This will be lengthy. :\
I've been testing and running a Steampunk campaign setting for three years now, two years of which have been a weekly game, with a rotating group of 5-6 people.
As of right now, the only major restrictions have been:
No Summoners (abused to hell and back by original testing party)
No Underdark Races (typical human-centric Democratic Monarchy)
No Psionics (only over my personal lack of understanding for PC play)
So let's get down to my concerns. Hopefully, I can get some suggestions.
MAGIC: Low Magic? Middle Line? High Magic?
It was when the party's witch cast Ice Storm inside of a small building in The Shambles (our poor district), that I realized openly vulgar displays of magic would probably be a terrifying experience in a tech savvy world, that has evolved past the hyborian norm. Not to say that it doesn't have it's advantages, but there seems to be disadvantages to the party being able to solve most problems with magic; instead of relying on their wits. Especially in higher levels, when airship battles and steam powered goliaths are at play.
Is this just my imagination? Should I let them continue to have access to all spells they normally could in Golarion? If not, what should I limit? Whole Schools? Only some spells? Go completely low magic?
I'll probably end up trying each option with test games eventually; but would love to hear what other Players/GMs may have to say.
Thanks in advance!
** spoiler omitted **...
Thanks.
What I got from this is that I could add restrictions about how they level. As in, "sure you can take a level in sorcerer; after 3 levels in a different non-magic class".
Not sure how I feel about that. There's up and downs for it. Ups for the game, but downs for the player that doesn't want to multi-class.
Its better to let PCs level how they want. They are the exception to the rule after all.
As in, "sure you can take a level in sorcerer; after 3 levels in a different non-magic class".Before doing this, do consider that this is going to mess up save DCs versus save bonuses.
Pretty much.
Right now it's the only idea someone's came up with though.
Its better to let PCs level how they want. They are the exception to the rule after all.
I don't think you understand the predicament. I'm the type of storyteller that wouldn't allow toon town in a sherlock holmes novel; so naturally I don't want to allow rampant magic in a low magic campaign world.
In a time that's "long passed" relying on powerful magic for progress, it seems counter-productive to allow high magic unchecked.
Didn't get as much help as I had hoped for. Kept getting the "play what you want" line, which is great for Golarion... not a homebrew world, with different natural laws. :(
I'm guessing that the best way to take care of it is to run a few side games with different rules, before saying screw it and continue to let the imbalance issue get worse.
Current ideas:
Low Magic: Or also known as the draconian "Magic is hard :(" option.
-Sorcerer's are the only "typical" player spellcaster.
-Wizards need to be trained far too in-depth to be of any real use in most cities (making Wizards a great potential villain choice)
-Spell-Less Ranger's, via http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=101557&affil iate_id=294988
----More of a bounty hunter choice.
-Bards are out for now. :*(
-Witches are either hag-blooded street urchins, or crystal waving, dabbling debutantes; both with Patrons from beyond the stars. Their spell list is altered to reflect this!
-Oracles, Druids and Clerics exist, but in very small number; and more often than not, secluded from the public.
-Alchemist archetype to facilitate a viable medic/healer role.
-Castless Paladins, or limit the spells (perhaps slightly enhancing the numbers or effects of the kept spells). I.E. Smite Evil would still work, but perhaps they don't get overly flashy spell choices.
Magitech Land: This is closer to what we have running now than not.
Magic is a calculable and predictable resource. It's viewed alongside of science and mathematics as an equal, not an opposition. Repulsive magic, like black science is met with suspicion and distrust. (Necromancy, Human Experimentation, Etc.) Abuse of magic is a serious crime; one that can get a player in major trouble with authorities.
-Reagents, materials and/or components for everything/everyone!
No metamagic feats?
-Sorcerer, Bard, Oracle are considered the typical adventuring magic classes
-Wizards are a thing of the past in most locales. It's cheaper and easier to hire 10 normal men with the skills that one wizard could produce. (Thanks Movin!)
