When it comes to D&D, I've always been an advocate of letting the rules dictate the setting rather than the other way around. One thing that really irritates me is the endless stream of people who do things like house-ruling out Raise Dead spells for the sake of the "realism" of their world. They want to play D&D - a game of high magic - in a setting indistinguishable from the dirt-filled and disease ridden world they imagine to be a "realistic" view of the Medieval period. Or they do it because they want death to be "meaningful".

Screw that. If you want to play dirt farmers and pigstickers then go play WHFRP, and if you want death to be all angsty then go play Vampire.

This is D&D.

So the setting should reflect game's elements, rather than the game being twisted and shoehorned into some setting that means you've got to handwave away most of the magic and bizarre stuff in order to keep a sense of "verisimilitude".

With that in mind, I've been going through the 5e PHB looking at the magic chapter to see what it actually tells us about the world...

Healing

The average peasant probably has ample access to healing magic. Even a first level clerical acolyte at the local temple or the local druid's apprentice can cast Cure Wounds; not to mention any bards that pass through regularly or live in the area. There are so many classes that can heal at first level that you can pretty much expect any non-life-threatening injury to be magically healed.

Similarly, poison and disease can now both be cured by a mere second level spell (Lesser Restoration) that is available to all three of the types of people mentioned above, so I would imagine that they would be easily available too.

None of the above spells have any kind of material component cost, so I wouldn't expect these sorts of things to follow the suggested cost of 10-50gp per casting. That might be the cost to go up to a total stranger and ask them to prepare and cast a random spell on your behalf, but I'd expect the local priests (less so druids and bards) to dish out healings for free.

Partly because it's in their interest to keep the locals happy with their religion; and also because that's the sort of thing that tithes are for. Then again I'm a Euro-socialist so I see free healthcare as fundamental right that good-aligned churches would provide.

Of course, severe injuries like people losing a leg in a ploughing accident might require a Regeneration spell, which is going to need a 13th level caster. That's the sort of thing that will require a short pilgrimage to the high temple or druidic enclave rather than something that can usually be done locally. Those who can't make the journey would have to wait for a high level priest or druid (or bard - bards are second only to clerics in terms of being able to heal) to visit the village. I would imagine that many religions would have one or two who travel the land healing people (as well as overseeing their local subordinates of course); so people are likely to be able to be healed even if it means it takes a year or two to be able to arrange it. As above, the spell has no cost to the cleric, druid or bard although in this case I'd expect some kind of "pay what you can afford to" donation to be expected. I see no reason why a cleric would refuse to heal someone because they can't afford the high price the cleric is demanding - not in any civilised society anyway.

Death

When it comes to actual deaths, things are a bit more complex.

Since stopping someone from dying is so easy (a simple curing spell or even a cantrip in the case of clerics) I'd expect dangerous events like childbirths to be attended by someone who can cast those spells in case of emergency.

When someone does die and there's no-one around to stop it (for example in an accident or in a feud) we're looking at finding a 9th level cleric to cast a Raise Dead. Ninth level clerics don't grow on trees, so while there may be one in charge of the local temple it's by no means guaranteed; so some travel may be involved. Unlike the lesser healing spells this one costs money - and a lot of it. It takes 500gp to cast the spell, and I can't imagine the various churches simply eating the cost for every prematurely dead person in their areas. However, they might subsidise the spell for the truly needy, or people might put some money aside each month as a form of "insurance". Maybe the churches themselves take this money on top of regular tithings.

Of course, this only works if the dead person is still whole (so if someone dies out in the woods and gets half eaten by wolves before the body is found it's too late) and if they are got to the priest within 10 days. Given the limited spell slots in 5e, the priest might already be "fully booked" for Raise Dead spells for the next few days so there might be some hard decisions to make in terms of who is more deserving.

A 9th level travelling bard that passes through could also cast a Raise Dead, but they're much more likely to demand the 500gp up front and the odds of one happening to pass through within the 10 day limit are quite low.

If you don't have the whole body, you might be able to get a Reincarnate from a 9th level druid, although the time limit is the same and the cost is twice as much at 1,000gp a shot. The fact that people are less likely to be tithing to druids and are therefore going to have to pay the full price; combined with the fact that the deceased will almost certainly come back as a different race; makes this a much less attractive proposition for the average commoner.

