Everyone knows about the lack of balance between magic users and other classes, and that had me thinking:

The PCs would only have access to magic effects as one-shot (or few-shot) scrolls and consumables.

There are no daily spells to make them completely mundane and repetitive. When the team receives a scroll that makes all their melee weapons +4 Frost Bands, it will be memorable. And, what's the harm? It's a one-time effect lasting 3 days (which they received as help to defeat the salamanders that make travelling through the Boughless Woods highly dangerous, disrupting trade and courirs).

That mostly leaves fighters and rogues, so these classes will receive special treatment, in the form of available variants / subclasses out there.

I imagine a group of magistrates in a fairly standard quasi-medieval kingdom keeping and restoring order.

Anyone interested?

I'd potentially be very interested in something like this. I was working on a set of house rules for a home game like this that included ways to use tool proficiencies to create one time use magical items like potions and scrolls, but even without that, I think the premise has some potential.

How would you deal with races that have spells or other magical abilities? Would those be banned as well? My variant was going to use only humans to push a horror fantasy aesthetic, but I'm open to other takes with wider options.

Also, what about barbarians?

Good to see some interest.

I won't stick to 'humans only', but no spell-like racial abilities work, and I'm open to player suggestions to replace them with something mundane.

Yeah, barbarians, too. And some other third-party classes without casting.

Sounds intriguing. Assassin?  Ranger/Paladin without the spells? Champion, Beastmaster?  Maybe bring in a drover or wrangler to help with the travels and give them a character progression matrix?

Is there an assassin class? Of course, ranger and paladin without spells, although I'm always wary when tampering with a class. Then again, I'm open to suggestions (which changes need to be reviewed and occasionally updated during game play for balancing).
This message was last edited by the user at 04:51, Wed 19 Aug 2020.

I am old, there was assasins.  Of course,  you can remold one from rogue class.

it's already done

Unearthed Arcana has rules for Spell-less Ranger variant which would also fit.

Also check out Adventures in Middle Earth 5e. It has various classes that are all spell-less, and are variants on normal 5e classes (Scholar, Warden, etc.)

Thanks for the tips, Jarodemo, these are good advice.

I started a game.