Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="nharwell" data-source="post: 266626" data-attributes="member: 1099">wrong gameI personally love low-magic item but high fantasy games (Conan genre, etc.).  Unfortunately, D&D is not the game for that.  There are many other systems that work fine for this type of game -- from GURPS to Feng Shui to HERO ...The nature of hit points and armor class in D&D require that a certain amount of healing and protective magics be available.  The fact that a 15th level fighter without magic is, in general, as easy to hit as a 5th level fighter really hurts the "high fantasy-action" part of the game (not to mention realism). Hit point differences do not adequately represent this, given that they must "heal" -- the recovery time for hit point damage is far too slow to represent "fatigue" or "luck."In addition, creature abilities such as damage reduction, flight, invisibility, etherealness, etc., are much more powerful in a low-magic game.  Even though the CR system is far from perfect, it does work reasonably well -- and a DM in this sort of game must reinvent the whole system to determine balance and appropriate experience.  Likewise, some classes (rogue, barabarian, fighter, etc.) are at a severe combat disadvantage compared to the abilities of other classes (monk, sorceror, cleric, wizard) to overcome various creature abilities and defenses.Finally, despite the addition of feats and a workable skill system to D&D, non-spellcasters do not have very many "abilities."  Skill points are too few and feats too rare to really represent the range of abilities of any fictional fantasy character -- even at high levels.  Magic items fill that roll in the game.  Even more than helping in combat, the items add flexibility to the characters.  Now, even though I've mostly spoken against "low-magic" games, it is possible to run and have fun with such a setting.  In my experience, though, those games never really work past 5th level or so (I'm sure many here will counter that with their own experiences, though).  If you run such a game, here's what I think you need to consider:(1) modifying the combat system, perhaps using defensive bonuses, armor, and Vitality/Wound points from Star Wars.  This would reduce the necessity for defensive and healing magics.(2) greatly limiting the more "magical" creatures in the game -- anything with damage reduction, etherealness, etc., must be rarer, or they would overrun large areas of civilization (and will certainly kill PCs more easily)(3) Giving more skills and perhaps more feats (or using some other type of "special abilities"). Since the PCs won't have much magic to cover their weakness or to represent the "cool abilities" they see in fictional characters, add more to the characters themselves.</blockquote>

Verification