For those who can afford it, of course, a 13th level cleric or bard can do a Resurrection on your lost loved one. The big downside to this is that it costs twice as much as a Raise Dead (1,000gp) but on the plus side the time limit is a century and you only need a body part. 13th level clerics are harder to find than 9th level ones but that doesn't matter because you can spend a year or two saving up for the spell before going to the temple (or waiting for the travelling priest to do the rounds). As with a simple Raise Dead I'd expect that there would be various long-term-payment financial arrangements made with churches, but bards would probably want cash up front.

If there's no body at all, for example it was completely eaten or Disintegrated then the average commoner is pretty much out of luck. It's going to take a 17th level cleric to cast True Resurrection and that costs a whopping 25,000gp to cast. There are probably only a small handful of people in each country capable of casting the spell, but the price tag means that only the super-rich nobility and royalty can afford it anyway.

For that sort of rich nobility it's cheaper to plan in advance and buy a Clone spell from a wizard. At 3,000gp it's more expensive than a Raise Dead or Resurrection, but it's mostly guaranteed. You don't need to worry about people finding your body or it being intact because it's irrelevant. After you die you wake up in a clone body and you're fine.

On the flip side of the coin, what does this mean if you want to kill someone and keep them dead? If you're an assassin or simply a murderer, how do you stop your victim being raised after the deed?

You probably can't get away with simply smashing up the body. While that will stop a Raise Dead it won't stop a Resurrection or higher. However, destroying the body completely (either magically with a Disintegrate or physically by feeding it to your pigs) will prevent all but the most rich or prepared of people from coming back. The only ways back after that are True Resurrection or Clone.

If your victim is likely to have a clone body waiting for them or is likely to have allies willing to pay for a True Resurrection, you basically can't kill them permanently. Instead you have to arrange for something permanent but non-lethal to happen to them. Good candidates are petrification (but be careful because destroying the statue will kill them) or the Imprisonment spell. In either case, you're then going to need to hide them or put them somewhere where the sort of rescue party that can afford a True Resurrection won't be able to get to them.

Transport

There are very few long range transport magics available to the average person, and few that would be good for transporting goods or armies. In most cases we're looking at nothing better than a road network.

Teleporting is possible, but for all but the highest level casters this is going to rely on the Teleportation Circle spell. This spell needs a 9th level arcane caster to cast it, and although it only costs 50gp in components it can only take you to a permanent circle. Creating a permanent circle requires an arcane caster of that level to spend a year casting the spell every day in the same place. That's going to set you back 18,250gp in components alone plus whatever you pay the caster, so there aren't going to be too many of those around. You're likely to see them only in major cities. Given that these circles are the sort of places that dangerous people and creatures are likely to appear, they will be located in places with organised defence forces. It's likely that these places will also have casters able to cast the spell for a fee.

Other Magical Conveniences

The Continual Flame spell only costs 50gp and lasts forever (unless it's dispelled), and it only takes a 3rd level cleric or wizard to cast it. I'd therefore expect most towns and cities to be lit at night by these, and most families would have one or two that they use to light their houses (they can be covered or hidden at night). The 50gp cost would be expensive if they were being bought regularly, but since the odds of a commoner's house being subject to a dispel are remote in the extreme they can last a generation or two and are therefore cheap. In fact they're the sort of thing a couple might be given as part of a wedding ceremony to both help them set up a home and also be symbolic of their wedding vows.

Plant Growth requires only a 5th level druid, and can give all plants in a half-mile radius double yield for the year. With no material cost, I see that being cast on every field around every town every year. This basically means that we'll only see half the amount of farmland that you'd expect for a given population (and this in turn means more wilderness, so it's in the druids' own self-interest to do it for the people).

Speaking of food, while a 3rd level cleric can create food in an emergency with the Create Food and Drink spell, this doesn't scale well and isn't likely to be able to feed a town through a famine. However, Create Water only needs a first level cleric or druid and creates lots of water. With repeated application this could irrigate crops and stave off droughts.

Detective Work

Finally, how much does 5e magic mess up detective work and/or investigative situations?

Surprisingly not much. While a fifth level cleric can cast Speak With Dead, the corpse retains the personality of its former life and is under no obligation to answer questions or even tell the truth. So the old "kill them first and ask questions later" tactic won't work. It will still be useful when investigating murders, of course, so a murderer would have to make sure they aren't identifiable by the victim.

In terms of interrogating or questioning people who are alive (either in a judiciary manner or in the field) the two main spells that can be used are Detect Thoughts which requires a 3rd level wizard or sorcerer and Zone of Truth which requires a cleric or paladin of similar level.

In neither case are these infallible. Detect Thoughts can't be done sneakily in that the target knows that you're trying to read their mind and can make a saving throw to end the spell, and similarly while Zone of Truth forces people to tell the truth it does have a saving throw and the target knows the spell's effect when it hits them (although the caster knows if the target has saved and is therefore possibly lying).

In a formal interrogation, I'd see the former as less useful. Not only do you rely on the target not being able to trick the caster who's reading their thoughts, you also have to rely on the caster revealing what they've detected truthfully and accurately. The latter spell is much more effective, although while it can stop someone lying it can't stop the equivocating and giving technically-true-but-misleading answers and it can't stop them from simply refusing to talk.

There could be an argument that Zone of Truth could be combined with torture in less savoury environments since it gets rid of the problem of people simply telling you what you want to hear in order to get you to stop. Of course it doesn't get rid of the fact that torture is hideously immoral, and most clerics and paladins wouldn't be party to such activity. There are bound to be a few who would do it, though, but they're more likely to be on the protagonist end of the scale.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;778123When it comes to D&D, I've always been an advocate of letting the rules dictate the setting rather than the other way around.

Empty your groinpurse everyone, and you too can join the Guild of Castrati GMs!

Which is to say, I'm of a very different mind.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;778123When it comes to D&D, I've always been an advocate of letting the rules dictate the setting rather than the other way around.

I have the opposite POV. I change the game system to met the needs of my setting, I don't change the setting to fit the game system. I've always done this. Heck, I was house-ruling OD&D to better fit my setting back in 1976.

This is one of the reasons 5e will not work for me (to GM, it would be fine to play in someone else's setting), it would require more work that I have time for to adapt it to any one of my three settings (especially when I've already done the work for TSR-era D&D and those rules work was well today as they ever did).

QuoteSo the setting should reflect game's elements, rather than the game being twisted and shoehorned into some setting that means you've got to handwave away most of the magic and bizarre stuff in order to keep a sense of "verisimilitude".

It depends on the setting for me: the Hidden Valley has less weird/powerful magic, my version of the Wilderlands is about (TSR-era) D&D magic normal, while Arn is a truly high-powered setting where a visiting player can come in with Stormbringer and not overpower the setting.  They all work fine with house-ruled TSR-era D&D rules -- far better than they do with any non-D&D system I've tried.

However, to each their own. If you don't like "setting trumps system" that's fine but I probably feel just as strongly that "setting trumps system" is the way to go. Neither strikes me as intrinsically "wrong".

Yeah, I'm not buying any of this shit. D&D can be played a lot of different ways. It is gaming culture tradition to always play gonzo high magic, but a lot of other things go on on the margins. And they work fine.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;778123When it comes to D&D, I've always been an advocate of letting the rules dictate the setting rather than the other way around. One thing that really irritates me is the endless stream of people who do things like house-ruling out Raise Dead spells for the sake of the "realism" of their world. They want to play D&D - a game of high magic - in a setting indistinguishable from the dirt-filled and disease ridden world they imagine to be a "realistic" view of the Medieval period. Or they do it because they want death to be "meaningful".

Screw that. If you want to play dirt farmers and pigstickers then go play WHFRP, and if you want death to be all angsty then go play Vampire.

This is D&D.

So the setting should reflect game's elements, rather than the game being twisted and shoehorned into some setting that means you've got to handwave away most of the magic and bizarre stuff in order to keep a sense of "verisimilitude".

Strongly disagree. D&D can be played many ways, and I like the group to determine the style of game, rather than solely the designers who are explicitly designing a widest common denominator version of D&D.

You are playing a kind of game, like the canonistas who take a bunch of disparate sources written by people who didn't care about canon, and trying to amalgamate them to be 100% consistent. As if there was some kind of intellectual rigor in this, rather than just changing stuff you don't like. I don't buy it.

Unfortunately, many D&D players take your approach, so it's easier to get customised fantasy game going with a game other then D&D.

edit: that sounded a bit more badwrongfun-ist than I meant to. I mean, have fun playing the game your way. It's just not the only way to play D&D and do I get kind of annoyed that it's such a widespread one. Also your assertion that if you want to tweak the playstyle you should just play another game is just mindless consumerism to me. I like tweaking, hacking etc. Essentially I see no reason to set up the books as holy writ.

Most of you are falling into the trap that leads to inconsistent confused games.

There is an implicit setting. That doesn't mean it's the only setting you can ever run, but if you aren't aware of the way the rules skew, you end up thrashing about any time anything emulative happens. Unless your group just doesn't care, at which point the setting is somewhat irrelevant.

So, for example, at some point someone is going to say 'hey wait, if half the party can cure diseases, and we clearly aren't that unusual, how the hell is disease a problem in the Middle Kingdom?'

There are a bunch of ways to answer that, but it'll probably save you some grief to work that out ahead of time.

I think you guys are misunderestimating my intent here.

I'm not trying to say that a high magic setting is the only way to play D&D or that it's the "one true way" to play it.

Well, I am actually - but in a tongue in cheek hyperbolic way that's well aware that I'm only expressing my own preferences, not objective fact. Obviously, when you look at it objectively any way to play D&D is as valid as any other.

But introductory rhetoric aside, my main point here was to lay out the default implications to the setting when you use the rules as written, as much for my own benefit as anyone else's. The point being that if you play by the book (without house ruling anything), this is what sort of setting you end up with.

Of course, if you don't like that sort of setting in your games - you'd rather there was more magic or less magic available to society - then you can use my description as a guide to what spells need changing to get the sort of setting you want.

I have a tendency to agree, D&D isn't the only game in town anymore. It is an annoying bait and switch when someone says "let's play D&D", but when you see the house rules, it really is another game; esp when they want to spend forever explaining them.

I'm not thinking  the church would be that benign about free health care (I'm  American so that may explain). My disagreement is that nobody lower then Landed Gentry or adventurers would likely ever see 1000 gold pieces let alone raise it. Those prices are there for a reason. Spell slots are limited, magic items jealously guarded and yes a Bard may be great at healing IF it's even a spell they know.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;778141I think you guys are misunderestimating my intent here.

Oh we know exactly your intent, you're using passivepurplebullshit rhetoric.  You're claiming you're not declaring a One True Way, you're simply irritated with all the people that play the way you don't like.  You don't need to do that here.  I find your view of RPGs extremely irritating as well, but what's more pathetic is your awfulpurple posting style.  No one's gonna ban you for saying what you think, we're just going to laugh at you when you mealymouth it instead.

Quote from: Will;778140There is an implicit setting.

I think most people here grasp the concept of implicit setting.  The implicit setting created by 5e is my main beef with many of the 5e rules.  Which is why they will be changed to make an implicit setting that isn't Cartoon Action Hour.

The problem is, I'm not sure that the designers at WotC are really aware of the concept - 4e is pretty much x-thousand pages of proof of that argument.

However, close reading of the 5e text, so far at least, is paying lipservice to the concept of what the GM says, goes, and while they've made some astonishingly bad choices as to what is in Basic instead of optional, they're pretty clear that this version of D&D is going to be the most "Build Your Own" of any of the WotC editions.

Whether they practice what they preach we won't know until we start getting the settings and find out if everything in the three books is really intended to be used with the Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Athas, Ravenloft, Planescape, Krynn or any of the other D&D worlds.  If the setting books are simply adding and taking nothing away, then we're back to the"Everything is Core" mantra of 4e and all this was merely smokescreen.  Their response so far to the couple White Room Spherical Cows has been encouraging.

We'll just have to see.

Quote from: CRKrueger;778150I think most people here grasp the concept of implicit setting.

The earlier responses seemed to indicate otherwise.

Of course, one of the underlying assumptions here wasn't true in old editions of D&D.

Not everyone who felt like it could become a caster. Clerics, in particular, were very special, and literally chosen. A PC could be a cleric, of course, but there's nothing that says everyone who wants to be a cleric is going to be one.

