Does removal of spell casting screw the Paladin / Ranger? How will feats for Spells affect the Bard?

[Helaman]

I am considering a low magic E6 setting and will very likely be making access to spell casting classes only via feat.

With Bards I am giving the player the option of choosing to be a non spell caster (instead of spending the feat above) and gain bonus feats at the same rate that fighters gain Combat feats. Curious on your take on this.

As such I am considering removing any spell ability from the Paladin/Ranger at 4th (or is it 5th?) level. Would it be a class breaker to remove it or should I give a bonus combat feat at 4th level to balance up?

[bozman20]

Helaman wrote:

As such I am considering removing any spell ability from the Paladin/Ranger at 4th (or is it 5th?) level. Would it be a class breaker to remove it or should I give a bonus combat feat at 4th level to balance up?

If you look in the APG (or in the PRD if you don't have that book) there are variants for both classes that remove the spellcasting. For the Paladin, look at the Warrior of Holy Light, and for the Ranger, look at the Skirmisher Ranger.

[Helaman]

Thanks for that... I looked at the PRD just now and they both look pretty decent.

Keeping in mind that I may draw on those as a possible choice, lets assume that the APG (for the purposes of this thread) wont be used.

[TriOmegaZero]

I highly recommend Monte Cook's Book of Experimental Might and the Ranger/Paladin disciplines. They are a selection of class features that characters can take in place of spell casting, and are quite interesting.

[Edward Thorn]

You could also have a look at Super Genius Games Archetypes books. They include the option of taking spellcasting away from Paladins/Rangers/Bards and switching it out for a whole bevy of alternate features.

[bozman20]

Another option is to use the suggestions in the 3.5 Complete Warrior book.

As you are doing E6, these are pretty simple.

Rangers: Gain Fast Movement (+10 feet to base land speed) at level 6.

Paladin: At 6th level, a Paladin's weapon is treated as Good-Aligned for overcoming DR.

These have the bonus of being 'capstone' abilities in an E6 system.

[Helaman]

bozman20 wrote:

Another option is to use the suggestions in the 3.5 Complete Warrior book.

As you are doing E6, these are pretty simple.

Rangers: Gain Fast Movement (+10 feet to base land speed) at level 6.

Paladin: At 6th level, a Paladin's weapon is treated as Good-Aligned for overcoming DR.

These have the bonus of being 'capstone' abilities in an E6 system.

Without using any of these 3rd party vendors I do see that the opinion seems to be spell use needs to replaced with "Something".

Thanks - post if there are other opinions or ideas or anything you want to add.

[martinaj]

I had a character who wanted to do something like this once, and we worked out a custom ranger that got no spellcasting, but recieved a few entirely new abilities at any level in which he would have gained access to a new level of spells (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th). Only one I remember off the top of my head was the ability to wield a one-handed weapon in each hand while suffering only the penalties for light-weapons (I believe this was level 12).