D20/OGL games geared to low magic, what's out there?

[HarryFlashman]

Must....Have...Cthulhu....Dark.....Ages!!! When is Pulp Cthulhu coming out? it is over a year late!

 

[Iron_Chef]

Conan is OGL and low magic, in the sense that there is powerful magic, but every spell and style of sorcery it springs from have prerequisites you must meet in order to learn them. This prevents low level casters from using mighty magics. Spell acquisition is slow; most mid-level sorcerers may know six spells spread out over three different sorcery styles (counterspells, hypnotism, curses, nature, summoning, oriental, divination, prestidigitation, etc.). Each style has a small number of spells which generally must be learned in a specific order before learning the style's most powerful spells.

Only one class can cast magic (Scholars), and they can be priests, witches, demonologists or whatever, though their initial background selection determines the sorcery styles available. Scholars who don't wish to learn magic are made possible by taking featrs or extra skill points instead of new magic. Sorcerers have a small base of power points (PP) with each to cast spells (spontaneously). The base # of PP equal 4 + Wis mod; your max # of PP is equal to double or triple (at 6th level) your base. To get the max, you must ritually sacrifice or torture victims, or drain them 1d4 per person out of willing, unwilling or unwitting targets (damaging their minds by 2d6 Wisdom in the process). There is a "Corruption" system to simulate the descent in evil and madness (benefits and drawbacks abiut similar to the black wizards of Lankhhmar).

There is also a Dabbler feat for those wishing to simulate some with some magic ability without taking levels in scholar. The feat lets you attempt to cast one spell per month, with unpredictable results... This lets you mimic characters like the Gray Mouser without taking levels in Scholar.

Although I haven't gotten much use of Conan's magic system yet (only 1 session into my first Conan campaign), I'm sure it will see some action soon.

 

[Krieg]

Must....Have...Cthulhu....Dark.....Ages!!! When is Pulp Cthulhu coming out? it is over a year late!

It is out now and is available from Chaosium's site.

 

[Desdichado]

My campaign setting, Dark Heritage features low magic and a dark, swashbuckling feel. It's not compatible with Grim and Gritty, as far as I know, but you're welcome to peruse it anyway.

 

[Desdichado]

My campaign setting, Dark Heritage features low magic and a dark, swashbuckling feel. It's not compatible with Grim and Gritty, as far as I know, but you're welcome to peruse it anyway.

D'oh! That's better, right?

 

[Strutinan]

The Dead Stars Rule Book is a science-fiction/horror system, but was designed to be modular enough to convert into other genres with a little work.

In the settings section you can even find a kind of "how to" guide for making it into a quasi-fantasy game.

I'm working on the magic rules for the fantasy game, and have just decided to publish them as a sepperate mini-pdf for regular 3.x games. Hopefully the mini-pdf will be out in a couple of months, but in the mean time I have a preview of the system (skill/feat based, with mana points) over at the Realms of Evil's d20 General board.

 

[Von Ether]

Bad Axe Games will have their "Grim Tales" coming soon. Very low magic, pulp stuff.

http://www.badaxegames.com/html/products/grim_tales/index.html

Green Ronin also just came out with the Psychic's Handbook, which is a OGL twist on feats and skills system featured in Star Wars. Nice thing is that the book gives several suggestions on how to make the powers more expensive or cheaper to fit the power level of your game.

http://www.greenronin.com/cgi-bin/product.cgi?prodid=1306

 

[malladin]

They are both vanilla D20 in terms of combat. HPs, AC & BAB. DarkLore DOES include a defense bonus, but that is about the only change.

Just to post a quick correction to this: DarkLore has a massive damage system which makes combat alot more deadly. It's similar to D20 Modern, but has a variable effect depending upon how badly you fail the saving throw - you also build up critical wounds.

In addition to this, there's also pur Advantages system, which provides a mechanic for political systems. As far as I'm aware this is a fairly unique mechanic, especially for D20 (I have seen similar on a few Indy RPGs online, butthe basic premise is actually taken from our first game which is as yet unpublished, but was written back in '98).

There's also a system for magic sending your wizard insane - an other way to 'darken' the magic in the game other than just making fewer spells available.

Cheerio,

Ben