Elf sounds like it would work pretty well, tiefling could also be fun. And all those classes sound like they'd work well. Sounds like a fun character!
...I am now stuck on eldritch knight or an oath of conquest paladin. Its basically down to "Do I wanna be a high int low cha character or visa versa." There is a lot of appeal in both. Eldritch Knight works better with High Elf, but Oath of Conquest Paladin is *perfect* lore wise, and could work with a dark elf, tho sunlight sensitivity is always a bitch....ohhhh, maybe an aasimar!
Low int high charisma sounds to me like it'd be funnier and mesh well with the "got a good sword by mistake" thing, but then, I do tend to play high cha, low int/wis myself a fair bit so it might just be my personal preferences talking. But bratty evil airheaded paladin is a great mental image. "Whatever, it's a sword, right?"
so far in tonight's game, the witch managed to set off a cursed scroll, teleporting herself away from the party, and the barbarian accidentally knocked out both himself and the rogue. we've been playing for an hour.
Ah, my Pathfinder game has less to get that ridiculous. We're playing through the Rise of the Runelords with (sort of) the Iconics. Currently we were running back to town to get the sheriff to help us get a 'warrant' to enter a dodgy insane asylum and save the proprietor from his own stupidity/murder one of the patients*, but were interrupted by a farmer yelling about killer ghoul scarecrows. So probably gonna do that and then get back to the asylum. There was the time the entire party (except for me, the Sorceror) charged across a rope bridge... which promptly fell, dumping them all into the water some 80' below. While we were being attacked by goblins. Which I then had to fight. By myself. Many magic missiles were expended that day. *: Well, mercy kill, I guess. He's in the terminal stages of Ghoul Fever, and our GM has made it clear there's nothing that can be done to save him, so our party decided it would be best to kill him quickly and spare him the curse of undeath. This decision was probably strongly influenced by the fact that we very recently (in and out of game) lost our Cleric to a Shadow. And that, y'know, we don't want him to come back and infect the rest of the Sanatorium. Also, the place is, as I mentioned, sketchy as hell, but we weren't about to barge in and risk killing the staff on a suspicion, and our rogue wasn't confident in sneaking in. Now I have Invisibility and Admonishing Ray, though.
the whole thing was just a parade of failures, starting when we found a scroll made of a goblin skin... -magus and witch both attempted and failed Knowledge: Arcana checks to know what spell is on it. -witch used read magic, which normally doesn't trigger the spell effect... except in the case of cursed or trapped scroll. which this was. -witch disappears -magus makes her spellcraft check, figures out it must have been a teleportation spell. which has a range of approximately the entire continent. how the fuck do we find her now? -the rogue, who also has a couple oracle levels, goes outside to pray to her deity for guidance. sees a butterfly-- the holy symbol of her god-- flutter up, hover in front of her face, then fly eastward into the forest. -rogue comes inside to tell the party about this occurrence, but before telling anyone first decides to check in with the barbarian, who she's dating. -barbarian is exhausted and tries to lean on her. "ok, make a strength check," says the GM, to see if he can hold himself up. -barbarian rolls a 1. rogue fails her fortitude save. -"you try to put your arm around her, but you put so much weight on her that she stumbles forward. you crack your skulls together and you're both unconscious." -magus and bard throw their hands up and call it a night.
Sometimes my gf and I start lil silly campaigns when we're bored. Sometimes we do the campaign in character as our ocs. Sometimes my oc names his tiefling bard "Winning" just to piss her off :3
Gf: Oh man.....this might be hard.... Me: Proceeds to scare all the monsters away. Do not let me have magic.
