Low-magic in D&D, can it be done well?

[Libertad]

Low magic in D&D is pretty tricky.  The CR system goes out the window, for one.  As long as the DM has a good eye for balance it can work.  I wouldn't find it worth the effort though.  There are other systems out there that would do it better.

What systems would you recommend?

I find it odd that a rather large portion of campaign settings have a low-magic feel.  Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Kingdoms of Kalamar, and Lankhmar are the official ones that I know of (or at least published under TSR).

Even in games like Dragonlance, the world itself seems low-magic (most land is rural feudal society with peasants), but the PCs and the bad guys have a bunch of magic mojo.  If you check out the 3.5 Dragonlance Adventure Paths you'll see what I mean.  I guess this is meant to make the PCs feel special ("we're a cut above the common man!") yet it comes off as odd when the bad guys have all these +2 Longswords and Scrolls of Fireball laying around at higher levels.

I think that Ravenloft got some of it right.  Most of the setting's meant for low-level play.  In 2nd edition, there was an adventure that whisked the PCs off to an Illithid domain.  The point of the adventure was sort of a "final destination" 12th level and higher PCs because high-level play didn't do horror as well.  There aren't restrictions on classes, and magic items can still be found, but the "magic item mart" thing's replaced with beneficial organizations.  A clan of nomadic sorcerers can use divination, while good witches and the Church supply healing aid.  This gives off the effect of making PCs feel special (off course I'm a Wizard, how else can I efficiently kill monsters?) while still giving them a connection to magical assistance and equipment.

[ksbsnowowl]

Even in games like Dragonlance, the world itself seems low-magic (most land is rural feudal society with peasants), but the PCs and the bad guys have a bunch of magic mojo.  If you check out the 3.5 Dragonlance Adventure Paths you'll see what I mean.  I guess this is meant to make the PCs feel special ("we're a cut above the common man!") yet it comes off as odd when the bad guys have all these +2 Longswords and Scrolls of Fireball laying around at higher levels.

I've never played dragonlance, and only ever read one book, so my experience there is rather shallow.  That said, my 'rare magic' viking world seems similar to what you describe (without the lack of divine casters).

My party of 7th level characters have come across magic items, but as far as magic weapons... they've seen a +1 greatsword (part of one of the PC's backstories, and was recovered from a thief), a +1 longspear, and a +1 longsword (a family heirloom of a small kingdom's "noble" family that runs a silver mine, which was returned to the heir).  Soon they will meet a Jarl (a 'knight') of another small kingdom, who also has a +1 sword.

That's not to say there haven't been individuals in their vicinity that have better magic weapons; rather, such individuals have just been off the PCs' radar.  But as they level, the individuals that challenge the PC's will be higher level, and have better stuff, and that's natural.  In a viking world, which epitomizes D&D's concept of "kill people and take their stuff," the better items aggregate toward the top.  So, once your PC's hit 15th level, a lot of the creatures that are a challenge for them also have higher-level stuff, and mid-level stuff seems 'common,' because just like the PC's, these opponents have been out there killing things and taking their better stuff.

Maybe that's why the PC's are getting attacked anyways.  That 13th level evil cleric eyes the +2 weapon the 11th level party cleric is sporting, and decides he'd like that for himself.  So he hires a few ruffians and leads them in an ambush on the party.

[veekie]

2nd Edition was much lower-magic than 3.5, so taking some hints from there might be good.  For example:

2nd Edition mages were limited on how many spells of each level they could have in their spellbook, by their intelligence.  This limit could be applied to all casters in a low-magic setting.  Rather than hitting 'all' when you got to superhuman intelligence (raising ability scores was much harder; when you hit 19 int that limit would go away for a 2nd edition wizard and you can then scribe all spells) just have the limited number continue to grow slowly all the way up as int (or wis, for primary wis casters) increases.  Suddenly no caster can know all spells, they must pick and choose.  Add to that spells themselves being rarer and harder to come by, and caster power suddenly drops a whole lot as compared to the magic-mart worlds of 3.5 where the wizard is just going to buy scrolls of all the good spells next time he goes to town.  Additionally, specializing didn't allow you to choose your opposition schools.  Wizards would be somewhat weaker if specializing in Conjuration automatically banned Transmutation, and vice versa, for instance.

