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Altair_the_Vexed
2006-11-25, 01:31 PM
I'm putting together a campaign setting that I want to be a little (not a whole lot, but a little) bit grittier than the standard sort of D&D settings. I want magic items to be less readily available to buy, making their discovery as treasure really important, and I'd like injury to be a slightly bigger deal. (Don't worry, those of you in my games at the moment, this won't be applied retroactively to the current games!)

These are my proposed possible methods for getting that grittiness. I thought it might be nice to read what the board-folk think of them. PEACH away!

Injury:

Decrease "Massive Damage" threshold to CON ability score + Level. This makes it more likely that a character will be killed outright by a massive blow. However, change "Killed outright" to "reduced immediately to -1 HP".
Internal Injuries: a character reduced to -1 HP takes 1 point of damage to CON - effectively, any negative HP is matched with damage to CON ability score. In this special case, CON damage that reduces the character's maximum hit points will not effect their current hit point total. This slows the healing process.
Death: a character no longer dies at -10 HP, they die when their CON reaches 0. However, any negative HP total renders the character unconscious as per normal rules. There is no chance that a character will stabilise at HP totals lower than -10, nor is there a chance that they will regain consciousness.
Coming back from the dead: 1d20 rounds after death, a character's soul departs. Unless raising magic is cast before this time, the soul must be found and retrieved and placed with the body for any raise dead or similar spell to function.Spellcasters:

The figures listed in the DMG for numbers of wizards and sorcerers (and other arcane casters), as well as the level of the highest level individual of those classes found in any settlement are all halved.
Cost of arcane spell casting listed in PHB is multiplied by 1 + Spell level. Thus a 0 level spell cost is as listed, 1st level spell costs twice the listed amount, and a 9th level spell cost 10 times the listed amount.
(As costs for higher level spells are astronomical, it is more common for arcane casters to send applicants on some sort of quest in exchange. The quest should be such that an equivalent amount of XP is netted for the party as the GP cost of the spell.)
Magic items are sold for their Caster Level times listed market cost, if they are sold at all. Weapons and armour bonuses count as three CL per plus value. Thus a +1 Longsword costs 6315 GP, not 2315 GP, and a +5 Holy Longsword costs 2 million, 58 thousand GP, not 98 thousand.
Of course, the extremely high prices of very powerful items means that magical treasure becomes all the more valuable. Note that most kingdoms would be unable to muster enough cash to purchase a powerful weapon, let alone any settlement.Well, how harsh is that? Can you imagine a game working under those conditions? What have I missed?

Captain van der Decken
2006-11-25, 01:40 PM
Definately makes a harder, low magic game. I think it's pretty good.
I like internal injuries. It does make healing a lot slower, especially with lack of magic.

You'd probably have to give characters easier monsters to fight though, at higher levels.

Fizban
2006-11-25, 05:37 PM
I like the injury variants. The rest could use work. The cost someone charges to cast a spell is all up to the caster, so you're baisically just stating that casters in your world know magic is powerful and charge accordingly. The cost of magic items could get weird. Since you say this is just how much people charge/pay for them, it doesn't effect the market price, and therefore crafting items is waaay cheaper. But that's easily dealt with by increasing the time it takes to create them to the point where it matters to the party. I'd vouch for letting potion crafting still be fast, so the party has some means of sustaning itself.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-11-25, 05:38 PM
Divine casters aren't as restricted as arcane in this proposed setting, so healing isn't too hard to come by - it just takes twice as much to get someone up to full strength, if they've gone down below zero.

One thing I'm concerned about - the cost of magic items makes them so precious that attacks on adventurers for their items would be more common. While that might be a cool campaign point, I'm essentially a little too lazy to keep coming up with cunning thieves bent on nicking the PCs' stuff. Is there a simple way round this?

Yakk
2006-11-25, 06:35 PM
Glyphed magical items.

Unclaimed magical items have a glyph on them.

If you place your flesh on the glyph of a magical item, the glyph moves from the item to the person touching it.

