Magic of Legend

[DamonJynx]

Look at the sorcery rules for Elric, rune casting and summoning. They are ideal for low-magic, swords and sorcery campaigns. Whilst they don't have same versatility or raw power as the magic systems in the core rulebooks, they can be quite useful if used creatively! The good thing is you don't have to nerf anything then. YGMV.

You'd be surprised how versatile and powerful Elric runes can be when used creatively...

Very true. I undersold them a little. Here are a couple of examples of what Loz is talking about.

Rune of Reflection

Each magic point used to cast the rune reflects an equal number of attacks back on the attacker, provided the recipient of the rune is aware of the attacks. One of my guys before a combat spends 5 CA buffing, 3 points on the Rune of Reflection, so 3 attackers hit themselves, he doesn't need to spend any other CA's for defense, and 2 points on Rune of Protection giving him an additional 2 points of armour. And the effects of both last an hour! That's as per the book.

Rune of Water stacked with Rune of Creature and Rune of Touch (Man, Woman, specific beast)

Each magic point invested in the casting of the rune of water does that many points of damage to all locations of the victim by dehydrating them (making them sweat blood is my description of it, along with agonizing pain). The touch rune is used to make the attack ranged and gives you POW * 1 meter for each point invested. The creature rune is used to specify the creature type affected. So for 4 MP you could do 2 points of damage to a creature POW metres away every round for an hour!

That's a use that's not listed in the book, but Pete Nash said it would be OK in another post. Maybe you could confirm that Loz?

And that's just the start really. One guy made a flying skull that did 1D6 points of fire damage each time it hit you! The magic is really cool! You just have to think outside the box!

 

[sdavies2720]

The simplest way to get low-magic that doesn't suck and doesn't alienate players, is to make casting expensive. If instead of one magic point cost per point of magnitude, it is 5 magic points per point of magnitude, spells will only be used only when they are most needed and heroes must rely on mundane solutions to problems most of the time.

I just think it's a clever way to do the: Let's make magic suck so bad that no-one will use it. Then nobody will be using spells and it'll be a low magic setting!

If all bladesharp 3 did, was that once per day, for 5 minutes you could get +3 damage and +15% combat style for 2 CA. I think Common Magic would be a very terrible and situational skill.
Meaning magic gets bad, meaning it isn't effective, resulting in magic not being used.

All in all, Low magic isn't about magic being worse, it's about magic being less common.
The reason it is often referred to as a "low-magic setting" is IMO because it's in the setting.

Now the basic runequest rules are operating around the fact that magic is important since POW=Magic Points, so you'll need a way around this. Perhaps through heroic abilities.
All in all a low-magic fix could be to offer all PCs a heroic ability at start-up and then make a heroic ability for each of the magic schools called spellcaster(specific school) that gave you access to casting spells. People who aren't magicians get something to use their MP on, people who are get to feel more rare.

Ok, I get it. You do need to decide what's important for you and what "low-magic setting" means for you. I just want to point out that making it hard (in the setting) to get magic only forestalls the magic race among opponents. Once the characters overcome the barriers to obtaining magic, it's back to business as usual. If that's what you're looking for, cool.

I was pointing out an alternative where "low-magic setting" means the magic can't be used very often, but it could be very effective -- as you point out, opponents are less likely to invest in developing their magic skill if they can't use it often, so that once-a-day bladesharp probably goes against opponents with no magical protection. You use it when you need that edge, not in every encounter.

FWIW, I've gone the route of limiting access to spells -- they are all controlled by the cults, and the players developed an early aversion to the cults. So they have little magic. But they are starting to catch on, and I frankly expect a spell arms race before too long. It's worth thinking about at the start of the campaign.

Steve