War of the Burning Sky: Low Magic???

[DonTadow]

I'm always pushing the limits of modules I buy, gutting them and reworking them to fit whatever campaign I have set up.

My next campaign is going to be a low-magic campaign with a higher than normal level of technology. I ask the writers, publishers, and other adventerous DMs, how easy would it be to convert certain elements of the campaign.

The story so far seems to indicate that there will be some difficulty, but I should be able topull it off. The more uncommon magic is, the more it really pushes the story of the Scourge. I can easily come up with a non-magical anti-magic inquisitor class ,which also is no problem.

The weakness of the material plane is great too, as it fits right in with the previous campaign, of which the party's weakened a planar shield around the planet.

What am I missing, what will be my most problematic points?

 

[Morrus]

Hmmm... it is a campaign which features a mile-long living airship, an everburning forest, a magic school as the main focus of resistance, and has incorporeal dream creatures as a major villain race. I'm not too sue low magic will gel with it well!

However, I'll let Rangerwickett speak more authoritatively on the subject.

 

[RangerWickett]

"Low magic" is completely a matter of presentation. You can use all the core D&D material, and let the PCs play whatever classes they want, and if you make the NPCs treat them as rare and unique, the world can still seem low magic.

The real world is low magic, but in Egypt you have stories of gods bringing each other back from the dead, of great plagues of locusts and fire and death, of pillars of fire and partings of seas. And occasionally of Scorpion Kings (but that's unconfirmed).

The thing is, if people's everyday lives don't involve much magic, it makes the magic things more spectacular. The campaign saga includes two magical schools. In core D&D, those are like colleges -- people join, learn magic, and are otherwise normal. In your setting, just change the flavor a bit -- it's an occult group who frighten away the common folk, and though there are only a dozen students out of an entire city of thousands of people, and though most of the students can't even cast a fireball, the populace treats them with great respect and fear.

The setting, as written, is about as high in magic as Lord of the Rings, with the one exception of the mile-long living airship. In everything else, the magic is not obvious. You could easily say people would rarely see it. But low-magic usually just means that people don't use magic very often. There are still magical monsters, places of eldritch mystery, and myths that lie sleeping, waiting to return to the world.

All you need to do is make sure the town blacksmith doesn't use cantrips.

 

[DonTadow]

"Low magic" is completely a matter of presentation. You can use all the core D&D material, and let the PCs play whatever classes they want, and if you make the NPCs treat them as rare and unique, the world can still seem low magic.

The real world is low magic, but in Egypt you have stories of gods bringing each other back from the dead, of great plagues of locusts and fire and death, of pillars of fire and partings of seas. And occasionally of Scorpion Kings (but that's unconfirmed).

The thing is, if people's everyday lives don't involve much magic, it makes the magic things more spectacular. The campaign saga includes two magical schools. In core D&D, those are like colleges -- people join, learn magic, and are otherwise normal. In your setting, just change the flavor a bit -- it's an occult group who frighten away the common folk, and though there are only a dozen students out of an entire city of thousands of people, and though most of the students can't even cast a fireball, the populace treats them with great respect and fear.

The setting, as written, is about as high in magic as Lord of the Rings, with the one exception of the mile-long living airship. In everything else, the magic is not obvious. You could easily say people would rarely see it. But low-magic usually just means that people don't use magic very often. There are still magical monsters, places of eldritch mystery, and myths that lie sleeping, waiting to return to the world.

All you need to do is make sure the town blacksmith doesn't use cantrips.

Thanks Range, that is a great idea. After reading the campaign primer , I still plan on using the magical aspects of the world, but go with the idea that magic is very rare, thus making the magical schools all the more special.

The airship shouldn't be much of a problem. In the history of the world, airships were powered by elemental creatures before the introduction of steam. A rogue magic user creating a crazy mile long airship, would fit in nicely with the theme of the world. Again, powerful magic used for evil means.

The dream creatures too have a bit of precedence from the history of the campaign.

My biggest concern is the adventures themselves. Will there be magical items that are neccessary to completing particular tasks.

 

[RangerWickett]

Adv. 1 has enemy wyvern riders dropping incendiaries on a city, but you could change that to just using catapults.

Adv. 2 is in a forest fire (they use it as a short cut to avoid pursuit by the enemy), and the party uses custom made potions to protect them. You could replace that with some sort of limited-duration relic that the party acquires in the first adventure, which creates an aura of fire resistance. Also, there is a magic sword that the heroes can win if they defeat the major foe of the adventure.

Adv. 3 has an orb that controls storms, but it's a one-use thing, and the villains have it. The party probably will use water-breathing magic at some point, though I suppose you could have the 'dungeon' not be flooded.

Adv. 6 will have, if the writer likes my idea, a flying palanquin that the party can use to escape an army that has surrounded them.