Two great moments from last night: Our party was trying to meet with the local lord on the road and found a party of duergar that had just killed his escort. After taking care of them, the cleric went into the cart to see if the lord was in there and still alive. He was, but also being restrained by a duergar who told him to drop his weapon or he'd slit the lord's throat. Cleric, who did not in fact have a weapon on him, said fine and then cast spiritual weapon and conked the duergar over the head. The duergar slashed the lord's throat and tossed the body behind him. Cleric shouts "You've killed him!" and my dragonborn paladin came charging in. Me: I race to the lord's side and use lay on hands to stabilize him. DM: The cart is too narrow to get past the duergar to him. Me: Oh. Ok, then I grab the duergar by the shoulders, mash my mouth on his, and breathe fire. DM: ... Jesus. After stabilizing the lord we found out he'd escaped from a bigger ambush further down the road and had been attempting to get reinforcements. So we raced to their rescue and found that along with the duergar attacking the few remaining guards, there were two restraining a carrion crawler determined to get to the caravan. We brainstormed and came up with a plan that involved: - our druid turning into a brown recluse spider - drinking a potion of giant strength that resulted in a strength of 23 - being airdropped onto the carrion crawler by the rogue's crow - tearing the restraining ropes into little reins - and using them to drive the carrion crawler through a crowd of the duergar So just envision this giant house centipede-esque thing plowing through a crowd of dwarf-like creatures and knocking them aside like bowling pins with a tiny spider on its back chittering victoriously.
So my group's doing Mines of Phandelver, right. Easy little starter campaign that the DM's going to hook into the other campaign books. Nice little intro. Except. Our party. Roscoe, halfling bard whose solution to most problems is to stick his dick in it. (A group of gerblins he rescued and adopted) Arethusa, half Sun Elf ranger with daddy issues. Approximately as subtle as a brick. Fibblestib, gnome divination wizard looking for the author of his favorite porn erotica novel/a surviving copy of her last work. Also has some weird personality issues and a tendency to whistle unnervingly. (He has an alt persona I've dubbed 'Otherstib' as his name hasn't been revealed to anyone but the DM yet who takes control when he gets scared. Whistles nonstop and gets a little murdery. May or may not be actual possession.) Subtle as the Kool-aid Man even when he's not out of his head. Krauv (or Kravve, or Krauvve), Brass dragonborn barbarian. Is kind of possessed, but it's a cute little mini-dragon ancestral guardian. His name in Dragon translates to "Large one who does things unwisely" (or, as Sibby put it when he told her, "big dumb idiot.") Has an unfortunate tendency to set things on fire, especially after he got an axe that makes him very nervous around wood. Like forests. Or docks. Kennoch, another half Sun Elf, warlock this time, Unicorn (Celestial) patron. Pretty much Sailor Moon if Sailor Moon were a literal pimp. Unfortunate victim of Arethusa's daddy issues and creeped Fibblestib out big time. Aaaand Sibylline, a redux of the character I almost played here. Tiefling Rogue con artist who clawed her way out the pauper's slum in Neverwinter by joining a group of Smugglers. Two default MOs: Flattery or sarcasm. Wishes Roscoe would stop thinking she has the hots for him, she's way too gay for that shit. (Also may or may not have slept with Kennoch in a non-canonical one shot) Inigo's a kobold who hangs out in Phandelin until his player's done with school. Spoiler: Spoilers for Phandelver if anyone gives a shit So the mayor of Phandelin fucked off with all the town's gold when the party accidentally convinced him the dragon was going to eat him. Whoops. So while the crew were off in Neverwinter selling bits of said dragon and picking up Sibby, Inigo and Hallwinter are looking for the mayor, right. Blah blah they find his dead horse, Inigo brings back suspicious black arrows he found at the site, the party decides they need to talk to local bitch Halia. Halia doesn't like most of the party. They're really not enthused about this. Sibby was told by a contact when she joined the party that Halia might be someone to talk to, turns out she's a Zhent and Sibby's smugglers have done work for them. So, first plan: Roscoe attempts to seduce Halia. It fails. Which wouldn't be surprising except he seduced an ogress once so. Plan two: Sibby talks to Halia, gets in her good graces and attempts to gain information that way. The rest of the crew, not really trusting her, decide to 'investigate' Halia's home while she's occupied. Sibby doesn't really approve of this plan because really guys, you're breaking into her place without your rogue? But whatever, they're going to do it anyway whether she likes it or not. So Sibby's talk with Halia goes well, except Krauv insists on coming with her. Not because he doesn't trust her, but because she's walking into the lion's den. She manages to have the talk without