Low Magic Campaigns?

[Errant]

This is why I love the ENWorld community so much - great feedback!

Heretic - I'll have to bone up on d20 Modern spellcaster prestige classes. Not sure the L5 spell limit is quite where I want to go though. I want magic to be rare, & subtle, but powerful.

Dave - nice idea about banning evocations. I was actually thinking of banning all spells that summon, evoke or create objects, creatures or energies 'from nothing'. Trying to make magic less 'flash bang' & more subtle. I'm sure you get the idea.

Yuval - Dark Legacies sounds kinda interesting, but a bit more hard info on the setting background & rules variations would be a nice addition to their website.

Sylver, S'mon - If you ask me Excalibur is one of the all time greats. Already own a copy. Mix in a little 13th Warrior & its very close to the feel I'm looking for.

Ashrem - Midnight does look interesting. Not quite the idea I was thinking of for a low magic campaign, but a nice work in its own right.

However, has no-one actually tried playing a low-magic campaign already!?

 

[Someone]

Have you considered changing game system at all? Pendragon seem to be much more suited to what you want, and I´m sure others too. Another option, still radical but less so, it´s to eliminate completely the magic system and act arbitrarely when you want to incorporate it. No matter how evocative the system is, if the players know how it works it´ll become just a system. If they can´t grasp how it works, there will be mystery.

 

[SkidAce]

By limiting the spell levels to 5th you can have magic still be powerfull and rare by the way.

What needs to be done is change the flavor and mindset of the rest of the world also. If your magic is rare, then the 3rd level fireball hitting the massed ranks of an army would be extrmemly powerful because they would not be expecting it and would not have developed counters for it.

Less magic items, less protectective devices for the bad guys, it will balance out. Be sure to let the power and DC of the spells keep going though, that way your mage is getting "bang" for his buck.

SkidAce

 

[Desdichado]

I've played tons of low magic campaigns. d20 Modern is a low(er) magic game. d20 Call of Cthulhu even moreso. It's true, you can't play them like D&D, where you go into a dungeon and keep pushing the PCs until they're all out of heal spells and the like. I don't particularly like to play that way anyway.

 

[SylverFlame]

S'mon, yes I realize there is magic in the movie, but I said basically NO magic. Sure Merlin let's her fly, but it is not flashy nor is it all the time. He definitely seems like he's holding back and resting up as if it took a lot out of him.

That's another thing you could consider. Fatigue for spellcasters. Physical detriments for casting magic.

 

[Red Spire Press]

Yuval - Dark Legacies sounds kinda interesting, but a bit more hard info on the setting background & rules variations would be a nice addition to their website.

Yep, it sure would. The problem is striking a balance between revealing enough info and revealing too much at this point, with the book still being a little ways away. Which is why we've moved to short bits of fiction as a means to reveal background info and rules overviews without also giving away too much in terms of actual game mechanics. I'm pushing for a new web preview by month's end. In the meantime, feel free to post me some questions and I'll try to answer what I'm allowed to without incurring the wrath of Azrae.

 

[Red Spire Press]

harrr the blasted double post!

 

[Golem2176]

Low-magic Campaign

I know you are not a big fan of the Ravenloft system, the Ravenloft Player's Handbook that is coming out has a slew of ideas for low magic in the domains of Ravenloft. These rules could easily apply to an entire plane or world. Also I agree wwith SylverFlame about the 'upgrading' of the characters weapons and items. Also I read an article in Dragon Magazine 253 about spontaneous enchantments. I can easily scan this article to pdf or rtf if you are interestes. In short it details how as a result of a single influencing power, items, weaponc or whatever have latent abilities that don't show up until later in the game after doing x, where x is practically darn near anything. It's quite an interesting article. Plus I cuurently am working on a sourcebook for the d20 system detailing low magic, standard magic, high magic campaigns. It's not done (I'm about 1/4 of the way done with it) I could easily email a copy of it if you are interested.

 

[Shalewind]

I've run several lower magic games. A good quick mechanic:

Disallow taking more than 50% of your level in caster levels. This means that even a 20th level world will only have 10th level casters in it. This is simple and requires no changing to the base system. If you need magical items tonned down, disallow any that require a caster level 10+ to make or scale wealth back by half.

Since then I've come up with my own homebrew magical system. But I think the above mechanic works nicely. Not for everybody since multi-classes casters are kinda weak, but then again, that's the point isn't it? Plus, in a setting like this, those casters with healing spells become very valuable.

 

[AeroDm]

If you use the 1/2 max caster class, I'd power up the wiz/sorc. Multiclassing as a cleric or druid isn't too bad because you still have the raw power (d8 hd, medium BAB, 2 good saves) to be effective.

Push the wizard up a bit, per se d6 with medium BAB. That way multiclassing with that doesn't give you weak spells and worthless levels.