Hello, myself along with the rest of my party are new to DnD and the role of DM has fallen on me. We've done a few adventures and played around with different characters, but we're all starting to look for bigger worlds and longer running stories and I have some ideas for a world that I'm not sure how to implement.
Basically, the material plane and the Feywild were once one. Think Narnia. Then a world shattering event happened and the 2 split leaving magic on the material plane cut off at the knees and diminished while the Feywild still retains the full force of magic. Technology has taken over the spaces magic no longer holds. Now, the technology isn't what I have an issue with thanks to Eberron. My issue now is how in the hell am I supposed to diminish magic? Do I cut the spell list and ban a shit ton of spells and how? Do I have casters all scale at half-level and how? Do I cut damage in half? Is any of this even possible?
Any advice and/or help is welcome even if it's quit while I'm ahead.
Yes, it's possible, but D&D isn't the best system for the job. In my recent Eternarii adventure setting, the party were up against an antagonist group who wanted to obliterate the magical weave and remove magic from the world. I started out by applying a flat negative modifier to all to-hit, spell save DCs, and such like. I also subtracted a straight cut to damage as well (half the dice).
Now, in my setting they had to attempt to stop the ritual or entire schools of magic would become inactive. I started with Level 9, and as the ritual progressed the higher level spells became inactive first. I highlighted it well in advance, by sharing that magic was doing weird things, and had it weaken before deactivating certain spells.
The problem is that for a character to be effective without magic, they really do need magic weapons. Monster resistances and immunities are the mechanism the designers chose to scale the challenge as players ascend the levels. As a result magics are often needed. Sadly, though D&D really is designed around magic being pretty freely accessible. To make a low magic level possible requires massive amounts of work from the DM.
Your idea is great, but given that D&D already places far more workload than should be acceptable upon DMs, you're adding to that workload if you want to tweak the system so extensively.
Thank you for your input. I understand that the game is designed and balanced with high and freely accessible magic in mind, that's why my thought was to replace what's needed with technology similar to Eberron - using what's left of magic in the world to further tech and have magic items fill in the gaps so players could still be effective. At least that was my thought process. Do you have recommendations for systems that would be better for the job? Any other tips?
The major problem is that magic is actually poorly defined within the system.
Consider for example, are you assuming that Ki points are magical? Superiority die? This is where we discover the issue. I had a monk in my campaign claim that the absence of magic wouldn't affect them or the fighter because their features weren't inherently magical. My ruling on this was that every D&D Class was magical. Therefore every single class feature, feat or such was inherently magical. You can probably see where the issues are coming in.
As for other systems, it's a difficult one. There are some out there, but truth be told I wouldn't recomment a single system. Rather stealing rules and features from other systems might be helpful.
Interesting 🤔... I am also of the mind that things like Ki Points and Superiority Die were not inherently magical, but that's a thing that could change depending on character creation, flavor, and subclass which I did not account for. I was mostly thinking of spellcasting in particular and not magical abilities. As for stealing rules and features from other system, I did have someone privately message me about stealing from Daggerheart as being that it only goes to level 12 instead of 20, features more narrative focused than damaging spells that you never get full access to due to the distribution of Domain Cards, and doesn't support an abundance of HP like DnD does, it feels smaller in comparison. Maybe I'll look at that IDK 🤷🏻♂️ it sounds like it could work but I've never played it to know any better, hell, I'm still new at this system.
You could simply leave the player characters as they are and have them be the exception, maybe build into your world the idea that the line between the two separate planes is starting to blur and a few very rare individuals are suddenly developing powers that haven't been seen in centuries. Something like that is central to a lot of fantasy settings, including to a degree the Dragonlance D&D setting and part of the centre of any D&D campaign is that the players are exceptional.
The other option is to let them have the full spellcasting but make them reflavour everything as being technology and encourage them to be as creative as possible.
Basically I'm not a fan of limiting the spellcaster players as it will take a lot of the fun out of the game for them (unless they're 100% onboard obviously)
I'm curious as to how one would implement that. Do you double dice on damage? What about spells that don't do damage? If the Feywild has more magic does that mean I should be creating a whole new list of spells strictly for that plane?
I like the idea of blurring the lines between the planes. That's a fun story hook, but the thing about stories is they all end. So the second that hook catches a player it's just gonna end with things going back to the way it was before the split and I might as well just stuck with Narnia.