The only way to activate a magical item is to have the glyph. A +5 sword without the glyph is a really hard to break mastercraft sword (it keeps it's hardness bonus, etc).

The only way to return a glyph to the magic item from someone is to kill them. When someone dies, their glyphs move back to their items.

You have a limit to the number of glyphs of each type you can have at one time. For arguement's sake, let's set it to your character level plus your charisma modification, minimium 1. If you want to integrate more glyphs, you must replace existing glyphs. Such an act must be undertaken willingly, and removes all of the magical properties of the old magical item.

Result from the above:
All claimed magical items are worthless when stolen, other than as ransom.

You cannot steal magical items from someone without killing them.

...

So players have to worry about kings wanting them dead, but they don't have to worry about thieves. :)

In addition, by forcing players to destroy their old magical items in order to upgrade, alot of the resale power goes away.

Note that nobody has the money to buy magical items. So if you did have an extra glyphed +3 long sword, you couldn't simply go and sell it to someone. You might be able to give it as a princely gift to a king, who would really appreciate it, but you couldn't sell it to anyone.

Rainspattered
2006-11-25, 06:52 PM
Divine casters aren't as restricted as arcane in this proposed setting, so healing isn't too hard to come by - it just takes twice as much to get someone up to full strength, if they've gone down below zero.

One thing I'm concerned about - the cost of magic items makes them so precious that attacks on adventurers for their items would be more common. While that might be a cool campaign point, I'm essentially a little too lazy to keep coming up with cunning thieves bent on nicking the PCs' stuff. Is there a simple way round this?
Make it so magic items don't look any different than regular ones, normally. The players can't go around bragging about "Dude, check it out, +5 Vorpal Dwarven Waraxe, what're the odds of finding that?" unless they want to get robbed.
Giving most people a terrible fear of magic items could help, too; nobody would try and steal your sword because they would be too terrified to you killing them with it, even if they were a lot more powerful than you. This could be either a misconception due to their rarity, or a very real thing; have adventurers find +2 weapons at levels two and three (well, okay, maybe not quite that early). This would also balance out the increased difficulty of the injuries slightly, but not unbalance the game utterly (+2 to hit and damage isn't going to give you that much of an edge, in the long run).

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-11-27, 05:12 AM
Some good suggestions, thanks!
It's interesting to see that no-one has an issue with the pricing formula I proposed. Maths isn't my strong point, so I was concerned I'd left a gap in my formula that might be exploited...

In the RAW there is only a 30% chance (if I recall rightly) that any magic items has a visual clue to it's function, so having all items appear ordinary (or at most, masterwork) would be a way to go. I could rule into the setting that characters do not know the bonus of weapons or armour (this is implied inthe RAW, but re-stating it could be helpful), and only special powers are known. That would make a +5 Holy Longsword less desirable to steal than a +1 Flaming Longsword, as the Flaming Longsword was obviously magical.

Magical items would become legendary, and named - possibly after their wielder: "The Greatsword of King Archeron" ... "Morannen's Shield" ...

To RULE this sort of change to the campaign, I propose leaving treasures held by monsters exactly as listed, so that magic items might be randomly generated. Anyone see any problem with that..? Will adventurers be disproportionally rich with items...?

Yakk
2006-11-27, 10:32 AM
So how do you deal with the problem of "I just upgraded my +3 longsword. It is worth the value of a small kingdom. Which one will I buy?" problem?

icke
2006-11-27, 11:39 AM
So how do you deal with the problem of "I just upgraded my +3 longsword. It is worth the value of a small kingdom. Which one will I buy?" problem?

Who is silly enough to sell a kingdom for a sword, however magical it may be? The +3 sword will be worth the kingdom, yes, but it's not as useful for rulers - while the kingdom is not as useful for adventuring.

Yakk
2006-11-27, 01:18 PM
The price of something is what it is worth. If people won't pay it, then it isn't worth that much.

So if the sword isn't worth the value of a small kingdom, then it isn't worth the value of a small kingdom.

