So we have an incredible amount of alternate rules available to us these days which are more or less official, at least in the sense that they've come directly from Paizo / PF and are not 3rd party or homebrewed. And while I'm not bashing on the 3rd Party / Homebrew material I'm looking for suggestions on what combinations of alternative rules would one use to mimic a much lower over all level of magic within a Pathfinder campaign.
I am making a few assumptions with this question:
1) Iron Heros, E6, and similar excellent products are not used for this, rather "cherry picking" which alternate rules to be used are the baseline for this.
2) Suggestions to the contrary of #1 will be deemed trolling. Those are excellent works but are not the question being asked.
3) All the rules apply equally to both PC, NPC, monsters, etc etc.
4) Encounters will be scaled, and in some cases completely rewritten as necessary to avoid putting the PC's against unwinnable foes and situations due to missing specific spells or magic items which would be otherwise assumed.
4) The bonuses by level instead of the WBL magic items system will be used.
5) Classes / Races / Archetypes will have to be limited to ones which are better fitting to the campaign in order to create the lower magic feel.
6) The campaign is assumed to max out between 11 - 13th level.
7) Masterwork, Exotic, Alchemical and mundane items from official PF published material are all assumed to be available as long as they don't specifically violate one of the other assumptions.
.
There are 3 House Rules which have been chosen to help bring this concept into focus:
a) HOUSE RULE #1: All spell completion / spell trigger items are removed. Scrolls, wands, potions, rods, staves and similar magic items which store spells for casting at a later date are all removed. Yes this severely limits spell casters. Already noted and addressed on the back end (beyond the scope of this document).
b) HOUSE RULE #2: 0 level spells (including all Cantrips & Orisons), are removed. All spells above 6th level are likewise removed.
c) HOUSE RULE #3: Magic item creation feats have all been removed.
Again the question is NOT what game other than Pathfinder would you use, but rather what alternate rules would you work with in order to create such an environment?
Everyone's "low magic" campaign is not going to be the same. From a general point of view as long as you are careful about what abilities monsters(actually any enemy) have, you should be ok with the rules listed.
PS: What about just using Iron Heroes? Just kidding. :)
But everything above the PS was serious.
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Seems like you've already got the nerf hammer in full swing. However, you could always go further, I guess. Ban all 9-level casting classes, using only the 6/4 level partial casters; use the mandatory esoteric material components rules; strictly enforce the use of spell components; etc...
Just remember that the more you restrict the PCs access to/use of magic, every single monster/encounter in the game has to be "powered down" as well.
As a DM, This to me creates so much extra work that it's often not worth the extra time and effort.
As a player, this to me creates a boring non-magical world that I don't want to be a part of.
Anyway, that's what I think. But it's your world, so do with it what you will.
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@wraithstrike "Everyone's "low magic" campaign is not going to be the same."
-- I could not agree more! That is the beauty of the d20 system and the reason I've stayed with it for so long. It's modular nature is beautiful!
@Childeric, The Shatterer "Ban all 9-level casting classes, using only the 6/4 level partial casters; use the mandatory esoteric material components rules; strictly enforce the use of spell components; etc..."
-- Some good ideas you have going here. I had not previously seen the esoteric material components rules. I've also considered the idea of dropping the 9th level casters, and while this is a good idea in itself I'm feeling that this may simply be a "cut" which goes a little deeper than what I had in mind. It may allow for a smoother transition than some of the other ideas I've considered with rebalancing the magic system. Excellent idea however and one which will definitely remain on the table.
@Childeric, The Shatterer "Just remember that the more you restrict the PCs access to/use of magic, every single monster/encounter in the game has to be "powered down" as well."
-- Excellent point, however I started this thread with acknowledging that this would be the case. The "low magic" rules variants would apply evenly across the entire campaign to pcs, npcs, monsters, everything. This effects spells, magic items, monsters with supernatural powers, everything.
Some monsters will simply no longer be in the campaign, or will take a serious reconsideration of their powers, abilities and tactics. Bare in mind however that we currently have 6 Bestiaries from which to draw upon, not to mention dozens of 3.0 / 3.5 monster books from which to draw inspiration from. I think there is plenty of material laying around to help breath plenty of life into the campaign.