I understand how it can feel like I'm stifling spell casters which, I don't wanna do. But also if I'm gonna be stuck DMing then I might as well create a world that I would enjoy telling stories in. So I need to find a way to fill the gaps so spell casters don't feel punished while also getting to do what I wanna do. Tough task, I know, but what are my other options? Not play and just show up to sessions to be the "rules guy"? I don't think so. If I'm gonna put my time into something then it should be something I enjoy too whether I'm a player character or not. They get to create characters and go on adventures. I get to crate a world to play with. Win-Win.
You'll need to decide where you want the majority of the action to take place and what are the mechanics for each realm. You can just have the game take place in the Fey world and have magic operate normally there. The party would then have the option of exploring the prime material with the knowledge that some of their magical abilities would be nerfed (eg advantage for saves).
If you set the beginning of the adventure in the nerfed material plane, then the players are going to choose non-magical characters and you're going to have a party of fighters, barbarians and rogues, unless you introduce a mitigating mechanic like extra obedience to a diety, which could actually make for some fun role-playing.
If I were tasked for running such a world I would probably have the players start in the borderlands of the two worlds (however that would work mechanically) and give the party a couple of different hooks for adventuring in one part or the other.
I'm curious as to how one would implement that. Do you double dice on damage? What about spells that don't do damage? If the Feywild has more magic does that mean I should be creating a whole new list of spells strictly for that plane?
Not sure that it’s the right approach: it’d depend on whether you envisage most of the campaign taking place on the Material plane or in the Feywild. Boosting Feywild magic might work if you’re mostly in the Material plane.
Options:
- +1 to spell attacks and/or save DCs
- all spells count as having been cast with spell slot one level higher
- consider triggering rolls on the Wild Magic Surge table.
I'd say, especially if you're new to DM'ing, the best solution would be to just ban full-class casters, or require them to multiclass and they can only take max 4 levels in the caster class. You're also going to generally have some additional worldbuilding, because if all magic is diminished, what does that mean for deities? Adventurers are already supposed to be exceptions to the rule, so I could see gods still being able to channel their powers into a few individuals, and some sorcerer blood lines being able to survive. But I can't see, given your setup, a wizard being able to find higher-level spells to learn, or a bard college being still able to function (which then begs the question, what happened to the bard colleges?). If resources are now limited, extant higher-level casters may be unwilling to share or teach what they have.
Does resurrection magic work? If healing magic is going to be limited, how will that affect your combat, since calculated CRs tend to expect some in-combat healing.
Hello, myself along with the rest of my party are new to DnD and the role of DM has fallen on me. We've done a few adventures and played around with different characters, but we're all starting to look for bigger worlds and longer running stories and I have some ideas for a world that I'm not sure how to implement.
Basically, the material plane and the Feywild were once one. Think Narnia. Then a world shattering event happened and the 2 split leaving magic on the material plane cut off at the knees and diminished while the Feywild still retains the full force of magic. Technology has taken over the spaces magic no longer holds. Now, the technology isn't what I have an issue with thanks to Eberron. My issue now is how in the hell am I supposed to diminish magic? Do I cut the spell list and ban a shit ton of spells and how? Do I have casters all scale at half-level and how? Do I cut damage in half? Is any of this even possible?
Any advice and/or help is welcome even if it's quit while I'm ahead.
Yes, it's possible, but D&D isn't the best system for the job. In my recent Eternarii adventure setting, the party were up against an antagonist group who wanted to obliterate the magical weave and remove magic from the world. I started out by applying a flat negative modifier to all to-hit, spell save DCs, and such like. I also subtracted a straight cut to damage as well (half the dice).
Now, in my setting they had to attempt to stop the ritual or entire schools of magic would become inactive. I started with Level 9, and as the ritual progressed the higher level spells became inactive first. I highlighted it well in advance, by sharing that magic was doing weird things, and had it weaken before deactivating certain spells.
The problem is that for a character to be effective without magic, they really do need magic weapons. Monster resistances and immunities are the mechanism the designers chose to scale the challenge as players ascend the levels. As a result magics are often needed. Sadly, though D&D really is designed around magic being pretty freely accessible. To make a low magic level possible requires massive amounts of work from the DM.
Your idea is great, but given that D&D already places far more workload than should be acceptable upon DMs, you're adding to that workload if you want to tweak the system so extensively.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Thank you for your input. I understand that the game is designed and balanced with high and freely accessible magic in mind, that's why my thought was to replace what's needed with technology similar to Eberron - using what's left of magic in the world to further tech and have magic items fill in the gaps so players could still be effective. At least that was my thought process. Do you have recommendations for systems that would be better for the job? Any other tips?
The major problem is that magic is actually poorly defined within the system.
