Anyone ever been in a campaign like this?

[Moe Ronalds]

Has anyone ever been in a no-magic campaign? I saw Dragonheart and I noticed that the only fantasy element seemed to be the Dragons in it, and even those didn't case spells or anything. I've been kicking around the idea of a campaign world without any magic or overly magical creatures (fey, outsiders, elementals, undead, etc...) and with all the other creatures being very rare, and most of them severely altered.

So my question is has anyone had any experience with a game like this? Did it go well? Was there anything unexpected that came up (there are the obvious issues such as healing, DR, and the like.) Were there any entertaining stories and of course the most important question of all: was it fun?

 

[Darth Shoju]

no magic

I didn't do a no magic campaign, but I ran a very low magic campaign. I let the players play mages and clerics, etc, but the cultures of the campaign setting had very few magic users. As a result, the party didn't get a lot of magical treasure. I found that this was putting them at quite a bit of a disadvantage v.s. monsters from the MM as that book assumes a certain level of magic availability when assigning the monster's CRs. On the other hand, when the players were against regular people they had quite an advantage as the societ had not developed magical defenses.

In your case, where there is no magic at all, I would expect healing damage would be a bit of a hurdle, as characters would still be taking decent damage from the fighter's attacks, but would take a long time to heal. You could adopt the d20 Star Wars rule, where you had a certain number of hit points, which was fixed, and then as you advanced in level you gained "dodge points" (I can't remember the actual terms used in the SW game though ). Basically when the dodge points were all used up in a combat (you subtracted successful hits from the dodge point just like HP) you were tired and could only take partials, and then you started taking real damage. However, the dodge points came back much faster than D&D HP does. Perhaps this, or having the heal skill be much more effective, would help get around the damage issue.

Other than that, if you are not using fantastic creatures, I wouldn't worry too much about the party being underpowered, as their opponents will be too. The d20 rules are made for a system with a fair amount of magic, so there will likely be a lot more rule implications. But I'd say you should be able to roll with whatever comes up. Good luck!

 

[MarauderX]

We played a no-magic Shadowrun a while back, and it was pretty cool. Instead of magic buffs, our PCs popped pills to amplify their abilities, and technology became the new direction that everyone headed. There were no other races beyond human, just bad guys that had massive enhancements, and our DM modified adventures that had a BBEG magician to be a guy with tons of skills and hyped-up weapons that were part of his body. Traps and other things were made to act like the spells which caught us off guard, but we didn't have to worry about any ogre-mages that could swat us down within 1 round. Overall you couldn't tell how bad-@$$ someone was by looking at them, you just had to estimate and hope not to pick the wrong guy to attack.

 

[yennico]

We played a no-magic Shadowrun a while back, and it was pretty cool. Instead of magic buffs, our PCs popped pills to amplify their abilities, and technology became the new direction that everyone headed. There were no other races beyond human, just bad guys that had massive enhancements, and our DM modified adventures that had a BBEG magician to be a guy with tons of skills and hyped-up weapons that were part of his body. Traps and other things were made to act like the spells which caught us off guard, but we didn't have to worry about any ogre-mages that could swat us down within 1 round. Overall you couldn't tell how bad-@$$ someone was by looking at them, you just had to estimate and hope not to pick the wrong guy to attack.

Sounds like "true" Cyberpunk.
Why did not you played Cyberpunk ?

Just my 2 cents
yennico

 

[Centaur]

I'm not sure about a no magic campaign, personaly, I almost always play a wizard or mage character of some sort so I'm not even sure if I would like to play in a game that doesn't have magic.

However, you could include Alchemy in the mix. One of the Forgotten realms books has an alchemical "healing salve" in it. This combined with a little imagination could make for an interesting mix. If people need to spend time before they go out making a bunch of alchemical substances and this serves as there "Magic" then it could be quite interesting. Instead of a wizard character you could have a alchemist character who hurles grenades and applys healing salves. Probably also make some interesting bath salts for the end of a harrowing adventure to regenerate/relax in.

I am playing in a low-magic campaign right now (as a wizard). The GM so far has had us run accross 3 wizards in close to a year of weekly gamming. And only a handful of traditional magical items. One thing he has done however is have Mithril weapons and Armor have the same effect as a +1 enchanted equivalent, including being able to hit creatures with 10/+1 DR.

 

[Desdichado]

I'd look at the d20 Modern SRD for some examples of how to get around magical healing -- taking days and days of game time to heal may be realistic, but it's not necessarily really fun. I think that's the most boring part of Ivanhoe, for instance, is watching him get drug around the countryside on a bed.

d20 Modern has a boosted Heal skill (now called Treat Injury, but apparently 3eR will change to the same concept) and a feat called Surgery -- both can greatly accelerate healing rates for a non-magical healing game.

You also need to find a bunch of alternate classes -- otherwise you've got just the Fighter, Rogue, and Barbarian (and maybe Monk -- although not magical, he's pretty supernatural, though.) That's not necessarily a problem -- barsoomcore has done a good job developing a very interesting game with just those classes (although he has since introduced a very dangerous type of magic, reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu in a lot of ways.)

 

[Jeph]

You can handle healing the way Feng Shui does: whenever there's a lull in the action, you all get completely healed, but may keep an arm in a sling or a few scars, maybe an open wound or two, as a token.

It's certainly not realistic, but hey, is anything in DnD realistic?

As for alternate classes, pick the Scout out of Star Wars, the Woodsmen out of Wheel of Time, and the Wanderer or Scoundrel (they're the same thing) out of Wheel of Time or SW, just nix the defense and reputation bonuses. Since magic bonuses to armor and shields may be low, consider giving all characters a base AC bonus equal to one half their base Reflex save or something.

 

[Desdichado]

That's a good point -- without magic, a level based AC boost is a good thing. Wot, Star Wars and d20 Modern all do it to keep runaway BAB's from making the game weird at higher levels.

 

[Frostmarrow]

We have a rule that says that all damage is instantly healed after each battle. It's pretty unrealistic to say the least but it works like a charm. Why bother with realism?

 

[Moe Ronalds]

You also need to find a bunch of alternate classes -- otherwise you've got just the Fighter, Rogue, and Barbarian (and maybe Monk -- although not magical, he's pretty supernatural, though.) That's not necessarily a problem -- barsoomcore has done a good job developing a very interesting game with just those classes (although he has since introduced a very dangerous type of magic, reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu in a lot of ways.)

As far as the monk goes, still mind, abundant step, diamond soul, timeless body, tongue of the sun and moon, empty body, and perfect self are the only things that are too weird (or that would be useless in a magicless setting). If I removed those abilities, I'd probably just need to think of some way to replace them to compensate.

Also, I like the suggestion of adding classes from other sources, and I *really* like the idea of adding a defense bonus...

As for healing, I actually did make the Field Medic class from d20 modern into a 20 level class, and I added a new ability that auguments healing. It's slightly overpowered, but all of its abilities benefit the whole group. I'm also working on a variant expert class (at the moment just called the scientist) with d4 HD, 1/2 BaB, but an impressive ammount of skills and a few bonus feats.

I also plan to make some higher-level alchemical substances (more pricey than normal potions and more risky, but otherwise the same).