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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blackwind" data-source="post: 1268537" data-attributes="member: 1205">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)</blockquote>

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