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So I was reading the thread about the stingy DM, and it occurred to me:
What about a D&D campaign without magic items. (maybe still include scrolls and potions and other consumeables).
I've seen houserules that bake your bonus equipment right into your character.
What about just running the characters as is? What would you need to do to accomodate them.
Can we come up with some guidelines on how to make this work? (like how much to adjust monsters of each CR, and what to look for)?
I figure maybe there could be a simple table, and you look at the monster, and make the following adjustments, and wham: monster is at the right CR for your level, without permanent magic gear.
Thoughts?
So I was reading the thread about the stingy DM, and it occurred to me:
What about a D&D campaign without magic items. (maybe still include scrolls and potions and other consumeables).
I've seen houserules that bake your bonus equipment right into your character.
What about just running the characters as is? What would you need to do to accomodate them.
Can we come up with some guidelines on how to make this work? (like how much to adjust monsters of each CR, and what to look for)?
I figure maybe there could be a simple table, and you look at the monster, and make the following adjustments, and wham: monster is at the right CR for your level, without permanent magic gear.
Thoughts?
It wouldn't be a simple table at all.
Now what do you mean?a. No one can craft magic items?
b. No casters?
c. Both?
If A: then casters are better than mundanes: just focus on no save effects/buffs.
If B: Then Mudanes are scared of anyone with DR/magic, but not Dr/material.
Are monsters still able to cast spell-likes? If yes, then the mundanes are boned as they saves suck without magic cloak/protection.
D&D and PF are built with magic items into system: you need to accomdate them otherwise.
Best I could say:
Treat Encounter Level as 2 lower for encounters for CR. The party is as weak as 2 levels lower (after level 3). By level 3, you are expected to find at least 1 magic item (usually a few potions if not a +1 sword).
So a Level 4 party should be facing CR 2's instead of CR 4's.
Because of the way it scales, it's probably better to say the party is equivalent to 3/4 their level, maybe even 1/2 level at the higher end.
If you can, take a look at the Conan RPG books that came out a few years back. has good ideas for No magic style.
if you definitely want it to stay d&d, I'd agree with previous posters, you'd need to take a long look at damage reduction, or severely limit the monsters you can use. A CR 7 barghest now gives all your non caster classes fits.
One way that a campaign like this could work is to make sure all characters have some spell casting ability. This is not to say they all have to be full casters. Barbarians, Fighters, Rogues, and Monks are going to be tough to play. Paladins and Rangers should be ok especially Paladins. Your 3/4 BAB classes like Bards, inquisitors, Magus will do ok. The strongest class will probably be the full divine casters that prepare their spells.
If you are going with a total ban on magic items the arcane casters are going to be hurting. Without scrolls the classes that prepare spells may have trouble getting enough spells. Spontaneous casters tend to need more magic items because of their limited number of spells.
The other thing that will probably need to be done is to spread out the encounters a lot more than normal. Since you are going to have to use spells to do what magic items normally do you will be burning through your spells like wildfire. Also since you will have to use spells to heal up a major encounter may take several days to recover from.
While maybe not what you are aiming for, it would be easier to play a no magic/low magic game with characters who advance using the slow experience gain table. Every level becomes a heck of a lot more important and you can keep magic items away from the players for far longer that way. To help buff the players early in the game, you can start at level three so that the players have some HP to keep themselves alive and the casters have a little bit of spell power to work with.
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I know this may be taboo to mention, but 4e does have a feature like this. Look up inherent bonuses, and see if it can be adapted to PF.
It basicly gives you +1 to hit/Damage, saves and AC at certain levels(Every 5 levels), to represent what you would be getting from the magic items.
For the most part that system works. You can play sword and sorcery style well. It also lets your melee type be a little more varied in thier weapon selection because they are no longer slaved to a specific item. (They are still tied to things like Weapon Focus etc though)
The important thing to remember is that while it will keep them saving and hitting at the right level, it does not replace the extra spell like effects they would be getting from these items. The heroes will end up a little less powerful, but not much
Thoughts?
