really hurt the ability of the casting classes to do anything but support fighters, rogues, and whatnot. So all spells (not spell like abilities) denied saves. Evasion gave a Reflex save for the appropriate spells, and Improved Evasion worked like regular Evasion for spells. Suddenly, casters were scary.

But almost nobody wanted to play one. Perfect.

The setting was very core/SRD and prestige classes were almost all hand crafted for it. Well the rules were very core, the setting wasn't.

Pronounceable
2008-01-04, 11:06 AM
A new system is certainly an option, but D20 can work fine with low magic settings; Conan D20 might be considered something of a half way house.

d20 can, but DnD never will. It was made for high, flashy, plentiful and stable magic. Vancian will never work well in a low, mysterious and/or dangerous magic setting. It has to go. Then DnD goes down like a house of cards. I'd guess about 4/5 of the system will have to be reconstructed before it can work as low magic. At which point, it is a homebrewed and new system already (like the one I use).

The "d20" is actually just "d20+modifiers>=DC". Remember d20=!DnD, and is itself a very solid concept and can run anything with proper application. It's the "proper application" that causes problems.

Matthew
2008-01-04, 11:24 AM
d20 can, but DnD never will. It was made for high, flashy, plentiful and stable magic. Vancian will never work well in a low, mysterious and/or dangerous magic setting. It has to go. Then DnD goes down like a house of cards. I'd guess about 4/5 of the system will have to be reconstructed before it can work as low magic. At which point, it is a homebrewed and new system already (like the one I use).

The "d20" is actually just "d20+modifiers>=DC". Remember d20=!DnD, and is itself a very solid concept and can run anything with proper application. It's the "proper application" that causes problems.

I think Unearthed Arcana provides enough material to get D&D to work as an interesting low magic game. Of course, it all depends on your definitions. When is D&D no longer D&D? What are you prepared to throw out? etc...

If D&D isn't D&D without plentiful Wizards and Clerics, then you have no chance, but it actually doesn't take a huge amount of effort to cull magic from D&D. Of course, the result of such a cull is a reduction in the amount of material available.

wormwood
2008-01-04, 11:50 AM
Actually, one of my DMs pulled off an interesting low magic game in D&D with some homebrew rules. First, he used a spell point system for all casting (which pretty much made sorcerers pointless... but I digress). The casters took however many spells they could cast of a certain level, multiplied that by the level, and summed all of them up for their spell points. When a spell was cast, it cost a number of points equal to its level. Normally, this would make wizards insanely powerful but his "low magic" thing fixed it.

Casters would only regain spell points per day equal to their caster level + casting stat bonus. It wasn't that big of a deal at low levels, since you would pretty much fully recharge, but when we started hitting higher levels the casters would REALLY think twice about throwing out a level 5 or 6 spell. It could take them several days to fully recharge. This let wizards throw out their world shatter spells whenever they wanted but they might be weak for a long time afterward.

In certain areas, the flow of magic was weaker and we'd get only half the points of normal. In other places the flow was stronger and we would get double (though that was really, really rare). When we visited the Underworld (it was a Roman campaign), he gave us spell points back every hour to reflect the inherently magical surroundings.

It worked really well because we were constantly on the go. The longer recharge times for casters wouldn't work so well if there was ample time to recover after encounters and/or adventures. I also like the flavor of magic items that store spell points since it fits well with the concept of an item that just plain makes you generically "more powerful." That's something that appears a lot in fiction but I think D&D is lacking.

Umarth
2008-01-04, 01:42 PM
If you simply remove all the pure casters, limit magical items in some way, and have the players mostly fighting critters with class levels you can have a a "DnD" game that scales well and is low magic.

Of course to really get a smooth low magic game the number of rule changes really takes it a long way from being "DnD".