him, but he comes in after. And after Sibby leaves he spills EVERYTHING the party knows. And accepts a job offer. MEANWHILE The other group attempts a break-in. Without a rogue. The front door is too busy and they know Halia has an underground passageway from her store to probably her house, so breaking in at night won't work. Fortunately, it's up to like five feet of snow so they go around back. Roscoe turns invisible and climbs on the roof, falls off but finds a half-open window. Fibblestib uses his Unseen Servant to open it and let his owl familiar (named after his favorite 'erotica' author) in. The owl and Servant absolutely trash the place. They recover documents before finding a cellar, which they also trash, and the entrance to the secret passage inside. Unseen Servant unlocks the front door so the party can go in, they go down to the passage. There's a chest! It's obviously trapped, but Fibblestib manages to jam the mechanism and keep it from going off. Chest open! IT'S FULL OF SNAKES. A swarm of flying snakes. They have a tiny bite but strong venom and there's like eighty of them. Arethusa goes down when she steps into the swarm to examine the contents of the chest (Fibblestib went 'fuck this shit I'm out' and Misty Stepped away as soon as they flew out at his face.) Fibblestib fails his Otherstib save roll. Fibblestib can't come to the phone right now. Otherstib uses his scroll of Thunderbolt on the swarm of snakes. It's Super Effective! It also hits a) Arethusa's unconscious form, and b) the stairs out to Halia's house. Half the stairs are now on fire. Roscoe heals Arethusa and she's back up, the snakes take out the Unseen Servant who was holding a torch. The OTHER half of the stairs are now on fire. Otherstib is whistling. The three remaining snakes decide discretion is the better part of valor and fly down the other side of the passage- towards Halia's store. They get Magic Missiled to death, but Otherstib is still going for the stairs/trap door into Halia's place of business Arethusa and Roscoe manage to calm him down and Fibblestib is back in control. But they hear screaming, definitely in pain, and Fibblestib is Not Here For That and decides to Big Damn Hero and burst in. They are in fact in the Miner's Exchange, which has just closed. It contains: a bunch of guards. The mayor, tied to a barrel in a locked room but visible through bars. And Halia, though she's in the front of the store. BOSSFIGHT GO! MEANWHILE Halia's house is toast. It goes up like a barrel of matches. The whole town is abuzz. A firbolg druid we met briefly (going to be an occasional extra whenever his other DM doesn't show up) goes to put out the fire before it gets too close to the forest. He does this by creating a massive dirt wall and dropping half of it on the house. Krauv is hesitant to go help, because he's probably going to be blamed for it, but he didn't start this one and maybe he should put OUT a fire for once. So he goes to help. Kennoch, for the moment, stays. Sibby cheats a dwindling number of people at cards as they go to to rubberneck/try to stop the fire. She Don't Give a Fuck. Krauv spots one of Halia's men running back to the exchange and decides to follow. Kennoch sees them pass and goes with Krauv, but Sibby's (ironically) waiting for one of Halia's men, so she gives up on cards and buys a drink. Krauv and Kennoch make it to the Miner's Exchange, are refused entry, hear the rest of the party yelling to them from the back. They join the boss fight. Krauv breathes fire at the two guards outside. It runs parallel to the building, which is stone... but the fixtures aren't. The building catches. Kennoch follows up by CALLING UP A GIANT FIERY BALL OF FIRE and STICKING IT IN THE DOORWAY. Inside and outside are now on fire. The curtains are very flammable. Krauv blocks the rest of the door with himself, because fire resistance. Boss fight continues. Sibby notices her guy is late, and also the running around screaming is now going in the other direction. She leaves, immediately sees smoke from both ends of town, and rushes to the Exchange. Bossfight joined! Eventually Halia's trapped in one of the side rooms by the flaming ball of flamey doom, the whole room is on fire, Kennoch dispells the ball so Krauv can go after her. Krauv dies. The guards already brought his health down to peanuts, the constant fire damage even halved takes its toll, and Halia's fighting back. Fibblestib paralyzes her so she can't go past his body, but nobody can haul him out of the fire. He, rather ironically, burns to death as the battle finishes. Sibby spends the battle unlocking doors to rescue the mayor. She's going to be heartbroken next session when it's revealed Krauv's toast, he was the only one of the old crew who she got along with. (In their first fight he took out an enemy that was harrying her and she declared him "her favorite idiot") Arethusa saw him go down and called to the bystanders/fire brigade (now including Hallwinter) to fetch the local priestess, but it got delegated and it's unlikely she'll make it in time. So: A simple scouting job turns into two sessions of double arson, an accidental raid/boss fight, and a dead dragonborn.
