From high magic campaign to low magic

My PCs have done it again. ::sigh::

Despite leaving them countless clues that the bad knows how to work the massive disenchant device, they killed him without asking him a single thing. Then burned his body... to ashes.
That aside.

In the next few sessions the party will attempt to operate a disenchant device that will effectively disenchant every known magical item on the planet (actually several planets but they don't know that). The ramifications of the device are quite clear, once an item is disenchanted with this magic, it can not be reenchanted, nor can any other item effected by the device. The party will no longer be finding any magical items, nor receiving magical items. They will emerge from the dungeon a year later admid a war for even the skimpiest permanent +1 armor.

There will still be mages and magics, but no magical items. Mages can still enchant items, but the enchantments lasts a day or two and must be cast by high level wizards.

So what should I replace magical items with. I've been thinking of going the Iron Heroes route with stunts? But I"m not sure what the other low level magic systems do foto replace such items?

What other changes to the world should take effect?

Finally, how would your players react to such a change?

In my game I have a range of types of masterwork items to make up for fewer magical ones.

Masterwork weapons can have a bonus of +1 to +3 to either attack or damage (or both), some have a higher crit range and/or multiplier, some are heavier and balanced as to give a bonus to trip manuevers or disarms, etc. . .

It has worked out very well.

my players would whine... alot...!

which is why I'm seriously considering borrowing this idea...



however in terms of handling ramifications, maybe consider a diminishing of DR to compensate...

alternatively, just leave everything as is and educate the PCs by giving them a tough fight against something that would previously have been a walk-over... something with DR 10/magic would be a good place to start...

el-remmen said:

In my game I have a range of types of masterwork items to make up for fewer magical ones.

Masterwork weapons can have a bonus of +1 to +3 to either attack or damage (or both), some have a higher crit range and/or multiplier, some are heavier and balanced as to give a bonus to trip manuevers or disarms, etc. . .

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ooooh... nice... I like it...

I'm real curious as to what campaign settings that are exclusively low magic can bring to the table. For instance, I was thinking that trainers have replaced magic shops to train the "stunts" and special moves.

I was curious as to if things like this could still work with core classes.

re

Stunts could work to boost PC power, but keep spellcasters in mind too. Spellcasters without wands and scrolls are less powerful, but maybe they can come up with new methods to boost their spells per day.

Ideas

blood magic--sacrifice hit points to cast a spell
temporary enchantments--like artificer infusions, can hold a spell in an object for a short amount of time
ritual magic--by extending the casting time and adding components, the spellcaster can cast a spell without losing a slot

As far as side effects of a low magic world...monsters with DR will run rampant now that hardly any one can help them. Spellcasters will have much more social power. A cruel warlord might try to capture spellcasters so that he has all the magic and his enemies have none.

DonTadow said:

So what should I replace magical items with.

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That depends. Why did you want to destroy the magic items in the first place? Cant' figure out what else to use until we know why you didn't want the items around.

The simplest solution is to not replace them with anything. Just have the machine destroy all currently existing magic items. Casters can go ahead and make more, but recall that making items takes time and XP - the old items are not going to be replaced any time soon.

What other changes to the world should take effect?

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Well, again, that depends - what sort of items are out and about in the world? Any items keeping major demons/devils/elementals/other nasties contained? Any magically supported infrastructure or safety features for communities? Magical transport systems?

Without magical weapons to defeat them, any critter with damage reduction is going to have a bit of a field day...

In general, it ought to take time - years to decades - for people to develop replacements. Remember that whatever replacement you use is currently completely unknown to the population. You will not suddenly have stunt schools replacing magic shops, because nobody knows any stunts right now at all.

Umbran said:

That depends. Why did you want to destroy the magic items in the first place? Cant' figure out what else to use until we know why you didn't want the items around.

The simplest solution is to not replace them with anything. Just have the machine destroy all currently existing magic items. Casters can go ahead and make more, but recall that making items takes time and XP - the old items are not going to be replaced any time soon.



Well, again, that depends - what sort of items are out and about in the world? Any items keeping major demons/devils/elementals/other nasties contained? Any magically supported infrastructure or safety features for communities? Magical transport systems?

Without magical weapons to defeat them, any critter with damage reduction is going to have a bit of a field day...

In general, it ought to take time - years to decades - for people to develop replacements. Remember that whatever replacement you use is currently completely unknown to the population. You will not suddenly have stunt schools replacing magic shops, because nobody knows any stunts right now at all.

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::background::
The party are in the land of the elves looking for a tome that hast he locations of six artifacts. The land of the elves has been cursed by a powerful magical enchantment for hundreds of years, which is why it ws hidden. Part of the curse is that time travels 4 times slower than it does in real life. The curse also leaks the farplane into the land of the elves. (many beholders, mindflayers and other aberrations now inhabit the land).

The PCs have researched texts that talk of a device that can rid the curse. In the texts and notes they've received the head master albenbain was the only one whom knew how it worked. The PCs found alebenbain, but he had since become a Lich to survive the harsh curse. The PCs killed him and burned his body before they could extract how to use the device. From the feedback, the players want to rid the elf land from the curse no matter what the results are. They are not sure of how powerful the disenchant device is, but they know it was once powerful enough to rob a pantheon of gods of their magic. Without the failesafes, locked (which the pcs don't know how to do, nor would it be logical to have a book on how the device worked) I expect that without a spellcraft check or use magical device high enough the pcs are going to globally disenchant all magic. In the last combat, the mage died, leaving only an apprentice mage with no ranks in using magic device and few in spell craft to complete the task.