If there isn't anyone who will pay for something, the price is "priceless", not 1 million gp. :)

Because players will end up with excess magical items, unless you simply don't give them access to them.

Note, however, if you mix in a feudal setting, almost all weath is tied up in land.

So even if your sword is worth 10,000 gp, nobody has 10,000 gp. You could trade it to someone for 10,000 gp worth of land.

This requires a revamping of treasure tables -- players coming back with chests of gold, in a cash-non-liquid society, would seriously mess up the economy. The value of gold would plummit and the local economy would fall apart. (see: spain during the conquistador era)

The goal of the "glyph" system is to reduce the amount of magical items players get to resell, yet still justify "tearing weapons from the dead hands of enemies". Your sword is not much more useful than a normal sword to anyone but you while you are alive.


The value of magical items should be based off of:

1> How useful they are compared to alternatives. How many pesant crossbowmen do you need to make up for a +1 sword? 10? 100? How about a +5 sword?

2> How cool they are. Nobles (and rich up and coming merchants who want status with Nobles) will want magical weapons as status objects.

As the amount of magic drops, #1 doesn't change much -- but #2 goes up.

Thus if magical items are "worth" 1 million gp, it has to be with nobles.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-11-28, 03:16 AM
Thank Yakk - those are the sort of issues I wanted to hear about. I'm no economist!

The culture in the setting I'm thinking of is pseudo-dark-ages, so yes, most wealth is tied up in land. I'd go with "priceless" AND "1 million gp" - so that at higher levels, when a PC has a few spare (powerful) magical items, she can go to her liege and gift them in exchange for land and a stronghold. The main reason for pricing magic things so high is to make sure there aren't magic item SHOPS, where you can go and buy a Staff of the Freakin' Magi - kind of like in the modern world where we can't go into a store and buy ourselves a Space Shuttle, or an Apache Attack helicopter: the price range is just too much for the private sector.

In line with the Classic D&D settings, I want players to become lords of the land as time goes on - I have a whole set of rules for it just waiting till they get to 12th level or so.

Umarth
2006-11-28, 09:29 AM
I've played in worlds like this and one thing you should keep in mind is this will make any PC spell casters you have significantly more powerful.

If your are looking for a low magic world that doesn't make PC casters shine you'll probably want to look at changing spell progression or what classes are allowed.

For example:
All spell casting classes only level up spell casting abilities once ever two levels rather than once a level. So a 20th level wizard casts as a 10th level wizard normally would.

or

Disallow: Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and Sorcerers. This leaves players with Bards and Adepts as the main casting classes with Rangers and Paladins filling the role Bards and Adepts due as secondary rather than tertiary casters.


Basically just keep in mind if spell casting is twice as valuable as normal your PC casters are about twice as powerful.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-11-29, 08:20 AM
Yes, I'm aware the PC arcanists will be more powerful - but against challenges of the right rating, they'll be as listed. The increase in power will be more political than actual, which is fine by me. I intend for the PCs to be politically powerful as they get to higher levels. This isn't going to be a campaign with Epic levels - in fact, I think I'll be increasing the XP requirements between levels anyway. 3rd Ed progresses so much more rapidly than Classic D&D.

Mauril Everleaf
2006-11-30, 09:41 AM
i really like this concept, but this again may be my 1 ed roots (by roots, i mean "the version i still play on weekends"), where magic was still "magical" and not common. in my world it is rare for adventurers to ever have better than a +3 weapon, or +2 armor, and any weapon or armor that is better than this comes directly from a major plot character that they defeated. im not sure how the spell progressions have changed from the old editions, but you may consider using the spell tables from an older manual (if you need them, i can scan them and email them to you). also, i know that 1 ed made it much more difficult for mages to level up than it was for fighters, thieves or clerics. again i can get this for you if you want.
crafting items would be inherently more difficult (without any imposed restrictions that you may houserule in) if you were to include the glyphs, seeing as how the dweomer must be specially crafted for each item and for each individual and all that comes with that.
One thing that you may also consider for this low-magic setting, is to limit the access to non-iron or non-steel weapons. make mithril, cold iron, weapons grade silver, adamant, adamantium and whatever else they have for special metals. im not saying that you take them away or make them as scarce as magic, but make them not readily available or only from special places ("only <blacksmith x> in this area can craft with mithril, you need to seek him out and pay him lots of gold for him to make your item"). also consider making magical weapons and armor that dont have attack or ac bonuses, just gives them some small magic effect or a tiny bit of resistance to something. this allows your low level pcs to have something magical but its not quite a +1, but better than a base item.

