Hmmm, likely in-setting consequences to society, economics etc of magic as portrayed in D&D.  Where have I heard that speculation before....

I know - Earthdawn!

Quote from: S'mon;798572Yes, 5e seems to be following the 4e paradigm that PCs are unique special snowflakes, not the pre-4e paradigm that the PC classes and their powers exist in the world. So PCs with Mending might be the only characters with Mending, or at least part of a tiny, tiny number of characters with Mending in the world. (Incidentally I always assume that cantrips & such are tiring to use, similar to combat - you can cast Mending a good few times in a day, but not cast solidly for 8 hours).

Sorry to nit-pick, but at what point did previous editions not mark out PC available classes as a cut above the in-world average, or "special snowflake"?  Wasn't that the reason for the dmg having the npc classes of Warrior, Expert, and Adept?  To have options for characters who have not trained intensively to survive regularly putting themselves into great danger

Also, I do not recall where in the 4e rules it was suggested that the characters were unique special snowflakes.  The game system approach of writing up encounter opposition in a different form was surely a rules convention to make running them easier, not a reflection of any in-setting reality?

Quote from: Psychman;798576Sorry to nit-pick, but at what point did previous editions not mark out PC available classes as a cut above the in-world average, or "special snowflake"?  Wasn't that the reason for the dmg having the npc classes of Warrior, Expert, and Adept?  To have options for characters who have not trained intensively to survive regularly putting themselves into great danger

Also, I do not recall where in the 4e rules it was suggested that the characters were unique special snowflakes.  The game system approach of writing up encounter opposition in a different form was surely a rules convention to make running them easier, not a reflection of any in-setting reality?

On your second point - well you sort of have a point in that the 4e DMG did have a section on PC-class NPCs, but this was quickly abandoned and was never used in published adventures, monster books etc. An NPC 'Paladin' in 4e bears no resemblance to a PC Paladin unless you build his monster stats with analogues of some PC powers. In prior editions they can be interchangeable - a 1e, 2e, 3e Paladin NPC can equally be a Paladin PC, there is no mechanical difference.

On your first point - 'special snowflake' means unique, not 'a cut above average'. PCs are better than average people in almost every edition (the BX/BECMI Fighter is identical to a 1 hit die monster, though). The important point is that in 3e a Paladin-3 can be a PC or NPC and have the same stats & capabilities. 4e does not work like that, as I'm sure you know. By default any 4e NPC has far more limited powers. Unless they are a DMG2 Companion Character they only have 1-3 healing surges. Unless they're an Elite they don't have Action Points.

4e NPCs have only the powers the DM wants them to have.  Pre-4e NPCs have the same powers as PCs. This has big implications for worldbuilding; in 4e I can create my world however I like and not worry that the rules will mangle it. Pre-Essentials the Rituals can be an issue for worldbuilding, but I decide which Rituals are available - I don't have to make any particular Ritual (Raise Dead say, or Linked Portal) available if I don't want to. Rituals are not tied in to class balance so this does not have the same effect that removing spells does in eg 3e.

Quote from: Doom;798527On the other hand, I can't wrap my mind around a world where folks have infinite magic.

Cantrips and infinite "trivial magic" could easily warp the world into something unrecognizable from fantasy pseudo-Europe, into a very different place

i agree.

infinite "trivial" magic doesn't seem like a problem to me. spells like prestidigitation, thaumaturgy or druidcraft give a caster a variety of effects that can be useful in many ways, even for an adventurer, while not being in any way overpowered. every casting class should have such a cantrip with class-typical effects.

a spell that does d10 damage is not trivial.

if you allow spells with such effects to be cast infinitely, you need to balance that by having side effects if you want to retain a world where magic is rare, wonderful and special. warhammer 2nd edition gave a wizard all spells of a school, with the possibility of casting them all with no limit (some spells are off-limit at first because of high casting numbers though). except that if you went around casting like mad... you'd end up literally mad. every spell you cast could mean you earn an insanity point. as you grow stronger and the risk of insanity is decreased, you start facing the threat of triggering tzeentch's curse, with greater effects as your spells grow stronger.

with that system you simply can't afford to cast spells without thought all the time.

ps: i don't think the most powerful thing about the warlock is eldritch blast (even with all improvements), btw. it's at will levitate, disguise/alter self (wow!), silent image or arcane eye (wow!!!). these spells are all incredibly useful.

Quote from: jibbajibba;798556I think the difference is volume.
So if you have 3 casters in the old school they could fix 3 things, cast burning hands 3 times a day, magic missile thrice

Now they can each fix 1,000 things so the whole process moves from a cottage industry to full scale industrialisation.

