Hussar
Legend
It's mild, but it's still basically a "screw you" to casters, a problem they deal with that the other classes don't. It you want to avoid discouraging casters, maybe consider some similar rule for warriors - perhaps equipment breakage, or lasting injury, or some sort of madness check at the monstrous violence they're perpetuating or something appropriately PT-esque.
Well, to be fair, they do, in the rules, outright lay some screwing to the fighter types- no plate mail, no (or at least very rare) steel weapons, meaning that you are using bronze ones (steel weapons are treated as magic weapons), magic items are cut in about half or less, which has a greater impact on the non-casters. And, yes, the madness checks apply to everyone.
Lasting injury actually wouldn't fit with S&S tropes. S&S heroes only suffer lasting injury at very rare occasions, when it's convenient to the plot. Otherwise, Conan is shaking it off and carrying it on.
Yeah, trying to make full casters unappealing is just making a trap option, an option you don't really want them to take and will punish them for taking. It's like a restaurant serving steak, but if you order it, it will be pre-chewed and mashed up in old bathwater before you serve it. Just take it off the menu. You don't really want to serve it, anyway. If the kind of game you wanna play doesn't include magic-casters as party members, just don't allow 'em.
I get the sense that PT overall isn't necessarily that kind of setting by default (since they don't ban casters or give rules for gimping them), but it is perhaps compatible with that vibe.
You can very much tell PT was written with 3e in mind. Even though they talk about how rare magic is, and how it's supposed to be a very low magic setting, the mechanics are very much falling short in this area. It's one of the weaker parts of PT IMO.
I think in that DL instance, you'll be disappointed if you expect the casters to do the heavy lifting. They nova'd and helped neutralize some of the big guns, but now they're significantly out of juice. We could've neutralized those big guns cheaper if we had some friggin' nets.![]()
We'll see next week. But, I'm thinking that the casters are going to be dropping fireballs and whatnot at a pretty high rate. And, even if they don't, they still neutralized TWO dragons without us taking a single point of damage. Again, something that you shouldn't be able to do in a low magic game.
Put it another way. An 8th level full caster has 12 spell slots per day as a base. Not counting at-wills or ritual casting. If an adventuring day (about 6-8 encountersX3-4 rounds/encounter) is 30 rounds long (give or take), that means your single full caster is blasting away with a spell every other round. Never minding that some casters regain some spells on a short rest. Multiply that by two or three casters in the group, and basically, every single round of every single encounter will see spells being cast. Every single non-combat scenario will see some rituals being cast (or at-wills like Guidance) in a typical group.
Look at the lower level Princes of the Apocalypse campaign. When our group scouts, the druid shape changes into a giant spider (hey, free blindsight and a major boost to stealth) and the ranger goes invisible (again, thanks to the druid). I DO NOT WANT.

So, yeah, I'm thinking just flat out banning PC full casters is the way I'll be going. Since paladins are already banned in the setting, that leaves most classes with fairly "mundane" magic.