Looking for some Alpha Play Testers - Low magic Campaign


Homebrew and House Rules


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Guys I'm looking for some alpha play testers for a low magic campaign. This is a work in progress and part of a larger body I'm strongly considering publishing under the OGL. This is a significant overhaul which hits all of the major points of a campaign: magic, combat and character creation. At this stage I'm just looking for feedback on how balanced the options are. Bare in mind these three sections are intended for use together, and represent a low magic campaign. Thus they are not intended to simply "fix" some aspect the Core / RAW has overlooked. To be fair, magic is more restrictive, combat more dangerous, and the world less forgiving...and that is what makes your characters heros. If it were easy anyone would be able to do it.

The overall effect of these rules should create an environment similar to Skyrim or Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings level of power without trying to "be" any of the above.

https://lazlo-cos-pathfinder.obsidianportal.com/wikis/character-generation

https://lazlo-cos-pathfinder.obsidianportal.com/wikis/spells-and-magic

https://lazlo-cos-pathfinder.obsidianportal.com/wikis/combat

Let me know what you think.


Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

Spells which introduce “Game Breaking Mechanics” (GBM) which allow the players to simply circumvent the realities of the harshness of life will either be banned or see heavy rework before being allowed in the game. These include a lot of the Divination (Detect X), Summoning magic, Teleportation magic, and spells which completely remove certain challenges such as Create Water, Resist Elements, etc. Magic as such under the LCM ruleset is much more limited in its scope of just how far it can be pushed.

That's not how you write campaign wiki. You make adjustments to spells you consider offensive and post these adjustments. Currently it just sounds like a dynamic way to keep players on the rails.

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

Blocking / Parrying

You can sacrifice 1 BAB and convert it to a + 2 “dodge” bonus for AC, unless you are using a shield. When your base attack reaches + 4 this advances to 2 BAB for a + 4 bonus to AC, and continues to scale at + 8 and + 12. With a medium shield you convert with a ratio 1 to 3, and a large shield at 1 to 4.

Am I reading it correctly that level 20 Fighter with a large shield can lower his attack by 6 to get 24 dodge bonus to AC? Or it stops at 12 for -4/+16? Either way, how does it make combat more dangerous?

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

https://lazlo-cos-pathfinder.obsidianportal.com/wikis/magic-items

It's empty. That's bad.

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

Prestige Classes are allowed but require a solid RP / campaign reason for joining (it is not merely choosing the right skills and feats). Only one prestige class may be taken by any given character, choose wisely. Prestige class levels may never exceed the lowest level the character has in their Base / Core class. EX: Fighter 3/ Rogue 5/ Assassin 3

and whole magic section breaks game design rule #0: "you shouldn't try to balance OP mechanic by making it annoying to use".

Overall, I don't see how any of these rules make campaign "low-magic". Said campaigns are usually guilty of not giving player characters appropriate WBL and not using encounters of lower CR to account for that. But I couldn't figure out even if that's the case from the wiki.

And the final question: have you tried not playing D&D? There are systems much more suited for running "low magic" and gritty campaigns than Pathfinder.

Sovereign Court

Thieve's World, Thieve's World, Thieve's World, Thieve's World...


Blocking / Parry -
no you are not reading it right. The campaign is limited to a hard cap at LvL 13, but I do agree with you on one point. I think I discussed the campaign level limits on the main page of the Wiki and not covered it again under character creation / combat / magic where I initially directed folks to pull from. Thank you for mentioning it. I'd also point out that under the combat section there are additional notes for the use of Class Defense Bonus, Massive Damage, and Armor as DR which are also factored against the Block / Parry rules. I'm wondering if you have read those before responding?

I'd also point out that the Flanking rules as presented in the Wiki are a very dangerous offset to the Blocking rules (functioning much like an Aid Other), especially if used with the rules for Damage Carry Over, and Massive Damage.

Game Breaking Mechanics -
There will be a later document which goes much deeper into the individual spells but it was simply too much work release at this stage. In the mean time the passage you are referring to was deliberately left vague as a heads for additional things to come. Please scroll to the bottom of the Spells and Magic section however for more on the individual spells spoken of currently, which I go into some detail on.

Magic Items is not empty.
Rather it is simply not complete yet. On the other hands neither is it one of the 3 areas which I stated initially were open for play test, with specific links. Again, I'm thinking you are not actually reading the entire material presented (which is admittedly quite long) and are having the reaction of "It is not like what I'm used to." It is not supposed to be. This is an Alpha level play test for an overhaul which will be released as a separate campaign and not as a supplement to Golarion. Thinking of it simply as Golarion with some tweaked flavor is a significant mistake.

"Thieves World, Thieves World...." Means what exactly? I've also heard "Just play Iron Heros" which is a system I have actually looked at relatively closely and gave close consideration as I was looking at how I wanted to Customize the LCM Ruleset.

Now to address the remaining question: Why use Pathfinder for the low magic setting. and in a related question, "What about WBL?" As for WBL it is completely rejected as functional and a system much closer to what was seen back in 2nd ed will be in place. Further the necessity for scaling plus bonus items and stat / resistance boosting items has been dramatically curved (reflected in the way both magic and monsters are also being scaled).

Why pathfinder? Because it makes a good basis to begin with and the D20 system is well played around the world.

Keep in mind what I said in the initial post. This is an Alpha for a complete overhaul. That overhaul throws out conventions like the WBL, and the concept that you have to have stat boost items to be functional at high levels. There are no high levels beyond 13, and 7th level magic is nearly the realm of the Gods.

What we are looking at here is the simple question: Does the Character Creation, Combat and Magic system work well together "inside the bubble"?


[Reading character generation]
My main issue for now is that the text mixes Rules, Recommendations, and Preferences, with little differentiation in formatting, witch makes it harder to read.
In addition, some rule alterations are unclear. For example "Barbarians do not “loose control” while enraged"; what does that mean mechanically ? Or is it in fact a non-mechanical observation ?

As of the end of character generation, I see nothing that makes the setting low magic, or discourage strong magic uses. The fact that spellcaster uses two stats isn't really an handicap since you have a max 18 for ability score. In fact, it possibly hurt more the med-low magic classes (Magus, ranger...) since they now need to improve an additionnal ability, on top of the number of abilities they already need.

[Reading combat]
See above about rule clarity. Don't mix that much rules and commentary. If you want to comment on a rule, create a "Brewer's Notes" section, a bit like the sideblocks we see in the rulebooks.
I see a bit too much of "The rules doesn't really matter if the DM say so" in the rules (crit & fumble, lossing limbs...)
The revamp of the action system doesn't mention swift action at all. Does feat&mechanics using swift actions work at all ? If so, how a considered swift actions ? As free actions ? As move actions ?

As of the end of combat, I see nothing that makes the setting low magic. In fact, the rules seemss to hurts martial caracters more than the casters.

[Spells and Magic]
See above about rule clarity.
The Spell matrix look a lot like the arcanist spell casting, except it is buffed by the ability to add metamagic on the fly.
The limitation on magic items strait up hurts martial caracters.

As of the end of Spell and Magic, more than half of the changes actually buff the casters. The only rule that really "hurt" them is the fact that they can't cast spells above level 3 for their non-specialty school; but it doesn't actually hurt the power of the caster, only its versatility.

[Conclusion]
I'm sorry, I see nothing in your rules that would encourage low magic; At best it will only encourage specialization within caster classes. But, casters will still be better than non-casters.

This collection of houserules looks more like multiple home-made patches on perceived issues in PF, and not a consistent, uniform, balanced ruleset.

Overall the documents are okayish as early drafts. However, they are far from being structured and clear enough to be used for testing (even "alpha"-testing).

Webdev Nitpicking : The website is unpractical for reading such things; the content div takes only a third of the screen width (on a 1440*900 screen). This creates too much empty space that could be used to contain better formatted content.


#1 Totally agree with you on the web dev for the site itself. Web sites / HTML is FAR from a strong point of mine (I was VERY happy with the C i got in my college HTML classes), however the site is relatively easy to use and thus I took the lesser of evils and stuck with it.

#2 Thank you. You have obviously taken the time to look over the material for more than 5 mins and have given me an honest opinion. It is much appreciated.

#3 I'm still considering how to best format the material going forward. The biggest points that make the campaign "low magic" is the simple fact that there are very few casters in the world, with most of the magic items in fact being alchemy or engineering inventions. Now with the word "engineering" don't start thinking Gnome Tinkerer (a concept i hated bad enough to not allow Gnomes in the campaign at all), but rather bonus items (a +3 suit of armor for example) was the product of superior blacksmithing vs enchantment. You may have also noted that scribe scroll and brew potions abilites have both been removed from the setting entirely.

Either way, i'll continue to work on the formating and clarification for the site and see if I can better bring into focus my vision of the campaign setting. Ironically enough, my concept of the setting is very clear and it surprises me that when I say things like "Purple elephant...gym shorts..mithril pottery!!" that others aren't like "oh yeah...I seen that coming. Makes sense." I guess this is why I've not become a professional author previously! LOL

Again, I thank you for the honest feedback.

