D&D 5E Sword & Sorcery / Low Magic

[Greg K]

My personal choice would be to use Beasts & Barbarians (Savage Worlds) or Barbarians of Lemuria. If wanting to stick with 5e, the setting for Xoth looks good as noted by some. Another option, as noted by several people would be to tailor 5e rules, limiting the classes and institute some optional rules from the DMG.

If modifying 5e, I would limit the classes to Barbarian (Berserker), Fighter (Battlemaster, Champion), Rogue (Assassin, Scout, Thief), Warlock* (Great Old Ones, The Fiend, and or Archfey depending upon your world) Possibly limiting to NPCs), and, maybe, the Open-Hand Monk (but I would omit it due to the mid to high level class abilities). The Xoth Conqueror, Courtier and Cultist classe are worth giving a look.

* I would limit the Pact to Chain and/or Tome and, possibly, the Warlock class to NPC.

Additional, I would also suggest looking at the following:
1. Jacob Driscoll's conversions of the Complete Fighter's Handbook Conversion and Complete Thief's Handbook to 5e which he posted toon ENWorld: The kits from those books have been converted to quick builds with suggested proficiencies, tools, starting equipment, and feats (some of the feats are new to his conversion documents). Implementing many of the "kits" will give more differentiaton to starting Fighters and Rogues.
2. Khaalis's Light Fighter variant which is in the ENWorld download section. The Brawler and Corsair Archetypes could be appropriate additions.

 

[GlassJaw]

This topic comes up once in a while. There are other threads you can search for and read.

My short answer is to do low-magic in 5E, you have to decide on one of two ways:

1. Use the rules as-is*
Enforce the setting through role-playing and world-building: casters are extremely rare, magic is feared and highly illegal, magic items are non-existent or very different.

*The easiest "changes" to make are restrictions: limit classes, races, spells, cap spell level, make learning new spells very difficult, don't give out magic items, etc.

2. Rewrite the rules
Make new classes, create a new casting system, change how armor works, change healing, expand the inspiration system (hero points), etc.

This requires significant work and while it can be done, I'm not sure I would recommend it. I would absolutely start with Darker Dungeons and AiME as my source material, as well as some other 3ed d20 sources: Conan, Grim Tales, etc.

I'm a huge fan of gritty and sword & sorcery, low magic settings settings but I would probably go with Savage Worlds instead (Beasts & Barbarians, Lankhmar, Solomon Kane).

 

[ART!]

For flavor, you could also look at restricting "race" options. For instance: if elves don't feel right to you for S&S, don't allow them.

Another option is to convert some or all of the races you want to allow into just different kinds of humans. For instance: use the elf race to represent humans who are descendants of Atlantis. Etcetera.

 

[Greg K]

You could also dig around for various homebrew to supplement a lineup of non-caster classes. Kibblestasty's Warlord, Benjamin Huffman's Pugilist, Mage Hand Press' Warden and Craftsman all come to mind as good fits for a low-magic type of game.

Other possibilities include Khaalis's LIght Armor Fighter variant and its Brawler and Corsair archetypes (which are free in the download section), 5MWD's Maneuvers & Commander Archetype by David "Jester" Gibson (another poster), and Jody Lee Johnson's Warlord Class (not sure if Jody still posts here). The latter two are avaible at the Drivethrurpgs sister (?) site, Dungeon Master's Guild, at a very minimal price.

 

[Don Durito]

Spheres of Might is out now too I believe which would give more options of martial variations presumably (not a recommendation I haven't read it).

 

[cbwjm]

Something quick and easy you could do to downplay the spell-power of magic-users would be to restrict spells to the enchantment, divination, and illusion schools. I'm taking this from Conan, but the sorcerers in those novels rarely had access to mighty spells of devastation at the drop of a hat.

Other allowable schools would be necromancy and conjuration, though you might want these to be rituals rather than quick action spells, something that requires exotic components as well (though I could see the various necromantic attack spells as able to be cast as normal since these tend to be less flashy than fireballs and lightning bolts).

 

[overgeeked]

Something quick and easy you could do to downplay the spell-power of magic-users would be to restrict spells to the enchantment, divination, and illusion schools. I'm taking this from Conan, but the sorcerers in those novels rarely had access to mighty spells of devastation at the drop of a hat.

Other allowable schools would be necromancy and conjuration, though you might want these to be rituals rather than quick action spells, something that requires exotic components as well (though I could see the various necromantic attack spells as able to be cast as normal since these tend to be less flashy than fireballs and lightning bolts).

The story I mentioned with the warlock had that caster summon a demon-ape who made a scores of miles trip in the blink of an eye and slaughtered a host of baddies in a passing sentence. So big magic is there, I just think it works better as a villain option.

I was watching a few videos on YouTube about Sword & Sorcery and one made a very good point about magic. It seemed to be more about manipulating the world than creating big effects. So instead of creating a gout of fire out of nothing you manipulate the fire from the torch to lash out and attack the target. It’s definitely evocative, but I’m not sure it would work in most cases. Unless you changed / added material components to all spells that required a source like that. But then that gets messy.

 

[cbwjm]

The story I mentioned with the warlock had that caster summon a demon-ape who made a scores of miles trip in the blink of an eye and slaughtered a host of baddies in a passing sentence. So big magic is there, I just think it works better as a villain option.

I was watching a few videos on YouTube about Sword & Sorcery and one made a very good point about magic. It seemed to be more about manipulating the world than creating big effects. So instead of creating a gout of fire out of nothing you manipulate the fire from the torch to lash out and attack the target. It’s definitely evocative, but I’m not sure it would work in most cases. Unless you changed / added material components to all spells that required a source like that. But then that gets messy.

Big magic is definitely there, but it isn't often something that is often shown as readily available to sorcerers (or maybe just not the run of the mill sorcerers, when it comes to Thothamon or the masters of the black circle, who knows what they are capable of). I think one of the things that is said in the Conan novels is that sorcerers are at their most dangerous when defending themselves. I could be wrong (and I'm really only going off R.E Howard's stories as my S&S examples) but I tend to think that's because they've had time to prepare their lair (could be a good reason to add lair actions to a sorcerer's tower).

 

[not-so-newguy]

What races would be allowed in a S&S game? I imagine that they would be limited and their background changed. How would you make standard races less Tolkien-esque and more Howard-esque?

 

[overgeeked]

What races would be allowed in a S&S game? I imagine that they would be limited and their background changed. How would you make standard races less Tolkien-esque and more Howard-esque?

To me it would have to be human-centric. With variant human and the wide range of available feats, you could easily account for various human cultures. I'm not sure the non-human races could be reskined in a good enough way to make them feel right for sword and sorcery but also satisfy a player wanting to play a non-human.