Hi folks,
I've been toying around with the idea of putting together a low magic setting. Not quite as low magic as Game of Thrones but with a similar feel to it.
On the one hand, the gods may or may not exist and therefore do not grant divine spells. This would mean no clerics or paladins. The existence of the acolyte background, however, still allows for priests who can use magic ~ a la Melisandre. It's just that they've gotten their power from some other source (either knowingly or unwittingly).
On the other hand, I'd also like to make it so magic isn't something anyone can learn. You have to either be born with the gift (eg. a draconic sorcerer), make a pact with a powerful magical being (eg. a warlock), or be exposed to raw magic in some way (eg. a wild magic sorcerer). This would mean no wizards, although with the sage background, one could still play a character who knows about magic even if they can't use it themselves.
I had posted about this idea in the playtest forums and got some good suggestions, but I ended up putting it on the back burner until I could see the full scope of races and classes and whatnot in the PHB. Now that I've got that, I can see that this would be quite a mission.
To whit:
- Barbarians: These guys are fine as is. The totem warrior magic is a primal spirit thing, and I'm fine with that.
- Bards: All I'd need to do here is add a caveat that they get their magic through making a pact with a muse of some kind.
- Clerics: I'm a bit loathe to ban a class outright, but I can't really think of a way to make these guys feasible in this setting. I know that Eberron has the same "the gods may not exist" thing and divine magic comes from the believer's faith instead, but that's not really the feel I'm going for.
- Druids: Fine as is. One can just think of them as having made a pact with Mother Nature to get their power.
- Fighters: I might have to change the eldritch knight so that they use Cha and the sorcerer spell list and come up with some kind of in-story reason to explain how they get their magical power (and why they don't get it till 3rd level), but otherwise they're OK.
- Monks: I might have to do something about the magic employed by Shadow and Elemental monks but I'm not sure what. I could just explain it away as being "foreign".
- Paladins: This is another class that I will most likely have to ban, since stripping them of divine magic would leave them with pretty much nothing.
- Rangers: I can use a non-spellcasting variant for this class.
- Rogues: As with the eldritch knight, I'll probably just have to change the arcane trickster so it uses Cha and the sorcerer spell list, and again I'll need some kind of explanation as to how they get their power and why it doesn't kick in right away.
- Sorcerers: No changes here, except maybe to add additional content.
- Warlocks: Again, no changes here. These guys are perfect for a low magic setting.
- Wizards: No wizards as a base class, but I may allow the school subclasses as multiclass-only things, as I see no reason why bards, sorcerers and warlocks can't specialize in a particular school of magic too.
I think I will also have to either ban the Ritual Caster feat or ban rituals altogether so that someone who isn't magically empowered can't cast them, as I don't think that makes sense in the context of this kind of setting. I'm not 100% sure about spell scrolls either. Potions are OK, as I was thinking of having most of them be brewed from supernatural and/or magical plants that produce spell-like effects anyway.
I'm not sure what else I'd need to change at this point, but that's the main stuff, I think.
I'm kinda hoping they'll update the artificer class from Eberron sooner rather than later, as I think it would make for a great addition to the setting as a group trying to replicate magical effects through pseudo-technological means.
Anyone got any thoughts on this? Does it sound appealing? Needlessly restrictive?
Thanks,
Jonathan
pukunui wrote:
My own opinion, you're throwing bans around a bit too happily.
One issue is that in this campaign, Intelligence won't do anything. It's tied to nothing except skill checks, which are somewhat rare and certainly not needed to succeed. I would caution against that strongly, just because giving an entire stat the shaft reduces character variety a bit.
You can always reflavor magic fairly easily. Have a wizard, but say that they're an alchemist, and everything they do is the effect of potions, grenades, injections, etc. You can do a similar thing with clerics. If you're going to allow barbarian and monk "spirit energy," you can make a wide variety of effects depend on that same source. It's not that you're accessing magic given by gods or floating around you or whatever, you've figured out (or been born with) a way to manifest crude effects with your own vitality. You could also give religions in this world a more cult-like feel, and have them occasionally center around actual beings that claim to represent a certain god. Followers make a pact with a creature like that, get their powers, and call it "divine," even though it's fundamentally the same as the warlock's pact. Or handle paladins somewhat like Dragon Age handles Templars: they take a drug or do a ritual or something that gives them extra strength (most paladin effects buff themselves, buff their attacks, or target an ally at touch range). You then have the option of building on that with brainwashed paladins, side-effects of th drugs, etc.
