A Low Magic Game?

[JoshuaZ]

A few posts above discussed how playing in Middle Earth would be relatively low magic (and others would also imply low level as well), yet I remember a quote from these boards a few years back that said "Everyone would agree that Middle Earth could not be run without Epic Level characters", and others have claimed that Gandalf would have to be defined as a "100th level Wizard" at least.

Honestly, anyone who says that hasn't been paying attention to either D&D or Lord of the Rings. Gandalf can't teleport, plane shift, resurrect dead, throw lightning, shapechange, or many other things that a 17th level wizard can do. This may be made worse by people who tried to model characters based on specific abilities, e.g. if Aragorn does something that normally takes a 10th level fighter feat, they conclude that he has to have at least 10 levels of fighter. And then if he does something that sounds like something a ranger would do, they conclude he has ranger levels. And then he's apparently knowledgeable so they conclude he has to have at least one level in a class that has a lot of knowledge skills as class skills. Part of the issue then is people realizing that D&D just isn't a perfect simulation system for any generic fantasy character.

[Anonymouswizard]

Others have said that Gandalf was a 5th level mage.

However, it's pretty clear that Gandalf as a DMPC. No one got that level of power except for a few NPCs used to rub the PCs nose in it that they were nearly magic-less.

Yeah Middle Earth is interesting.

You can stat out Aragorn, Borimir, Legolas, and Gimli pretty well at about 5th level (with some potentially being 6th level, Aragorn and Legolas probably have LA+1 races). Most of the hobbits can be statted pretty well at 2nd level, Samwise might be 4th level by the end of the story or might be 2nd-3rd. Gandalf isn't so much a PC as a CR10+ celestial, put in the party to help them out as they gain their feat with the intent to remove him from the party fairly quickly.

On the other hand you can stat out most of the fellowship at 10th level. You're using a different set of assumptions, but you can do it.

I'll note that as far as 'official' means anything LotR doesn't have spellcasters in the D&D sense. The D&D conversion doesn't have any spellcasting classes, and the handful of PC-available spells are more of an 'at-will cantrip' level. I haven't seen the monsters yet, but I believe it's roughly the same case for them. But it also doesn't give stats for the fellowship (as it's based on 5e I work under the assumption everybody but Gandalf never passes level 10).

[Aneurin]

your comments ( Aneurin) manly apply to third edition (and maybe 4th never really played that one) other edition handle low magic much more easily

Are you sure? Because at a quick glance 5e has 12 classes, of which 8 are casting classes (or at least classes that gain spell casting). Four of those are full casting, plus there's the Warlock which sounds like it's the equivalent of a full casting class. It also appears to suffer the same Christmas tree effect that is inherent in 3e, following a quick glance at the magic item list, and I can't find any rules to cover non-magical healing. Which is really important for low-magic games, since there probably isn't a handy cleric around to patch you up.

Nothing I've heard about the earlier editions makes me inclined to believe that they lend themselves to low magic particularly well, either. Though I'm certain they handle it much better than 3e onward.

D&D is structured around kicking ass and taking names and going on to being epic heroes who do impossible things, but low magic often goes hand in hand with low fantasy and lower power levels in general and D&D just isn't good at simulating that.

[Stan]

I can't find any rules to cover non-magical healing. Which is really important for low-magic games, since there probably isn't a handy cleric around to patch you up.

In 5e healing self healing is almost ridiculously easy. Over the course of the day, you can heal nearly your full hp from short rests. Then you can heal all your hp with an overnight rest.

The thing with D&D is you can dial the power level easily just by controlling how fast levelling occurs. This was demonstrated well in CoC D20 - if you stick to low level, it's more lethal than BRP CoC. At levels in the upper single digits, it was a pulpy monster hunt. At high levels, it was similar to D&D but modern and with more tentacles.

[Luccan]

For the record, while I think they're two great tastes that taste great together, I believe there is a difference between Low Magic and Rare Magic. Low Magic would mean (accessible?) magic is weaker and/or stronger magic is inherently difficult to access. Rare Magic might have magic as world changing as 9th level spells that could theoretically be accessed at level 1... but good luck finding it. I think these are usually desired together and like I said, work well together. But I think since the terms can have fairly wide connotations, it's important to nail down exactly what a group wants. If all they're saying is "Low Magic" and they're displeased with how you present it, you have every right to tell them your understanding of "Low Magic" and ask them to clarify what they want. If they can't give at least a slightly less vague description, you have to let them know it's unlikely you'll be able to deliver the game they want without specifics.

