Are there any published guides for 5e for creating a low fantasy game world? Are there any 3rd-party guides for this using 5e?

Thanks, everyone!

Because lots of terms mean different things to different people, what do you mean when you say low fantasy? Can you flesh out the kinds of things you’re looking for?

I don't magic to be quite as accessible. I was thinking about have characters in the dedicated magic classes to multiclass and only level that class every other level. Still, that will make the half-caster classes relatively powerful in comparison.

Frankly, trying to clamp down on magic in class choices is not a great move; there's exactly 3 classes that don't have magic or an analogous power coded into their core kit, and at least half the subclasses of those three bring the magic in. And 50/50 splits are pretty much the worst multiclassing progression; a character literally can't get their tier 2 features like that until they're nearly in tier 3. PC's are supposed to be exceptional, so their being one of the rare casters doesn't necessarily keep a setting overall from being low fantasy. Really, the main way you do low fantasy imo is to make access to magic items and services scarce; a priest purported to mend wounds simply by laying hands on someone or stories of seeing a man shift into an animal or throw fire attract all kinds of interest, speculation, skepticism, and suspicion. A +1 sword itself is a remarkable and near-priceless find, not a pricey but typical acquisition for an adventurer or soldier of fortune who's made their first really big payday. Basically, approach it from the DM side of things, not the player side.

Good advice. Thanks!

If you want to run a low fantasy game where the PCs have very limited access to magic, I'd recommend going with a different game system like GURPS or Savage World.

While I agree that the idea of low-magic has multiple interpretations, I think you can achieve some of the effect by controlling who has the spell slots. If you can arrange for the party to have at most half-casters and for the antagonists to be full casters, you can achieve the effect of making casterliness intimidating.

Look into the latest RPG for Middle Earth using the 5E ruleset. It's very low magic, and uses classes that can't spellcast.

You might also dig around on DMsguild. I'm sure some folks have already built campaign worlds or rules sets based in 5E that don't give every class access to magical abilities.

Lastly, if you can't find what you want, you can always homebrew things. Granted, this is a LOT of work (creating or adapting classes that meet your criteria for low magic) but it's probably the route with the greatest chance of giving you what you want.

Rather than using straight 5e (which is heavily reliant on widespread and obvious magic), you're best off going for an adaption, like Free League's Lord of the Rings: Roleplaying, which adapts 5e and is a whole game that has minimal magic.

That said, I'd actually go the whole way and an engine built from the ground up to handle the style you want. Rather than the above LotR game adapted to 5e, I play the original game, called The One Ring, which IMO handles things better. There are other low magic systems out there, but I'm not familiar enough with them to offer recommendations.

I wouldn't just carve things out of D&D5e though. That tends to cause issues and there are systems better suited for what you want out there.

 controlling your players' character sheets and spell progress, and whatever else sounds complicated. instead, why not adjust social pressures in the story? let them choose who they are, but then make it someone else's fault magic is rare. give them a reason to hesitate to solve every problem with magic (and sometimes go gleefully nuts with so much magic). is magic illegal? taboo or misunderstood? perhaps only the rich may go to magic school, enforced by dreaded guild enforcers? or maybe young magic users are encouraged (forced) to join the (not entirely good) empire's army on the riotous frontier?

 if you're set on using 5e, then embrace the basic premise that that these characters are exceptional among their population. of course these guys would have magic and special stuff going on in a world where that's rare: these are the heroes of an age! if instead you're envisioning farmers and tailors and cooks to go off to do archeology and intrigue in a world where dragons are a story and skeletons are only ever just creepy (and not bitey), then that might be a different TTRPG altogether.

Quote from Erik_Soong >>

Quote from Linklite >>

Rather than using straight 5e (which is heavily reliant on widespread and obvious magic), you're best off going for an adaption, like Free League's Lord of the Rings: Roleplaying, which adapts 5e and is a whole game that has minimal magic.

That said, I'd actually go the whole way and an engine built from the ground up to handle the style you want. Rather than the above LotR game adapted to 5e, I play the original game, called The One Ring, which IMO handles things better. There are other low magic systems out there, but I'm not familiar enough with them to offer recommendations.

I wouldn't just carve things out of D&D5e though. That tends to cause issues and there are systems better suited for what you want out there.

 I just ordered The One Ring the other day because it was praised as one of the best non-D&D fantasy ttrpgs. I'm pretty excited about it.

 I love it. The engine is really good at replicating the Tolkienesque atmosphere, I'm just waiting for my Moria Kickstarter stuff to appear. The presentation is gorgeous. A money pit though.

Quote from FossMaNo1 >>

I don't magic to be quite as accessible. I was thinking about have characters in the dedicated magic classes to multiclass and only level that class every other level.

 I agree with Ace that this would be a tough build, but I think you might be able to do something similar with more specific restrictions. Allowing one caster level for every 2 or 3 non-caster levels would still allow the non-caster class to proceed at a decent pace. You could also cap caster levels at a max of 3 or 5 to only allow up to level 2 or 3 spells, respectively.

You wouldn't see a lot of effective combat magic, but low level spells can provide a lot of utility.

I don't think this would be as seamless as another system that was better designed for it, but if you guys really wanted to stay with D&D I think this could work.