I could certainly see myself interested in this campaign, but I think you should be more open to reflavoring effects before you axe them completely. It's just mechanics, the flavor of how the stuff actually works is infinitely flexible.
EDIT: having played a ranger recently, I'm confident that you could easily reflavoring nearly everything they have as mundane effects. Granted this was the playtest and some spells have changed, but things like Animal Friendship and the various spells that use ammunition as components, those can clearly go either way. You may want to mess with the spellcasting ability though; if they're just firing arrows in a spray, Wisdom shouldn't factor in really, it would just be Dex. Just an idea.
You can probably get away without healing magic if you tone down combat encounters.
Or just use martial healing. 
woif wrote:
Truthfully your setting doesn't sound all that low magic to me. It just sounds more like a setting that has simply had the divine magic element removed.
First I should quantify my statements about banning things. When I hear that something is going to be "banned" from the game, I'm picturing you going to the players and saying "this campaign contains XYZ elements, so please black out these sections of your handbooks." I don't know if that's how you intended to approach it, but just in case, I think that's a very bad way to go about it. What I was trying to advocate was more, "this campaign contains XYZ elements, so keep them in mind when making characters." Inform the players that it's "low-magic" and what general ramifications that has, but don't just take options off the table. Trust that your players can respect your design decision, commit to staying within it, and be inventive enough to re-flavor or avoid options that defy it. Of course you probably know the players better than I do, and maybe you've judged that you can't trust them like that 
But I won't assume that.
And another thing about that. The players might just go "oh cool, an excuse to play a party of nothing but meaty bruiser guys," and not go for wizards or clerics or anything. But in that case the bans won't mean anything, so I'm not considering that. I'm talking about the case where you've explained the setting, and a player says "I want to use a paladin class, but their powers come from X." Your answer to this shouldn't just be "no, that class is banned." The specific image of a holy warrior with god-given power to manifest angel wings is out; you should still give the player a chance to figure out how their version of the class is different.
Few suggestions:
Clerics and Wizards have access to a few spells that the other classes do not. You could allow a Sorceror, Warlock, or Bard to pick a few spells from these lists. Since Bards can already gain access to other spells from class lists, there's already a precedent for this as well.
Perhaps you could also create archetypes for Bards/ Warlocks/ Sorcerors that attempt to attribute their power to the gods, but this is a dubious claim at best. They gain access to some cleric spells for players interested in a "Melissandre" type character. Suffice to say it seems to me in a setting where you can't "learn" magic, many people would suspect magic is somehow the work of the gods. Thus the typical differentiation between divine and arcane magic isn't really meaningful in such a setting.
Macv12 wrote:
Spell casting is mechanically a delivery system for abilities. In and of itself it's like a plate - it's what you put on it that counts.
Classes are the same. A collection of mechanics.
When you make a low-magic setting, are you eliminating divine magic? Arcane magic? Or delivery systems?
How do warlocks and sorcerers get their powers? How do the Patrons get their magic?
It seems like step one is to find out what you really want to do. Step two would be to revise spell lists.
Step 3 would be altering class features.
Assuming this is a mechanical decision.
If it's one of flavor, you keep things like paladins and just permit smites. You keep clerics and limit their prepared spells to only those of their domain etc. This creates a restricted feel to magic without major overhaul. I'd still revise the spell lists down by 50% for any caster class.
One possibility is to just explain that it's harder to be certain classes, and a PC of that class is special.
You don't need to ban wizards if not everyone can be a wizard. Perhaps it takes incredible amounts of time and dedication, and access to secret and rare tomes, in order to learn even the basics of wizardry. There may only be a few wizards in the world, but as a PC, you are a special snowflake.
