How to remove magic spells and still balance the classes?

[Cougar]

Ok, I am coming up with a homebrew campaign setting and I want to remove the major magic using classes (cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard) and dump the paladin due to his reliance on divine power. I also want to take out all spells from the ranger and bard, but leave the classes in. I want the Bard to keep most of his bardic music abilities, but he riles so heavy on spells I am not sure I can balance it with a rogue or a fighter. Same with a ranger, although they don't rely as heavily on spells. Any thoughts? Anyone do this in their campaign?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Dave

 

[DanMcS]

A ranger without spells is a fighter with some abnormal bonus feats (favored enemy, track). You'd do better to revamp the fighter into a more general class with a couple extra skill points and make the favored enemy thing into a feat chain, than to try to rebalance the class without spells. Actually, all classes should have extra skill points, since there won't be spells to accomplish a lot of things for them.

Redoing the bard without spells, eh, I don't know enough about bards to even take a shot at that one. The spells seem pretty inherent to the class, though, that could be hard.

 

[Umbran]

Redoing the bard without spells, eh, I don't know enough about bards to even take a shot at that one. The spells seem pretty inherent to the class, though, that could be hard.

Well, if you are rewritign the fighter to take up the favored enemy as feats, why not rewrite teh rogue to take the up musical abilities as feats?

At that point, it might not be so odd to rewrite the game to have two classes - fighter and rogue. Fighter takes up the ranger and barbarian abilities as feats or PrC. Rogue takes up bard and monk as feats or PrC. All the others are gone anyway.

 

[takyris]

Not to be utterly unhelpful, but you could always play d20 Modern with D&D equipment and monsters -- and even with the more heroic 50-point Massive Damage Threshold.

Barbarian = Strong/Tough
Fighter = Strong, aim for Soldier
Ranger = Strong/Fast, aim for Gunslinger and rename it Archer
Monk = Strong/Fast, aim for Martial Artist
Rogue = Fast/Smart, aim for Infiltrator
Bard = Charismatic, aim for Personality or Negotiator

Works perfectly well without any magic.

 

[Cougar]

No that is a helpful suggestion. I don't have the d20 Modern book, but I can look at the SRD to get some ideas. I might go that way, but I think I will just stick with D&D for now.

 

[Cougar]

It had been suggested by one of the members of my group to allow for bonus class features and abilities based on some of the spells as well as giving bonus feats for the removal of the spell lists.

 

[jmucchiello]

Ok, I am coming up with a homebrew campaign setting and I want to remove the major magic using classes (cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard) and dump the paladin due to his reliance on divine power. I also want to take out all spells from the ranger and bard, but leave the classes in. I want the Bard to keep most of his bardic music abilities, but he riles so heavy on spells I am not sure I can balance it with a rogue or a fighter. Same with a ranger, although they don't rely as heavily on spells. Any thoughts? Anyone do this in their campaign?

Not exactly designed to for removing spells completely from the classes, Character Customization makes it possible to rebalance classes in this manner. I plan to use the system in CC as the basis for another book on dialing down (or up) the magic in a setting. But that's not nearly ready for public consumption.

(end blatant plug)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Ok, I am coming up with a homebrew campaign setting and I want to remove the major magic using classes (cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard) and dump the paladin due to his reliance on divine power. I also want to take out all spells from the ranger and bard, but leave the classes in. I want the Bard to keep most of his bardic music abilities, but he riles so heavy on spells I am not sure I can balance it with a rogue or a fighter. Same with a ranger, although they don't rely as heavily on spells. Any thoughts? Anyone do this in their campaign?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Dave

There's no real way to de-magic the bard, although if the songs don't bother you try boosting them. They're the only unique bard feature.

As for the ranger, taking away spells only reduces AC and speed, not much else. I suggest giving it a class bonus to AC (+3 to +6 by 20th-level) and give it +10 feet to it's speed at 4th-level or so.

 

[Cougar]

Post deleted

 

[Cougar]

There's no real way to de-magic the bard, although if the songs don't bother you try boosting them. They're the only unique bard feature.

As for the ranger, taking away spells only reduces AC and speed, not much else. I suggest giving it a class bonus to AC (+3 to +6 by 20th-level) and give it +10 feet to it's speed at 4th-level or so.

Good ideas. Especially on the Ranger. I had planned to look at the WoT Woodman and see how they did the woodsy character with no spells.

Bard is tough. I don't even like the bard, but since I am removing the other classes I want to leave as many as possible. I like the bardic music concept (although I know some of them won't work in a magic free world) but I am not sure how the class will stand without them. Maybe I will have to make it more of a rogue variant.