One of my fellow players claims that the D&D 3.5/Pathfinder ruleset simply does not work without spellcasters and magic. I think this is just silly. If one made an entire setting specifically designed without out it, new classes, new monsters, and the equivalent of most magic items (technology maybe), I think it could work.
What does the community think?
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Yes but it still has the problem I'm seeking to avert. I'm sick of the POWERSPLOSION!!!! spellcasters (and psions) get at higher levels. The last time I GMed was my first high level game, and (mostly due to one player, the same one who started this whole thing) it was the most frustrating and annoying game I've ever played.
I just want the encounter to NOT be something like this:
GM: You see a horribly deformed giant crawl forth from the cave, howling its terrifying battle cry. This will surely be challen...
Player: I cast forbid action, preventing it from attacking.
GM:.......f$*k......
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First discussed here, the E6 method is a grittier feel. Search the board for numerous discussion to implementing this in Pathfinder.
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How quickly does it take your group(s) on average to get to higher levels, or at least to the point where you feel that spell casters are ruining things for your personal fun?
Tossing paint on magic isn't going to solve your unhappiness. If you want to try no magic, then totally go NO magic. Run things at a little slower pace for healing, certain kinds of monsters will stick around for longer and people might find them interesting, etc.
We tend to level up whenever the GM feels like it, which at first I liked because we level up really quickly. Then I realized, we level up really quickly. Didn't like it so much after that......
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That's possibly a large part of the problem them, perhaps the core of it. Your seeing all of the flash without any of the work that's supposed to go into getting that far. If a group plays regularly at an average rate it should take quite a long time to get to higher levels. Your GM is playing a bit more fast and loose then you enjoy, perhaps you should talk to them. Some people enjoy playing like that, others don't. Same with almost everything.
Heck I'm sure you could find groups that rarely run combats at all if you looked.
Suggestions:
Scrap XP. Blackbloodtroll has it right. Let them level when you say so, and make them work for it.
A low-or-no magic setting has to be offset by other abilities and numerical bonuses. Gestalt characters have a lot of bang for their level but still have reasonable saves and HP. Try treating a 5th level Gestalt game like a 9th level game, or have them play 3rd level characters clearing out a goblin warren. They'll feel like superheroes. (If gestalt isn't your thing, try Bloodlines or Heroic Paths (from the Midnight setting)
Dont give out permanent magic items. Make everything in your setting a temporary boost. Give them drug/Rage style penalty after they wear off. make your players weigh the potential consequences of using magic.
It won't work without houserules to make up for it.
I did a mini-campaign set in real-world ancient Greece a while back that didn't have magic. It worked out fine. +1 swords and armor became really well-made weapons/armor; most other magic items were just thrown out. We never made it past 5th level, so I can't really say how it scales, but if you keep your players relatively close to cities (where they can rest) and keep adventuring days short (like, 1-2 fights, tops), it can be a lot of fun. Even mundane traps become particularly compelling, since you can't just cross off a few charges of your CLW wand and call it a day.
My guess is that at higher levels you'll have to make some adjustments to the monsters to make it work, since damage reduction and the "high HP, low will save" monsters both really assume a caster is around to make them CR-appropriate.
It depends:
if "no spellcasters or no magic" means you go through the entire set of books and remove any and all creature, class, ability, and item that uses magic or requires magic to kill it, then what you basically have are fighters, rogues (without that spell talent), and rangers (spellless archtypes) running around.
if it can't be done with a skillcheck it can't be done.
You essentially have a medi-eval world, as it was. No magic at all, just folks being folks doing things only folks can do.
Can you do it? Sure.
Not entirely sure the appeal though. Alot of work? yep. Worth it?
er. not imo.
Be hard pressed to find any monsters after a certain point though- because at some time they all start needing magic weapons to overcome DR and/or using magic against the party (and so the critter would have to be removed).
-S
Here's a hint: You don't need to change everything. Just remove the magic, figure out what still works, and stick to that. You end up with a much smaller game, but really, you don't use the whole monster manual in ANY game.
Also, if you want to include a particular monster that has supernatural abilities but seems fair, you can always re-skin it. The werewolf loses his DR and suddenly becomes a madman. The reverse works as well: If a mundane monster that you want to use is designed with magic in mind, just use a different stat block. They don't have to know that the troll was secretly a dire bear. Also, a pit fiend is still scary sans-DR, SLA's and supernaturals.
Look for small changes; don't rebuild from the ground up.
Here's a hint: You don't need to change everything. Just remove the magic, figure out what still works, and stick to that. You end up with a much smaller game, but really, you don't use the whole monster manual in ANY game.
