Low level, low magic

der_kluge · Jan 8, 2004

I would agree with Crothian, with the caveat that doing such a thing completely skews the whole CR/ECL system. I mean, take a 5th level party with no magic weapons, no spellcasters, and throw a werewolf at them, and see how well they do.

hong · Jan 9, 2004

die_kluge said:
I'm currently running a game that is high magic, high power, high level (currently 10th; they'll end at 20th).

I was thinking to myself that by the time this game is over with, everyone is going to want to play a 1st level character whose only dream is to acquire a masterwork weapon.

We've just had a two-year campaign where my PC has just retired after hitting 21st level. I can safely say that the experience has turned me off slogging through the mud to kill kobolds and dire rats for at least the foreseeable future, if not permanently.

As far as I'm concerned, D&D is about being larger than life. Slogging through the mud is not something I want to go back to.

der_kluge · Jan 9, 2004

hong said:
We've just had a two-year campaign where my PC has just retired after hitting 21st level. I can safely say that the experience has turned me off slogging through the mud to kill kobolds and dire rats for at least the foreseeable future, if not permanently.

As far as I'm concerned, D&D is about being larger than life. Slogging through the mud is not something I want to go back to.

Really? So, you're experience was just the opposite then? That, after stopping at 21st, you and your friends won't ever go back to 1st level?

That's interesting. I wonder if that will be the case with our group? I'll have to dredge this thread up and post the results in a year when we finish.

Nightfall · Jan 9, 2004

Midnight man! Only way to go IMHO.

Darklone · Jan 9, 2004

Well... I've been a big proponent of low level and low magic games since a long time... because insta kill & raise dead parties turned me off... too much CRPGs, I think.

One easy way to play such a game in D&D:
- Spellcasters have to be multiclassed and the spellcasting class may never be the highest class.
- Give out 10% of the PHB XPs. Another possibility: Every time you level, you lose the XPs needed for that level, e.g. you need 3000XPs MORE for level 3.
- No Item creation feats.

I use an additional houserule:
- Attribute raises every even, feats every odd level.
- One additional starting feat and PCs start at level 1 with a NPC class. Skill points for level 1 and 2 are doubled instead of the usual quadrupling of skillpoints at level 1.

Malk · Jan 9, 2004

I wonder at how many people seem to dislike magic. Is it really that you dislike the magic or is it something else, i know that for me and my roleplaying friends seeing what you can do at high levels and high magic has always been a really cool counterpoint to slogging through the mud and killing the kobolds. Though i can say that well DM'ed, kobold killing can be just as memorable as fighting balors, sometimes more so. I've tried starting campaigns at high levels and that has never really worked out except as a one-shot sort of thing, and I think thats because all the cool powers didnt feel earned.

Inconsequenti-AL · Jan 9, 2004

I really enjoyed running the occasional part of a session with different characters:

Our mighty characters have destroyed the Dreadful Wizard and his tower starts to tumble down. The players loot his corpse, grab his jewelry, precious things and DVD player, then with a flash and some cheap smoke effects they teleport back to 'Ye Olde Magicke Itemme Shoppe' to hock their hard earned goodies.

At this point, give them some alternative character sheets. They are now low level guardsmen, trapped in a collapsing tower and currently without an employer. The local kings Paladin army is closing in to finish of the remains of the lich kings forces. Even worse, the captain, Vlad the Vampire is very hungry

Spending an hour or two doing this sort of thing can be a lot of fun. Makes a nice diversion and those high level characters seem even better. To make it 'less pointless', I gave players XP for playing this section well, it's metagamey, but what the heck...

Mystery Man · Jan 9, 2004

I'm running a high powered high level game right now. My players are looking forward to starting back at level one. But only for a time, then they'll start complaining that they level too slow

or there's never enough loot

or that the monsters are too tough.

My typical approach to power and treasure is nothing, nothing, nothing...then whamo! the motherload. Then nothing, nothing etc. The players just never know when or where they're going to find it but when they do its all the more satisfying.

Darklone · Jan 9, 2004

Mystery Man said:
My typical approach to power and treasure is nothing, nothing, nothing...then whamo! the motherload. Then nothing, nothing etc. The players just never know when or where they're going to find it but when they do its all the more satisfying.

Funnily, I do it similar for my low level campaigns. No treasure for a long time, then ONE magical sword, but that's a big one.

Makes the whole thing more King Arthus like.

Bendris Noulg · Jan 9, 2004

Malk said:
I wonder at how many people seem to dislike magic. Is it really that you dislike the magic or is it something else...

There's no dislike of magic, but rather a question of "how much?" When there's so much magic that the game becomes less about what the characters can do and more about what their items can do, it changes the tone of game play. I mean, I guess we could start playing intelligent epic weapons with +20 worth of enhancements and get the DM to NPC some 20th Level goombas to cart us around, but that's not really the point either.

And it's not about trucking through the mud slogging it out with kobolds (although the conditions of a muddy battle filled with Kobolds possessing various Class Levels should be a challenge at any level, which is the point of making Kobolds capable of having Class Levels, isn't it?). For example, in most of the genre's literature, what could be referred to as "high level characters" move about on horse and boat (carraige, train, etc.) without running into the endless bordem of random encounters many folks like to use as their example of low-powered gaming. Really, after Gandolf leave's Frodo's place and goes to check out Mordor, how many times is his trip interupted by random orc encounters? Why, none, believe it or not.

So why do people like to use such rediculous and assinine examples to discredit something that they (clearly) have no understanding of? Are personal experiences with a bad DM causing folks to assume that any deviation from the high-powered goodies that WotC tries to dictate as "normal" D&D must be a bad game?

Isn't that called prejudice? Yeah, I thought so, too...

At any rate, it's not about a dislike of magic, else we'd be playing Traveler or Gamma World or something else. It's about magic being an element of the game, not an over-riding requirement that someone else decided to build into the system and call "standard" D&D. (Although, in all honesty, it doesn't resemble any D&D game I've played in during the past 20 years... Granted, I was in games 23 years ago that "standard" D&D resembles, but most of us were munchkins in 7th Grade anyway, so does that really count?)