in regards to the damage rules, i like them very much. gives a much more real feeling to the world. although im a bit confused about returning from the dead. how are you supposed to find and return the soul to the body? in this low magic world, i would guess that planar travel would be almost out of the question, as would wishes and communes. does this apply to all raise dead spells, or just the lower level ones that require the body be present? basically, what of true resurrection?

seriously, i like all of this. bravo my good man. bravo.

Yakk
2006-11-30, 11:07 AM
Ever read Greek legends?

If you want to bring someone back from the dead, you had to find the gates to hell, travel there, adventure down into hell, negotiate with Hades, then make it out again.

The thing was Hades has no reason to even let you out. Unless you convinced him.

The short answer is: you aren't supposed to bring people back from the underworld. Doing so and failing is an epic feat (and by epic, I mean Greek epic, not D&D epic).

Mauril Everleaf
2006-11-30, 11:31 AM
this would require anchored gates to the various planes on the prime, which is legit if thats the way the world is designed, because planar travel would be almost non-existant. So this means that if a character dies, that the group has to go on an epic level quest to get him back? eh, i don't expect to see many raised characters until the party cleric can cast raise dead, and i dont see many clerics coming back at all. Again, i like the idea, just a bit confused as to how returning from the dead is affected in gaming terms.

NullAshton
2006-11-30, 11:42 AM
Injury variant is neat. Massive damage variant is KIND of neat, but still has the problem of being a save-or-lose type of effect, which needs to be removed out of D&D.

High prices of magic items are okay... as long as you multiply the wealth by level by that amount. Caster level 20 items being 20 times as expensive? Okay... but multiply the wealth by level for level 20 by 20 as well. That way you still have the same balance for PCs, while it's still harder for kingdoms to equip their archers with +5 crossbows of pwning.

The problem with 1d20 rounds to raise someone... is that even Raise Dead takes a minute to cast. Ressurection and True Ressurection takes 10 minutes... Perhaps adapt Psionic Revivify to be an arcane spell, except that the XP cost is dealt to the person being revived(with scaling XP costs based on level), and no level loss and stuff. After that time, then possibly find a cleric of the deity that the person's soul is on to cast the proper spell. Inconvienent, yes. But they aren't out of the loop for several sessions.

Mauril Everleaf
2006-11-30, 12:35 PM
High prices of magic items are okay... as long as you multiply the wealth by level by that amount. Caster level 20 items being 20 times as expensive? Okay... but multiply the wealth by level for level 20 by 20 as well. That way you still have the same balance for PCs, while it's still harder for kingdoms to equip their archers with +5 crossbows of pwning.


um, that would defeat the purpose, i do believe. the point is to make magic and magic items ultra rare, not just ultra rare for non-adventurers. under your system, adventurers would be pwn machines that could readily and easily conquer entire nations by themselves. the purpose is to make the world more realistic, not less.

[no flaming intended]

NullAshton
2006-11-30, 03:18 PM
Except that challenges for their level would have the regular equipment they always did...

375,000 for a +5 suit of armor? I'll be a monk with vow of poverty, thank you very much.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-11-30, 03:23 PM
Injury variant is neat. Massive damage variant is KIND of neat, but still has the problem of being a save-or-lose type of effect, which needs to be removed out of D&D.

