What are some games with Low Magic you'd recommend?

What are some games with Low Magic you'd recommend?

How is Low Magic best presented in games that still let the players take the role of a dedicated caster? Is such a thing even possible/allowed?

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mediafire.com/folder/7llc83r2xf8bg/Barbarians_of_Lemuria_-_Mythic_Edition
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blease resbond

dnd 5e

warhammer 40k role play. Literally are just guys with guns.

Someone in the party could develop psyker abilities but using them too much would cause them major shit.

Daggers in the Murk

Yep, Dark Heresy is perfect for this.

Sure you can be a spell caster...and like 10% of the time your spells backfire spectacularly, and like 20% of that you wipe the party or near enough. Even if you're successful the magic warps you and makes you start to stick out like a sore thumb and eventually be a target for the inquisition.

You end up just playing a slightly worse normal character with the ability to occasionally do some crazy shit against bosses.

GURPS

Barbarians of Lemuria is swords and sorcery, which fits low magic pretty well. I mean, there are mystic careers, and magic can do some decently impressive stuff, but it's not off-hand stuff like it is in D&D, where you can spam fireballs while flying invisible. A powerful spell is a big deal and not normally conducive to free-casting in battle. For each rank in magician, you need to take a flaw. The energy spent on powerful spells is (only partly) regained on a monthly basis, and normally require a number of special conditions (an ancient artifact, rare material components, a sacrifice, a group ritual, fasting for a week, suffering a good amount damage, etc.) to keep their power costs from being too high.

It should be noted that careers in BoL are like skill packages (rather than having a bunch of separate thief skills, you just have ranks in thief, which apply to any thief-y task) which you have a number of. So even if you're primarily a magician, you'll have some ranks in other stuff too. And since magic-wielding careers are in the minority, in any given party, you'll end up with a strong majority of skills pertaining to nonmagical shit, unless you try really hard not to. On top of this BoL would function fine and still give you a good diversity of careers without any of the magic/mystic ones. So you could easily restrict magic to NPCs, or merely restrict the number of ranks PCs could put into a career.

What if spellcasters were limited in how often they could use a spell? Like, once a day?

Shivs in the Shade

SW Edge Of The Empire.

>How is Low Magic best presented in games that still let the players take the role of a dedicated caster? Is such a thing even possible/allowed?

No dedicated casters. The caster career must be purchased on top of your starting career. Your base career gives you a good amount of skills, so it's a pretty important and useful thing.

Also, the caster powers are fairly limited. The powers are generally designed to enhance your combat/social abilities, rather than replace them.

can anyone post Barbarians of Lemuria PDF?

Knives in the Night

Components are single use(outside of cantrips) and must be kept track of. Let's be real, Most of us probably aren't keeping track of that shit.

Or you can do what were trying, allow them to start with whatever spell they want but to learn new spells need to be earned, like go on quest difficulty. We're doi g that for our wizard who is one of 7 in the world. Our party(fighter with wraith bloodline and Scout with literally all the bullshit that entails) is pretty on par with the Wizard.

Zweihander, it's like WFRPG, but a bit more Polish-ed

Gurps

>Zweihander,
Is it occulded from the sun?

Shanks in the Dusk

fantasycraft is like D&D 3.5 but built for low-magic; it's what most people actually want out of D&D

EotE looks really cool but I can't be arsed to buy the special dice. They're much more expensive than regular dice and none of my local gaming stores even have them.

Define "Low Magic".

It means different things to different people, So I'd like your interpretation before making recommendations.

Pathfinder works reasonably well

Sure.

mediafire.com/folder/7llc83r2xf8bg/Barbarians_of_Lemuria_-_Mythic_Edition

>Zweihander in the Midnight Hour

>Pathfinder
>low magic
Are we playing the same game?

I'm 90% sure it was a joke, but the 10% really scares me.

do you have a pdf?

either/or:
>magic is powerful but rare
>you can't buff yourself in 5 different ways while slinging lightning bolts in one hand and fireballs on the other
>it has a limited use per day or takes a while to rest before regaining your magic stamina
>it's hard to learn and may even be tiresome or actively harm you
>traditional wizards are a thing but they're seen as basically demigods among men because to reach the traditional wizard status means to have dedicated your whole life to the study of magic
>it's present but definitely not used as an everyday tool

I've heard unironical claims about pathfinder over the years and it's completely in the realm of possibility that he's not joking

"pathfinder is very new player friendly" still gets me to this day

Came here to recommend this. Also, you may take a look at Houses of the Blooded where all magic is either blessings that are weak but inherent in someone's blood, or vile blood magic that is a prohibited legacy of witch kings.

It has great art and pretty good system for a d20. The only thing I don't like is how fiddly it fills sometimes. There are too many things going on at times.

You can just use D&D as long as the GM sets up a reasonably low-magic world.

I just let them take a single spell for each player, make it pretty stronk, but only limited uses per day, increasing once per level
>tfw fucking everyone except the paladin is Not!Megumin
>Paladin calls down an oversized lightning bolt that can one shot most monsters
>accidentally created an occult following of the Lightning Master
>was one of the most enjoyable campaigns I ever ran

I came to this thread to make sure my homebrew was low magic and I'm satisfied now

As a GM using D&D is fine but you're better off looking for a more pleasant system.

D&D is hard to set up as a low magic game
only time I got somewhat into it was when I banned full casters except for the warlock and cleric and left the half-caster classes around

without druids, bards, sorcerers and wizards it actually felt pretty nice

I guess with a handful of house rules and half the content banned, sure.

>only time I got somewhat into it was when I banned full casters except for the warlock and cleric and left the half-caster classes around
You still have decently powerful magic on demand (without long rituals, sacrifices, side effects, etc.), which isn't really keeping with a low-magic theme. It may not be as over-the-top powerful, but it's still in keeping with a high-magic world.

I've only ever played it using this online dice roller game2.ca/eote/

I personally use Castles & Crusades, it's not really that complex, and it does have enough variance in martial classes so that every class feels a little bit different.

Burning Wheel

Stilettos in the Shadows

dungeons and dragons

Are you baiting, or do you mean 1e?

Ad&d (1e, 2e) with some classic restrictions on casters. Not learning new spell when level up, spells have to be gained by scrolls like items. That way you control which spell appear in the game at wich time you can use material compoments rule to control some particular spells, have fun. Casters have to choose wich spells to cast in the morning for the day. It is the bast game ever created for a reason.

Yeah I guess if you're a drooling moron Pathfinder isn't new player friendly. It takes a very high iq to play pathfinder

Deadlands has stuff to like about it. Especially the older non-d20 version. Though it might be closer to mid level magic than low magic.

GURPS Lite

>Pic related
New and curious? Want your friends to play? Have a free resource which boils the game down to its essence: GURPS Lite.

Lite gives you the essential rules while stripping away the rest of the crunchy chaff. It also strips the list of traits down considerably, dropping supernatural, exotic, and most cinematic traits.

Full license: pastebin.com/kRh5LB2c
>you may distribute this PDF file freely under the above restrictions, and post copies of it online.

Also, be sure to check out the Caravan to Ein Arris, which is a FREE adventure which works with just the rules present in Lite. (warehouse23.com/products/caravan-to-ein-arris-gurps-fourth-edition)

Best advice I have for getting your friends to play: make pregenerated characters (full basic set optional) and give them a choice between them, use only the rules in Lite, run a one-shot and do something GURPS can do that other games struggle with.

Two days in, and I'm still laughing.

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