Lazlo


An issue you will really have to work with is that the feeling the players have of the setting are as much influenced by the mechanics than the actual history. If the mechanics belies the setting, there is the risk of the mechanics overwriting what you want to convey via the story.

After rereading, I think that one of the point you should work in priority is the classes. Right now, with the available classes, a player simply wont feel that there is shortage in spellcasting since many available classes are spellcasters. And mainly primary spellcasters, in addition.
It could be a good thing to rework wich classes you allow an wich you don't in order to create the impression that spellcasting isn't that usual.
In addition, I believe the class list should have its own page, rather that beeing inserted in the middle of the "Character generation" page.
Finally, you can use formating and ordering to give this impression without changing things too much.

If using your website is a bother while you are still working out the rules, you could use something like Google Docs as a tool to work out the way you want to phrase and organise your rules.

Here is a sample of writing and formating that could work for a class list : Classes of Assalya
You can see that I'm using italics to create a distinction between setting and rules. I've also separated the classes between Common, Uncommon, and Unplayable classes so that the players can feel that there is a shortage of casters. In addition, Unplayable classes let you show that a class exists, but can't be played for setting reasons.
Of course, the DM Notes shouldn't be shown in the final document, so that the player may discover this bit of knowledge if they ever investigate what's up with the wizards.

Dark Archive

My personal recommendation for inspiration, though it may well need some conversion unless you're willing to use 'as is', would be the Midnight Setting if you want a low magic campaign.
 
An introduction of the setting can be found here.
 
The feat based spellcasting, barring of clerics to the villains, and Heroic Paths instead of magic items/weapons works all work well in keeping the magic low in a campaign. As too the built in flavor that magic used can get you hunted and killed... helps limit magic used.

Midnight Character Creation
Midnight Magic System


An idea I have kicked around was simply limiting the classes to non-spell casting variants (spell-less Ranger for example) and have only one caster for both arcane and divine allowed in the party. Further I always find it somewhat irritating when folks are saying "I don't see why the campaign is low magic" but they are looking at character creation and not at the campaign itself. Just because you are a wizard (or whatever) does not mean that there are many others in the campaign. You may in fact be one of only 30 Evokers in the entire kingdom, and must be a member of the Guild of BattleMages (or whatever) to take such a class.

Just some thoughts I'm kicking around.

Thanks for the ideas guys, please keep em coming.

~ Lazlo ~


I've finally got time to address some of your more specific questions..

Aralicia wrote:

[Reading character generation]

My main issue for now is that the text mixes Rules, Recommendations, and references, with little differentiation in formatting, which makes it harder to read.

In addition, some rule alterations are unclear. For example "Barbarians do not 'loose control' while enraged"; what does that mean mechanically ? Or is it in fact a non-mechanical observation?

Specifically many players who were familiar with earlier editions of the Barbarian tend to still play their Barbarian Rage as "flipping out and hitting anything near them" in true berserker fashion. Thus the comment under the Barbarian entry. In retrospect however I am updating some of the entries on the site and have removed the offending comment entirely and am trying to distinguish better between "hard changes" to the rules vs merely recommendations on how to better tweak the character options for campaign optimizations. This was a point you mentioned (directly or indirectly) on a couple of occasions in your post and I took as good feed back and changed.

Aralicia wrote:
As of the end of character generation, I see nothing that makes the setting low magic, or discourage strong magic uses. The fact that spellcaster uses two stats isn't really an handicap since you have a max 18 for ability score. In fact, it possibly hurt more the med-low magic classes (Magus, ranger...) since they now need to improve an additional ability, on top of the number of abilities they already need.

I took a long hard look at the demographic ratios for the number of adventurer classes represented in a given population. As near as I can tell they represent 5 - 7% of the total population, which is comparable with the number of Special Forces soldiers in the US Military vs more common infantry and support soldiers. You have a lot of people, but not a lot daredevil risk taking mercenary types. Even those who make their living dealing with conflict as a soldier are typically NPC "Warriors" and not "Fighters" (or whatever).

So far so good. The second consideration I'm having is the fact that spell casters in general are rare and must specialize. Granted they get additional bonuses for doing so, but this also means that a Diviner for example is much stronger at Divination than a wizard in a standard campaign, as is a Fireball slinging Evoker, but they are now pigeonholed so not every caster in the game has the same basic setup of spells. IE; everyone takes Fireball, Fly, Lightningbolt for their their 3rd level spells and teleport for their 5th level, etc.

