D&D General A campaign without classes that use magic?

[atanakar]

Lately, I've become tired of classes that use magic - arcane and divine.

I find they are «high management» for the DM and give the players several scenario breaking spells. For my next campaign I'm considering to simply ban magic using classes for PCs and keep them only for foes. Sword & sorcery style. Have you done this before with D&D? What problems to you for see? Other than some players being upset, which we will consider a non-issue for the purpose of this discussion.

I would give Constitution Score + Con Bonus at first level. The only healing would be HDs, surges and long rests.

Edit: I should have mentioned it will be level 1 to 6. No sub-classes that use magic.

 

[Iry]

Your biggest hurdle is that even martial class become blatantly superhuman and have several obviously supernatural abilities.

If you don't want characters to break your scenarios that is something to discuss with the players OOC. Otherwise they will still break your scenarios even with martial classes.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Sure, I haven't done it myself, but I've heard of others doing this.

Adventures In Middle Earth is actually designed for this, and replaces all of the existing classes with classes that are basically non magical (I think at the higher levels you can pick up some minor magical tricks depending on class, but nothing like traditional D&D).

 

[noko]

Lately, I've become tired of classes that use magic - arcane and divine.

I find they are «high management» for the DM and give the players several scenario breaking spells. For my next campaign I'm considering to simply ban magic using classes for PCs and keep them only for foes. Sword & sorcery style. Have you done this before with D&D? What problems to you for see? Other than some players being upset, which we will consider a non-issue for the purpose of this discussion.

I would give Constitution Score + Con Bonus at first level. The only healing would be HDs, surges and long rests.

It would still have to be quite a low-magic world or all humans would be under magic's heavy foot.

 

[TwoSix]

I'd probably add a couple of non-magic using homebrew classes to give your players some more mechanical options.

I'd probably boost the role of alchemy, and make healing and restoration potions easy to obtain; this allows adventurers to convert gold into resources, which makes for a more satisfying play cycle. And cackling potion-makers fits well into sword and sorcery tropes.

 

[Nebulous]

Your biggest hurdle is that even martial class become blatantly superhuman and have several obviously supernatural abilities.

If you don't want characters to break your scenarios that is something to discuss with the players OOC. Otherwise they will still break your scenarios even with martial classes.

It's not that bad a low level. I think the OP could accomplish what he wants if he keeps the campaign 1st-5th. But you need to have players who are onboard with a no spellcaster DnD campaign, that's going to be the hardest part.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Haven't done it, but I've read about and looked at doing it. I don't see any major obstacles to doing it. HD will limit healing - recall that by default you only get 50% of your HD back per long rest, so you may be able to run with fewer than the usual 6-8 encounters per LR without problems, especially once they get going, because they will be down a few HD a lot of the time.

The only annoyance will I think be that a vast number of classes and subclasses use at least a little bit of magic, and you'll have to consider what, exactly, magic is - cantrips and things that use spell slots? Or most of the Barbarian subclasses? What about Monks?

You might quite easily end up with a limited selection of Fighter and Rogue subclasses, and like, Barbarian Berserkers as the only allowed subclasses if you go maximally anti-magic (which I think is going further than sword and sorcery material, myself). I also suspect it'll be a lot more fun 3-8 or so than 1-2 or 9+, if the enemies still get a lot of magic, especially as some stuff that's normally relatively easy to deal with at those levels will simply be a case of "RIP". No revivify, no getting people back up from 0 HP in combat (ever, well barring potions or the like I guess), all that will likely add up to a lot of PCs biting it in situations which wouldn't have been a huge problem in a more typical game.

It won't be borked, but unless you're raring to make encounters drastically more challenging, you'll want to take care with monster selection and expected encounters/day.

 

[Stoutstien]

Lately, I've become tired of classes that use magic - arcane and divine.

I find they are «high management» for the DM and give the players several scenario breaking spells. For my next campaign I'm considering to simply ban magic using classes for PCs and keep them only for foes. Sword & sorcery style. Have you done this before with D&D? What problems to you for see? Other than some players being upset, which we will consider a non-issue for the purpose of this discussion.

I would give Constitution Score + Con Bonus at first level. The only healing would be HDs, surges and long rests.

Well there is a difference between running vs game with no magic and running one without spells. The vast majority of classes/subclasses/ races have at least some base in magical power and ablities. Just something to keep in mind.
Another point to consider is how will THP work. Inspiring leader, battle master rally, long death monk, and a few other sources are not magical.

Personally I've ran 2 games with zero to little magic and they went fine. The only hurdles came up in mid tier 3 with mobility of higher CR NPCs.

 

[atanakar]

I should have mentioned it will be level 1 to 6.

 

[Fenris-77]

Going no spell slots is what the OP is getting at I think, not eliminating every vestige of magic from the game. There is lots of 3PP material that could be adapted or used outright to give some more mechanical options to classes that are losing their 1/3 caster options. Rangers can be made using either Fighter of Rogue, or there are non-spell casting variants available.