Character Creation in Low Magic Games

[HoboGod]

3.5e is notorious for having unbalanced full casters. It's no wonder that many DMs want to do "low magic games" where spells and wondrous items are restricted and E6/E8 games where full casters never reach higher than a certain spell level. I, however, am against these variants. I'm an optimizer, I love playing with things and mixing new things together. Being told that I'm heavily limited makes me sad. On the other hand, I agree that full casters can get out of line. But if the problem is full casters, then the approach should be to dampen full casters and encourage players to take something less than full casters.

My proposal for low magic games is as follows:

Dampened Magic Game
Your maximum caster level is capped at 1/2 your total hit dice rounded up (for example, a Human Wizard 4/Rogue 2 has a caster level of 3 despite having 4 levels of wizard.) The bonus to a spell's DC from spell level caps at 1/2 your total hit dice rounded up (for example, a Human Wizard 8 has access to 4th level spells, but 3rd and 4th level spells only provide +2 to the spell's DC.) Your caster level for meeting prerequisites such as for prestige classes and creating magic items remains unchanged despite these caps. Feats and magic items which increase caster level up to your total hit dice such as Practiced Spellcaster are affected by this cap, but feats and magic items which can increase your caster level beyond your hit dice such as Ring of Arcane Might are not affected by this cap.

This variant shall hopefully encourage players to be multiclass spellcasters. It does not affect players who only take a few level dips into a spellcasting class. However, it does not dismiss a player wishing to be a pure wizard. Magic still grows stronger as one levels up and still allows access to every spell and item in the game. Only the higher possible levels of spellcasting are reduced in effectiveness.

Feedback? How well will this work? What unforeseen consequences arise from this variant? How practical/simple is this variant?

 

[Dandu]

Will the game still trow Balors at you?

 

[HoboGod]

I dunno, I don't tend to throw Balors. I imagine most monsters remain unchanged in their magical capabilities, though spell resistances might need minor adjustments as beating the high end caster level checks becomes disproportionately more difficult.

 

[Dandu]

I imagine most monsters remain unchanged in their magical capabilities.

It seems likely that if you go after a monster designed to be taken down with X amount if firepower while packing 0.5X amount of firepower, things will go badly.

 

[HoboGod]

That's to say non-magical classes don't have any firepower. While painfully true that wizards and clerics pack excessively more firepower than pure fighters and barbarians, a properly optimized character can do respectable amounts of damage. Arcane Trickster types still work nicely. A Gish type using a Spell Storing weapon and casts fireballs at cannon fodder still works nicely. As do monks that use Shocking Grasp or Inflict Spells as part of their unarmed strike. The only thing that becomes more difficult to pull off is the wizard that's sole point of existence is to say "poof, your dead!". And quite honestly, I'm getting very sick of those.

 

[Herzog]

So, you nerf full casters (by limiting save DC's and caster levels).
non-casters are unaffected, as are gish-types.

non-casters still fall behind when compared to (optimized) gishes. It becomes less interesting to play a full caster.

You'll probably have to re-write every other encounter to account for the diminished firepower of the caster. (this includes the duration of buffs for your non-casters. They get screwed too this way) and you still have an unbalanced game.

I appreciate the alternative way to try and fix the caster/non-caster power discrepancy, but I'm afraid this solution will generate far too much work (to keep the encounters balanced) for too less of a difference in balance between the casters and non-casters.

But hey, that's just my opinion...

 

[Greenfield]

My group ran a campaign designed to start as "low magic" and work its way up.

When the game started, there were magic swords and armor around, but nobody knew how to make such things any more. No permanent magic item creation feats were in the game at all.

We also started off without a few PRCs, and we stripped a few spell from the game. Like everything Level 9. Dimension Door was known, but Teleport and it's near cousins was not. Raise Dead and it's derivatives were gone.

We had to take a number of Wondrous items and shift their creation over to other feats, since some are non-permanent, but that wasn't a big deal. Most were just an extension on Brew Potion.

The premise of the campaign was that these Feats and PRCs had been closely guarded secrets held by guild masters and master spell casters, prized and precious. And as I'm sure you can see, secrets do one of two things over time: They cease to be secrets, or they cease to be at all.

Now the gods kind of liked the peace and quiet, where they didn't have Epic champions showing up at their doorstep with custom gear, trying to challenge the order of the cosmos every other month. But one day they realized that dark times were coming for mortals, and that they'd need the ancient secrets and crafts once more.

If they suddenly released this knowledge on the world, the turmoil would be worse than the dark times, and The Enemy would find it even easier to move in. So they sent word through their seers, oracles, prophets and priests. Each nation was to send a representative, and the group that would be formed would be guided to caches and troves of ancient lore, and that their mission was to find them and disseminate the knowledge to all lands.

So each player had a character from a different land, and several of those lands had histories of conflict and warfare. They weren't together because they were good friends, but because they weren't. Each would keep the others honest when it came to spreading the lore, guaranteeing that every major power got access to the knowledge at the same time. And the whole process was slow enough that no wars would be triggered.

At least, that was the theory.

It made for a fun campaign. That's when we came up with the idea that dead could be raised only by going on an adventure to the "lands of the dead" to bring the fallen one back. It added a lot to the richness of the game, and all it really cost was the idea that dying was merely a financial inconvenience.

When someone finally managed to uncover/research Teleport, it shocked people. I mean, that was "Demon magic", wasn't it? They're the ones who can pop from place to place at will. Great fun to play.

Permanent items were precious and hard to come by. Every magic blade in the world was known, had a history and a name, was held by some rich or powerful family and was part of their family pride. Bags of Holding? Things of legend, like the original held by Perseus in Greek mythology.

We considered which spells to ban, based on how they influenced play. Spells that made people immune to certain game considerations were all candidates for the black list. Teleport, Death Ward, Raise Dead. Heroes' Feast was nerfed so it gave you a serious bonus to poison Saves, but didn't just render you immune. The Magnificent Mansion spell got modified so it was a level lower and not extra-dimensional, because once it was in play the night encounter completely vanished from play.

It was low magic for most of the run, and high color all the way.

 

[Dandu]

That's to say non-magical classes don't have any firepower. While painfully true that wizards and clerics pack excessively more firepower than pure fighters and barbarians, a properly optimized character can do respectable amounts of damage. Arcane Trickster types still work nicely. A Gish type using a Spell Storing weapon and casts fireballs at cannon fodder still works nicely. As do monks that use Shocking Grasp or Inflict Spells as part of their unarmed strike. The only thing that becomes more difficult to pull off is the wizard that's sole point of existence is to say "poof, your dead!". And quite honestly, I'm getting very sick of those.

Haste, Polymorph, Bless, Lesser Restoration, Restoration, Greater Restoration, Hero's Feast, Resist Energy, Protection from Energy, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Reincarnate, Raise Dead, Resurrection, Heal.

These spells (off the top of my head, there are obviously more) will be either available at a later level than normal, or not at all. This is going to be a serious problem if your non-deathwarded party faces something that deals in negative energy, even if you deal OVER NINE THOUSAND DPS. Without proper defenses, the party's just a bunch of glass cannons.

 

[the Jester]

All I want to say is that "gish" is a term for a githyanki or githzerai fighter/mage, and the term is horribly misused a lot and it makes me sad.

That is all.

 

[the Jester]

...actually on topic, though, I'll just say that this system seems to have a wee bit too much stuff to keep track of, considering how much 3.x already needs you to keep track of.

I prefer the "can't have more than half your levels in a casting class" approach. Seems more elegant.