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

Ruin Explorer · Apr 27, 2020

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

1-2 may be pretty fatal/terrifying w/o any ability to rescue people with spells (people going down in round 1 will be the big issue - round 2-3 they'll usually be save-able). 3-6 should be fun.

Re: CON score + CON mod HP at L1, I'd consider revising this to CON score (perhaps -2) + half HD HP myself (rounding up), because otherwise a Rogue will gain a massive amount and a Barbarian might gain barely anything. Unless that's the goal for some reason.

Fenris-77 · Apr 27, 2020

Fleshing out the usefullness of the healer kit to include some options to manage conditions like poisoned or paralyzed might be a good idea, or just avoid monsters that use conditions that the party can't manage.

Horwath · Apr 27, 2020

I would add spell-less rangers and paladins into this. to be some semi-decent healing option.

instead of spells you give them battle-master maneuvers.
d8 dice only.
4 dice at level 2. 2 maneuvers at level 2
level 5, one extra maneuver
level 9, one extra dice, one extra maneuver,
level 13, one extra maneuver,
level 17, one extra dice, one extra maneuver,

Paladin,
Increase Lay on hands from 5 per level to 5+cha bonus per level
Divine smite, +1d8 damage. prof mod+cha bonus usage per long rest.

Ranger.
And nature salve.
Ranger can prepare a number of healing salves after every long rest.
Number equals prof mod+wis bonus.
Application is one minute. Heals 1d6 damage per ranger level. Round-up.
3rd level, ranger gets expertise in 2 skills from list: athletics, stealth, animal handling, nature, perception, survival

jsaving · Apr 27, 2020

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

This is the main thing you need to think about in designing your ostensibly no-magic campaign.

If as you say you are going that route because you dislike "high-management" aspects of the game, then it would be curiously one-sided to block all spells whether or not they are high-management while allowing all martial abilities whether or not they are high-management.

But I've known a fair number of DMs who at one time or another decided to play low-magic campaigns. One of them banned ranged spells while relabeling touch-range spells as alchemy/medical effects. Another eliminated spell slots altogether (though this had the unintentional side effect of funneling players toward the most high-management martial abilities in the ruleset). Yet another went through the entire PH to produce a small set of spells and abilities he considered "reasonable" and then made players use only those.

The problem is, any "solution" you introduce may seem arbitrary to your players, and they won't entirely be wrong about that. I'd suggest sitting down with your group and having a conversation about why you feel like this is something worth trying, and then a couple of gaming sessions down the road being willing to reassess and potentially even throw out the whole idea if things don't go the way you intended.

Remathilis · Apr 27, 2020

My suggestion is to find a better system. Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire is probably a far better system for this kind of game. Don't cram D&D's said l square peg into a round hole.

atanakar · Apr 27, 2020

I'm looking at my 2e Historical Reference Books.
Never ran a campaign with one of these. I think it's time.
D&D is what you want it to be.

dave2008 · Apr 27, 2020

Horwath said:
I would add spell-less rangers and paladins into this. to be some semi-decent healing option.

instead of spells you give them battle-master maneuvers.
d8 dice only.
4 dice at level 2. 2 maneuvers at level 2
level 5, one extra maneuver
level 9, one extra dice, one extra maneuver,
level 13, one extra maneuver,
level 17, one extra dice, one extra maneuver,

Paladin,
Increase Lay on hands from 5 per level to 5+cha bonus per level
Divine smite, +1d8 damage. prof mod+cha bonus usage per long rest.

Ranger.
And nature salve.
Ranger can prepare a number of healing salves after every long rest.
Number equals prof mod+wis bonus.
Application is one minute. Heals 1d6 damage per ranger level. Round-up.
3rd level, ranger gets expertise in 2 skills from list: athletics, stealth, animal handling, nature, perception, survival

the rogue scout makes a pretty good spell-less ranger

dave2008 · Apr 27, 2020

We almost do this. In the last two groups I played with each only had one spell caster (a wizard in one and a druid in the other). Based on that experience, and the fact the AiME is set up to do it for 20 levels, I think it would work just fine

dave2008 · Apr 27, 2020

Remathilis said:
My suggestion is to find a better system. Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire is probably a far better system for this kind of game. Don't cram D&D's said l square peg into a round hole.

It actually works pretty great with D&D. You just have to find a group that buys into the no-caster model.

atanakar · Apr 27, 2020

dave2008 said:
It actually works pretty great with D&D. You just have to find a group that buys into the no-caster model.

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.

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

Ruin Explorer

Legend

Fenris-77

Small God of the Dozens

Horwath

Legend

jsaving

Adventurer

Remathilis

Legend

atanakar

Hero

dave2008

Legend

dave2008

Legend

dave2008

Legend

atanakar

Hero

Similar Threads