Define Low Magic


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Shadow Lodge

I've seen a lot of poeple talk about low-magic campaigns here. But what do you really consider low magic? I'm just wondering, because some people seem to think that a low-magic world would definately benefit the wizard (as he's a towering source of magic in a world otherwise weak in it). Others take the view that in a world so devoid of magic, he would have a hard time expanding his spellbook beyond the spells he automatically gains as he levels.

For me, the following would be characteristics of a low-magic world:

Magic is very rare. Full casters are rare as hen's teeth. Even partial casters are fairly rare. An adventurer might go his entire career without finding a magic weapon.

Creating magical items / researching spells is much more costly and dificult. I'd suggest making the costs for creating a magical item should be multipled by five, the required caster level doubled, and the time required for creation to be tripled.

Why so harsh? Because otherwise, there's no reason that they would be so rare. Every wizard in the setting would take item creation feats out the wazoo and start flooding the market with magical items, and it would quickly become the default high-fantasy magical world.

I'll go against the popular grain here and say that most monsters should NOT be nerfed. One of the reasons to set a campaign in a low-magic world is to give it a more gritty feel. Nerfing the monsters to make them the same threat level they would be otherwise doesn't accomplish this, it just means that you're fighting weakened monsters. A monster has DR 5/magic ? Too damn bad...it's just so resistant to damage that it absorbes lots of what the party throws at it.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Hmm...I thought low magic and low fantasy were synonymnous.
Learn something every day :)


Low magic should cut both ways. Fewer abberations and magical beast, undead should be rare. Most if not all adventures would feature humanoids and animals. Demons and outsiders in general would be on the not welcome list.


Have you looked at the Green Ronin Conan D20 thats low magic. Lots of humans races and ancient "ruins".


I agree with Mr. Fishy. If you keep those monsters that aren't exactly mundane, you start running into some serious problems unless you're willing to alter all of them as well. When the aberrations are playing with your brain because they retain their SLAs, it's not going to be much fun if magic is so limited that you can't defend against it. Many outsiders have a plethora of SLAs while the PCs will be magic-poor, meaning they can't defend against those effects as easily (no cloaks of resistance/displacement, no rings of protection, etc.). Regardless of how low-magic is defined, you have to always understand the repercussions of your decision. For example, do you limit the players to classes with no spellcasting, partial casters only, or still let them have full spellcasting? The cleric won't care, the wizard may weep, and the sorcerer will be just as unconcerned as the cleric. How do the PCs handle a monster with DR/magic and good? Hope the cleric prepped the right spells...and so on.

Shadow Lodge

I guess I should have stated a few things better. I don't really think you should nerf the more magical monsters, but they should probably be made much more rare (just like magical items and people talented in magic).


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Why do you hate your players? No, really, why?


I think a great example of a low magic fantasy world is Tolkien's books. Yes, there are magic swords, but you could count them up pretty quickly. Their magic effects are quite subtle anyway. They are just really, really good swords that are really hard to break. Nothing flaming, or eating souls. Most "reputed" items could be masterwork items. There are only 5 wizards and at the time of the trilogy, there is only one working for the good guys. There is a reference to "conjurers of cheap tricks"... so perhaps there are partial casters. I really like that setting for a story, but I prefer the sort of world Pathfinder has described to play in.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
loaba wrote:
Why do you hate your players? No, really, why?

Why do you let your players run your games?

Spoiler:
See how that was completely irrelevant and added nothing to the discussion? Can you guess why I posted it in response to you?


Dire Hobbit wrote:
I think a great example of a low magic fantasy world is Tolkien's books. Yes, there are magic swords, but you could count them up pretty quickly. Their magic effects are quite subtle anyway. They are just really, really good swords that are really hard to break. Nothing flaming, or eating souls. Most "reputed" items could be masterwork items. There are only 5 wizards and at the time of the trilogy, there is only one working for the good guys. There is a reference to "conjurers of cheap tricks"... so perhaps there are partial casters. I really like that setting for a story, but I prefer the sort of world Pathfinder has described to play in.

How would you reconcile Elves in a Middle-earth setting? They're not exactly low-magic... They're very controlled magic if nothing else.