-Alchemist Potions aren't considered magic and is the ideal spell-like utility character for most parties. His potion list is altered to show this!
That's about it for now.
I have a feeling nothing's going to work outside of just telling my players "I don't want you to play magic casting classes", or stopping every game before their normal Golarion styled spellcasting might is too great to control in civilized society (so between levels 7-10).
Which I really don't want to do.
Every time you play in a "low magic world" with D&D rules (or derivates), a unicorn steps on a kitten and an orphan drops his ice cream cone.
Every time you play in a "low magic world" with D&D rules (or derivates), a unicorn steps on a kitten and an orphan drops his ice cream cone.
Awesome that you don't have to play it, then!
I once came up with a bunch of campaign specific cantrips for a Magi-Punk style world. They weren't much use in combat (save for one).
They were things like a measuring cantrip (allows EXTREMELY precise measurement of lengths, volumes, pressures, etc.), a material evaluation cantrip (kinda like how we nowadays perform ultrasound or xray tests on pressure vessels), a "check this math" cantrip for evaluating the mathematical calculations one had made on a piece of paper, stuff that would help a tinkerer build things when used with fabricate (or even by themselves).
I had to put a range restriction on the measuring cantrip, because the PCs began trying to use it as a range-finder for artillery.
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Basically, you should start with figuring out how much magic you want.
Is it a low-magic setting with mostly steampunk technology? Then spellcasters are rare, to start with, and you might want to work with something like an E6 ruleset (original post can be found somewhere on ENWorld; the quick summary is that characters do not progress past level 6; after that point they get feats); I prefer E8 myself, with some supplemental feats to access iconic features.
This prevents the party from having spells that are too over the top, in comparison to everything else. Stopping normal progression at 6 or 8 also prevents you hitting the spells that tend to make adventure design particularly difficult.
If you want a higher-magic setting, then its probably fine with the party having normal magic.
Slim and Phelan, thank you!
Both of these are great ideas to test out.
Is this the link you were talking about PhelanArcetus?
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/206323-e6-game-inside-d -d.html
Even if we don't go with e6 (probably e8 in our games), this is more than enough inspiration to make my own rules, to better suit our playstyle.
As for cantrips, Slim... I really like this!
We have a lot of lower level homebrew spells already (and close to 1500 total 3PP spells, thanks to Rite Publishing's 1001 spells and a few other books). I can see the cantrips working out great as to why a Sorcerer or properly trained wizard would still be useful in the field.
With these suggestions, some research and bringing it up to my gamers; I can add, cut, edit and rearrange PFRPG to better suit the world; instead of forcing people to play something else all together.
This is great. I was going to look into Savage Worlds, or another company that's a lil more friendly towards Steampunk; but this could really work!
Thanks!
-Wizards are a thing of the past in most locales. It's cheaper and easier to hire 10 normal men with the skills that one wizard could produce. (Thanks Movin!)
As for cantrips, Slim... I really like this! I can see the cantrips working out great as to why a Sorcerer or properly trained wizard would still be useful in the field. Thanks!
Wizards or Sorceror "Tinkers" are for the things that your 10 normal men can't produce with the required precision. Your boilermakers knock together the boiler and frames, but the wizards make the gyros and the other precision bits with the help of the cantrips and mend/fabricate. Folks who can't quite cut it as wizards or sorcerors but can still cast cantrips are the skilled operators or diagnostic technicians as they can "see inside" the machinery with the various cantrips.
Wizards or Sorceror "Tinkers" are for the things that your 10 normal men can't produce with the required precision. Your boilermakers knock together the boiler and frames, but the wizards make the gyros and the other precision bits with the help of the cantrips and mend/fabricate. Folks who can't quite cut it as wizards or sorcerors but can still cast cantrips are the skilled operators or diagnostic technicians as they can "see inside" the machinery with the various cantrips.-Wizards are a thing of the past in most locales. It's cheaper and easier to hire 10 normal men with the skills that one wizard could produce. (Thanks Movin!)