IMHO: You can't make a campaign like this work without also mucking with spellcasting and/or the classes. Otherwise every day is the casters' day to shine.
For example, maybe you ban wizard, sorcerer, cleric, druid, oracle, witch, and summoner as PC classes.
Beyond that, I don't think I'd houserule in bonuses so much as just tailor challenges to the party's actual strength.
I know this may be taboo to mention, but 4e does have a feature like this. Look up inherent bonuses, and see if it can be adapted to PF.
I don't think there's anything wrong with mentioning it, but in most of the ways that matter to people trying to run low-magic campaigns, 4E is an inherently low magic game relative to Pathfinder whether you're using magic items or not.
Mostly I'm talking about things like flight, teleportation, and scrying here. A 17th level PF wizard can recite the first verse of a haiku, cast teleport and end up on a different continent, recite the second verse of the haiku, and finally quickened teleport to a third continent to finish the haiku, all in a single combat round -- which is kind of a ridiculous scenario, but those kinds of trivially flipping the laws of nature the bird on a cosmic scale are the kinds of things that you have to get back out of the game for a low-magic-feeling campaign to happen. 4E, by the way it's designed, has already done that for you -- its epic-level characters just can't/don't do things like that. Once you've solved that problem, the much simpler problem of how to get combat bonuses to balance out is pretty easy.
So I was reading the thread about the stingy DM, and it occurred to me:
What about a D&D campaign without magic items. (maybe still include scrolls and potions and other consumeables).
I've seen houserules that bake your bonus equipment right into your character.
What about just running the characters as is? What would you need to do to accomodate them.
Can we come up with some guidelines on how to make this work? (like how much to adjust monsters of each CR, and what to look for)?
I figure maybe there could be a simple table, and you look at the monster, and make the following adjustments, and wham: monster is at the right CR for your level, without permanent magic gear.
Thoughts?
In a campaign like this spells should be limited and controlled, because "low magic" includes magic you cast. Non magic characters are weaker, but magic one should suffer of istant death, before or after.
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Mostly I'm talking about things like flight, teleportation, and scrying here. A 17th level PF wizard can recite the first verse of a haiku, cast teleport and end up on a different continent, recite the second verse of the haiku, and finally quickened teleport to a third continent to finish the haiku, all in a single combat round -- which is kind of a ridiculous scenario, but those kinds of trivially flipping the laws of nature the bird on a cosmic scale are the kinds of things that you have to get back out of the game for a low-magic-feeling campaign to happen. 4E, by the way it's designed, has already done that for you -- its epic-level characters just can't/don't do things like that. Once you've solved that problem, the much simpler problem of how to get combat bonuses to balance out is pretty easy.
When running low magic worlds, one of the things I've always done is restrict access to new spells.
Generally, in this type of setting new spells must either be found or researched. Some spells, such as teleportation, won't exist at all. It also gives the party wizard a good reason to spend time muking about in decaying, monster infested libraries.
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Really there isn't a huge problem. Just be prepared to adjust the encounters/monsters on the fly. If you attempt to to apply the non-patented Paizo/WotC EL/CR system you WILL run into trouble. But if you just look at the creature you are thinking of using it won't take an advanced degree in maths to work out if the players have a chance or not. Fighter types will fall behind at later levels but the spell casters will be less effective at lower - hmmmm, sounds like old-school D&D to me.
Again the ONLY problems you will encounter (no pun intended) is if you attempt to use 'prescribed' encounters. In short once the fight starts to may need to wing/fudge/cheat/whatever to keep the game moving. If you ever DM'd 1e AD&D, just play PF like that and you will be fine.
S.
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If you ever DM'd 1e AD&D, just play PF like that and you will be fine.
S.
Using this train of thought, maybe using a variable xp system might help balance the classes a bit. The non-casters use the fast track, the partial casters (paladin, ranger, etc) us the medium XP track and the full casters use the slow track. Multiclassing is where things might start to get messy.