Seriously - to the OP - why do want to set up your party to fail? The game is set up in a way that assumes characters will have access to X magical resources at X level so they can face X monster. If you limit player access to magic items, but don't alter your monsters accordingly, then you're guilty of being an Ugly DM. And who wants that?


TriOmegaZero wrote:
loaba wrote:
Why do you hate your players? No, really, why?

Why do you let your players run your games?

** spoiler omitted **

Have I started a thread that I don't know about? I'm confused...

Oh wait, you're trying to say that if I think a DM is a big jerk for setting up his players to fail (which is exactly what the OP is suggesting), then I must let my players run wild and have everything they want. Nice assumption...

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Yes, completely unfounded and not at all helpful to this discussion of what low magic means to different people.

Just like your statement.

Your second post, much better.


Kthulhu wrote:

I've seen a lot of poeple talk about low-magic campaigns here. But what do you really consider low magic? I'm just wondering, because some people seem to think that a low-magic world would definately benefit the wizard (as he's a towering source of magic in a world otherwise weak in it). Others take the view that in a world so devoid of magic, he would have a hard time expanding his spellbook beyond the spells he automatically gains as he levels.

For me, the following would be characteristics of a low-magic world:

Magic is very rare. Full casters are rare as hen's teeth. Even partial casters are fairly rare. An adventurer might go his entire career without finding a magic weapon.

Creating magical items / researching spells is much more costly and dificult. I'd suggest making the costs for creating a magical item should be multipled by five, the required caster level doubled, and the time required for creation to be tripled.

Why so harsh? Because otherwise, there's no reason that they would be so rare. Every wizard in the setting would take item creation feats out the wazoo and start flooding the market with magical items, and it would quickly become the default high-fantasy magical world.

I'll go against the popular grain here and say that most monsters should NOT be nerfed. One of the reasons to set a campaign in a low-magic world is to give it a more gritty feel. Nerfing the monsters to make them the same threat level they would be otherwise doesn't accomplish this, it just means that you're fighting weakened monsters. A monster has DR 5/magic ? Too damn bad...it's just so resistant to damage that it absorbes lots of what the party throws at it.

The fewer spellcasters there are, the better each one of them is. Conversely a non caster without magic is a walking dead man. Even if he only gets his free spells, everything will have terrible defenses and terrible offenses than isn't another spellcaster.

What you're doing is saying in no uncertain terms that your choices of character are spellcaster and monster food. Most people have no desire to feed the monsters.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Mistah Green wrote:


What you're doing is saying in no uncertain terms that your choices of character are spellcaster and monster food. Most people have no desire to feed the monsters.

Or that he's not going to use monsters except for rare, truly dangerous opponents.

Yes, I know deviating from the game like that is extreme, but some people like that.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
Mistah Green wrote:


What you're doing is saying in no uncertain terms that your choices of character are spellcaster and monster food. Most people have no desire to feed the monsters.

Or that he's not going to use monsters except for rare, truly dangerous opponents.

Yes, I know deviating from the game like that is extreme, but some people like that.

Except that he isn't.


TriOmegaZero wrote:

Yes, completely unfounded and not at all helpful to this discussion of what low magic means to different people.

Just like your statement.

Your second post, much better.

My question (not really a statement) stands; what this DM is proposing is grossly unfair to any player who has taken the time to read through the core rules and the bestiary. That player has formulated certain expectations based on game materials and is about to be sorely disappointed when his character doesn't obtain magic items and the beasties become harder and harder to hit etc.

I have no problem with a low-magic world and appropriately modified creatures. If the OP insists on going this route, I hope he would at least up the XP awards (substantially.)

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Mistah Green wrote:
Except that he isn't.

What?

Kthulhu wrote:
I guess I should have stated a few things better. I don't really think you should nerf the more magical monsters, but they should probably be made much more rare (just like magical items and people talented in magic).

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
loaba wrote:

My question (not really a statement) stands; what this DM is proposing is grossly unfair to any player who has taken the time to read through the core rules and the bestiary. That player has formulated certain expectations based on game materials and is about to be sorely disappointed when his character doesn't obtain magic items and the beasties become harder and harder to hit etc.

