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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6594063" data-attributes="member: 1465">You have separate issues here: magic items, and spellcasters.First of all, 5e should work also in complete absence of magic items, so that's settled.As for spellcasters, you need to be very sure what do you mean by "low-magic". You mention that you want spellcasters to be rare, not necessarily you want their power to be low, which is an independent issue. This is good, because it means you don't need to do any change to the existing classes or other material.Now that we've narrowed the problem down to mere rarity of spellcasters, consider also the separation between PC spellcasters and NPC spellcasters... Because you can totally have a party of ALL spellcasters, and then have ZERO spellcasting NPCs ever, and you'll still have a world where spellcasters are nearly non-existant, the only ones just happen to be concentrated in the player's group <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Personally, if I want to set a campaign's theme to "low-magic" in terms of spellcasters rarity, I wouldn't necessarily restrict the races and classes available to the PC, but I strive to make the PCs feel truly alone and different from the rest of the world.Among other things this could mean to assume:- they'll never find another of their kind- they'll never find scrolls or spellbooks to copy spells from - they'll never find magical training or knowledge through RP- the rest of the world will strongly react to them (fear, awe, hatred, anything...)Still, it's for the best to discuss with your players, because the final thematic result will be very different from having truly no spellcaster in the party. Ask them which "theme" would they prefer from the game, between being unique marvels in a near-magic-free world, or magic-free heros in a near-magic-free world.From the point of view of capabilities (i.e. lacking spells to save the day) I wouldn't worry at all. The game will work just fine, and if anything, it might actually force the players to think more than usual about how to solve certain challenges that can be traditionally bypassed with spells.My suggestion is not to worry about when it's appropriate to grant (dis)advantage, just grant it ONLY when the written books tell you so.Thus when a PC has a spell/ability that says "grants (dis)advantage to someone", then do it, but don't do it by your own volition in any other case. Don't even worry much about whether some conditions or environmental circumstances grant (dis)advantage: if you happen to remember that, then yes proceed as by the book, but if you forget, it's not a big deal.I think (dis)advantage has some built-in flexibility, but mostly only in the direction of making it more common by granting the benefits to reward a player's creativity or tactical thinking, but it also carries the danger of going very easily overboard.</blockquote>

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