I'd also point out that is a "lower magic environment" not a "no magic environment" so simply turning everything off is definitely not the objective here.
@Childeric, The Shatterer"this to me creates a boring non-magical world that I don't want to be a part of."
-- I understand your point, however I'd point out that this reaction (which I also anticipated) is largely driven by the fact that what I'm suggesting is simply "different" and different is something that frequently takes a while to catch on. Consider this, if PF had launched and the idea of using guns were suggested many would have raged that this was not "fantasy". The same argument could be made for the recent d20 Starfinder (which was built on a d20 / PF chassis), many would argue that it could not be done under PF / d20.
Yet both were done, admittedly with a lot of work and not a simple "no spelling classes allowed" type of house rule glued on top of a PF setting. It takes time and work to get such things balanced, and most are not willing to put in that amount of time. I've already been doing this for some time, and I can tell you first hand it was not as hard as anyone would have you believe, but it does take time and work.
-- What I'm suggesting is something which will allow for the existing campaign setting to be converted to a lower level of magic while still retaining much of the same "feel". Yes, I'm also assuming that for many their vision of the PF setting is one which drips magic from every pore..that however was never what I got out of the campaign (and have never played it that way) and yet the game still ran beautifully without major issue. Personally I have never felt that magic defined the PF / Golarion setting, but rather was the people, culture and environment which did it. That however is a personal take, which I know some will disagree with.
@Bob Bob Bob "what specifically are you looking for?"
-- Excellent question, and given (as Wraithstrike mentioned earlier) that everyone's vision of "low magic" is different, not unlike everyone's vision of "fantasy" is different this is perhaps a point I should have made initially I suppose.
My setting I'm looking at is similar to LOTR, Game of Thrones, the Shannara series by Terry Brooks and the Witcher books / games. In other words, there is magic in the world that the players struggle against. There is evil in the world. There are monsters in the world, both in the form of men and beasts. There are magic items to be found and used. The both players and npcs can be spell casters. The creation of new magic items happens, however it is a very time consuming arduous task that a PC is not simply going to throw together between adventures, thus magic items can be found and occasionally granted as gifts and rewards for great quests similar to the way they would have appeared in earlier editions of D&D.
These worlds are NOT devoid of magic, and are not as some would claim, "boring". They are however different from a standard PF setting. Take a look at Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien) which was the very basis of D&D, Pathfinder, World of Warcraft, and literally thousands of books, games and movies. It was dramatically different from PF in the level of magic which was seen in the books and movies.
The same type of argument could be made of Game of Thrones. There is much lower magic levels seen than what we have in a typical Pathfinder campaign. And yet it has been enormously successful.
So to say there is no audience for such a setting, or that because it has a lower level of magic it isn't "fun" is an opinion I must simply disagree with. This is on par with saying that with the introduction of video games that tabletop games are no longer fun or obsolete.
So then going back to my original question:
Are there any specific alternate rules which any would suggest which would help to create such a low magic setting?
Thank you all for the thoughts and suggestions already put forward. Even positions I disagree with encourage healthy debate in these matters.
Even some of the 4th level caster(such as paladin) spells would be fairly powerful in a GoT setting. I might go so far as to remove all spells, but let the allowed classes keep SLA's and SU's that they come with.
This will mean more work on your part as a GM when editing monster abilities to ensure the party doesnt run into something they don't have a solution for, but it will make it more like a low magic campaign setting where running into magic is rare.
You can even go so far as to use mostly NPC classes and PC classes such as the Fighter class as enemies. The PC's and any NPC Paladins and Anti-Paladins, due to their magic, would be rare encounters.
However this all depends on how far you are trying to go with making it low magic.
Allow me to share some of the assumed demographics in the campaign I'm trying to create as a way of illustrating my vision of just how magical the world will be. How many spell casters are there is a pretty good acid test for such a question. Also what is the bell curve for NPC levels? How many 5th level characters are there compared to 10th? These demographics have their roots in the original 3.0 settlement creation rules and are not something I simply pulled out of the air.
How many spell casters are in the world?
Demographically the campaign population is about 6% warrior, 2% noble, 4% Experts & 6% spread across all PC classes. Everything else is commoners (around 83 - 85%). Adepts are not represented. These numbers, while accurate, are estimates which can fluctuate by a percent or two either way.
Many traditional roles of rogues, bards, alchemist, fortune tellers, prostitutes, cooks, etc are in fact staffed by Experts or commoners in most cases and not represented by PC classed npcs. PCs are exceptional. They are the doctors, the special forces soldiers, the computer hackers, professional athletes, daredevils, fighter pilots and the engineers of their world.
80% of all PC classed NPCs are non-spell casters variants of one flavor or another. This leaves about 1-2% of the total population as an actual spell caster.
80% of all casters are partial casters, and 70% of all casters are divine casters. Cleric vs Druid, 80% are clerics / 20% are druids in most established areas, although the numbers will have a much greater range in a large city (90/10) or in a forest, jungle or tundra (10/90). Arcane casters generally represent those of educated backgrounds and as such cities will attract more of them than jungle tree villages or farming communities.
What are the racial demographics in the world?
There would be similar statistics based on race, such as the Divine / arcane balance for elves vs dwarves, etc. I should really get a handle on this aspect as well but so far have not gone down that rat hole. Somewhat surprising really given how deeply I've gone down the others. I can say that dwarves are down right fearful of arcane magic, however they are the only ones in the campaign to have mastered black powder weapons. Elves tend to favor partial caster of both divine and arcane types. Humans have more Arcane casters than other races, a fact which make both dwarves and elves distrustful of them as both races have lived long enough to see the destructive potential of arcane magic and rightly fear it.
Racially the campaign was limited to only allow from core races from Core Rule Book I (aka players handbook) minus the gnomes which simply don't work as well for low magic environments. Demographically the campaign is assumed to be populated by 80% humans (not counting monster races such as orcs or kobolds). Some racial communities such as dwarven strongholds or elven forest strongholds will obviously be very different with 90 - 100% non-human populations.
What is the demographic power curve like between 1st, 5th, 10th levels?
1st Level – L1 Spells – 46% of the total caster population world wide
3rd Level – L2 Spells – 22% population of casters
5th Level – L3 Spells – 15%
7th Level – L4 Spells – 10%
9th Level – L5 Spells – 5%
11th Level – L6 Spells –2%
Bare in mind that while this represents the caster level progression (based on spell levels) it is a good representation of the over all power dynamic of the campaign and thus can safely be used to reflect non-caster classes as well.
NPC levels commoners are capped at 3rd. NPC Nobles and experts are capped at 10th. NPC warriors are capped around 5 - 6 level. PC's are capped at 13th level (the campaign cap).
As may be obvious from these numbers I've been working on this for a long time, and have a very clear idea of how the power demographics will shift under such rules. Yes I've looked at the major kingdoms around Avistan and have given thought to how such things effect their culture. Yes there is a bit of realign, however it is not the total destruction that naysayers would have you believe. And yes, I've considered simply working on a new world to set all of this in. The thing stopping me? The stories told within the Golarion setting are simply so damn good!
So I compromised and rebalanced the power dynamic in order to keep the best parts while retooling the back ground magic and level arcs.
I had some plans to test a low magic game, where every player chooses an NPC class, but receives a free Variant Multiclass.
This limits magical abilities to cantrips, orisons, and domain/school powers.
The adept would be the only caster class, and I'm not sure if I want to force the adept spell list on all casters, or change the spell list to that which matches your VMC choice.
This would affect CR a lot, and most encounters would have to become NPCs rather than actual monsters.
You are correct that 4th level spells could be powerful compared to a GoT setting, however GoT is only one setting that I've drawn inspiration from. Secondly, the campaign caps at 13th level (I've also considered 11th or 12th level, but 13 seems to hit the sweet spot so far) with NPCs capped at 10th. Do bare in mind there is a hard cap on magic spell levels at 6th level, and NPC's cap at 10th level (outside of specific encounters). This 10th level cap would also mean that level 4 casters would rarely see 3rd level spells (due to the stat requirements).