Now if this happens, by the time the pcs travel back the real world (they will still be stuck in the heaviest of the cursed zone and thus time will still move slowly until they leave the place. It will be anywhere from 4 months to a year later. Enough time for chaos to irrupt and some to adapt.

From a metagaming point of view, do all treasures now equivelate into flat out coinage and mundane items. If so, outside of upkeep, what do they have to spend their money on.

I like the ideas of special items of rituals, artificer items and blood magic (isn't something like that in the magic incarnum books), but what do fighter types have to spend their money on now.

I kept hearing that a lot of what made Iron heroes great was that fighters now spend their money on special moves and combats. Is there other systems that have a coinage system where pcs can pay for training of special skills, tactics and feats?

Hyboria: World Of Conan The Barbarian

I'm really glad you brought this topic up. If you're going to switch from high magic (Greyhawk or any D&D campaign for that matter) to low magic (Lankhmar or Hyboria), you've got to not just swap things. You've got to have grit that you can't find in high magic campaigns. It has to be rough around the edges, grimy, dusty, rusty, decayed. Think of your low magic campaign like any given Nine Inch Nails song. It's about rot and corrosion. Stuff don't work right no more so it's squeaky and not so fine-tuned (so to speak).

Now, onto the grit:
1. FORGET ABOUT REFINED CULTURE. Get rid of high elves and their high arts. Start thinking about the stank, lower races and how they get by in what we would call "THE REAL WORLD."
2. Add all the dark stuff. Beautiful female slaves, murderous warriors, prostitution in the churches, superstitious populace with torches and pitchforks, rampant possession by 'spirits' and basic carnal desires and reactions. All priests are out there to control the public and get rich (and make dark pacts with the devil). All wizards will die at the hands of some experiment summoning Beelzwebul gone bad. All warriors are cut from steel.
3. Magic doesn't have rules like in regular D&D. Sure the PC's magic is always going to have the D&D rules, but it needs to be known that magic isn't a refined science and occasionally, a crazy NPC sorcerer (around 5th level) is going to be summoning dark and terrible things that only an archmage in standard D&D would summon.
4. Magic in low-magic worlds has more to do with superstition and fear (thus enchantment and summoning spells rather than fireball and magic missile). Raise dead? Heh, yea right. You wouldn't want your body raised from the dead. What returns 'aint' what was you..see Pet Cemetary.

Magic is some kind of 'American Possession' that needs to be owned, shopped for or purchased on a spree. Get away from the 'american possession' attitude and you'll see what I mean.

Although I've seen brilliant DM's do brilliant things with 'magic' in their games, you can't tell me that there isn't a way to do the exact same thing in a lower magic world. Read a few ORIGINAL CONAN stories and you'll see.

Rules:
1. NO PC CAN START 1st LEVEL AS A SPELLCASTER (offer a non-spellcasting ranger for variety)
2. All magic is arcane and the gods probably don't exist. Yea, clerics get screwed in armor. Get over it ya' sissy.
3. There are no magic shops and most magic dies when the wizard dies.
4. People heal faster and there is access to healing potions GALORE, but other potions and items are very hard to come by. In fact, no character can have more permanent magic items from game to game than 1 per 3 levels.
5. NO ITEM IS MAGIC UNTIL +4. Anything less is just a superior masterwork item or something that play's trickery on you (i.e. something with a contraption for fire or poison). Monsters that can be hit by magic are pretty rare, but RUN when you see them..or figure out at least 3 other ways to send them back to the grave or other plane.
6. Adventures are not just a series of "ZOO DUNGEONS" with every monster A-Z because the DM isn't creative enough to come up with REAL NPC OPPONENTS. WHat I do is use the monster stats and just tell the players that it's a person and then say,"Wow, it must be a FEAT or ABILITY you just haven't seen yet..perhaps it's a lost art from the jungles..oh well, are you going to fight or run?"
7. Come up with more 'fun' encouragements for people to fear nature rather than magic and I'll show you a world worth living in.
8. Use poison, stun, trip, sunder, and precarious fighting positions to challenge your players rather than 'just another wizard with just another spell.'

We've had a blast playing in the world of CONAN using the D&D rules (I fricking HATE the Conan RPG rules because they're trivial changes just so you can't use any of your D*D books you purchased..forget that).

If anyone's interested, I can email you the house rules we use.

Also, if you've never used the Iron Heroes stuff, that's probably the way I'd lean in the future.

jh
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Emirikol said:

I'm really glad you brought this topic up. If you're going to switch from high magic (Greyhawk or any D&D campaign for that matter) to low magic (Lankhmar or Hyboria), you've got to not just swap things. You've got to have grit that you can't find in high magic campaigns. It has to be rough around the edges, grimy, dusty, rusty, decayed. Think of your low magic campaign like any given Nine Inch Nails song. It's about rot and corrosion. Stuff don't work right no more so it's squeaky and not so fine-tuned (so to speak).

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I don't think this is entirely what he was thinking about. Or at least that's my perspective.