Can d&d 5e work for a setting without magic?

can d&d 5e work for a setting without magic?

It would be extremely boring. What little depth 5e's combat has comes from magic, otherwise it'd just be a bunch of dudes autoattacking each other until everyone on one side is dead.

Considering a whole third of the handbook is spells and 90% of the classes in the game use magic to one degree or another, no.

Then again DnD barely works as a setting even for the thing it's supposed to, let alone as a game that's actually fun for actual roleplay.

>Wold the most epic system, made of pure EPICNESS work for x???

Yes. Yes it'd be also friking epic.

>inb4 poopyheaded nonD&D players saying D&D isn't epic... for teh win and the best system EVER

>muh mechanical complexity

Tbh depending on how heroic/deadly you want to go I might pick ASOIAFRP.

Can V:tM work without vampires?

it could work. nothing says it cant
you can still roll a d20 to attack, and your class features dont always need magic

why you would want to remove options from the players and chuck out a third of the whole book is beyond me

No, it would no longer be D&D, then, if only in spirit.

>can d&d 5e work for a setting without magic?
Not really, a lot of the complexity comes from knowing how to spend your movement/action/bonus action/reactions and without magic, a lot of your martial classes will just end up defaulting to one or two tried and true methods of attack (which all basically boils down to attacking one more time).

Not to mention, combat and skill resolution is too barebones to carry a system on its own.

>No one replies to these epic posts
Proves it right, dnd truly is the best system.
GURPSbabbies BTFO.

>can d&d 5e work for a setting without magic?

Of course, as long doing an 'all fighters' party doesn't bother you... and being stucked fighting only level 1 commoners

The most epic one probably would. But OP asked about DnD.

>It would be extremely boring.
You're a patient guy.

5e can work for anything.
The question you should be asking is:
>Can D&D 5e work well for a setting without magic?
To which I ask:
Can D&D 5e work well for a setting with magic?

Hehe

It would function at a basic technical level, but there'd be basically nothing to the system at that point. Personally I'd never do so, you'd be significantly better off finding another system more suited to it. D&D doesn't really work well outside of the high fantasy niche at the best of times.

You could add some complexity by using crude technologies in place of magic. Have a Tinkerer class in place of the Wizard and Sorcerer, some Plague Doctor type class in place of Clerics, maybe reflavor what the Druid does as less magical and more an absurd amount of knowledge about natural stuff. Going this route would probably require more down time so the Tinkerers can make/maintain their stuff, your warriors can properly naturally heal with assistance from the Plague Doctor and Druid, not to mention a lot of set up on the DM's part to ensure things are relatively balanced and don't get stale.

Pretty easily.

There's a number of classes that don't require any magic, and mixing between them and the various options likes feats provides a pretty broad spectrum to play around with.

That's one of D&D's strengths, in that it's such a large system, that even if you only use 1/10th of the material available, you're still using a large system with a lot of mechanical depth and options.

There's other systems that are more focused around non-magical settings, but if you and your group likes 5e, don't hesitate to adapt it to your needs.

Can you give examples of the content you think would be appropriate to a no magic game?

>can d&d 5e work
No.

SFIRP is shit.

Every two months I tell myself "Wow, I really want to run something feudal with knights, no magic and pseudo-realistic combat" Then I crack open SFIRP and remind myself how much the rules suck.

...for you

Farming dirt. It's what the classes that will be left are most suited for.

Rogues, barbarians, fighters, and even to some degree monks all work well in a no magic setting (especially in a low-level campaign), and even just one class by itself allows a pretty broad range of choices just by playing around with different class options, backgrounds, and feats. In fact, single class parties actually run rather well in 5e, if that piques your interest.

Beyond that, there's a lot of room for refluffing magical abilities to make them not magical, enabling classes like Paladin, Ranger, and to some degree Bard to join in. When you mix in the ease of multiclassing in 5e, you wind up with thousands of potential combinations.

Of course, 5e is better suited for low magic (and of course high magic) rather than strictly no magic, but I've actually wound up running essentially magicless campaigns for groups just because of the options they selected and the tone of the game the group wanted. I did include some monsters that could be considered "magical" (since hobgoblins and giants and the like don't exist in reality), but even just using the various human NPCs and creating your own using the PC rules allows you to populate a pretty rich world with lots of different challenges, even before you start refluffing.

I've heard good things about AiME.