I would play in one. Special material bonus' take care of alot of DR problems. Alchemist fire and acid take care of even more. The only problem would be healing injuries in or between battle. You could handle that by changing the cleric class into a "combat medic" class and let him use healing kits and a modified treat deadly wound via the heal skill. Make a class ability that the cleric gets so they can use it as a standard action and a number of times per day per person equal to wis mod or something. Maybe like ;What exactly do you propose is going to take care of the inherent game balance assumption that players are using wealth by level to magically improve their attack, defenses, and damage? Getting rid of more than half the creatures in the book helps, but not entirely.
The first things that comes in my mind, is lower the level of the creatures and put more of them. The CR is the same but the "number" used are lesser.
OP: Sure, why not?
I'd be happier with Iron Heroes for that probably, but otherwise I don't see any problem with that.
My gaming group is entering the second phase of our homebrew campaign, a setting in which after a cataclysmic battle brought on by an attempted freeing of Rovagug, magic has been lost in the world.
Essentially, there are no spells, older wizards are only just now figuring out how to cast Cantrips, there are no magical items, item creation, or creatures, and even (Su) and (Sp) abilities do not currently work until they are somehow mysteriously unlocked.
I am not trying to bash the concept, I am just wondering what the consensus would be among other PF players as far as interest in this type of game.
(NOTE: I am not the GM for this...)
I haven't read the rest of the thread, but...not a chance in hell.
I believe their is some confusion in this thread equating a no-magic campaign with a no-magic game.
Making Pathfinder into a no-magic game would require a tedious amount of work with dubious house-rules prone to exploitation by players who don't want to play without magic. But, I might add that such players would only be playing such a game if the DM were forcing it upon them.
On the other hand, a no-magic campaign using the Pathfinder system simply requires the DM to choose appropriate challenges for players who actually want to play a no-magic campaign.
I do, however, concede that healing is an issue. But, I think it's a problem that can be handled. I would look to 4e healing surges as a model using the feat Godless Healing from the Inner Sea Guide.
For magic-less healing, I would use Action Points and a variant of the Second Wind Tough Hero Talent.
Each PC would get 5 + 1/2 level Action Points each level, and could spend them to add 1d6 to any d20 roll, use an immediate action to re-roll a d20 roll, emulate a feat they don't possess but qualify for otherwise (they must meet the requirements of the selected feat) for 1 round, or heal 1d6+their Constitution modifier.
This would give a little healing, as well as a little extra oomph to replace magic and help the PCs survive an unexpected difficult encounter, which is pretty likely since magic is no longer an option.
For magic-less healing, I would use Action Points and a variant of the Second Wind Tough Hero Talent.
Each PC would get 5 + 1/2 level Action Points each level, and could spend them to add 1d6 to any d20 roll, use an immediate action to re-roll a d20 roll, emulate a feat they don't possess but qualify for otherwise (they must meet the requirements of the selected feat) for 1 round, or heal 1d6+their Constitution modifier.
This would give a little healing, as well as a little extra oomph to replace magic and help the PCs survive an unexpected difficult encounter, which is pretty likely since magic is no longer an option.
Use of Action Points only becomes viable if you remove their status as a diminishing commodity. When you only get 5 + 1/2 your level each level, and that value is static and does not replenish until your next level, you end up with the players hoarding them and refusing to use them except in the most dire of circumstances. The same thing is seen in Star Wars games where Force Points are non-replenishing commodities.
A viable (and tested extensively in several games, many of which were my own, admittedly, but still tested extensively) solution that doesn't break mechanics and removes the hoarding of the commodity, is to simply give each PC a flat 6 Action Points per session. Any AP not used at the end of the session vanish, and do not carry over to the beginning of the next session. The amount of AP is only ever 6, the PC's get them back each session, and there is no reward for hoarding them. It's been my experience that enacting this change encourages the use of the AP, and that the players are far more likely to do some of the more esoteric uses of them (Trading them for a Feat, as you mention) when they know that they can rely on their AP replenishing next session.
Another solution I've found works for healing in a low-magic environment is to enable the Heal skill to actually, you know, heal damage. A standard healing kit can, on a successful healing check, heal 1d8+N, where N is the Healer's Level plus the Healer's Wisdom bonus or 1/5th the margin of success of the Heal Check, whichever is higher. (The DC is a value determined by the GM - I use half the damage dealt to the character per wound plus 10, and only allow one kit to heal one wound... So if you took three wounds of 10, 12, and 20 hp each, your DC's would be 15, 16, and 20, respectively. A 3rd Level Caster with a Wisdom bonus of +3 would heal 1d8+6hp on a flat-even Heal Check)
Feats such as "Combat Medic" and "Field Surgeon" would, of course, modify this, if you created such things.