As for cantrips, Slim... I really like this! I can see the cantrips working out great as to why a Sorcerer or properly trained wizard would still be useful in the field. Thanks!
You could pay the engineers union to repair the damage to your train's steam engine for tonight's moonlight ride through the countryside, or get it done in an hour with a "specialist", who has a knack for mending.
I'm getting the bigger picture here.
After talking to my co-pilot, We're going to alter spell lists and include some d20 Fantasy Technology based spells (Ptolus and Technologists Handbook); instead of going E6.
E6/E8 is definitely a great idea; but we're afraid of it being a lil too alien to start in the middle of a long running game.
This may be too little, too late - but another option you might consider is the route White Wolf took with Mage: The Ascension.
Could you use magic to create a cloud made of cotton candy that shoots lightning bolts? Sure! But Paradox is going to eat you alive for doing it.
It would involve structuring a new system and it's essentially stealing an idea from another gaming system, but hey... it's homebrew anyway, right?
So, for example, you could say that a player gets paradox points (or you could call them something else, like maybe 'disbelief' points) from casting spells. 1 point per level of the spell cast. Then set up thresholds for bad things that happen as they reach those thresholds, and ways to burn off the points.
That would force your spellcasters to think before they cast. Would they still be able to do all the wonderful things they could before? Yes, but they have to carefully consider if they want to get themselves into trouble for doing it.
In the early days of Pathfinder we were running a ROTRL AP and I was running a 3.5 Warmage. His background was he had just spent several years at the Academy and he and several other Warmages had signed on with a non-specified army that was facing off against another non-specified army (though it was insinuated that it was or allied to The Grand Duchy of Alkenstar). He had heard of cannons, but thought that anything that "mundane" craftsmen could produce would be a match for battle magic to be laughable! He stopped laughing after his entire army was wiped out, and he only survived by crawling away under cover of his dead comrades.
Alkenstar (in times of crisis) can mass produce devastating weapons that can be handled effectively with a modicum of training, whereas magically produced items take somewhat longer and in the case of spell-trigger/spell-completion items, can only be used by a small number of people.
This may be why magic falls out of vogue in your game!
I think that in a high magic world, when technology is developed it would be symbiotic with magic and the technology/science would first be employed to "stretch" the amount of magical energy required to do things. Ideally, this would reduce the magic required down to a cantrip so that one or two apprentice spellcasters could power the thing all day.
Wizards probably learn basic science and engineering along with their spells during their training. Given the conceit of magic, they probably would not see it as different from the "real" physics which the technology runs on.
You could slow down spell progression. For example, give wizards the inquisitor's spells per day instead of the standard wizard's spells per day. Players would still get to cast spells beginning at 1st level (which is fun--especially if you want to play a spell caster!), Save DCs don't need to fudged, the highest level spells are eliminated, higher level spells are delayed, and if the PCs want more spells per day, they can just invest in Scribing Scrolls.
The new avatar series.
The police employ Metal Benders to bind criminals. They descend from a zeppelin. One of the bender haters had a battery backpack that let them throw lightning. Remember, if you outlaw magic, only the outlaws will have magic.
I like the idea of spells designed for a steampunk world. Heat water would allow steam-mechs to make jackrabbit starts.
You could slow down spell progression. For example, give wizards the inquisitor's spells per day instead of the standard wizard's spells per day. Players would still get to cast spells beginning at 1st level (which is fun--especially if you want to play a spell caster!), Save DCs don't need to fudged, the highest level spells are eliminated, higher level spells are delayed, and if the PCs want more spells per day, they can just invest in Scribing Scrolls.Just pointing something out, that results in the wizard having more spells per day of levels 1-6 than he normally would. Granted that's still cutting out 7-9.
Yikes!
I gotta check those tables before I open my big fat mouth.
But on the other hand, you want to give them some kind of perk to replace 3 levels of spells and the later access to higher level spells.
Maybe require specialty school spells to take up 1 slot, non-specialty school spells to take 2 slots, and opposed school spells to take up 3 slots?
