Low Magic Games

>inb4

Either cap everyone at level 5 at most or seriously fucking play a new system. The fact that spells like comprehend langues and zone of truth are acquired early on is a good sign that the game was made for high fantasy. You are trying to use an apple to make orange juice and there are already other games that do orange juice well.

Seconding, if Conan's what you're looking for.

Burning Wheel, GURPS or any of half a dozen systems need to know more to suggest the right system.

Runequest and GURPS do it well. Both are kind of crunchy but in my experience that means there are less turns where fucking nothing happens (as in some HP is lost and that's it).

Advanced dungeon and dragons could be toned for low magic with tweaking. what sort of advice are you looking for exactly?

no magic pathfinder is fucking a terrible idea but IF YOU MUST remember a few things

above level 5 is fantasy, normal humans can't go that high

Use codex martialis to make combat bearable

IDK who deserved this #Rekt but someone does. Anyway, one way you could do it is just to really make spellcasting limited through DM fiat.
>sorcerers only get at most 3 spells over a long period
>When they whine, tell them to multi class something martial and stop being a massive bitch
>balance this by saying they can use their limited spells more frequently
>>as they level they don't get more spells but their fireball goes from baseball size at level 1 to beach ball by level 10 to fucking meteor size by 20

>Make finding spells as a wizard next to fucking impossible
>but give them access to really cool arcane rituals that do super crazy things but require Batman level planning and seeming mundane but hard to find reagants like the whisper of a child's wish and a four-leaf clover bitten once by a lady bug
>balance this by giving them more skill points in areas related to knowledge and then make lore actually important
>>like Gandalf trying to enter Moria, he didn't need to use magic but he knew a shitload of words of power in the end all he really needed to know was Elvish

>clerics
>pffffffft
>they don't get healing spells but have to learn actual medicine and surgery
>can only use spells related to their specific god and must stay in line with their deities dogma
>additionally divine spells can be cancelled out by extreme opposites to their domain
>>priest of a fire god cannot cast spells in the tundra his god is not present in these lands
>also counter this by just making them super badass against undead

>to really emphasize low-magic give martials some sort of magic resistance based on will and determination, sheer badassery (ha I laugh at your tricks fool as they shrug off a cone of cold) or through favor from the gods

>finally implement boons as small temporary or permanent feats that are granted to the heroes by sages, people of import or gods as they do truly heroic or evil things

Wha-la low magic

>rebalance the entire game to suit your needs, probably creating more problems than you're solving

or

>just play a different system, one that has been balanced and playtested for your intended use
Seriously I'm sure you can even find a d20 based system if that's what you're looking for

and a #Rekt that was certainly not

>inb4 play a new system
I'll mention systems I've actually played.

ACKS does lower magic than dnd/pathfinder. Pendragon does no-magic.

Try Song of Swords

Eh, barring sorcerer these classes are already broke to shit. If you're creative as a dm it won't matter too much to change some things. Adding the boons is already provided for in the traditional rules and isn't that hard in the first place. The martial stuff doesn't have to even be anything quantifiable. As the DM, you pretend you are god x who pretty much sits around all day watching the mortal realm while occasionally masturbating and eating souls. John the barbarian is pretty badass and did this thing you liked. Next time he gets hit by a fireball, you're like nah I don't want my favorite show to end. Done.

Flavor.
Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks are at best mistrusted and spat upon as heretics and madmen, and at worst lynched on the spot as walking demon portals and threats to society. Alternatively, "the evil Wizard-Lord of the City of Brass Lamps" will attempt to either imprison/kill a known mage as a threat to his power or attempt to recruit him with promises of more power and riches. Zanthor Cuntstain is more likely to hire Corman Dickpunch to raid the Tombs of Armok because he's a big fucker with a sword, while Garm Titfuck is an old man in robes with a stick.

Class restrictions/modifications.
You can easily say you can only advance to certain levels of certain classes without "Help", i.e., non-Warlock bargains and pacts with outsiders of questionable planar origin. Lower hitpoint values of both players and creatures to represent deadlier combat.

