Quote from: estar;920716Challenge accepted!

You postulated the challenge and so get the pick the initial time period.

So when in this alt-fantasy earth analogue is the Mending Cantrip discovered? From the dawn of sentience? The Neolithic period. In alt-sumeria/alt-egypt or the alt-Persian analogue or perhap their version of 5th Century Greece.

Mending requires two lodestones. How common are lodestones naturally?

And no "spell focus" is not allowed as a cop out excuse.

Quote from: estar;920731Sure, no impact other than life is 20% better for the temples and the elite. The spell is restricted to cleric, druids, and sorcerers as woven cloth developed before writing. Linen, felt, wool, and silk are all developed as in OTL due to local conditions.  

Due to the fact there is less loss due to tools breaking, temples are more elaborate and better maintained due to the fact more tribute can devoted to expansion rather than maintenance. But there will come a point where the improved durability will go as far as it can.

As for nets it doesn't make a difference as the spell is not widespread enough to make a difference to the peasantry. Sorcerer distribution is random, clerics are centered in a central temple. There are no parish church as every region with a radius of a half day walk has center town and temple. Druid have more of an impact on the cultures that are still Neolithic/Nomadic/Pastoral but those cultures have vastly lower population density compared to the various cradles of civilization.

Plus it took time to spread to the druids i.e. they think to weave the forces of the natural world into a mending spell. As you said it was discovered with woven cloth which was first developed in the cradles of civilization during the late Neolithic.

Also no spellcaster dependent on the written word exist yet.

Cuneiform alone defies you. Let alone engraving. As does Incan braided knot language. As does dyed fabrics communicating tribal knowledge to in-groups. And that's just on your attempts to stifle writing.

Also supposedly that makes religious authority that much more powerful. And then you also forgot 5e's demographics for not just wizards, clerics, and druids, but also bards, sorcerers, and the magic archetypal fighters and rogues. Oh, are they all subservient to the grand conspiracy to keep it in house at the temple forever, too? No. Life doesn't let that happen for long, at all.

Anyway, going on with your idea... wealth is accrued from the lack of loss to light material depreciation. Trade, and its subsequent reduced loss from compromised travel containers, or supports, rapidly spreads dominance to further lands. Suddenly what once was hard fought tool examples crossing great distances is miraculously kept pristine thoughout the journey across continents. Now throw in knowledge as a trade good beyond example models, like manuscripts (in a variety of media)... and now an explosion of thought spreads outside containment. You have the object itself, or its model, and the words or pictures diagramming reproduction able to withstand hard travel through several hands. Fragility no longer becomes a limiter to the spread of content.

And nets do revolutionize the availability and scale of harvesting techniques. The time saved in repair galvanizes shared Mending knowledge along coastal areas faster. It frees up manpower labor hours for further corveé labor works, or leisure creativity. The easier access to gathered bounty without lengthy maintenance spurs population increase, and thus creativity due to larger demographic size, akin to China's historical "keep the people fed!" strategy. In fact, one of the Ur civilizations of Perú is based on nets and trading the sea's bounty (predominantly seaweed, as many interior people's biologically craved the iodine) to further inland peoples, way deep into the interior.

No, estar. Your ideas are not plausible. You stepped into my realm of expertise here. Your cloistering of knowledge freezing progress does not work like you think it works. The 5e system demographics do not support it, and the extrapolated consequences from sapient life's nature do not either. The setting is already stretched past default human history recognizable as a fantasy reference point.

Love ya, man, but no, just no. Don't expect me to suspend my disbelief on human nature or life's drive to survive. The tech shift gives too much dynamic momentum.

I don't know if people would take longer to make better crafted goods.  Because their investment would be safer.
Or churn out a bunch of cheep quick stuff and just mend it when it unravels.

Actually there probably wouldn't be any net difference.

Quote from: Omega;920771Mending requires two lodestones. How common are lodestones naturally?

And no "spell focus" is not allowed as a cop out excuse.

Yeah I missed that. Well in our history the magnetic properties of lodestones were not discovered until the Greek  in the 6th century. Lodestone were lying there waiting to be picked up however the mending spell couldn't have developed with the invention of woven cloth because humans were not producing any iron until a millenia or two later.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920776Cuneiform alone defies you. Let alone engraving. As does Incan braided knot language. As does dyed fabrics communicating tribal knowledge to in-groups. And that's just on your attempts to stifle writing.