Or is that nerfing the wizard way too much? Especially combined with the inqusitor spells per day table?
I guess it depends on how low you want your magic to be.
Funny you should mention that, Eric.
The game world STARTED 3 years ago using the World of Darkness systems for Hunter, Mage and Vampire.
Hunter was our Paladin-esque knight, Mage was our Bard and a Gangrel was one of their antagonists.
I'm not really interested in a Paradox type of system for magic. Punishing a caster for wanting to cast (in that kind of manner) doesn't feel right to me.
SmiloDan,
Decidedly, we'll start off by just shaving the spell choices from the normal books and adding plenty from great d20 supplements; including alternate ways to use spells; and the Technologists spells.
If we need to dive further then that; I'll take your suggestion on the spells progression alteration! I like the idea. We really haven't pushed the envelope to say "Ok, magic should stop here" yet.
The more I talk about this; the more I have to write down to present to my group on Wednesday. Ha! I'm psyched about this! I hope they will be too!
Slim and Phelan, thank you!
Both of these are great ideas to test out.
Is this the link you were talking about PhelanArcetus?
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/206323-e6-game-inside-d -d.html
Even if we don't go with e6 (probably e8 in our games), this is more than enough inspiration to make my own rules, to better suit our playstyle.
As for cantrips, Slim... I really like this!
We have a lot of lower level homebrew spells already (and close to 1500 total 3PP spells, thanks to Rite Publishing's 1001 spells and a few other books). I can see the cantrips working out great as to why a Sorcerer or properly trained wizard would still be useful in the field.
With these suggestions, some research and bringing it up to my gamers; I can add, cut, edit and rearrange PFRPG to better suit the world; instead of forcing people to play something else all together.
This is great. I was going to look into Savage Worlds, or another company that's a lil more friendly towards Steampunk; but this could really work!
Thanks!
Yeah, that's the one. I was being lazy, and work sometimes makes it hard to access websites, seemingly randomly. (For example, I can access the main page of the wiki for one game I'm in, but not any subpages... and sometimes I can't access the site at all.) It's normally good with established sites, but I was feeling lazy.
Definitely wouldn't switch to something like E6/E8 in the middle of a campaign; it's quite unfair on a lot of grounds... changing expectations, builds relying on picking up a higher-level feature or combining classes, and so on.
What I'm doing in my E8 setting is working out a ritual casting rule. I want there to be the big magic as well, I just want that to take lots of time and casters, so it's available but highly restricted by practicality.
I'm thinking that if and when we end this particular chapter in the story; or if the party decides a total re-roll would be needed, we'd try E6 or E8.
Our games are all events that have happened in the same world, with slight history edits for better blending.
I'm gonna use some thread necromancy.
I wished I'd seen this earlier but check out old Xcrawl stuff (3.5) from Pandahead Games.
Some overview.
Divination spells were generally illegal due to privacy laws. They existed, but were the province of governments. If you got caught Mind Reading or some such, you were in for a world of trouble.
Summoning spells were pretty taboo. Consorting with outsiders who weren't direct representatives of the Gods was considered to be black magic and a threat to society. Even the direct representatives of gods were only dealt with in temples with witnesses. Any threat to the State was documented and prosecuted.
Raising Undead was not uncommon, but they had to wear masks, so as not to offend the deceased's family members. Zombies make great cleanup crews for toxic waste. If you lost control of your Undead you were financially liable for their actions.
Some spells were trademarked, so anytime you cast them you had to have a gold coin as a material component. The coin teleported to the trademark holder's bank. Some spells were really expensive as a result.
On the tech side of things:
Medical science was kind of retarded developmentally as a result of Cure spells. The Heal Skill could do some cool stuff however, and healer kits had more utility.
Guns; shotguns are simple weapons, most are Martials.
Rather than make all flashy spells fail, how about the P&F method.
Human NPCs will roll to disbelieve.
Cosplayers will dress up like monsters and hit the streets the next day.
The police will plant a gun on anyone arrested who used magic missile.
