Low Magic Setting / Rules

[Wheldrake]

Low magic is an entirely viable option. It sounds like this campaign is shooting for a very Pendragon-esque feel. Instead of instituting complex rules for taking a spellcasting class as a prestige class, just ban spellcaster classes. Make magic items only available through acquisition during play, with no access to "magic shops".

You might get around some of the difficulties with this play style by houseruling the mundane arts of healing to being more potent, or making some low-level healing potions available through a village witch type character, or similar. If this really is supposed to be an Arthurian type campaign, you might arrange for extensive downtime between sessions in order for healing to take place.

And of course you'll have to throw standard ideas on challenge ratings out the window, and tailor challenges to reduced PC abilities without standard levels of access to magic items.

At the very least, it would be refreshing to see fighter types without the "must-have" jingasa balanced on their head. <g>

[JoeJ]

To throw out a complete flip of perspective for a moment, a low magic campaign can also be about high magic heroes in a low magic world, thus getting closer to the classic superhero trope.

In this case the PCs have all the regular spells and abilities, but hardly anybody else in the world does. There may be only a few dozen other people in the campaign that have levels in any PC class. The PCs can't pay anybody to cast spells for them, and they can't find magic items available for purchase. The players protect their city from the forces of evil because nobody else can. Certainly the town watch - made up almost entirely of 1st level Warriors - isn't able to stop villains like the Immortal Warlord Vorgo, Beast Lord, or Jagar the Necromancer.

[boring7]

Auxmaulous wrote:

No, you are incorrect on the terminology (and a few other things). Monty Haul is "guess whats behind door number 3". It's prize give-away to keep the players attention...You really should understand the term before you toss it around here, just makes you look uninformed.

It's "about the loot." The fact that the loot is crappy doesn't make a player's attitude any less "about the loot." If you don't like that use of the terminology, well that's certainly your prerogative (slang terms don't have hard definitions, I suppose) but using it as an excuse to insult and condescend (like a grammar nazi making fun of typos, for example) is just asinine passive-aggressive behavior. Further, claiming a position of authority on something that has, at best, a tvtropes entry has a similar effect on your credibility.

You know what I meant, I've used it before without issue, but here and now you have to make an issue because you need to insult me. Have you asked yourself WHY you need to insult me?

Auxmaulous wrote:

And I get it, you have alot of angst towards low-magic/low-tech or low resource games (as a whole).

More projection.

Auxmaulous wrote:

But other people are looking for something else - just because you and your group were incapable of achieving it with enjoyment doesn't mean that others (who may have more skill or understanding) can't try?

More condescension. At least you've finally accepted I'm not "making things up." Progress!

Most of these examples were actually published adventures of low-magic settings, so I don't know what you want. It was raw, it was real, it was darker and edgier and it meant you weren't a hero, you were a survivor. But it continues with the point, "why do you want low magic?" Well in most cases, because you want something else that low-magic isn't going to give you and a game that isn't really pathfinder. Just play Call of Cthulhu where your only hope is extremely temporary survival and the knowledge that the world is still going to end horrifically, just not this second.

Hell you even admitted it yourself. "Lower player agency," you said. You might say that is different from "on rails" but that's a rather fine distinction.

Auxmaulous wrote:

Your other post on "magic is science" is such a nonsensical reach that it wasn't quote worthy. You should try another angle to convince people that what they want or like out of game is wrong.

Perhaps I did not explain the point correctly. No, that post was definitely unclear. I was trying to catch too many subjects at once.

Real world history: when Iron smelting was invented (and before it, bronze) cultures adopted it en masse, they often built their society around it, because it was so powerful it changed their entire world. EVERY major technological achievement that proved its worth was backed by the king, or he wasn't king very long. Someone on his list of enemies would take that opportunity he ignored and then go on to conquer him. There were a lot of historical examples of "magisters" and "scholars" who got paid to be smart guys. Sometimes they were Archimedes, sometimes they were charlatans that didn't know anything, but they still managed to make a living by BSing the parliament or the prince or whatever into keeping them around. And if they managed to deliver real results, they'd get funding, minions, support (and whores) to keep doing so.

Low Magic Setting: When Magic is discovered, it is dismissed (or hated) and the only people who practice it are master teaching apprentice. Masters never take multiple apprentices and no king would ever threaten/cajole that master into setting up an arcane school and training war-wizards or magewrights. No town council would ever consider USING the wizard's power when things were bad and a stone shape spell or 3 would really help. No person with power would ever build an empire unless he could leverage his magic into "dudes with swords" power. Because Reasons.

To have a setting like Song of Ice and Fire, where magic is undeniably real and scary and fully available for exploitation but NO ONE does so, you have to just have an entire nation of Luddites. You have to have more than ignorance, but flat-out stupidity where people just cannot learn anything or even think outside a very small box full of swords and axes.

I realize here in the real world we had witch-hunts and inquisitions and such, but funnily enough they only ever hunted people who didn't actually have any power and didn't represent an exploitable (or even real) resource. If your tribe declared the domestication of animals to be morally repugnant and hunted the people who dared use horses, your tribe wouldn't be around for very long. If your nomad brethren considered rifles and artillery to be dishonorable, they tended to die at the long-range fire of the empire that wanted you off of their trade route. If you hung a man for witchcraft, you didn't destroy anything special you were going to get use out of, you just killed a dude.

Conan's setting...to be honest I never read the novels, so my knowledge is limited to movies and a few of the many comic book adaptations. They seemed to bridge the gap with making all magic evil, every time. When Johnny EvilWizard became king he didn't teach other people because he couldn't TRUST any other people. They could only do magic by being as evil as him and were therefore just as prone to backstabbing. The half-monster-demon-dude and his monstrous minions played their role pretty much the same, too evil and too paranoid to spread their empire past a certain point and too obsessed with "being evil" to use their power for utilities, like high-speed travel or healthier, raid-resistant peasant villages.

That, at least, is internally consistent. Magic is evil, and even if you have to use it temporarily, you toss it away soon after or else get corrupted/betrayed by it. Because it is eeeeevil.

[Auxmaulous]

boring7 wrote:

It's "about the loot." The fact that the loot is crappy doesn't make a player's attitude any less "about the loot." If you don't like that use of the terminology, well that's certainly your prerogative (slang terms don't have hard definitions, I suppose) but using it as an excuse to insult and condescend (like a grammar nazi making fun of typos, for example) is just asinine passive-aggressive behavior. Further, claiming a position of authority on something that has, at best, a tvtropes entry has a similar effect on your credibility.

You know what I meant, I've used it before without issue, but here and now you have to make an issue because you need to insult me. Have you asked yourself WHY you need to insult me?

I'm not insulting you, you are just wrong - your use of the term is wrong. The Monty Hall issue was around before TV Tropes - it was in the 1st DMG.

And it wasn't about "the loot", you are backpedaling here.

boring7 wrote:

If they were monty haul before they stay monty haul (or straight-up quit)

That is what you wrote - and Monty Haul has jack and s~@& to do with low power games. In fact it's a symptom of a DM who is gladhanding his players so they continue to play and like him, re: giving them more power so they are happy - not something that the players decide.

This also has zero association with low powered games. In low powered games the players would hope to get some loot. Monty Haul isn't the right term - what you were looking for is hoarding items (limited use) or maybe scrounging.

It isn't that I'm being Waffen SS about this - you're just wrong.

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For Space:

boring7 wrote:

Most of these examples were actually published adventures of low-magic settings, so I don't know what you want. It was raw, it was real, it was darker and edgier and it meant you weren't a hero, you were a survivor.

I don't want anything from you. Well, maybe for you to stop reading into gamers secret reasons why they would want a lower powered game - in a SUGGESTION FORUM. Because we all know, that if it isn't your way then it's wrong or that there's something wrong with these people who may want to run their game differently.

You had a bad experience with a GM who wanted a gritty game but didn't get the handshake and agreement from his players - so now you have to eCrusade against anyone who wants to try and run a game that is modified to meet their desired play expectations.
Again - you were the one with the bad experiences - so who is projecting here?

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boring7 wrote:

Hell you even admitted it yourself. "Lower player agency," you said. You might say that is different from "on rails" but that's a rather fine distinction.

Only an entitled player would say that lower player agency = rails. GG though.

Some game styles can have limited player control over the world (opposite of PF supers) yet are 100% sandbox and freedom of choice. Instead of flying on your magic carpet to Atlanta you have to walk or take the train - the choice to go there is the still the same - it belongs to the player.

A counter argument is "but I don't want to fly to Atlanta - I want to fly to the MOON!"

Then this comes down to how the DM wants to run his game and if he wants to run an adventure on the moon - he can run an anything goes or you get to play right here in this box (or various sizes). Limiting player power does not equal rails, it comes down to the DM/GM limiting the scope of his world. Some player entitlement crowd will feel that is fact limiting their power, but ultimately the GM still decides the sphere of what he is going to run (how big is the play area).

Again - not being able to fly to the Moon on a whim =/= on rails.

All lower "player agency" means to me is eliminating "workarounds" or "win" button solutions and requiring them to think of a fix when interacting with the world around them. Player agency is probably an incorrect term to use; Player power and influence beyond his immediate would be more of an accurate description of what needs to be lowered in a low-magic game.

This again is a stylistic and subjective choice.
If you like high-powered games and solutions based on spells written on your sheet and covering all your bases or having the right magic item at the right time then great. Some groups of players don't want their character's daily spell load out or gear selection to decide their success or play a greater importance than their own ability to solve problems. They want it to come from their choices.