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Using this train of thought, maybe using a variable xp system might help balance the classes a bit. The non-casters use the fast track, the partial casters (paladin, ranger, etc) us the medium XP track and the full casters use the slow track. Multiclassing is where things might start to get messy.If you ever DM'd 1e AD&D, just play PF like that and you will be fine.
S.
That, with a bit of work, is a very intriguing idea...
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For my games, there has to be some consistency. If scrolls are allowed, then a weapon/staff/ring/etc could be magical if it had all the runes or whatnot on it, and perhaps only be limited-charges command or use-activated magic items. You could also make it so that such magic imbued in objects also expires after a certain number of days or weeks, making anything that can be made quickly possible, but anything but a potion or scroll would be unpractical (spellbook classes would be fine).
If you made potions/oils have a free metamagic effect and make them cheaper, you could get away with not having to adjust the difficulty for mundanes. To keep it balanced, make crafting them take more time.
Here is my train of thought; leverage the flexibility of feats.
What about using the E6 system as a bit of a guideline? They suggest that 5 feats might count as +1CR if no other effects of levelling are taken into account. Were this true you could supplement magical equipment with additional feats per level. You therefore wouldn't need to adjust your encounters (save DM time), and players can fill out feat chains to their heart's content. Some other GPsink would need to be concocted or else I could see PC groups buying up kingdoms.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?352719-necro-goodness-E6-The-Game-Insid e-D-amp-D
Or you could do some other feat related economy-fu by assigning them a GP value. After all, the costs of living even the most opulent lifestyles become trivial at later levels compared to your expected wealth by level. That means plenty of money to spend on training.
This is the closest related thread I could find on short notice. I could have sworn an RPGSuperstar judge gave an average GP value per feat somewhere.
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/general/howMuchIsAFeatWorthInGold&page=1
In both of my suggestions prereqs should be followed to the letter, to help salvage balance.
Thoughts?
This is a very interesting topic!
Im currently playing a ninja in a normal campaignwith a very special constellation. Two players are very maxed, me and an Inquisitor.
We can both put out tons of damage for some rounds and we have an Alchemist with some decent control through sickness/nauseated causing stink bombs.
Why are we so maxed?
Our Gm doesn´t like to give out a lot of gold or magic items, so without maxing, we can´t withhold, because he also likes high level play and monsters and loves to give us 2 or more higher CR to test what we can do.
Last encounter we survived with pure luck.
It was some CR 16 devil who was holding the person needed for our quest inside of him with magic jar i guess.
We slew him in 3 rounds, i was at 0 HP, inquisitor at 30 HP, the other 2 full but couldnt do anything because of SR (Sorcerer and Alchemist, whole group lvl 10).
So the devil was banned and left no reward but XP, what happens quite often.
Knowing this i took Master Craftsman with alchemy, create magic arms and armor and create wondrous items.
(I know many people ban this, but its in the book and its possible and our GM allowed it because he feared other maxing or me taking a wizard or any other caster class possibly with word casting which he has no clue of and no time researching.)
Taking the hedge magician trait and using the rule to create 30% cheaper but bound to conditions magic items i made the best use of my money.
And seriously, without all that equipment i would be lost, even with normal encounters i guess.
There are no three feats that could substitue for that equipment, beginnging with the holy subtle Halfling slingstaff to the sniper goggles and all the armor.
Anyhow i dont really like that, because i would like to take some nice fluffy feats for halflings or let you do some more social stuff, but that all goes to the old problem of damage output and role in play and style of playing, doesnt it?
That brought me to the idea of applying more feats. like every third, second or every level. Maybe it would be a way to balance things without magical items.
I like the idea of buying feats for training too.
After reading Ultimate Magic und Ultimate Combat though, i came to think that some feat chains are just too long and playing characters that specialized im not sure its fun.
There are so many situations you need to be more versatile....
the campaign I'm in right now is very low magic. We have all full casters but there is a large faction of the culture that actively hunts arcane casters so it puts a limit on what we can do as a party. We have difficulty just finding somewhere to sell our minor magic items.
