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Quidditch
If you were to take it to the extreme of the Darksword Adventures game world (I'm showing my age) or even certain societies in Pathfinder and it's predecessors, those with magical ability become the ruling class with non-magical people as a subordinate or even shunned strata. Additionally, you could have a person's place in society determined by the nature of their magical ability.
On a practical level, everything is done with magic rather than physical effort. People don't hike up stairs, they fly. They don't ride a horse or wagon to another city, they take a magical conveyance or cast teleport. Battle mages become the enforcers and soldiers, along with abjurers, divine casters are the healthcare system and transmuters and conjurers control the weather and act as craftsmen.
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I imagine the people would become so use to the wild and wacky that shapeshifting for fun and kinky reasons would become a thing.
Whole industries would completely become useless, so in spite all of the advancements in magic the economy would suffer because of a permanent underclass. Don't worry they wouldn't starve but they would be either teleported away or possible choose to sell themselves into slavery.
purify food and drink and create water could really have a huge impact on trade through hostile environments, such as deserts or the high seas. Endure elements and endure elements communal would also help with this. I'm sure there are a number of spells to help avoid getting lost, which would help with trade.
There has been quite a lot of discussion about create water and agriculture.
Purify food and drink would also help the food produced go further by making sure none was lost to spoilage.
Detect lies, speak with dead, and many other divination spells would change law enforcement.
I thought Ebberon was rich in low level magic but high level magic was rare? So in such a world there'd be streets illuminated with magical light sources but no demiplanes just for growing crops.
So then those who show no talent for magic get tossed aside, banished or killed at birth. Interesting...
Being deliberately provocative, are we?
OK then, in this (arguably real) world, people judged as deficient are sidelined and often sequestered. Go talk to any of the groups trying to get support for special needs. Look how poorly we do it even in the wealthy nations. You think it will be any different in your posited world?
The inability to sense magic will be analogous to blindness or deafness in being able to recognize magic environmental threats. If flight is the norm, then stairs and walkways are just inefficiencies, unless you are one of the few who need them....
So then those who show no talent for magic get tossed aside, banished or killed at birth. Interesting...Being deliberately provocative, are we?
OK then, in this (arguably real) world, people judged as deficient are sidelined and often sequestered. Go talk to any of the groups trying to get support for special needs. Look how poorly we do it even in the wealthy nations. You think it will be any different in your posited world?
The inability to sense magic will be analogous to blindness or deafness in being able to recognize magic environmental threats. If flight is the norm, then stairs and walkways are just inefficiencies, unless you are one of the few who need them....
Well considering this is a one possible hypothetical option (that I posited, not the OP) for a fictional scenario in a fictional setting - yes - that would be very unbalanced and could lead to a great deal of abuse by the magically gifted. This leads to a plethora of story hooks and RP options for the players. Which is what we look for in these games.
If folks haven't read the Darksword Trilogy it's a great series. The sequels were okay as I recall. Not bad, but hard to follow the original trilogy.
The original books were written by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman.
Purify Food & Drink, Create Water, and (most especially) Repel Vermin would make disease much less of an issue for those able to utilize/afford them.
Remember that the farming-demiplanes also require another, expensive spell -- Permanancy. Food would not suddenly become a right for all - those able to afford to set up these areas would charge as much as the market would bear.
Crops
With spells like create Demi plane, you could have crops that crow all year long...
By Ilúvatiar! If these crops don't stop crowing, I'm going to "plant" my foot in some spellcaster's arse!
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Timeless demiplane provides effectively free permanency on demiplanes. You could have one caster go around seeding it and have the lower level mages do the rest. You dont need expensive components for massive farms. Heck you dont need people in them. You can make them into moabius strips and send in constructs with a portal to your granary/mill plane.
Purify food and drink means you can eat whatever. Predistagion means you can make koolaid. Fabricate and false fous lets you manufacture just about anything.
You can create a whole civilzations with just this.
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It may be useful to consider things spell by spell. Continual flame streetlights are occasionally mentioned, but I don't buy those either.
