D&D 5E Low magic player characters in D&D 5e

[Gadget]

Traditionally, a 'Low Magic' campaign in D&D usually means a combination of very scarce magical items and a rarity of full caster NPCs in the world. I.E. there is no friendly clerics/druids on every other corner willing to heal or selling healing potions, no barrel of +1 swords to be inspected and purchased, etc. Sometimes there are restrictions on the full caster classes for PCs, either through out right banning, requiring multi-classing with a mundane class, or a role-play oriented "burn the witch" type scenario. 5e makes this harder because, as others have mentioned, there are more classes and sub-classes with spells/supernatural abilities, and the martial classes are better balanced with the spell casters (so the martial classes are not as dependent on magic items as they were in past editions, so the lack of magic items are not as telling, and any difficulties imposed on the spell casters does make them suffer more in comparison).

I guess the question is: what type of 'low magic' feel do you want? Is it more of a 'Lord of the Rings' feel, where there is magic, but it is much more rare and subtle, but because the PCs are participating in a grand epic, they end up having more of these 'rare' items (mithril mail, glowing swords, star glass, Elven cloaks, not to mention a magic ring) than would be expected in the setting? Or is it more of a Conan-esque world where any magic is corrupt and evil (possibly with a Great Old Ones vibe), life is cheap, but the wine and song are plentiful?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Another possible option:

There are only three classes in the game: Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue

The Barbarian only has the Berzerker sub-class. The Fighter and Rogue have all three of their sub-classes, but their magical ones are slightly changed (becoming the "full casters" of this world.

The Eldritch Knight's spell list is replaced with the Cleric's spell list (and the sub-class is called the Cleric). The Arcane Trickster's spell list is replaced with the full Wizard's spell list (and the sub-class is called the Mage). This way, you start your career as a non-magical character,and only gain some magical capabilities starting at 3rd level. Plus the number and power of your spells are reined in (going only as high as 4th level spells and you only know a few total.)

Thus what you end up with are Clerics who are strong weapon-wielders just like Fighters are, and Mages are sneaky and have to hide and protect their secrets and power just like Rogues do.

Any desire for the classic classes gets accomplished by taking the applicable Background. A Rogue (Mage) with the Entertainer background is your bard. A Fighter (Cleric) with the Knight background is your paladin. A Fighter (Champion) with the Outlander background is your ranger, etc.

 

[Pibby]

I'd leave everything as is except cantrips if they're the only problem. Give each class that has cantrips slots for them instead of unlimited uses where the slots they have for those cantrips are equal to the number of 1st level slots they have (so up to 4 per long rest). Discourage players from using the Warlock class, unless they decide to become take the Blade boon pact, since that class's main strength is the use of strong cantrips.

If it's to your and your players' taste you can use the alternate rest rules in the DMG where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is a week. This means casters will spam their spells less on a daily basis and thus give it more thought before they use a spell.

Do keep in mind that spells are not always of the hocus-pocus variant; the Knock spells is just literally the caster knocking on an object.

 

[Beleriphon]

You may have to consider the problem of healing. Most 5e methods of fast healing require magic. So no magic means little or no fast healing, which can slow play down to a crawl, especially when things go wrong for the PCs.
....
Workarounds include making healing potions alchemical rather than magical, and improving the effectiveness of mundane medicine.

I was going to say, healing potions are fine and at 50gp a pop magical or otherwise they're probably out of the hands of anybody but the PCs. It supports the low magic feel if the most magical thing you can find is a red potion that heals a paltry sum of HP.

I'd also very much use the potion admixture table from the DMG for a game like this. Mixing potions should have the possibility of explosive results.

As for PC classes and such being wizards and whatnot, I always like the feel of the The Witcher for low magic. Several of the main characters in the game are sorceresses of some power, and the world at large is still low magic. People aren't inherently afraid of them in a burn them at the stake kind of way but rather distrust power that isn't perceived to be entirely loyal to the local crown.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Others have hinted at this already, but here's what I would do.

Only two classes: Fighter and Rogue, but allow Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters.

They have access to every spell on every list.

All spells that can be cast as rituals can ONLY be cast as rituals.

If you're a fan of Law and Chaos as a big axis in your game, have alignment determined by the type of spells a character takes. Learning Arcane spells pushes the character towards Chaos, learning Cleric spells towards Law, and Druid spells towards Neutral.

For a slightly more magical option that still feels swords and sorcery, allow a third class, Wizard. They have access to all spells in the manner described above.

 

[Zaran]

I think 5e is already low magic.

