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

[Remathilis]

It removes an arms-race aspect from the game..

By having the DM win it from the get-go.


Here is my final piece of advice to anyone going down this road: if you are going to limit magic for your players, limit it for yourself. No archmages, only rare cultists or hedge-mages. Magical monsters are very rare and always have vunerlabilities to exploit. Your NPCs should reflect your PCs more often then not.

I say this because it is really easy to limit your PCs ability to affect things without magic and then use magic to shield your plots, NPCs and so on. I've seen it done too many times but more than one DM. So make sure you are playing but the same rules as your PCs, so to speak.

The best way to avoid an arms race is to agree on mutual disarmorment.

 

[ART!]

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

As has been mentioned, there are a couple of well-done spell-less ranger re-writes out there that would fit the mold here.

My players will like this. They prefer strong campaign concepts. We are tired of the usual D&D tropes. We did play one game of AIME last year and they liked it.

Yeah, with my group I'm trying to push for fewer 6-month to 2-year campaigns and more 2-3 month-long campaigns, if only to try out some concepts and variants and see what we like. We've been playing 5E for a good long while, there's no talk of playing anything else (other than boardgames every couple of weeks), so it'd be good to explore some different approaches to 5E.

Intelligence and Charisma are next-to-unusable in a no-caster party. Even a rogue is going to want Dexterity then Constitution (because of the lack of healing). This means it's very hard to have a team "face" or team smart guy, making social interaction difficult. If I were you, I'd introduce some new class or subclass that lets you use Intelligence or Charisma in combat somehow, so that a build with those abilities as primary or secondary is feasible without being combat dead weight.

You could do things like having more language options, to make INT more attractive, and emphasize social stuff to encourage some CHA builds. In that regard, detaching ability score bonuses from race would be a good approach for a spell-less 5E campaign.

 

[atanakar]

By having the DM win it from the get-go.

Here is my final piece of advice to anyone going down this road: if you are going to limit magic for your players, limit it for yourself. No archmages, only rare cultists or hedge-mages. Magical monsters are very rare and always have vunerlabilities to exploit. Your NPCs should reflect your PCs more often then not.

I say this because it is really easy to limit your PCs ability to affect things without magic and then use magic to shield your plots, NPCs and so on. I've seen it done too many times but more than one DM. So make sure you are playing but the same rules as your PCs, so to speak.

The best way to avoid an arms race is to agree on mutual disarmorment.

There is more than one flavour of fantasy and more than one way to play D&D. It is possible to have archmages in a no magic campaign. You just have to supply the legend and artifact (McGuffin) to destroy it. Not everything needs to be symmetrical. All this needs to be discussed at session zero (and before) with the players.

 

[DND_Reborn]

By having the DM win it from the get-go.


Here is my final piece of advice to anyone going down this road: if you are going to limit magic for your players, limit it for yourself. No archmages, only rare cultists or hedge-mages. Magical monsters are very rare and always have vunerlabilities to exploit. Your NPCs should reflect your PCs more often then not.

I say this because it is really easy to limit your PCs ability to affect things without magic and then use magic to shield your plots, NPCs and so on. I've seen it done too many times but more than one DM. So make sure you are playing but the same rules as your PCs, so to speak.

The best way to avoid an arms race is to agree on mutual disarmorment.

^ snipe

 

[Remathilis]

There is more than one flavour of fantasy and more than one way to play D&D. It is possible to have archmages in a no magic campaign. You just have to supply the legend and artifact (McGuffin) to destroy it. Not everything needs to be symmetrical. All this needs to be discussed at session zero (and before) with the players.

Good luck then. May you thread the needle where many have failed.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

This edition is fairly low magic compared to AD&D, 2E, 3E, 3.5 and 4E. The only jack up would be granting cantrips to primary spellcasters, but they're tricks and trivialities for the most part - they replace ranged weapons with something more representative of the class.

Running a 5E game with no magic is kind of a waste. The game is built around the presence of magic. If I want to have a low magic experience, I favor other systems - GURPS specifically - for things like a western game, spy game, or scifi game.

Perhaps at high levels, but when I compare a first level magic-user in B/X to a first level wizard in 5e, I see a world of difference. At some point the B/X magic-user might surpass the 5e wizard, but I don't normally play those levels anyway. You mileage may, of course, vary.

 

[atanakar]

THE CAMPAIGN

The campaign will take the form of a vision-quest given by the village seer at the end of session one. It will be a mega-module for levels 1 to 6. I've never done a classic Quest before.

The Gods have decided that the Archmage's hubris has finally gone too far. He wants to ascend to challenge them. They want to strike him down by proxy. They had foreseen this possible scenario at the beginning of time and placed four hidden artifacts in the world-forest in which the Celtes-Like humans live. The PCs become the god's chosen heroes after receiving a mark on the chest over their heart.

After the initial set up, one PC will receive a vision on the location of one artifact. Then a second PC, a third and a fourth will receive a vision. Once all four artifacts are secured the PCs will proceed to the final encounter against the archmage. If they succeed order is maintained. If they fail the Archmage ascends to challenge the Gods themselves.

It is a world with almost no magic. The majority of opponents would be humans with ill intent. No orcs and other humanoids. Beasts and Dire Beast are threat. Strong emphasis on dangerous plants since this will be set in a world-forest. Fungus that infect other creatures, mutate them and changes their normal behaviour, is a good way to create bizarre creatures without using magic.

No magical creatures or creatures that require magical weapons to hit. No mythological creatures. No devils or demons. No psionics.

Some creatures will be experimentations by the Archmage. Mutations and crossbreeds of regular creatures let loose in the wild. Fey creatures as manifestations of the gods. They do not live in the prime material but they can access it from time to time. Considering weird-minor-gods anchored to a specific location. A few trans-planar creatures.

Experience Points:
I haven't used XPs since the second half of 2e. We do not play often enough or long enough to do the XP grind like we used to in the 80s. Instead I divide the number of XP required on a number of sessions. In this case, they will level up every two games. For our group it represents one year of role-playing. 12 games. For this reason I do not need a myriad of creatures, monsters and foes. I only need enough to run the course of the quest.

Who's the Archmage?
He's just a regular guy who became the shaman of his tribe long time ago. Over time he figured out a way to borrow magical power from small fey creatures he entrapped. He was caught and cast out of his village. In his travels he found a place to settle atop a small mountain. The veil between the world and the fey world is thin in that area. Over the decades he has perfected his craft and uses a series of McGuffins to power up more and more power. To the point that he has now angered the Gods.

 

[GlassJaw]

I love gritty, low-magic settings. I love the sword & sorcery genre. I've played and run low-magic games and done some work on low-magic rules. I also love 5E.

That said, I'm definitely agree that 5E can't do it without serious rework. You really need to scrap the classes almost entirely. While not perfect, I would start by looking at what AiME did.

The core mechanic and numeric scale of 5E is absolutely conducive to a low-magic style, it's just that everything tacked on top isn't applicable. The default "setting" of 5E, while maybe not "high magic", is most certainly common/plentiful magic. Magic touches almost everything, included the rule systems. It's implied everywhere.

 

[atanakar]

I love gritty, low-magic settings. I love the sword & sorcery genre. I've played and run low-magic games and done some work on low-magic rules. I also love 5E.

That said, I'm definitely agree that 5E can't do it without serious rework. You really need to scrap the classes almost entirely. While not perfect, I would start by looking at what AiME did.

The core mechanic and numeric scale of 5E is absolutely conducive to a low-magic style, it's just that everything tacked on top isn't applicable. The default "setting" of 5E, while maybe not "high magic", is most certainly common/plentiful magic. Magic touches almost everything, included the rule systems. It's implied everywhere.

Correct. Look at post #55. Tell me what you think.

 

[FXR]

My Sword & Sorcery game features spell-less bard, ranger and paladin classes and no clerics. My actual party feature a barbarian slayer, a battlemaster fighter, a hunter ranger and a swashbuckling rogue. Tagging along them is a Vengeance Paladin, so it's quite feasible to have a spell-less party.