As for magical items...well, another 2nd Edition limitation might help there.  First, magical item creation was harder, you had to get specialized components (determined by the DM - making a magical item was basically a blank check for the DM to send the party on adventures to gather the toenail of a cloud giant and the eyeball of a medusa and whatnot) and then you had to cast Permanency - which permanently removed one point of constitution from the caster.  And since stats were also harder to raise...  Suddenly magic items become very rare because nobody wants to permanently lose stats.

Granted, neither of these methods is going to be effective or balanced on its own, but they might be an interesting place to start.  This allows things to be possible while making them more difficult.  An equally large difficulty is balancing the monsters, and I think it may simply not be worth trying to adapt D&D to this sort of thing.  As others have said, there are other games that are inherently lower-magic than 3.5 - including AD&D 2nd Edition itself.

Definitely an approach I can get behind. In a low magic setting, magic has a very tangible(more than mere wealth even) price, which limits its use.

So changes necessary:
-Build bonuses into your skill instead of gear. Better stats, to-hit, damage, general AC(replacing the amulets, magic armor and rings),  and saves.
-Separate creatures into grades by magic power. Strongly magical creatures like demons and dragons will be near mythic encounters and extremely difficult even for experienced characters, while pure brute types will make up the bulk of the adventuring day.
-Reduce expectation of loot, magical, or even gear at all is rare.
-Give magic a cost, greatly reducing individual spell availability.

Given the scale of changes necessary...rolling back to 2E might be easier. Or using a system like FATE, etc.

[RobbyPants]

Well, you can assign bonuses to the PCs that they'd normally get from magic items. I played around with this a bit in this old PbP game (which I think I'm going restart on here soon).

The basic idea was this:

Magic items that just provide a bonus are not being used. Instead, you all get the following bonuses as you level up:

    * All characters have an enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls, enhancement bonus to armour or shield AC bonuses (if any), resistance bonus to saves and enhancement bonus to all ability scores equal to their character level divided by 3, rounding down.
    * All characters have a deflection bonus to AC equal to their character level divided by 4, rounding down.
    * All characters have a competence bonus to all skills equal to their character level.

Plus there was a limit of 5 "attuned" magic items at once. This basically nullifies DR/magic, but it sucked already, anyway. It also won't give the PCs things that they'll probably need to effectively compete at mid to higher levels like flight, etc, which many often get from magic items, but that can be worked around (a flying mount + Handle Animal/Ride ranks, etc).

This is very similar to something I'm in the process of working on right now. The general parts are:

- Every several levels, you gain some boost (enhancement bonus to attack/damage, enhancement bonus to Armor bonus, enhancement bonus to Shield bonus, Deflection bonus to AC, Natural bonus to AC, resistance bonus to saves, enhancement bonus to an ability score) which scales by level.

- No "plus" items exist. Get rid of Gloves of Dex and Cloaks of Resistance. Magic weapons and armor just provide their special bonuses and no plusses.

- You can only attune so many permanent items at a time (based on level, between 3 and 8 ).

- Wands and Staves are permanent items.

- You can only benefit form one potion per hour (not sure yet how to handle scrolls).

- Anyone can craft (with certain restrictions on types).

- Each person can only craft one item per level (with a certain max value based on level).

- Crafting involves going on some sort of quest to get items (with guildlines).


TL;DR: You don't need items to stay on the RNG. Anyone can make items. They should be rare enough that you can't simply expect to trade them for money. If you happen to find 50,000 gp at level 1, you can't just convert it into magic items, so we don't need WBL anymore.

