Hi Guys,
I'm looking at starting a new campaign with my group and i've always liked low-magic worlds (too much magic makes it less special for me).
The way i'm thinking of implementing this is to force all magic-using classes to alternately multiclass with a non-spellcasting class (counting rangers and paladins as non-spellcasting by taking the options in the APG).
The other thing that bugs me about a lot of core worlds is the way that religion is dealt with. - Clerics being able to communicate with their god ruins immersion (for me) and makes it difficult to include church schisms etc. Also, in our own world, patheistic societites have not tended to have worshipers of one god - rather everyone worships the whole pantheon.
The way that i'm thinking of dealing with this mechanically is to make the pantheon restricted to a few gods based on the Oracle mysteries (except nature for world-specific reasons) and either not allowing clerics at all, or making them clerics of the whole pantheon - i'm just not sure how this should be done in terms of domains etc.
Anyway,
I'd love to hear some feedback about these options and any issues people think might come up?
I like running low-magic games, so I understand where you're coming from. I really like the idea of alternate spellcasting class levels; I'll have to try that rule out the next time I go truly low-magic.
As for the topic of religion, I often allow my players to choose multiple deities to worship, provided they can come up with a unifying theme, or even the whole pantheon. You may want to have them give up the free proficiency in a favoured weapon to balance out the flexibility with domain choices, or just give them the weapon of the god most closely associated with their domain choices, if any. I have offered some bizarre religions in my day; there was once a small NPC religion based around a single myth, which was sort of in line with the Odyssey, and involved both legendary human figures and prophets, as well as cameos from several gods. Dogma was based on the actions of these figures and the lessons learned from the story - which was actually still open to great interpretation and debate. So, yeah, I'm flexible with these sorts of things. ^__^
You can always ban any sells that you feel offer too much communication with the gods; perhaps anything more powerful than an augury. In some cases you can rule that the answers they receive from such spells come not from the gods themselves, but from intermediate sources, such as powerful celestials, whose answers may differ, depending on which celestial answers the call.
I would absolutely be banning any spells that offer communication with the gods - or at least limit the answers to those that lie in the caster's subconcious knowledge.
My ideal is to have the main society in my world worship a pantheon of gods, whist other societies have either different gods, ancestor worship, natural spirit worhip (hence removing the nature mystery).
For clerics (if i allow them) I'd like them to be priests of the whole pantheon in the main society but wouldn't want to limit their build too much. I like your ideas but i'm still trying to think of ways to have a unified priesthood.