No Magic at High Levels?

[Tuboo]

Hi All. I am curious what your thoughts are on this. I am wanting to build a PC who does not carry any magic items on him or use other magical effects. Let's discuss generally why the system makes these builds less easy and the role of magic in games of this nature.

I personally think that magic is just flavour requiring little explanation. I have fiddled with homebrew classes that can logically steam-punk a large number of magic effects, or attain similar levels of power without needing to be decked out in glowing magic equipment from head to toe. (which makes detect magic the most powerful level 0 spell in the game in my opinion, even with the 3 turns it takes to pinpoint sources) Honestly, if the magical aura's were visible, most PC's would be lit up like christmas trees. To me, it seems a little bit too homogenous.

The campaign I am looking at is starting at level 6 with average wealth. We are playing with the Armor as 1/2 DR rules, and my class (a crossover from WotC) is light armour, with medium armour available at the cost of one feat. What do you all think?
My thoughts: adamantine armor, switch hitter using Mwk weapons, possibly duel wielding, possibly on horseback.

[proftobe]

The are unfortunately a number of flaws
1. calling a magic item steampunk is the same as calling it psionic. If you need it to remain compatible then its just a different type of christmas tree.

2.If you're gonna use PF monsters then you need a way to deal with DR and then there's the fact that ECL in PF is set assuming access to the BIG 6. SO ECL will be off by a lot.

3.I wouldn't suggest going high level instead I'd suggest E6. Basically its a variant were any levels past 6 are treated as epic you should find the rules for it easily.

4.There are a LOT of people's take on "fixing" the christmas tree phenomenon look around the boards. Most work similar to the old vow of poverty without the vow.

[Astralplaydoh]

What about a new feat, something like this:

Devour Magic

You are capable of devouring entire magic items such as amulets, rings, and even full suits of armor while maintaining their magical effects.

Prerequisites: Con 13

Benefit: You are capable of devouring magical items thereby absorbing them into your body. Magic items are automatically resized as you begin to eat them so that they fit in your stomach. The magical effects present in the magic item persist while inside of your stomach and still take up their associated slots as normal. Devouring a magical item takes one minute.

You are also capable of expelling a magic item from your stomach as a full round action. When you expel a magic item it automatically resizes after it leaves your body. You lose the magical effects provided by the magic item after expelling it.
You cannot maintain two magic items that share a slot inside of your body at the same time. The only exception is a magic ring which you may keep two of inside of your body.

Another benefit to devouring a magic item is that it now more difficult to detect the magic aura from the devoured items. A spell caster must succeed on a caster level check (1d20 + caster level) against a DC of 11 + your character level to be able to detect the magic items.

[LazarX]

If your change is nothing more than calling magic psionics, steampunk, or whatever, than it's no change at all.

[Tuboo]

While I agree that the difference is only in the flavour, and not in the mechanics to change it into psionics or steampunk, I wonder why PF and D&D in general have chosen the mono-culture of magic, rather than using a variety. I suppose they have expanded into psionics a bit, but they still lack the tech/steampunk variant.

[LazarX]

Tuboo wrote:

While I agree that the difference is only in the flavour, and not in the mechanics to change it into psionics or steampunk, I wonder why PF and D&D in general have chosen the mono-culture of magic, rather than using a variety. I suppose they have expanded into psionics a bit, but they still lack the tech/steampunk variant.

Because both D&D use a certain coherent quasi-midieval model of world as a central reference point even if the games themselves weren't world bound. D&D used Greyhawk as it's reference, and Pathfinder uses Golarion.

Psionics and Steampunk are not just odd bits of flavor, they pretty much radically change the flavor of a world from the above baselines. A world with all three simply doesn't make much sense. (and before you bring it up, Eberron was definitely NOT steampunk.)

Treating steampunk as if it were just another flavor of D&D magic is a tremendous disservice to the genre. Folks who think along these lines should read the Difference Engine by William Gibson, (or re-read it if they've forgotten) to understand what the thematic essence of steampunk actually is about.

[Liz Courts]

Moved thread.