Woven Cloth = 6,500 BC
Cuneiform = 3,000 BC
Incan braided knot = 500 AD

Without writing there can't be any spell book, without spell book there are no wizards. There is a 3,000 year gap between the discovery of woven cloth and the discovery of writing in Sumeria.

Anyway it doesn't  matter it has been pointed out that Mending require the use of two lodestone. Lodestone wasn't identified until the 6th century Greeks. And the reason Lodestone discovered was because of it attraction to iron. And Iron wasn't widespread until the 1,000 BC.

Now iron ore, particularly iron meteorites were processed as early as 3,000 BC. So it unlikely but within the realm of plausibility in an alt Earth that the properties of lodestone could be discovered as early as then. But remember what has to happen is somebody somewhere brought a piece of lodestone next to a iron object and noticed their attraction. Then for that to come to the attention of spellcaster, and then they would have the insight to develop the mending spell from that to be used for cloth and wood. Two materials totally unrelated to metal.

So it is highly unlikely that with the 5e rules as written that the mending spell would have been developed around the time of the invention of woven cloth. Y

Quote from: Opaopajr;920776Oh, are they all subservient to the grand conspiracy to keep it in house at the temple forever, too? No. Life doesn't let that happen for long, at all.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920776Anyway, going on with your idea... wealth is accrued from the lack of loss to light material depreciation. Trade, and its subsequent reduced loss from compromised travel containers, or supports,

You are skipping a lot of steps here. You need to pin dates onto your assertion. You are hand waving millenia of development away. The earliest civilizations were centered around local temples. This phase lasted for thousands of years ending when warrior kings started assuming control and building empires. In the middle east this occurred in the 3rd millenia BC. The general pattern was

Hunter Gathering
Neolithic Agriculture
Temple center civilization

Then the warlords started appearing.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920776And nets do revolutionize the availability and scale of harvesting techniques.

I am not arguing that. I am contending that there not going to be spellcaster who job it is to repair fishermen nets for a long long time if ever any pre-industrial society with magic. They could do it but they won't. And it not a conspiracy but a lack of imagination to apply it enmass.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920776No, estar. Your ideas are not plausible. You stepped into my realm of expertise here. Your cloistering of knowledge freezing progress does not work like you think it works. The 5e system demographics do not support it, and the extrapolated consequences from sapient life's nature do not either. The setting is already stretched past default human history recognizable as a fantasy reference point.

Love ya, man, but no, just no. Don't expect me to suspend my disbelief on human nature or life's drive to survive. The tech shift gives too much dynamic momentum.

You are not writing good or plausible alternate history. Which is something I have done. You are making a common mistake of generalizing and glossing over steps. You start with the point of departure and work your way forward in chunks that clearly illustrate how you from there to the alt-present.

My overall point lest is lot in the minutae, that is plausible to construct a history where there is a point where there is a feudal medieval culture with magic operating in 5e 'as is'. I am not saying it is the most probable history. People when faced with alt-history often make that mistake.

It is highly improbable that the South could have won the American Civil War with condition existing in 1860. However there are a variety of possible events that could occur that result in a Southern Victory in the Civil War.

Another example is Sea-Lion, the German invasion of England in World War 2. That is an example of something being impossible to occur with condition existing in 1939. Pretty much everybody who seriously looked at it agree that in order for Germany to pull of a successful Sea-Lion the point of departure has to be set way before 1939. However there are some plausible paths to a German victory in World War 2 that doesn't involve an attempt at pulling off Sea-Lion.

So with this exercise you pick a point and go forward from there. Given the span involved you want to go in 500 year increments from 6,500 BC the invention of woven cloth to 500 BC, then century increment afterward. Maybe 1000 BC to start the century increments.

What I did with the Majestic Wilderlands is I have blank outlines of the setting map. I drew historical maps from the end of the Dawn Wars to the present day of the campaign. Making notes on what development occurred where and what the civilizations and cultures were. I developed a consistent society that worked with D&D magic 'as is'. Didn't require special abilities, and special spells to keep mages in their proper place.

It may be your area of expertise but is also mine, and my take has the virtue of being playtested since 1990 since when it first jelled.

Roman civilization was far more advanced than Dark age Europe.  That's why they were called Dark ages.  

