Dungeons & Dragons is a game where you can play as heroic characters as they storm the tower of a lich seeking to ascend to godhood or traverse the multiverse in search of an ancient relic. But, what if you’re looking for a play experience that’s more down to earth? Whether you want to play in a slow-burn political thriller full of alliances and assassinations, or a sprawling journey across the rugged scenery of New Zealand, a low magic campaign might be right for you.
In this article, we'll get into the nitty-gritty of running a low magic campaign that will immerse and thrill your players!
What Is a Low Magic Campaign?
Low magic refers to subsections of fantasy where the fantastical elements of the genre appear less often when compared to heroic fantasy (aka traditional D&D). There's no exact criteria for low magic fantasy settings, though in D&D terms running a low magic campaign could imply:
- There are no non-human races or a few non-human races that live on the fringes of human society
- Magic and magical items are exceedingly rare, and the typical commoner will likely not encounter them in their lifetime
- Monsters and gods are all but myths to the general population
Player Classes in Low Magic Settings
In these types of settings, nonmagical martial classes like barbarians, fighters, and rogues are much more common than spellcasters, both for players and the enemies they face. Druids, monks, paladins, and rangers may appear, but they will be quite rare and usually hail from locations far from civilization. The supernatural abilities these classes tote will likely be pared down, whether by coming up with a nonmagical way to describe them or replacing them with mundane abilities.
Classes that revolve around manipulating the universe's fundamental forces, such as bards, sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards, or by channeling divine power, such as clerics, are extraordinarily rare in these settings, if they are included at all.
Monsters in Low Magic Settings
In low magic settings, the party's main opposition will likely be humans with competing agendas. Depending on your setting, the party could also face off against monsters, though they'd be less common than in heroic fantasy settings. Monsters that could suit a low magic setting include goblins, oversized beasts like giant spiders, and even bugbears, if you prefer that classic D&D flair. When you're looking to up the ante, giants and even dragons are an option.
At the end of the day, just about any monster can be included in a low magic setting. What matters is the monster's impact on the world at large. In some cases, these monsters haven't been seen for generations and are nothing but an old wives' tale before making a resurgence. In others, these monsters are treated as commonplace and don't break the grounded feel of the setting.
Before You Start, Talk to Your Table
Playing in a low magic scenario can be a jarring departure for players that have come up with a traditional D&D experience. Before putting in the work to plan your campaign, make sure you and your table are on the same page with what to expect.
How to Set Up Your Low Magic Campaign
Beyond limiting character options, magic, and monsters, it might be necessary to adjust the core rules of the game in order to provoke a feeling of realism in your low magic setting. Below, we provide some optional rules to help ground the fantastical elements of the D&D system.
Gritty Realism
Gritty Realism is an optional rest variant in the Dungeon Master's Guide that slows down the recovery of hit points and features. Under Gritty Realism, it takes 8 hours to complete a short rest and 7 days for a long rest. This is meant to make players think twice about diving into combat and encourages them to spend more time in the safety of civilization.
This variant works particularly well for political campaigns as the players will have plenty of time for negotiating and espionage while they wait for their abilities to recharge and hit points to regenerate.
Character Advancement
When looking to run a more grounded campaign, it's best to keep characters in the early tiers of play. Levels 1-10 are a sweet spot for low magic games because characters won't have massive pools of hit points or access to high levels spells, which can help keep the stakes high and make gameplay more grounded.
If you're running a long-term game and don't want players to feel stuck in their characters, consider alternate ways of leveling up. For example, if you wanted to cap magic in the world at 3rd level spells, you could allow your party to level normally to 6th level. After that, class features and spell slots wouldn't progress, but characters would be able to choose a feat or alternate subclass feature when they level up.
In terms of rewarding players beyond leveling up, the Dungeon Master's Guide suggests that characters in low magic campaigns should only have one uncommon magic item by the time they reach 11th level. This means you'll have to be creative when handing out loot, as you can easily break the immersion of a low magic setting by handing out powerful gear. Yeah, players might not be getting armor of invulnerability, but perhaps they can be rewarded with a deed to a castle or a boat and crew.
Travel and Exploration
Low magic settings are excellent places to run sprawling, adventurous campaigns. Traveling without the aid of magic means that surviving in the wild becomes a real challenge that won't be easily solved with a casting of goodberry or circumnavigated by teleporting away.
Before running a low magic setting, I'd suggest checking out the Wilderness Survival section of the Dungeon Master's Guide, which provides rollable tables for weather, and rules for wilderness hazards, foraging for food, and becoming lost.