High prices of magic items are okay... as long as you multiply the wealth by level by that amount. Caster level 20 items being 20 times as expensive? Okay... but multiply the wealth by level for level 20 by 20 as well. That way you still have the same balance for PCs, while it's still harder for kingdoms to equip their archers with +5 crossbows of pwning.

The problem with 1d20 rounds to raise someone... is that even Raise Dead takes a minute to cast. Ressurection and True Ressurection takes 10 minutes... Perhaps adapt Psionic Revivify to be an arcane spell, except that the XP cost is dealt to the person being revived(with scaling XP costs based on level), and no level loss and stuff. After that time, then possibly find a cleric of the deity that the person's soul is on to cast the proper spell. Inconvienent, yes. But they aren't out of the loop for several sessions.

Thanks for your input.

The point of these variant rules for this setting is to make it far more important to find magic items in quests and adventures, and to make serious injury more ...er... serious.
The Massive Damage rule I'm proposing drops the character to -1 HP (unless they'd be lower than that from the damage already taken) - it doesn't kill them outright. This gives them more chance of being saved by their friends than the WotC rule.
Also, I want death to be a far bigger issue than it is in the RAW. I know the casting times - that's why I chose 1d20. I want it to be a desparate scramble to try to raise someone in time, and when (not "if") that fails, I want there to be a long and epic dangerous quest to get them back.

The CRs of encounters will still stand - because treasure will be generated as in the DMG, with all the chances of containing magical equipment, weapons and armour. NPCs will have the same buying issue that PCs have - so they'll not be carrying around any purchased magicitems beyond a Potion of Cure Light Wounds or sixteen.
Seeing as the game I'm proposing will be using WotC Open License SRD sources only, you'll not be a Monk with a Vow of Anything, I'm afraid.

You're right though - the dead character is going to be out of the action for a long time. What do we do to get round that?
There are a few ways I could help keep the dead character involved (I'll probably use all of them):

plot hooks for the afterlife - esoteric knowledge from the Outsiders can move plots along in an interesting way
NPC "guest star" - the player of the dead character can play an NPC who is helping the PCs bring the dead character back
new temporary character (of comparable level) for the dead character's player - for the duration of the questThe church that the PCs approach might want to send an agent to watch over the PCs during their quest, to judge how worthy they are of help. That would fulfil the "guest star" and temporary character roles.

I guess I'm just thinking aloud. Suffice to say, if you were adopting these rules into a campaign, you'd need to be prepared to run a quest for the departed soul, and to keep the dead character's player interested.

Fredderf
2006-11-30, 03:42 PM
Not bad, but you will still have the issue of the CR of most creatures. They are made assuming that the PC's have magical items. Also, the Mage's caster level will have to go down. Arcane casters will kill all of the rogues and fighters if they don't have magical weapons and equipment to make things even. You may want to take a look at the d20 modern stuff. You can easily change the time period, and the system includes weaker mages that are only for high-level people, and it will cut down on magic items.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-11-30, 03:56 PM
Not bad, but you will still have the issue of the CR of most creatures. They are made assuming that the PC's have magical items. Also, the Mage's caster level will have to go down. Arcane casters will kill all of the rogues and fighters if they don't have magical weapons and equipment to make things even. You may want to take a look at the d20 modern stuff. You can easily change the time period, and the system includes weaker mages that are only for high-level people, and it will cut down on magic items.

I don't agree that I need to nerf Mages. Arcane casters will get cut to pieces at first to third level by any goblinoid with a toothpick (or more to the point, a bow). If they become awesomely powerful at higher level, so be it. I have a few ideas up my sleeve to beef up melee characters and the same for those skill-monkeys.
As far as CRs go, I can get round that with a simple bit of planning - treat the party as a level lower than they really are. From 1st to 4th, the party uses the 1st to 3rd level XP track, then 5th =4th, 6th = 7th, etc, etc. Personally, I've been finding that parties can walk all over encounters with a CR that WotC calls "challenging" - but I'm prepared to make allowances. :biggrin:

belboz
2006-11-30, 04:08 PM
My thoughts:

-I think there might be something weird about treasure still being generated as in the DMG. Where are the monsters getting all of those items in their hoards? What's a lowly gnoll, or something, with only a few hundred, maybe a thousand, GP to rub together, doing with a 6000 gp item? You'd think that after whatever raid brought him that, he'd sell the thing and retire in luxury.