It is the DM's call if cantrips can be constantly spammed over an entire workday.  I would tend toward progressively more difficult Constitution checks causing a level of exhaustion after maybe a couple minutes if it ever becomes an issue in my game.  So far, everyone has been fine with the conceit of no industrial application of cantrips without further exploration of the concept.

Quote from: S'mon;798572Yes, 5e seems to be following the 4e paradigm that PCs are unique special snowflakes, not the pre-4e paradigm that the PC classes and their powers exist in the world. So PCs with Mending might be the only characters with Mending, or at least part of a tiny, tiny number of characters with Mending in the world. (Incidentally I always assume that cantrips & such are tiring to use, similar to combat - you can cast Mending a good few times in a day, but not cast solidly for 8 hours).

This is likewise the DM's call.  I like class being something in the world, so it has meaning in my game and PCs are not special snowflakes.  NPCs with classes are a thing that the party can meet, albeit rare.  

If you prefer PCs to be unique, the game looks like it will run just fine like that.

Quote from: Old One Eye;798584It is the DM's call if cantrips can be constantly spammed over an entire workday.  I would tend toward progressively more difficult Constitution checks causing a level of exhaustion after maybe a couple minutes if it ever becomes an issue in my game.  So far, everyone has been fine with the conceit of no industrial application of cantrips without further exploration of the concept.

I go by the logic of practically unlimited rather than literally unlimited.

Basically: An adventuring magic caster is not likely to cast cantrips in a day enough to really hit their limit. That doesn't mean there is no limit, it just means there is no reason to do bean counting on it.

If it starts getting excessive, I'll start making players make some sort of checks, either con or magic casting stat, to prevent exhaustion. The same I would for a Fighter if he said he was going to run 10 hours straight.

EDIT: As a note, I don't really count arrows either. I just generally assume if you bought arrows and/or can fletch you have enough arrows unless we start getting into situations where you couldn't recover arrows, were constantly on the run, and had very little contact with society to buy more. Magic arrows, of course, are always counted.

Quote from: shlominus;798579i agree.

infinite "trivial" magic doesn't seem like a problem to me. spells like prestidigitation, thaumaturgy or druidcraft give a caster a variety of effects that can be useful in many ways, even for an adventurer, while not being in any way overpowered. every casting class should have such a cantrip with class-typical effects.

a spell that does d10 damage is not trivial.

Assuming we are talking about spells that would alter the fabric of society, I would say that a cantrip doing d10 damage is relatively trivial.  Firebolt makes a fire, easily replicated by mundane means in every peasant hearth.  If a milieu has spellcasters in sufficient quantity to have firebolt companies taking the place of crossbowmen, it reduces their supply train.  Having a hard time seeing what else.

Mending, however, has broad application to change society even without spamming spallcasters everywhere.  A ship on a voyage of discovery will absolutely value someone who can instantly mend a ripped sail.

Quote from: Old One Eye;798591Assuming we are talking about spells that would alter the fabric of society, I would say that a cantrip doing d10 damage is relatively trivial.  Firebolt makes a fire, easily replicated by mundane means in every peasant hearth.  If a milieu has spellcasters in sufficient quantity to have firebolt companies taking the place of crossbowmen, it reduces their supply train.  Having a hard time seeing what else.

Mending, however, has broad application to change society even without spamming spallcasters everywhere.  A ship on a voyage of discovery will absolutely value someone who can instantly mend a ripped sail.

sure. a damage-spell probably wasn't the best example, mending as a cantrip is certainly worse.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798528for the same reason you have torches in 1e instead of continual light spells in every house, or why clerics in 1e don't cure hunger and thirst in their towns by casting creat food and water every day

First Level Caster 1/day or infinite: I'll take tired and false equivalency for 1000 Alex.

The equivalency is that even though the magical paradigm has changed, in some cases dramatically, none of the magic systems in D&D are immune to the "follow this to a logical conclusion" type of analysis, as a scarcity and/or limitations not present in the rules has to be assumed.

Fairly irrelevant if it is once per day for a spell that lasts forever.  Rome was a thousand years old at the height of empire.  A thousand years of continual lights that last forever would have the city as bright as Vegas.

At what point were classed characters not special snowflakes? It depends on how rare we are talking about...

Let's consider... 3e!
(sorry, 3e, you're my favorite target because I know you best)

In the DMG was rather specific about demographics.

Now, first, most people are commoners. But pretty much any town and up is going to have a few of most classes.

PCs of a particular level and class may very well stand out as rare, particularly at mid levels -- I think the largest metropoli have maybe one NPC of a given class in the 13-15 range.


Now, in 3e, cantrips were N/day, so things are less open ended.
Continual Flame has a 50 gp cost. I always figured this would spell the difference between the wealthy part of town (with CF) and regular districts (with lanterns, if anything).

Quote from: Old One Eye;798601Fairly irrelevant if it is once per day for a spell that lasts forever.  Rome was a thousand years old at the height of empire.  A thousand years of continual lights that last forever would have the city as bright as Vegas.