I have no problem with a low-magic world and appropriately modified creatures. If the OP insists on going this route, I hope he would at least up the XP awards (substantially.)

Question, right, I apologize. I totally agree that he must make sure his players are okay with this type of game. And trying to force it on them without their knowledge/consent is doing them a disservice.

But then the question should be, why aren't you asking the players to play Warhammer Fantasy RPG?


To me, low-magic can cover quite a distance from complete lack of magic with just a few supernatural things, to something with far more magic than tolkien (yet less than D&D). I, too, distinguish between low-magic and low-fantasy; tolkien is low-magic, but still medium- to high fantasy with lots of orcs, elves, dwarves, and undead.

Personally, I think the best way to keep a campaign low-magic is to make casters rarer among the general population (without necessarily restricting PC players), restricting the christmas tree effect of magic items, removing magic marts, and, more than anything, keeping it low-level (E6 for example).

It's hard to run a campaign with level 18 characters being low-magic without severely altering several aspects of the game, and in such a world surely wizards and sorcerers (not to talk about divine casters) will be far ahead of fighters, monks and the like (and yes, monks are very gear dependant).

loaba wrote:


Seriously - to the OP - why do want to set up your party to fail? The game is set up in a way that assumes characters will have access to X magical resources at X level so they can face X monster. If you limit player access to magic items, but don't alter your monsters accordingly, then you're guilty of being an Ugly DM. And who wants that?

An optimized party will wreak havoc amongst appropriate CR encounters. An optimized level 4 party could get into a fistfight with an owlbear practically naked, beating it into pulp with unarmed strikes and improvised weapons. Having a Masterwork greatsword instead of a +1 greatsword won't mean they auto-fail.

And not adjusting monsters isn't the same as not adjusting encounters; what he's saying is that a dragon still get to cast spells even though the players can't, not that they necessarily have to fight dragons at a regular basis.

I usually don't change the monsters that are, but do introduce new ones; taking dragons as an example, true dragons are very rare and very powerful in my campaigns, but there's also other dragons, such as sylvan dragons and mountain dragons, that are physically similar but far simpler creatures without magic power (adults ranging in CR between 2 and 7).


Any spells that a gnome or halfling casts.

Shadow Lodge

Funny how almost everyone has ignored the actual question in favor of telling me that I'm doing it wrong.


Dire Hobbit wrote:
I think a great example of a low magic fantasy world is Tolkien's books. Yes, there are magic swords, but you could count them up pretty quickly. Their magic effects are quite subtle anyway. They are just really, really good swords that are really hard to break. Nothing flaming, or eating souls. Most "reputed" items could be masterwork items. There are only 5 wizards and at the time of the trilogy, there is only one working for the good guys. There is a reference to "conjurers of cheap tricks"... so perhaps there are partial casters. I really like that setting for a story, but I prefer the sort of world Pathfinder has described to play in.

R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing is another interesting take on it -- essentially, casters are pretty tough, but there exist relatively plentiful artifacts that grant their holders complete immunity to magic and (I'm simplifying a bit here) disintegrate casters on touch but are harmless to non-caster people.

But in much the same way, I think it's an interesting setting for his books and his take on magic is really interesting too -- but I prefer something more like Pathfinder to play in.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
Mistah Green wrote:
Except that he isn't.

What?

Kthulhu wrote:
I guess I should have stated a few things better. I don't really think you should nerf the more magical monsters, but they should probably be made much more rare (just like magical items and people talented in magic).

Uh, what's a "more" or "less" magical creature? Personally, having just recently completed a high-level campaign (16th) I can tell you that magic equipment becomes absolutely vital, as everything you face is magical on one way or another.

The game depends on having access to the right tools. Don't deny your players what they need to have a reasonable chance to succeed. And, while you're at it, save yourself some paperwork.


Kthulhu wrote:
I've seen a lot of poeple talk about low-magic campaigns here. But what do you really consider low magic?

Basically, the full caster classes simply do not exist, with the implications on magic item creation that are fallout from that. Maybe they did exist at some point in the world's history, but that knowledge has been lost.

I'd include something like Summoner in that, even though it only gets 6 levels of spells.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
loaba wrote:

Uh, what's a "more" or "less" magical creature? Personally, having just recently completed a high-level campaign (16th) I can tell you that magic equipment becomes absolutely vital, as everything you face is magical on one way or another.