The base D&D assumption is truly ancient world, most of which is uncivilized now, but at many times in the past it was civilized.  Hence all the ancient ruins.  If you are worried that the systematic use of magic would make life too easy say sure it used to be like that, but adventurers in the past found it far too easy to assassinate kings and loot temples.   So civilization fell.  This has happened many times in the past.

Quote from: Headless;920758You can disarm spell components too.

Player: "Nuh uh, he couldn't disarm my components on his turn because they were in my component pouch, not 'in my grasp'! Why would I have them in my hand before casting the spell!? Who walks around with pieces of bat shit in their hands ready at all times? I pull them out like the archer pulls out arrows, duh!"

Quote from: 1of3;919020If you want to introduce means and reduce the power of magic, it appears counterproductive to do it with even more magic. So make non-magic solutions, like:

Flight and levitation spells do not work over water. That's why there are moats around castles.

Scrying and communication spells can be prevented with a circle of salt.

Rubies suck up magic fire. A ruby worth x gp, will reduce a spells damage by f(x) and be consumed in the process. Against area spells, the effectiveness is halved. Other gems might work in similar manners.

And so on.

Y'know, I think nerfing spells like teleport, divination, fly and such is the shit-ass referee's way of covering for their own lack of imagination and tactical skill.

But this shit is flavorful as fuck and adds another dimension to magic - very well done, sir or madam.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;920850Player: "Nuh uh, he couldn't disarm my components on his turn because they were in my component pouch, not 'in my grasp'! Why would I have them in my hand before casting the spell!? Who walks around with pieces of bat shit in their hands ready at all times? I pull them out like the archer pulls out arrows, duh!"

Indeed, much like with lodestones, some folks are going with a huge, huge, stretch rather than just acknowledge there's a problem. D&D is a world with active gods that are quite capable of manifesting, teaching their followers, and making their will known. They're going to teach people how to write (i.e., it won't be a human invention), the better to worship them (although in Ye Real World, much of early writing was religious in nature, so we're not talking a real stretch here).

With no restriction on the size of lodestones, them being nearly impossible to "break", and the fact that you can use lodestones to make lodestones, it won't take that long before "lodestone technology" spreads across the gaming world. I'm pretty sure dwarves will be mining iron far earlier than humans, anyway.

You won't have people whose job it is to Mend all day, what will happen is, anyone with things that need constant Mending, like fishermen, are going to barter some of their product for the Mending.  What is the Mender going to do with all that various barter?  Sell it.  Menders will be "general store" type merchants, groups of them will own trading guilds.  Also more Mending=Less Weaving Needed=Women can actually do something all day besides weave for 12 hours.  Run with that one Opa.

Honestly, though I appreciate it Doom & CRKreuger, I think this level of stretching by their defenses is already proving my point.

Estar, Shipyard is trying to get to that Dark Ages "points (or patches) of light" fantasy without it explode into an industrial revolution. Sheer casting frequency, by a multitude of variables (casting classes demographics, sheer ease, mere swappable spell slots - or infinite, etc) is going to land like Giant Meteor -- yay, more lodestones! -- on the setting. You are trying to reverse engineer it through setting where you are trying to make the mechanics not mean what they explicitly were printed on the PHB to mean.

(Seriously, magic never worked until the invention of writing? Are you kidding me? We're gonna chicken and the egg now the moment of magic's entrance to the world. Or is it: "A god brought it down, along with writing, simultaneously to different spots in the world, too!" "And those other non-human illiterate critters have it innately because... reasons!", too? Pictographs on hide or bark were well accepted beforehand until this edit - but OK all druids, arcane tricksters, and eldritch knights are part of literati now. So they are all part of the grand conspiracy now, throughout the world and across factional reasons to never ever sabotage each other, lest their power escapes. Otherwise non-initiated wild class adventurers out there will set off the chain reaction of knowledge around the world... And yet you still have the same balkanized fantasy realms where non-casters matter.)
:rolleyes:

You are trying to fashion a setting that justifies the system, accomodating playstyle power dial by only shifting world coherency. THAT IS NOT THE POINT OF THIS EXERCISE. Whatever setting you derive will no longer be FLEXIBLE FOR OTHER TABLES. Essentially you are saying, you buy this system, you must use this setting to accompany your lower power goals. You are Storygaming "Precious Moments" settings compatible with altered system goals, instead of empowering Shipyard to run any setting desired WITH altered system goals.

