D&D 5E Single Magic campaign

[Anthony Vu]

I'm trying to make my first-ish homebrew game. I'm looking for a way to have it where people only know one kind of magic, such as the power to freeze things, the power to manifest weapons, increase ones physical strength, etc. (or in easy terms anime super powers and magic).

 

[DEFCON 1]

Interesting idea. Personally though, if I was to try and do this... I wouldn't use D&D 5E to try and accomplish it. I'd use a superhero roleplaying game, as those are designed and built to have a character creation process which revolves around a "theme" for all their abilities.

If you want to stay within the realms of the D&D-esque d20 die for combat, I'd heartily suggest you look into picking up Mutants & Masterminds from Green Ronin. It is based upon 3rd edition D&D's d20 System (at least for the first couple editions it was extremely close, this new 3rd edition seems to have expanded out a bit from a strict d20 System). Thus if you want a game that is based around "roll a d20, add modifiers, aim for a DC"... M&M is really the system you might want to look at so you can build characters that are "fire based" or "telekinetic" or "super-dense" etc.

Here's the quickstart rules for Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition.

 

[Satyrn]

I'm trying to make my first-ish homebrew game. I'm looking for a way to have it where people only know one kind of magic, such as the power to freeze things, the power to manifest weapons, increase ones physical strength, etc. (or in easy terms anime super powers and magic).

I don't think you'll get your player's buy-in for that. But okay:

There was a 3e 3rd party supplement available on pdf called Elements of Magic that would work as a starting point for this. It presented spell lists such as "Evoke Fire" that allowed casters to do a variety of fire effects at all spell levels.

Now the book allowed wizards to learn dozens of such lists as they progressed, but you could find some way to limit that to fewer lists, and with a mors focused theme.

And you'd probably have to create more lists to model manifesting weapons and some other themes, but it'd be my starting point for this.


Alternatively, the Unearthed Arcana mystic could work as a starting point, too.

 

[Satyrn]

And yeah, if medieval superheroes is really what you're going for, Mutants & Masterminds ought to work easiest.

 

[Mercule]

Not to be flip, but I'm not sure D&D works well for that, mechanically. The spells just aren't divided up right. You could build some Wizard subclasses and create new spell lists for them.

I'd be more inclined to just talk with your players and say, "Hey, this is what I want to do. Can you guys play along?" While I fully support the right of the GM to limit options to match a setting, the reality is that you aren't going to get very far without a certain level of buy-in, anyway. If they agree, it doesn't really matter what the rules say.

It's been said, "D&D models D&D". It's a general purpose fantasy RPG, but it doesn't handle every permutation well. If you're dead set on having mechanical backing for what you're trying to do, I would recommend either Fate or Savage Worlds as pretty light weight, easy to learn games that support themed "trappings" (in very different ways). If you want something heavier, Fantasy Hero is a tool set that can do just about anything without losing balance or slowing down (in play).

For D&D, I think Elements of Magic could do this in 3.5E, but I don't see a 5E version. You could also scour the DM's Guild.

 

[cbwjm]

The forging divinity novel series is set up similar to this in which people are often able to master one type of magic such as fire, metal, of protection with dedicated sorcerers able to tap into more than one type of magic. I think it could work quite well in D&D but it might take some work to split the lists into different types of magic (or do it on an adhoc basis as you need the spells) and you may want to rewrite some of the subclasses to better make it work.

I'd use magic initiate as the basis, allowing a player to tap into a single path of magic. If they chose fire spells and then later picked up a spellcasting class, then you could either require that their first spells be fire, expanding on their theme or allow them to expand into a second theme.

For more dedicated casters, allow for 2 or more paths depending on the type of caster. An Eldritch Knight might start out being able to work only a single path of magic then gain a second at a later level. Whether you would want to limit the types of paths that eldritch knights, arcane tricksters, paladins, wizards, etc get would be up to you, but you might want to allow casters to learn any theme. If you do though, it might be better to use a single class as the base for caster classes or it could just be separate traditions for learning magic (clerics may be a more battle ready way of learning magic whereas wizards may be the more scholarly way of learning to use magic).

You could also link themes together. So a caster that is able to use lightning spells might be able to later learn spells dealing with thunder or wind. A caster with fire might later be able to link to spells that deal with light. Earth could link to acid and metal, etc.