Yes, capping NPC's at 10th level means some encounters with npcs will have to be retooled. No biggie, I've certainly overhauled much worse in this project and am pretty much an old hat at it by this point. Besides if the npc is supposed to be a real bad ass for an encounter you just add a couple of extra henchmen and balance is retained.
Capping magic at 6th level has lead some to suggest limiting spell casting classes to only partial casters, and that idea definitely has strong merit to it. On the other hand I liked the idea that actually finding a core caster, who would be the highest level / most powerful caster in the area, and who would be a rare and powerful encounter. This person would be the de facto leader of the local casters and undoubtedly have an entourage of partial casters who pay homage to them. A good example of which would be a cleric who is the temple leader and is served by paladins. An Evoker mage is the guild master of "battlemages" and served by a group of combat focused Magus. Perhaps a tribal druid is served by barbarians and rangers who come to him for healing and to get messages from the tribal spirits, etc etc.
You could add in a detailed accountability for spell components. Refreshing spell comps and their availability could help to balance out the use of spells.
Just say you don't want any casters in the party. There will be one full-caster cleric NPC. And she's a mean, old granny with a horrible bedside manner and a lifetime's worth of advice she can't wait to share with your stationary, recuperating ass.
So don't get hurt, if you know what's good for you.
Upgrade your armor and fight smart.
Just say you don't want any casters in the party. There will be one full-caster cleric NPC. And she's a mean, old granny with a horrible bedside manner and a lifetime's worth of advice she can't wait to share with your immobile, recuperating ass.
So don't get hurt, if you know what's good for you.
Upgrade your armor and fight smart.
@master_marshmallow
Starting characters as npc classes is a good idea. There were rules for something similar in AD&D...or was it 2nd ed? It answered the question of "Dad, what was life like BEFORE you became Billy Badass?"
Nightfiend
Totally agree with the spell component idea. I typically roll with the idea the players need to give some lip service to making the effort to replenish common components (those worth say less than 5 gold) but ones which are worth more than that have to be more actively sought after or they run out.
Pretty much the same sorta thing for encumbrance. "Normal" gear is generally ignored unless the player gets too slap happy with it and wants to carry around 50 swords and a couple of engine blocks.
Slim Jim
The idea of no spell casters in the party is one I've done from time to time, and while it works well for some things, for others its is less so. We did a party with no divine casters and only used healing skills and alchemy to recover from wounds. Surprisingly it worked fine, although admittedly gave the scaling of encounters per day a lower curve as the party would actively look for another answer other than to run in and kick open the door. Which is not a bad thing. Sorta the feel I'm shooting for in a way. Perhaps rolling with this idea + the idea that you have to go back to town is see a doctor, priest, etc for help with the really nasty stuff.
Remember the specifics of the Automatic Bonus Progression houserule, in that if you're only using extremely occasional magic items, you use level +2 for the table, not just level. Normally, the rules still assume that the party recieves half (half!) standard wealth by level in magic items.
Just bearing some of your numbers out here, let's see what a Minas-Tirith equivalent city looks like in your setting, with regards to spellcasters. According to the best estimates I've been able to find online, the city normally contains 50'000 people, and is a metropolis in pathfinder terms.
In your world, it holds 2400 non-casting pc classed characters.
600 spellcasters total (1.2% of the population)
Of those;
144 are bards, magi, investigators and alchemists, skalds and summoners. I imagine we're heavy on bards and light on skalds, due to the cultured nature of our city.
336 are inquisitors, hunters & warpriests. I expect we shall be light on hunters for the same reason that we're light on druids.
113 clerics and oracles, while about 13 are druids and shamans.
The arcane casters will number 43 wizards and arcanists, while 11 will be sorcerers and witches, going with the same 80/20 split for clerics vs druids.
Statistically, there's 2 clerics capable of 6th level spells in the city, 1 druid or shaman who can cast 4th level spells (so yay reincarnate), the local archmage is just barely capable of 6th level spells (86% chance he's high enough level) while whatever hedgewizard can be dug up will cap out at 4th level spells.
