Anyone ever run/played D&D without arcane magic?

[Stofsk]

I've been recently thinking of a game I played in many years ago, where part of the setting had that arcane magic was extremely rare - but divine magic was not. IIRC the game had a sorceress being played by one of the players, so it was obviously not something that was completely banned, but it did change a lot of the way in which the game ran (the player was very reluctant to use magic, as it scared people and could lead to a witchhunt etc).

But I almost always play a beatstick so playing a magic user is not something I'm familiar with. But I've had a mind to play in a D&D or pathfinder game for awhile now, or run one, and I'm thinking of writing up a homebrew setting. For whatever reason, the idea of strict controls on and rarity of arcane magic seems to appeal to me. Would anyone who's more knowledgeable than me care to discuss the matter? Thanks guys.

[Cynical Cat]

It's a bad idea. Not because running a low magic is somehow wrong, but because D&D scales so that mundane mail shirts are junk armour by 6th level. D20 runs the assumption that you'll load up on useful magic and the whole system runs on it. If you're going to do low magic and are insane enough to still want to use d20 (really, really look at something else) you'll want to do a d20 rules variant like Monte Cook's Book of Iron Might.

[Stofsk]

Couldn't that issue be addressed by having magic items become artifacts that have divine magic as their origin?

If it doesn't it doesn't, I'm not too attached to the idea to defend it to the death. But if the issue is 'magic items are super-important' I'm wondering why it *has* to be arcane magic. You guys know more about the system than I do.

[White Haven]

You can always shift the focus to personal might rather than sorcerous arsenal by adding scaling bonuses to your players themselves rather than via loot drops. Either represent it as training and experience, or divine blessings, or whatever.

[SirNitram]

Really doesn't work well. I ran a Netheril campaign starting with the seven human villages before the Elves taught arcane magic. It really scaled badly, even with half the party as divine casters.

[Stofsk]

Do you have any examples of the scaling problem?

[White Haven]

Hmm. Could try playing around with the base attack bonus scaling modifiers to compensate.

[frigidmagi]

It could work... If you dumped most of the upper level monsters. Most of them have Damage Reduction that can only be defeated with magic.

[Cynical Cat]

It could work... If you dumped most of the upper level monsters. Most of them have Damage Reduction that can only be defeated with magic.

The whole armour class/to hit/hit point system assumes plentiful magic of both types. Without something similar replacing arcane magic the problems will remain. You need a significant work to push the system in another direction to beat down the problems to merely those of playing d20.

[frigidmagi]

The whole armour class/to hit/hit point system assumes plentiful magic of both types. Without something similar replacing arcane magic the problems will remain.

Good point.

[Stofsk]

I'm not following this chain of reasoning guys.

[Cynical Cat]

I'm not following this chain of reasoning guys.

D&D is built on a number of assumptions and one of the key assumptions is an ever increasing supply and quantity of spells and magical gear. In 3.0/3.5 D&D, for example, a troll is rated as a CR 5 opponent. That's an opponent that is fair but tough fight for four fifth level characters. The assumption behind that is that by that time the players will have some good weapons and offensive magic (specifically fire or acid) in order to beat down the fucker down before he eats half the group. And that's just one creature.

Now you can compensate and say that maybe the troll should be a higher level opponent, but then you've got issues with armour class, hitpoints, damage dealing and so forth that the troll generates. And so and so forth for all sorts of critters. As frigid has mentioned, the critters with widespread immunities and resistances to conventional attacks are another issue and there's a lot critters like that. D&D crawls with tons of critters with a variety of immunities to forms of attacks. Fourth edition is less so this way.