D&D 5E Sword & Sorcery / Low Magic

[doctorbadwolf]

It has powerful wizards, like a lot of post D&D fantasy, (although as the stories are written by different authors what exactly they can do and how powerful they are is inconsisent - and they're not generally major characters). It doesn't really detract from the Sword and Sorcery feel.

Really a big problem for D&D magic is it's not appropriate for any genre. So while it may not fit sword and sorcery particularly well, it doesn't fit any other kind of fantasy better.

It fits action-heavy high magic fantasy just fine.

 

[TwoSix]

Really a big problem for D&D magic is it's not appropriate for any genre. So while it may not fit sword and sorcery particularly well, it doesn't fit any other kind of fantasy better.

It's appropriate for D&D type fantasy, which after 45+ years is pretty much its own thing.

But yea, I do love some good alternate magic systems.

 

[ART!]

It has powerful wizards, like a lot of post D&D fantasy, (although as the stories are written by different authors what exactly they can do and how powerful they are is inconsisent - and they're not generally major characters). It doesn't really detract from the Sword and Sorcery feel.

Really a big problem for D&D magic is it's not appropriate for any genre. So while it may not fit sword and sorcery particularly well, it doesn't fit any other kind of fantasy better.

I wonder how much work would be required to have a "tone dial" for magic (and other aspects) in D&D, rather than decades of people coming up with their own kludges. Even just a couple settings would go a long way toward showing people how to further tweak things.

 

[overgeeked]

I wonder how much work would be required to have a "tone dial" for magic (and other aspects) in D&D, rather than decades of people coming up with their own kludges. Even just a couple settings would go a long way toward showing people how to further tweak things.

There are rest variants. Spell slots are tied to rests. Anywhere from 5-minute short rests on up to 7-day long rests. That's a lot of officially written variation. There's also how strictly the DM enforces spell components. There's also restricting feats, restricting multiclassing, and outright banning subclasses or classes. There's also limiting spell selection, spells gained, and outright banning spells.

 

[ART!]

There are rest variants. Spell slots are tied to rests. Anywhere from 5-minute short rests on up to 7-day long rests. That's a lot of officially written variation. There's also how strictly the DM enforces spell components. There's also restricting feats, restricting multiclassing, and outright banning subclasses or classes. There's also limiting spell selection, spells gained, and outright banning spells.

True, but some of those are much more work for the DM than others, which disincentives going that route.

The rest economy is an easy one.

Components is not, and is also more work for the players, and on a frequent basis - but if you want to make more of the game about acquiring components, that could be interesting.

I would not want to go through all the feats and decide which ones are okay - or trust my players to consult the list I made!

Same goes for spells. No way am I going through all that, or having to constantly remind players what's not on the list.

Restricting multiclassing and certain subclasses sounds significantly easier.

 

[overgeeked]

True, but some of those are much more work for the DM than others, which disincentives going that route.

The rest economy is an easy one.

Components is not, and is also more work for the players, and on a frequent basis - but if you want to make more of the game about acquiring components, that could be interesting.

I would not want to go through all the feats and decide which ones are okay - or trust my players to consult the list I made!

Same goes for spells. No way am I going through all that, or having to constantly remind players what's not on the list.

Restricting multiclassing and certain subclasses sounds significantly easier.

Well, outright banning multiclassing is easy enough. As is banning feats. They are technically optional after all. Targeting your bans to things that cause problems (no Luck feat, etc), are effectively multiclassing feats (metamagic adept, etc), and the like is easy enough. So too with spells. If you're running a game that's big on survival saying no to the various create water, create food and water, goodberry, tiny hut spells, etc that obviate the risks of survival challenges is simple enough. If your players don't read the lists and pick the spell anyway, just tell them it fails to work. They can swap out the spell the next day (clerics) or according to the ASI spell swap rules or they're stuck with a dud spell in their book. You don't have to front-load the work. Just address things when they come up. Give the player a bennie of some kind for finding a problematic thing then ban the problematic thing.

 

[ART!]

If you're running a game that's big on survival saying no to the various create water, create food and water, goodberry, tiny hut spells, etc that obviate the risks of survival challenges is simple enough. If your players don't read the lists and pick the spell anyway, just tell them it fails to work. They can swap out the spell the next day (clerics) or according to the ASI spell swap rules or they're stuck with a dud spell in their book. You don't have to front-load the work. Just address things when they come up. Give the player a bennie of some kind for finding a problematic thing then ban the problematic thing.

Well, obviously banning just the survival spells would be easy enough, but I don't think that's going to be the only kind of spell that breaks the S&S feel, and then I'm back where I started, looking at basically all the spells.

If I have to depend on the players picking the right spells and me remembering if they're the right spells or not, or taking the time to check the list - no thanks.

If I have to arbitrate every spell as it comes up - no thanks. And that sounds like a great way to frustrate players. And come up with a bennie? Yuck.

 

[Laurefindel]

Well, obviously banning just the survival spells would be easy enough, but I don't think that's going to be the only kind of spell that breaks the S&S feel, and then I'm back where I started, looking at basically all the spells.

If I have to depend on the players picking the right spells and me remembering if they're the right spells or not, or taking the time to check the list - no thanks.

If I have to arbitrate every spell as it comes up - no thanks. And that sounds like a great way to frustrate players. And come up with a bennie? Yuck.

The easiest way to dim the magic knob would be to offer different sets of spell lists (the PHB one being the high magic one). Rather than starting with the PHB spell lists and banning spells out, start with a curated spell list and tell the player "those are the spells you can use". If you want to give them a treat, add another spell halfway through the adventure!

As a third party product, that should be (relatively) easy to do, reprinting only the spells used from the OGL