A continual flame spell costs 50gp (ignoring paying the caster), a common laborer earns 1sp per day. That street light costs 500 times the daily wage of a minimum wage worker, around $40,000 using my state's minimum wage. A) Municipalities can't afford $40,000 light bulbs. B) Even if they could people would steal them if the bulb is worth more than they make in a year. It is much more sensible to hire lamp lighters at a silver piece a day who can walk round town in the evening lighting scores of lamps.
Any spell with a material component cost is going to have that cost pegged at something relevant to a PC walking round with thousands of gp. A world where most laborers are dealing with small numbers of silver pieces as their basic currency these spells are going to be prohibitively expensive.
False focus exists. Also you can call outsiders with it as a spell like ability. Or lower level alter summon monster on a mount spell and get spellcasting from them. You want the wizard who is set up for casting not blasty mcblastman.
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Purify Food & Drink, Create Water, and (most especially) Repel Vermin would make disease much less of an issue for those able to utilize/afford them.
Remember that the farming-demiplanes also require another, expensive spell -- Permanancy. Food would not suddenly become a right for all - those able to afford to set up these areas would charge as much as the market would bear.
I undercut your prices by uses timeless demiplane and replace the permancy cost with poppets and pocket the rest. The farming demiplane only requires permanency if you are a bad wizard.
Life would be utter alien. So much of human society is based around scarcity and needing huge organizations and nation-states of human manpower to ensure large-scale human survival. If magic is around, I don't need farmers to farm my food, builders to build my fortresses, or servants to manage my house, then a lot of the social glue that holds society (and cities in particular) together kind of falls apart.
Why have government or even a job when I can magic up everything I need? Why have war when I magic up entire realms of territory? Why emotionally compromise with others when I can literally make friends or lovers?
Also, immortality, necromancy and astral travel to afterlives is radicalize going to change how people view see death, which is another core aspect of human life.
Point is magic being omnipresent and largely available to people probably means humanity and human society becomes unrecognizable.
I suppose it could end up as a magical Star Trek utopia, but I've never really bought into Star Trek utopianism since it has never really examined how replicators probably made the non-artists and scientists of the world unemployed and with doing to really do, which given how people IRL have reacted to new technology taking their jobs I doubt everything would be fine.
Slim Jim's Laundromat, a continent-spanning franchise, in which for mere coin the commoner will load his soiled, fraying duds into marvelous machines which will treat them with Clean (Mending +75cp). -- Never be inconvenienced by stubborn stains or tears ever again! Phosphate-free and environmentally-friendly with no waste runoff.
I like the idea that you have a world so full of magic that it is in the water supply!!!
Any commoner who gets gets cut or a broken limb goes to some particular river or stream. (maybe it's not as extreme as I am thinking and a Druid or Unicorn lives near it enough to influence the water) He drinks the water or pours it on the wound and it slowly heals.
In an EXTREME magic world, the doors open and close for you. (if not for everyone, then just for kings and queens. No the doors don't make a "shushing" noise like trek.)
Maybe the farmer doesn't plow his field. Some animated plow does it. Sort of make a magic version of everything we have today.
Of coarse in the Extreme magic world, maybe our bodies have gotten used to the magic potions that heal us. But then that would be a Plot item.
I like the idea that you have a world so full of magic that it is in the water supply!!!
Any commoner who gets gets cut or a broken limb goes to some particular river or stream. (maybe it's not as extreme as I am thinking and a Druid or Unicorn lives near it enough to influence the water) He drinks the water or pours it on the wound and it slowly heals.In an EXTREME magic world, the doors open and close for you. (if not for everyone, then just for kings and queens. No the doors don't make a "shushing" noise like trek.)
Maybe the farmer doesn't plow his field. Some animated plow does it. Sort of make a magic version of everything we have today.
Of coarse in the Extreme magic world, maybe our bodies have gotten used to the magic potions that heal us. But then that would be a Plot item.
Do they sigh with a job well done as in the hitchhikers guide?
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You really need to consider a few factors I think (need to leave for work in 5 minutes so only a brief post).