Ok so. I am working on a tabletop setting and I want it to be like....medium magic. Like small magics are common but big magic is extremely rare. I'm trying to figure out a way of making spellcasting classes a bit more limited without making them useless. My current thoughts are a) you actually have to go out and learn new spells, instead of automatically getting them at level up (or in the case of warlocks and clerics, bargin or pledge for more power, or in the case of sorcerers, idefk) or b) make magic a lot more...dependent. Have wands that can only hold a certain amount of spell slots worth of spells, and have potions that mimic the effects of spells, but you need the ingredients. That kinda thing. Any thoughts? Is this just a fools errand?
idk what system you're working in but "potions (and scrolls/wands/etc) need ingredients to craft" is default at least in Pathfinder?
Needing to go learn spells makes sense, though you could also allow players to do it on level up and say it's because they have been studying spells in their downtime. I feel like the only big thing you'd need to do beyond that is just say there are very few high-level spellcasters in the setting, maybe bump up the frequency of more common magic items and things (even if you have them do quests to gather supplies for an alchemist's healing potions before they can buy them easily, or something like that) and make the higher-level/rare stuff less common.
ah yeah I know fuckall about 5e, sorry if you want to crib them, iirc the Pathfinder rules for potion making are "requisite materials or equivalent price in gold (base 250g if ingredients aren't known), takes 2hrs per level of spell being potioned to brew"
I also recommend using some other alternate rules to help bring the magic to life a bit, like the potion miscibility table (especially if you allow it to work with ingested potions, making drinking multiple potions of different kinds in a shorter period dangerous).
There's a fundamental conflict between limiting magic and retaining the balance of spellcasting classes. I don't know 5e, but presuming it's balanced to start with, making magic really hard would be screwing some of your players. I think the feel you want is accomplished by world-building. Like, many D&D campaign worlds have magic sort of built in everywhere, and you can buy magic items or hire spellcasters in every city. If a PC says they're a wizard, everyone shrugs. Instead of that, try building the setting like in low-magic fantasy novels. In Bujold's Five Gods setting, there are lots of priests. They do the job religious leaders do in our world, plus all the "educated-professional" type jobs like doctor and lawyer, but they generally don't have powers. A person with magic from the gods is a saint, and they're just as rare and poorly understood as that implies. They also only exist because a god has something specific they need done, which means a saint isn't going to be obeying human hierarchies much, even church hierarchies, or for that matter doing whatever they feel like themselves. Or in the Eddingses' Belgariad series: you're a sorcerer. Cool. That makes you sorcerer number 5 out of 5 in all of civilization not controlled by an evil god. There are myths and prophecies about you, and you have mythic scale enemies. They know Detect Magic, and the range is very long due to lack of interference. Most people nominally on the side of good don't believe in magic, don't believe you have magic, and/or are bribable by bad guys. You're level 1. Good luck! The idea is, yes magic is hard and rare, but any PC spellcaster already has what it takes, that's why they're a main character. The rarity of magic is in the world around them. (I would avoid having magical items and components with listed prices, at least for the kinds of magic you want to be rare. That makes it feel too routine. Pay for magic in whatever cool plot you want to power this kind of magic - for wizards, research and experiment; for priests, a god who needs them to do something that needs this magic; etc. The character may well need to spend money, but the money is not the point narratively.)