+1 to this.
I'm in a PbP game now, and I'm betting it's going to be fairly low-magic. There's 8 characters, all 4th level, and out of those 32 levels, only ONE is a caster level (Sor1). Everything else is martial and skill-based classes.
It can work, but not without some significant homebrewing.
A few things I'd consider at least :
A defensive rating, AC going up as a function of level, probably divided in dodge bonus and AC bonus as per monk.
Consider altering saving throws, saves are 1/2 level +1 per 4 class levels that have it as a good save.
Just disregard magical items in general, the few magical items are more specific use than all round effective, a special stake to slay vampires, a bottle to trap a spirit, a consecrated silver sword to slay werewolves, an amulet to ward off evil spirits etc.
Otherwise I think making magic alot more basic goes a long way to making it work, and spells should be fine to implement, maybe even make it part of the skill system.
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Depends on what "no magic" means...
No monsters with magic (demons, devils, angels, dragons, Fey, undead?, constructs, magical beasts, a lot of monstrous humonoids), and stripping the magic from the rest of the things that fit (abberations, undead?, some magical beasts)
that leaves you with oozes, centuars, minotaurs, maybe griffons, and a hand full of other monsterrs
and no npc's with magics to have to resist
if thats the case, then it'll be Hardmode (no magic healing) but it'll balance out
if its just "No magic users or items for the PC's" then you're FUBAR'd
I have a friend who is running a "no-magic" campaign. 0 magic. No magic items, spells, potions, nothing. He has been running this for over a year now without a hitch.
The game works fine without magic, it just takes some foresight.
No monsters with any unnatural abilites?
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The various green book historical campaign guides for 2nd ed. AD&D kind of did this. It could work in PF, but with a pile of house rules, such as mandatory skirmisher archetype for rangers. Throw WBL out the window since there are no magic items. You will have to be comfortable enough with gauging encounter balance by instinct since without WBL, CR is meaningless. Narrative level gain is probably a good idea. Then there'll be little things such as DR since the players will rarely have the means to beat it.
You can run d20 modern without magic just fine...right?
You can run d20 modern without magic just fine...right?
Yes, but that also plays very differently then pathfinder. The classes are designed differently and the action works differently. You are taking a massive portion of the game out of pathfinder if you take out ALL magic. You have to reconsider literally every monster in the bestiary. And as you get to mid levels, the entire CR system is meaningless, because the game assumes the party access to all the crazy things magic can do. In d20 modern there are no such things baked in. In fact magic is an add on, not a core assumption.
A middle way i would think is to highly limit magic rather than fully removing from the system. So players cant play magical classes, simple enough.
We used to manage healing via herbal potions of one kind or another, lycans-bane potion or something i think it was which healed d8 +x but also carried a low effect DC 10~ risk.
There may still be very rare magic users in the world who are not common in any way, a long term BBEG could be a wizard or witch or the kings advisor could be suspected to have powers. Else just having things that still exist from 'the old times' which is where magic items and monsters come in.
Generally trying to stop the 'power explosion' without having to totally overhaul. Magic could just be a word for the unexplained.
Well, my plan was to write an entire setting, including classes, monsters, items, etc., with no magic. I was thinking of basing it off of the Fallout games. My question was basically 'can the core rules themselves (combat, skills, and all that jazz) work without magic?'. I would actually be writing almost all of the monsters and 'magic' items (i.e. technology) literally from the ground up.
EDIT: I've actually wanted to do a Fallout setting for a while now, so its not entirely just the whole 'power explosion'.
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In that case, the core rule systems work fine, but I would recommend using the Wounds and Vigor optional rules. Highly-lethal combat without magical healing results in long recuperation times between fights. The Wounds and Vigor rules mitigate that.
Its not the spell list, its the spells thats the problem. And it can still be fun without magic, there are plenty of video games without it.
What from Pathfinder do you want to keep? If you take out all the casting classes, all the magic items, all the magic creatures and all the magic places, what are you left with? I know the answer isn't nothing, but after adding back in new classes, items, creatures and places, what you're left with sounds like it'd be more homebrew than not.
I don't mean to sound like I'm saying don't try it, but I'm just wondering what Pathfinder is actually offering here other than the basic d20 stuff?
Well, half of my RPG group is saying they'll leave if its not Pathfinder. Does that answer your question?
Well, half of my RPG group is saying they'll leave if its not Pathfinder. Does that answer your question?
Pretty much. :) I wonder what specifics they want out of the system. You know your group best, so I can't really offer any advice there. (Then again, I'm not sure I can offer much advice that hasn't already been offered.)
I've often hypothesized that you could maintain a gritty, magic-less game by having extremely low "level up" progression, and giving out bonus feats between levels instead of numeric bonuses. All of the monsters maintain their difficulty, hit points stay relatively low, and you still get new tricks to play with as you play.
Unfortunately, I can't find anyone interested in trying it. Two people of the three in my group love casters.
These low-magic discussions come up a lot. There's a treasure trove of information on these forums, as well as many "alternate leveling" progressions that don't involve the piling on of tons of magical items just to keep the PCs in line with the challenges.
However, getting rid of spellcasting entirely would have to be done extremely carefully I think. If any of the monsters have spell-like effects, the game will get real old real quick. "Why can't we have nice things!!!" Also, a certain level of casting is assumed to get past high-level challenges.
E6 is probably a great choice, it limits the power of casters by capping their maximum spell level. I personally feel like it should be possible to play the game with only Rangers and Bards and Paladins allowed in addition to the non-casters, which would really limit the impact of magic on the game, but would eliminate most of the class choices for the players.
One of my fellow players claims that the D&D 3.5/Pathfinder ruleset simply does not work without spellcasters and magic. (...)
What does the community think?
I am convinced that Pathfinder can work with no magic whatsoever, but it won't work (read play and feel) the same as a game with magic (I guess that no-magic also means no creatures with spell-like abilities or defenses only bypassed by magic etc).
It would likely screw the CR system. For example, DR might "worth" more in a no-magic game. Same with the ability to fly, to deliver poison, to regenerate (or fast-heal) etc, even if non-magical. Alchemical equipment might be overpriced (actually prices might be fine; its the typical PC wealth that would be overly generous).
Such a game would have to accept that healing from an encounter might take a day or two in the best conditions, or even weeks if you can't have access to a reliable healer and the leisure to spend full days resting.
So it won't work as we are expecting a Pathfinder game to run, people might not enjoy that kind of game (or other publishers might propose a better game for that genre), but the system CAN hold a purely non-magical game with no modification whatsoever (other than the removal of magic). You wouldn't even have to redesign classes or create houserules.
I bet you could take the PRD, remove all 'magical' elements and come up with a perfectly playable game.
'findel
Has anyone considered compiling all the info from all these threads into a single low-magic/no-magic GMs guide?
Has anyone considered compiling all the info from all these threads into a single low-magic/no-magic GMs guide?
I tried a few years back but I couldn't reconcile the two major philosophies in one document.
1) Low magic is just that, the same game but with lower magic. That makes wizard and some monsters comparatively stronger. The art is in balancing the magically powerful with the mundane. This would have been more of a "how-to" guide.
2) Low magic is compensated by a handful of inherent bonuses. This involves more initial input but the game is more readily usable as-is afterward. The art is in balancing the initial bonuses. This would have been more of an "alternative rules" guide.
I'm still interested in developpomg to first one, but since this is the least popular option on these boards, I'm not sure who it would serve...
'findel
Has anyone considered compiling all the info from all these threads into a single low-magic/no-magic GMs guide?
If by low-magic you mean keeping spell-casting as is, but removing magical items without gimping the PCs then yes. There are several such guides kicking around this thread. Basically they all alter character progression in a way that allows them to keep up with the power curve of the game without the need to rely on magical items (although in most cases the items still exist, they are just more rare, and not completely necessary).
If by low-magic you mean gimping all magic (spellcasting and items), then I think the best "complete" guide for it is E6.
I have personally not come across anything that looked remotely balanced that took out ALL magic from Pathfinder, though I agree with Laurefindel that it would be possible with some smart DMing.
EDIT: I should add that most threads on no-magic Pathfinder that I've seen wind up dying out in a cascade of suggestions for other RPG systems that would work really well out-of-the-box, and require no modifications by the DM. I would think Pathfinder without magic wouldn't be too different than any of the other d20 systems once you stripped it out. It wouldn't be Pathfinder that's for sure. I don't want to discourage anyone, but reinventing the wheel is time consuming and there are other ways to go about this...
Actually, I meant a guide that laid out the various ways of interpreting low-magic and no-magic and what's needed for a GM to pull them off, as well as warnings about how not to do it.
Actually, I meant a guide that laid out the various ways of interpreting low-magic and no-magic and what's needed for a GM to pull them off, as well as warnings about how not to do it.
Sounds like a tall order. :) I'd be very interested in reading it myself. I don't personally know of anything with such a broad scope though.