[ksbsnowowl]

Well, you can assign bonuses to the PCs that they'd normally get from magic items. I played around with this a bit in this old PbP game (which I think I'm going restart on here soon).

The basic idea was this:

Magic items that just provide a bonus are not being used. Instead, you all get the following bonuses as you level up:

    * All characters have an enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls, enhancement bonus to armour or shield AC bonuses (if any), resistance bonus to saves and enhancement bonus to all ability scores equal to their character level divided by 3, rounding down.
    * All characters have a deflection bonus to AC equal to their character level divided by 4, rounding down.
    * All characters have a competence bonus to all skills equal to their character level.

Plus there was a limit of 5 "attuned" magic items at once. This basically nullifies DR/magic, but it sucked already, anyway. It also won't give the PCs things that they'll probably need to effectively compete at mid to higher levels like flight, etc, which many often get from magic items, but that can be worked around (a flying mount + Handle Animal/Ride ranks, etc).

Rereading this in Robby's quote reminded me of a d20 PDF that I downloaded a couple years back.  Viking RPG (maybe Viking d20?) was a project by a Norwegian over on enworld maybe?  He basically used the basic chassis of 3.5, but gutted the magic system, and wrote new base classes.  Where the PHB fighter has a column for BAB, Fort, Ref, and Will, these classes also had a column for "attack enhancement" (I forget exactly what it was called).  This bonus scaled with level, and applied to attacks (maybe damage?) and applied as a dodge bonus to AC.  Thus, it performed a similar function as magic weapons by raising your attack roll, but without giving you extra iterative attacks.

[phaedrusxy]

- You can only benefit form one potion per hour (not sure yet how to handle scrolls).

- Anyone can craft (with certain restrictions on types).

- Each person can only craft one item per level (with a certain max value based on level).

I just ignored potions, as they're capped at 3rd level and lower non-personal effects, anyway.

I made staffs take up a slot, but not wands.

I said you just can't cast from scrolls, period. They're just used to share spell info between wizards, etc.

Otherwise, what I'm doing is very similar. I do have a WBL chart, but it is more for determining what is able to be "crafted" at a given level, etc. It is also broken down into item levels, basically (at ECL 7 you should have 1 item worth X, 1 item worth Y, etc).

[zioth]

I've been running a low-magic D&D campaign for a long time. It can be done. Here are some ideas:

1) Low treasure. No one's going to be crafting powerful items if they only have 1500gp at level 7.

2) Slow advancement. The balance between casters and non-casters is quite reasonable at low levels, even without magic items.

3) Less combat. When you do include combat, ignore CR. Give the characters a challenge appropriate to their power, and reward them accordingly.

4) Consequences for using magic. If this is a low-enough-magic world, then most people have never seen a spell cast. They're likely to burn a known spellcaster at the stake.

5) Urban adventures. If magic isn't trusted and mages are feared, the PCs will have to be careful what they do in public. Urban adventures make sure they're in public most of the time.

6) Redued access to magic. Limit wizards to their base 2 spells per level. Make new arcane lore an incredible find. Change the know-everything classes (cleric, druid etc) so they have a limited number of known spells. Drop sorcerer altogether.

[Lycanthromancer]

5) Urban adventures. If magic isn't trusted and mages are feared, the PCs will have to be careful what they do in public. Urban adventures make sure they're in public most of the time.

Uh... The only people getting burned at the stake are non-casters that people have been led to believe are casters. The reason why this is? If it really WAS a spellcaster past level 2, those people in that mob are probably not going to walk out of there alive.

Also, again, low-magic just makes the spellcasters much much much more powerful by comparison, crafting or no.

[Libertad]

I like Ksbsnowowl's "rare" magic idea.  If you use the standard loot and wealth by level guidelines with no class restriction, the PCs end up feeling like superheroes.  Most "normal" people are noncasters and NPCs, but most of your adventures pit you against magic-using baddies.  This seems to be the avenue most low-magic settings do.

