Define "low-magic"

[mmadsen]

Some elements I agree with:

Magic items can't be bought easily. A player can't just remove 5,000 gp from his character sheet and get a really cool magic weapon.

In a low-magic campaign, players have to use more 'real life' solutions than magic.

All in all, I'd define "Low Magic" as "powerful effects are rare" and "the price to cast magic is too high to use it casually".

For me, D&D 3e tends to be a game of 20th century consumerist society with a medieval perfume.

For me, low magic is when the presence of magic has no noticeable effect on the society as a whole.

 

[barsoomcore]

To be perfectly honest, I like running low-magic games because, in hong's terminology, there's a limited amount of wahoo I need to wrap my head around.

I actually tend to run campaigns where NPCs have access to magic the PCs don't, so that I can just make stuff up and not worry about "Hey! He can't do that! That's not fair, the spell description says..." When I run the magic system I can have whatever I want happen and I don't have to justify it. Which is nice for me.

 

[Mallus]

I actually tend to run campaigns where NPCs have access to magic the PCs don't, so that I can just make stuff up and not worry about "Hey! He can't do that! That's not fair, the spell description says..." When I run the magic system I can have whatever I want happen and I don't have to justify it. Which is nice for me.

Ah... NPC's who tap the magical essence known as plot device. Its a favorite of mine.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Define "low magic"

There aren't a lot of spellcasters, magic items, giant scorpions, flying gorillas, glass fortresses and so forth in the world. But the PCs encounter all of them. Like Lord of the Rings.

 

[WizarDru]

There aren't a lot of spellcasters, magic items, giant scorpions, flying gorillas, glass fortresses and so forth in the world. But the PCs encounter all of them. Like Lord of the Rings.

Sure you don't mean Wizard of Oz?

 

[Remathilis]

Puts on his SARCASM hat:

Low magic means

* PC are sentenced unavoidable, irreversible and terminal death because cure/raise magic is poo-pooed.
* You will never find magic (be it spells or items) over 2nd level spell power...
* ...But NPCs can weild 9th level spells no problem.
* You can choose between human and uh... human.
* Fighter, rogue, uh... barbarian?
* No flight, buff, scry, teleport, raise, or nuke magic...
* ... cept for the bad guys, of course.
* Magic comes with the price of deterorated health, sanity, xp or soul-ownership.
* House cats become CR2 creatures...
* ... And still TPK the party.
* Excalibur is a +1 longsword.
* "NO" is the typical answer to "Can I play a..."
* Not typical, only answer.
* Your typical priest is an expert, magic shoppe is an adept, and artificer is a commoner with Skill Focus: Craft.
* ... But your typical evil wizard is still 9th level.

In case anyone missed it:


Seriously, Low magic is great for certain games or stories, but isn't everyone's cup of tea. I prefer the RAW, so Low magic seems like alot of nerfling.

That said, I'd also love to run a Low Magic Middle Earth game one day using a CODA to d20 conversion, so never say never...

 

[hong]

There aren't a lot of spellcasters, magic items, giant scorpions, flying gorillas

I read that as "flying tortillas" and it still made sense. I clearly need to bring the flumph back into my game.

 

[Tonguez]

There aren't a lot of spellcasters, magic items, giant scorpions, flying gorillas, glass fortresses and so forth in the world. But the PCs encounter all of them. .

Actually a setting can be low magic but still have its share of magic items,giant scorpions, flying gorillas, glass fortresses and so forth in the world. IMC the PCs are in possession of a boat which was built by forest sprites and carried to the sea by a flock of birds. On delivery the PC were asked to choose one of two names - Kaweamanu (Carried-by-birds) or Kaweapo (Carried-by-Night) - they chose Kaweapo and got as the ships familiar a tiny spider whose web has the effect of a mending spell (Kaweamanu would have got a frigate bird with a permanent fan (feather token) effect.)

A technique I have found to keep magic unique and simultaneously ubiquitous is to make ALL magic divine and require PCs to negotiate and/or earn its use. To this end I use the celestial and fiendish templates liberally to create spirit creatures and NPC who might give the PCs something ibn the right circumstance (eg a Celstial Heron whom the PCs assisted gave them a feather from her wing which had the power to heal moderate wounds). Another technique I gained from Enworld is that of a Spell Recovery rate of 1 day/spell level (eg if a Scorcerer casts Acid Fog it takes 6 days before it can be used again (ie to recover use)) in slight compensation the setting also has a feat (called The Knack) available to all PCs which allows them to cast a selected Orison wis-mod times per day.

 

[der_kluge]

You're right - I don't agree with that definition

Low-magic and realism have nothing necessarily in common. I heard about this low-magic campaign world once, where the entire universe consisted of these really big rocks floating in the air, with even bigger balls of flaming gas just hanging in mid-air, and the like. And People lived on those rocks and could even walk on the bottom and not fall off! And they were supposedly descended from monkeys. And everything was made up of these tiny things which couldn't even be seen. Realism, forsooth!

Well, you and Joshua are certainly entitled to disagree with me. And yes, a world can be low magic and still be fantastical, but show me a high magic world that isn't fantastical. At least one that's done with some verisimilitude. It's been my experience that when people seek low magic, what they're really asking for is a world that is more realistic. That is, they don't want wizards flying around raining down fireballs on their enemies. That just tends to leave a bad taste in most GMs' mouths for those that have a specific idea in mind for their campaign setting. For example, in my current game, I'm playing a cleric, and the GM is shooting for a low magic kind of game. His only real modification was to remove arcane spellcasters. Let's see how low magic it becomes when my cleric starts laying the smack down with divine power, spiritual weapons, and summon monster spells.

You could have an extremely fantastical world even without any magic at all. But you'd still have to have some way to explain it.

 

[FireLance]

Actually, I think there's one important element of low magic which hasn't really been brought up, and that's the PCs vs the rest of the world.

You can have a world where powerful magic is rare, but the PCs are the rare individuals with access to it.

You can have a world where fantastic creatures are rare, but the PCs are the rare indivduals who happen to ecounter them.

You can have a world where magic items are rare, but the PCs are the rare individuals who happen to find, make, be given, or otherwise acquire them.

However, many people take the view that the PC's access to magic must be limited simply because it is a low-magic or a rare-magic setting. That need not be the case, just as it is possible to run a party of low-magic PCs in an otherwise high-magic setting.