-A few thoughts on death. I like the idea of making death a big deal without permanently and seriously crippling the character; making a story point out of it is perfect. But a "long time" for the quest may be a long time indeed. Suppose a party of 5th level characters (at <5th level or so, death is PC-ending even in standard rules) loses their CN thief, and don't get to a cleric before her soul is off to the CN afterlife. So now the rest of the party has a quest, on a chaotic neutral outer plane, to reclaim the soul of their friend.

Now, I don't know what your CN outer planes look like, but if they look like mine, they're not healthy places for L.5 characters. Or L.10 characters. L.15 characters, sure. But that player isn't going to want to play an NPC or a temporary PC for 10 levels. And when she comes back...she'll still be L.5, right? Unless "plot hooks from the afterlife" actually involves 10 levels worth of solo adventures.

And, of course, gods help the party if, say, they lose a CE Belkar-type. Talk about your unhealthy planes.


I don't think either of those are fatal; you can come up with some explanation as to why monster's items are worth so much more than the rest of their hoards put together, and work something out for the planar quests (maybe low-level characters souls go into some interesting but relatively safe planar holding pen while they're evaluated for admission into their permanent afterlife, or something). But they're worth thinking about.

Umarth
2006-11-30, 06:45 PM
I'd take another look at what Fredderf is saying. The games I've played in this style the non caster types never have a good time because they are jokes.

Every fight is dominated by the casters while the fighting types sit and watch. If the monsters are tough enough to give the casters a real fight then the fighters just get smucked like the fodder they are.

Doing something like restricting casters (only Bards and Adepts as full casters) or reducing caster levels (one caster level every 2 or every 2 out of 3) would go a long way to having a game people are going to have fun playing.


Why don't you try rolling up a party at levels 5, 10, and 15 and see what happens in a couple sample combats or tricky situations.

belboz
2006-11-30, 07:11 PM
I think the idea is supposed to be that you'll always roll up level-1 characters with this system, and that the fighters will *find* (in treasure hordes) magical weapons and armor to keep up with the casters.

I think you'd definitely have to weight the item-generation tables towards fighting stuff, though. And I'm not sure that would be sufficient. And there's the problem with rationalization, which I mentioned above.

This does, basically, muck up WBL as a guideline for PCs--since they'll be finding items that are now extremely expensive, characters will be very rich, at least on paper (might be hard to find a buyer for the items, of course).

Actually, a question about that. Assuming that a noble would be interested in a +1 sword, which a low-level character could find, won't the character become very rich very quickly from low-level treasure hordes? How much do the services of, say, NPC level-2 warriors cost? Letting relatively low-level PCs just pay for a small army of mercenaries could really throw things out of whack.

Fizban
2006-11-30, 09:06 PM
For nifty low-grade enhancements to low level weapons: aside from removing the "must have at least +1 before other abilities" rule, you could use the surge abilities from DMG II. For 2,000gp, you can deal 2d6 of an element as a swift action after hitting someone, usable a number of times per day based on your own ability scores. There's are other surge abilities as well, such as knockback and stun.