The game depends on having access to the right tools. Don't deny your players what they need to have a reasonable chance to succeed. And, while you're at it, save yourself some paperwork.

Was the 16th level Fighter you fought magical?

The game as written depends on that. Change the dependency, you have to change the game.


stringburka wrote:
An optimized party will wreak havoc amongst appropriate CR encounters. An optimized level 4 party could get into a fistfight with an owlbear practically naked, beating it into pulp with unarmed strikes and improvised weapons. Having a Masterwork greatsword instead of a +1 greatsword won't mean they auto-fail.

Yes, you're quite right, of course an Owlbear really just brings a lot of HP to the table. It doesn't have any nasty DRs in play. That's huge. :)


TriOmegaZero wrote:

Was the 16th level Fighter you fought magical?

The game as written depends on that. Change the dependency, you have to change the game.

That is quite true, and why go to the trouble to do so? So you can play in a low-magic world? So you can more easily control the PCs?

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

In regards to the OP, not nerfing monsters while removing swathes of what makes a party effective plays havoc with the CR system past the low levels. Assuming you go through with it, you need to acknowledge that fact and I hope you're good at gauging your party's numbers/tactics when designing encounters.

When you say you want spellcasting to be a rare trait, are you saying to have it is to be exceedingly special/noticeable in such a world? Does this mean that you don't want your players to be special? That's not necessarily a bad thing, per se, but it's an acknowledgement of what genre you're shooting for.

When you increase the market price of magic items five-fold, it seems to me that you're actually trying to make magic items special to the players. Adding another zero to the price tag of that +1 longsword won't really make players' eyes light with wonder, because it's still just giving you a +1 to damage at the expense of buying a house.

If you want magic items to be special & unique, make them special and unique! Flat-out remove the boring stuff that only gives numbers. Only hand out the cool stuff that can help define a character, like the holy avenger, marvelous pigments, or a horn of the tritons. Hand them out infrequently, sticking to literal piles of coins and gems otherwise, so that players will only really have a couple. People with such items won't be interested in selling them, because they're much more awesome by comparison in a world without minor magic items.

Personally, I'd attach scaling bonuses to either the players or the special items (both?), to deal with the loss of them having appropriate numbers (saves, AC, attack/damage, etc). But that's because I still want to use the CR as a guideline.

If you worry about item creation, don't let those feats make you a factory. Instead of multiplying the gold cost, limit how many they can make of a certain DC. I'm pulling numbers, so I'd advise against using them as is, but it gives the idea of what I'm shooting for...
* Each level, and only at that level (use it or lose it), you can make a single magic item of DC 5+Level or higher (throw in a cap?)
* You can make an unlimited number of items with a DC equal to your level or less (so at level 6, unlimited CL 1 items out of your spell list at normal speed)
* Don't include the unlimited low-level item option if you're still uncomfortable with there ever being someone with factory potential; even if it's only one/day maximum by a rare class at an uncommon/rare level (6+)

Scarab Sages

loaba wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:

Was the 16th level Fighter you fought magical?

The game as written depends on that. Change the dependency, you have to change the game.

That is quite true, and why go to the trouble to do so? So you can play in a low-magic world? So you can more easily control the PCs?

Maybe because you (GM AND Players of course) want to play a campaign / an adventure / a story ark with a more conan like / medieval / warhammer like setting without adapting (and purchasing)a complete new ruleset.

If the rules need such extensive reworking that learning another game is the better option, OK, but why not try it first.

I know, it will never be perfectly balanced and you will never be able to run adventures as written, but if the players are willing to play along, why not?


Kthulhu wrote:
Why so harsh? Because otherwise, there's no reason that they would be so rare. Every wizard in the setting would take item creation feats out the wazoo and start flooding the market with magical items, and it would quickly become the default high-fantasy magical world.

I'm currently playing in a low-magic campaign where the world is low-magic because the governments of the world (and the churches, to a degree) all had a backlash from the mage guilds uniting to conquer the world and slay the gods. When they nearly succeeded but failed, mages were distrusted by the people so were hunted down as witches and those who weren't registered with the local governments were executed without question.

