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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GM Lent" data-source="post: 6775892" data-attributes="member: 6798775">Interestingly, magic level aside, Dark Sun did manage to capture the feel of a S&S setting incredibly well.  It took place in a desert, mere survival was a daily challenge - heck, in the 2e version, DMs were recommended to start characters at 3rd level instead of 1st just to increase their odds of surviving.  Players were encouraged to keep a tree of alternate characters that had specific rules for leveling alongside the "main" character, so that when the main character was killed another was readily available.  That setting was pretty hardcore.I don't look forward to the task of separating spells as you describe, and it's part of the reason I decided to take a different approach in my adapting the rules to the setting.  I don't mind the madness rules in the new GM Companion, actually, but I like the debilitating Taint rules (from the 3.5 Heroes of Horror) better.  And if you haven't looked at them yet: no, the new madness rules do not include a system for applying to spells.       I 100% agree with you on the mechanics affecting the feel of a game aspect. Just earlier today I was lamenting with a friend how so many of the cool kits from the Al-Qadim setting are ill-suited to 5e mechanics.  In 2e those kits basically rewrote the way a given class worked, making it into a different class altogether, but 5e lacks the openness to additional classes that was prevalent (and truth be told, abused) in 2nd Edition.  It makes adapting a lot of older stuff really difficult.Did you look at the two new adventures?  I was surprised at how easily they looked like they could accommodate a low-magic campaign.  Not completely relevant here, but still.I also don't know how much I'd worry about balance.  Smart characters know when to fight, when to run, and when to bargain.  I'm not a fan of the videogame-esque "we will never encounter anything beyond our ability to kill" motif that has filtered into the game starting with 3rd Edition.  And related to that . . .   I actually feel that varying the XP needed to advance in level is a far more effective balancing tool than trying to make all of the classes somehow "equal" at each level could ever be.  That's the way pre-WotC versions of D&D worked.  Which you probably already know, but I don't know your background enough to assume you do.  It makes sense to me that a character who can fundamentally alter the fabric of reality at will should take longer to achieve power than the guy who beats on people with a stick. But I also feel that characters using WotC-era experience progression tables level too fast.  I considered reverting to the old TSR XP tables, but given the difference in what monsters are worth now it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Ultimately I decided to abandon XP altogether and have the characters level every so many sessions.  We play infrequently enough now that this method works for all of us.But I digress.</blockquote>

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