Look, I love your world creation stuff. I really do. But just like Storygames are a precise solution to mechanically induce from players a style of play compatible with a specific setting, so too is this a precise solution to fictively induce from the system a world of play compatible with a GM's desired play style. You've reversed the process; you've crossed the streams. He has to use your suite package in toto, not in part.

The point is accuracy to the goals of making the style and the world compatible, and that's where the messy and imprecise solution of tailoring BOTH setting and system comes into play. Working from one side alone is going to lead to warped and immutable solutions, likely very beautiful in their delicate construction, that yet hit their mark in one lone way and not deconstructible for much else.

Again, Lord Vreeg nailed this ages ago. System and setting need to be altered to match as compatibly as possible at the start to support subsequent world coherency and playstyle. Picking only one side of the ledger alone is not enough, because then you lose one of RPGs' greatest strength, flexibility.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920921Estar, Shipyard is trying to get to that Dark Ages "points (or patches) of light" fantasy without it explode into an industrial revolution.

While this is also true, let me clarify that my main concern remains making kingdoms less vulnerable to farcical usurpation. I'm not opposed to PCs having and enjoying the powers that D&D advertises, I just find the countermeasures to that power inadequate for the 'realism' baseline the default D&D setting claims to support.

Quote from: Opaopajr;920921Honestly, though I appreciate it Doom & CRKreuger, I think this level of stretching by their defenses is already proving my point.

Estar, Shipyard is trying to get to that Dark Ages "points (or patches) of light" fantasy without it explode into an industrial revolution. Sheer casting frequency, by a multitude of variables (casting classes demographics, sheer ease, mere swappable spell slots - or infinite, etc) is going to land like Giant Meteor -- yay, more lodestones! -- on the setting. You are trying to reverse engineer it through setting where you are trying to make the mechanics not mean what they explicitly were printed on the PHB to mean.

You keep eluding to 5e demographics. Unlike 3.0 there are no detailed breakdown in the 5e rulebooks. On page 23 it explicitly lays out that the frequency of magic is campaign dependent. So on what page number are you getting the frequency of the different spellcasters?

I disagree that it would always "explode" into a industrial revolution. You are saying that now because you stand on the shoulder of 3,000 years of progress and looking back with hindsight. There are many things possible with ancient and medieval tech that were not done because the Renaissance, Enlightnment and the Scientific Revolution hasn't happen yet. And again the mechanics of spellcasting define natural limits in pre-industrial cultures.

The following are AGENTS of other powers with their own agenda. They are not free to open shop as net mender because it is profitable for them to do so. Doesn't mean that it couldn't happen it means that it happen because that what the powers that be wills it. And what the powers will things to be is the province of the referee of the campaign.

Clerics (Gods)
Druids (Nature)
Paladin (Gods)
Rangers (Nature)
Warlock (Entities of Power)

The following are examples of NATURAL spellcasters, people who are born with with ability to cast magic. You can't build an industrial revoluation because a) they are rare and b) they randomly occur each generation)
Sorcerer

The following are example of SCHOLARLY spellcaster, they can cast magic because they learn how to cast magic. In order to even begin the culture has to be able to support a bunch of people living non-productive lives during childhood and young adulthood. By productive live I am talking doing things that lead people being fed, housed, and clothed. Everything beyond depends on there being a surplus of those three things. Given the inefficiency of agriculture at the dawn of civilization there isn't going to be a lot of these guys. And by the time agriculture does increase in productivity due advances in tech, people will have been dealing with rogue spellcasters for centuries and have various means of dealing with them with the rules 'as is'.

Bard
Fighter-Eldritch Knight
Rogue- Arcane Trickster
Wizard

Finally you forget that they to have to be able to imagine the effect in order to create the spell in the first place. Some will obvious from the get go some won't. Some will be obvious to have but what needed to cast them will require advances in technology before they are able to be cast.

For example cure wounds would be obvious from the get go for clerics to pray for. It only a verbal and somatic spells so we are good there.

Call Lightning would be there from the get go as well.

However Lightning Bolt is a spell that would obvious to neolithic spellcasters but be developed slightly latter In order to cast it you will need a bit of fur and a rod of amber, crystal, or glass. So you have to be able to work a piece of crystal or amber into a rod shape (Neolithic). Or be able to know how to work glass into a rod shape (Late Bronze Age).