Use of Action Points only becomes viable if you remove their status as a diminishing commodity.In other words, use Hero Points from the APG.
Given that the current system for Hero Points establishes them as a diminishing, limited resource commodity, then, no... I'd have to say that this is not what I am suggesting at all.
Hero Points as presented in the APG rules are practically identical to the Hero Points from the WoW RPG, and even those find their way to a "treasured resource" status rather than a "spend them like water" status.
For a system such as Action Points or Hero Points to work in the gameworld scenario presented in the original post on this thread, they'd have to be changed from a limited, diminishing resource to a constantly renewed resource. Otherwise your players would hoard them and scrape them together and rarely (if ever) use them.
Take away the "once they're spent, they're gone, and you only get them back under certain circumstances" caveat, and things suddenly work a lot better for the purposes of their use in a gameworld situation such as this one.
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I am also working on my homebrew setting that is low magic.The idea is just not that easily accepted by the average player who is used to high fantasy magic rich games.
It's not a question of setting - I'll play as happily in a no-magic-whatsoever game as one where magic is only done by rare people and is weak, to one where everyone-and-their-10-month-old-baby-sister can do magic. But the ruleset has to support it. The Pathfinder/3.x ruleset assumes magic, and does not work well without it. The d20 Modern ruleset, on the other hand, doesn't assume any magic. The Iron Heroes ruleset assumes magic might be encountered, but isn't readily available. I wouldn't try playing an Iron Heroes game set in Golarian any more than I'd want to play a Pathfinder game set in a magicless world.
For magic-less healing, I would use Action Points and a variant of the Second Wind Tough Hero Talent.
Each PC would get 5 + 1/2 level Action Points each level, and could spend them to add 1d6 to any d20 roll, use an immediate action to re-roll a d20 roll, emulate a feat they don't possess but qualify for otherwise (they must meet the requirements of the selected feat) for 1 round, or heal 1d6+their Constitution modifier.
This would give a little healing, as well as a little extra oomph to replace magic and help the PCs survive an unexpected difficult encounter, which is pretty likely since magic is no longer an option.
Use of Action Points only becomes viable if you remove their status as a diminishing commodity. When you only get 5 + 1/2 your level each level, and that value is static and does not replenish until your next level, you end up with the players hoarding them and refusing to use them except in the most dire of circumstances. The same thing is seen in Star Wars games where Force Points are non-replenishing commodities.
A viable (and tested extensively in several games, many of which were my own, admittedly, but still tested extensively) solution that doesn't break mechanics and removes the hoarding of the commodity, is to simply give each PC a flat 6 Action Points per session. Any AP not used at the end of the session vanish, and do not carry over to the beginning of the next session. The amount of AP is only ever 6, the PC's get them back each session, and there is no reward for hoarding them. It's been my experience that enacting this change encourages the use of the AP, and that the players are far more likely to do some of the more esoteric uses of them (Trading them for a Feat, as you mention) when they know that they can rely on their AP replenishing next session.
Another solution I've found works for healing in a low-magic environment is to enable the Heal skill to actually, you know, heal damage. A standard healing kit can, on a...
Oh! That sounds awesome! PCs are actually "punished" for not using them, since they'll be "competing" with allies and opponents that ARE using them! And you can't hoard them, so there is no "reward" for using them later. I like that idea!
I also kind of like the idea of maybe 3 per session, but if you do something cool, you get a bonus 1--even if you used an action/hero point to succeed at what you did. Maybe even if you just TRY to do something awesome.
About to start a zero magic campaign for 4 of my friends. Right now the classes are 3 gunslingers, of varying archetypes, and 1 alchemist.
Basing it in a 3 Musketeers style world where magic once existed, but the portal to other dimensions was closed off cutting off access to the gods and their blessings and magic in general.
The initial quest will be for the gunslingers, working as a type of king's musketeers, to escort this low level alchemist to a neighboring kingdom to get a neutralize poison potion and return in time to save the king's daughter who was poisoned by some unknown person.
We've been working on the balancing issues, many good ones mentioned in this thread, and now to try it out. If the group likes it we'll continue it and maybe even have them try to figure out how their world was cutoff from the other dimensions and to possibly reverse the process.
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@OP -
You'd probably be better off using the old d20 modern. Despite the name - there were variations for other time periods, and if the GM wanted to eventually let someone cast spells - there were prestige classes for that.
And really - something like d20 modern's class defense bonuses is the only way to keep AC decent without magical defenses.
I played and enjoyed Iron Heroes.
But PF without magic or even really low magic is clunky. Why try to fit a round peg into a square hole? Just play Iron Heroes.