[3.5e]Removing Arcane casting entirely from the equation?

[wadledo]

So, yea.
No more wizard, no more sorcerer, no more bard, Beguiler, Duskblade, Hexblade, Spellthief, Warmage, or Wu Jen.
Aside from making all the magic fanboys scream "NOOOOOO!", what problems do you think this would cause?

Most buff spells can be replicated by Clerics and Druids, Psionics covers blasters and divination, as well as the odd battlefield control, and ToM and Incarnum can fill in the cracks.

Any creatures with automatic levels in sorcerer and the like would obviously have to be changed to something appropriate, but that's easy.

In my mind at least, it solves one of the problems with D&D(that of casters being pretty much impossible to beat with a little work), and once I've worked out the kinks in this, that's the next thing to deal with is divine magic.

[Yukitsu]

You'll have to ban cleric, druid and favoured soul as well. (and whatever I missed.) They are all top tier characters that can do about the same in a campaign world.

[Draco Ignifer]

I wouldn't ban arcane casters. It gets rid of one of the big sources of potential good conflict in the game. Just turn them into a NPC-only class, the same way dragons and demons are NPC-only species. Played intelligently, they'll give the PCs one hell of a time, but that's what good villains are supposed to do.

As for clerics, druids, and favored souls... turn all personal spells into touch spells, because buffing a fighter with the giant package of spells that makes clerics better than a fighter makes the fighter even better, and impose reasonable limits on wild shape, such as "must have seen the animal in a situation where you would gain knowledge about its capabilities, such as combat." That rectifies a lot of the big problems, IMO.

[Sinfire Titan]

Then you'd have Artificers ruling the world.

[wadledo]

Draco Ignifer: Relegating it to NPCs just makes the PC's pissed that they can't shoot fireballs from their hands.

Divine magic I can at least make some requirements for, like clerics of (insert god here) usually cast this line of spells, and druids are just melee monsters, which is far easier to deal with.

At the moment, I have no problem with Cleric/Druid/Favored Souls.
This is not what I'm saying.

I am saying, what problems does one for see from banning Arcane entirely, such as spells that no other class can cast, abilities that will be completely lost, items that can't be created, tropes that can't be filled, problems you have with this, other than the fact that clerics would be overpowered.

[Draco Ignifer]

PCs also can't breathe fire, deliver claw/claw/bite attack comboes, turn people to stone unlimited amounts of times per day with a gaze attack, or anything else a lot of monsters can do. Some PCs still want to play monsters, but most catch on to the fact that these guys are adversaries unless the DM says otherwise.

[Glimbur]

Stone to Flesh doesn't come up often but as far as I know it's Arcane only. It'll be the little things, like Grease and Knock and Fly and such. Domains will help, but you only get two Domains and you have to pick one spell at each level to prep that day.

[Quirinus_Obsidian]

I hate to say this, because I am a Melee fanboy, but, you can't really 'remove' arcane magic from DnD. It is so ingrained into the workings of DnD, it would just fail. There are other DnD based systems that have 'Low Magic' setting, like Iron Heroes. You can also incorporate rules about removing certain spells and spell types from the game.

For starters, I would not allow any PC the ability to stop or manipulate time with a few choice words. Celerity, Time Stop, Synchronicity (Psionics) kinda killed it for me. Polymorph and [Transmutation] spells would be even more nerfed than they are.

Also, if you were to reduce the power of Arcanists, then Divine powers (Druid, Cleric, Favored Soul, etc.) would have to be equally reduced in power.

Specifically, I would remove any reference, feat, ability, or anything that allows the term 'Wild Shape'. Rules in my game are the PHB II Shapechange variant - only. It also fixes the 'Natural Spell' feat = 'WIN' button from the game.

Divine Metamagic would have to be equally reduced or removed.

Psionics, Artificers, Incarnum users, Shadowcasters, Binders, Truenamers (well, they were asinine to begin with), and any other variable magic system would also either be nerfed or removed altogether.

It's all about balancing the game. Right now, in terms of 'power', Wizards in DnD 3.5 have more power than Dragons. That is just.... wrong. Hopefully Pathfinder helps to fix that. 4e kinda did... but, 4e is, well, 4e.

[Sinfire Titan]

PCs also can't breathe fire, deliver claw/claw/bite attack comboes, turn people to stone unlimited amounts of times per day with a gaze attack, or anything else a lot of monsters can do. Some PCs still want to play monsters, but most catch on to the fact that these guys are adversaries unless the DM says otherwise.

BEG TO DIFFER SIR!

Totemists can do everything you just listed and more! At Will.

[Eclipse]

Honestly, I probably wouldn't play a game that outright banned arcane casters unless the GM could explain his reasoning to me. Seems like a bit of overkill to me, particularly if you're considering this for balance reasons.

If it's for plot reasons, you might convince me, if you had an excellent plot in mind.

I don't think you'd really be missing too much that other classes can't cover though. Mostly battlefield control, but other classes have a few spells to deal with that, just not the variety that arcane casters have.

If you're doing this for balance though, I'd strongly urge you to consider these houserules instead.

[Ecalsneerg]

I've done this in a setting, utterly removing arcane magic (by means of insane elves, who also got removed). I didn't come across any issues, but as I was also using the E6 variant then I didn't hit the point where the divide started getting big.

[wadledo]

My main thought behind this whole idea is that you can take out arcane casters without damaging the system to much.

Psions fill in the wizard role near perfectly, as well as being inherently less liable to abuse(as long as you understand the rules), and I've a few thoughts on Clerics, Favored Souls, and Druids.