Yep.  You answered before I did.  It's not a false equivalency of 1x per day (it's actually a few times, depending on level of spell and PC, but whatevs) vs all day if your time frame spans decades.  I.e., both would result in a continual light stone in every house, and that's the relevant part of the argument.

It's just one of those things you don't worry about because it's nitpicking away the believability of the game.  Just like ecology.  There's no way all these monsters in the D&D world could live together in a world that otherwise mirrors the middle ages in our world from an ecological standpoint.  But we ignore it because hey, fantasy.


And I'm pretty sure we already had this conversation just a month or so ago.

Quote from: Will;798602At what point were classed characters not special snowflakes? It depends on how rare we are talking about...

The AD&D 1e DMG also had guidelines as to what level NPCs would be in what level of populated areas.

PCs being special has pretty much been there since day 1 when NPC "regular people" (commoners) had 1d4 hp

Sacrosanct:
Again, Continual Flame costs 50 gp, probably due to observations of how Continual Light would go in 2e.

If you are making a few copper a day, you likely cannot afford a 50 gp item. (particularly since someone could just come by and... steal it)

Continual Light in 2e was a bigger problem, though it relied on a very vague balance -- it 'gradually consumed' whatever it was cast on, with no actual guidelines on how fast (other than 'gems last a very long time').

Quote from: Old One Eye;798591Assuming we are talking about spells that would alter the fabric of society, I would say that a cantrip doing d10 damage is relatively trivial.  Firebolt makes a fire, easily replicated by mundane means in every peasant hearth.  If a milieu has spellcasters in sufficient quantity to have firebolt companies taking the place of crossbowmen, it reduces their supply train.  Having a hard time seeing what else.

Mending, however, has broad application to change society even without spamming spallcasters everywhere.  A ship on a voyage of discovery will absolutely value someone who can instantly mend a ripped sail.

This is not a unique problem confronting the 5e magic system. Other games have magic system work similar in that a spellcaster can cast something useful without any real limit on the number of times the spells the spell can be cast.

GURPS Magic for example. A notable example is the use of Create Earth to "mine" useful quantities of valuable material.

What people forget that any magic system doesn't exist in a vacuum. That it was part of the history of the setting and people having dealing with it for centuries or for many millenniums.

If the setting is similar to the traditional pseudo medieval default of D&D then  what could be a plausible reason for various useful spells not igniting a magical revolution on par with the industrial revolution?

The simplest reason is that the campaign is set in the time period before it occurred. The idea of a magical or industrial revolution also means that there was a time before it occurred. Before anybody put together the ideas and means.

If that not good enough or not plausible enough given the chosen setting's history then consider this.

The #1 problem of all pre-industrial societies is feeding, clothing, and housing all levels of society. Our history's industrial revolution started for the most part as a revolution in the making of clothing. It was a revolution because for the first time in human history a surplus could be generated far beyond throwing more bodies at the issue.

And that is the problem of pre-industrial society, they do not have a large enough surplus to permit anybody beyond a small fraction of society to live a life of luxury or even a middle class lifestyle.

Think of the problems with human spaceflight during the 1960s in that you have to throw away much of your rocket to get that one last bit that is useful to the mission into the space. A large number of people have to toil in pre-industrial to allow even a small number of nobles, artists, and craftsmen to live and ply their trade.

Now onto magic, magic as presented traditionally and in 5e is mostly scholarly profession. That means for a number of years ta individual has to learn to read, write, reason, and understand the basics before even thinking of gaining the powers of a 1st level practitioner.

And for those types of magic that do not require study generally have a prerequisite in that you have to be born with the ability to use it, or some other entity with a agenda has to anoint you with the ability to use it.

All of this means that in a pre-industrial society only a very small number of individuals will have even the opportunity to learn or use magic. And those who actually learn to use magic will be a subset of that group.

What this amount to is that only a small fraction of a region's population will possess these fantastically useful spells. For them and for those who these individual associate with life will be indeed much easier as these spells are used. But beyond that things continue as it had for generations. A life of toil with most work focused on meeting the basic needs of food, clothing, and housing and not much left over for other things.

Compounding the problem is that the idea of the factory and industry need to be developed. A society can have all the pieces for a magical revolution but unless somebody has the idea of putting it together in just the right way it not going to happen.

There been several proto-industrial revolutions in our own history that petered out for one reason or another. It wasn't until 18th century Britain that everything came together in just the right way to ignite a lasting industrial revolution, the effects can be seen in front of you in the phosphors and LEDs of your monitors.

It doesn't matter how useful magic is in 5e, but you can always design your setting to account for it. And even if you go no further than the implied default setting of 5e there are still good plausible reasons why things are the way they are.