[awa]

Are you sure? Because at a quick glance 5e has 12 classes, of which 8 are casting classes (or at least classes that gain spell casting). Four of those are full casting, plus there's the Warlock which sounds like it's the equivalent of a full casting class. It also appears to suffer the same Christmas tree effect that is inherent in 3e, following a quick glance at the magic item list, and I can't find any rules to cover non-magical healing. Which is really important for low-magic games, since there probably isn't a handy cleric around to patch you up.

Nothing I've heard about the earlier editions makes me inclined to believe that they lend themselves to low magic particularly well, either. Though I'm certain they handle it much better than 3e onward.

D&D is structured around kicking ass and taking names and going on to being epic heroes who do impossible things, but low magic often goes hand in hand with low fantasy and lower power levels in general and D&D just isn't good at simulating that.

Their may be a lot of magic items but the game is designed to function with out them, another important aspect is that low level enemies are a much larger threat at higher levels in second and fifth edition than third edition where the number simply leave them behind

5th has non-magical healing built right into the rules

5th and second might not be low magic from the get go but they are not very hard to modify into low magic

[Psikerlord]

Are you sure? Because at a quick glance 5e has 12 classes, of which 8 are casting classes (or at least classes that gain spell casting). Four of those are full casting, plus there's the Warlock which sounds like it's the equivalent of a full casting class. It also appears to suffer the same Christmas tree effect that is inherent in 3e, following a quick glance at the magic item list, and I can't find any rules to cover non-magical healing. Which is really important for low-magic games, since there probably isn't a handy cleric around to patch you up.

Nothing I've heard about the earlier editions makes me inclined to believe that they lend themselves to low magic particularly well, either. Though I'm certain they handle it much better than 3e onward.

D&D is structured around kicking ass and taking names and going on to being epic heroes who do impossible things, but low magic often goes hand in hand with low fantasy and lower power levels in general and D&D just isn't good at simulating that.

Yes I think 5e is one of the worst version of dnd for low magic - magic baked into nearly every subclass, and common at-will cantrips (for me low magic is inconsistent with at will magic).

[Anonymouswizard]

Yes I think 5e is one of the worst version of dnd for low magic - magic baked into nearly every subclass, and common at-will cantrips (for me low magic is inconsistent with at will magic).

Considering that the Lord of the Rings version had to throw out all bar three of the classes, and even then changed their subclasses, I'm agreeing here.

Weirdly, 4e may be the best for low magic, if you're fine with it's quirks. Healing Surges are a really good replacement for magical healing, in my opinion even better than Hit Dice, and I've nicked then for my homebrew system (although recovering at a much slower rate of 1/day). In fact all magical healing in my have requires the character to siege a healing surge, and no natural healing can happen without one.

Although at will magic can work with low magic. Although it's just easier to start charging 1MP for a minor trick.

I will point out that by the standards of fantasy systems D&D is in the upper end magic wise. Most systems tend to have weaker magic, and many also have MP regenerating slower (although not all).

[awa]

yes 5th edition is not innately low magic, but you can remove the extra magic without breaking the game

[JoeJ]

If I were using D&D in a low magic game I'd increase the casting time of all spells that aren't cast as reactions to make spellcasting during combat completely impractical, but also increase durations as a partial compensation. Any spells that strike me as overly flashy for the setting would be removed completely (most of them would have been rendered useless already by the increased casting time), and call it done. As DM, I control the number of magic items given out regardless, so I don't need to make a rule about that.

[Knaight]

Their may be a lot of magic items but the game is designed to function with out them, another important aspect is that low level enemies are a much larger threat at higher levels in second and fifth edition than third edition where the number simply leave them behind.

Meanwhile compared to most games not named D&D the characters are still fantasy superheroes - sure, there's Exalted and Mythender, but there's a lot more with normal people to low end pulp heroes. Said other games also usually don't have massive lists of monsters (where the whole idea of "monsters" is often a sign of higher fantasy), and tend to focus on human opposition.

Just about every edition of D&D is pretty bad for low magic. Some are just worse.

[Anonymouswizard]

Meanwhile compared to most games not named D&D the characters are still fantasy superheroes - sure, there's Exalted and Mythender, but there's a lot more with normal people to low end pulp heroes. Said other games also usually don't have massive lists of monsters (where the whole idea of "monsters" is often a sign of higher fantasy), and tend to focus on human opposition.

Just about every edition of D&D is pretty bad for low magic. Some are just worse.

I'm currently trying to think of other games I own that focus on monstrous opposition. There's Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but that's a retroclone, and Fantasy AGE, but that's incredibly D&D influenced. After that I can't think of any.