We are currently level 6 and only now are we starting to have difficulty w/ encounters. I would suggest allowing your players to have a crazy point buy (like 30+) or if you roll, do 3d6 drop lowest +6 and reroll 1's. Up to level 5 having an very high stats can make up for the fact that you don't have magic weapons, much above that however, you will start to very quickly fall behind.
A fighter lvl 7 for instance will likely have a +2 weapon and a +3 armor, and likely a belt of +2 to STA, not to mention 3 or 4 additional magic items. This means you're hitting 15% less often, doing 3-4 less damage per hit and getting hit 15% more often. With an average of 30 dmg per hit, that is a lot more damage per round.
One way to avoid some of these issues would be to fight lots of other humanoids, they will be just as hamstrung by loss of times as you are. Conversely, after lvl 5 drop the damage dice by one size, or give monster -2 or -4 to STA and CON and a -2 on AC to help compensate for loss of items. Also avoid monsters that are particularly difficult to hit, like incorporeal undead or swarms, or ones that have DR/Magic.
And give away feats like candy.
Don't be stingy on non-magic loot either. Give them lots of Alchemical items like anti-toxin and acid flask to make up for loss of spells per day etc.
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It wouldn't be a simple table at all.
I was thinking an alternate version of the table on page 291 of the Bestiary (Table 1–1: Monster Statistics by CR), which would show more detailed information (include to–hit bonuses, DR values and types, and adjust any numbers that would be too high given the different assumption of wealth.)
Then you could look at a monster, check it against the new table, and assign a more accurate CR.Now what do you mean?
1. Disposable Magic items only.
2. Monsters would still have spell-likes.3. WBL Should be mostly irrelevent in this setup. It would reach a certain point, and then basically stop, as you'd have masterwork gear, mundane gear, and disposables (alchemy, poisons (likely cheaper) and maybe potions.
4. I'd want the characters to be fairly tough, but not superheroes. I don’t want it to become Exalted.
Iron Heroes
Conan RPG books.
Looked into Iron Heroes. Didn't like it. Too Superheroey. Looked into Conan. Looked awesome. Very similar to what I'm thinking of.
However, I have all these great pathfinder books on my shelf. Adapting some classes, gear and feats wouldnt be too hard, but I have a bunch of PF monster books (2 bestiaries and a bunch of APs, and some of the golarion books) and I'd like to make use of them, and figure out how to make use of them, either in a conan system game or a PF game run similarly to conan, but with still a little bit of magic available, and largely compatible with PF stuff, once CR values are adjusted.Problems you guys pointed out that would need to be covered:
1. If you attempt to to apply the non-patented Paizo/WotC EL/CR system you WILL run into trouble.
2. Players will have less DPR.
3. Players will have less AC, Resistance, and possibly DR.
4. Players will have lower saves.
5. Problematic DR Types: Notably DR/Magic. (Ie Barghest)
6. You'll use more spells if you lack healing items.
7. It could take downtime to recover from injuries.
8. Wizards need scrolls.
9. Spontaneous casters need more magic items to compensate for less spells.
10. Full casters may be way too good.
1. Yep. my idea is CR guidelines that you could use to assess CR for a non–magical items campaign.
2–4. Very true. Instead of buffing up the characters and giving them superman powers to replace their batman equipment, I'd like to be able to gauge what they can take on without beefing them up.5. Yep. I'd imagine the easiest solution would be to change it to a material of some kind. But perhaps raising the CR would work in some cases too.
6. True. In my original idea though, potions and such would still be available, as would any item with just a couple uses. Probably not wands, unless they had significantly less charges.
7. I'm cool with that.
8. If wizards are still in, or other casters that need scrolls, they'd be available still, though the prices may have to be lowered.
9. Do they?
10. Would they be? without their boosting items and whatnot? I can see it for summoner and druid, for sure. but the others too?
