Starting up a rare-magic-item campaign

I've preparations underway for running a D&D low-magic (actually a rare-magic-item) campaign. There are a few radical changes to the standard rules that I'm going to implement, primarily for flavor purposes.

1) Magic items will be very rare. (To facilitate this, Item Creation and the I.C. feats will have additional restrictions to keep their use from being as casual as they are in the standard rules.) The vast majority (99%+) of masterwork weapons, armor, and shields will be nonmagical. Weapons, armor, and shields with special powers beyond a simple enhancement bonus are invariably legendary and highly valued, nearly as much as artifacts are. "True" artifacts do not exist as such, and if they do they are powered down relative to D&D standard.

2) Alchemical items are much more common. There is a widespread code of honorable combat in the game world this campaign takes place in which forbids the use of chemical weapons and explosives, though not everyone cares much for being 'honorable'...

3) The Masterwork rules for weapons, armor, and shields is expanded to make up for the lack of magically-enhanced equipment. In this system, weapons can have a masterwork bonus to attack, damage, or both (these stack for purposes of determining the price markup). Shields and armor can gain a masterwork bonus to AC or lowered ACP (these also stack). Shield and armor spikes can gain bonuses to attack but these count separately from the shield's or armor's own total masterwork bonus.

Masterwork bonus == cost markup
(formula: bonus^2 * 300 gp)
+1 == +300 gp
+2 == +1,200 gp
+3 == +2,700 gp
+4 == +4,800 gp
+5 == +7,500 gp
+6 == +10,800 gp
+7 == +14,700 gp
+8 == +19,200 gp
+9 == +24,300 gp
+10 == +30,000 gp
(beyond +10 is epic-level, based on the idea that a +10 masterwork nonmagic weapon is mechanically equivalent to a magical +5 weapon)

4) Personal magic is unchanged for the most part.

5) There are no gnomes or sorcerers in this campaign setting, and paladins are a prestige class (along with blackguards).

6) All PCs have maximum hit points for their class & level (I use this for all my games pretty much, but in this case it will matter more than usual).

7) Campaign material is limited to what appears in the PHB, DMG, or MM1, unless otherwise noted.


That's the crunchy parts of the house rules for the campaign that vary from the SRD.


So my concerns are: how do I keep the PCs alive without the usual grab bag of magic items they carry around improve their defenses? I don't want to limit the spellcasting ability of monsters and NPCs they will face, whose effective CRs will for certain be higher than their normal ratings.

I've considered adapting the rules for voluntary poverty (BOXD 29-31) and expanding them to cover both good and evil characters alike and removing the exalted flavor of the benefits of keeping the vow of poverty (and without requiring the characters to take and keep the Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty feats -- these benefits would come automatically and nonmagically).

Advice, constructive criticism?

Matthias said:

Masterwork bonus == cost markup
(formula: bonus^2 * 300 gp)
+1 == +300 gp
+2 == +1,200 gp
+3 == +2,700 gp
+4 == +4,800 gp
+5 == +7,500 gp
+6 == +10,800 gp
+7 == +14,700 gp
+8 == +19,200 gp
+9 == +24,300 gp
+10 == +30,000 gp
(beyond +10 is epic-level, based on the idea that a +10 masterwork nonmagic weapon is mechanically equivalent to a magical +5 weapon)

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Maybe I am misunderstanding, but your "masterwork homebrew" seems stronger than normal D&D magic to me

Matthias said:

Advice, constructive criticism?

Click to expand...

I ran a low magic campaign that started when 3.0 was first coming out. About a year ago after the climax we restarted 80 years in the future. Here's some things I noticed that I changed during the restart (or didn't change, but thought about).

Monsters are balanced against magic item toting PCs. When the PCs were 12-14, they had lots of problems hitting monsters, and were hit all the time, Any monster with power attack could reliably use it heavily all the time. You need to balance for this. At the very least, I'd add +1 CR to all non-equipment using creatures once they hit CR 4-5, and again at higher CRs.

A pure caster will have a lot of magic options that others won't. If this is a bad thing is up to you. It does make them more powerful. Considering requiring even a little bit of multiclassing if you want a low-magic feel. 'Cause you're describing "low magic item", not "low magic".

Item creation is gimped enough - if players want to expend their feat slots and then time and resources for one class of items per feat, let them. And if you are going to gimp it, switch auto-item-creation feats (wizard's scribe scroll) to something else.

I have low magic, but low level magic (like potions) can be found. Most major cities will have an item crafter or two that with gather info rolls they could find and commission. Since every wizard had scribe scroll arcane scrolls are easy to find someone to make. I ofset this by also going low-wealth.