We get the idea of low-magic in our games as ones where players don't get good equipment or play clerics and wizards.  It actually seems like most low-magic settings are low-magic, but not for the PCs or bad guys.  I think we need a better definition of low-magic games considering that the popular settings and game mechanics are often at a disconnect.

Examples:

1: Monster hunters in 3rd edition Ravenloft could access secret organizations dedicated to protecting humanity, many of them containing wizards, paladins, and supernatural heroes (albeit low-mid-level).  There are wizard colleges around, but they're one-of-a-kind isolated places.  Most dudes are commoners who can't really defend themselves, and the nobility's either evil or incompetent.  A PC Druid most likely belonged to an order that's a big power play in a certain nation, while the PC Wizard probably studied at a famed university.

2: In the Dragonlance adventure paths, you can get access to magical items and spell laboratories if your wizard character joins the Tower of High Sorcery, and some churches have extensive networks of clerics.  The Dragon Empire (the Big Bad Guys of the setting) were for all intents and purposes a high-magic society.  Most of the good and neutral nations were suffered from peasant uprisings, poverty, and distrust of both arcane and divine spellcasters; the Gods of Evil were the only deities who didn't leave the world; and the Wizards are all cloistered in a single Tower cut off from the world.  The Dragon Empire had an army of evil Clerics, magical defenses, flying fortress, and weren't averse to adding monsters and chromatic dragons to their ranks.  Heck, the party Cleric of a non-evil deity was expected to be the first of the "returned" generation!

Idea: what if we allowed the PCs in low-magic settings to have standard wealth by level and unrestricted access to full-casting core classes?  Magic item shops in every town would be replaced by powerful one-of-a-kind beneficiaries with a vested interest in major world events, like monster hunters in Ravenloft or the last remaining conclave of Wizards in Dragonlance.  The bad guys would be more powerful than the forces of good due to evil pacts and stuff, and thus function as though they were in the "normal magic" range in regards to encounter treasure.

It may not be what we think of low magic, but this can be explained by "PCs are special."  Most peasants will never see a potion of jump or a +1 flaming sword, but the PCs go to the regions of the world where all the interesting stuff is happening.  And if the PCs fail, well then there's nothing protecting those commoners and aristocrats from the Necromancer's army of shadows or the Dragon Empire's invasion.

[ksbsnowowl]

^ good post.

Idea: what if we allowed the PCs in low-magic settings to have standard wealth by level and unrestricted access to full-casting core classes?  Magic item shops in every town would be replaced by powerful one-of-a-kind beneficiaries with a vested interest in major world events, like monster hunters in Ravenloft or the last remaining conclave of Wizards in Dragonlance.  The bad guys would be more powerful than the forces of good due to evil pacts and stuff, and thus function as though they were in the "normal magic" range in regards to encounter treasure.

You never told me you were a telepath.

This is quite close to what exists in my homebrew setting.  Although other areas of the world are somewhat different, the main focus is on Rashemen (FR culture ported into a viking setting).  I didn't intentionally think of it the way you describe it, but the Hathran are basically "powerful one-of-a-kind beneficiaries with vested interests in major world events."  They even require all male arcane casters to craft one assigned item per year (an easing of the Vremyoni "you can't adventure" treatment that exists in FR); ergo, they do have magic items 'in reserve.'  And magic marts don't exist, period.

I'm just starting my players on a path that is basically a reframed Red Hand of Doom using an army of Tanarukk (demon-blooded troll spawn) and half-fiend trolls (and a Nycaloth and an Abishai) in place of goblins and dragons.  Much of their power comes from troll interbreeding with bound demons, and there are a few Glabrezu that have granted some wishes to some trolls (via human prisoners the trolls intimidate into wishing for what the troll desires).  Thus, I have forces of evil that are stronger than the scattered human settlements because they have made pacts with demons and devils, just as you describe.

