Is it possible to run a low magic/low fantasy D&D game?

What system would you recommend for a game where magic exists but is rare and not overpowered

In 4e, as long as you stick to Heroic tier. It's a very swashbuckling low/no magic with the heroes swordfighting with half a dozen guards but that's not opposed tot he idea.

Martial Classes + a few others (Artificers and Monks could work with the right fluffing for example) and you'll be fine.

Adventures in Middle Earth seems to think so.

>What system would you recommend for a game where magic exists but is rare and not overpowered
Not that user, but check out Barbarians of Lemuria.

Magic exists, but it's a pain to use so its use is typically restricted to NPCs who have the time, money, and strongholds needed to give them the prep time to cast anything beyond the most trivial of illusions.

Conan. Any version. The themes pretty much negate casual magic and most of the systems used for it reflect that, even the d20 ones.

As long as you avoid outright magical stuff, I'd argue you could still potentially hit Epic tier without too many issues.

EVen some of the anti-death features can be pretty mundane, like the "When you die, one of your followers takes up your name and picks up where you left off" ED.

u wot m8? Ever made frenzied berserker or warblade? Power gaming is weak in you i see

Yeah, quite possibly. Depends how you scale stuff/fluff it up.

Either way: You'd definitely want to use Inherent Bonuses and Alternate Rewards to remove the need for magic items. Grandmaster Training is much cooler anyway.

It's possible. Not really optimal, you'd be omitting something like 70% of the game's existing material, and the remaining 30% are not rules that make for really compelling gameplay.

Then there's the question of whether players will be interested in it. At this point a lot of us have played in "Low magic" D&D games that turned out to be "The party isn't allowed to be casters or have magic items, but I will continue throwing supernatural shit against you non-stop; so I hope you like fighting undead and fiends with completely mundane weapons. Also every prominent NPC you encounter will be magic. Including the DMPC Wizard I'll be sending along with the party to guide you".

You get one, maybe two shitshows like that under your belt, you start to get real suspicious when somebody proposes D&D,, Low-Magic. You become acutely aware that there are like thirty systems that handle the low magic/low fantasy idiom better than D&D does, and if they're not willing to run one of them then there's probably some bullshit coming your way.

Use Conan d20.

I was mostly just heading off people going >m-m-muh Battlemaster tho!

Yes it's called Dark Sun.

No divine casters as there's no gods and no wizards beyond horrendously powerful bbeg sorcerer kings. Yes there's Psion's but you arguably don't have to run them.

And it's a fun setting to play in as a result much more grounded and still plenty to do if your players can actually roleplay.

>Is it possible to run a low magic/low fantasy D&D game?

It already exists, it's called D6 I believe. Not the old Star Wars system, but a variant of 3.X that was invented to combat caster supremacy. Basically the deal is that you are forever limited to levels 1-6 and after level 6 you just gain a new feat every time you would gain a level.

Midnight did it but banned anything more magical than rogue.

...

Midnight took place in a fictional world instead of Earth so it's technically High Fantasy.

E6. The actual E6 game is built on 3.5 but I've also played in E6.0 (built on 3.0) and E6.PF.

It's not exactly about combatting caster supremacy, although that's what a lot of people like about it.

there is an option for it
it doesnt affect the characters themselves, but it does have guidelines, such as less gold, less magic weapons

the DMG also increases short rests to 8 hours and long rests to 1 week

by level 10 you are still impressive, but your items and the world around you will be less so, and you heal slower

(cont)

It has more to do with noting that the 3.5 rule set worked a lot smoother 1-5 and got wonkier as you went up, but that 1-5 was more than enough oomph to replicate most fantasy works. By "pinning" game play to this zone both in player abilities and challenge rating you could end up with something that looked more like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars and less focused on bigger bigger bigger. It also lightened the rule set dramatically and made for much quicker play. I for one loved it.

So yeah, it was hot there for a good minute in my neck of the woods. Theres still great materials for it at esix.pbworks.com/f/E6v041.pdf and esix.pbworks.com/w/page/9900109/FrontPage

But it's not as popular now. Whether intentional or not a lot of the unscratched itches that drove E6 ended up being a part of the 5e design and most E6'rs have jumped ship to 1-10ish games in the new system, myself included.

It's possibl-ish in 5e depending on how low you want your low magic to go. You could go as far as a Champion STR Shield Master build, a GWM Battle Master build, a ranged Assassin Rogue, and a "melee" Thief Rogue armed with an astounding amount of healing kits and potions and put them up against purely mundane threats if you wanted to go that low, but the story and RP would have to be on point and you'd have to be extremely careful with monster selection.

Beyond that, every class is at least semi-Caster, with Open Hand Monk up for debate. If you were willing to move up to Game of Dreck level of magic you could probably add Paladin, Ranger, and Warlock (oddly enough) and +0 magic weapons (but no other magic items) and open up most of the book to usage as long as you kept your player group positioned as being unreasonably powerful compared to the setting and plotted accordingly. I call that "Pulling a Robert Jordan."

You could also go higher than that and add Life Clerics, Circle of the Moon Druids, and Valor Bards and go for a Disney Princess level of magic. At that point you could just about run the game as normal, though.

Point being, any of these could work if you make them work, so don't let me discourage you as long as you know that it's going to be more difficult than running RAW. But ultimately, I agree with the idea that DnD runs best when you let it just be itself. If you want a low magic setting, strongly consider getting at least a setting book if not a whole new system for low magic. There are some really good ones out there.

Sure. Ravenloft is a low magic setting.

It is literally impossible.

Are you kidding? Ravenloft is not remotely a low magic setting. It's a setting where 'Magic Gypsies who can give you the Evil Eye and make your flesh melt off your bones and can travel through the magically controlled mist that is raised by an immortal imprisoned force of evil' is the starting point for the setting at it gets more magical from there.

It's gothic but it's not remotely low magic.

Ok, maybe I should unpack what I meant. To the average person in Ravenloft, Ravenloft is a low magic setting. Clerical magic doesn't glow or give any obvious result. Arcane magic is rare and hard to find and extremely expensive. The average person in Ravenloft will never meet a full blooded Vistani or a monster

In Barovia, maybe. Ravenloft also has realms where tuesdays the ocean turns into pudding and people's heads are on backwards because it's darklord is an utterly insane elf wild mage. Or Sithicus, where the blessed ghost of Lord Soth rises up in battle against the forces of darkness whenever they near triumph so that the Dark Lord of it can never have the victory she desires over him.

Ravenloft, as a whole, is rather high magic. Barovia is rather low magic for the setting.

Fair point, most of my experience in Ravenloft is in the Core. I should make fewer sweeping statements in the future.

sure, run 3.5 and use that tier list thing. if you ban everything above a certain tier level you get all the full casters basically and are just left with specialists.

Sorry, it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine. How Castle Ravenloft and CoS has resulted in people assuming that it's the entirety of Ravenloft, when it's just a single domain and honestly one of the most 'Mundane' of them.

Of course. you can use D&D to do anything you like.

Limit PCs to non-magic or low-magic classes, play in a low fantasy / low magic setting.

Its very easy and we've run a few campaigns like this. They are great fun when your party loves roleplaying and you're all interested in having a break from the regular magic and fantasy of the basic D&D setting.