Been playing with an idea for 3.X
No dedicated Magic-Users; no Clerics, Druids, Sorcerors, or Wizards.
Still allow the other spellcasters, such as Bard, Paladins, and Rangers.
Now, I'm trying to think how much that would change the game world. Bards would be the strongest spellcasters in base 3.X; there would be no more "return from the dead" spells; magic use would be inherent, rather than learned; how would it affect crafting magic items; etc.
I've also played with making a Cleric and Wizard PrC, similar to what d20 Modern does, which would allow more normal 1st-5th spells Arcane or Divine spells.
Quote from: Novastar;572052Been playing with an idea for 3.X
No dedicated Magic-Users; no Clerics, Druids, Sorcerors, or Wizards.
Still allow the other spellcasters, such as Bard, Paladins, and Rangers.
Now, I'm trying to think how much that would change the game world. Bards would be the strongest spellcasters in base 3.X; there would be no more "return from the dead" spells; magic use would be inherent, rather than learned; how would it affect crafting magic items; etc.
I've also played with making a Cleric and Wizard PrC, similar to what d20 Modern does, which would allow more normal 1st-5th spells Arcane or Divine spells.
Sounds good for a magic lite setting. I don't see any problems.
If you ask 'where do magic items come from' you might have problems. If they require spellcasters, there are a few items that a Paladin/Ranger/Bard could make, but they're not the majority. But most people just assume that items are available, even if nobody COULD actually make them.
You might want to consider an artificer class that can make items that normally require wizards or clerics. While it can be intended as an NPC class, they could get item creation feats and 'spell slots' but not spells. Ie, an item might require a '5th level spell lost' to complete - the artificer is treated as having that spell at 9th level. You don't have to worry too much about the details, but it makes it easy to explain why a +1 longsword is so easy to find - especially if you're using published modules that often use magic equipment like candy.
At low-levels, you're going to have issues with healing. A 3rd level bard with a high Charisma can cast cure light wounds, but probably only 1/day. So at lower levels, resting from fights is going to be much more important than it currently is.
A lot of monsters will be much tougher than their CR would suggest. Any creature that does ability damage or drain is going to seriously mess up the party for a LONG time if they insist on being 'optimal' before continuing. You may want to consider making it easier to recover Maybe instead of 1 point per day, a character could heal Con modifier. Thus, if the Fighter loses 10 points of strength to a Giant Spider, if he has a +3 Con he'll be at full in 4 days (instead of 10) or 2 days with a heal check (instead of 5).
The ability to turn undead and destroy the most powerful undead will be greatly reduced. If you don't want undead to be significantly more challenging than they typically are, you might want to allow a Paladin to turn like a cleric (rather than three levels lower). Secondly, you really might want to consider allowing characters to deal critical damage to 'non-allowed' monsters with the appropriate knowledge check (I suggest DC 15 + CR). For example, normally you can't get a critical or a sneak attack on a plant or undead. With a knowledge [nature] check, you could; with a knowledge [undead] check, you could. This will help the party defeat some 'grind' monsters just a little faster, and consequently reduce the amount of damage the party is likely to take.
Finally, the ability to travel quickly from one place to another will be essentially non-existent. That's a pretty big change to the standard setting. Even at high levels, characters will be using mounts to quickly cover ground. That makes the campaign world much narrower in focus. You can't 'jump' from a desert adventure to an 'underdark' adventure nearly as easily - from the DM point of view, that means you're going to have a much 'denser' adventuring region. Instead of 1 adventure near a particular village, you'll need four or five - all for different levels, and all having reasons why the 1st-level PCs don't stumble into the 10th-level plot too early...
With PCs spending more time in a given area, they're going to get to know NPCs a lot better than is true for most campaigns - that means putting more work into making them interesting to interact with. Or rather, it means putting more details into each character so players can expose layers through repeat interaction.
Ditto the other two posts.
Focus on magic being less available and pay close attention to the impact on your world.
For example, perhaps there ought to be fewer magical creatures.
And those that can still cast are going to be held in higher regard.
TSR DMGs talk you through the ramifications of low or no magic settings. If you have a copy it'd be worth going back and taking a look-see. Digest version is determination of magical items (from spells to enchanted items) will determine whether MU classes will be overly powerful and should not allowed, make no setting sense, or so weakened that they'd be classes better off not available.
So in the end it really depends on how you want to run your setting.
For example, you could just label 'magical items' as tech -- and it'd be up to you if it is ancient forgotten tech, or just fantasy tech with other technology trees unexplored (such as "light- or harmonics-energy imbued human kinetics operated weapons" but no explosive projectile based tech; i.e. light sabers but no guns). Or you could have ancient magical items left, but all/almost all magical spells were kept on less durable material and thus most spells were lost. You could do as Dark Sun where psionics become emergent and defiler magic and the sun's interference has disallowed or corrupted most other spells. You could do as Birthright and say the power of blood determines True Mages who can cast Arcane spells of level greater than 3, but no one else can -- and most True Mages require enormous amounts of source to cast the greater spells, thus need to be Regents, bonded to the land, to use any of those higher spells.