Mauril Everleaf
2006-12-01, 12:30 PM
My dm never used the "must be a +1 before adding abilities" rule. Honestly i dont recollect ever having heard of it til i read the dmg myself. This is a great way to give magical arms and armor to low level characters, but still keep the overall magic of the world low.
Also, in regards to CR, i would actually reverse the way you are doing it. treat all monsters as 1 CR above what they are listed (Maybe even multiply the current CR by 1.2. It makes CR a non-linear bump, which is better i think. 1.2 is a rationalized number that keeps the low CR monsters still low (base kobold -unclassed- should not be CR 2) and makes the higher CR monsters progressively higher). This allows players whose meta-game knowledge knows the way CR works (but not the CR of all the creatures in the mms) to keep with the system. "<in head> He said it was a CR 8, we are lvl 5. Probably too tough. <to dm> We run away." it also messes with the players who do know the CR of all the monsters in the mms. "Why did we just get owned by that CR 8 monster? We are all lvl 8 and 9?" This removes the power-meta-gaming, adds some freshness to monsters, and concedes for the lack of magic.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-01, 01:51 PM
Okay - lots of good crunchy issues getting thrown about here: thanks! From the points raised above I'll compile my checklist for setting it right.


Item generation tables need to be weighted in favour of combat. Okay, make it so. I've not been entirely happy with the random treasure tables in AD&D and 3rd Ed anyway - I always preferred the staged tables from Classic D&D. Plenty of work to do there. While I'm at it, I can cherry pick my way through the items and make sure that only the ones that really fit the setting survive.
Bump up encounters' CRs by 1.2. Yes, that seems reasonable. It's a higher levels that the differences are really going to shine out.
Selling magic items - as I've mentioned - is NOT an option. Trading them might just about be, with a lengthy justification and some darn good Diplomacy checks.
Lower level characters are dead, get over it, start a new one. When you've invested more time and effort getting to high levels, your party are tough enough to go and retrieve your soul. On the other hand, the cosmos that I have in mind is not like the DMG cosmos (souls go to the Afterlife - a different plane to the Home Planes of Aligned Outsiders), so there's a little less danger involved in travelling to the afterlife of a CE character.

Tola
2006-12-02, 03:38 AM
Lower level characters are dead, get over it, start a new one.

Hard to do, given the time and thought that goes into setting them up to your liking. Worse if you've been planning in advance what you intend. Worse still if you try to give them proper personality. People can get really INTENSE over these things...Believe me, it's easy to SAY 'get over it', but it's rather hard to actually DO. At the least there'll be deep annoyance, that will likely grow if it keeps up.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-02, 06:42 AM
Character death seems to be a very touchy subject.

I'll be clear from the outset - while as a DM I'm not setting out to "beat" the players and kill off their characters, if there was little chance of dying, there'd be less excitement. In 21 years of playing, only a handful of characters have died in my games. However, most of them stayed dead.

If you enter into a game with the knowledge that your character is not going to die for more than a few hours, in my opinion, half the excitement is missing. You might as well just say that everyones' characters are immortal. This isn't a computer game where you get 3 lives before the game is over.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I discuss this with players when they join my game, cause I know it isn't how the standard rules are written. Besides - your party could go and get your dead character back from the dead. Meanwhile, you need to play someone else.

Thiel
2006-12-02, 06:43 PM
If you want to restrict spellcasters you could start by banning Eschew Materials and then add a lot of spellcomponents.
For instance:
Cleric wants to unhallow a site. To do that he needs to spatter it in the blood of a hundred maidens ritually killed on their sixteenth name day or something equally nasty. Of course he still has to use the oils and incenses mentioned in the spelldesription.
This make high level spells harder to cast simply because the caster can't get hold of the right spellcomponent.

Mewtarthio
2006-12-04, 12:03 AM
You may also want to consider using the Sanity (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm) variant. It seems like this is the type of setting where the average person sees little to no magic in his life and the most common enemy is a 1 HD Humanoid with class levels, and with the rest of the "gritty" elements a horror-themed campaign (or at least a campaign with many horror-themed adventures) does not seem inappropriate. That also solves the problem of overpowered spellcasters, since the Sanity variant offers three different degrees of degrading Sanity as the price for such power (one where you're pretty much safe unless you use high-level spells or cast lots of spells in a short time, one where you need to cast spells sparingly, and one where anything past first level can land you in the psych ward for months).