Items, nigga!
Magic items are far more rare, to a point where players can go several levels without finding even one. Alternatively, refluff lower-end magic gear as "Masterwork" quality weapons. A +2 sword could actually be an ancient Atlantean king's blade, inscribed with long-dead languages while a +1 suit of Plate is armor hand-forged over the course of a year by the dwarf master smith Urist Battlecarp or some shit.

You can also try some of the suggestions actually *in* the DMG.
The reason I'm attempting to help rather than suggest a different system is because my group is made of autists who refuse to learn another system, "because it's too hard."

If you must play a d20-ish game, 4e D&D does low/no magic quite well as long as you use the inherent bonuses optional rules and refluff creatively (wizards probably won't work, but avengers can pretty easily fit into a low magic world).

This is assuming you want your game to have frequent combat. If you're trying for a more political or exploratory game, 4e CAN work but you're probably better off with something else.

This is terrible game design even if you were starting from scratch and not just tacking homebrew onto a system not designed for this shit.

The sorceror advice is terrible and contradictory. They can't use their spells unless you say so but they can totally use them more than normal! Yeah, no that's dumb for numerous reasons. Firstly no player is going to be fine with DM fiat for spell cast and "multiclass something martial and stop being a massive bitch" is at best going to just equal nobody taking sorceror to begin with. Meanwhile the level up of spells thing is doing nothing to make magic less important and just shifts the power to massive concentrations rather than quick frequent bursts.

The wizard suggestions just make the wizard the star of the show more because now the entire campaign is going to be either about getting the wizard his magic bits or the wizard being fuck all for useful and feeling worthless the whole time. Now, the knowledge/lore skill buff is not a terrible idea assuming you can actuially make those things important, but at the same time you are going to need to be careful not to make them necessary for advancement (Make this skill check or flounder/fail is piss poor encounter design) and that's a fine line to walk.

Clerics as you have written them are garbage. Main class feature of healing stripped away with no benefit other than "badass" against one specific enemy type. This will become "we fight undead or the cleric is useless" faster than you can possibly imagine.

Magic resist for martials is something you give to bring them up to caster level not in addition to casters being crippled.

And none of this addressees the issue of magic items being a core element of the game baked directly into the monster stats.

Ultimately you are straight up better of finding a system that wants to do what you want to do. But if you absolutely must do low/no magic pathfinder this is what you are going to have to do. To be continued

First, you will have to go through every single spell in the game and determine if it matches up to the power level that you have in mind. Any spell that is too powerful or just doesn't fit will have to be re-tailored or eliminated from the game on a case by case basis. Second you will have to redo the spells known and spell slots charts for every class. Keep in mind that this is part of the balance of the game so you will need to make sure that when you drop those numbers down you give the spellcasters some sort of perk to make up for it. The other option is remove all spellcasters period.

Now, since magic has been brought down seriously the next thing you are going to have to do is go through every single monster in the entire monster manual and redo their stats/AC/saves/maneuvers and then modify their special abilities to fit the new magic level. Keep in mind that this may modify the challenge ratings of monsters that rely heavily on magical abilities.

Now, whether you nerf or remove magical healing entirely you are going to have to make some manner of non-magical healing to make up for it or you are going to have to modify your encounter design to make sure that you aren't TPKing because your damage output is outmatching the player's ability to heal over time. This means spacing encounters up over longer periods of time or adding non-magical healing skills/items to greatly speed natural healing (likely both).

This is just the bare minimum you will need to do in order to make things playable and will require a large large LARGE amount of work on you as the GM before the campaign even begins. It will require you to heavily study the core mechanics of the system, how they interact with magic, and how both interact with class design, monster design, and encounter/campaign design. It is quite frankly a maddening task that will tax you to no end as a GM and is really not worth it for what you will get when you are all done. But more power to you

>my group is made of autists who refuse to learn another system, "because it's too hard.

Literally kill them. It's for the best.

Not that user, but finding halfway decent roleplayers isn't easy.

play the Riddle of Steel.

>finding halfway decent roleplayers isn't easy.

Better than playing with shitty ones.

>no magic
Don't do it. This is stupid. The game is balanced with magic in mind. You will only have a bad time and make your players upset.

>low magic
This is still stupid to do with D&D and you'll probably have to cut out most of the classes, but it's doable. Just keep magic-capable NPCs super ultra rare and make all NPCs wary of or scared of magic.