But yes, D&D, in practice from as early as BD&D, has been high magic and climbing higher. 3e is where it started to get to the somewhat silly levels, with keeping your spells becoming incredibly easy and the value of making a single attack roll vastly overestimated, and even though the height of magic has been reduced in 5e it's now more common than ever (with the old half caster being a full caster and the quarter casters becoming half casters).

What annoys me is that I've looked at early D&D and it's essentially billed as 'if you can survive the dangerous lower levels you can become a fantasy superhero'. 9th level is called out as where you're important enough to lead armies. The rules came to continually focus on the latter aspect at the exact same time it started being pushed as 'generic fantasy' (which it can be until about 5th level).

D&D really needs to split into two games, the low powered dungeon crawler and the high powered fantasy superheroes. That way characters can be designed for their genre, rather than meandering slowly from the former to the latter while the GM insists it's still the former.

[Psikerlord]

I'm currently trying to think of other games I own that focus on monstrous opposition. There's Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but that's a retroclone, and Fantasy AGE, but that's incredibly D&D influenced. After that I can't think of any.

But yes, D&D, in practice from as early as BD&D, has been high magic and climbing higher. 3e is where it started to get to the somewhat silly levels, with keeping your spells becoming incredibly easy and the value of making a single attack roll vastly overestimated, and even though the height of magic has been reduced in 5e it's now more common than ever (with the old half caster being a full caster and the quarter casters becoming half casters).

What annoys me is that I've looked at early D&D and it's essentially billed as 'if you can survive the dangerous lower levels you can become a fantasy superhero'. 9th level is called out as where you're important enough to lead armies. The rules came to continually focus on the latter aspect at the exact same time it started being pushed as 'generic fantasy' (which it can be until about 5th level).

D&D really needs to split into two games, the low powered dungeon crawler and the high powered fantasy superheroes. That way characters can be designed for their genre, rather than meandering slowly from the former to the latter while the GM insists it's still the former.

yes in a way the old basic, then expert, then other boxed sets, split up the game well. For my money, keep levels 1-10, throw the rest.

[Psyren]

You could technically play Starfinder with no magic at all (save the Drift stuff of course) - no spellcasting, no magic items, you could even remove the more supernatural monsters like Outsiders and Undead. Whether filling in all those blanks with technology goes against the spirit of the OP's request is left as an exercise for the reader, but you could technically check off all the stipulations in the opening post that way.

[JoshuaZ]

Low Magic Age is a fantasy RPG that focused on turn-based party-based tactical combat. Field of View, Fog of War, Cover, Zone of Control, Charging and Flanking, various and abundant tactical elements are implemented in the game rules that evolved from Wizards of the Coast's Open Game License (OGL).

The term Low Magic predates that game and that doesn't have much to do with the conversation here.

[SirGraystone]

A long long time ago when I was in high school, each time we had a replacement teacher we will try to get away with stuff we never could with the regular one. When you have a level 10 group, usually with high AC most melee fight doesn't cause any problem so DM balance that with the use of magic.

The group didn't want low magic, they wanted easy loots with little work from the temp DM. Next time, simply tell them a firm no when they ask for a low magic adventure. Or make them roll level 1 characters. New characters with no magical items can run a low magic adventure.

[Knaight]

I'm currently trying to think of other games I own that focus on monstrous opposition. There's Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but that's a retroclone, and Fantasy AGE, but that's incredibly D&D influenced. After that I can't think of any.

There's a decent chunk of Cthulhu and Cthulhu-adjacent stuff on top of D&D. I guess there's also Inspectres, but that's a stretch for a game so character and mystery focused. If the bar is lowered from "focus on" to "have" there's some real expansion - Ryuutama, Qin: The Warring States, Mythender and potentially some sci-fi stuff, though there's some real blurring between the concepts of monsters and aliens there. There's also other heavily D&D influenced works, such as Warrior Rogue and Mage.

Still, the specific dynamic of a fantasy world full of monsters is very much a signature of high fantasy, and D&D in particular has been firmly wedged in that particular niche for a long while. It's a large part of its charm.

The term Low Magic predates that game and that doesn't have much to do with the conversation here.

Keyword spambots generally aren't too good at staying on topic.

[Calthropstu]

Completely off topic but there was a guy who ran a campaign that had no magic, but everyone THOUGHT there was magic. The thing was, wizards had a particular "spell component" that was a hallucinogenic. It spread in a wide area and made everyone believe magic had taken effect. And if you believed you had died, then you died. "Magic resistance" meant you had immunity or tolerance to the drug.
Most of the wizards themselves were unaware of this. So when the party got trapped in a cave and the wizard used "magic" to get them out... We literally went on one trippy adventure.
That is my favorite example of no magic done right.