Good luck,
=Blue(23)

White Whale said:

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but your "masterwork homebrew" seems stronger than normal D&D magic to me

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How do you figure that? A masterwork +10 weapon would get +5 to attack (maxed) and +5 to damage (maxed). That's functionally the same as a weapon with a +5 enchantment (+5 to attack, +5 to damage).

Maybe I should have stated that in the original post, that a non-epic weapon cannot have more than a +5 to attack or +5 to damage (so a non-epic weapon with a masterwork bonus of +8 could either be +5/+3, +4/+4, or +3/+5, but not +6/+2 or +2/+6).



@ Blue

You mentioned scrolls & potions -- the atmosphere of the game world might allow these, while stll moving combat gear, wands, staves, rods, and wondrous items into obscurity.

Your analysis of the monster situation sits square with mine; scaling up CRs sounds like a good way to eyeball it, although results will always vary from encounter to encounter.

Matthias said:

How do you figure that? A masterwork +10 weapon would get +5 to attack (maxed) and +5 to damage (maxed). That's functionally the same as a weapon with a +5 enchantment (+5 to attack, +5 to damage).

Click to expand...

Ok, so I misunderstood (thought a +10 weapon gave +10 to both attack and damage).

Anyway, it is still cheaper than an equivalent magic item. And frankly I don't exactly see the point in doing this change (except for flavor reasons). Essentially you have removed one aspect from the game (magic weapons), then replaced them with something almost functionally identical ("homebrew masterwork"). This is just my opinion, though.

The rest of your changes look fine. I would like to play in a campaign like this

You're right, these changes are for flavor. I also want to (re)inject some mysticism into the appearance of magic items; when a party is bursting with magical haversacks, rings, amulets, cloaks, and books of ability bonuses, the joy of granting magic items just seems to have lost its magic (pun intended).

In this game, if the party should come across a ring that makes the wearer invisible, or a sword that scorches its targets with fire, or heck, even a simple Bag of Holding, I want them to ooh and aah over them as in the good ol' days...

Encourage multiclassing: remember that PCs will no longer have magic items to boost their saving thows. For instance, the Fighter would do well to take a few levels of Rogue or Ranger to boost his Reflex save and a few levels of Knight for the Will save. So instead of a pure Ftr 12, you're a Ftr 4 / Rgr 4 / Kt 4.

To keep the power disparity down, you might want to mandate spellcaster multiclassing with characters taking Mystic Theurge or Ultimate Magus (Wizard / Bard).

I think you'll find that a Bard in the party will make a much greater difference, and a single-classed bard will be a very potent character.

I'm a bit leery of reducing the Armour Check Penalties.

As for the monsters, just use monsters of lower CR but more of them.

Take a look at the CONAN RPG. Those characters get stat bonus increases to all abilities in addition to the single ability increase of core D&D. Increasing ability scores is one way to offset lack of magic items.

Eliminate low-level items. For example, the only rings of invisibility are rings of improved invisibility. The only bags of holding are of the largest size. All magic weapons & armour are made of adamantite which increases both the cost and the rarity.

You're already giving them max hit points which helps a lot — you've just doubled their hit points! Give them a 32-point buy. Just like the CONAN RPG ability score increases, a 32-point buy gives them higher stats offsetting the need for + ability score items.

Make all permanent magic items require the permanency spell just like in previous editions.

Remove all class-skill requirements from skills (just like Iron Heroes). Give all classes an additional +2 skill points per level.

Overall it looks pretty good

You dont need to bump monster CR's, just give the players a negative level adjustment (should be less work in the long run)

Griffith has good suggestions too. Consider switching wholly to Conan RPG or Iron Heroes.

I ran an extensive low-magic 3.5 game with a strongly tweaked ruleset. It was great fun, though I went a lot further in limiting magic (there were no 'minor spellcasters', very limited spell lists channeled wizards, clerics and druids into archetypes, item creation required a formula and the feat, and the feat got you a few formulae so you could make three or four different magic items; etc.)

One cool thing about this is that low-level enemies remain semi-viable threats, because you don't have the same catastrophic inflation of AC and damage that occurs in standard-magic games at higher levels. So that 1st-level warriors total attack bonus of +3 might actually hit your 10th level fighter's AC 20!

I found that it was very advisable to watch CRs carefully. If your pcs have one magic weapon in the group, a monster with DR 15/magic deserves a +1 or +2 CR modifier.

Yeah, that game was awesome. It's over now- we finished the second arc of the campaign, which thrust them into the supermagical apocalypse that wiped out the elder civilization thousands of years before the campaign present, in pursuit of their arch-enemy. It was incredibly fun, and the game was extremely roleplaying-heavy, complete with romance and marriage and a lisping knight with a fondness for boys. The rule set I used is posted here, and the story hour of the campaign (still in progress!) is here..