Low fantasy D&d

[vodacce]

Sorry for my bad english

My friend want to use D&D to play a low fantasy homebrew setting. I know that are in the market D&D low fantasy rules (Iron heroes, games of thrones, and so on...
What is the best? What is the system more good to use for a homebrew setting?
The setting of my friend is a classic low magic, very realistic world. Thank for your help..

 

[JustKim]

Iron Heroes is low magic, not low fantasy. You have magic and you have monsters and you have people doing spectacular, impossible things. As low as fantasy or magic may get in the various d20 alternatives, they never really approach realistic because of the nature of levels, random skills, hit points and damage, etc.. The system just isn't made to emulate real life. I think your friend would be better suited finding a game other than D&D to run a realistic simulation.

 

[Aramis Simara]

I would recommend looking into the Conan d20 rules and setting. They are published by mongoose publishing (mongoosepublishing (dot) com). I am very happy with the products I purchased so far.

 

[Mark CMG]

Medieval Player's Manual

(Also in PDF - here.)

 

[vodacce]

Iron Heroes is low magic, not low fantasy. You have magic and you have monsters and you have people doing spectacular, impossible things. As low as fantasy or magic may get in the various d20 alternatives, they never really approach realistic because of the nature of levels, random skills, hit points and damage, etc.. The system just isn't made to emulate real life. I think your friend would be better suited finding a game other than D&D to run a realistic simulation.

I know that D&D is not good for realistic play but my friend is young (20 years) and his players play only D&D. In italy 99% of rpg players play only D&D and is difficult for a young and not expert master to find people that can play a rpg that is not D&D.

 

[Khairn]

Another good system for low fantasy D&D would be Grim Tales.

Its a very well put together tool-kit that uses d20 Modern styled classes at its core. Very nice set of rules that I highly recommend

 

[Henry]

When some people say "low fantasy", they mean, "an environment where the characters scrape by with a meager living, where character expolits and jobs are more mercenary than idealistic, and where ethics and morals are more gray than black and white."

If this is the type of "Low fantasy" they wish, another good choice is the Black Company campaign setting from Green Ronin (if you can find it). Not only is magic slightly less effective than standard d20, but the classes are geared such that magic is not as important to them. Furthermore, combat is much deadlier than most d20 games, and the concept of the campaign world is one of scraping by, of being a little morally questionable in order to "do the right thing."

I highly recommend it for more grim fantasy that uses toned-down magic.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Thing is what do folks really mean when they say "low fantasy".

Take Narnia, certainly a High Fantasy setting and magic plays a major part in the story and while there is a crossing betwen worlds,ressurection, a vast host of "fantastic" folks and a magical winter there is very little "flash bang" magic, the villain of the peace has two magical items one rather neato and the other horribly dangerous but neither would be particularly signifigant in the average D&D setting.


I'd say D&D as low fantasy can work but one has to reign in the frequency of magic use. It has to be a less common and more signigfigant to all concerned when magic is in use. for example, no one really cares much beyond the tactical difficulties when an invisiblity related encounter takes place but in the fiction of our culture invisibility is a big deal.
Bringing someone back from the dead is an modestly expensive buisness transaction instead of a culturally signifigant event. To get D&D to be low fanatsy one has to somehow make magic a little more impressive while also making it less common. I did it for a campaign way back when by scaling up casting times by a factor or two and this really changed the pace of magic use. If you have to be casting a frieball spell for a whole minute as opposed to 1 action it really becomes a big deal when it is deployed. This minimizes spellcasters to some degree but not if one gives magic a gee-whiz or scare your pants off factor that requires folks to make a will save or suffer a morale penalty in combat or some other such thing. Folks that know someone was brouht back from the dead will look on someone with wonder or dread depending on faith and personality. Work that stuff in and low fantasy is certainly possible.

 

[painandgreed]

Thing is what do folks really mean when they say "low fantasy".

When I've heard it, it pretty much refered to the opposite of "high fantasy" meaning the Same as "sword & sorcery". This would be such things as Conan or Fafrid, the Gray Mouser in stories that do not have epic quests or altruistic ideals. D&D works fine for this, just stop caring about alignment and don't give such adventures to the players.

If meaning the same as "low magic" then D&D has some issues as all the classes are supposed to be balanced. Just take away all, or most, magic items and don't include many of the monsters that require them keeping most adversaries to character races that also have levels and lack the equipment and things should be on their way. However, many of the classes have spells such as bards, rangers, paladins, etc. To keep things balanced, you'd have to give them soemthing back. Then you have to figure out what to do about wizards as PCs. Lots of work.

 

[Conaill]

One of the easiest tricks I've come across to lower the magic level in D&D is to require magic users to multiclass. For example, you could specify that a characters total caster level can be no more than half his character level.

There's a few extra things you may need to add (e.g. repricing magic items, dealing with 1st level spellcasters, and perhaps things like Wiz/Sor multiclassing, etc.), but since the core mechanic is based on the standard D&D multiclassing rules, everything should be fairly balanced in theory.