Search for balance low magic rules

Velmont

First Post
I want to know, have anyone played or DMed a low magic campaign and have found a good system. I want something balance, but as I've never played any game with low magic.

So any one have suggestion, preferebly something playtested in one of your games.
 

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Couple of ideas (some of which I've actually tried out):

Don't allow a spell caster to take the same spell casting class twice in a row. Arcane casters can go back and forth between Wizard and Sorcerer (if they want), Clerics multiclass very well with other classes (including Aritocrat and Expert). I've tried this once under 3rd ed rules. Not so sure about it yet.

An idea that I did implement with great sucess was instead of handing out lots of magic items, when I felt the party or PC deserved a boost I would have an in game reward of a feat. In game it would be something like: The Archmage rewards your service with a tome of the artificers. It is a storehouse of lost knowledge on the art of creating items of power. After the PC mage had examined it for a month he had create wonderous item feat for free.

I did the second one a lot and it worked out great, putting more emphasis on the characters and less on the magic items they carried around.

Ha. Reading through this the irony of giving out a magic item creation feat to reduce the number of magic items in the campaign just struck me. At the time this was below my radar because I was such a bastard when it came time for the PC to actually create any items... (no time, constant interuptons, hard to find materials).
 

One question you might want to ask yourself is "Why is this world low-magic?" (besides the fact that's what you want as a GM). Some ideas:

1. Magic is unpredictable. All spellcasters must make a Spellcraft check to cast any spell. The more difficult the DC, the more unreliable magic is. The more likely blowing a Spellcraft check results in something bad happening, the more unpredictable magic is. Example DC could be DC 15 + spell level to cast successfully. Missing by 10 or more results in something bad. No taking 10 on this roll.

2. Magic is difficult. As Darthor suggested, do not allow spellcasters to take the same spellcasting class twice in a row. This simulates a situation where levels in magic require twice the experience that other classes require, without actually imposing an XP penalty on the character. It also means that only epic characters will ever cast spells over 5th level.

3. Make magic items more expensive to produce. Instead of 1/2 gold and 1/25 experience to craft a magic item, perhaps the experience cost is 1/15 or even 1/10. Alternatively, you could leave the costs to craft the same, but double or triple the prices in the DMG, effectively raising the costs to create. This could reflect that, in your world, it's very difficult to bind magic to items, making them more scarce, hence increasing their value.

I really like Darthor's idea of handing out feats as treasure, rather than magic items. I did something similar in my last campaign, with tomes of Skill Focus: Necromancy, Brew Potion, and Power Attack. I also prepared (though the party didn't find them) tomes to add skill ranks in specific skills, and special teachers who could help characters improve some skills. The players loved receiving these things, more so than normal gear, as it improved their characters directly.
 

I like too the feat reward too.

For my low magic campaign, I have tought of this.

1. All caster level are halved.
2. Key component exist. Key component allow the caster to cast at full caster level. They are hard to find and personnalized to the caster (so you can't use the one of another wizard, that would explain why not every wizard have key for every spells). An exemple, a wizard could need a piece of a broken armor fell in a combat he fought as a key for Mage Armor.
3. All items needs one focus component. That component is generally hard to find and wizards don't give this secret easily. The nature of the component is the same and can be use again everytime the same item is created. Exemple, a staff of healing may need a phoenix feather.

What do you think of that?
 

There have been quite a few other threads in the past month or so on this, you could probably find a few good ideas in those others. Like others have said, it's important to specify WHY magic is rare. Anyway, ones I liked:

1> Require a Feat to enter each spellcaster class. (I've actually used this one, BTW). That is, make a feat called something like "Arcane Talent" that lets the person know three cantrips and cast 2/day. Anyone who wants to be a Wizard, Bard, or Sorcerer needs to have taken that Feat. There's a separate one for the Divine classes (Cleric/Paladin), one for the Nature classes (Druid/Ranger), and one for the Psionic types. So, first off it keeps people from taking spellcasting classes at level 1, since you can't pick Feats until AFTER you've picked classes. Also, it's a Feat, so you're spreading them a bit thinner.
If you want to make it even tougher, break magic into 5 "power ranges": 0, 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10+. Then, make it a Feat to enter EACH range. So, Basic Arcane Talent would give you the cantrips and unlock 1-3, Intermediate Arcane Talent unlocks 4-6, Advanced Arcane Talent unlocks 7-9, and Epic Arcane Talent unlocks 10+.
This one makes high-level mages far less common, but the magic itself is still just as potent.

2> Add a lot of material components, especially expensive/rare ones. If a Fireball needs a little bat guano it's no biggie, but if it needs enchanted Red Dragon guano things get a bit more complex. Suddenly, it's not a given that every level 10 Wizard has Fireball available. The spell's still just as potent, it's just not going to be as common.
You also need to do this for the divine versions of spells. Just because the caster is a priest doesn't mean he doesn't need a Red Dragon tooth to cast Flamestrike.
Adding foci helps too. Sure, the caster will go buy/make/find whatever foci he needs, but that takes time and he's not going to haul tons of trinkets along... or will he? Suddenly all those shamen with necklaces of teeth and feathers make more sense.

3> A level X spell always does X damage to its caster (or maybe 2*X with a Will save for half), which triggers an immediate Concentration check. So, first it means he'll probably fizzle some spells. Second, he can't just cast continuously without wasting healing spells on himself, which means it'd be nice to have some weapon skills. Third, you'll want high HP to soak up the spell damage, which means multiclassing with a fighter class... see the effect?
 

A simple idea, that did a lot.

Here's all I did for my low-magic game: All spells were moved up one level. It worked out great! Wishes and Miracles became, in essence "Epic" spells. Spellcasters could still throw magic, but everything was rarer.
 
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Check this out. I think this is one of the more interesting and balanced ideas. Here Scoot Holden-Jones or RedBaron (what he used to post under I believe) has used the pscionics handbook and developed a set of low magic rules for Middle Earth d20 that allow spelllcasters to vary the power of their spells (by not casting at maximum caster level) and to detect other spellcasters (the idea being that when one uses magic, other magic uses can detect its presence depending on how powerful the magic was). Just some thoughts, but worth a look for nothing less than some really good ideas.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/hosted/ME/SHJ/MESpellcasterSHJ.html
 

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