A leveling way to limit access to magic?

[Elf Witch]

I want to second the idea that in a weak magic game (including items) a cleric X/Fighter X will be very powerful indeed. Same a few other combinations. Spells become the only realistic way to beat DR/magic until a pretty high-level.

In such a world I'd likely go with the Cleric/Fighter or perhaps Cleric/Paladin depending on how that would be treated.

Issues:
#1 Cost of magic items. Are you going to bump up the _costs_ (in gold or XP) to make items? Are you going to change the expected wealth? I think you have to cut money down considerably if you don't want everyone to have tons of minor magic items. Not sure how much, but I'd consider multiplying costs for items by the minimum caster level. So potions of CLW aren't any more expensive, but CMW would be twice as much. A +1 sword has a minimum of level 5 to be able to make (that's when you can take the feat right?) so it goes to 10,000. This would make very minor items _very_ common, so maybe just have a multiplier of (1+1/2 caster level) or perhaps (2+1/2 caster level). Charge that for item creation too. Really depends on the flavor you want.

#2 Monsters and CR. This is going to go out the window and you'll have to reevaluate every CR. Also caster level for monsters.

#3 Feats that improve effective caster level (max HD). Allowed? I'd probably go with yes.

Just some thoughts. Let us know how it goes, this might be the solution to how to do this in my (main) world. I've been looking at much more complex solutions, but this might work...

Mark

Cleric/paladins can work as long as you limit prestige classes that allow you to go up in spellcasting levels for both each level. We had a player doing this with cleric/paladin and it was really powerful to powerful for our low magic game.

 

[Stormborn]

A suggestion for the less-than-full-spell-progression classes would be to use the spell-less versions found in various products. I know that such exist for Rangers and Paladins, and any player who wants a spell casting version can multiclass with Cleric or Druid as needed. Bards are a little harder. Bards really only have two things that they could not get from multiclassing, bardic music and bardic knowledge. Bardic Knowledge could easilly be converted into a feat and the music effects could exist as spells or as feats. If you do that eliminate the bard all together and allow players to create that PC through multiclassing.

Something you may want to do as well is boost the Expert class a little bit (say a feat at 1st and 4th and every 4 levels there after) for classes that want to focus on the study of magic. Into that mix you might consider a Craft Potion feat that doesn't require spell casting but is more like Alchemy. Require Survival to gather ingrediants (or use the standard cost to create for potions to buy them), Craft (alchemy) to mix them, use the normal Crafting times. Leave the XP cost as a kind of "life investment" in the process. This wil help some with your healing at lower levels when PCs are more fragile.

Consider making all Magic Arms and Armor into Legacy Items. You can't buy them, but you might find them. Once you have it you are going to have to invest in rituals and even some of your own abilities to advance them. This fits with a low magic feel, but also allows players to gain some of those cool abilities if they are willing to wait for them.

Other than that I echo what others have said about paying attention to creatures with special abilites or SR that seem designed to need magic to counter. In that regard you might want to pick up something like Iron Heroes Bestiary or other monster supplements from settigns that use low magic/no magic to augment your choices.

 

[Greg K]

For a lower powered magic game, I always thought that altering the spellcasting classes themselves might be interesting. Perhaps, delaying access to new spell levels by a level two and altering the spells per day. Another option might be to either remove or change the level of certain spells.

 

[Nadaka]

When I did a low magic campain I simply said the cleric, druid, wizard and sorcerer don't exist.

What did this do for me? It made bards the powerful full level arcane caster that works subtle yet potent magic. Paladins became the defacto warrior priests. And rangers took on the role of druids as well.

For magic items, if it can't be made by a paladin, ranger or bard it doesn't exist either. And due to the focus of these classes on aspects other than magic, existing magic items are a bit rarer as well (IIRC i gave most stuff a 25% to 50% markup on the rare occasions they were available for sale).

If that goes a little too far, you might consider giving your players the option to access spells from the wiz/sor, cleric, and druid lists by taking an exotic spell proficiency feat that allows them to learn 1 (or few) spells from those lists.