Theoretically speaking, this allows the city a "peak magic" corresponding to some 1400 people raised from the dead each year, with a further 700 reincarnated, 700 more if the highest level hedge wizard happens to be a witch who wants to pitch in in the druidic effort.
Even if the clerics don't work it like this for a maximum of 2800 ressurections a year(just north of half a percentage of the city's total population, more than once for each nobleman in the city), there's a pretty good chance that everyone in the higher spheres of the city know someone who's made the round-trip from the beyond.
Luckily for your setting building, magic doesn't impact terribly on large scale economics, due to the quadratic scaling in price as you ascend the spell levels. This means you can have carrier pidgeons and teleportion spells in the same setting without breaking stuff too badly.
Remove disease though *is* available in large enough quantities that it will inevitably make economics-scale impact on the setting if you don't write in rock-solid reasons for it not to. There's 36 clerics capable of casting it, making for north of 100 potential castings a day, and that's just the clerics.
That's enough to curbstomp most plagues, if you make anything remotely like a concerted effort to do so. Maybe the clerics are dicks. But clerics of christianity in the real world would do it, at least for their own cities. Ditto almost any other real-world current faith I've heard of; they're mostly big on charity. You can probably avoid this by picking a set of deities like those of pathfinder, norse, roman or greek mythology. Those are mostly a&+@*!~s anyway, so they wouldn't neccesarily concern themselves with stuff like that.
That said, you should probably just treat it as a feature of the setting - disease is rare in all but the most exposed circumstances.
If your setting is the sort to include fantasy racism like the witcher series, disease should be confined to the nonhuman getthoes and the like.
As an aside, HP healing is very much abundant in a city like this. Even supposing half the clerics channel negative energy, (what sort of wretched hive of scum and villainy is this city, anyway?) you'll still have plenty of healing to go around for things like broken bones, cuts and any injuries you like, so long as the clerics can get there in time.
What's their army look like? Suppose the city came under attack, what could it field?
In the US, cities have an average cop to citizen ratio of 40-45/10k people. That means around 200 warriors in the city watch, call it 250 souls when all is said and done, including a minor number of experts, pc attache's and an aristocrat level'ed political commander. That said, medieval infrastructure probably means they need more people, so let's say 400 warriors.
Then there's whatever standing army it has. I'd go with a nice round thousand here.
That leaves mercenaries, private guards, household troops, temple guards and what have you. That's maybe another thousand, and then the remaining 600 is probably either too old to fight or has something else going on that means they won't be stepping up to the city's defense.
From there, there's the Aristocrats. 25% are children, another 30% too old to fight. But that's children in modern terms, so probably make it 15% instead, leaving us with 55%. But then again, half of them will be women, so unless your setting is more egalitarian than the source material you mentioned, only the male half will do the fighting, leaving us with about 27% of the Aristocrats serving as Knights. Still, this assumes every male Aristocrat of fighting age will take up arms, seemingly a solid bet in a Game of Thrones style setting, less so in something like the Witcher. Maybe call it 25%?
That way we have 250 Aristocrats in the fight, too. Likely mounted and wearing plate, because that stuff is expensive, and so the purview of noblemen.
So that's around 2750 fighting men, plus whatever PC classed characters pitch in. Being PCs, they are braver than most, but they also come with their own stuff attached. I won't guess at how many might decide to join the fighting.
Whether or not the high-level spellcasters in the city will lend their aid in the fight will be a big freaking deal, I can definitely
say as much. An important enough siege of this city is likely to see large-scale battlefield control magic wielded a few times each day the sige lasts, from things like Cloudkill, Illusory Terrain and Confusion. There'll also be a few combatants on the field with access to Overland Flight and Air Walk, which might ruin the imagery you're going for.
On the plus side, those with high-level divination spells are fairly likely to be outside the reach of the city guard under these demographics, so you should be able to run investigative scenarios within the city without divination magic rearing its ugly plot-breaking head. Unless of course the PCs bring it themselves, but at least then you won't need to deal with fridge-logic a la "why didn't the watch cast those spells already?".
