altering d20/d&d for low magic games

[Afrodyte]

Inspired by the discussion on this thread, I've decided to see what can be done to make the system work for low magic games.

Of course, before going into that, I should clarify what definitions exist for low magic. Basically it seems there are several types of low magic games:

1. Lower frequency of magic
2. Lower power of magic
3. Narrower distribution of magic (like only certain races or creatures have any significant capacity for magic)
4. More subtle magic
5. A combination of the above

I won't get into which is better because all that is a matter of taste and is not really relevant to the issue at hand. I'm more interested in the things you have done (or would do) to make low magic work for d&d. Some of the things that I've seen a lot are: limiting the availability of particular spells, reducing the maximum spell level available to spellcasters, require spellcasters to multiclass, and make the acquisition of spells more difficult. However, I'm sure there are other ideas that haven't seen the light of day just yet, and I'm certainly interested in those.

What type of low magic do you (or would you) prefer to GM or play? How have you (or would you) tweak the system to fit your preference?

 

[Conaill]

One of the simplest and most elegant tricks to get a low-magic D&D is to require all spellcasters to multiclass, such that your Caster Level can never be more than half your character level. (You'll also need to increase magic item prices by 2 or more etc, but that's the main idea.) Keeps all the characters balanced, but restricts pre-epic magic to 5th level spells or lower.

 

[Red Spire Press]

Low-magic ends up being about a lot more than just tweaking the magic system. There are so many interconnected factors in the d20 system that it becomes a laborious task to make everything mesh together again. Which is why you should save yourself the trouble and pick up the Dark Legacies Player's Guide.

I'll quote from a post I made recently about what we've done which should give you some insight into the process for creating a complete low-magic/rare-magic/whatever campaign:

The Dark Legacies Player's Guide, due out later this month, may help you out. It is a low-magic ruleset and campaign setting intro that handles every aspect of what low-magic is really about. The mortal practice of magic has only recently come to humanity, born on the backs of other races destroyed by it. Entrenched institutionalized religions fear the encroachment of this personal power on their territory, waging war against it in the name of everything holy. And the actual practicioners of magic, succeptible to its Abyssal origins, walk a fine line between corruption and enlightenment.

There are no schools of magic in Dark Legacies. All magic is effectively demonic, sourced from the Abyss. A new spellcasting system introduces difficulty in the form of spellcasting rolls, spellcasting strain, difficulty sourcing components, and lots of consequences including spell failure and corrupting taint, while maintaining compatability with third party spells. It is a low-magic setting in every sense of the word: magic is new, magic is feared, magic is rare, magic is hard to master, and most importantly (and often ignored) most people wouldn't want to use magic even if they could.

In addition to the purely magical changes to the rules/setting, there is a wealth of supporting rules and intricately detailed "reasons why". There are conventional equipment upgrades and feats that are a happy substitute for excessive magic items; low-magic gaming guidelines and new skill uses; a brand new system for priests to combat and control the chaotic forces of the Abyss, of magic, and also their own people; and there are new races and classes, all of which contribute to an intense and exciting gaming experience where the wave of a magic wand is not desired as Preferred Solution #1(tm) to all woes.

 

[Desdichado]

Wow, I'm suddenly having tons of opportunities to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart...

But I always say the same thing. I've done a fairly brusque refitting of the system by replacing almost all the classes and borrowing the magic system from the d20 Call of Cthulhu game. This site shows specifically how I've done it. But the short version is that I have no spellcasting classes at all. No wizards or sorcerors. No clerics or druids. Not even any paladins, rangers or bards.

Anyone can learn a spell; I have a third (now fourth) level character that can cast the spell Fist of Yog-Sothoth which does (character level)*d6 damage when cast, but which causes 2 points of strength damage and 1d6 Sanity damage to the caster every time (not to mention the Sanity damage from learning the spell in the first place...) Since his Sanity is now in the 20s, he only uses that spell if he's desperate. Really, really desperate.

I've also had one magic item turn up, loosely modeled on the Witchfire, made famous in the Witchfire trilogy series of modules from Privateer Press (but known more colloquially to my players as "the big-ass demon sword") -- it's about 8 feet long and is possessed by multiple demons. It does some serious damage; the entire party would have been killed in a heartbeat without it ignoring 10 points of natural armor bonus on a certain largish bad guy and doing 2d12 + STR modifier damage to his iron-bound arse (good damage rolls helped too), but it also bites its wielder every time it attacks anyone, as well as whispering blasphemous heresies into the very soul of it's user -- after losing 1d6 Sanity and 1d6 hit points every single time he made a successful attack, which was like four times, the third level character was reduced to a gibbering idiot in negative hitpoints who was only too happy to never see the foul weapon again.

It really depends on exactly what you mean by low magic, I guess. A lot of people are happy with something as simple as nerfing half a dozen spells, or house ruling that all dedicated spellcasting classes must not let their spellcasting class level pass up their non-spellcasting class level. That's low magic, but obviously a much different feel than my campaign.

One thing that's really important to keep in mind is that the CR system isn't really balanced all that well without "regular magic." You have to do exactly what we used to do in the old days; look over the monster/character abilities of your antagonists, mentally stack them up against the abilities of your PCs and make a judgement call on how well they'll be able to perform. I've been lucky (or good, but modest!) in that I've been able to have some real nail-biter encounters without having any real balance issues -- i.e., encounters that were either much too easy or much too difficult for what I wanted. I did have a pack of slightly downgraded dire badgers (with a different picture, but mechanically that's what they were) who savaged the PCs a bit more than I thought, and I did have to make some impromptu downgrades to my martial artist iron lich (he didn't cast any spells, and I "forgot" his damage reduction) after already toning down the natural armor bonus to begin with.

It takes a bit of practice to do that, though, and a willingness to admit to yourself that "whoops, I slightly flubbed this encounter -- what can I do to make it about the difficulty class I intended it to be?" and then have the ability think on your feet just a bit. But I've gotten fairly good at that; in fact, I'm just as likely to blow the balance in a regular D&D game as in my low magic game anyway.

I dunno. Anything else you want to talk about specifically?

 

[VirgilCaine]

............Read my sig.

 

[GlassJaw]

Inspired by the discussion on this thread

I've created a monster!!

I've done a fairly brusque refitting of the system by replacing almost all the classes and borrowing the magic system from the d20 Call of Cthulhu game. This site shows specifically how I've done it. But the short version is that I have no spellcasting classes at all. No wizards or sorcerors. No clerics or druids. Not even any paladins, rangers or bards.

I checked out your site - very nice. Although I will say that your campaign is almost in a class by itself. I'm not sure I would actually call it a low-magic D&D campaign at all. It's so different that I think it's difficult to compare. You have some great ideas though.

Like you said, you have none, zero, nada, spellcasting classes. You aren't really toning down the D&D magic system, you are starting with no magic and adding a very dangerous way to cast individual spells/incantations (the Cthulhu system). I almost consider your campaign to be Cthulhu in a fantasty/swashbuckling setting rather than a low-magic D&D setting.

I would like to get into more of a discussion on the mechanics, rules, issues, etc with altering that pesky table on pg. 135 of the DMG (Character Wealth by Level).

Let's say you are starting a new campaign with the following concept in mind:

I don't want the characters to be completely reliant and defined by the items they carry. While I want magic to exist in the world, I want to make it more rare than a standard setting but I also don't want to completely eliminate certain classes or rewrite the spellcasting system. What are some of the things I can do to acheive this and what will I have to do to compensate for a diminished magic level?

 

[Desdichado]

............Read my sig.

..............Stop telling me how to play my game.

 

[Desdichado]

I checked out your site - very nice. Although I will say that your campaign is almost in a class by itself. I'm not sure I would actually call it a low-magic D&D campaign at all. It's so different that I think it's difficult to compare. You have some great ideas though.

I totally agree; I call my game a d20 fantasy game rather than D&D. Most people equate the two, but clearly it isn't necessarily true. Mine's closer to the d20 Conan RPG or d20 Wheel of Time RPG than to D&D per se.

Then again, Midnight is considered by its fans and creators to essentially be a D&D setting, and the mechanical changes it introduces are of a similar scope.

 

[GlassJaw]

If you want a low-magic game, play D20 Modern, without FX. Stop modifiying D&D!

NO-magic is quite different than LOW-magic. - Me

 

[Galethorn]

"If you want a low-magic game, and don't want to go to the trouble of modifying D&D, try Grim Tales!"- me, just now.

I tried modifying D&D. I spent a year trying all sorts of variants, but it never worked quite right. Now, my campaign is D20 Fantasy, using Grim Tales, and several of the variants that I liked best from my D&D-modding days. The group still calls it D&D, though, for some reason.

So, if you want low magic, and D20, but don't want to have to pound D&D into something it isn't meant to be, then give Grim Tales a look. If you're like me, you'll never go back. Except for high-magic games, when others are DM, but that's a whole other story.