Low-Magic Campaign

[Tony Vargas]

Something that irks me when people refer to 5E as "low magic" is that it is really only low magic in the expectations of how many permanent magic items your character needs is his career to survive fights with tougher and tougher enemies. It is in no way "low magic" when it comes to the magical abilities of most of the character classes and sub-classes. That is what I would want to see reined in ...

There's many different ways of taking 'low magic,' and, IMX, back in the day, it most often meant 'few magic items to find' and/or 'few other casters in the setting.' Both of which, perhaps unintuitively, proved (again, IMX, having preferred to run such games in the 80s and into the 90s) to put PC casters at that much more of an advantage.

I think I see the issue here Tony Vargas.

I see an issue, Caliburn, I see you taking a condescending tone, making unwarranted and false assumptions about me in a transparent ad hominem attack. But I'll snip all that, and see if there's anything of substance to reply to...

...some other fantasy rpgs, like RuneQuest or GURPS Fantasy ...how gritty and deadly can go hand in hand with a lot of magic.

Though, RuneQuest wasn't as high magic as D&D is typically played, and GURPS, of course, runs the gamut. That high-magic campaigns can be deadly, or even 'gritty' (mostly about tone and the morals & ethics of the heroes or anti-heroes in question), is only relevant to the discussion in a tangential way. Of course high-magic can be deadly, usually thanks to very deadly magic, for instance, or gritty, thanks to magic being inherently compromising in some way, perhaps. By the same token, low-magic shouldn't have to be deadly or gritty. Even a no-magic campaign should be able have a more heroic tone to it, if desired.

It isn't even difficult to make D&D low magic work well

Again, really depends on what you mean be 'low magic.' 5e works, by default, with very few magic items. It works fine in a low magic setting, with high-magic PCs, they're just at a bigger advantage. It does not work for campaigns such as the OP envisions, in which PC magical resources are tightly constrained. In addition, it offers few PC choices devoid of magic. Cut most classes & sub-classes, and add some missing non-magical elements, and you can get there.

or to change the default D&D pacing ...

Pacing, on one hand, can be irrelevant, if all you do is shift the standard 6-8 encounter day to a 6-8 encounter week with the same resources available over its course. OTOH, pacing (time pressure) is a fine tool to make a high-magic game work better, as well.

I don't have the slightest problem running an exciting game without whack-a-mole healing...

The whack-a-mole phenomenon is more recent and not integral to keeping D&D functional. It is an odd little system artifact, the combination of the heal-from-0 rule, and otherwise fairly small-number healing effects, making leveraging that rule by letting allies drop, healing them a little only to drop again, &c - that isn't ideal for all sub-genres & tones, nor even for many, but it doesn't bare directly on low-magic campaigns. Whether you want a functional D&D that's exactly like 5e, or one that eschews whack-a-mole for less goofy, but still workable alternatives (heal-from-negatives combined with bigger-numbers healing being the clearest solution, IMHO), the game could do with some more support for low-/no- magic player-facing options, particularly sub-classes (or even the unprecedented, in 5e, resort of a class that doesn't use magic, at all, in any sub-class).

 

[Caliburn101]

@ Tony - I dissect the argument you made with a rebuttal, which you do likewise in response but characterise it as an ad hominem 'attack'?

I do wish people would take robust debate for precisely what it is. The critique of an argument, and the basis of that argument is not a personal attack, and stating that you think you understand your respondents mistake is not condescending.

Otherwise every real debate ever conducted, even in a debating society with a rulebook on form is all just an exercise in condescension, by your definition.

Ultimately you are saying D&D cannot do what I say it can, and state I have done quite successfully in terms of low magic and healing. You say it's because of the nature of the rules, I say it's a DM imposed limitation to blame that, when the DM can change the terms of engagement with the rules to suit.

You began with what you yourself would term condescension - all D&D games not run the way you think they should be run as regards low magic and healing are bad, in essence, is what you stated.

You characterised a personal opinion as a truism which cannot be disagreed on with credibility.

Personally I chose to treat that as merely a robust rebuttal and responded as strongly.

If YOU had wanted to avoid personal attacks - why indulge yourself thusly?

"But I'll snip all that, and see if there's anything of substance to reply to..."

For the avoidance of any doubt, that last question is rhetorical.

 

[Tony Vargas]

@ Tony - I dissect the argument you made with a rebuttal, which you do likewise in response

And I am, again, going to limit my response to actual points, rather than respond to personal attacks, condescension, and fallacies.

Ultimately you are saying D&D cannot do what I say it can, and state I have done quite successfully in terms of low magic and healing. You say it's because of the nature of the rules, I say it's a DM imposed limitation to blame that, when the DM can change the terms of engagement with the rules to suit.

This is a thread about changing the rules & restricting character options, in order to make the game work better for a specific type of campaign. Examining how to do that necessarily reveals ways in which the system as presented doesn't handle the desired campaign as well as could be desired. So, yes, there will be things uncovered that you 'can't do' with the system as it stands - or, in some of the examples I used, stood in past editions.

There's no need to 'defend' the system from that, it's not like some attack in the edition war, it's just part of the process of an Empowered DM making decisions that will shape his campaign.

 

[Caliburn101]

And I am, again, going to limit my response to actual points, rather than respond to personal attacks, condescension, and fallacies.

This is a thread about changing the rules & restricting character options, in order to make the game work better for a specific type of campaign. Examining how to do that necessarily reveals ways in which the system as presented doesn't handle the desired campaign as well as could be desired. So, yes, there will be things uncovered that you 'can't do' with the system as it stands - or, in some of the examples I used, stood in past editions.

There's no need to 'defend' the system from that, it's not like some attack in the edition war, it's just part of the process of an Empowered DM making decisions that will shape his campaign.

So yes, it can do these things, and it in no way makes the game inevitably 'unheroic' et al.

Glad we agree.

I am not defending the system, I actually prefer other systems which require less work to be flexible and easy to use representing other genres, subgenres, styles or stories. But ultimately, any system is just a set of guidelines and probability generation methodologies sitting behind the reiterative and collective storytelling process that is roleplay.

It is the storytelling process that makes a game 'heroic' (or not), and nearly every system I have ever experienced can support that to one extent or another. The quality of the GM, the players and their interaction overrides any clever rules device or rules weakness. One system or the other can be better a 'x' or 'y', but I cannot think of any system that is completely useless in any regard.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So yes, it can do these things, and it in no way makes the game inevitably 'unheroic' et al.

Next time you want to agree with me, don't come out swing'n quite so hard. ;P

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

I still like this one

For lower level magic and an S&S grittiness to the game a fast fix that works well is to do the following;

1. Reduce HP dice for PC classes to one-step lower (e.g. 1d8 becomes 1d6, 1d12 becomes 1d10 etc.)

2. Make all healing spells use up the healing HD of the target (or in emergencies the caster) on a 1 HD for each slot level of the spell basis (life force is burned to fuel magical healing...)

3. Make Paladins the Clerics (but they can access Cleric Spell List); Make Rangers the Druids (but they can access Druid Spell List) and the only 'full' caster the Warlock renamed as Sorceror or Mage with the following changes;

(a) Replace all but the 6th level Mystic Arcanum with an Eldritch Invocation
(b) Add Arcane Tradition of choice from the Wizard Class (now called 'Path of Mastery')
(c) Rename 'Otherworldly Patron' to 'Eldritch Bloodline' (the casters source of power)
(d) Rename 'Pact' to 'Arcanum' and the character gets Chain and Book variants
(e) Make Intelligence the spellcasting stat
(f) Use the Your Spellbook rules for the Wizard Class, this otherwise being the Book from the Warlock Pact
(g) Use Wizard Class Cantrip and Spells Known progression
(h) Use Wizard and Warlock Spell Lists
(i) Has Font of Magic like Sorcerer Class
(j) Remove Eldritch Blast from the game but allow all relevant Eldritch Invocations to apply to all damaging Cantrips

4. No Bards or Bear Totem Barbarians.

5. All magic items move up one step on the rarity table, so Legendary Items are considered artefacts.

6. Introduce 'Mastercrafted' items which either give +1 DR per class (lt/med/hvy) for armour, +1 AC for shields, +1 damage for weapons or +2 skill for tools.

A nice balanced 'low-mid' magic game will ensue .

All these years later, and this post comes to mind.
Well done, Caliburn101.

My campaign is pretty vanilla 5E, now. However, I am thinking about using these variants for certain groups of NPCs in my world. That way, my players still get to play the high fantasy characters that they want to play and I get to play some sword-n-sorcery inspired house rules for my NPCs. The toned down power of the NPCs for the good guys will help explain why they need the help of the PCs. And, as I plan to open up the full cleric and druid lists to the revised Warlock (quoted above), the PCs will be in for lots of surprises from these cultists.

 

[gamerprinter]

Now this was for Pathfinder (PF1), but back when I was developing my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG), just prior to the release of Way of the Samurai (PFRPG), I wanted to playtest the various Samurai archetypes and prestige classes included in the supplement, none of which possessed spell like abilities. That meant it would be a 5th level playtest (high enough to gain at least one level in a prestige class, to test those out, or five levels as a flavor of samurai). So I created a 5th level, non magical Pathfinder based one-shot of the Seven Samurai (7 PC samurai) against the bandits scouraging the village who hires the 7 PCs to defend them against the depredations of the bandits. Nothing was adjusted mechanically, except no magic, no spells, no items existed in the entire adventure. It ran perfectly fine and was a fun one-shot and excellent play-test of my character options prior to release... so a straight up game of PF1 with no magic. It was fun!