By the way; if the city put all their available casters to the task, assuming half their clerics did indeed channel negative energy, they could raise about 300hd worth of zombies or skeletons each day, as long as the requisite onyx could be supplied. And that cost could be cut down significantly among arcane casters through use of blood moneyJust a though.
That means that they could very nearly double the size of their standing army in a week's time, although there would be no high-level characters among the undead.
That's for a largely neutral-aligned city, if they leaned evil, they could do more than that.
Having said that, I think you need to be aware that, as pathfinder is fundamentally structured to be a game about heroes, so too does worlds in which games of pathfinder take place become worlds about heroes, or face the threat of causing cognitive dissonance in the players.
The first Witcher game deals with this. Geralt is the only one who has a prayer of killing monsters; thus the world needs him, for all that it has armies of lower-level warriors at its beck and call. Indeed, the final act of the game centers on a madman's desperate bid to mass-produce high-level warriors, because he can tell that low-level people just don't cut it. The Witcher's setting turns around high-level people.
Same thing with the Lord of the Rings.
GoT is different though. It's not a world of heroes. Training and experience is important, and a knight in armor is fair enough likely to brutally murder a number of unarmored levvies, but anyone can die at anyone's hand. Disease is a real threat.
Here's why;
Captain of the City Guard
Male LN Human Warrior 11
Init +4; Pcp +12 & Sense Motive +15
Ac 26, T 12, FF 26, CMD 26, FFCMD 26 (+11 armor, +2 shield, +2 deflect, +1 natural)
Hp 88, 11d10+33
Fort +12, Ref +6, Will +9
20ft.
Longsword +14/+9, 1d8+11
Sap +11/+6, 1d6+9
Light Crossbow +12/+7, 1d8
Str 16, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 16, Cha 8
Feats Toughness(1), Skill Focus: Sense Motive(H), Power Attack(3), Rapid Reload:Light Crossbow(5), Improved Initiative(7), Skill Focus:
Perception(H), Skill Focus: K.Local(9), Weapon Focus: Longsword(11)
Skills Intimidate +8, Knowledge(Local) +6, Knowledge(Nobility & Royalty) +2, Knowledge(Religion)+0, Perception +12, Sense Motive +15
Gear
Masterwork Fullplate, Masterwork Longsword, Masterwork Sap, Masterwork Light Crossbow, Masterwork Heavy Shield. (ABP Effective Level 11)
Green Guardsman
Male N Warrior 1
AC 17, T 10, FF 17, CMD 12, FFCMD 12
Hp 10, 1d10+5
Fort +4, Ref +0, Will +0
20ft.
Longsword +2, 1d8+1
Sap +2, 1d6+1
Light Crossbow +1, 1d8
Str 13, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 11, Cha 8
Feats Toughness(1), Skill Focus: Sense Motive(H)
Skills Intimidate +3, Sense Motive +3, Perception +1
Gear
Light Crossbow, Longsword, heavy wooden shield, sap, scale mail (ABP EL 1)
As you can plainly see, the captain of the guard can plow through any number of his lower-ranking guardsmen he likes. This translate to the broader issue of war, but also smaller conflicts, even of varied skill, and so any world pathfinder is applied to becomes a world of heroes.
Ringwraiths are unique enough I'd just slap them with the incorporeal type and give them regeneration; that way damage gets cut in half unless you go on a quest to find one of the whatever remaining ghost touch weapons in the world.
Certainly I'd take drastic measures on the side of messing with creature abilities (upping DR drastically, add Regeneration) before I started messing with Power Attack - it's such a core mechanic of the game; it also messses with the spell>martial balance in the spellcasters favor, which doesn't feel appropriate for a low-magic game.
@Bob Bob Bob & Groundhog
You guys are amazing! This is the level of detailed feedback I was hoping to entice! Thank you.
So then allow me to offer my thoughts on some of this.
@Bob Bob Bob
Now, that all being said, I think I have your answer. Ban all prepared casting. Either change it to spontaneous or use an archetype that swaps it out (or just remove it). Use the rules for Occult Rituals. You'll probably need to scroll down. Don't ban the creation feats, require Master Craftsman to take it. Up to you whether to include spontaneous casters or not.