Industrial Magic vs High Magic
A magic rich world can have casters capable of creating demi-planes, raising the dead, travelling to other worlds but still have massive armies of uneducated peasants carrying on life as normal. The reason being those casters not only are limited to what they can do personally but they may not want to share it (more on this in a moment). On the other hand an industrial magic society can have a much lower level of magical ability (no teleportation or raising the dead) but because its industrialized everyone is able to benefit from it. They can't teleport but magically run carriages are a common thing anyone can buy cheaply, they can't create demi-planes but every crop produces to its best quality and quantity.
Control vs Access
Who has this power is it a wizard type situation where everyone can use even basic cantrips and can learn more powerful spells or is it only passed down in certain bloodlines. Do you get a meritocracy where the best and brightest rise to power or do you wind up with a small elite who are deliberately controlling access and teaching in order to shore up their own power. Its not that peasants can't use magic but rather that if they're taught you lose your control.
Blast out of time I wanted to post more maybe later.
In Red Dwarf a toaster went nuts. After it toasted all the bread in the house/spaceship it would order more bread.
Cultist would be a new NPC class. They have no magical aptitude, but they learn the skills they need for rituals. Rituals make golems, summon things longterm, and make useless land fertile.
Some fiction has fighters being specialized bodyguards for spellcasters. Granting all fighters better saves against magic would heal the imbalance at the same time.
Someone with 8 mental stats and aptitude can still cast cantrips. Such people justify the stat books found in ruins and dungeons. Demand finds a way.
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Very small armies, defence spending is best put towards training, paying and equipping high level spellcasters and their bodyguards as a military force rather than large numbers of low level troops easily wiped out by AOE damage spells. The exceptions would be areas that have spent decades at war.
High populations due to magic bolstering food production and magical healing keeping people alive longer and curing disease.
Every nation will be ruled by a magocracy. The actual sitting leaders may not be spellcasters but they will require the support of spellcasters to lead and will bow to the whims of the spellcasting elite. The position of spellcasters in society would be very privileged but there would also be systems in place to ensure that they progress in their magical aptitude as quickly as possible (The Bartimaeus Sequence does this pretty well).
Non-spellcasters, treated like second class citizens, will try to rebel. Most of these rebellions would be run by idiots and easily squashed, but the smart ones will first try to level the playing ground with magical items and rapid advances in technology.
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Two problems with that one large parts of the spellcasting DnD classes are either extremely intelligent, wise or charismatic so they'd probably be well aware of the need to either keep the non-spellcaster happy or dead and would take steps to ensure rebelions didn't happen.
Two their the ones guiding tech/magic development and would ensure something that could level the playing field wouldn't come into play. The magic ages section of Kurtherian gambit seems to do this quite well (only read first book so far) with a villain actively avoiding taking more potential mages into the accademy because he realizes while it'd mean more money it'd also mean more mages and thus less individual power
I do think that setting were "everyone is at least hedge wizard(aka has access to cantrips), with some having born with more magic(sorcerers) and some training to be better at magic(wizards)" would be interesting to actually see ._. I don't think such settings have been published though?
I’d recommend taking a look at Jim Buthcer’s Codex Alera novels if you want to see a story set in a setting like that.
So, assuming low level magic is common and the higher level magic is only for the wealthy and government, here are a couple of ideas;
Literal horseless carriages. Animated and controlled through magic devices. More expensive ones might have decorative animated statues to pull them. Anything from horses to dragons to dancing girls can pull the carriages.
Every day after the first emptying of the chamber pots, the street cleaners come out with their wands of prestidigitation to make things clean the streets and gutters and add a different scent every morning. On Sunday morning, they bring out the big guns with fire mephits to burn some of the bigger trash items left over from partying Friday and Saturday night, then the water mephits wash all the ash and soot into the gutters to make it easier for the regular street cleaners, who come to work an hour before sunrise on Sundays.
Druids or clerics of agricultural deities are hired to tend crops.
Every magic shop has a rack of wands of prestidigitation since most people can, at least, cast 0-level-spells.
Every magic shop also has it's own Wizard Mark that is placed on any item sold. In the case of items with charges, stores should guarantee to sell fully charged items. They have a charge tester (battery tester) behind the counter and they test it when the wand is bought. Any reputable store won't put their mark on an item they haven't tested first.