[Calthropstu]

A long long time ago when I was in high school, each time we had a replacement teacher we will try to get away with stuff we never could with the regular one. When you have a level 10 group, usually with high AC most melee fight doesn't cause any problem so DM balance that with the use of magic.

The group didn't want low magic, they wanted easy loots with little work from the temp DM. Next time, simply tell them a firm no when they ask for a low magic adventure. Or make them roll level 1 characters. New characters with no magical items can run a low magic adventure.

Or be a jerk and say "Sure. Low magic." Then, when they encounter a party of psions using the psionics as different variant...

[Anonymouswizard]

There's a decent chunk of Cthulhu and Cthulhu-adjacent stuff on top of D&D. I guess there's also Inspectres, but that's a stretch for a game so character and mystery focused. If the bar is lowered from "focus on" to "have" there's some real expansion - Ryuutama, Qin: The Warring States, Mythender and potentially some sci-fi stuff, though there's some real blurring between the concepts of monsters and aliens there. There's also other heavily D&D influenced works, such as Warrior Rogue and Mage.

Call of Cthulhu and it's variants and descendants are an interesting variation, as there's very few monsters there that you want to be actually fighting, and that's intentional. While there's plenty that can be beaten (some pretty easily if you know how) even those can normally take out an investigator before they can say 'dodge roll'. We're getting to the level of ghouls and deep ones if we want a Dungeons & Cthulhu game, and even then they're dangerous. Although I don't own CoC anymore, so that's why it was left out, I do own derivatives but they have a more human-focused approach.

Also, I'll admit that have makes the selection much larger, I'm trying to think of a fantasy game that doesn't have a monstrous opponent somewhere in it's library of pregenerated monster statistics and honestly can't. That's why I used 'focus on', as otherwise we end up with essentially just modern and near-future games (and not even all of those, with urban fantasy and all those experiments running around). A monstrous alien is still monstrous.

Still, the specific dynamic of a fantasy world full of monsters is very much a signature of high fantasy, and D&D in particular has been firmly wedged in that particular niche for a long while. It's a large part of its charm.

I should mention that none of my post was meant to imply it's a bad thing. I actually like monstrous opposition a lot, although I prefer to use humanoids myself, and D&D gets a lot of charm out of some of the weird monsters it possesses. I love the 2e Monstrous Manual for how it has a mixture of more basic creatures and some out there stuff.

I mean D&D is the origin of the Beholder. Eye Tyrants are a good example of a monster that I'd love to use if I can ever have a group willing to play at a reasonable level.

My post was more supporting you, pointing out how many fantasy games focus on human scale antagonists. Even ones with fantastical elements, because having monsters doesn't mean PCs have to be at a monster slaying power scale. D&D is actually more weird in that it puts a lot of potentially world-altering abilities in the hands of PCs, especially casters, and doesn't even ask nicely for players to not use them (almost every edition I've read just assumes that they don't). That's the actual reason I prefer to cap magic at thje D&D equivalent of 3rd level, it makes world building so much easier.

Completely off topic but there was a guy who ran a campaign that had no magic, but everyone THOUGHT there was magic. The thing was, wizards had a particular "spell component" that was a hallucinogenic. It spread in a wide area and made everyone believe magic had taken effect. And if you believed you had died, then you died. "Magic resistance" meant you had immunity or tolerance to the drug.
Most of the wizards themselves were unaware of this. So when the party got trapped in a cave and the wizard used "magic" to get them out... We literally went on one trippy adventure.
That is my favorite example of no magic done right.

I've honestly seen no magic done a lot better. Every player went into the game knowing that functional magic wasn't a thing, and the entire game stayed clear of the supernatural or SF-tech. I've also seen high fantasy and soft SF done really well, each style of game is just taking different tools to be applied.

[Jay R]

So what is a Low Magic game? Is there a set standard that everyone agrees on? Or is this just one of those things that can mean anything?

Neither, of course, these are two equal and opposite extremes. Most situations in the world don't represent either 100% agreement or 0% agreement.

Theoretically, "low magic" could mean anything from "the only magic is a prestidigitation spell" to "casters are one level behind D&D casters".

Using general terms will almost never communicate specifics. So in situations like this, be specific.

"Do you mean that there are items but no casters?"
"Do you mean that there are casters but no items?"
"Do you mean that there are no swords over +2?"
"Do you mean that there are no spells above 3rd level?
"Do you mean that it takes twice as many levels to reach spells?"
"Do you mean the same level of PC magic but no NPC magic?"

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

-- George Bernard Shaw