Mending is more problematic because it would not developed until the properties of Lodestone are discovered. Which in our history wasn't until the 6th century and the widespread use of iron. Spellcaster would want the spell since they cast the first spell but per the 5e rules they couldn't make a mending spell work until Lodestones were discovered.

I am not arguing that a magical industrial revolution within a century of the discovery of magic isn't possible. It just ONE of the POSSIBLE results from the introduction of magic. And the initial conditions can be tweaked in a number of ways particularly the nature of the divine within the setting.

In the Majestic Wilderlands the gods operate through faith and their primary motivation is to teach their respective philosophies. Magic is a natural force that when harnessed in a certain way will move the gods to grant their priests the knowledge to cast divine spells. However because it is a natural force, it can be used independently which is what sorcerers are able to do due to their inborn abilities. And later Bards, Wizards, etc discovered how to do this through study and knowledge.

That the net effect of magic on the various cultures of the Majestic Wilderlands to make life for everybody 20% better. And for the various elites, life it way better. At the current present the various elites enjoy a lifestyle and access to technology comparable to an ordinary person living in the middle of the 19th century. However there there is neither the desire, imagination, or means to enable this for everybody. Mainly for two reason. Nobody has developed a factory system, and 90% of spellcaster consider themselves to be one of the elite and have no desire to open a shop to mend nets for fishermen. At this point in the Majestic Wilderland nobody is willing to waste 15 years worth of food, clothes, and housing on producing an individual who main trick is to mend nets. No they are continue that individual training until he capable of much more and use him for things with a better pay off in terms of their interests.

However this is not 100% and every generation there a small percentage capable of casting useful spells that drop out and live independent lives. They in turns use what little they know to train other to further own goals. Eventually some centuries in the future this will start to reach a critical mass and ignite a magical version of the industrial revoluation. But my campaign are set centuries earlier.

And finally the reason this doesn't spiral out of control to produce a world dominated by wizards is that clerics rose first and they along with the nobles, the merchant and the peasantry have a vested interested in a stable society. When a wizard or any other type of spellcaster goes rogue, they unite to defend what they consider the proper order of thing. I will stress this is the general case. In certain regions, and certain times, wizards have won out and dominated society. But because they are a scholarly profession there is a limit to how many trained wizards a pre industrial society can produce. The reason the above is the general case, is while the gods have chosen to operate through faith, miracles are known to happen. Paladins exist and will be attracted to regions where their religon is under siege.  When wizards dominate it is because society become riven by factionalism and civil war and an outside culture is able to attack and disrupt things. During such times people are willing to grasp at anything to restore order and a couple of time it was wizards that filled that void.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;920925While this is also true, let me clarify that my main concern remains making kingdoms less vulnerable to farcical usurpation. I'm not opposed to PCs having and enjoying the powers that D&D advertises, I just find the countermeasures to that power inadequate for the 'realism' baseline the default D&D setting claims to support.

I reallize that, what you don't realize is that there is no problem with PCs that a 1,000 peasant with pitchforks can't solve. I know I am exaggerating, but that my basic point. Society in whatever form you have it, out number the PCs. If the PC piss of society they will despite any momentary victories they enjoy. The trick is to do in a way that plausible, and consistent with the setting. And 99 out of 100 time having a 1,000 peasants showing up to mow down PCs is neither plausible or consistent.

And specific to 5e, bounded accuracy means that those 1,000 peasant will win the day. It may result in hundreds of death but they will emerge victorious in any stand up fight. And if the PC are unable to take any long or short rests that make the day of reckoning happen that much quitter.

If you read those posts I linked on my campaign. There are four session where the PC overwhelmed a castle. It worked because it started out with a bolt out of the blue arrow shot and caught the NPC flat footed.  However it was a near run thing because at no time there was any chance for the PC to rest (short or long). While caught flat footed, NPCs troops came dribbling in from all over the castle and that wore down the PCs resources over time without any rest. The fight ended because the PCs brokered a truce good enough for the NPCs to accept.

Another setting explanation could be is that Mages are not secular. Their magic comes from patronage, just like clerics. Maybe the gods of magic don't have clerics, they have mages, and the gods aren't interested in you blowing their divine power shilling for coins.

Perhaps casting spells takes days / weeks / months off your life? It's one thing to blow a year or more of your life to further some great cause (even if that cause is your own power), but its another thing just to cast Mend to fix peasant shit while blowing off time of your own life.