Honestly, I find it encouraging, but also adorable that you're asking these questions. A lot of published and homebrew settings from back in the day tampered with the availability of magic all the time. Go, have fun, there's no "right answer" just as long as you pick a direction and follow it as far as you can to its logical conclusion.
Here, let's flesh out your setting more -- because that matters more to game mechanics than when game mechanics works backwards upon setting. When you say magic is inherent, I assume that means innate, evoked from within be it themselves or others. So you can say magic derives from raised belief pouring into the world. Bards tap emotions to raise belief; Rangers tap into instinct and animal/plant empathy; Paladins tap into righteousness. By accessing anima's belief, the anima changes its appearance in the world, and magic seems to happen.
If you have a different vision of setting, express it here and we can flesh out how it would leave its macrocosmic imprint upon mechanics. And from there you can work from mechanics to determine microcosmic details upon the starting area of PCs.
You could also make some of the Mage and Cleric spells available through say Alchemists for Mage/Sorceror stuff, that requires a comparatively LONG time to cast compared to a proper mage, like some sort of Ritualised magic that takes hours, days, weeks etc to use.
So you can still justify magic items in the world (to a lesser degree if you like) and could still get access to Mage spells via scrolls and so on, but make them VERY expensive to make and buy and tricky to use (the Rogue will be more useful here).
To allow restricted access to Cleric spells you could create a "Priest" npc class where they have to "Pray" for a long time to get spells and again they are ritualised (Hours, days, Weeks to cast properly) and very expensive and/or only made available to the "Faithful".
And a similar type setup with Druids, like still have druids as NPCs, but limited VERY slow casting for spells, again hours, days weeks etc..
For example, maybe a Druid or Cleric COULD raise dead, but the Cleric/Druid would have to meditate for days, perform a long ritual and maybe sacrifice 10 years off their life or something to their deity/avatar or whatever. This would mean just throwing lots of gold at a Cleric or Druid is not enough, there'd have to be a really GOOD reason to do so and be one of the faithful and so on.
I like the idea of a Mage/Cleric restricted setting, but I agree you need to investigate the ramifications of doing that.
"Once upon a time there was [wizards & clerics]The Space Atlanteans but The Firestorm Cthulhu Plague happened and they were utterly obliterated. But hey, luckily enough, all their magic items survived."
Quote from: Planet Algol;572307"Once upon a time there was [wizards & clerics]The Space Atlanteans but The Firestorm Cthulhu Plague happened and they were utterly obliterated. But hey, luckily enough, all their magic items survived."
You can do that, sure. No casters, but 'standard' magic item availability. But without consideration, you're going to destroy versimilitude very quickly.
If the Firestorm Cthulhu Plague happened over 200 years ago, finding a fully charged wand of ANYTHING should be extremely rare. People might still use magic, but they'll CONSERVE it if it is a limited resource. That makes a big difference in play.
Think of it like this in our world - if new cars were suddenly unavailable, but all the cars currently on the road still worked, what would happen? Mechanics would have a lot more business as people try to keep old clunkers from dying. People that wreck multiple cars probably won't find anyone willing to sell them one. People will drive less often so they can make their car last longer - people that have always driven to and from work will take the bus more so they can save the car for a big trip to St. Louis and such. Some people will hoard as many cars as they can. In 20 years as the number of working cars falls dramatically, they'll be able to sell a working vehicle for a small fortune.
So even if you have items available, if they're not an easily renewable resource, you still have major possible impacts to the world.
If you try to play it 'same as standard but no wizards, clerics, or druids', it's not going to work. The availability of those classes is a fundamental part of the game - so not having them requires fundamental changes.
Yes and no.
My idea was no PC or NPC spell-casters, but monsters such as Efreeti or Dragons or Eladrinn still have their full spell-casting abilities. So, it is possible that all magic items still exist, but they may be sitting in an irate Dragon's Hoard.
I took the Bard's, Paladin's, and Ranger's spell list, and am now going thru the DMG to see what items could still easily be made, and which one's would require a supernatural patron.
There's also going to be quite a difference in availability, when a lvl7 Cleric used to be able to get you an item, but it now takes a lvl14 Paladin, and one trained to make Magic Items at that.
I'm trying to also envision the societal changes that take place without dedicated magic-users. The only Clerical magic comes from LG holy warriors; the only Druidic magic comes from loners who walk the earth, and Arcane magic comes from Bards (which I've always seen more as Skalds, than tumbling fools).
I'm on team gene wolfe/jack vance, that shit happened 60000 years ago.