In that world, magic item shops were rare, as it was impossible to get a license to sell them legally. But, old magic items found as treasure or held as heirlooms were still normal.

NPC arcane spellcasters were rare and almost always enemies of the group (which was aligned with one of the kings.) NPC divine casters were either part of the church heirarchy or were loners on the edge of society. (Peasants can't tell the difference between a witch and druid, most of the time.)

Magical beasts were just as common and unchanged, since there was nothing really stopping them from existing. In fact, some areas were overrun with them, since there were no longer wizards holding them at bay. Mindless Undead and Golems, however, are relatively rare.

PC arcane casters had to hide their profession or be faces with persecution by villagers.

---

That is one alternate definition of "low-magic." Another could be Kthulhu's world where magic is actually harder to do, but that seems more artificial somehow. You'd almost be better off using the "Impeded Magic" planar trait from 3.5 Edition.

---

Or, if you don't mind doing a LOT of extra work, you could actually create a demographic of your local world and alter it from the norm.

Thus, you could simply create a Tolkein-esk world where the phisical number of full spellcasters is limited. Perhaps the wizards and druids of the region have set their number by common agreement and jealously guard their powers and knowledge. Perhaps sorcerous bloodlines are few and only exist in certain heroic bloodlines controlled by the GM in NPC-only families.

By that method, you would know the exact number of characters in the region with full-caster powers, you could know every one of their names, and you can ensure that the PCs aren't one of them.

After all, how can a PC be a wizard if noone will teach a new apprentice (because the number of wizards are few) and no spellbooks are freely available? If there are only twenty druids allowed to be part of the Druidic Circle in a region with five hundred thousand people, it seems reasonable that the PCs aren't one of them.

And, in this way, it is leaves it possible for a PC to slip into that number later, when the story has one of 'the chosen number' die off.


Kthulhu wrote:
Funny how almost everyone has ignored the actual question in favor of telling me that I'm doing it wrong.

Fair enough; I define a low-magic world as a big 'ol PITA and something that my players are likely to frown upon.

If I were you, I would talk to my players and see how they think a low-magic world should be implemented.

Note: having said that, at mid levels, when the party has a stack of +1 Rings of Protection, worth 1000gp EACH, yes, I agree there is an imbalance in the system. For what it's worth, I expect most players who have ever run a high-level characters, and have counted up they're magic items GP level, have probably paused... What can you do? You'll break your head trying to reconcile the typical D&D economy.


feytharn wrote:


Maybe because you (GM AND Players of course) want to play a campaign / an adventure / a story ark with a more conan like / medieval / warhammer like setting without adapting (and purchasing)a complete new ruleset.

Indeed. I used to run Oriental Adventures games with relatively low magic. I think most PCs had 2 magic items at any one time, sometimes three, and at least half of them were basic utility rather than weapons, armor, rings of protection, and so on.

The PCs faced a lot of human (and humanoid) opposition more often than far out magical beasts. But, yes, I did have them encounter something that needed magical weapons to hit and they didn't have magical weapons. It was, however, in an area where they could use the terrain to their advantage. It ended up at the bottom of a well, as I recall. It was healthy, but out of the way and no longer an obstacle.


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If you want to do a low magic world, you need answers to these questions:
1) Why is it a low magic world?
2) Given that casters are hurt far less by not having access to any magic items than are non-casters, how do you intend to maintain balance intra-party?
3) Why are there so few magic items, and, how do you intend (or not intend) to prevent PC's from circumventing this with item crafting feats?
4) How are you going to handle balance with respect to monsters/magical creatures?
5) How has society & the economy reacted to this?

#2 is the most important one from a gamist perspective, a lot more people THINK their players won't have issues with this if they don't actively take steps to address it than actually have players that feel that way in their gut. #4 is also important from a gamist perpective.
You CAN finesse #4 by basically taking a simulationist perspective and tossing CR largely out the window---your opponents are the ones that live/work/plot in the areas you go to, so you don't have to take on 'level appropriate cr'---you take on whatever you think your party can handle. Best not choose...poorly.

#1,3, and 5 are vitally important from a simulationist perspective. The world has to make a certain amount of sense. They're also narrativist concerns, because, IME, a coherent, consistent world is far easier to work with from a narrative perspective.


For me, low magic isn't about numbers or magic item creation costs. Numbers and prices are arbitrary, unless your low magic campaign happens in a small part of the world that is low magic, while the world is a high magic place, there is no reference for the characters and thus changing prices and numbers makes no sense.

Low magic means to me:
*Wizard/Cleric/etc. doesn't use Scrying to reveal the adventure plot, enemies and powerful NPCs/Kings/Etc don't use lead walls and powerful magic to protect themselves against Scrying.
*Gandalf doesn't take the ring-artifact, teleports to Mordor and deals with the problem in 5 minutes, if you know what I mean.
*Strong limitations to Magic Shops.
*Magic isn't common.
*Magic items are wonderful things that aren't bought/sell/find often. Again the numbers provided by those items doesn't matter, +1/+5 isn't a problem, teleporting or flying is. Instead of changing your magic sword every 2/3 levels (i.e.) you will find a new, powerful, magic sword after some more time.


Low magic for me personally is simply restricting access to acquiring, making, and purchasing magical items. It technically isn't low magic in that magic is very rare. It's magical items are rare and hard to come by and the best way to get them is to go out and find them or find someone/something that already owns one and take it. It's a nod toward how magic items were handled in 1E (which I prefer over 3.5/PF).

Grand Lodge

On the whole low magic/restricted magic theme I cannot recommend the Midnight setting enough... everyone can learn magic or do minor rituals with the right feats, just that everyone is crap at it, and is limited to only a few schools of magic and once you use up your very limited spell energy you start needing to take CON damage to fuel your spells.

Dedicated casters are only marginally less crap at magic but in this setting you feel like you are worth a damn. The good summoning and evocation spells need feats to access as seperate schools, pretty much limiting combat applications of magic until you've some levels under your belt.

Really minor magic is available and craftable (lucky charms that give +1 a save etc) but anything that would be normal in your average FRP game such as +1 swords are rarer than rocking horse poop and extremely valuable.

Then there are covenant items which are more or less low powered artifacts, with backstory and non standard bonuses that scale up with the characters. So a covenant sword with a history of truth may start at +1 with a +2 Sense Motive checks to detect lies and would scale up to possibly +2 but with a bunch of other powers that would top out with true seeing once a week.


One sample low magic world. I've been contemplating running a short campaign in it next year. The shorthand for this world is pre-apocalyptic, Antediluvian, 'dawn of history'
This world is a VERY young world. A few of the eldest who were the first to awaken in this world are still alive. Nobody knows ANYONE who has died of either disease or old age. As near as anyone can tell, some great Power must have made this world, but thus far, said Power has shown no interest in communicating its intentions or desires to anyone.
For world feel---think pulp science fiction age Venus---considerably thicker atmosphere, greater oxygen availability, etc...and dinosaurs...lots of them. S.M. Stirling's recent homage 'The Sky People' is a place to start. The world at campaign start would only be about 200 years old. With generation times averaging 25 years, and an average of 8 children per couple, you're talking about a population that grows by a factor of 2^12 per century. Allowing for a rather savage amount of unnatural death, the population at campaign start is around 10 million worldwide (this, btw, means that over half the people born meet their ends through violent intervention, as the population would otherwise be 2^24 times almost 2, since the previous generations wouldn't have naturally expired as yet).
For technology, think bronze age, with a few tribes having the secrets of iron. Technological development will be a huge theme in this world. Knowledge, craft, and profession skills will be MUCH more important than in most games.
In terms of magic and priest craft---well, nobody has the requisite magic theory developed...the sort of stuff people totally take for granted in most worlds. Accordingly, you can't start as any sort of caster. In addition, the human bloodline hasn't been influenced yet by outsiders/fey/etc, which means sorceror is verbotten also.
Mechanics-wise, everyone is a human---although perhaps I should say proto-human, since after the apocalypse, all the regular races would spring from this one.
The normal person would have 3 12's and 3 13's insofar as attributes, a bonus feat and +1 skill point per level. Nobody really knows their lifespans as yet, but you'll gain the mental stat adjustments at 200 years/600 years/ and 1000 years respectively.
Player characters would be built with the following array 18,16,14,14,14,12 with the ability to add +2 to one stat of their choice. The various npc and heroic npc templates would be adjusted accordingly.
In addition, all persons have, although they won't know this at start, a very strong resistance to arcane and divine magic. Apply a +5 profane or sacred bonus to all saves against magic. Reduce this bonus by 1 for every spell level that you're capable of casting. Thus someone who could cast 5th level spells will have totally lost this bonus.

