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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6998151" data-attributes="member: 996">I've run low-magic a few times.  I ran a low-magic /items/ AD&D campaign for many years, where NPC casters were comparatively rare, though occasionally powerful.  The upshot of that style of world with more-or-less regular rules for the PCs was that PC casters were much more effective, interesting to play, and that mechanisms that limited or challenged them (making spells, components, &c 'rare,' for instance; or making casters misunderstood) turned easily into plot hooks and story arcs, and could be leveraged by clever players to their advantage.    NP, you might lean more towards making magic mysterious than 'low,' and that's also helped by keeping a damper on the players magic-using options...Good idea, having no restrictions on Paladins and Clerics, brings plenty of healing/support magic to the party, so you won't much need to re-balance encounters or 'days' or anything like that.Though, IMX (above), curiosity/suspicion or fear of magic-users is something they can turn to their advantage.  In 5e a good choice of Background, for just one instance, could help you conceal that you're a caster when it's inconvenient - while leveraging it at other times.Makes for good plot-hooks.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Balance is something the DM typically needs to manage, anyway, so fear of unbalancing the game shouldn't hold anyone back.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   Restricting or 'nerfing' magical options is a way to bring a party more into-line with a low-/no- magic setting, if that's the kind of theme the DM is going for (there's little magic in the world, and little magic among the party).  It's also perfectly legitimate for the story to focus on a party of heroic casters who constitute a substantial set of the world's magic-users - even all those not downright evil - the world is low-magic, but the party & their ultimate enemies are anything but (like a super-hero setting where the party and their enemies are the only supers around).Without magic also contributing to healing, HD will get stretched pretty thing and fights can go bad quickly when someone gets dropped and can't be brought back up again.  The existing non-magical PC options are few and not too-high impact.  Second Wind has been mocked as 'regeneration' for the fighter, but it's really not much in any practical sense.  Inspiring Leader is non-trivial damage mitigation, there's a healer feat (I can never remember the exact name of) that's probably the most potent option & can net quite a bit, and there's the very limited inspirational healing of the PDK.  My experience with 4e was that when you had adequate non-magical healing (which was easy, between Surges representing far more available healing than HD, Second Wind being available to all, and Warlords having Inspiring Word, and other martial classes have a surge-trigger hear or there) and used inherent bonuses, going low- or no- magic was pretty seamless, so it /can/ work.  In 5e, low- or no- magic leaves too few and not sufficiently varied PC options, and HD aren't quite enough by themselves, so you just have to exercise some of that DM Empowerment and tweak a few things beyond just limiting access to magic.</blockquote>

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