A fireball spell will be accompanied by witnesses who smelled sewer gas earlier.
I just figured I'd toss in my own two cents here. I'm currently working on a Steampunk campaign of my own. I'm not too sure what "E6" or "E8" stand for, but the basic idea is that an Alchemist discovered a means of drawing energy from other planes and using them to power his inventions. Couple hundred years later, this process has become partially automated, and steam-tech is just as common as magic, but 'dedicated' spellcasters are somewhat rare. Most schools of higher learning provide spellcasting courses, so Wizards aren't as rare as they apparently would be in any other setting, and an "Artificer's Guild" provides "Poor Man's Magic". Airship, steam locomotives, and steamships all exist, with Airships mainly being used for transport of VIPs and important object.
As far as Firearms, I use the 'Firearms Everywhere' rules, except all guns are Martial weapons. In addition, more 'archaic' forms of weaponry still exist alongside firearms, due to the creation of "Dragonscale Armor", which works by deflecting bullets rather than trying to stop them. Basically, it's a 'Mundane Property' that adds half the armor's total AC bonus (including Enhancement Bonus) to Touch AC. As a result, melee weapons still have a place on the battlefield. Plus, if you run out of ammo, or the guy is literally right in your face, what other choice do you have?
On the subject of suggestions for what you could do to get players not to commit 'vulgar displays' of magic, about the best suggestion I can think of is to remind the players that they are dealing with a populace that is used to "Hedge Magician" levels of magic, not the powers of true reality-warpers. As a result, if they use any blatant displays of powerful magic, there is a VERY good chance that any nearby civilians will likely panic. Of course, this could be a GOOD thing, like if you're trying to clear a street before the Big Bad has a chance to start bringing out the big guns and really rack up the kill count. In either case, people are likely to remember this kind of thing the next time the characters go shopping.
In short, using 'vulgar magic' will likely impose circumstance penalties on any 'social' checks that the group tries to make unless they were obviously trying to save people. Even then, your average joe is still likely going to be really weirded out that he's now gently floating to the ground instead of falling to his death, and where the hell did that big ol' winged fire-breathing lizard where the Sorcerer used to be come from?
I just figured I'd toss in my own two cents here. I'm currently working on a Steampunk campaign of my own. I'm not too sure what "E6" or "E8" stand for, but the basic idea is that an Alchemist discovered a means of drawing energy from other planes and using them to power his inventions. Couple hundred years later, this process has become partially automated, and steam-tech is just as common as magic, but 'dedicated' spellcasters are somewhat rare. Most schools of higher learning provide spellcasting courses, so Wizards aren't as rare as they apparently would be in any other setting, and an "Artificer's Guild" provides "Poor Man's Magic". Airship, steam locomotives, and steamships all exist, with Airships mainly being used for transport of VIPs and important object.
As far as Firearms, I use the 'Firearms Everywhere' rules, except all guns are Martial weapons. In addition, more 'archaic' forms of weaponry still exist alongside firearms, due to the creation of "Dragonscale Armor", which works by deflecting bullets rather than trying to stop them. Basically, it's a 'Mundane Property' that adds half the armor's total AC bonus (including Enhancement Bonus) to Touch AC. As a result, melee weapons still have a place on the battlefield. Plus, if you run out of ammo, or the guy is literally right in your face, what other choice do you have?
On the subject of suggestions for what you could do to get players not to commit 'vulgar displays' of magic, about the best suggestion I can think of is to remind the players that they are dealing with a populace that is used to "Hedge Magician" levels of magic, not the powers of true reality-warpers. As a result, if they use any blatant displays of powerful magic, there is a VERY good chance that any nearby civilians will likely panic. Of course, this could be a GOOD thing, like if you're trying to clear a street before the Big Bad has a chance to start bringing out the big guns and really rack up the kill count. In either case, people are likely to remember this kind of thing...
Look at the pen. FLASH!
They are shooting a movie, Dragonfire 5. The effects are very real. You landed on an air mattress. Here's your check for doing a stunt, and being a real life extra.