D&D General What do do when a setting doesn't have magic?

[Laurefindel]

You can run most any flavor of D&D sans magic. It's going to change around the dynamics of the game. Anyone running such a game needs to carefully consider which monsters and abilities are used. Healing will be hugely reduced, so the game would most likely need to have most of the "resource depletion" encounters removed, and focus on a smaller number of more focused, storyline important encounters. Probably need to change around advancement as a result.

Because there won't be any "magic items", treasure will become far less important. This will also mess with various "CR" systems for balancing encounters.

I think it can be done, but to be a successful game it's going to take some thinking on the part of the GM.

Personally, for such a game I'd skip any flavor of D&D and opt for something like Mythras.

Of all editions of D&D however, 5e is the least affected by lack of magical healing. So there’s that...

 

[MikalC]

Play in a system better suited for it.

 

[Bacon Bits]

You can run most any flavor of D&D sans magic.

No, I think the game falls apart with zero magic. In PHB 5e with zero magic, you're left with:

Barbarian (Berserker)
Fighter (Champion, Battlemaster)
Rogue (Assassin, Thief)

Literally every other class or subclass has magic. Monk gets Ki Empowered Strikes. Everything else literally gets spellcasting in some manner.

 

[ART!]

5e D&D functions really well with all spellcasting classes and subclasses removed. It can appear less satisfying because it leaves more than half the classes and a whole section of the book out of the game, but the game would be sound and the characters would perform as intended (I'd expect that in a no-magic world, the threat of demons, golems, and enemy spellcasters wouldn't be as present as in a regular game).

So while 2/3 of the pages would be removed, the system itself wouldn't be amputated of essential components. One could take the SRD, remove everything magical, and be left with a perfectly playable RPG. It's just that D&D fans would be missing a lot of things.

You can go a long way in refluffing many magical spells and abilities as mundane, and you can go even further if you are willing to tweak things a bit

...throw out the full casters and try some reskinning on the others' spells. Here's an example, probably inspired by Aragorn and his Big Adventure:

2nd Level Ranger Spells	Reskinned
Animal Messenger	Animal somehow understands you, and you attach a note to its collar
Barkskin	Any number of reasons to become less hit-able
Darkvision	"Ignore" other senses to gain more vision
Find Traps	Rangerly intuition
Lesser Restoration	Herbs. Good ones.
Locate Animals	Rangerly intuition
Locate Object	Rangerly intuition
Pass without Trace	Mad skills
Protection from Poison	"Old shaman prayer" said to be protective
Silence	Special stomp that upsets eardums
Spike Growth	Whisper to the plants...plants are natural, right?

Yeah, this is totally do-able, and with very little work really. Think of "magical" abilities - and some-to-all spells - not in terms of their description or how we usually think of them, but rather in terms of their effects. Heck, even a Wish spell could be thought of as just getting really lucky.

And if there's no magical creatures, there's a lot of spells or magical abilities that you can just ignore, like Turn Undead or Summon Lesser Demon.

Given that, at lower tiers even the spellcasting classes become viable.

 

[billd91]

No, I think the game falls apart with zero magic. In PHB 5e with zero magic, you're left with:

Barbarian (Berserker)
Fighter (Champion, Battlemaster)
Rogue (Assassin, Thief)

Literally every other class or subclass has magic. Monk gets Ki Empowered Strikes. Everything else literally gets spellcasting in some manner.

I would totally disagree that this indicates the game is falling apart. D&D plays just fine even if you're only using a subset of its full range.

 

[Asisreo]

Oooh, I love having D&D fit in odd settings.

Now, I have no clue how to have a balanced D&D game where there's no magic existing. However, I can think of a couple of ways that I can have a no-magic setting where the players and the setting is abruptly introduced to magic.

Something like the medieval era but one day, mystical beasts actually appear and the smart scholar has found a way to manipulate magic as a wizard while the meek peasant was touched by a demonic presence and given pact magic. Stuff like that.

In this world, magic is new and nothing is really built around it but it doesn't restrict the creative design of adventures as much as a straight "Magic never has and never will exist" setting.

If I was going for that, I would definitely go with a separate system. However, I love magic in all systems so such a campaign likely wouldn't happen for me.

 

[Cadence]

For items, Green Ronin had some rules I thought were nice for Masterwork items in d20/3.5 (I saw it in their Black Company rule book, but assume it shows up elsewhere). It looks like folks have done similar for 5e.

Basically non-magical craftsmanship can give the weapons, armor, or equipment up to 6 benefit bonuses and they include things like bonus to hit (+1 to +3) , bonus to initiative (+1 to +3), bonus on concealmant rolls (+4 to +12), critical threat range, protection against sneak attacks and criticals, encumberence, helping on skill rolls, etc...

 

[Ancalagon]

People can do all of that.

D&D player characters become more and more saddled by the focuses of their classes as they level.

It works fine at low level vs appropriate obstacles. When you get higher up, you can slowly morph into a hammer if your DM doesn't keep threats under you.

Replace orcs with bugbears. Ogres. trolls. hill giants...

 

[Wasteland Knight]

No, I think the game falls apart with zero magic. In PHB 5e with zero magic, you're left with:

Barbarian (Berserker)
Fighter (Champion, Battlemaster)
Rogue (Assassin, Thief)

Literally every other class or subclass has magic. Monk gets Ki Empowered Strikes. Everything else literally gets spellcasting in some manner.

You can still run a game. Mechanically some characters will probably be similar. But a party can be built and a game can be run.

Is it a great design choice to choose D&D for a no magic game? No, I don't think it is. As I mentioned earlier, for an absolutely no magic game, I would reach for a different ruleset.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

Play in a system better suited for it.

This is really my take on it. While a creative GM can shoehorn just about any system to "work", I'm a firm believer that not every system is suited to every type of game or style of play. And I think it's good practice to put yourself in the best spot to succeed by picking a ruleset that is a good fit for the game you intent to run.