Consider for example, are you assuming that Ki points are magical? Superiority die? This is where we discover the issue. I had a monk in my campaign claim that the absence of magic wouldn't affect them or the fighter because their features weren't inherently magical. My ruling on this was that every D&D Class was magical. Therefore every single class feature, feat or such was inherently magical. You can probably see where the issues are coming in.
As for other systems, it's a difficult one. There are some out there, but truth be told I wouldn't recomment a single system. Rather stealing rules and features from other systems might be helpful.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Interesting 🤔... I am also of the mind that things like Ki Points and Superiority Die were not inherently magical, but that's a thing that could change depending on character creation, flavor, and subclass which I did not account for. I was mostly thinking of spellcasting in particular and not magical abilities. As for stealing rules and features from other system, I did have someone privately message me about stealing from Daggerheart as being that it only goes to level 12 instead of 20, features more narrative focused than damaging spells that you never get full access to due to the distribution of Domain Cards, and doesn't support an abundance of HP like DnD does, it feels smaller in comparison. Maybe I'll look at that IDK 🤷🏻♂️ it sounds like it could work but I've never played it to know any better, hell, I'm still new at this system.
You could simply leave the player characters as they are and have them be the exception, maybe build into your world the idea that the line between the two separate planes is starting to blur and a few very rare individuals are suddenly developing powers that haven't been seen in centuries. Something like that is central to a lot of fantasy settings, including to a degree the Dragonlance D&D setting and part of the centre of any D&D campaign is that the players are exceptional.
The other option is to let them have the full spellcasting but make them reflavour everything as being technology and encourage them to be as creative as possible.
Basically I'm not a fan of limiting the spellcaster players as it will take a lot of the fun out of the game for them (unless they're 100% onboard obviously)
How about approaching it from the other direction: boost magic in the Feywild, but keep it as normal on the Material plane?
I'm curious as to how one would implement that. Do you double dice on damage? What about spells that don't do damage? If the Feywild has more magic does that mean I should be creating a whole new list of spells strictly for that plane?
I like the idea of blurring the lines between the planes. That's a fun story hook, but the thing about stories is they all end. So the second that hook catches a player it's just gonna end with things going back to the way it was before the split and I might as well just stuck with Narnia.
I understand how it can feel like I'm stifling spell casters which, I don't wanna do. But also if I'm gonna be stuck DMing then I might as well create a world that I would enjoy telling stories in. So I need to find a way to fill the gaps so spell casters don't feel punished while also getting to do what I wanna do. Tough task, I know, but what are my other options? Not play and just show up to sessions to be the "rules guy"? I don't think so. If I'm gonna put my time into something then it should be something I enjoy too whether I'm a player character or not. They get to create characters and go on adventures. I get to crate a world to play with. Win-Win.
You'll need to decide where you want the majority of the action to take place and what are the mechanics for each realm. You can just have the game take place in the Fey world and have magic operate normally there. The party would then have the option of exploring the prime material with the knowledge that some of their magical abilities would be nerfed (eg advantage for saves).
If you set the beginning of the adventure in the nerfed material plane, then the players are going to choose non-magical characters and you're going to have a party of fighters, barbarians and rogues, unless you introduce a mitigating mechanic like extra obedience to a diety, which could actually make for some fun role-playing.
If I were tasked for running such a world I would probably have the players start in the borderlands of the two worlds (however that would work mechanically) and give the party a couple of different hooks for adventuring in one part or the other.
Not sure that it’s the right approach: it’d depend on whether you envisage most of the campaign taking place on the Material plane or in the Feywild. Boosting Feywild magic might work if you’re mostly in the Material plane.
Options:
- +1 to spell attacks and/or save DCs
- all spells count as having been cast with spell slot one level higher
- consider triggering rolls on the Wild Magic Surge table.
If you have player buy-in on a low-magic world, you could simply ask them not to play super magic-y characters.
I'd say, especially if you're new to DM'ing, the best solution would be to just ban full-class casters, or require them to multiclass and they can only take max 4 levels in the caster class. You're also going to generally have some additional worldbuilding, because if all magic is diminished, what does that mean for deities? Adventurers are already supposed to be exceptions to the rule, so I could see gods still being able to channel their powers into a few individuals, and some sorcerer blood lines being able to survive. But I can't see, given your setup, a wizard being able to find higher-level spells to learn, or a bard college being still able to function (which then begs the question, what happened to the bard colleges?). If resources are now limited, extant higher-level casters may be unwilling to share or teach what they have.
Does resurrection magic work? If healing magic is going to be limited, how will that affect your combat, since calculated CRs tend to expect some in-combat healing.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep