Not certain if it's Dragon or Dungeon but it is this year or last. It's an article on pointers to make your game low magic.
Not sure, but if you can get your hands on it get the Iron Heroes book. Sweeeeet.
Not sure, but if you can get your hands on it get the Iron Heroes book. Sweeeeet.
Anybody? Id appreciate it. I'm creating my own campaign and I want it to be low magic using the core rules. Iron Heros is a little fight focus for me.
I took a quick look at my back-issues and didn't see the article you're describing, but you might want to look at "The Saga of Westeros" in Dragon magazine issue #307 (pages 79 to 96). It is a description of a low-magic world based on the books by George R.R. Martin. I've never read Martin's books, but the game-materials in the articles seem good. Even if you are not interested in Martin's world, it is a good source to see what a low-magic world would be like. Oh, and the issue has a poster map.
Maybe it was in Dragon. It gave you points like clerics are only able to heal people of the same fate. It's a recent issue I think.
Exiled Prince,
I don’t know which recent issue you saw the article in. I did a quick look backward through from issue 341 to 332 and didn’t see an article or class acts page detailing pointers for a low magic game. However, friends and I have played around before with a low magic game and I can offer you the suggestions we implemented.
First, any spell caster by default had to be multiclassed and the class levels had to stay within one level of each other. This applied to the setting as a whole, so even the NPCs had to obey this stricture. By forcing multiclassing, this accomplished the primary task of slowing down the power curve (after all, characters would be 10th level before fireball became an issue). It also placed greater emphasis martial combat (which became more risky since healing magic was greatly slowed) and on individual skills.
After all, the characters did not have ready-made buffs to enhance their capabilities, so succeeding at a skill check became more rewarding. Since skills did take on greater importance, we upped the amount of base skill points each class received by 2. So a fighter for example had 4 skill points + intelligence bonus per level.
Second, overall magic item acquisition was curtailed to promote the low magic feel for the game. Finding magic weapons and armor was a serious deal. In turn, masterwork equipment took on new importance. In addition, Craft: Alchemy and Brew Potion gained importance to help combat the magic healing deficiency.
Third, feats gained new importance to aid one’s character development. The feats allowed for greater skill capability with the plethora of “talented” feats (feats that give +2 to two different skills) and really helped to create individual combat niches for the characters (i.e. the spring attacking ranger, the cleave raging barbarian, and the sword and shield fighter).
Defensive feats also saw greater selection to help with armor class as did the use of combat maneuvers such as fighting defensively. After all, with armor class escalation curtailed, it became attractive to sacrifice attack for defense and helped show case higher-level combatants vs. low level foes.
Finally, the types of foes we would typically encounter were of the mortal variety. Meaning, seldom did they have serious damage reduction immunities, incredible magical or psionic capability, etc. Here, your world setting will play a major role in conveying the low magic tone you are striving for. In ours human kingdoms were the norm, with goblinoid threats in the wilder reaches. The main villains, who were exposed at the end, were Yuan-Ti as a forgotten race along with kobold and lizard men servitors. Occasionally we fought undead and one scenario pitted the heroes vs. werewolves.
The campaign went to 10th level before we retired it and was fun to play. The main problem we had was that with the retarded magical healing capability, adventure pacing was sometimes strained if the heroes took too much of a beating in an encounter.
So there are the quick and dirty highlights of our foray into a low magic game. Hopefully the ideas above will be useful to your own endeavor.
For other considerations, I recommend picking up a copy of Unearthed Arcana. It has some excellent ideas concerning generic classes (Adepts, Experts, and Warriors) that could be used to help construct a low magic game. The book also details alternate magic systems (such as spell point driven spell casting) and game mechanic systems (such as reserve points which are extra hit points that fill in after a fight to help maintain adventure pacing). If your FLGS has a copy on the shelf, give it a flip through.
Good luck with your campaign and let us know what you develop.
Good gaming,
Mark