Luckily(?), it's not. 5E is a lot better than 3.x, but it's still not particularly well balanced, and generally favors casters. But now it requires a bit of expertise to make 'em really powerful. By default, in order to make magic items in 5E, you need a formula, which is rarer than the item itself. Wands and Potions don't exist in 5E as they did in 3.x Trouble is, that's already how it works by RAW. Since you want small magic to be reasonably common, perhaps you could forbid the primary caster classes and point players in the direction of hybrids like the Eldritch Knight and Paladin? Ooooor allow a maximum of 10 levels in primary casting classes (So you can be, say, Wizard 10/Rogue 10, Warlock 10/Barbarian 10 or even say, Bard 10/Druid 10 or whatever). Either way, players are limited to 5th level spells at most, with primary casting classes having stronger magic at the cost of losing out on their stronger abilities. A 10th level primary caster (Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, Wizards) has a typical layout of 4/3/3/3/2. Warlocks get 2 castings of up to 5th level (arguably primary casters, but weird). By contrast a 10th level Eldritch Knight only has 4/3, and gets 4/3/3/1 at 19th level... but they also get access to all their other abilities and the prospect of powerful, high level stuff. Secondary Casters (Paladins/Rangers) get 4/3/3/3/2 at 20th level - so they, ultimately, get 5th level spells, but much later. If you want their abilities to come online at roughly the same time, require one level of another class for every level in a spellcasting class (so they must split their levels and advance half as quickly). Key 5th Level Spells (i.e., what casters will be getting as their capstones under this scheme) include the following. This isn't the whole list, blasty spells have been omitted in favor of the more problematic control/intelligence/movement spells. Decide for yourself if they're problematic. Bards: Awaken, Dominate Person, Geas, Legend Lore, Planar Binding, Scrying, Teleportation Circle Clerics: Commune, Geas, Legend Lore, Planar Binding, Raise Dead Druid: Awaken, Geas, Commune with Nature, Planar Binding, Reincarnate, Scrying, Wall of Stone Paladin: Banishing Smite, Geas, Raise Dead Ranger: Commune with Nature, Tree Stride Sorceror: Dominate Person,Hold Monster, Teleportation Circle Warlock: Contact Other Plane, Hold Monster, Scrying Wizard: Contact Other Plane, Dominate Person, Geas, Hold Monster, Legend Lore, Planar Binding, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Scrying, Teleportation Circle, Wall of Force (included here as without Disintegrate, nothing can destroy a Wall of Force. It's temporary and a concentration spell, but... still. You could always remove its immunity to dispelling.)
I mean, in my experience 5e has the same problem that's been an issue in dnd for a while- linear fighters, quadratic wizards. Unless a martial really really exploits whats available to them- and there are a lot less opportunities to do that in 5e then in pathfinder, because the system is more simplified- then the higher level you get the greater the disparity between what a caster can accomplish and what a martial can gets. Especially since everything is kinda predicated on the idea that even martials are gonna need some manner of magical weapon, at the very least, to even have a chance of damaging higher level enemies. Another idea I had is just...going through the spell lists, removing some, giving some additional drawbacks, moving others higher up, ect. Or making casting higher magics itself more dangerous, somehow. Thank you all for the ideas! :3
I'm chiming in to say 1) I've played in a campaign where the DM intentionally started the game with no NPCs, even the most powerful people in the world, higher than 6th level - it definitely helped with a low-magic feel in early levels. So, worldbuilding + broad limits can make a big difference. Making people think about narrative cost (not just monetary cost) has been really effective for games I've played in as well - thanks for putting it more concisely than I could, @TheSeer IME, tweaking magic systems in smaller more internal ways has not gone well - that's just my feeling as a player with a history with DMs/GMs who thought they were better at modding rules than they actually were, though, so take that with a big grain of salt. @BaseDeltaZero I actually kinda love the "no primary casting classes" concept and miiiight steal it for a setting I've been working on!