Rebalancing for the weaker characters
1. Humanoids will be just as hamstrung as the players.
2. Dumb down the monsters (though it would take effort to figure out how much to dumb them down by).
3. Avoid the Problematic Monsters: incorporeal undead or swarms, or ones that have DR/Magic.
4. Be prepared to adjust the encounters/monsters on the fly.
5. Look at the creature: It won't take an advanced degree in maths to work out if the players have a chance or not.
6. Fighter types will fall behind at later levels but the spell casters will be less effective at lower - hmmmm, sounds like old-school D&D to me.
7. Ban wizard, sorcerer, cleric, druid, oracle, witch, and summoner as PC classes.
8. Tailor challenges to the party's actual strength.
1. True. and I use a lot of these.
2. I can see it being needed in some cases, though it would be easier to just figure out what their new CR would be based on their old stats, so you can use them As–Is, or as close to As–Is, as possible.3. Hmm. Avoid, use sparingly, or tone down; for sure.
4. Yeah, I'd hope to do some adjusting up front to save on headaches. If I just have to adjust my encounter design practices, that’s a lot easier than trying to fudge everything to avoid a TPK every week. lol.
5. True. but I generally don’t have the players sheets, so I often have to design slightly more generally, since I don’t know their exact capabilities, a lot of the time.
6. That does sound pretty oldschool. lol.
7. Hmm. maybe. Maybe they could be made as Bard Archetypes or Bard Alt. Classes or some such…
8. Good call. If I can work out some better guidelines for this sort of thing, it would help though.
Beefing up the characters to compensate.
1. Inherent bonuses
2. More Feats
3. Crazy High Pointbuy.
4. Lots of alchemical items and some potions.
5. Beefed up and cheaper consumeables, such as potions and oils. Possibly with metamagic. Maybe make it take longer to craft them.
6. Make everyone casters?
1. I've looked into that. I don’t think I want to go that direction in PF.
2. Really? why feats specifically? Just for more general power? I'm not sure theyre needed.3. I was actually thinking 15 point buy, or a roughly equivalent random system I came up with using playing cards (I could easily adjust the "points" there too, but I think I want to go for 15 or so).
4. Definitely.
5. I was thinking something along those lines. Possibly making poison much cheaper as well. Since theyre going to use more disposables, may as well make them more available.
6. I don’t think I want to do this one. I want less magic overall for this campaign.
Campaign Suggestions
1. In a campaign like this spells should be limited and controlled, because "low magic" includes magic you cast. Non magic characters are weaker, but magic one should suffer of istant death, before or after.
2. For my games, there has to be some consistency. If scrolls are allowed, then a weapon/staff/ring/etc could be magical if it had all the runes or whatnot on it, and perhaps only be limited-charges command or use-activated magic items. You could also make it so that such magic imbued in objects also expires after a certain number of days or weeks, making anything that can be made quickly possible, but anything but a potion or scroll would be unpractical (spellbook classes would be fine).
1. Could you explain that more?
2. Definitely. I could see other charge based items, but I would want to avoid anything at–will, x/day, and all the christmas tree +x items.So: Do you think an alternate Table 1-1 with a DR column and an section for attack bonuses (or full DPR calculation) do the trick, or is there much more to it than that?
Maybe some cheaper disposables, and make scrolls and scribing cheaper.
Would the class-dynamics change that much? Would it be very problematic? What if full-casters got the boot?
Playing in a campaign now that is low in terms of magic items... I don't think I have a single item with anything greater than a +2 and that's a ring of protection. Did I mention I'm 13th level.
It's completely doable you just have to have to be a smart Dm and be capable of judging what your party can and can't handle.
A possible low-magic campaign template.
Rules of thumb;
1. Scrolls and Potions fully available.
2. Crafting extends to 'Grandmaster Crafted' (another +1 damage or +hit) with steel, and a further +1 to hit for mithril or +1 damage for for adamantine - which now require Grandmaster crafting to create.