That will give you "magic is a complicated and involved affair" while allowing monsters with SLAs to bypass those issues. It will allow magic items to exist while requiring high level characters (7th level) to make anything (and they'd all only be able to make one type). Then you decide whether you want magic for other people to be an inherited/chosen trait (spontaneous casters) or just not at all. You'll probably also want to include Prestige classes to give SLAs. Stuff like Living Monolith or the ones that use the Deific Obediences.
OMG....this is EXACTLY the direction I actually went with this!! So here is how it worked.
Prepared casters: I always hated this mechanic anyway so I moved to a "prepared-spontaneous matrix" which is to say when you memorize spells they don't disappear until you run out of spells per level, but are harder to change out. You need a couple of days of down time at an Inn, Temple, etc. Classes that are spontaneous casters largely became obsolete (the Sorcerer was absorbed into the Witch class as an alternate build) under this rule although were not banner per se. Such classes still benefit from (generally) better spell casting power and other class features (such as the bard).
Classes were limited to:
Divine
Priest - cloth wearing replacer for the cleric
Warpriest - fills in gap left by the cleric
Paladin – Non-spell casters with divine blessings
Templars – Fighters, monks, and other non-casters dedicated to the Temple.
Arcane
Alchemist – represent fully 1/2 of all casters in the campaign
Bard - mostly focused on either Transmutation / Divination for your more adventurous types or Charm / Illusion for more city based society types. Not required restrictions for PC's but used as a campaign baseline.
Magus
Wizard
Primal / Tribals
Barbarian – Unchained
Druid
Ranger
Witch (could be Witch class or Sorcerer with "blood line" abilities coming from their pact)
Martial / Skill based
Fighter
Monk - limited to Brawlers, Martial Artists, and other "non-mystical" types
Rogue – Unchained
Further the spells were restricted by school, type or domain meaning that casters were much more targeted in how they cast spells, but got more oomph out of them. This made the concept of specializing more significant because anything outside of their scope was limited to 3rd level spells or lower. Looking at the earlier posted demographics however and you'll notice this still accounted for 83% of the total body of core mages being able to cast anything they wanted (3rd level spells or below) before they even noticed a restrictive application of this rule. If we compare this fact to doctors or scientists in the modern world that would be about right. 80% are generalists, the remaining 20% tend to specialize.
This also speaks strongly to the ability to control things like Raise Dead, Teleportation, etc by restricting it to being in the hands of only a few, and those being different hands. No one spell caster could have the full range of Arcane / Divine spells,etc and thus could not amass "killer combos" like the infamous Scry & Fry tactics. On the other hand, "Battlemages" were to be feared! and "Healers" could raise the freakin dead! Etc.
Within their specialty these casters got significant bonuses like a - 1 metamagic bonus to spell level adjustment but a + 1 penalty if casting outside of their specialty. This very effectively limits how far non-specialty magic could be pushed. Of course with spells limited like this there is not much more that needs to be done to make the specialty schools feel special because they are already very restricted by who can cast them to start with, thus not every priest will be raising the dead nor every mage casting teleport. Such things are pushing the top of casting power and are held in awe by pretty much everyone else.
My assumption was the allowed specialty schools would be retyped along the following lines:
Necromancy - Removed. Raise skeleton and the like are "infernal black magic" restricted to campaign villains.
Enchantment & Illusion schools of magic were collapsed and became one school. (Enchantment / Charm was also considered for this as an alternative to "mentalism" or mind effecting spells)
Evocation was expanded to include all direct damage spells (mostly from conjuration). Direct damage as in "does XX amount of HP damage when cast" type of spells. Most Evocation spells revolved around various elements and secondary effects from those elements were incorporated. Such as a blast / blowback effect from fireball, or stun / shock effects from electrical attacks like lightning bolt. ETC
Evocation and Abjuration were the only types of spells cast as a standard action, all other types were full round actions. Buff spells were universally cast with a duration of "encounter" to allow them to be more useful and to avoid the duration expiring while casting them on the party. Beside, in the case of buff spells, the casters were much more limited to their number of spells per day, thus loading up before one battle was not nearly as effective a technique as it would be in other settings.
