No spellcasters / low magic campaign

[Soporific Lotus]

A person in my Pathfinder group has proposed running a homebrew campaign that will be extremely low magic. It will be so low that we are going to be restricted to taking pure martial only classes, that is barbarian, cavalier (no samurai), fighter and rogue (no ninja). The monk and paladin and ranger variants without spellcasting are considered too mystical for the setting. In this setting non-human races compose less than one percent of the world population, there is no divine magic and arcane casters do exist but they are extraordinarily rare. We will not have easy access to any magic items including potions, wands and scrolls. Healing will be done through heal checks. Basically combat will be very deadly. We will mainly only be fighting classed humans. I do not know how he is planning on having us advance as we level.

We will start at third level. Its going to be getsalt but the other class has to be a non-adept NPC class. It mainly gives you a background and extra skill points as everyone will be an expert or aristocrat. My first thought when considering a class was survivability. With no healing magic, a high AC, DR and HP seemed essential. I was thinking of starting with a cavalier of the shield and then going into stalwart defender. The cavalier of the shield ability resolute, which converts a little bit of lethal damage to non-lethal damage, and the bonus to heal checks seemed very powerful. The defender of course has DR, d12 hit die and AC bonuses. I would have a starting AC of 25 or 26 which I think would make me extremely difficult to hit (+9 fullplate + 1 DEX + 4 tower shield + 1 dodge and maybe + 1 shield focus). I would have a +8 to hit which does not seem that bad (+3 BAB +4 STR +1 weapon focus +1 mounted +1 masterwork -2 tower shield).

He also said that he might allow one person to play a non-divine magic user. I normally only play characters that can use magic and thought about playing a sorcerer. The more I thought about it I started to think that a sorcerer would break the game. Enemies would have no magic of their own or anti-magic defenses. If everyone we are fighting are going to be barbarians, cavaliers, fighters and rogues then colorspray, glitterdust, fly and confusion are going to be unstoppable.

I have several concerns about such a setting. It seems that turtling up is the best option and combat would get stale. Saving throws seem marginalized as most saving throws are versus magic especially will and reflex. I think the focus is going to be on roleplaying so my concerns about combat may be unwarranted.

Has anyone played anything such as this? It almost seems like a different system might be better which is designed with no magic and a more detailed melee combat system.

[Kolokotroni]

First you have to recognize is that without a serious change to the HP system, recovering from a single combat will take Weeks. If this isnt supposed to be a combat light came (mostly intrigue and roleplay) then your dm HAS to make changes. No matter how much you 'turtle' eventually you will get hit, and if you do, you wont be able to reasonably recover HP in the course of even a couple days a higher levels.

I briefly played in a Game of thrones d20 game where there are similar issues. It is D20 based but has very little in the way of fantasy elements. It meant skills become the most important part of the game. Particularly social skills but even swim, climb, acrobatics and such remain relavent. Crossing a casm isnt a matter of a couple spells anymore, it involves skill checks. Same with finding out 'who dun it'.

Make sure your character is heavily skilled and also check with your dm on the kind of game your dm wants to run, and build your character around that. If it is surviving in the wilderness, go with that, if it is a political intrigue build around that. But make sure you have some idea of what the themese will be before you decide on a concept.

[Soporific Lotus]

Healing is not as bad as it seems. One person can use heal to give long term care to the rest of the party healing 4 HP per level per day plus extra healing the first day with treat deadly wounds. A d10 HD character has 4.5 + 1-4 HP per level plus full HP first level. So one person can fully heal the rest of the party in two days. That person would then need to be healed by someone else but would have gotten two nights of full rest gaining back a total of 2 HP per level so they would only need one day of long term care to be not totally healed but in good shape. If my cavalier/defender is the main healer my resolute and DR effectively bumps my healing rate so after healing everyone and getting one day of full care I would hopefully be at max HP.

I am expecting that the number of combat encounters will be scaled way back.

[Kolokotroni]

Soporific Lotus wrote:

Healing is not as bad as it seems. One person can use heal to give long term care to the rest of the party healing 4 HP per level per day plus extra healing the first day with treat deadly wounds. A d10 HD character has 4.5 + 1-4 HP per level plus full HP first level. So one person can fully heal the rest of the party in two days. That person would then need to be healed by someone else but would have gotten two nights of full rest gaining back a total of 2 HP per level so they would only need one day of long term care to be not totally healed but in good shape. If my cavalier/defender is the main healer my resolute and DR effectively bumps my healing rate so after healing everyone and getting one day of full care I would hopefully be at max HP.

I am expecting that the number of combat encounters will be scaled way back.

You are right, for some reason I was under the impression that there was a flat number of hp that characters recovered from by resting and not that it scaled by level. My mistake, but it still presents a problem in terms of pacing.

[Soporific Lotus]

Kolokotroni wrote:

It it still presents a problem in terms of pacing.

It does but I think there are going to be a lot of RP XP rewards. I think combat is supposed to be a method of last resort. Its funny you mentioned Game of Thrones because I think the GM was thinking about the books when coming up with the setting.

[LazarX]

When TSR cranked out some Conan and Red Sonja modules they put in a rapid healing mechanic to make up for the fact that there were no healing classes present in the setting.

You can also use the variant Vitality/Wound Point mechanic found in the D20SRD/Unearthed Arcana. Would also suggest that you include the class defense and armor as DR options as well.

[Lathiira]

Something else to consider regarding combat: archery. With no spellcasters, archery goes from good to nigh-essential, IMO. If you can kill the enemy before they can even reach you to hit you, you save precious hp. An archery-specialized fighter or ranger might do well if combat's more common than you think. Just be prepared for enemy archers and when the melee crew finally gets to you....

[Sylvanite]

Lathiira wrote:

Something else to consider regarding combat: archery. With no spellcasters, archery goes from good to nigh-essential, IMO. If you can kill the enemy before they can even reach you to hit you, you save precious hp. An archery-specialized fighter or ranger might do well if combat's more common than you think. Just be prepared for enemy archers and when the melee crew finally gets to you....

THIS. Archers are damage hoses...and if spellcasters don't exist archers become even better. Also, you're talking about a high Dex character with lower armor checks, meaning they get more benefits in a heavily skill oriented game, as well.

An archer and a dedicated protector of the archer could be quite a good combination in this game. Also, knowing this it may be worthwhile to take feats that negate some archery, such as Deflect Arrows and missile shield and the like. Make sure all characters in the party have some ranged capability, as facing archers will be just as brutal as having them in the party.