In a Land of Dying Magic...


Advice


Hello all,

So I had an interesting idea for a world. I probably won't use it, but still fun to think about and flesh out.

Basically, the idea is that magic is a limited finite resource. 9th level casters suck up a lot of that, and even more as they level up. This means PC's are forced to be 6th level casters or below. By killing evil wizards or clerics and whatnot they free up magic allowing themselves to become more powerful. So something like 90% of the world magic is possessed by 1% of the population.

So I figured in terms of mechanics, how much is everything changed if parties can't have full casters? I thought that using the Wound Levels from Pathfinder Unchained might help balance things out. Any other thoughts to make combat more fair. Maybe more frequent firearm use? There are also rules that restrict magic itself.


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Basically the thing to watch out for is recovery from odd things. A medusa is more of a problem if no one in a 500 mile radius has stone to flesh. If remove curse requires a 7th level caster try not to have permanent curse-throwing enemies at 5th level.

Worse blasting or battlefield control is far less of a problem.


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Really cool idea, overall. The concept that pretty much every full caster is a Big Deal (tm) is interesting. Should let you create some dynamic NPCs. A 20th level wizard in that sort of world would be pretty godly.

Should be a source of some good plot points, too (namely that these sorts of high level casters must be constantly striving to secure their own share of the declining amount of magic in the world). I can imagine pogroms in certain places where any current or potential magic users are destroyed to limit any future drains on the magic pool, or a powerful magic user who makes deals with otherworldly forces (demonic/devilish/whatever) to keep his magic juice flowing. Maybe a cabal of mid-level wizards/arcanists who hunt down other casters and use rituals to steal their power (one might even call them "mage hunters" -- see what I did there?). So many cool adversary ideas that can flow from the concept...

Mechanically, I agree with avr that condition removal stuff could be the biggest nuisance, but its something you can probably mitigate as need be. You'll just have to be mindful of that when choosing enemies (and their spell loadouts). It may also restrict the scope of access of certain common utility spells (at least until higher levels). One good example is Teleportation, which is accessible by wziards at 9th level, but as a 5th level spell for the 6th level casters that get access, it won't come online for the PCs until fairly late game. That might actually be more helpful than hurtful for you, of course, as being able to blip around the world at a whim can easily wreck certain plots. And if only their enemies have such power... well, that could be an interesting dynamic too.

I might be a bit biased in favour of the idea because I really like a lot of the 3/4 BAB and 6th level casting type classes. I find they tend to be the most balanced as a whole, and they tend to be a lot of fun to play. So even as a player I think I'd be super into this idea.


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You might want to look into ... Pathfinder with limited or no magic items


I like it seeing a lot of potential for a great campaign. I'm curious as to the backstory to how or why this started. Was there an accident was this Divine act? Is this relatively new or generations ago? It helps determine how people are reacting to this. If this is new there will be a lot of wizardly and clerical battles to secure the magic. The story of Geb and Nex will be repeated on a much, much larger scale. If this is older the dust will have settled with maybe a hundred or so souls with massive power. These people will be paranoid as hell. One wrong move and they lose not only their power but their life as well.


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Larry Niven explores a related (but significantly different) premise in his The Magic Goes Away universe. Magic runs on mana, which is a finite resource, so if you use too much magic in a given area it becomes harder and harder to do further magic there. Well worth reading because they're great stories!


Thank you for good responses!

I definitely would use Automatic Bonus Progression here. I don't know why either, but I tend to like more mortal heroes if that makes sense.

Also, quite conveniently, pretty much all full casters will be Evil. Magic is an extremely coveted resource, and in order to hoard up enough to make yourself powerful, it requires killing off other casters.

I don't really have any good ideas for an origin of everything.

Thinking about this I think Ley Lines should play into this somehow. Maybe Arcane magic is tapping into the planar energies, and then Divine is being granted power, but there is a barrier or something from deities giving it to all their worshippers.

This also could result in a powerful organization of a few casters that keep a tight control and monopoly on magic.


You also may want to look at the old dark suns setting. There arcane magic drew off the life force of creatures. Preservers learned how to draw the power by spreading it out so as not to harm the environment, defilers on the other hand just drew whatever power they needed. This was one reason so much of the world was a wasteland.

One thing you could do is to eliminate prepared casters. Maybe the ability to do magic is something that you have to be born with, not something you learn. This would mean that most casters are killed when they are discovered. Those that are not will tend to hide what they are from the public. Of course once they gain enough power they can pretty much do what they want. Ranger and paladins would probably have to be spell less but there are a couple of archetypes for those.

Arcane magic if fairly easy to limit like this but divine magic may be tougher to explain. One way to limit divine magic would be to have it draw from the casters life force. Maybe each spell does damage to the caster based on the level of the spell. Casting spells above a certain level (say 6th) may be fatal. Sure the high priest can cast miracle but only at the cost of his life. Maybe an arcane caster can draw on the life forces of others or even their surroundings.

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