The next issue is levels...getting to 5th level is a big deal in the older editions, whereas in the new editions people practically "power level" to that in a few sessions. Absolutely, if anyone can be a cleric, and making it to 5th level is simply a matter of a few battles and an adventure or two, then yes, "Cure Disease" is the kind of thing that anyone can get, any time.

The next issue is spells and magic items. In older D&D, even a 5th level cleric only got 2 3rd level spells a day, and getting a wand of Cure Disease wasn't completely trivial...in fact it was basically impossible. In a city of 10,000 people, if there's only one 5th level cleric and he can't make potions of Cure All every day, then suddenly, yeah, I can see that "cure disease" costing a bit of money, and I can see diseases actually being a factor.

Similarly, if Raise Dead is trivial, you really do have to figure the world is far more warped about death than in "our" world. But if Raise Dead takes years off the caster's life (instead of gold that's just immediately replaced due to "wealth by level" gibberish), and casters of high enough level are very rare? Now you can go back to taking advantage of how death is treated here.

It's one of the issues I have with Pathfinder--armies simply don't make any sense when you can outfit half a dozen guys with Wand of Fireball more conveniently and for far less money than you can equip a few dozen knights, and it's totally a game world, to just by the printed modules and such, where there really should be troops of Fireball Wand-ers...and very little else makes much sense considering the awesome and trivially acquired power of magic.

On the other hand, 5e is still wide open. As long as they don't make the mistake of making magic items stupid-trivial to make, and don't mess up in, well, all the ways previous editions have made mistakes, there's a chance it'll be pretty rockin'.

Quote from: CRKrueger;778150Whether they practice what they preach we won't know until we start getting the settings and find out if everything in the three books is really intended to be used with the Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Athas, Ravenloft, Planescape, Krynn or any of the other D&D worlds.  If the setting books are simply adding and taking nothing away, then we're back to the"Everything is Core" mantra of 4e and all this was merely smokescreen.  Their response so far to the couple White Room Spherical Cows has been encouraging.

We'll just have to see.

I agree. We can't be sure that it's not all talk about customizing the rules to the setting until they do something like publish Dragonlance in the Pre-Chronicles era and toss the cleric and all the healing spells.

I never had to house rule anything to run a gritty, lethal D&D game. IIRC, the AD&D DMG says 1 in 100 adults have levels. Fighters are by far the most common class, followed by thieves, then clerics, then magic-users. So maybe 1 in 500 adults is a level 1 cleric. And not all deities are benevolent. Included in those numbers are storm gods, gods of war, and gods of death. I don't imagine clerics of Ares or Set go around cheerfully healing every peasant supplicant. So we're left with clerics of benevolent deities - maybe 1 for every 1000 people. Many of those will be concentrated in great cities, abbeys, or temples. So most villages and towns won't have even a single level 1 cleric.

Then there's the whole notion of magic being some utilitarian tool like writing or masonry. The role of magic in a campaign world is entirely up to the DM. You want telekinetic rail cars, magic-powered windmills, and temples dispensing cure disease like tylenol? Cool. In my world, divine magic is made available to clerics to further the ends of a capricious deity, not to facilitate an efficient public welfare program.

In 35 years I've only seen one raise dead and one resurrection. Again, I didn't have to house rule anything. Nor did I consciously set out to run a harsh or cruel game. It just so happened that I've experienced little high level play, and played in campaigns were high level NPCs are very rare.

Quote from: Doom;778152Similarly, if Raise Dead is trivial, you really do have to figure the world is far more warped about death than in "our" world. But if Raise Dead takes years off the caster's life (instead of gold that's just immediately replaced due to "wealth by level" gibberish), and casters of high enough level are very rare? Now you can go back to taking advantage of how death is treated here.

For 5e, Raise Dead is a good example to discuss. The material components for spells RAW are as I recall:

• If there are no specific components listed, all the caster needs is a "component's kit",  not the name but you get the point.
• Any listed specific components are required.

Raise Dead requires a 500gp diamond which is consumed on casting. That should make for some restraint on the spell, unless your setting rains precious gems. It's not just having the funds but getting the item. And this requirement for specific and pricy components are common for higher level spells.

I see cantrips and orisons as a big obstacle to low magic settings, but 5e isn't necessarily raining meteor swarms either.