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The Difficulties Of Running Low Magic Campaigns
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<blockquote data-quote="Jon Bradley" data-source="post: 7738545" data-attributes="member: 6943584"><p>FantasyCraft takes a different approach. </p><p></p><p>One of the aspects of the Crafty game engine is Campaign Qualities where you set up the game you want to run. Two of these options include Miracles (divine magic) and Sorcery (arcane magic). Under both are a cascade of options you can use to flavor them being allowed in the game. </p><p></p><p>As an example for Miracles, one is titled Wrathful Universe which basically means if you break your god's oath as a Priest then you get cursed. One of the Curse options involves a permanent negative modifier to all attack checks, skills checks and saves until Atonement occurs.</p><p></p><p>Some of the examples for Sorcery have some bearing on the discussion here. You can choose to eliminate some schools of magic from being available entirely. They just gone and do not exist which makes finding a school with a single spell from that school so much more worthy. Another could be making it more difficult to cast all magic spells perhaps by doubling the casting time or lowering the save DCs for those resisting. </p><p></p><p>I prefer a third option for this discussion. What if Magic was corrupting? What if every time a PC cast a spell they had to make a Save equal to 10 plus double the Spell level so for a 3rd level Spell they have to make a DC 16 Save (or triple it so this would be a DC 19 Save)? Failure means they start gaining levels of Taint that only dissolve after so much time. Too many levels of Taint and your PC suddenly becomes a permanent NPC.</p><p></p><p>Alternately, you can just not active Miracles or Sorcery and thus remove Priests and Mages along with any associated classes from the game entirely. This is more difficult, as noted above, because higher levels practically require you to have magic or magic items just to survive. Once you cross 10th level, it becomes more difficult. I know I played in a 3.5 game with a fighter who did not believe in using a lot of magic items. In fact, he only had 3 when the game ended around 15th level: a magic flail, a ring of protection and a bag of holding. Yeah, he died quite a bit but I was trying to make it work as best as possible.</p><p></p><p>FantasyCraft has some differences from both D&D and Pathfinder which make it a better fit for running low magic or no magic campaigns. It uses a spell point system for arcane magic, an actual Spellcasting skill and is multi-attribute dependent for Mages. There is no dump stat in the Crafty engine either so you really pay for min-maxing yourself out. Also, skill heavy or non-combat focused characters can still affect things during combat with regularity including inducing an opponent to suffer stress damage. Yes, this is another type of damage but so worth it.</p><p></p><p>As an example, there was a story I read of a group of 7 FantasyCraft PCs playing their first game. The group included 4 combat heavy PCs, 2 combat capable and a very non-combat Courtier class (or the most dangerous person in a castle, Cersei from GoT is a solid example). They were making their way down a forest path when they were ambushed by a goblin warband which doubled their number and lead by a goblin shaman. The Courtier, due to a character option taken in chargen, got to act in the Ambush round and won the initiative over the goblins. They used their single action to Threaten (a combat action using the Intimidate skill) the goblin shaman and they crit succeeded. The goblin shaman failed his check, suffered Stress damage and the GM rolled for Morale which the shaman failed. It took off running forcing a general morale check which most of the goblins failed so they followed. Regular initiative order started up with 7 PCs vs 1 lone goblin who made his check. The Courtier still had the highest initiative and reminded the goblin of what happened causing it to run away. </p><p></p><p>I used this example because it demonstrates FantasyCraft does allow you to critically succeed using Skills and non-combat characters can use interpersonal options in combat such as Threaten, Distract, Tire, Taunt and Anticipate.</p><p></p><p>With the options available in FantasyCraft, I very easily can run a low or no magic campaign without worry. On the first page of this discussion, compared magic to be like an extra layer of icing on a cake. It is an apt description.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jon Bradley, post: 7738545, member: 6943584"] FantasyCraft takes a different approach. One of the aspects of the Crafty game engine is Campaign Qualities where you set up the game you want to run. Two of these options include Miracles (divine magic) and Sorcery (arcane magic). Under both are a cascade of options you can use to flavor them being allowed in the game. As an example for Miracles, one is titled Wrathful Universe which basically means if you break your god's oath as a Priest then you get cursed. One of the Curse options involves a permanent negative modifier to all attack checks, skills checks and saves until Atonement occurs. Some of the examples for Sorcery have some bearing on the discussion here. You can choose to eliminate some schools of magic from being available entirely. They just gone and do not exist which makes finding a school with a single spell from that school so much more worthy. Another could be making it more difficult to cast all magic spells perhaps by doubling the casting time or lowering the save DCs for those resisting. I prefer a third option for this discussion. What if Magic was corrupting? What if every time a PC cast a spell they had to make a Save equal to 10 plus double the Spell level so for a 3rd level Spell they have to make a DC 16 Save (or triple it so this would be a DC 19 Save)? Failure means they start gaining levels of Taint that only dissolve after so much time. Too many levels of Taint and your PC suddenly becomes a permanent NPC. Alternately, you can just not active Miracles or Sorcery and thus remove Priests and Mages along with any associated classes from the game entirely. This is more difficult, as noted above, because higher levels practically require you to have magic or magic items just to survive. Once you cross 10th level, it becomes more difficult. I know I played in a 3.5 game with a fighter who did not believe in using a lot of magic items. In fact, he only had 3 when the game ended around 15th level: a magic flail, a ring of protection and a bag of holding. Yeah, he died quite a bit but I was trying to make it work as best as possible. FantasyCraft has some differences from both D&D and Pathfinder which make it a better fit for running low magic or no magic campaigns. It uses a spell point system for arcane magic, an actual Spellcasting skill and is multi-attribute dependent for Mages. There is no dump stat in the Crafty engine either so you really pay for min-maxing yourself out. Also, skill heavy or non-combat focused characters can still affect things during combat with regularity including inducing an opponent to suffer stress damage. Yes, this is another type of damage but so worth it. As an example, there was a story I read of a group of 7 FantasyCraft PCs playing their first game. The group included 4 combat heavy PCs, 2 combat capable and a very non-combat Courtier class (or the most dangerous person in a castle, Cersei from GoT is a solid example). They were making their way down a forest path when they were ambushed by a goblin warband which doubled their number and lead by a goblin shaman. The Courtier, due to a character option taken in chargen, got to act in the Ambush round and won the initiative over the goblins. They used their single action to Threaten (a combat action using the Intimidate skill) the goblin shaman and they crit succeeded. The goblin shaman failed his check, suffered Stress damage and the GM rolled for Morale which the shaman failed. It took off running forcing a general morale check which most of the goblins failed so they followed. Regular initiative order started up with 7 PCs vs 1 lone goblin who made his check. The Courtier still had the highest initiative and reminded the goblin of what happened causing it to run away. I used this example because it demonstrates FantasyCraft does allow you to critically succeed using Skills and non-combat characters can use interpersonal options in combat such as Threaten, Distract, Tire, Taunt and Anticipate. With the options available in FantasyCraft, I very easily can run a low or no magic campaign without worry. On the first page of this discussion, compared magic to be like an extra layer of icing on a cake. It is an apt description. [/QUOTE]
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