Similarly, in many setting, paladins are "called" to be paladins, either by a god, some force of reality, or an awakening of their own spirit. This is as good as "has to make a pact" in terms of restricting access. There are as many paladisn as you want there to be. No one can just take it up liek ap rofession.
A cleric could be similarly explained. It takes a special kind of faith, or a special calling, destiny, or birthright, to wield that kind of power.
Lots of comments! Thanks everyone.
As I mentioned, I have actually got some options at my disposal to compensate for some of the restrictions, I just can't talk about them due to my NDA.
Macv12 wrote:
Like the idea in principle. One thing to note though.
There is a VERY BIG difference between:
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A low magic world. - Where magic is very rare.
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A low magic game. - Where players have very restricted access to magic. Normally whilst being part of 1.
Seems that you're going for both, but the concepts aren't mutually dependent.
D&D does kinda assume a high amount of magic, 5E has gone a very long way with bounded accuracy and cutting out assumptions of wealth and magic items as players level.
Magic items: Done.
The most important thing to note about magic weapons though isn't +1 to hit and damage that they give. It's dealing with nonmagical resistances and immunities.
It's cool making such monsters scarier but might be a tad frustrating relying on the sorcerer having “Magic Weapon”
Rituals:
Oddly enough, when I think of low magic settings... I actually think rituals should be encouraged as the predominate form of spellcasting rather than fast casting spells.
And a third option:
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Lower powered magic – Does the top tiers of magic exist in the game?
You could also consider limiting the higher level spells, to players and/or NPCs.
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5E has also made this easier. Lots of spells can now be made more powerful by being cast with higher level spell slots, this wouldn't reduce the power of high level casters.
On that note, perhaps a different approach regarding classes.
Rather the “half-caster” (Paladins and Rangers) and “one-third-caster” (Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters) being restricted... perhaps encourage them.
A world without Clerics and Druids, where Paladins and Rangers are the most powerful divine spellcasters is a very different one, even more so when Eldritch Knights are the most powerful arcane spellcasters. And might oddly achive more what you're going for.
Esp since Paladins and Rangers conceptually inspire the "lone champion" troupe that are outside the usual "church hirearchy" that the Cleric seems to imply in most settings.
(Warlocks being a tad little outside this, their magic works quite differently to everyone elses)
Maybe "low magic" isn't the right term for what I want. It's more that I have a specific idea of how I want magic to work, and the cleric, paladin and wizard class mechanics/concepts don't jive with that.
Conanish?
The Swords and Sorcery: "Magic is dark and forbidden and scary" rather than being part of accepted civilisation vibe?
woif wrote:
Illithidbix wrote:
Ok, yeah, can see the vibe your going for. 'Tis a cool troupe.
Your changes look fine.
I actually think the Paladin would work in your setting. If you look closely it's not really tied to religion or divinity at all, more to the concept of the Oath itself. It would mean they'd be percieved radically differently to how they are in most settings however.
Paladins are the Divine spell-caster that makes the most sense to me as “spontaneously manifesting” almost like a defensive response to fiends and undead threatening people. Devils eat too many people and humanity produces demon-slaying superheroes like a body produces antibodies. Like a Buffy style slayer vibe.
You could even work in a few paladins are convinced they have divine gifts from enigmatic distant deities, forming cults, denouncing other religions as false.
Whilst other paladins are equally convinced it's *not* divinely sourced, and their powers work equally effectively.
I vaguely get you're not overly keen on the feel that paladins and their smites create for your setting though.
Quite like the idea of Sorcerers getting healing magic myself. Even just Cure Wounds and Healing Word will do (spare the dying wouldn't go amiss either).
For divine characters, I'm thinking more along the lines of 3e's favored soul class and that one celestial warlock prestige class (enlightened spirit?).
RE: artificers ... rather than wait for WotC to come out with an official version, I might try my hand at converting it myself. Would it be easier to convert the 3e version or the 4e version? Or maybe come up with a sort of hybrid? Any thoughts? Should it be a class of its own or a subclass of some other class?
My guess is that the 3e class progression information is easier to map into 5e than 4e would since you don't have to worry (or you have to worry less) about pouring over all those A/E/D powers.
zgrose wrote: