"low" magic campaign using D&D rules

[Keldryn]

Just to clarify for a second- it wasn't just the Melniboneans and Pan Tangians who could be spellcaster, its just that they were far and away the best spellcasters.

A spellcaster from one of the lesser races could be dangerous, but his power wouldn't be out of line with his compatriots. A Melnibonean or Pan Tangian spellcaster could be like a 10th level PC adventuring with 1st level ones.

I really don't see that as being balanced or fair towards the players who didn't roll well.

A party of Melniboneans or Pan Tangians would be 1) counter to the setting (they didn't adventure much, and rarely in groups smaller than "armies")

Even with a very slim chance of rolling either result, it's still possible to have a party of either. Regardless of what the vast majority of Melniboneans or Pan Tangians do, I don't see it being counter to the setting if there is one, single, solitary group of four Melniboneans that travel together to accomplish some purpose. It doesn't mean that they're all doing it; just the four that happen to be PCs.

But by disallowing even the chance of playing one of those races would diminish part of the appeal of the game- one might as well play a core Runequest.

Yeah... it might be like not allowing players of Dungeons & Dragons to play dragons as their characters!

You don't need to disallow it. Any imaginative GM can come up with a reason why four characters of a race that almost never "go adventuring" or "travel in groups smaller than armies" are working together, and it doesn't have to be counter to any part of the setting.

Certainly its fair- its as fair as any other die roll. In Stormbringer, each person has the same 5% chance of playing an elite race or 5% chance of playing one of the "fallen" races.

I simply don't consider it as fair if every player has an equal chance of rolling a really good result or a really poor result in character generation. It has such far-reaching effects on the entire game that players should start out on an equal playing field with equal opportunities.

Regardless of the game, you don't neccessarily get to play the PC you want to play. I can't play a paladin if the party is comprised entirely of PCs who are part of the Assassin's guild.

If you have a limited amount of free time to spend gaming -- as most working adults with families do -- why on earth would you spend all that time not playing a character you want to play?

There are ways to play a paladin if the rest of the party are members of the assassin's guild; it just takes a bit of creativity and a DM who can grasp concepts outside of "the PHB says that Paladins cannot adventure with characters of Evil alignment." There's a lot of potential interpretations of how a Paladin might act, and it is quite conceivable that a Paladin may have to suck it up and wrestle with his own personal "demons" and work with a group of evil-aligned assassins in order to serve the greater good. That's a situation rife with role-playing opportunities.

If I'm playing the original Traveller game, my PC may die during generation (my first one did, as a matter of fact). Stupid die rolls!

If I may be so blunt... what is the freaking point of that? If you are rolling on a bunch of tables to generate your character and halfway through you roll a result that says you died... Wow, that was a spectacular waste of time and half an hour of your life you'll never get back. That's poor game design. Same thing with psionics in the original AD&D PHB. If you wanted to test for psionic abilities when creating your character, you'd roll percentile dice. If you got a 96 or above (something like that, modified by Int, Wis, Cha bonsues?), yay, you get extra powers that nobody else in the group does! If you roll really low, like an 04 or less, your character is basically a vegetable. Roll a new character! Again, what an absolute waste of time. What is the point of having a possibility of your character dying during character generation, other than to waste the player's time and cause unnecessary aggrivation?

I can't play a race with a LA greater than 0 if the DM says the starting party level is 1st. No drow, githzerai, bugbears or minotaurs for me!

A DM is well within his rights to restrict particular choices during character generation. I'm not quite sure how this point is relevant to the rest of our discussion...? Now, if all of those character races had all of their fancy powers that cause them to have a +LA and you put them on a table where players rolled and 90% of the time they were a human or other PHB race, but also had a 1% chance of being a minotaur or drow, and a 1% chance of being something crappy like a kobold or a giant rat.... that would be a poor design choice, in my opinion. It's not balanced nor is it fair.

My point isn't that the game itself has to always be balanced and fair. Well, it should be fair in that the DM isn't carrying out a personal vendetta against a specific player for not giving him a ride home or whatever, but bad things happen to PCs, often as the result of chance, and I have absolutely no problem with that. Adventuring is a risky profession. But I think it's poor game design to include this sort of wildly varying randomness in character generation itself. Someone is going to roll up a Buffy, and someone else is going to get stuck being a Xander. It's hard to feel like you're contributing anything meaningful to the game when all of the other characters have you outclassed.

Mainly because the magic of the setting, while rare, was overpowering.

