Tweaking the system for lower magic

[Aezoc]

Hi all, apologies if this has been addressed previously, but I didn't see a thread on it. My next campaign will be running in a lower-magic world where magic items are extremely rare and nigh impossible to create any more. Given this, does anyone have suggestions on how to tweak the classes in order to maintain balance? I'm planning on keeping the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, and possibly wizard as spellcasters. I'm using a mundane variant paladin and ranger, and I've already assigned all of the classes Defense progressions (a la WoT) to compensate for the lack of magical armor. Does anyone have thoughts on how to adjust spellcasting to keep the magic-user classes from utterly dominating after the first few levels?

 

[A'koss]

I'm running a very similar game, I'll create a new thread in the House Rules forum for the wizard class we're playtesting right now.


Cheers,

A'koss.

 

[Cheiromancer]

The easiest suggestion I've heard is to require the primary spellcasting classes (cleric, druid, wizard, sorcerer) to split their levels evenly with a non-spellcasting class.

For rangers and paladins, an easy fix is to give them a bonus feat whenever they would acquire a new spell level.

Don't know what to do about bards, though. Maybe leave them as is- they would be the most powerful spellcasters in the campaign world.