3. Spellcasting classes limited to those which max out at 6th level spells or less.
4. Drop all DR/magic in the game to 20% of the numerical value and change to DR/-
5. Allow Alchemists to make Talismans and Amulets which give a limited range of Save Bonuses (+1 to +2) vs magic and at a high level of skill, levels of SR.
6. Increase the number of 'inherent' magic 'items' in the game like the Nighthags stone. Make their bonuses situational - or limited in effect - a Lamias Hide cloak which gives +2 vs Charm effects; a Stone Giants Gall Stone which gives Resistance 5 against Acid damage; or a Hellhounds Tooth which when worked into a sword allows it to do do +2 fire damage. Alchemy and a Knowledge (Innate Magic) skill can be prerequisites as can weapon crafting.
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I know this may be taboo to mention, but 4e does have a feature like this. Look up inherent bonuses, and see if it can be adapted to PF.
It basicly gives you +1 to hit/Damage, saves and AC at certain levels(Every 5 levels), to represent what you would be getting from the magic items.
For the most part that system works. You can play sword and sorcery style well. It also lets your melee type be a little more varied in thier weapon selection because they are no longer slaved to a specific item. (They are still tied to things like Weapon Focus etc though)
The important thing to remember is that while it will keep them saving and hitting at the right level, it does not replace the extra spell like effects they would be getting from these items. The heroes will end up a little less powerful, but not much
I agree with using this system if you want to go low-magic.
You will need to rescale it to fit Pathfinder, say... +1 every 4 levels? Cos remember 4e uses a 30 level system and assumes a character gains a +1 on their items every 5 levels.
Using this system, you can still include magical items in your campaign, just remember that they are rare and powerful.
For example:
A +4 Keen, Holy, Brilliant Energy, longsword will be equal to having Excalibur appearing in your campaign.
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A possible low-magic campaign template.
Rules of thumb;
1. Scrolls and Potions fully available.
2. Crafting extends to 'Grandmaster Crafted' (another +1 damage or +hit) with steel, and a further +1 to hit for mithril or +1 damage for for adamantine - which now require Grandmaster crafting to create.
3. Spellcasting classes limited to those which max out at 6th level spells or less.
4. Drop all DR/magic in the game to 20% of the numerical value and change to DR/-
5. Allow Alchemists to make Talismans and Amulets which give a limited range of Save Bonuses (+1 to +2) vs magic and at a high level of skill, levels of SR.
6. Increase the number of 'inherent' magic 'items' in the game like the Nighthags stone. Make their bonuses situational - or limited in effect - a Lamias Hide cloak which gives +2 vs Charm effects; a Stone Giants Gall Stone which gives Resistance 5 against Acid damage; or a Hellhounds Tooth which when worked into a sword allows it to do do +2 fire damage. Alchemy and a Knowledge (Innate Magic) skill can be prerequisites as can weapon crafting.
These suggestions look pretty cool actually. might have to steal them at some point.
I am running a game virtually empty of magic items, but I am also giving considerable bonuses to my pcs in exchange. I think if you were to run characters 'as is' you will have some very serious problems with regards to monsters. Eseentially you'd need to play E6/7/8. If you go past 8 without it, you will have serious problems using any out of the box monsters and NPCs
Major problems:
1. Humanoid ACs will more or less stagnate. This is a fundamental problem as except in very specific cases class and level do not scale your AC. But attack bonuses DO scale. Without some massive adjustments to the system, AC would essentially become meaningless past something like level 6.
2. Monster Saves will be too high, you can adjust this but it would take a lot of work. Without the ability to increase primary stats, any ability that allowed a save would be heavily devalued.
3. Monster ACs will be too high. While PC ACs depend on magic, monster ACs do not. They are usually loaded with natural armor bonuses. So the players without those strength/dex items and magic weapons will have considerable difficulty hitting. Again, you can lower the ACs of monsters, but this is going to require alot of careful adjustment.
4. High level characters may or may not be able to do things that are expected of them. Particularly if you are using published adventures, certain non-monster challenges may become far more difficult then intended. If a challenge was meant to be simple with certain magic items (a bag of holding, or winged boots) it might become very challenging depending on the party composition.
