D&D 5E Sword & Sorcery / Low Magic

[overgeeked]

So I’ve been reading a bunch of my old Sword & Sorcery fiction and watching a bunch of the often wonderfully terrible fantasy movies from the ’80s and wondering about Sword & Sorcery 5E.

I know there’s a difference between low magic and Sword & Sorcery. They don’t always go hand-in-hand, but for the feel I’m looking for they do.

This is kinda hard to pull off in 5E considering there are only three classes who are not casters and each of those have caster or specifically magical subclasses. So unless you want the whole party made up of barbarians, fighters, and rogues, we need to either clamp down on magic and casters or start homebrewing a bunch of other classes.

The easier solution is to clamp down on casters. Of the various ways to do so, I think bringing back our old friend uneven advancement is the easiest and most familiar fix. There are three levels of caster in 5E: full, half, and third. You could give each a multiplier for xp necessary to advance. Say x4, x2, 1.5 for ease of use. You could also make any casters use the Spellcaster Sidekick class, though I’m not sure how well that would go down.

Any other thoughts or ideas on doing low magic Sword & Sorcery with D&D 5E?

 

[Aldarc]

I would probably "give up" on 5e. It's too wide and high magic. I would use either alternative rule sets for 5e or look to close proximities.

Adventures in Middle Earth (5e Engine)

Black Hack, 2nd Edition

Worlds Without Number by Jeremy Crawford

 

[not-so-newguy]

Are there any particular books that you're trying to emulate?

 

[overgeeked]

Are there any particular books that you're trying to emulate?

Howard’s Conan stuff...without having to use the rules heavy Conan 2d20 game.

 

[J.Quondam]

There's a pretty active thread about playtesting "World of Xoth", which is meant to emulate S&S type fantasy in 5e.

D&D 5E - Free 60+ page Guide to Sword & Sorcery for 5E D&D

The Player's Guide to the World of Xoth is a free PDF with more than 60 pages of sword and sorcery material for fifth edition that allows you to play in adventures inspired by the stories of Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Venture in the footsteps of Conan the Cimmerian, Satampra Zeiros...

www.enworld.org

That first post contains a download for the player's guide. It includes some how-to on using standard 5e classes in the genre, as well as a handful of new classes.

 

[not-so-newguy]

One thing to consider is removing a Spell Focus option for Spellcasters, or at least making a Spell Focus a rarer magic item that needs to found in play.

 

[TwoSix]

You could also make any casters use the Spellcaster Sidekick class, though I’m not sure how well that would go down.

I’m working on a 5e hack where everyone has to use the 3 sidekick classes only. The focus is on making magic more shamanistic and totemic, rather than being powered by the internal magic of the caster. Players can spend experience to attune more strongly to found magic items, train with NPC organizations, or make pacts with powerful spirits.

 

[Ath'kethin]

I've been running low magic/sword & sorcery games using 5e for years. It's possible, and not too difficult; don't believe the naysayers.

An easy solution to the magic issue is just ban all full casters, all spellcasting classes and subclasses, or at the very least ban damage-dealing cantrips. I ran several successful games featuring no full casters except the warlock, and they were awesome. Well also reskinned Eldritch Blast so it isn't just a magic raygun, which helped a lot.

Obviously, there's a lot of managing expectations that needs to happen is such a campaign, and that should be part of your pitch to potential players - don't even wait for Session 0. No full casters means much more limited magical healing, and you need to anticipate that. For my part I also ditched healing POTIONS (where would they come from?) but allowed the warlock to concoct Keoghtom's Ointment. It made for tender, mich more dramatic play, and made the group really weigh the value And necessity of combat.

I also just gave everyone max hit points at every level. And while some argue otherwise, I'm A-OK with full healing on a long rest. After all, the Conan stories don't really focus on his time laid up in convalescent care, now do they? Let the characters be bold and dramatic.

The Primeval Thule campaign setting has a 5e version, and it combined with the Primeval Thule Player's Companion has tons of flavor and options for such a campaign. Note that the restrictions I mention above are my own, and nothing in the PTCS even suggests following that course. I (and my groups) felt the changes really enhanced the feel of the setting and game, but those changes are not really necessary.

I'm sure someone will mention Xoth in this discussion, which is fine; there's a 5e Xoth document that has some more ideas on adapting 5e to Sword & Sorcery. It's pretty good, but I don't agree with all of it's ideas. The Xoth adventures are pretty solid, though, and very evocative.

Most 5e adventure from WotC require heavy adjustment to work as Sword & Sorcery stories. IME Lost Mine of Phandelver and Tomb of Annihilation were easiest to rejigger this way, but of course YMMV. I prefer strings of shorter, episodic adventures to running the longer arcs, and there are plenty to choose from (there are quite a few Primeval Thule adventures, for example, in addition to the Xoth stuff).

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Give the 1/2 spell progression from the paladin/ranger/artificer to the full casting classes, then remove the half-casters!

Bump warlock and bards:

- Bards become a rogue archetype (I'd go with Arcane trickster spellcasting + improved Help from the Expert companion class).

- Warlocks subclasses becomes Divine domains for the Cultist (new name for the cleric).

 

[Quickleaf]

So I’ve been reading a bunch of my old Sword & Sorcery fiction and watching a bunch of the often wonderfully terrible fantasy movies from the ’80s and wondering about Sword & Sorcery 5E.

I know there’s a difference between low magic and Sword & Sorcery. They don’t always go hand-in-hand, but for the feel I’m looking for they do.

This is kinda hard to pull off in 5E considering there are only three classes who are not casters and each of those have caster or specifically magical subclasses. So unless you want the whole party made up of barbarians, fighters, and rogues, we need to either clamp down on magic and casters or start homebrewing a bunch of other classes.

The easier solution is to clamp down on casters. Of the various ways to do so, I think bringing back our old friend uneven advancement is the easiest and most familiar fix. There are three levels of caster in 5E: full, half, and third. You could give each a multiplier for xp necessary to advance. Say x4, x2, 1.5 for ease of use. You could also make any casters use the Spellcaster Sidekick class, though I’m not sure how well that would go down.

Any other thoughts or ideas on doing low magic Sword & Sorcery with D&D 5E?

Good suggestions about 5e-adjacent games already which are built with low-magic in mind.

There's also a spell-less ranger variant that WotC described in a 2015 article: Modifying Classes | Dungeons & Dragons So if you incorporated that, you'd have 5 nonmagical classes to use: barbarian, fighter, monk, ranger (spell-less), and rogue. Of course judicious adjudication around specific subclasses might be necessary. Expert (sidekick) class might be interesting for players want to run scholarly types, which could work if you embrace some of the investigative pulp influence on Sword & Sorcery.

Probably you'd want to utilize certain optional rules in the DMG... Action Options, Cleaving Through Creatures, Hitting Cover, Injuries, Morale, Slow Natural Healing... and possibly a Critical Hit Table.

If you did want to include magic, I think you'll quickly be butting up against just how very non-Swords & Sorcery even low level spells like magic missile or Leomund's tiny hut can feel. If I were in your shoes looking to kit-bash 5e into a low-magic Swords & Sorcery game, I'd be tempted to toss the entire 5e spellcasting system in lieu of something built from the ground up with my vision of what PC-available magic does looks like for the campaign I want to run.