Adv. 7 has a temple that creates shades of your memories to challenge you, and at the end the party can retrieve an artifact, the Torch of the Burning Sky. The Torch is iconic to the campaign, and retrieving it or losing it has a major effect on who wins the war, since it can teleport armies.

Adv. 8 is about where things start to be high magic, since it has a prison designed for all the magic users captured by the Ragesian scourge. Also there's a vast divination/teleportation ward to protect the prison.

However, otherwise there aren't any vital magic items.

 

[DonTadow]

Cool, I'll look out for them.

adv 1. I could see wyverns existing in the world with no problem. Their just an exotic creature.

adv 2. I've used alchemical herbs as a means to explain away necessary potions. Perhaps the custom potion is some kind of salve.

adv 3. The orb is ok, considering that its an artifact. Plus i hope to have limited magical items anyway.
The water breathing may be tough. I really want to keep the dynamics of what you guys have written. It's like cutting the hair of the mona lisa cause you don't like the eyes. Perhaps I'll invent some technomagic that will allow them to breathe water for short periods.

adv. 6
If its not specific to the story, I might just use a small airship for this escape.

adv 7
Sounds like two powerful artifacts, considering its epic for us to retrive them, it should fit in.

adv 8
(do you really think my players will survive that long).
This is obvious going to be the toughest adventure and I'd have to wait and see howi t goes at this point.

Thanks range.

 

[DonTadow]

Any problems introducing

a. Guns

b. grenades

c. Mechanical horses

d. other mechanical airships

e. politics (as in burning sky will pick up at 3rd level for the party, who by that time will have been through 5 or 6 adventures and may have some affilication with other council members).

 

[RangerWickett]

Any problems introducing

a. Guns

b. grenades

c. Mechanical horses

d. other mechanical airships

e. politics (as in burning sky will pick up at 3rd level for the party, who by that time will have been through 5 or 6 adventures and may have some affilication with other council members).

Interesting setting you've got there. Changing the tech level, or including 'magi-tech', will alter some of the flavor, but it won't ruin the story arc. But for instance, adventure 4 - The Mad King's Banquet has armies in heavy armor, marching in formation. If you've got guns, that changes a lot to be more like Civil War firing lines (assuming, of course, that you let guns work like real world guns that ignore armor, and not like the overpriced crossbows they are in the D&D rules).

Grenades would be fine, as would mechanical horses. Having airships would change some of the dynamics, unless you make them rare or prohibitively expensive. In the campaign saga as designed, armies have acess to, at most, flying mounts that can carry one or two people at a time. Pilus shows up later on with his massive airship, and it's a major event. That's not to say that airships ruin things. They just, y'know, change things. If you priced them like hella-expensive magic items, something like 100,000 gp for a ship that can carry 20 people, yeah, it might be okay. Otherwise, Gate Pass would just be obliterated by dropping thousands of boulders from the sky (the wyverns could carry, like, one or two at a time, and couldn't fly that high while carrying them).

You can add as much politics as you want. However, communication would be a slight problem, since the adventures assume the heroes will leave Gate Pass to get help, and won't be back for a while. But sure, it'd be nice to have the PCs have more connections to the city.

Sorry if some of that is incoherent. Read my sig.

 

[DonTadow]

Interesting setting you've got there. Changing the tech level, or including 'magi-tech', will alter some of the flavor, but it won't ruin the story arc. But for instance, adventure 4 - The Mad King's Banquet has armies in heavy armor, marching in formation. If you've got guns, that changes a lot to be more like Civil War firing lines (assuming, of course, that you let guns work like real world guns that ignore armor, and not like the overpriced crossbows they are in the D&D rules).

Grenades would be fine, as would mechanical horses. Having airships would change some of the dynamics, unless you make them rare or prohibitively expensive. In the campaign saga as designed, armies have acess to, at most, flying mounts that can carry one or two people at a time. Pilus shows up later on with his massive airship, and it's a major event. That's not to say that airships ruin things. They just, y'know, change things. If you priced them like hella-expensive magic items, something like 100,000 gp for a ship that can carry 20 people, yeah, it might be okay. Otherwise, Gate Pass would just be obliterated by dropping thousands of boulders from the sky (the wyverns could carry, like, one or two at a time, and couldn't fly that high while carrying them).

You can add as much politics as you want. However, communication would be a slight problem, since the adventures assume the heroes will leave Gate Pass to get help, and won't be back for a while. But sure, it'd be nice to have the PCs have more connections to the city.

Sorry if some of that is incoherent. Read my sig.

Thanks, I wanted to give the players a reason to like/want to save Gate Pass so i figure if they really get attached to it, get involved in the politics and inner workings, they will be more upset when it gets trashed.

Thanks for the info.