Low Magic in D&D - How'd it work out for you?

[Huw]

I ran a "no middle magic" campaign. That is to say, spells, potions and even wands were relatively common, but permanent magical items were either powerful or non-existant.

Example: The party got their first magical weapon - a +2 sword with a minor extra power and a couple of minor drawbacks - at 5th level. They also had a ring of elemental command by 7th level (which they'd activated properly by 10th). Also, by 10th level, there were about 6 permanent items in a party of 8. Many of these got swapped around - I rarely had all 8 players at once.

Worked well. The characters had a good selection of silver and cold iron weapons (I'd altered many monsters so that one of these would work), and made good use of potions.

 

[The Levitator]

• Magic Item Reaction table? Interesting idea. I've love to see the details.

Why, I'd be happy to elaborate! Here's the copy and paste from our house rules:

• Magic items have a unique signature that makes them unstable in close proximity of other magical items. Whenever a magical item "bonds" with a creature already possessing one or more magical items, there is a chance that one or more of the items will have a reaction. There is a 20% per item that the items are not compatible. Due to the magical energy, magical items “bond” in effect to anyone who possesses them. There are several possible outcomes of 2 items bonded to a single creature reacting with each other.

Roll d100
01-20- Item explodes, doing 1d6/2000 gp. value of the item (10’ radius, Reflex save for half) and destroys item.
21-80- Item releases energy harmlessly, making the item non-magical
81-00- Item drains the magic of another item, making that item non-magical
and making it more magical.

Reactions take 1 hour per 1000GP value to react. Spellcasters (SOR and WIZ only) have the ability to sense incompatible items as soon as they are within range of each other. The spellcaster makes a Spellcraft DC=15 check. A spellcaster can make this check every 10 minutes. This requires active participation by the spellcaster. This gives them time to separate the items. Non-spellcasters have no way of sensing incompatibility.

 

[Imp]

Cap levels. Kick the high-level stuff offplane, jack up item creation feats several levels, introduce spell rarity for certain effects. Then you have the option of having continuing high-level adventures with superheroic PCs – in different worlds geared towards high-level adventures.

The high-magicness of 3E is pretty overrated in the first 10 levels, which is why E6 works so well for that sort of game.

There's a bunch of little things you can do, like introduce metals that give sharp weapons a +1 to damage (so, when masterworked, you have a nonmagical +1 weapon), mundane counters to magical spells, things like that.

Taking detect magic out of the game makes things interesting.

 

[Aus_Snow]

E6 did it without changing from 3.5e

Uh, that is 'changing from 3.5e.' In a big way.

I mean sure, if that particular radical overhaul suits you or someone else, cool. But that doesn't make it D&D 3.5. 'Cause that it ain't.

 

[Ry]

Uh, that is 'changing from 3.5e.' In a big way.

I mean sure, if that particular radical overhaul suits you or someone else, cool. But that doesn't make it D&D 3.5. 'Cause that it ain't.

I meant that you know how it works. All the pieces of 3.5e are still there, you just put them together differently. That's different from say True20, where the pieces are different.

 

[Ulrick]

Yeah, not so well past 5th level.
1) CRs get way out of whack, and it's a PITA to balance things.
2) They adventure for 1 minute, then rest to recover hit points. "*yawn* It must be past my bedtime. Oh, look at that! It's 8:01am! Time to sleep!"

Not so good.
-blarg

I noticed the same thing too when I ran a low-magic campaign for 3.5. It's really difficult to adapt modules to a low magic game too.

While I didn't have as much problem with your second premise (my low-magic campaign had more roleplaying than combat), your first premise rings true. In the end it was more work for me, the DM. I had to be careful in my selection of monsters because of immunities. NPCs had to be toned down. It just got old.

The players, however, loved the campaign, however.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

I'm running a low magic game in the world of Magnamund (from the LW gamebooks and Mongoose Lone Wolf RPG) with D&D 3.5, here's what I did:

1. Magic is uncommon but not so uncommon that peasants run in mortal terror at seeing a light spell, but they may give that person depending on whether their experience with magic or rumours/stories they've heard paint it in a favorable light or a bad light.

2. Magic items are almost nonexistant. Scrolls are available though not sold widely outside huge cities. Potions I've tipped more towards an alchemical nature. Brew Potion is now Alchemy and has prereqs like Know Nature so many ranks. Potions don't detect as magic because they are just mixtures and they also have an "expiration date, " that is, you may find five potions in a cache of a bad guy's belongings but they could be a year old and their potency gone.
Making potions isn't something you do while adventuring, it requires downtime and a lab.
Wands, Rods, Staves, Wondrous Items, magic weapons and armors cannot be made; the world has lost the knowledge to forge these magical items but can be recovered. They are very rare.
I like the odd wondrous items. No stat boosters, PCs have to stand on their own stats.
The players are 5th-6th level, I think only one of them has a magic item, and it's a curious item from Complete Adventurer.
The former PC of one of the players had a ring that prevented death effects but no one knew what it was.
Magic items are mysterious and rare.

3. Most of the uber broken spells are removed from the game and high level spells are difficult to learn.

4. Most of the highly magic PrCs are gone.


The rest is just flavor. I don't throw hugely powerful aberrations or magical beasts against the PCs, most of their opponents have been humans actually. Thri-kreen, a neogi, one or two special vampires I made (drastically altered from the MM), Szalls (goblins), low level undead, a wyvern, and a young white dragon. I'm not going to throw something with huge amounts of DR that can only be overcome by magic unless one of them has a magic weapon, or using funky powers that cannot be countered with anything but magic items. If things go the way I think they will, most of their opponents will continue to be humans or humanoids.
The game has been a lot of roleplay punctuated by combats and travel. What few really powerful wizards there are tend to stay out of the affairs of government.
There aren't really adventurers per se in the game world, just people with extraordinary skills who get caught up in events.

It has made for an interesting and plot filled game.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

<snip>
2) They adventure for 1 minute, then rest to recover hit points. "*yawn* It must be past my bedtime. Oh, look at that! It's 8:01am! Time to sleep!"

Not so good.
-blarg

Easily dealt with using a trick I learned on here.
Characters cannot use 8 hours to recover until at least 8 hours have passed since their last 8 hour rest period.
PCs go to bed at 11pm, get up at 7am, eat and adventure until 8:00am and decide to rest again because they haven't managed their resources wisely? Sure, but your rest won't start counting toward the rest needed to recover HPs/spells/class abilities/etc until 3pm.
So the PCs can choose just hang out in one place from 8am to 3pm, doing nothing and afraid to continue adventuring without replenshing themselves (including going further into the dungeon/finding the princess/McGuffin/whatever) or can continue on, using due diligence in consuming the resources they have remaining and tomorrow, plan better.

The former choice will mean holding position in a possibly hostile environment like a dungeon or forest for 15 hours (8am-3pm and then the 8 to get the rest needed to recover spells and HPs), braving wandering monsters and just generally unheroic. Even if in a safe location, that's another night spent at the inn with gold going out and little coming in.
Possibly falling behind on the quest if it is time critical.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I meant that you know how it works. All the pieces of 3.5e are still there, you just put them together differently. That's different from say True20, where the pieces are different.

Ah, OK. Gotcha.