Contributor
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Toying with the idea of a late-Renaissance/Age of Discovery campaign done with the PFRPG, but I’d like to keep magic mysterious and difficult to obtain. This means dropping the magic-fixated classes (Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, and Wizard) and eliminating spellcasting from the remaining classes. I don’t mind keeping supernatural abilities the classes may provide, as those can simply be explained-away as ‘cinematic,’ but how do you adjust and compensate for a Paladin’s loss of spells and turning? Or a Bard’s complete loss of magic?
Here are my thoughts:
Bard
The Bard is a core spellcaster (spells from first-level onward), but to me they’ve never felt like a magic-focused class. Instead, they feel like a jack-of-all-trades and a face. Taking away their spells does eliminate some of their combat options, though, so I think we can replace those by giving them access to some custom Rogue-style talents, likely built from their low-level spells anyway.
Paladin
Paladins gain a big divine link through their spells, so I’m reluctant to just give them bonus feats to make up for the loss of spells and channeling. Instead, I’d be more inclined to develop a class ability that gives them bonuses and buffs linked to their faith. Starting at fourth level, they can call on their faith to gain temporary hit points and an AC bonus, similar to a Rage.
Ranger
I’ve always thought that Rangers get a good deal even without the spells: Bonus feats, tracking, good skill points, two good saves, great BAB progression, animal companion, favored enemy, and favored terrain. They don’t really seem to need any compensation for the loss of magic.
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See if you can find Masque of the Red Death. Should be almost exactly what you want. It is a 3.5 (and older) Ravenloft spin off book, made by White Wolf (Swords and Sorcery).
Also, you might consider throuwing Cleric and Wizard back in a bit. A Cleric can still funtion as a religious leader (getting more skills, can ward against undead (Turning can be amped up), and grant some spell benefits as just prayers and rituals, like bless and some divinations. Possibly combine Cleric and Bard, and even a little monk.
Wizard can be a Alchemist and Sage. Look at the 3.5 Loremaster, without a lot of spells. They can decipher scripts, know a lot of obscure languages, histories, and other weird knowledges. They might also be able to develope potions and pouders of some (noncombat) spells, like Grease, Glitter Dust, Acid Splash, etc. . .
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I am curious, How do you plan on handling healing without magic. If your remove the Cleric and druid, take spells from the bard and Paladin and remove channeling from the Paladin you are left with only the heal skill, essentially. I am only asking because I have toyed with limiting spells/magic many times many editions and always come up short in the healing department and found that eventually you just can't keep up without some sort of healing.
Every version of D&D had some ideas on how to heal without the healing spells but without magic every system (and I have tried them all without magic) have just come up short.
That all aside, how little magic are you going? if you are saying no gods/external forces of magic, nature, or just plain good and evil forces. Then you might as well remove the Paladin. With out those powers and abilities granted externally the paladin is a poor man's fighter/warrior. d10/+1 Bab every level is just a warrior. If you are leaving powers just removing spells then you can probably leave the Paladin but then he becomes your default Cleric class. Even more so if you leave the healing abilities since they are not spells but Supernatural abilities.
I am curious, How do you plan on handling healing without magic. If your remove the Cleric and druid, take spells from the bard and Paladin and remove channeling from the Paladin you are left with only the heal skill, essentially. I am only asking because I have toyed with limiting spells/magic many times many editions and always come up short in the healing department and found that eventually you just can't keep up without some sort of healing.
Don't underestimate the power of bedrest in Pathfinder.
Unless the core rules will change it, beta allows an awful lot of healing.
Take an average 20th level fighter with an 18 CON (that's a pretty high con in a world where he's not wearing a periapt of health or other +CON item). Let's say he rolled an average of 6 on every d10 as he levels. That's 204 HP. Now let's say he gets into a really really long hard battle and is knocked down to 1 HP. He limps off to the town healer and she makes him lie down in a bed as she heals him using nothing but the Heal skill?
How soon may this fighter leave the healer's tent fully recovered?
Answer: 2 days and 8 hours.
That's assuming she's a good healer with a fresh Healing Kit and she doesn't blow any rolls. She Treats Deadly Wounds when he first arrives, bringing him up to 21 HP (maybe a few more for her WIS score). Then under Long Term Care he recovers 80 HP each day, bringint him up to 181 HP. The next day he stays only 8 hours to recover 40 more HP which is more than the 23 he really needs to recover. Note: she didn't really need to treat deadly wounds - if she hadn't, our fighter would be leaving with 201 of his 204 HP which would really be close enough to full that he wouldn't notice the tiny little scratch he had left.
Your DM better not put such a group into fights like my group sees every session. Today we had only 1 real fight, it required every LOH from the paladin, every heal from the cleric, 6 channel energies used for healing, and even the druid chipped in two cure light wounds (this is a 3rd level party). Our paladin hit 0 HP twice and finished the fight with 3 HP, our wizard went to -9, got healed, back to -9, got healed, then back to -7. Our druid and rogue were at half HP (despite having received 6 channel energies during the fight). Only the cleric managed to end the fight healthy - the only damage he took during the fight was when he blew a jump check to jump over a known trap (cage dropped, blades inflicted damage for 3 rounds). That was just one fight, and it was our first and only fight of the day, so we were fully prepared to start it and fully drained when it was done.
The point is, if you can manage to keep the battles reasonable, such that in-combat healing is never needed, maybe even throw in some houserules to make it easier to stabilize (or not die) when negative, then your heroes can probably use downtime to rest and recover their HP surprisingly quickly. But it would require downtime. Maybe a pace more like 4 fights per week rather than 4 fights per day.