The Finer Details
Using meticulous variant rules that are mostly ignored, like encumbrance and tracking your food and inventory, are more ways to bring realism to low magic campaigns. Obviously, keeping a running tally of your arrows doesn't sound like the most exciting experience, but the real fun comes in when you're lost in a dark forest and only have 5 arrows left in your quiver. Will the party have to backtrack to civilization to restock? Or will they have to keep an extra watch while you scavenge for supplies to make your own? And oh, is that a cluster giant wolf spiders scuttling your way?
If you're okay with magic users in your campaign but want to find ways to restrict their abilities, you could also remove the component pouch or other tools that allow players to ignore some material components when casting spells. That way, casters aren't only restricted by the spell slots they have but also by what materials they were able to scrounge together at the last village.
Creating Your Setting
There are specific campaigns that lend themselves to low magic settings. Believe it or not, when all-powerful spellcasters have the ability to teleport, resurrect the dead, and reshape the world around them, it can drastically change the type of story that can be told.
Low magic campaigns are well-suited to historical fantasy settings because the lack of fantastical elements makes the world you're playing in feel more grounded and realistic. Here are just a few historical periods that can create ideal settings for low magic campaigns:
- Middle Ages: Though the medieval setting is explored thoroughly in traditional D&D, it can look vastly different in low magic settings where magic and monsters are not as prevalent. Those living in this period experienced plenty of hardships, from war to famine and disease. Without access to magic, these issues can threaten society as a whole and may need a group of adventurers to go on an epic quest to find the key to their resolution.
- Ancient Greece: A time of epic adventures, tales of gods and monsters, and conflict. Exploration, especially by sea, will be a substantial pillar of running a low magic setting in ancient Greece. There will also be the opportunity to embark on heroic quests to hunt mythical monsters.
- Feudal Japan: With the failing influence of the emperor and leaders of different armies controlling smaller pieces of land, this period makes a stellar backdrop for low magic settings. The story could revolve around a party of warriors attempting to swing their faction's influence with shrewd negotiation or prowess in combat.
How Low Can You Go?
Low magic campaigns are an interesting departure from traditional D&D and can breathe fresh life into a table that's tired of counterspell battles. These settings alter the focus of D&D, reducing the space that magic occupies and allowing for strategy, roleplay, and exploration to flourish. So, what are you waiting for? It's time to go on an adventure!
Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his girlfriend, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.
After running a 3-year mostly-DotMM campaign, I have just spent a year with most of the same group running a homebrew post-apocalyptic, desert world with semi-low-magic. By that I mean there were plenty of spellcasters but few magic items beyond what the Artificer can create with infusions. I felt that that the Artificer especially would appreciate the power they had. I also implemented many of the encumbrance and wilderness challenges, although have let up on some of those now that my players are now Level 8.
When I surveyed my players most recently, the lack of magic items was one of the main things they identified as impacting their fun. The Artificer was one of the most frustrated! Fortunately they are now in a highly-magical Temple of the Ancients that stayed outside the tech focus of the world and kept powerful magic alive.
A second frustration is the wilderness survival aspect of the setting.
My advice is to be very very careful and hesitant about starting a low-magic campaign. I like the poster who recommended a one-shot first. I suspect most players from traditional D&D settings don't have the patience to do low-magic.
Don't forget settings like Africa, and Asian nations like India. You can easily have campaigns based there. There's enough non-magical magic, like math and science to make it seem magical.
This is a great way to describe it. Definitely like that vibe.
A modern world zombie apocalypse is also a low magic setting, with heavy firearms and explosives subbing in for magic weapons and spells.
We've been playing for years in a low-magic scenario based on HarnWorld. Each player plays seven characters, and is in charge of a small frontier settlement. The settlements compete for power and for recruiting new settlers to the area, but the characters can unite to fight a common enemy or to go on a mission/adventure, with each player choosing one character to send. Instead of leveling across the board, the character levels in a single skill at a time. The focus is on the mission and the character interaction, rather than the character getting more powerful. Spells exist, but the common folk don't trust magic (think the witch scene in Holy grail), so the spellcaster has to be very careful when and where he casts them. We found three potions of healing once (concocted from a rare root), and it was a big deal.
When it comes to low-magic campaigns I imagine the setting of the Thief video games by Eidos Interactive. Even though it has Victorian, Gothic, gaslight fantasy and steampunk aesthetics, at it's core it's a low-magic world. Garrett, the game's protagonist, is a master thief stealing from the rich and he only stumbles upon magic when he begins following the actions of his mark's cult of ritualist casters and the artifacts of their rites.
Heh, my first games of D&D all those years ago WAS a low magic campaign by default. Our DM at the time didn't care to even consider magic as a major force (I want to say he couldn't fully wrap his mind around it). Was it there? Yes, kinda. But for the most part it was filled with dungeon crawls, city intrigue, betrayal, and solid character development. We were a bunch of theatre kids who wanted to act more than play. Eventually, we learned how to meld the two into something special. We were fans of a quasi "Dark Sun" campaign. We played in a world that magic had basically destroyed it and thus only those who had the knowledge of this ancient concept could even hope to understand it. It's like asking "What is God" in a sense. How is our reality woven and how might one manipulate the rules of reality against the most extreme circumstances. We fought with guile, brutality, cunning, and avoided almost everything we could. As we grew as a team, and as players, roles where defined. Ultimately...we became legend. Great article. Brought back mad memories.
I think it means races with natural magic abilities, such as aasimar or genasi.
Better idea: play a low-magic system instead. D&D is not good for low-magic, it excels at one thing and one thing only: Heroic Fantasy. Shoehorning it is just going to cause frustrations.
I have always felt that D&D was too unbalanced toward spells and magic. The feeling that players can just dimension door out or teleport out of a situation was lame to me. I didn't want to keep upping the magic abilities of enemies to keep up or have players feel OP because they had amazing magic effects. On the other hand, my good friend loves the heroic feeling of typical D&D. He likes that you feel powerful with spells, unlike in real life. So while I see the draw for magic and spells, I really would like to play a gritty realistic low-magic campaign in D&D. Kind of like a Call of Cthulhu feel to it.
Keep in mind that low magic campaigns also means low magic opponents. Don't railroad a party with no magical items up against multiple damage resistant monsters with no way to back out of the encounter. Quite a few players invest time and thought in developing their character and want to see that character flourish while overcoming challenges. TPKs should be rare. Otherwise, players will get frustrated, not invest in their characters, or just walk away from the table..permanently.
D&D is supposed to be story-telling by social group, not egotistical tyranny.
I loved tracking arrows. It was so immersive when I had 6 left in a fire giant castle in the middle of no where and nothing to craft them with. I had to take a feat to get mending to keep repairing them.
i have an idea for a semi-low magic campaign, only allow arcane spells to go up to 5th level, and remove any spells that resurrect or immediately prevent death. in place of this, anytime a spell casting class is supposed to gain a higher spell-slot, give them a feature similar to the warlocks mystic arcanum. thank you for coming to my ted-talk.
PS: remove any OP spell like wish and power-word kill. as well as easily exploitable spells such as polymorph, teleport, or enlarge/reduce. again, thank you for coming to my ted-talk.
Well you can have high magic opponents but they should be big bads. Think the evil sorcerer.
The goal shouldn't be to TPK but make them think about how to win.
One way to do this would be to make Cantrips a short rest kind of ability, for example Proficiency modifier times per short rest, or something like that. Alternatively make some of them once per short rest but make them better. For example, making Blade Ward a reaction that gives resistance to physical damage until the end of your next turn. It would work only once per short rest. This would make magic rarer but impactful.
I'd also think it would make sense to make most PCs one third or one half casters with really high-level magics and full casters kept rare. (This would require some classes to get altered, for sure.) Other spells like Create Food and Water would also need to be banned or made very difficult to prevent them from being too "high magic".
Low magic settings are also frequently premised on "magic corrupts, particularly the more powerful magics." Thus having substantial costs appear for learning higher level spells.
Articles like this remind me how few of the classes/subclasses in D&D have no spells or things that could be interpreted as magic. I think Rogue, Fighter, and Barbarian are it. And some of the subclasses of those would need to be rare or not used. Might gate entrance into certain subclasses by making them fractions. I’d talk with the PCs about what subclasses they are looking at to put that in the story. Order of Eldritch Knights, Rogue Phantoms are part of a mystery cult, Zealot barbarians take a special herb.
Battlemaster, Champion, Cavilier, Samurai, Purple Dragon for Fighter. Thief, Swashbuckler, Scout, Assassin, Mastermind, Inquisitive for Rogue. Berserker and Battlerager for barbarian. Monk has some questionable choices for low magic, all but Astral Self and Four Elements?
Great article! My world lies in between this and epic fantasy. I definitely thinks it’s possible to mix, keeping some of the grittier elements like survival, encumbrance, and traveling blended with magic and a magic system that is grounded in world.
Isn't low magic that magic as a force, spell casting or item list is reduced (possibly to nothing) and low fantasy is all about whether elves, manticores and owlbears etc... exist?
I think it's quite important to distinguish between these two, Low fantasy = Humans with magic. low magic = whatever you want but in a world where magic isn't as common. Both = reality, or perhaps alternate history stuff, Neither (high and high)= Forgotten realms.
This is actually pretty helpful. The advice for low-magic campaigns is fairly specific, and it makes sense. Offering other ways to customize and develop a character beside the normal class features is a neat idea.