A single Pan Tangian or Melnibonean could kit out a party of 6 right out of the gate with enough gear to take on the entire city watch...or summon enough elementals and demons to double party size and quadruple its power.

I don't remember the mechanics of how the magic worked but... why not just limit starting characters to less powerful forms of that magic, and gradually open up the more powerful magic as he or she advances? Just because all of the characters in the books of those races had powerful magic doesn't mean they all started out being that powerful. It reeks of Palladium-esque game design (I know it was Chaosium).

 

[Celebrim]

As many have noted, the CRs get a bit off. But perhaps the PCs can have fewer but more powerful magic items than they would otherwise.

I haven't yet tried something like this for 3rd edition, but it is very much like my approach to 1st edition.

I was inspired by the idea that a heroes 'tokens of destiny' that mark him as a hero and which ultimately are identified with the hero should be largely gained near the start of the quest, and not at the end of it. So I would have the PCs acquire a series of broadly powerful, unique items, that would be expected to last them the whole or the majority of the campaign. They weren't nearly as powerful as the things you suggest, but they weren't 'swords +1'.

 

[Najo]

It's only derailed if it turns into a flame war.

ehren37 does make a very valid point that should be considered when designing and running a low-magic game.

If NPCs are utterly unequipped to handle magic, it does make the PC spellcasters even more powerful. With NPCs who are completely baffled by and afraid of magic, PC spellcasters will have no trouble ripping off every shopkeeper and noble with the use of low-level spells such as invisibility, charm person, and even basic illusions, never mind the possibilities of higher-level spells. Do you want the PCs to be able to cast minor illusion spells on bags of rocks to make them look like gems and then make thousands of gold by selling them to different jewelers in every town? City guards will get utterly trounced even by lower level PCs. PC Wizards could quite easily abuse their 1st and 2nd level spells to pretty much guarantee that the party never really has to pay for anything.

Imagine the effect that a single 1st-level Cleric or Druid (or even an Adept) can have on the village or town that he or she lives in with the three 0-level castings of purify food and drink that he or she can provide (so at least 24 gallons of water per day). It's not a powerful combat spell, but we're talking zero-level magic here that would have profound effects on the development of a community. If there are good-aligned NPCs of any of these classes -- even if they are extremely rare -- it's hard to imagine why they would not perform such services for their community. Some players don't notice or care, but others will have a hard time sustaining the suspension of disbelief when everyone in the world is completely ignorant of even the most insignificant magic that they've been able to use in abundance since 1st level.

How do you best prevent this without powering down the PCs? If the NPCs are mostly afraid of arcane magic and leary of divine magic not connected to their gods, then what defences do they have against the party that would exploit them? What spells are the trouble makers? Any specific schools that are highly abusive? What methods of protection could villagers take without PC level magic at their disposal?

 

[Najo]

I just thought of a few more. Bare with me.

* Bite the bullet and go core classes only. That means there is only arcane and divine magic. No incarnum, psionics, invocations, infusions, truenames, maneuvers, mysteries, or pactbindings. It will go a long way to keeping magic special as opposed to "one of many".

* Kill (or downplay) a few races while your at it.

* Keep Spell Compendium a DM book only. Let clerics learn new spells with a spellcraft check when they find/research them, and wizards/sorcs new spells when they stumble upon them. No free spells from SC!

* Ditto with Magic Item Compendium.

* Create a list of "acceptable" PrCs.

* Ban ANY feat that grants spellcasting ability (like those ones In Comp Arcane) for free.

Just a few more ideas since last Thought about it.

Although I don't want to remove the possiblity of options (though players having to find these choices is intriguing) your advice is keeping game balance in mind and on the right path towards what I am looking for. This is good stuff, and your efforts are really appreciated.

With that said, everyone's imput is good and I appreciate those posters who are keeping this thread on subject. To clarify, I am not looking to make changes that require adjusting game mechanics or encounter CR balance. I am not looking to make spellcasters more or less powerful than the non-spellcasters. I am not looking to remove magic items from the PCs, just make the world the opposite of ebberon, while keeping it a fantasy setting. I don't want magic street lamps, but I do want swords of ancient power and even magical technology from a lost age, that must be rediscovered.

The main issue that just came up is how to deal with even low level PCs with magic exploiting npcs without magical defenses. This is one of the things D&D has (a magic item arms race), that ruins the mystery of the supernatural and turns the world into a mirror of our own with just magic replacing technology. I prefer magic to be ancient secrets, and powerful rituals with connects to planar mover and shakers and lost spells of ancient occultists, not the alarm systems a king puts into his castle to keep his family safe. May as well put the anti crime sticker and the security company's logo in the window while he is at it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In no particular order, I respond:

I really don't see that as being balanced or fair towards the players who didn't roll well.

I suspect you don't roll stats, either. But do you use dice in combat?

What happens when you have a player who gets a rash of low rolls? Or high ones? I've been on both sides of that- a Ranger who couldn't hit his favored enemy for the entire combat (and nearly died) and a Ftr/Cleric who earned a personal blessing from Tyr (+1 Ftr level) because of an incredibly unlikely string of 20s and 100s (on a % die) spring immediately to mind.

A DM is well within his rights to restrict particular choices during character generation. I'm not quite sure how this point is relevant to the rest of our discussion...?

They are all sentient races suitable for PC play that I'd love to play regularly- and have in the past- but not being allowed to play them while others can play other races is no more or less unfair than what happens in Stormbringer. DM's whim is just as arbitrary as a die roll.

Now, if all of those character races had all of their fancy powers that cause them to have a +LA and you put them on a table where players rolled and 90% of the time they were a human or other PHB race, but also had a 1% chance of being a minotaur or drow, and a 1% chance of being something crappy like a kobold or a giant rat.... that would be a poor design choice, in my opinion. It's not balanced nor is it fair.

Again, its as fair as any other die roll.

I don't remember the mechanics of how the magic worked but... why not just limit starting characters to less powerful forms of that magic, and gradually open up the more powerful magic as he or she advances?

Because you can't.

Your facility with magic was decided by your POW score- an attribute. The higher the POW, the more powerful an elemental, demon, or virtue you could summon. As I recall, there were ways to lose POW, like unsuccessful summonings. (The basis of this system worked in countless other settings)

The problem is that Melniboneans and Pan Tangians have innately high POW scores, kind of like a Half-Orc gets a bonus to Str...except it would be more like a Storm Giant's Str bonus in comparison. This comes from their centuries or millenia-long association with demons and elementals (and even gods) in their everyday society.

Result: even a weak Melnibonean or Pan Tangian mage could successfully summon critters more easily than anyone else.

Yeah... it might be like not allowing players of Dungeons & Dragons to play dragons as their characters!

Not quite- Dragons never started off as PC races. Heck, even in legend, they are rarely the main characters, they are the antagonists to the protagonists.

Melniboneans and Pan Tangians account for a sizable number of the characters in the Elric saga. It is largely about them and their effect on the world.

There are ways to play a paladin if the rest of the party are members of the assassin's guild; it just takes a bit of creativity and a DM who can grasp concepts outside of "the PHB says that Paladins cannot adventure with characters of Evil alignment."

Sure there are- most of them just happen to involve taking away the Paladin's ability to act freely in accord with the tenets of his beliefs.

If I may be so blunt... what is the freaking point of that? If you are rolling on a bunch of tables to generate your character and halfway through you roll a result that says you died... Wow, that was a spectacular waste of time and half an hour of your life you'll never get back. That's poor game design.

Actually, its not. It was rather clever and (many of us who love the game feel it was charming).

The point was that by rolling on the charts, your PC gained benefits & perks. It was like leveling. However, the gamble was that each time you rolled, you had a chance of a bad mishap (also kind of like levelling). The more you rolled, the greater your rewards and the greater your risks. You also simultaneously generate a PC history.

For example, you start PC gen with Joe Dude. Your pal starts with Jane Plain. Joe Dude joins the Space Marines, Jane Plain goes into science. The rolling begins.

Jane Plain rolls, gets a promotion and stops.

Joe gets a certain amount of training and equipment with his rolling, earning a promotion. He rolls a few more times, gets lucky, gets some medals for valor, and keeps upping his skills. Then he gets a bad roll, is injured and is forced out of the service (with Honors!)...and takes up being a private security advisor.

Jane Plain? She has some cash, basic equipment and a little history.

Colonel Joe Dude, OTOH, has no financial worries, lots of high-end equipment, a permanent place in history, and an artificial leg.

Then the GM starts the first adventure.

Just because all of the characters in the books of those races had powerful magic doesn't mean they all started out being that powerful. It reeks of Palladium-esque game design

There is some truth to that. Palladium OCCs are notoriously not balanced against each other.

So what?

The problem with Palladium isn't the balance of the OCCs but rather clunky rules in general. Some of it is simply internally inconsistent.

The fact that a party in RIFTS can start off with a Glitterboy and a Vagabond is, in a sense, quite realistic. Think about the aftermath of the American Civil War. Wandering around the country were all kinds of people- trappers, Native American Scouts, freed slaves, displaced farmers, ex-soldiers; young & old; men and women... Should they band together...

When in life are you a member of a team where everyone has roughly equivalent abilities and experiences? Not in your family. Not in your job. Not in your friends. Not in my experience, at least.

Balance isn't the end-all-be-all of RPG design. It may not even be truly possible. And in some cases, its not even truly desirable.

I can take 300 points in HERO and design 2 PCs, one of which will play like Superman and one of which will play like Stephen Hawking. Hawking is smart, but he won't last 2 segments against Supes. Supes is ultra powerful in combat, but it will take Hawking's intellect to suss out that they need to tweek the artificial black hole's containtment field just so...

I'm sure there are people who can work similar wizardry with other point-based systems, like GURPS.

 

[Celebrim]

Same thing with psionics in the original AD&D PHB. If you wanted to test for psionic abilities when creating your character, you'd roll percentile dice. If you got a 96 or above (something like that, modified by Int, Wis, Cha bonsues?), yay, you get extra powers that nobody else in the group does! If you roll really low, like an 04 or less, your character is basically a vegetable

Well, at least for me, your point is taken. But I think that you are taking it a bit too far. I don't remember there being a penalty to rolling in the PH psionics table, except that if you did and you got 'lucky' the most likely result would be that you'd be extra vulnerable to psionic attack because not being psionic was a better way to resist than being a weak psionic.

A PC was psionic if the modified on the d% was 100 or greater. The modifiers worked out +2 for 17 INT, +5 (total) for 18 INT, +1 for 17 WIS, +3 (total) for 18 WIS, and +1 for 18 CHR. I only played with 1 psionic PC, and it was by no means over powering nor did he overshine the rest of us. Granted, the possibility of a super-powered PC was there, but it was remote beyond any real possibility and no worse than the chance that someone would (legitimately) have a character with several 18's.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

How do you best prevent this without powering down the PCs? If the NPCs are mostly afraid of arcane magic and leary of divine magic not connected to their gods, then what defences do they have against the party that would exploit them? What spells are the trouble makers? Any specific schools that are highly abusive? What methods of protection could villagers take without PC level magic at their disposal?

Normally, in a rare-magic world, PC casters with unaltered magic levels are substantially more powerful.
Some settings adress this by making casters either actively hunted (as in Midnight, or churches in some settings) or at least looking to keep a low profile (Gandalf in LOTR). Magic might be detectable over great distances or the enemies might be reliant on informers. Perhaps stone blocks this detection, so PC casters can cut loose in dungeons but must be discreet elsewhere.

There are many story elements you can use that are not "powering down" PCs per se but rather adding some in-world challenges.

 

[Najo]

Please keep my thread on subject. I love Elric as much as the next guy here, but I really do not see how debating the Strombringer rpgs game balance solves my problem I asked for help on.

thank you

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't remember there being a penalty to rolling in the PH psionics table

That's because there isn't any.

Check AD& 1Ed PHB p 110: you had to have an unmodifiedmental stat of 16+, you got bonuses for having multiple stats in that range, and you either had Psionics or you didn't.

Then you randomly determined how powerful you were if you did.

Please keep my thread on subject. I love Elric as much as the next guy here, but I really do not see how debating the Strombringer rpgs game balance solves my problem I asked for help on.

Apologies.

I merely brought it up to illustrate how another game dealt with the problem of scarce but powerful magic and its practitioners.

 

[Imp]

The main issue that just came up is how to deal with even low level PCs with magic exploiting npcs without magical defenses.

You mean if they go rogue and start looting the populace? Look at it this way: if the npcs don't have magic, what will they have that the regular-powered PCs want? It can easily be not-worthwhile to do that, if all it lands you are silver coins you can't buy magic items with and the emnity of entire cities and nations.

If you follow the keep-everything-low-level suggestion, "high level" is going to happen by the early mid-levels. I suppose you can throw in morale modifiers for the angry mobs and armies and that'll stave off PC domination for a little while. But the PCs will gain a reputation fast and hostiles will organize huge forces against them if they don't try to keep a fairly low profile. Maybe make up cautionary tales about "the last group of heroes who came through" to tip the players off. Consider having magic use attract supernatural attention sometimes.

You do however sort of have to accept the fact that if your PCs are very special in your campaign world then they are going to be very special, so they'll able to lord it over the NPCs fairly quickly – you can't have it both ways.