The specialization requirement does NOT change the number of casters in a given realm, but DOES now make them much more unique. In other words you still only have 50 casters, but now it is unlikely that more than a handful are of any given specialization. The ripple effect of this means that most NPC casters are rarely higher than 6 - 7th level, and probably not more than two or three each ever get that high in a given region per Specialization

Aralicia wrote:

[Reading combat]

See above about rule clarity. Don't mix that much rules and commentary. If you want to comment on a rule, create a "Brewer's Notes" section, a bit like the sideblocks we see in the rulebooks. I see a bit too much of "The rules doesn't really matter if the DM say so" in the rules (crit & fumble, lossing limbs...)

I am currently cleaning up some of the arrangement and formatting choices with the combat section. I liked your idea of the "Brewer's Box" and will look into some better HTML formatting options to highlight that better on the paper until I start porting it all over to Word and PDF (which I'm more familiar with).

Speaking directly to your comment, "The rules don't apply if the DM says so." I could not agree with you more. They don't. On the other hand that statement opens up a "slap happy" style of play with the wrong group / DM. As I move forward with putting this all together there will be an entire chapter devoted to running the game and how to keep things balanced.

One of the most successful RPG games ever published was the World of Darkness by WhiteWolf. They used a "story teller" style of combat which was very light on rules and heavy on RP and DM interpretation. It worked fine. Another system which I absolutely loved was the Silhouette system used by Dream Pod 9 (the makers of Heavy Gear), they used elements which were very similar to the WhiteWolf systems and again focused on a "rules lite / RP heavy" style of game play.

What I've learned from this is the game mechanics should be there to facilitate a good game experience for both the player and the DM, without becoming a crutch for justifying bad games. Is this style for everyone? Obviously no, which is why this technique has only remained an influence and not the meat and potatoes core to the overhaul. I have been using this technique in my home game for over 2 decades now and my players have loved the dynamic interpretative feel it brings to our encounters, without breaking every rule in the book.

Disclaimer: This style of gaming is an influence in my overhaul and not its core.

Aralicia wrote:
The revamp of the action system doesn't mention swift action at all. Does feat & mechanics using swift actions work at all? If so, how a considered swift actions? As free actions? As move actions?

So the combat section includes the following:

Types of actions and maneuvers
For my campaign I've opted to simplify the Types of Actions available to the following 4 types: Standard, Move, Full Round w/ 5ft Step, and Free Actions. Typically 1 free action allowed per round w/ a few exceptions such as Combat Reflexes.

In other words (which I've just clarified in the document text): Swift Actions, Free Actions, Immediate Actions, etc are all now classified as a "Free Action" and are understood to be things which are effectively instantaneous choices such as dropping an item you are holding in order to draw a weapon, etc. I thought I was being clear with that distinction, but this is a good example of why I'm asking for neutral opinions on the material, to catch things like this. :)

Aralicia wrote:
As of the end of combat, I see nothing that makes the setting low magic. In fact, the rules seems to hurts martial characters more than the casters.

This is actually why I chose to not use one of the Spell Point systems. In that scenario you would be absolutely right. The additional flexibility such systems allow for would definitely be unbalancing. The reason I say the world is a "low magic" setting is because in a given population with only 5% adventurers and only a handful of those being casters there isn't that much magic being slung about. It is not really a head to head comparison of whether a 10th level Evoker will out damage a 10 level Barbarian against a training dummy after 10 rounds of straight whoop-ass! <chuckle>

Aralicia wrote:

[Spells and Magic]

See above about rule clarity.
The Spell matrix look a lot like the arcanist spell casting, except it is buffed by the ability to add metamagic on the fly.

The Spell Matrix is actually a concept that has been kicked around since 2nd ed in various gaming magazines and was what many of us assumed the mage would be in 3rd ed. It was also why many of us were pretty upset with the Sorcerer class as we felt this mechanic should not have been split off to a separate class. Some of the core designers for D20 3rd ed. have even stated the introduction of the Sorcerer (vs a conversion of the mage) was done for the benefit of those who liked the way the mage had been done under the Vancian system for decades and a compromise for those who wanted the change. So to say it is basically a re-hash of the Arcanist is simply untrue (although there may be similarities).

I also have recently looked over the new rules in the Pathfinder Unchained supplement and have noticed that one of the alternate rules for casters is likewise allowing for dynamic / spontaneous casters as well. Admittedly the specifics are different from what I'm using but I was pleased to see it included none the less.

Meta-Magic on the fly is only one aspect of the Matrix system. Don't overlook the dynamic DC system that is being used (as opposed to a more traditional caster check, or static DC systems). Between the two + the benefits of specialization, and limitations on Defensive abilities, such as Evasion and SR, spells tend to hit pretty hard. On the other hand, spells eventually run out. Bare in mind that items which add additional spell casting ability to Casters such as wands, scrolls, etc are very limited both in the frequency at which they appear and just how many additional spells they actually allow you cast in any given day. Typically this would include not more 5 - 7 total spells for a given day, assuming you have two such items, and those spells would have a very narrow scope of concept (such as all fire spells). Thus a smart mage will have save his spells for when they can be put to the best tactical advantage vs relying to the additional fire power these types of items allow for.

Aralicia wrote:
The limitation on magic items strait up hurts martial characters.

I must respectfully disagree. The campaign setting is one where such buffs are simply less important. The campaign setting is not assuming standard d20 monsters which can only be hit with specific types of magic. Most of the monsters are being rewritten to have fewer special defenses or are susceptible to at least one commonly available attack such as "Elven Steel" (any weapon with word "elven" in it's name), or "magic fire", etc. The same can be said for the need to have bonus items which buff stats and resistances. While these are never bad choices for items, they will be both less common, and less needed, since the campaign is "low magic" there are fewer things which can simply screw over the character with a single "save vs suck / save vs death" type of roll. This isn't saying they don't happen occasionally, merely that they are far less common.

I have taken your feedback on how to better present some of this material under careful consideration and expanded the write up on magic items to clarify the different type of effect I'm trying to achieve with the LCM Ruleset & campaign setting. Feel free to take a peek at the magic items section, but do bare in mind that it is a work in progress and still fairly raw.

Aralicia wrote:
As of the end of Spell and Magic, more than half of the changes actually buff the casters. The only rule that really "hurt" them is the fact that they can't cast spells above level 3 for their non-specialty school; but it doesn't actually hurt the power of the caster, only its versatility.

The point here is not to "hurt" the caster classes. You are absolutely correct that their spell casting is more powerful, and due to the dynamic matrix system in place even arguably more versatile on how they are casting their spells (while more limited on their selection). Yet this must be weighed against the fact that there are far fewer magic items in the setting which increase their available spells per day, such as scrolls or wands. The caster can no longer stock pile these additional spell arsenals on the off chance they might suddenly need Water Breathing, or a Stone to Flesh spell, but didn't want to sacrifice a spell slot "just in case" they needed it. Under the LCM overhaul such effects as petrification are quite rare anyway (which again goes back to that low magic thing).

Another thing to point out is the partial caster classes, I'm thinking of the Bard specifically here, have much greater diversity in their spells and thus are able to fulfil a more specialized role given these limitations. They become a very viable "utility spell" caster and their position in a party become more obvious as a 4th slot character. (Many troupes consider Bards to be a good 5th or 6th slot character choice, but a poor choice for one of the "big four".)

Aralicia wrote:

[Conclusion]

I'm sorry, I see nothing in your rules that would encourage low magic; At best it will only encourage specialization within caster classes. But, casters will still be better than non-casters.

This collection of houserules looks more like multiple home-made patches on perceived issues in PF, and not a consistent, uniform, balanced ruleset.

Overall the documents are okayish as early drafts. However, they are far from being structured and clear enough to be used for testing (even "alpha"-testing).

I hope I've already addressed most of this above. I have also taken your feedback to heart and have continued to work on clarifying the document to address most of these concerns. I don't feel it is "there yet" but hopefuly with solid honest feedback like this it will get there.

Believe me when I say "thank you" for the help on making this project better.

Lazlo Arcadia

Dark Archive

I recommend a feat based spellcasting system, as found for the Midnight setting, and perhaps comparable in effect to the Rogue's talents Minor magic and Major magic but for all casting levels.

Spellcastting classes could merely have the feat offered more often, though if wanted other classes could take the feats as well.


Not a bad idea, thanks for the suggestion.

Lazlo

Dark Archive

Glad to see you liked my suggestion, I can offer more information:

In the Midnight system, apart from the cleric which became a villain only class, all divine and arcane spellcasting classes were replaced by a single class, the channeler. The druid and wizard core classes were made into prestige classes.
Although there is a channeler class, any character can potentially cast spells. Anyone can take the Magecraft and Spellcasting feats and learn to wield magic. The feat Spell Knowledge allows you to learn more spells.

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