The ToM classes, in my thoughts, honestly don't need any nerfing, seeing as Truespeak is as weak as jello, and Shadowcasters aren't much better.
Binders are a lot like Totemists, so I've got no fears there, and I've honestly never seen the problem with Artificers, aside from if you let them craft without any observation(which sounds very childish, I know).

Archivists I'm fine with, seeing as how they can get some of the same treatment as Cleric.

And the fluffy reason is that the magic we know as arcane has never existed.
I might have an "aberration" come by for an epic fight, but other than that, no wizards anywhere, ever.

Edit:
Sinfire Titan: Ha!

[Sstoopidtallkid]

The problem is the amount of stuff only an Arcanist can do that's needed for most parties. Teleport, Fly, Haste, the things that the game assumes you'll have to face most challenges past a certain level. If you want to eliminate brokenness, ban the Wiz, Artificer, Cleric, Druid, and Archivist, and encourage your players to play Psions and ToBers.

[Lemur]

I don't see any major problems with removing arcane magic from the game. It doesn't provide the healing angle which 3.5 seems to need to run smoothly, so mostly you're just losing various tactical choices. If you throw in psionics, then you have even less problems, seeing as 3.5 psionics do a lot of replicating of common arcane spells.

The one thing I would say to do is to present it as an element of the setting, not a game balance decision- I can't tell which goal you're aiming at from the thread, but either way, it's better to describe it as the former reason, or you might face some needless arguments from your PCs.

[mikeejimbo]

So, yea.
No more wizard, no more sorcerer, no more bard, Beguiler, Duskblade, Hexblade, Spellthief, Warmage, or Wu Jen.
Aside from making all the magic fanboys scream "NOOOOOO!", what problems do you think this would cause?

I don't think Bard, Duskblade, Spellthief, Warmage or Wu Jen are overpowered. And Beguiler maybe just a tidbit. And Bard once I discovered Glibness and RPed a bit.

[Doomsy]

Magic is a crutch and a lot of players have learned to lean on it. Things like fly and teleport could probably be rigged up in artifacts or you use flying mounts, etc. Unless you don't even have magic weapons and gear, then we might be in trouble. The idea that you 'need' spells like those to fight MM beasties is actually resulting from the fact that wizards make it easier, not possible. As the DM, you decide how the fight moves and what they fight, and that controls the difficulty level.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I once ran a game with a severe setting-wide limitation on spellcasting classes. The only available classes with spellcasting were Ranger, Paladin, Hexblade, Blackguard, and Adept, and it used Wounds and Vitality so Adept got 0 WP/level. Any ability drain was just ability damage, negative levels allowed you to attempt the save every day until it went away instead of turning into permanent level loss, and it was impossible to heal would or ability damage except by normal rest. I also used my standard limitation on Power Attack, that your bonus to hit for extra damage is limited by the lower of your BAB or your Str bonus. It turned out to be quite a fun game.

[Jalil]

You can also incorporate rules about removing certain spells and spell types from the game.

For starters, I would not allow any PC the ability to stop or manipulate time with a few choice words. Celerity, Time Stop, Synchronicity (Psionics) kinda killed it for me. Polymorph and [Transmutation] spells would be even more nerfed than they are.

Also, if you were to reduce the power of Arcanists, then Divine powers (Druid, Cleric, Favored Soul, etc.) would have to be equally reduced in power.

Specifically, I would remove any reference, feat, ability, or anything that allows the term 'Wild Shape'. Rules in my game are the PHB II Shapechange variant - only. It also fixes the 'Natural Spell' feat = 'WIN' button from the game.

Divine Metamagic would have to be equally reduced or removed.

I agree with all of this.

Psionics, Artificers, Incarnum users, Shadowcasters, Binders, Truenamers (well, they were asinine to begin with), and any other variable magic system would also either be nerfed or removed altogether.

Not this. Keep an eye on artificers, but the rest looks balanced to me.

It's all about balancing the game. Right now, in terms of 'power', Wizards in DnD 3.5 have more power than Dragons. That is just.... wrong.

I'd love to see a full party plan out and execute a dragon raid. Rather than a wizard scry out a dragon, teleport in, metamagic a souped up shivering touch, throw all the gold etc into bags of holding, and port back out. Mess around with metamagic, nerf it subtlety, and perhaps change spell level cast times, like it was back in AD&D. Add onto enemy's saves, too. Bring back save(partial) into the glory. Something like n+{(n+1)/2} to all saves, where n=CR.

[bosssmiley]

Hey Wadledo, if you're going to write arcane casters out of the game you might as well play "Iron Heroes" (hat-tip: Quirinus_Obsidian). At least that was built with the intent that the poor, put-upon fighting man was going to be the centre of attention from the get go.

If you're feeling really brave - and fancy moving out of the d20 ghetto - you might want to look at RuneQuest (in which all magic is ultimately divine magic), or even the mighty, replete-with-win "Pendragon" (all knights, all the time).

[Eldariel]

It works just fine. Psionics does everything spellcasting ever tried to do, but better. Some reflavouring, some homebrewing on "divine psionics", and you're good to go.

[Sinfire Titan]

Psionics, Artificers, Incarnum users, Shadowcasters, Binders, Truenamers (well, they were asinine to begin with), and any other variable magic system would also either be nerfed or removed altogether.

Incarnum isn't a variant casting system. If anything, it's like the Tome of Battle (it was meant to fix melee combat to be viable at all levels). Trust me on this one, I've had considerable experience with the MoI.

And it isn't Incarnum User, it's Meldshaper.