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-04, 08:21 AM
If you want to restrict spellcasters you could start by banning Eschew Materials and then add a lot of spellcomponents.
For instance:
Cleric wants to unhallow a site. To do that he needs to spatter it in the blood of a hundred maidens ritually killed on their sixteenth name day or something equally nasty. Of course he still has to use the oils and incenses mentioned in the spelldesription.
This make high level spells harder to cast simply because the caster can't get hold of the right spellcomponent.

I'm not trying to restrict spellcasters. There's no restriction on PC spellcasters at all - just a restriction on arcane casters in the general public.

That said, the extra materials idea works for some spells. I'll have to go through and see what might be fun.
I have a plan for (NPC only) ritual magic in my game that I'll not go into here (it's NOT like the WotC ritual variant, it's my own invention) that could do with the blood of a hundred maidens... :smallwink:

As for the Sanity variant, it's a bit too extreme to apply to this setting without some serious tweaking.

Mauril Everleaf
2006-12-04, 10:09 AM
Another way to limit spellcasters in some way (without directly nerfing them by cutting down spell progression or increasing experience per level) would be to include a rarely used rule of casting failure. Ive never been subject to it in a game and im not even sure if its still in the RAW, but casters have a chance of failure when they cast a spell based on INT(arcane) or WIS(divine) or CHA(whatever uses cha for spells). the lower the stat, the higher the possibility of spell failure. Since most commoners tend to have average to low stats (which is why they are still commoners usually) this makes it difficult for them to use any magic they should come across, plus it kinda keeps with the low magic aura that you seem to be wanting in this world, by making magic something that requires talent and luck to shape, rather than it just happening bc you have a few levels of wizard.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-05, 07:58 AM
Um...


I'm not trying to restrict spellcasters. There's no restriction on PC spellcasters at all - just a restriction on arcane casters in the general public.
...snip...

:smallbiggrin:

The spell failure rule you're citing seems to be an extension (or misinterpretation) of the RAW, which states that you have to have an ability (INT, or CHA, or whatever) above a certain level to cast spells at all, and that you are limited to spell levels equal to your ability -10 (thus a Wizard needs an INT of 19 to cast 9th level spells).
That's built into the game already.

Although, I get what you're saying: I need a reason why there aren't as many spellcasters as in the standard settings.
How's this, to be an arcane spellcaster, you need the [new, just invented] feat Arcane Caster?
This feat is free to characters starting at first level with an arcane caster class. Without this feat, arcane spells are unavailable.

Umarth
2006-12-05, 09:32 AM
Since you get the feat for free if you take 1 lvl of an arcane class why would this limit the number of arcane spell casters?

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-05, 10:25 AM
Good point Umarth.

It's not a mechanical restriction on the number of arcane casters, it's a flavour restriction.

The idea behind the feat is that one is naturally able to cast arcane spells, in the manner of Harry Potter. Being a wizard isn't merely a case of just studying wizardry, it's dependent on being genetically able to.

The reason that a character might be able to take the feat at later levels is that their latent talent has taken years to manifest.
There is a precedent for this sort of thing - the "Force Sensitive" feat in the d20 Star Wars game.

Mauril Everleaf
2006-12-05, 10:30 AM
Actually im refering to a rule that is listed in previous editions of DnD. If you were a mage and had an intelligence of 16 you had a 15% chance of spell failure every time you cast a spell (in addition to not being able to cast 9th level spells). im not misquoting the 3.5 rule, mostly because i dont know the rules well enough to quote them at all. Check an old phb under the intelligence section and see if its listed. Mine is in my car or i would post it for you. Again, just a thought to make magic more mystical (ie not so commonplace that it is easy to control).

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-05, 12:12 PM
Ah - okay Mauril, I see. I hardly ever played AD&D, I'm more of a Classic D&D (boxed sets) player myself. I might add that in... but ultimately, I don't want to be nerfing arcane casters that much. It'll need some softening if I was going to use it.

Mauril Everleaf
2006-12-05, 12:35 PM
oh, definitely agreed. just thought id toss in that as a starting place.