Of course, there's the walk-in cooler at your favorite inn. You take a big insulated room, have Ice Storm permanenced in the back, then a metal wall put up sealing it off from the rest of the room. If it stops keeping things cold. Call a professional to take a look at it. There is a warning sticker stating NOT to open that metal wall and try and fix it yourself. If you do, the company isn't liable for injuries and it will negate the warranty.
I would definitely suggest limiting this to a single magical city or just a couple at most. A whole world, even if it's mostly lower-level magic that everybody has access to, would quickly become over populated. There would be plenty of food (I like some elses idea of food inspectors, by the way), but no living space... Unless governments start creating extra dimensional spaces to house people, but they would need permanent Gates to get back and forth.
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Purify food and drink and create water could really have a huge impact on trade through hostile environments, such as deserts or the high seas. Endure elements and endure elements communal would also help with this. I'm sure there are a number of spells to help avoid getting lost, which would help with trade.
There has been quite a lot of discussion about create water and agriculture.
Purify food and drink would also help the food produced go further by making sure none was lost to spoilage.
Purify food and drink would also affect how long ships could remain at sea without reprovisioning, and how much cargo they could carry, as carrying barrels of fresh water would no longer be a necessity, as long as one or several members of the crew could turn saltwater to fresh drinkable water. I wouldn't want to rely on just *one* ship's mage or ship's medic handling that (putting one's eggs all in one basket), but if there are two or three such positions, and even a 1st level adept can handle the light work of purifying water for the entire crew, it should be a game-changer.
That same spell also would allow fresh fruit to be shipped from one end of the world to the other, and remain fresh and tasty.
Ray of frost could likewise allow frozen food to be kept frozen for months, as long as a spellcaster is there to cast that cantrip every couple of hours on the thin sheet of metal the food is lying on, keeping it cold.
Keeping bugs away will be a bigger threat, than spoilage due to temperature or bacteria or fungus.
Purify food and drink means that people at one end of the world will be able to eat bananas and tomatoes grown on a completely different continent, half a world away. It will likely be a status thing, to be able to offer up fare that one's guests have never seen before, from far-off 'exotic' lands.
Now, for "packaged" foods that will already require a purify spell to be safe to eat, wouldn't it be a good idea to just mix poison into it to deal with the whole vermin issue?
Oh, BTW, purify food and water doesn't say it makes food fresh and tasty, it makes it "pure and suitable for eating and drinking". I rather expect that the best you can hope for "out of the box" will be rather bland. Fortunately, bland is easy to deal with. Some people even prefer bland. (Personally, bland is Bleah.)
^-^
That 8 alarm chili is too much? A simple orison fixes that.
Oh, a permanent Chill Metal spell with some air circulation would probably make a safer, easier to contain refrigerator.
Oh yeah! I never thought of that! As it stands, nobles probably already have fresh food from all over. As you said, purify food is a low level spell. I imagine merchant companies who charge top coin for fresh food from all over Golarion.
You beat me in the post LOL
True about the Purify spell. I've always used it as i just keeps the food fresh. Bananas stay yellow, cooked meat won't spoil, etc... So, I assumed it would still taste the same, but you're right. A simple 0-level-spell fixes that.
As for the fridge, that was an idea from a looong time ago when we were coming up with funny tongue-in-cheek magic items in 1st edition and 2nd edition D&D. It matched walk in coolers at the time. You know how you always hear the coolant unit running? Same thing. That storm on the other side of the metal wall is dang noisy! LOL
Keeping bugs away will be a bigger threat, than spoilage due to temperature or bacteria or fungus.
Repel Vermin, if you have a CL 7+ bard, cleric, or druid (or a CL 5+ ranger, or a CL 4+ ranger with bonus spells). Just have them recast it once every ten minutes per caster level.
The problem with vermin is then reduced to how much the actually eat, which is a lot better than how much they spoil.
Oh! A guard guild (security guards) that hires out guards for nobles, stores, whatever. With each team, there is one that has a wand of Summon Monster. This one guard uses buckler and sword (or club) and holds the wand in his shield hand. The higher level the wand, the more money they charge. Basically, he's a K9 security guard. Works especially well if he can actually speak to what is summoned.