I mean really, historically, who fought 4 battles of any kind in a single day, day after day. It was rare in any war (a few days of fighting, then often days or weeks of sitting/marching, then a day or two of fighting, days or weeks of sitting, etc. are by far the norm in war time). Never in any kind of combat sports I've seen (point tournaments, yes, but not full-contact). Pacing a "historical" RPG setting off of the kind of combat-weeks that real humans have generally faced historically would really increase the surviveability of the PCs.
There are variant rangers in the complete warrior without spells and I think the same for paladin though I can't be certain at this moment.
Yes, the paladin variant is there also. I actually like both of these variants and have used them in "magic" worlds.
I was about to post the same responce..but you beat me to it :P
wasgreg
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There are variant rangers in the complete warrior without spells and I think the same for paladin though I can't be certain at this moment.Yes, the paladin variant is there also. I actually like both of these variants and have used them in "magic" worlds.
I was about to post the same responce..but you beat me to it :P
wasgreg
Yes, I'm a big fan myself, of the ranger at least. I never really liked them WITH spells myself.
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Contributor
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I am curious, How do you plan on handling healing without magic. If your remove the Cleric and druid, take spells from the bard and Paladin and remove channeling from the Paladin you are left with only the heal skill, essentially. I am only asking because I have toyed with limiting spells/magic many times many editions and always come up short in the healing department and found that eventually you just can't keep up without some sort of healing.
What DM_Blake said. I've run plenty of games of d20 Star Wars, where there are no Cure spells (and no annoying Jedi to patch people up), and the healing still goes well once the group gets bed rest and medical care, even before the bump in natural healing that PF has granted. I also don't plan on combat being the sole focus of this game, so the PCs won't usually be stringing fight after fight and needing to heal in between.
Every version of D&D had some ideas on how to heal without the healing spells but without magic every system (and I have tried them all without magic) have just come up short.
I have to disagree. My personal experience has been that it does change the nature of the game, because injuries take longer to heal, but that natural healing works just fine. If anything, I've always been annoyed that healing magic reduces the Heal skill to a glorified Knowledge skill.
That all aside, how little magic are you going? if you are saying no gods/external forces of magic, nature, or just plain good and evil forces. Then you might as well remove the Paladin. With out those powers and abilities granted externally the paladin is a poor man's fighter/warrior. d10/+1 Bab every level is just a warrior. If you are leaving powers just removing spells then you can probably leave the Paladin but then he becomes your default Cleric class. Even more so if you leave the healing abilities since they are not spells but Supernatural abilities.
Pretty much no magic on the PCs' side, including a the Lay On Hands abilities. Most of the rest of a Paladin's powers would be a reflection of his inner faith and strength of character, instead of being a hotline to god.
If the game gets off the ground, it would revolve around a team of special agents hunting own the last remaining mages on the planet, most of whom have fled to the "New World" to hide from their past crimes and carve out personal fiefdoms from the natives. Magic would be an inherently corrupting force that warps the human mind over time, and hence would be inappropriate for PCs (who already warped enough).
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Well, if it works for you then that's all that matters. I would suggest dumping the Paladin to then, but the Ranger and the Bard could easily be adjusted since they tend to be thematically more skill/force of personality characters than channelers of external power.
I hope you have better luck with your healing than I have experienced. My experience goes something like this (almost always) Level 1-3 works great no problem. level 4-6 kind of bumpy here and there mixed with moments of wonder and awe as it works real well somewhere around 6-9th level Kuthunk TPK...reset TPK again...angry grumbling players muttering about manacles and blow torches...New campaign with magic back to the defaults in the books.
My Dm created a huge Arthurian legend low-magic campaign and he had three special bard variants with no magic. (sort of)
One was a herald that only could use perform oratory and used shield magic and had slight other modifications (I don't know where that is from)
Another was the minstrel which was a bard with no spells that got a few extra bardic music abilities and and a couple more a day. We found that in a campaign with low magic the semi-magical songs were more powerful so it didn't need much of a boost.
The last is the easiest and probably the best solution. The skald. Full BAB d10 hitdie and bardic music.
might be able to get copies of the classes from my DM if you want. He also has a troubador class that gets mystical songs, but that was an npc class.
I don't know how balanced the variants would be in pathfinder and they would have to be updated, probably with the bard's new mechanic and songs or something.
The Complete Champion has several variants for paladins and rangers that eliminate spells, at least, in exchange for bonus feats from a select list.
Don't underestimate the power of bedrest in Pathfinder.
Bed rest does jack all to help when you're fighting for your life. D&D is balanced around the concept of on-demand healing. You'd have to do an immense amount of work to tear out on-demand healing from the game and still leave it playable.
A supplement you might want to look at, OP, is AEG's Swashbuckling Adventures. It's a sourcebook not unlike their Oriental Adventures one, except for their Seventh Sea property (Age of Sail pirates/high seas adventures) rather than their Legend of the Five Rings property. It's a low-magic setting, and Swashbuckling Adventures specifically has almost no magic in it. However, it does have a class called the Alchemist who can fill the healer role by brewing temporary potions. That still fits in a renaissance-era campaign because potions and philtres and elixirs and so on were all a fact of life back then. They mostly didn't do anything but act as a placebo in real life, but you're not playing real life...
I'd say the type of spells used can have quite a dramatic effect on the play.
A paladin, for instance, who preperes mostly healing wouldn't be out of place having spells, especially since a fair number of paladin class features (Lay on hands, remove disease, or the new channel energy) focus on healing. Besides, the paladin is a supernatural and magical class by nature.
Bards, likewise, are very focused on magical abilitiles. Also, looking at the bardic spell list, most abilities are quite heavily themed on sound and pied-piper-esc characters, since hte majority of spells are enchantments and sound-based, like shatter.
I have to admit though, it'll be an up-hill battle to convince me that rangers/paladins/bards can do without spells. Alongside the assassin, I actually think their spell lists are the most flavourful in core.