I eventually went with your idea about allowing magic items to be made, but heavily blurring the line between "magic" and just "really well made". To create the magic version of the item a crafting check was required with a very high DC + required feats. Failure on the check meant additional time was required to create + more resources. This was still largely restricted to NPC's but included to allow for a baseline to be established. Additionally much of the more "flashy" magic effects were removed.
More common items might include an elven mithril katana which was really sharp (keen), or dwarven plate mail which was heavily made to absorb blows (+ 50% weight w/ fortitude), perhaps a great hammer with devastating critical hits (+ 4 to crit confirmation), etc. In this way some magic was retained without having the "magic shopping mall" effect in every town and hommlet you run across. Items such as a Deck of Many things might show up as part of a specific quest / story line but never as "random treasure". Items which trivialized environmental hazards ranging from carry weight to, ignoring things like survival in the cold, getting lost in the dark, etc. were removed. What is the point of having these effects in the game at all if you are one spell away from erasing them? Even with reduced spell casting in the game, such effects have a place. On the other hand, it makes skills like survival much more valuable.
@Groundhog
OMG if your statistical breakdown of a city are EXACTLY what I did myself when trying to understand just how many of a given class by level I wanted to see in the campaign setting. While I won't dig into the math of it (as I woke up at 2am for no reason and it is now 4am and I'm beat!) you are spot on and I love it!
I too looked at questions like what happens in a city? during a seige? in a large scale army / mass combat? etc etc And of course, why can't caster classes simply over run the whole show? Once I got to the point where they no longer could I knew the campaign setting was getting close to where I wanted it. Does this completely change the power dynamic from a typical D&D / PF setting? Absolutely! and that was not an over sight, it was in fact the end goal. Magic should be rare and powerful compared to what non-casters can do. However when the non-casters don't really have access to such power it all seems very strange and powerful without needing much to make it special beyond that point.
Consider Game of Thrones (HBO tv series) for a moment. Did Daenerys need to do anything "extra" to make her dragons special? NO! They were flying fire breathing monsters for God's sake! The same could be argued with the Felbeasts / dragons of the Nazgul (LOTR). They had flight and that terrifying scream which could quickly break up enemy tactical formations. These powers are devastating in low magic settings.
As for the Ring Wraith type of character I completely agree and would have certainly made such a character a reoccurring villain with incorporeal, DR, etc to ensure future fights were a reality. Perhaps such a creature was drawn to the spell casting abilities of a party member or magic item....who can say?
Changes made to combat
Allow me to touch on combat changes I found within the alternate rules & house rules:
AC is based on a form of dodge bonus which is driven by the character class and level. Non-armor wearers have the worst of it, heavy armor = poor, medium armors = better and light armor = good. The idea being the lighter the armor, the more the class relies on simply not getting hit.
I'll just point to the thread I did on that previously.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2toe2?Level-based-defense-bonus-feed-back-welco me#1
Armor / Natural Armor became DR on a flat one to one ratio (this works very well with Wound / Vigor systems although I personally don't use such)
Enhancement bonuses were based on the type of armor it was applied to, light armor the enhancement bonus was applied to AC, Heavy = DR and medium was 50/50 so + 4 became +2AC / +2DR.
Shields enhancement was always AC.
Three house rules I included in the combat section:
#1 - If you exceed the AC of the target by up to 1/2 your BAB that additional difference is translated to damage (as if it were power attack). IE; Your level 10 fighter exceeds the AC of his target by 10 = 5 points of extra POW!
#2 - Simplified Action Economy: Standard, full round, movement, 5ft step, and free actions. Swift, Immediate, etc were all merged into free actions to keep it simple. Standard action = full attack action. IE full attack and still be able to move.
#3 - Attacks per round. The penalties on secondary attacks were dropped. At + 6 BAB you get an extra attack, there is no penalty for this (it is made at your full BAB bonus) unless you are Two Weapon Fighting. This is largely to benefit full bab melee classes as they are the most likely to ever get high enough level to benefit from it.
These changes obviously benefit the melee classes, but then under RAW mages could cast a 10d6 fireball every round and still move so I don't feel these are over powered.