I think it would be quite a lot of work for the initial set up, but it could be a fun way to play. Make sure that your players are ready to play with these restrictions first though as you may not want to do a lot of the work and then have it pushed back by player's lack of interest... or you might want to since creating stuff like this can be fun.

 

[Anthony Vu]

Interesting idea. Personally though, if I was to try and do this... I wouldn't use D&D 5E to try and accomplish it. I'd use a superhero roleplaying game, as those are designed and built to have a character creation process which revolves around a "theme" for all their abilities.

If you want to stay within the realms of the D&D-esque d20 die for combat, I'd heartily suggest you look into picking up Mutants & Masterminds from Green Ronin. It is based upon 3rd edition D&D's d20 System (at least for the first couple editions it was extremely close, this new 3rd edition seems to have expanded out a bit from a strict d20 System). Thus if you want a game that is based around "roll a d20, add modifiers, aim for a DC"... M&M is really the system you might want to look at so you can build characters that are "fire based" or "telekinetic" or "super-dense" etc.

Here's the quickstart rules for Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition.

Alright thanks. It's just hard because D&D 5e is really the first and only tabletop rpg I have ever tried and know about. So I don't know any others. And I feel I'll get confused with other systems because there are not that many videos explaining how things work.

 

[Anthony Vu]

The forging divinity novel series is set up similar to this in which people are often able to master one type of magic such as fire, metal, of protection with dedicated sorcerers able to tap into more than one type of magic. I think it could work quite well in D&D but it might take some work to split the lists into different types of magic (or do it on an adhoc basis as you need the spells) and you may want to rewrite some of the subclasses to better make it work.

I'd use magic initiate as the basis, allowing a player to tap into a single path of magic. If they chose fire spells and then later picked up a spellcasting class, then you could either require that their first spells be fire, expanding on their theme or allow them to expand into a second theme.

For more dedicated casters, allow for 2 or more paths depending on the type of caster. An Eldritch Knight might start out being able to work only a single path of magic then gain a second at a later level. Whether you would want to limit the types of paths that eldritch knights, arcane tricksters, paladins, wizards, etc get would be up to you, but you might want to allow casters to learn any theme. If you do though, it might be better to use a single class as the base for caster classes or it could just be separate traditions for learning magic (clerics may be a more battle ready way of learning magic whereas wizards may be the more scholarly way of learning to use magic).

You could also link themes together. So a caster that is able to use lightning spells might be able to later learn spells dealing with thunder or wind. A caster with fire might later be able to link to spells that deal with light. Earth could link to acid and metal, etc.

I think it would be quite a lot of work for the initial set up, but it could be a fun way to play. Make sure that your players are ready to play with these restrictions first though as you may not want to do a lot of the work and then have it pushed back by player's lack of interest... or you might want to since creating stuff like this can be fun.

Thanks for the idea. I'll try that as well.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Alright thanks. It's just hard because D&D 5e is really the first and only tabletop rpg I have ever tried and know about. So I don't know any others. And I feel I'll get confused with other systems...

You can always put that campaign idea in your back pocket for when you've expanded your comfort zone enough to encompass some less-limiting systems. (Ironically, you need a less-limited system to run a game for more-limited magic-using PCs.) D&D has been your entry into the hobby, but don't let its failings discourage you. There's systems out there for just about anything, the problem is a) finding the perfect one and b) finding a few other people who have found the /same/ one.

but...

I'm trying to make my first-ish homebrew game. I'm looking for a way to have it where people only know one kind of magic, such as the power to freeze things, the power to manifest weapons, increase ones physical strength, etc. (or in easy terms anime super powers and magic).

If you just want to run a short campaign featuring characters like that, write them up arbitrarily, much like you would NPCs or monsters. Use the mechanics of 5e, but not all the PC-generation stuff.

Best 5e(-derived) session I ever played in was done that way. The characters were just thrown together, fairly simply, be the DM, based on characters from TV shows. They were familiar, so the system didn't have to do a lot of heavy lifting to get the ideas across. If you're doing anime characters and lift from specific ones you & your players are familiar with...

 

[steeldragons]

Wasn't this how...what was the series...one of the early fantasy series...the world was called "Xanth," was it? Haven't thought of those books in years and years.

Everyone in the world had magic. But everyone could only do 1 thing. Some useful, some not so much.