 

[Dausuul]

The only idea I've come up with so far (and I'm not sure it's a good one!) is to restrict cantrips to characters who have already reached the 5th level. This makes multi-classing into a caster at 5th level an option — the spells might not be that powerful, but your cantrips will scale with your total character level, so your fire bolt will do 2d10 damage. And it means that characters who want to take the challenging path of single-class wizards would spend their first 4 levels being very cautious in combat, but would be rewarded at 5th level with powerful cantrips.

This proposal is not as punitive as it seems, because before level 5, a mundane weapon offers comparable performance to an attack cantrip. Take a light crossbow. For a level 1 wizard with Dex 14, Int 16, the crossbow is +4 to hit/1d8+2 damage, versus +5 to hit/1d10 damage for fire bolt. If a typical target has AC 13, you're looking at an average of 3.9 damage for the crossbow, versus about 3.6 for the cantrip.

At level 4, the cantrip improves since the wizard will presumably take +2 Int, but they're still pretty close. Only at level 5, when the cantrip starts dealing 2d10 damage, does the spell move decisively ahead--and that's precisely the point where you allow cantrips to come online. So I think this is an idea worth considering. If you want to make it a bit more of a transition between "no cantrips" and "cantrips at will," you could say that casters below 5th level can cast a number of cantrips equal to their number of 1st-level spell slots; they get these cantrip slots back after a short rest.

 

[MoonSong]

OH! THis reminds me of something I was going to put in my initial list:

Ritual Magic! Go through and take the utility spells that are castable as rituals...and make them Ritual ONLY! Sure, you're PC spellcasters can sure learn/use them, as rituals. But they are no longer "off the cuff" spells. Would probably, imho, help to make the magic FEEL more "low/strenuous/costly."

This completely shafts sorcerers, they don't have ritual caster, and those spells are about the most subtle on their list. Just saying, this change makes them more high magic even...

I would actually remove warlocks, wizards, and clerics, and then remove all flashy cantrips and damaging spells from the druid, bard and sorcerer, then leave all other classes as they are. Have spellcasters actually have to rely upon weapons for combat and maybe limit paladins to only smithing, druids to only circle of the moon, and remove arcane tricksters and eldritch knights. On a world where magic is uncommon, there wouldn't be ways to accurately study magic, so nothing of the industry that wizards need -libraries, special paper, ancient tomes etc- in fact maybe I would remove arcana as a skill altogether, so all magic would come by mere chance -sorcerers- or by ritualistically practice some tradition -bards, druids and rangers-, paladins could still be a problem, but by removing spellcasting you are making them less conspicuous.

 

[steeldragons]

This completely shafts sorcerers, they don't have ritual caster, and those spells are about the most subtle on their list. Just saying, this change makes them more high magic even...

Well, if you'd read my entire plan, you'd see that sorcerers would not be a concern at all as they would be banned or too unattractive in NPC interactions to be taken. They can be "shafted" right off the table as far as I'm concerned and, moreover, in a purposely low magic setting/game, they are barely justified as a class at all.

Since I know you have no concept of a D&D game that includes anything but a very specific 3.x mental-image of what a sorcerer is/must be, I think it safe to say you can save us all a lot of hassle by ignoring anything I might suggest regarding them. [EDIT for hyperbolic language: "Some of us..."/EDIT] know your views on 5e sorcerers.

 

[Riley37]

How about a campaign set in a "low-swords" world?

You know, a world in which over 90% of humanity are peasant farmers, and maybe 2-4% of humanity has learned "sword and board" or equivalent fighting styles?

Would you restrict PCs becoming fighters, rangers, paladins?

Keeping in mind, of course, that historically, Middle Ages Europe was a "low-swords" setting. LotR may also have been a low-swords setting; it's just that the story is about the top 1% of the population, and the bottom 90% are invisible and nameless everywhere outside the Shire.

My point is, deciding that the world AROUND the PCs is low-magic is one thing, and IMO, a good thing, and finding a +1 Chainmail should be "wow, I own a MAGIC ITEM!" rather than "ho hum, one more for the collection".
And you can do that, and still have all the PCs be spellcasters. (See also the Ars Magica TRPG.)

Deciding that the *party* is low-magic, is another thing entirely. In which case, either bar spellcasting entirely, or you're gonna have that one PC who's a super-special snowflake... just as Luke Skywalker was the only Force-Sensitive in the party, and thus the central character.

A warlock, a fighter, and a rogue walk into a bar. Everyone pays attention to the warlock, because he's the first one they've ever seen.
A warlock, a wizard, a bard and a druid walk into a bar. People pay attention to all of them - because they all are spellcasters, though in different ways from each other.