There are still individuals who have crafting feats, so you can probably find a spirit shaman in a remote village that can make you a scroll that you need, but it's not as prolific nor as wide a choice as Wands R' Us.

[ksbsnowowl]

Another good example of a "Low Magic Item" world is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (WotC even made an RPG for it that wasn't too bad - had a really interesting twist on the casting mechanic).

When the series starts, NO ONE in the world knows how to make magic items any more.  Male magic users go insane and are hunted down.  Nearly all the female magic users on the main continent lock themselves away in their tower conclave and meddle in the political affairs of nations.  Oh, and those female magic users also claim rightful ownership of all magic items in the world.

Unsurprisingly, a mid-level female magic-user owns any combat they are in, except against other channelers (magic-users), or unless they are severely outnumbered, or they are caught by surprise/poisoned.

If you want casters in your game, that's the way it is going to be.

If you want a gritty, historical real-world feel to your game, use the Vitality/Wounds hit point system from Unearthed Arcana, and ban all casters except Rangers and Paladins.  Allow all core item-crafting feats (note, a lot of items will no longer exist, because no one can meet the prereq's). Problems solved.  Excepting Practiced Spellcaster, no one has a caster level higher than 10, so +3 weapons, armor, and cloaks of resistance are the highest it goes.

[Sinfire Titan]

2nd Edition was much lower-magic than 3.5, so taking some hints from there might be good.

What? 2E's modules had more magic items than 3.5 does if you follow the WBL guidelines. Seriously, where do you think the WBL guidelines came from? WotC made them when playtesters complained about magic items.

[zioth]

Uh... The only people getting burned at the stake are non-casters that people have been led to believe are casters. The reason why this is? If it really WAS a spellcaster past level 2, those people in that mob are probably not going to walk out of there alive.

Assuming poor DMing and uncooperative players, yes. The wizard will cast Fireball and kill the whole crowd. Assuming at least moderately good roleplayers who understand that they're in a low-magic campaign, they're not going to want the whole town to turn against them, so they'll think carefully before they risk using magic in public.

In my campain, the wizard focused on subtle spells like Charm Person and Invisibility. He saved his damaging spells for when he was in private, and there weren't likely to be any surviving witnesses. At some point, he started using magic more publically, and now he's the enemy of the whole town. There were serious consequences to his actions -- his political ambitions were ruined, and the clergy and town guard were out hunting him. He had to go into hiding, and only come out with good reasons.

If you're interested: http://zioth.com/zioth. The character is Ziedon, and he comes into his own around turn 101.

[Zonugal]

In found in my campaign setting (a space opera based in the Astral Plane) that an appropriate way to bring close combat back in battles was to start making it a better option than magic. So my setting has the players at 3rd to 8th level and the highest npc at 12th, so magic is rather low compared to much higher-leveled campaigns. Characters also readily and to a great extent use magical weaponry in the form of energy firearms (acid splash made into an acid pistol, magic missile into a mini-rail gun, ect...) so they also have energy shields (resist energy made into a army badge or such). So this results in characters initially establishing long range support in any battle and than quickly engaging their enemies in close combat (think of Warhammer 40k and assaulting).

[Mixster]

IMO D&D really isn't worth using for low-magic settings, the fun stuff in D&D is all in the high-magic part of town. You'd be much better off using Runequest, or perhaps Gurps.

Reminds me of something I heard: "With enough money, time, and parts you can turn a pick-up truck into a fast racing car.  But it's easier to just buy a racing car."

I don't know much about these RPGs.  Can the Runequest and GURPS rule-sets simulate a high-action Sword & Sorcery feel, or one where the characters' main focus of power comes from their skills and abilities and not magic?

Not being an expert on GURPS I really can't say much about that. But Runequest can certainly handle encounters that are purely mundane and based on skill without magic ever getting near it. Magic also scales linearly in that, making powerful casters much less likely to screw over the entire world.

