Alternate (low) magic systems

[Blackwind]

Next semester, I'm going to be running a new campaign with a completely new group of players. Some of them will have more or less experience with various editions, but this is the first long-term game that I will run in 3.5. The campaign is going to be set in a homebrew world that I've been working on for some time.

My problem is that the setting has a significantly lower magic level than that assumed by 3E and 3.5. Magic is rare and mysterious, casters are rare and held in awe by the common folk. Magic items would almost never be bought and sold. When I first started playing D&D (when I was 9 or 10) we had a mix of Basic D&D, 1st and 2nd edition books, and our own imaginations. PCs didn't have anywhere near as many magic items as they do (on average) in 3E. Our campaigns were influenced by Tolkien, the earlier Dragonlance novels, and our own knowledge of history and myth. The important thing, of course, was that we used the rules to support the worlds we built and the stories we told, rather than allowing the rules to dictate the setting. In the standard settings for 3E (Greyhawk and the Realms for example - especially the Realms), it seems as if the settings have been fitted around the new rules. Magic levels seem higher.

So anyway, I tried to create my own magic system. I decided to redo the spellcasting base classes and make a new system based primarily on skills and feats. It involved mana points, a Base Casting Bonus, a ton of new skills and feats, and an original concept of different styles of magic (stone magic, herb magic, incantation, spellsinging, ritual magic) that each had their own spells and spell lists. Obviously, that idea proved to be more than I bargained for. There's no way in hell I'm going to create all those new spells.

So then I started thinking about just re-making the spellcasting core classes as prestige classes... but that too presents certain difficulties.

I know there are a lot of magic systems out there on the web and in various d20 books, and some of them are designed for low magic settings. Apparently Midnight has one. I want a magic system that will give me roughly the same feel and power level as Lord of the Rings. So my question to all you d20 experts (and commoners, too) is, simply, what magic system should I use? I would appreciate any information you have on any of the various alternate magic systems out there.

Of course, I also need something that I can customize for my setting. I'm still planning to use a lot of the original material that I'm developing, including some of the new skills, feats, etc. Other rules changes in my setting include lower PC treasure levels (and a reworking of the D&D economy to be more realistic). I'm considering using VP/WP, a hit location/realistic crit system, and rules for piecemeal armor.

Sorry for blathering on so much. Your advice is needed.

-Blackwind
(Who caught the first spelljammer out of Toril)

 

[aurance]

Here are some suggestions (untested), to be used together:

1. Use non-casting paladins, rangers and bards. Give paladins and rangers bonus feats or extraordinary special abilities to compensate at higher levels. Check out The Complete Warrior for those. For bards, remove their spellcasting, give a few bonus feats, and increase skill points to 8.

2. So the only remaining casters are druids, clerics and wizards. Make it mandatory to alternate casting and non-casting levels, so at most one could be a 10th level caster at 20th level. You can elminate druid altogether in this way, having them be cleric 10/ranger 10.

3. Increase cost (XP and gold) for magic item creation by 5. We do use this rule in our campaigns, and we found 5x to be a good number. Or, divide character wealth at each level by 5, and just have XP for item creation be base price/5 instead of base price/25.

 

[Blackwind]

I do like your idea of using noncasting paladins, rangers, and bards. For this world I've also thought about making paladin and ranger into prestige classes (tied to the setting) anyway. Good idea, and although it would it involve some work it's not nearly as bad as making up all new spells and magic system.

On the other hand I don't really like the idea of mandatory multiclassing. First heard of this over on the Middle Earth d20 site. I suppose I could use it but it just doesn't seem like a very elegant application of d20 rules.

Your suggestion on magic items/character wealth may save me a lot of playtesting, aurance. I think I like your latter option of dividing character wealth by 5 and then item creation at base price/5. Of course I'll have to experiment with it first, but it's a cool idea.

Thanks for the cool ideas. It'll be interesting to see what everyone else has to say about this too

 

[GMVictory]

Some ideas for you.

1. Restrict the spell lists. Some spells have not been invented yet or the knowledge has been lost.

2. Magic item creation feats are not available. Those things are lost lore or those who know how will only teach this to an apprentice or disciple. In the campaign I plan to run I've limited Magic Item creation feats to Brew Potion and Scribe Scroll, everything else is lost lore or can be learned by becoming an apprentice/disciple (and essentially leaving the campaign for the next few years).

3. There are two kinds of magic items: Trinkets and artifacts. Trinkets have one or two minor abilities that have subtle effects. Artifacts have greater power, however, the user may not be able to use all of those powers or the enchantments have weakened over time.

 

[aurance]

Actually I don't like the mandatory multiclassing bit either. It seems to be a rather popular idea though. The other way to do this is to keep those classes at 20 level progressions, but just stagger casting progression to be at every other level. Juice the caster classes up with something else to balance the loss of casting. It could be as simple as giving those classes more skill points / BAB, or maybe giving wizards something like bardic knowledge.

We used 10x cost at first, but found that no one thought it was worth it to create any magic items regardless of problems at hand. At 5x, people still looked very much at mundane solutions first, but did not feel the sacrifices were out of hand for those magic items they absolutely wanted or needed.

 

[Protean]

If you don't mind a singular form of magic, I would reccomend using the Wheel of Time magic system. Of course I'd probably tone done overchanneling, and lift the restrictions on male channelers. The rules for Embracing the True Source really work for campaigns that focus on magic as a manipulating force. It's implied flavor of grasping and forming the chaotic nature of magic is a pretty common one.

You might even like the reputation rules, or specific feats like The Dark One's Own Luck. I'd be careful with encounter design though. Without insta-healing, battles become far more chaotic and deadly. With Wheel of time magic, typical dungeons can be a nightmare for PCs.

 

[Golem2176]

Here's an idea: Make spell-chains. Basically make it so that unless you know spell x, you can't know spell y. Make your own custom lists that suit your campaign. Here's an example chain:

Obscuring Mist --> Fog Cloud --> Gaseous Form --> Solid Fog --> Cloudkill --> Acid Fog --> Control Weather (Fogs) --> Incendiary Cloud

 

[Particle_Man]

The game (d20) Grimm has an "imagination point - incantation" system. Learning spells is a hard task, and only a very few can be cast per day. This might be TOO low magic, but you could tweak it. Also, some schools cost more points than others, when casting spells.

 

[MQP]

I've got a low magic world as well, but I didn't change the magic system; I just said that there's less than 20 arcane casters in the setting, and used an "Arcane Injunction" agreement between those casters to not use their powers to influence politics/government in the setting on pain of the other casters hunting them down and destroying them.

I stole this idea from Sepulchrave's Story hour, btw.

MQP

 

[Tsyr]

I would suggest in this case that you can't go wrong with the system in Slaine. Here is an excerpt from a wonderful review by trancejeremy... you can read the rest here, or read all reviews of Slaine here...

Also as mentioned, Slaine has it's own magic system. It's something of a fairly simple spell point system. Each character (except Dwarves) have Earth Points, which represent how much Earth energy they have in them. It's essentially a spell point system - you spend them to cast a spell, and they regenerate over time. You can also gain more Earth Points by sacrificing things (this is often necessary for bigger spells). There are also some fairly length rules involving stone monuments (things like Stonehenge). Learning spells is done using skill points. There is a skill named 'Sorcery'. When a rank in that is taken, the character learns a spell (2 spells for a Witch or Druid). I thought this was pretty clever, as it allows anyone to learn some spells.

They also generally require a magic attack roll. Each class gets a magic attack bonus, just like the regular base attack bonus. The witch is the best, with Druid second and the other 3 pretty low. Works basically like physical combat. The spells that aren't combat/person orientated require a skill roll (there are 2 magic skills, Bless and Divination)

Slaine spells are somewhat like regular D&D/d20 spells, in that they sometimes have material components or XP cost. There's not a huge number of spells in the book, maybe 65 or so. Including perhaps the most painful spell ever, "Ligature". Other than that, most spells aren't too powerful, even the ones with high point costs (and those are likely out of the reach of PCs). These high point costs spells can be cast by sacrificing things, most notably animals (including people), and torturing them first gives you even more points. So this game is perhaps not for the sqeamish. The spells tend to be fairly subtle, not flashy like D&D spells, though there are a couple like that ("Lightning", for instance, is somewhat like the D&D spell "Call Lightning"). (There are a couple of editing gaffes in this section, with notes on artwork placement left in).