D&D 5E Sword & Sorcery / Low Magic

[Tales and Chronicles]

Paladins, rangers and bards can work well if you remove their spells and give them maneuvers from the BMs instead.

 

[Marc_C]

I did think about it but decided to use Barbarians of Lumeria instead. It was designed for that.

 

[Dioltach]

If the feel you're going for is Conan, then you'd be best off limiting PCs to Fighters, Rogues and Barbarians. Spellcasters are pretty much always evil in Sword & Sorcery - they're the enemies that the heroes fight against.

 

[Scott Christian]

So I’ve been reading a bunch of my old Sword & Sorcery fiction and watching a bunch of the often wonderfully terrible fantasy movies from the ’80s and wondering about Sword & Sorcery 5E.

I know there’s a difference between low magic and Sword & Sorcery. They don’t always go hand-in-hand, but for the feel I’m looking for they do.

This is kinda hard to pull off in 5E considering there are only three classes who are not casters and each of those have caster or specifically magical subclasses. So unless you want the whole party made up of barbarians, fighters, and rogues, we need to either clamp down on magic and casters or start homebrewing a bunch of other classes.

The easier solution is to clamp down on casters. Of the various ways to do so, I think bringing back our old friend uneven advancement is the easiest and most familiar fix. There are three levels of caster in 5E: full, half, and third. You could give each a multiplier for xp necessary to advance. Say x4, x2, 1.5 for ease of use. You could also make any casters use the Spellcaster Sidekick class, though I’m not sure how well that would go down.

Any other thoughts or ideas on doing low magic Sword & Sorcery with D&D 5E?

I don't think it is possible to do with 5e. The system doesn't fit; like trying to mash a square peg in a round hole. I think if you want that option, it is best to just switch to a different system.

 

[cbwjm]

If you can find it, the old mongoose Conan d20 rpg should give you ideas to steal. They had one main spellcasting class which didn't even need to have spellcasting (replacing spell styles and spells with feats and skill points). Most every other class was essentially non-casters, though they could probably be condensed a bit and might be a bit bare bones compared to 5e classes but it still should give some good ideas.

 

[Krachek]

Limit spell level to 3 or 2.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Depending on exactly what feel you want you may want to just give every spell a casting time ranging from an hour to several days and prohibitively expensive or hard to come by material components. Low magic doesn't necessarily mean less powerful than D&D magic gets so much as far less ubiquitous and available than D&D magic and class design tends to assume.

 

[overgeeked]

Depending on exactly what feel you want you may want to just give every spell a casting time ranging from an hour to several days and prohibitively expensive or hard to come by material components. Low magic doesn't necessarily mean less powerful than D&D magic gets so much as far less ubiquitous and available than D&D magic and class design tends to assume.

That was another idea I had. The quick fix for casting is make everything a ritual. There’s no such thing as an in-combat spell. Remove spell focus, play up the scarcity of material components, and make gathering even 1st-level spell components an adventure in itself. Though at that point, you might as well just remove magic from PCs.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't think it is possible to do with 5e. The system doesn't fit; like trying to mash a square peg in a round hole. I think if you want that option, it is best to just switch to a different system.

Certain parts of the system don’t fit. Mostly the spellcasting rules and classes. Otherwise it would work fine.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Why not restrict class, but allow archetypes that are ''caster-adjacents''

Barbarian:
Berserker
Totemist (or beast)
Storm

Fighter:
Brute (UA)
Battlemaster
Rune-knight

Rogue:
Thief
Phantom
Scout

Monk:
Open Hand
Mercy
Long Death