Looking for balanced substitutions

[SylverFlame]

Hello all. I've been working on a campaign setting and have run into a conundrum. You see, the setting is magic rare, as I call it. What this means is that the setting is similar to a low magic setting, but instead of balancing things to make magic a little weaker, it is simply less common. One of the things I have done is purposly stated that wizards and sorcerers are highly rare (I will likely not allow more than one "magic" class in a party) and magic items can be found, but making them has become a closly guarded secret (only two guilds have access to the feats, except for potions).

Now then, this has now gotten to the point of class tweaking. I have tweaked the mage and sorcerer to accomodate the rare rules by limiting the classes, requiring guild memberships (these give bonuses in resources but require time and effort) though "rogue" wizards (along the line of Renegades in Dragonlance) are frowned on. Other things are in the work.

Now then, my next question is Clerics, Bards, Rangers, Druids and Paladins. I have taken care of the divine class by saying not all priests are clerics, Paladins are chosen by the gods so individual gods decide how much magic they have (read this as saying some "Paladins" are Paladins, though some aren't, like clerics) and Druids are subject to rarity as wizards.

Now then, how do I balance taking away Ranger spells and Bard magic? I don't want to nerf the classes though I do see them as part of my campaign world. I think the "some are, some aren't" is already being used enough with Paladins and Clerics, so I don't want to do that. I find giving them bonus feats steps too much on the fighters toes while extra skills and skill points hurts rogues. What can be done? A "beefing" of present abilities? Get rid of them and let other classes absorb the niche? I would love to hear any suggestions.

So far I have these ideas:
1) Make Rangers the "Paladins" of nature and elemental deities
2) Add bonus feats to each, though I feel this steps to heavily on the fighter's toes
3) Add skills and skill points to each, again, stepping on rogues toes
4) Simply eliminate the classes (I don't like this because I like the flavour of bards and would go for number 1 first)

Thanks.

-- A very humble SylverFlame, who is presently in the throws of obeisance to the great and helpful people of this World called EN.

 

[Aaron2]

First off, there are plenty of non-spell using Ranger varients floating around. Others might be able to specify a favorite. The Wheel of Time has one, for instance.

I'd ditch the Bard. Since their music is magical anyway and without it their no different than a rogue.

Here's what I did in my magic not-quite-so-rare homebrew.

I ditched sorcerer except for outsiders (i.e. NPCs). Since there is really no limit on their known spell choices, its hard to limit them in a meaningful way.

For wizards, I created several wizard guilds that each have their own private spells. Membership in the guild is a requirement for learning these spells. Because the wizard guilds realize that large numbers of free (i.e. non-member) wizards are a threat to their power base, they hunt down any they find. Either mind-blanking them (in the case of good guilds) or killing.

For clerics/druids, I made them need a prayer book that operates similarly to a wizards spell book. Scribing is much cheaper (5 gp per page). Each god has a limited number of spells that it can cast and new spells can only be learned by finding musty tomes.

With these two rules in place, I can control what spells the players have access too. I have been considering making wizards and clerics semi-prestige classes requiring something simple like three ranks in Knowledge (Arcane) to become a wizard and three ranks in Knowledge (Religion) to become a cleric.



Aaron

 

[SylverFlame]

I like the "spell book" for clerics and druids. For clerics, I'll just include it in their religious tome, as I don't see why no priest has ever not carried one (at least in one of my campaigns). It will be harder to think of something for the druid, though I will think of something.

The Ranger variants may work, though I think I'll just turn them into the nature/elemental paladins.

As for sorcerers, they hold a place in my world, and I'm keeping them. The thing is, most people don't trust arcane magic (like in Dragonlance) and wizards can hide their ability as they don't look any different. With sorcerers they have obvious signs that become more apparent with levels. For instance, a player could start with hair that seems to flow like fire in the wind at level one, and by level twenty they seem to be infused with fire. Also, sorcerers are going to be more limited in their spell choices, so I kind of want to keep them as flavour.

Like you pointed out, bards a rogues with magic and less skill. As much as I hate it, I'll probably turn it into a prestige class of some sort. Or, maybe not.

Thanks for the help.

 

[haiiro]

First off, there are plenty of non-spell using Ranger varients floating around. Others might be able to specify a favorite.

AEG's Mercenaries has a great sort of ranger toolkit, a class called the mercenary ranger. It's essentially lots of different ranger-y elements that you can choose from to create your version of the class -- everything from the 3.0 ranger as-is to several non-spellcasting variants. Definitely worth a look.