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boring7 wrote:

Reasons why he thinks low magic worlds wouldn't exist

You're under the impression that everyone and anyone could work magic. In a low-magic game a consideration would have to be made as to why the players and few NPCs in the game can work magic and others can't.

Is it exceptionalism or destiny on the part of PCs and some of the worlds NPCs? Are there in-game meta limiters for casting spells and being able to learn magic in the first place - such as a 15 or higher INT and specialized and risky training to weed out the weak?

IDK - that would be up to the low-magic DM to figure out. But magic is not rifles or even the use of Iron or any other mundane tool - that's why it's called magic. PF calls it magic but treats it like Iron so I can see how a PF player would have a hard time wrapping their head around the concept since their is no distinction between the two. Some people don't like or want that for their games - the want magic and magic items to feel rare - and they do because they are rare and they have a function that doesn't replicate some generic spell (ideally, if it was a well designed low-magic campaign).

The problem here is that you are making fixed and rigid assumptions based on your interpretation of how things should work, magic = development of rifle. Other gamers don't see it that way and they have the tools and means to make sure that your interpretation isn't the only way.

Anyway - we can end it right here. I don't want to pollute this thread anymore than we already have, if you want to talk about how terrible low-magic games are create a post in Gamer Life so everyone can dogpile on it and we can take this out of the Suggestion forums.

[Xenre the Vague]

I am going to be very honest here. I really don't understand how making a low-magic (as opposed to a no-magic) campaign is that difficult. My husband and I do it all the time. It's our preferred (along with our players of nine years and counting) choice of campaign.

Creating the setting is deceptively simple. Here's how we handle it:

1) Divine casters (Clerics, Paladins) (in most cultures on my world) are looked at with fear, awe and respect. Some even seen as a bit of a celebrity, depending on the individual kingdom. Inquisitors, largely are an exception. They are straight up feared. If they are out in public, someone's gonna bleed. They are brutal, sadistic and only answer to the gods and the church (and in a few kingdoms in my world, the ruler). To be any of the above takes a fierce dedication and the utmost commitment, so their numbers are very small. Not every town is going to have a healer. Arcane casters are reviled and hated. It is summarily believed (again it varies from kingdom to kingdom) that they form pacts with demons and devils to get their power. This is the main reason why in my world, arcane casters are so scarce. They are hunted down and executed for conspiring with dark forces.

2) Magic Items are almost non-existent. That isn't to say they don't exist. It's simply that not every Tom, Dick and Goblin chief is carrying the +5 Awesomesauce Blade of Hades. In game example: My husband is playing a character that is currently sitting at 9th level and the only magic items he has to his credit is a +1 bladed buckler and a pair of Boots of Striding and Springing. To get the buckler, he had to travel to the fey realm (which is a separate dimension in my world to that of mortals) and find a way to clear a pond of toxins to get it. He is playing a Fighter/Druid Gestalt (3rd Edition Unearthed Arcana) and was banished from his homeland for having the ability to use magic (Rangers and Druids are treated much the same way as arcane casters because they did not gain their powers through devotion to the church). His boots are actually not magical in nature. They were derived from the wings of a Green Dragon and thus have special properties based on the substance, as do many of the items in my world. But even then, what I give him is sparing and he enjoys the hell out of it. Given that he started playing D&D when Reagan was in office, that's saying something.

3) Do a rather quick and easy alteration to the monsters they come up against. A lot of monsters have DR that is element specific. Silver, Gold, Adamantine or what have you. It's a simple case of changing a monsters DR type to something of this caliber. You need a +3 sword? Well, now you need one forged out of cold iron. Need a Lawful Weapon? Now you need one made of volcanic glass. Things like that. A small bit of creativity and you're good to go. It needn't be difficult.

4) Explanation, explanation, explanation. You have to tell your players, in no uncertain terms "We're playing a low magic campaign. Don't worry, I'm not nerfing anyone. You won't be meeting a horde of monsters that all have DR magic. Everything will be balanced accordingly." It's been mine and my husband's experience that any player that enjoys playing won't have any kind of issue with this, provided the DM isn't a a%@*%*+ about it.

So there it is. That's how we handle it and for as long as we've been playing, it's worked out very well. We've literally played with dozens upon dozens of groups and we've yet to have a problem.

With that said, I have one more point to make. Pathfinder, as a gaming system, in fact, any game system out there, doesn't have to be completely reformatted for this type of game to work. Be it Rifts, Shadowrun, Unisystem, Pathfinder or any incarnation of D&D.
All it takes for this to function is a DM/GM that cares enough about his players and his game to do a little homework and come to a consensus with his/her players.
It isn't about what you find and what you have in a campaign, it's about what you did and what you have to do to get it. Players will appreciate that +1 Longsword a lot more if it's just as powerful at 10th level, as it was at 3rd...because few other people have one.