Overall I think there are a lot of concerns. Simply raising or lowering CR isnt going to help. You'll need to address specific monster statistics and abilities. Do get right I think it would be a lot more work then its worth.
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I've played in a several low to no magic games. Like I played a game where I was a 10th level ranger when I finally got +1 rapier.
Here's what I noticed. Casters didn't out shine non casters. What happened was more teamwork was required. Caster buffed the melee guys, it was much more important to do so as the melee types didn't have magic to do that for them. The casters really depended on the melee character to protect them as they lacked the magic item they would normally use to shore up their weaknesses. Over all it worked out pretty well. The only real issue I found was that lack of rewards that magic items bring.
I haven't tried a Low Magic Game with the Pathfinder rules. I suspect it would work even better though. Fighters get a lot more in PF than in 3.5.
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Seems unfun. I'd be pissed off if my DM said we were playing PF/ D&D and sprung a no magic game on me.
If the DM said we were playing Iron Heros or GURPS low fantasy... well I'd be the only one who showed up.
I wouldn't advertise it as a PF or D&D game. I'd say up front it would be a limited magic d20 game, that mostly uses PF rules. It'd tell them that it wouldn't be gear focused as much as focused on doing cool s%~&. Then I'd give them a campaign synopsis. They'd know in advance. And my pool of gamers often play other RPGs, so running a game without magic wouldnt necessarily scare everyone off.
I am running a game virtually empty of magic items, but I am also giving considerable bonuses to my pcs in exchange. I think if you were to run characters 'as is' you will have some very serious problems with regards to monsters. Eseentially you'd need to play E6/7/8. If you go past 8 without it, you will have serious problems using any out of the box monsters and NPCs
Games rarely seem to go above 10 or 12 anyways. But I can see your point. And yeah, the printed CRs would be useless.
Major problems:
1. Humanoid ACs will stagnate.
2. Monster Saves will be too high for their rated CR.
3. Monster ACs will be too high for their rated CR.
4. High level characters may or may not be able to do things that are expected of them, particularly if using modules.
1. This is true. I totally forgot about that. I'd likely need to lift level-based ACs from Conan.
2 & 3. You don't think looking at the numbers, and comparing to a new table that shows reasonable capabilities for that level would make it easy to assign new CRs to them? Obviously not all CR7s would get bumped to say, CR9. However, when I look at a specific monster I'd think it would be obvious where that CR falls, given a new table 1-1, no?4. Very true, and something to keep in mind when designing encounters.
Simply raising or lowering CR isnt going to help.
You'll need to address specific monster statistics and abilities.
To get right I think it would be a lot more work then its worth.
I was suggesting looking at the monster in question, seeing its specific statistics and abilities, and using those to determine what its CR should be (ignoring whatever CR Paizo gave it). It might go up, might stay the same.
I think a decent low magic campaign that doesn't make everyone into superheroes or high powered anime characters to compensate is a good goal.I guess what I'm proposing, is something like the Conan RPG, but updated and more compatible with Pathfinder.
[Edit**]One more point, I'm talking about starting from PF, and trying to make it play more like Conan, while keeping the utility of as much PF stuff as possible.
On the issue of AC mismatches of mobs as characters progress.
If you take into account the Grandmaster Crafted items I mentioned (and apply for weapon materials used for armour a bonus; +1 to hit becomes +1 AC, or +1 to damage becomes +DR/1) AND reduce AC of mobs as follows;
1-5 CR - no change
6-10 CR -1
11-15 CR -2
16-20 CR -3
21-25 CR -4
26+ CR -5
.... a VERY simple progression, then you compensate well for this without a complex calculation.
The same can apply for 'to hit' bonuses.
A low-magic campaign is emminently possible with paizo and if it occurs in a flavoursome and well-constructed homebrew campaign can be every bit as enjoyable as an 'epic magic' normal game.
