Once you’ve played your fair share of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, you might want to spice things up a bit with settings that make magic more, well, magical. While there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a magical adventure through the multiverse, a more grounded setting has more chances of making players shine.

Related

Dungeons & Dragons: 8 Tips For Naming Your NPCs

This is for all the DMs who hate it when players ask the dreaded question, "what's their name?"

Posts

This does come with some challenges, since most editions of D&D come with a plethora of magical spells and items for the players to use, solving nearly every situation with a teleport or a fireball. Consider these tips to use the rules of D&D in a more subdued setting, all while not removing agency from the players.

8 Communicate With Your Players

Some People Like Their High-Magic Settings

Setting Up Camp by Matthew Stawicki

While it might seem obvious, this is such an important step that it bears reminding: tell your players that you’re planning a low-magic campaign. This can come with limitations to what players can do or encounter, and that might not be fun for everyone.

A game of Dungeons & Dragons is a collaborative effort where everyone is telling the story, not just the DM. If not everyone is on board with what you’re planning, then the fun is spoiled for everybody, so be sure that you talk things through before moving forward.

7 Limit The Availability Of Casters

For Both Players And NPCs

Eccentric Apprentice by Campbell White

If you want to have less magic in your world, a good way to limit it is by having fewer users of magic. This is easily done with NPCs, since you make the choice of having Wizards be as rare as Gandalf or as common as a street peddler.

With player classes, you’ll have to limit access to certain classes, although that would limit what options your players have during a campaign. You could still let your players choose whatever class they want, and have the rest of the world react accordingly; they’d be a rarity everywhere they go, for good and for ill.

6 Roleplay Some Spells As Mundane Actions

It’s All In How You Describe It

Murasa Ranger by Eric Deschamps

Sometimes, a setting is about flavor rather than balance, and how you explain something can go a long way into making it fit the campaign. With this, you can make monks and rangers be almost non-magical, explaining some spells they have access to as feats of skill rather than magical ability.

Related

Dungeons & Dragons: 8 Tips For Running A Dragon Encounter

For when your party is done with the 'dungeon' part of the game.

Posts

This won’t work with everything, but it opens up a lot of choices for players without messing with any of the game’s balance. A Sorcerer and a Wizard would remain as magical as ever, but having fewer classes performing magic makes them all the more special in comparison.

5 Use The Gritty Realism Rule For Resting

It’s From The Original Player’s Handbook

Volo, Guide to Monsters by Zoltan Boros.

A good way to limit the magic players use across the board, all the while not nerfing casters specifically, is to use an optional rule found in the D&D 5th edition Player's Handbook. This rule, called Gritty Realism, makes short rests take 8 hours and long rests take 7 days.

This rule will make every spell used count, while still affecting non-casters to a degree. Just remember to limit NPC casters similarly, since this isn’t intended to punish players, just to remove how often magic is seen in the world.

4 Balance Encounters Around Your Players

Their Lack Of Tools Shouldn’t Be Their Downfall

Reghed Fight Wolf by Lake Hurwitz

The challenge ratings for monsters in the 5th edition make planning a session a simple endeavor, since you can throw whatever number fits your players and know that they should be fine. If you go through the effort to limit magic in your setting, then you should also look at what the creatures do, since there’s a lot of physical immunities going around.

If your players agreed to a low-magic setting, and all chose non-magic classes to fit, throwing a monster with resistance to physical damage can make them all angry at you. You can still have those monsters, but make them part of a complicated quest, where finding a way to beat them is part of the adventure.

3 Remove Magic Scrolls

And Have Less Magic Items In General

Dungeons & Dragons art by Manuel Castañón via Wizards of the Coast

A spell scroll in Dungeons & Dragons is an item that lets you cast the spell scribed in it, no matter your class. As you can imagine, such an item is a bit counter-intuitive to the idea of having a low-magic campaign, so it’s best if you remove them entirely.

No matter how many items you remove, there’s still magic at the core of Dungeons & Dragons. If you’re planning a campaign devoid of all magic, consider other systems.

Magic items, on the other hand, can remain, but you should be careful with how many you add, or even how powerful the ones you add are. You do want some magic in your campaign, so consider making the items extremely rare, and never something you can just purchase in a shop.

2 Change How Rewards Work

Not Everything Needs To Be An Item

Northlander Longship By Jedd Chevrier

A problem that many DMs encounter when doing a regular D&D campaign is how many rewards to give their players. You always want your party to feel rewarded whenever they complete a task, but if you keep giving them gold or magical items, their power will soon be unstoppable.

While doing a low-magic campaign sets you on the right path to correct this, you still need to reward your players with something, otherwise they could end up feeling their efforts were for nothing. There are other things you can give them that aren't direct power, like a ship to cross the seas or a king’s permit to enter the noble quarters; it depends on how your particular world works.

1 Keep The Player’s Level Low

Level Ten Is A Great Stopping Point

Dungeons & Dragons Tomb of Annihilation Illustration By Jedd Chevrier

Even with all these limitations, a campaign that goes beyond level 10 is sure to include some manner of high magical elements, and that generally goes against what we’re trying to achieve here. There’s nothing wrong with a campaign ending at level 10, leaving you with a mostly grounded world where the gods had little if any impact on the story.

If you and your players fall in love with your world, and want to stay within it, you could start fresh characters to inhabit it, making the previous characters NPC veterans that can aid the party. You can also continue the story beyond level 10, accepting that magic will become more common on your travels; a different flavor, but something that can be fun nonetheless.

Next

Dungeons & Dragons: 8 Tips For Doing A Plot Twist

The signs were there the whole time.

Posts