Hi All,
One of the things I likes least regarding 3.5e was the "christmas tree effect" in which there was a very heavy reliance on magic items on the part of the players who, if not properly equipped, would be slaughtered by creatures of the recommended CR.
This is fine if you are running D&D genre fantasy with magic dripping from everywhere and magic shops in town. Uggghh.....that is what took me from 3.5e to Mongoose's Conan D20 and True20. Both of these systems don't assume excessive magic.
I am 1000% behind Paizo's Pathfinder effort and am considering using the Pathfinder engine (along with True20) to power the new setting I've been creating. However, because of the nature of this setting and its level of magic (more akin to REH's Hyboria, Middle Earth or even old school Dragonlance as opposed to FR or Ebberron) I was wondering if the Pathfinder rule set will be a viable option. In this setting, magical items are named, quite difficult to create and are not sold...generally speaking.
Will I be able to use Pathfinder for such a setting? Is there a low/moderate level magic option in 3.5e that can be used? I'm not averse to adding additional +'s to character's ability scores to imitate the effect of "buffing" items but I was wondering if there is another way.
I am a big fan of the low/low-moderate settings myself and hope to use Pathfinder in that role. I hate the idea of magic item factories and high level dependancy on magic. I am most interested in seeing how they address high level play. I feel that changes similar to the beta version of dodge may help high level play, but other changes will be needed.
There's a section in even the Alpha, pg. 123 Designer Notes: High and Low Fantasy that discusses this, advocating treating a party as 1 level lower for low fantasy, magic rare campaigns.
Though DR will still need to be addressed, and there may be more issues that crop up.
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Why not just grab Iron Heroes? It's great for low magic settings and you can still use the Pathfinder stuff with very little modification. That's the big advantage of Pathfinder is that it's still compatible with all the stuff that's already out there.Well, I am currently creating a setting for publication and would prefer to support a system that can be considered "alive" and will have continued support. Iron Heroes seems like a fine game but I haven't played it and I haven't seen any type of support for it for quite a long time. That doesn't bode well for someone creating a setting specifically for that rule set.
Iron Heroes was one of those "We're gonna put out all the books you'll really need for it at once" type of things. Like what World of Darkness has been doing with their tertiary properties (Promethean, Changeling, etc)
Adjusting Paizo to a low magic setting will likely be as much work as adjusting 3.5 to a low magic setting. While some things are being changed, the scope of the rules in a general sense isn't really being altered that much. That is to say, PC's are still expected to receive magical items and to follow the wealth by level guidelines, and monster CR's will take that into account.
If your sole issue is whether or not Pathfinder will be easier to convert than 3.5, I think you will be disappointed.
That being said- converting to low magic isn't all that terribly difficult. You just need to beware monsters and such that require magic to overcome, and either adjust their CR upwards abit or remove the offending ability. (such as DR 5/magic and such).
3.5 and Pathfinder RPG are more or less a moderate-to-heavy magic environment, IMO.
-S
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Most of the adventures I have read from Paizo don't seem to rely upon overly heavy magic item use. I think that at mid levels the PCs will have a slightly harder time, just due to the add ons that items would give. I would think at most one level difference, so run them through a side trek and they should be up for the challenge. At higher levels, they may need another side trek or two to gain another level to put them up for the challenges they will face.
The quantity of items given out is not too high, in my opinion, and would be easily reigned in.
The only issue I would think would be a problem for Low level play would be healing. Some of the Paizo adventures can get a bit bloody fast.
I ran a low magic game using Iron Heroes once and we dealt with the lack of healing magic by stealing and modifying an idea from the Stephen R Donaldson Thomas Covenant series. The book has berries that keep you fed, you don't need rations, and they have a mud, called Hurtloam, that heals you. I combined the two into Blood Berries that heal 1HP per berry. A picked berry is good for 24 hours. An average bush as 8d12 berries and grow in patches of 2d12 bushes (gotta use a d12 for something). Other than that, they had no magic.
Oh and Blood Berry Wine was THE alcohol of choice, so finding the bushes can be difficult sometimes.
I personally recommend the Midnight setting for a "low magic" campaign. It basically rehashes some classes, ditches some altogether, writes a couple new ones and gives the magic system a "low magic" alteration- on a serious scale.
The mechanics are easy to adapt and take away to any campaign. (that is, to a non-Midnight campaign setting)
-S
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I personally recommend the Midnight setting for a "low magic" campaign. It basically rehashes some classes, ditches some altogether, writes a couple new ones and gives the magic system a "low magic" alteration- on a serious scale.
The mechanics are easy to adapt and take away to any campaign. (that is, to a non-Midnight campaign setting)
-S
Midnight... tried that once... dark setting, lots of bad stuff... we died. Seemed decent and interesting had we lived. lol