[snakeman830]

Uh... The only people getting burned at the stake are non-casters that people have been led to believe are casters. The reason why this is? If it really WAS a spellcaster past level 2, those people in that mob are probably not going to walk out of there alive.

Assuming poor DMing and uncooperative players, yes. The wizard will cast Fireball and kill the whole crowd. Assuming at least moderately good roleplayers who understand that they're in a low-magic campaign, they're not going to want the whole town to turn against them, so they'll think carefully before they risk using magic in public.

Or, the spellcaster just casts something like Charm Person on the leader of the guard or Invisibility and not care as the villager's can't find him.

[Libertad]

Not being an expert on GURPS I really can't say much about that. But Runequest can certainly handle encounters that are purely mundane and based on skill without magic ever getting near it. Magic also scales linearly in that, making powerful casters much less likely to screw over the entire world.

Sounds cool, I'll check it out sometime.

[SneeR]

In my experience, low-magic removes the possibility of engaging battles with "monsters." Nothing high-level is appropriate. The whole world sort of stagnates at about level 8-10 without magic.

I DMed an extremely successful campaign that featured almost zero magic. It was also almost entirely human, and featured the rise of technology as a theme. It basically became about taking down a government through political manipulation and guerilla strikes. I think that this is the only way such a game could go. Surround the PCs with low-level NPCs, and makes sure they understand that there are some guys that only they can kill. They need to have an army assist them so they can kill the general without dying at the hands of the opposing army. One-on-one combat became much less important except against the elites.

Naturally, social skills become exceedingly important. That game was great, and we still reference it in our group.

[b100d_arrowz]

It really depends on the group of players you have. If they all awnt to be uber wizards toying with the very fabric of existence not so much, but if their fine with the best magic tossed around being fireball and buffs then most certainly. I ran a very low magic campaign once, with no divine magic at all, and for PCs, they could only take half their levels in a full spellcasting class, or 3/4ths if they were a bard or similar (ranger/paladin had the acf for no magic). And honestly my players loved that campaign more then any of the others that we ran, no matter who the DM in our group was. Granted my players are not the world's best optimizers, in fact some of them were still in the mold of thinking about how kick ass the monk is  but they found that doing things low magic like this made them actually think about what they were doing with their characters, as there was no way for a character to come back from death (at least not until the climax of the campaign), we threw in a lingering wounds system, spells per day came into play again, and the less skilled optimizers didn't feel out of place at the gaming table.

From the DM side it actually made the CR of things match up a bit better, especially since my group was larger then the assumed party (we averaged 6 a session, sometimes as many as 10 if some of the old players were visiting and wanted to join in), and it kept me more on my toes as well as the players had to actually be creative instead of waiting for the wizard to do all the work  The only real change in monsters that I threw down were: the dragons were locked away deep inside the earth, and the players did not encounter them until they were of high level, outsiders did not use the greatest of the SLA (blasphemy being the key one  ), and not using other instant kill monster attacks. Other then that the combat frequency dropped a bit as the party couldn't just buff buff adventure at will anymore, but even that was welcome to the players, they liked the extra chance to roleplay.

[Unbeliever]

One idea that I've played and floated before just involves being very comfortable with mutable fluff.  We ran a setting -- Icelandic Saga, fwiw -- where it was a fairly low magic world.  And, we just separated out the game mechanics element of wealth, gp, and magic items from the fluff/storyline elements.  So, after each encounter we'd get "treasure points" that were suspiciously similar to gp that we could spend on magic items and gear. 

And, then we'd define some of our items or abilities to be the product of gear or items our characters had on us.  Likewise, sometimes we'd get a bona fide magic or heirloom item that existed in the narrative, and could be traded or gifted, and so forth. 

This meant that you could be a dirt poor fighter, but still have whatever mechanical benefits that D&D assumes you ought to have to make the game run.  It also didn't require all that much on our parts.