Anyone tried no offensive spellcasting?

(Psi)SeveredHead said:

I don't think that would be much fun for the caster. They're basically being turned into NPCs. It wouldn't suit 3rd Edition balance either.

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We used the Dragonstar Science-Fiction setting for D&D 3E in a campaign that was in part influenced by the Marines of the movie Aliens.

The idea was that each player should have a stable of characters, from which we handpicked one each for any given mission. Predictable enough, most players soon gravitated to one preferred character each, using the same one for every mission.

The one I gravitated to was a pacifist android (think Bishop of said film) wizard. Loads and loads of utility magic (scrolls in internal data storage!), no offensive magic. And she was an absolute joy to play! The good experiences from that campaign has influenced how I built every spell caster since...

It should work fine, really. I agree with some others that you might want to give casters more to do in combat, but most players could probably figure out something to do with their "utility" spells each round.

Now, some players might hate it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, but if your players are okay with it, it should work fine.

That said, I'd grab Iron Heroes and use that before I did this. It captures the Sword and Sorcery flavor better for me than any version of D&D/Pathfinder.

Cheers!
Kinak

Huh. Very interesting and flavorful idea. I've never tried it.

However, I had a few sessions in high-level 3e where the pcs traveled to a low-magic setting where magic effects were limited to 1: only a +1 bonus, only 1 round duration, only 1 die of damage, only 1 target, etc.

It was very cool and an interesting challenge for the pcs, but is very different from what you're talking about.

I once created a halfling wizard who eschewed evocation. It wasn't the lack of combat spells that was the trouble (he did have color spray and the like), it was the fact that light was an evocation spell. That was obnoxious.

I get this visual of a wizard shaking his fist and shouting "I'll beat you with one spell tied behind my back!"

I would like to do a 4e campaign that was martial classes only and the "wizards" would be the ones that took the Ritual Caster feat.

Quartz said:

Has anyone tried a 3E/3.5E campaign where magic cannot directly affect people against their will? So no Fireballs, no Lightning Bolts, not even Magic Missile. Nor Charm Person nor Sleep. But divinations, buffs, and summons are fine.

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Your idea is something I've been kicking around as well, especially since I've been reading The Dresden Files, where this is essentially how magic works. In the Dresdenverse, offensive magic is not impossible, but the act of harming a human(oid) is against the rules of the White Council. Certain creatures in the setting don't have souls (fey, demons, undead) and therefore can be targeted with offensive magic, but it'd be interesting to run a D&D game where there was some kind of similar ruling body of magic to dictate what characters could do.

I think it would work out fine. It would change a lot of multiclassing choices and combat roles for PC's but overall I can't see this destroying a campaign if the PC's knew about this limitation before hand.