Actually inventing something, in general, is +20 difficulty higher than the base difficulty to make it. In addition, inventions have to proceed in a stair-step prerequisite fashion as well. Think Civilization as it might be applied to magical, religious, and mundane technology.
This campaign world would undergo a transformation over the course of hundreds of years from a low-tech, low-magic world to a high-tech, high magic world to a very high tech, high magic world, in time for its great apocalypse.


Kthulhu wrote:
Funny how almost everyone has ignored the actual question in favor of telling me that I'm doing it wrong.

That should tell you something.


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loaba wrote:
what this DM is proposing is grossly unfair to any player who has taken the time to read through the core rules and the bestiary. That player has formulated certain expectations based on game materials and is about to be sorely disappointed when his character doesn't obtain magic items and the beasties become harder and harder to hit etc.

Why should a player be rewarded for reading the Bestiary? This is info his character would not have, and thus the player should not have it. Why would the player (unless he also DMs) want to read it, unless it is to metagame? Surely, the player has something better to do with his time than read monster stat blocks for fun? If not, there is a life out there somewhere waiting for him to claim it.

As for the Core Rules, I actually think it was a significant mistake to include in it material that had previously been included in DM material, but it was, and there's no stuffing the genie back in the bottle. I do appreciate that doing so made it possible to start playing with one less book, and that is a good thing.

The line between DM info and player info has been eroding for years, and we've now reached the point where basically the only info the player doesn't have is what is in the actual adventure, if that. Not a good thing, IMHO.

Shadow Lodge

Mistah Green wrote:
That should tell you something.

It lets me know that the "one true way" -ism is still alive and well.


Mistah Green wrote:
Kthulhu wrote:
Funny how almost everyone has ignored the actual question in favor of telling me that I'm doing it wrong.
That should tell you something.

Interestingly enough, he and those that doesn't say he's wrong has posted long, detailed post explaining issues and solutions as well as described reasons for wanting that playstyle, while a sound minority have posted a lot of unhelpful BADWRONGFUN-posts.

That should tell you something.


Mistah Green wrote:
Kthulhu wrote:
Funny how almost everyone has ignored the actual question in favor of telling me that I'm doing it wrong.
That should tell you something.

I'm curious, do you hunt out threads for the purpose of posting short, insulting, general dismissals of the topic? Or, do you just choose them at random?


I'd define low magic as a large concept which runs from slightly less magic then a standard as presented D&D/Pathfinder setting all the way down too no magic.

The only way that a low magic setting works is either mortals just can't make magic items or they have some type of time limit on them. In most settings you have magic items last pretty much forever unless someone destroys them, and over the thousands of years that will lead to huge number of them on the market, even at 5 or 10 times cost.


dunelord3001 wrote:
The only way that a low magic setting works is either mortals just can't make magic items or they have some type of time limit on them. In most settings you have magic items last pretty much forever unless someone destroys them, and over the thousands of years that will lead to huge number of them on the market, even at 5 or 10 times cost.

One of the interesting details in the 3.5 DMG (not sure if PF carried it over, though) is the detail in the magic items section that said that sometimes magic does go bad over time. As such, magic items that have set around for hundreds of years may no longer work like originally intended, either becoming cursed or having their magical abilities affected by their environment.

I almost always include a little bit of that in my campaigns and my players have learned as a result that items from REALLY old sources should be tested before use.

(I should point out that I did say that I'd do that before actually doing so...)


I think low magic is a sliding scale. Personally my favorite part of dnd is spellcasting, so that preference definately colors my view on the subject but the 'real' low magic where actual casting classes are restricted or elimited is unappealing to me. So for me, low magic is a world where external items and magic is limited and the party is the exception to the rule. This ofcourse requires some consideration of plotlines as intrigue or investigation is made pretty trivial if you are the only kids on the block with magic. So usually its some kind of epic quest kind of story line if I am going low magic.

If I want a 'real' low magic game I'll usually play a different system though, like Song of Ice and Fire D20 that is designed around it.

I still think its incredibly subjective though. For instance does low magic refer to the power or rarity of magic? If you are in a world where everyone and their grandfather can cast a few cantrips, but casters over level 4 are almost unheard of, is that low or high magic?

What about harry potter's world? Sure in hogwarts there is magic up the wazoo, but in the world at large its unknown and rare (relative to the general population) and people would freak out if they found out about it. So is that high magic or low magic? Or can the same setting be both? What about the Dresden files?

I think the better method then saying 'I want a high magic game' or 'I want a low magic game', is to create a setting, then decide how you want the players to fit in that setting and go from there with any needed houserules or restrictions.


Brian Bachman wrote:
Why should a player be rewarded for reading the Bestiary? This is info his character would not have, and thus the player should not have it.

So the players should only ever have the info that the DM wants to them have, even as far as game mechanics go? I'm floored that someone would actually think that.

I say crack open the bestiary, see what badness is in there. Know a thing or two about the game you're going to be playing. We're all adults at the table, who can choose not to meta-game.

If you want to say AP (ie) are off-limits to a group, fair enough. But the Bestiary is and should be fair game.


Eh a player who thinks he knows what is coming because he has read the monster books will be disappointed in games I run. Those stats are suggestions :) do not expect all foes ya fight to match what is in the books.

Anyhow Low magic to me is not about no magical bests but more "here be monsters" kind of places. Magic is not common for mortals is all, bests can and do have magic as do other things, in the dark hidden places off the map.

It's about slow advancement and limiting magic items and powers. Pc's do not craft magic items or at lest not easily. Magic could be hard to learn and rare, limited or lost and gaining new spells is not an easy task. The caster pc's may be some of only a handful of their kind among mortals.

I have run low magic with 3.5 and with pasthfinder, I think of my homebrew as a type of low magic. Casting is limited and must be learned and can be seductive and dangerous. Magic items rare with making magic items a guarded secret and hard to learn.


The last low-magic campaign I ran was in 3.5. It was also low-tech. My basic concept was that it was a post-apocalyptic world that had suffered catastrophic global warming resulting in the drowning of all the old civilizations and the gradual rebirth of new ones on islands that were difficult and dangerous to travel between. I used a map of The Bahamas with the names changed as my beginning campaign map, and was gradually introducing other islands that were further off. The tech level was Stone Age, with one island having developed to Bronze Age. One of the PCs first missions was actually to steal bronzemaking technology from that island.

Magic was just beginning to re-emerge in the world, and wizards were not a playable class (although there were wizard NPCs on the advanced island) as the dominant culture was illiterate. Sorcerers were beginning to emerge, but were rare and subject to a lot of superstition. Arcane spells were learned randomly, rather than selected. Druids and clerics were playable, but there was a very small pantheon to choose from for the clerics. Druids were more common. In a pre-literate society, there were obviously no scrolls. Potions were pretty common. Other magic items were rare, but available if the tech was appropriate (+1 leather or hide armor was a big deal, as was a magic bronze short sword or axe).

It was a lot of fun, but we abandoned the campaign around 8th level because I ran out of time to write new material.


loaba wrote:
I define a low-magic world as a big 'ol PITA and something that my players are likely to frown upon.

And completely irrelevant to this thread.

Nice.


Arnwyn wrote:
loaba wrote:
I define a low-magic world as a big 'ol PITA and something that my players are likely to frown upon.

And completely irrelevant to this thread.

Nice.

Oh, look, the kids are awake...

The OP asked for opinions on Low-magic campaigns, he;s getting pro and con arguments.

If you play the game as it's presented, well there is plenty to keep you busy already. If you want to alter the game, such as magic-level, well, then you've got some work to do.

I submit, that really, in the end, all of the opinions here mean jack. What really means anything, is what the OP's players think of all this. If his group is onboard with a low-magic campaign, that's great. His group should be working out the details.

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