I got to wondering what everyday life would be like in a medieval world with magic thrown in on top. (Warning this is long, and clearly the start of notes for a campaign).
The Great Limit
The Great Limit refers to the duration of most spells. Most spells last between several seconds and, at best, a couple of minutes. A spell caster can summon a creature from another plane, but it blinks into existence for less than a minute (3 second round * 20) then is good. Some spells present a lasting effect but these are are, complex, and hard to cast (generally level 4 or greater). The Great “Limit” says that most magic is transitory. Spells may produce collateral damage, but few permanent effects. Spells like Planar Ally and Permanency represent the efforts of the best and brightest in the Pathfinder world to get around the Great Limit. The Great Limit might be more a suggestion than a law for higher level spells, but in a world where most people are fifth level it holds in most cases.
Magic Items and Artificers
Given the Great Limit, magic items exist as one of the few ways to fix a spell in place in a lasting form. Most such items are created by artificers NPC experts using the Master Craftsman feat. Artificers (as an NPC class) are the main stay of the magic using community. PC Wizards and Sorcerer's are outlier dedicating themselves to trying to catch brief sparks of magic. An alchemist, a brewer of potions and magic items, is much closer to most inhabitants idea of a magic user than a wizard throwing fireballs.
Prevalence of Magic
In general we can separate the Pathfinder races into two groups, long lives and short lived. Long lived races have a greater amount of time to train their children in a skilled profession (PC Class) than their shorter lived kin. Many Dwarfs and Gnomes, coming to adulthood in 40 years, will have PC class. Almost all elves, coming to adulthood in 110 years, will have a PC class. By contrast the majority of shorter lived races will have NPC class levels. This explains, in part, the reputation elves have for nearly supernatural ability. The average human combatant is a fifth level warrior, the average elf combatant is a fifth level fighter. Where powerful human magic items might be created by a 20th level expert, powerful elven items are the product of a 20th level archmage.
In a world where most adults will have a couple of levels in something (general 3.x assumption) magic is rare but not that rare. Magic demonstratively works in the pathfinder world. Further magic is tied both to learning and religion. Finding somebody with one level of adept as the result of servicing as an alter boy in their youth isn't unheard of. The number of magic users likely increase in cultures where brides are expected to bring a dowry into the marriage. Skill with magic, especially the ability to cast cure light wounds, forms an item of value that an otherwise poor bride can bring into the marriage. This also partially explains the witch, for just a simple um . . . deal, even a low level witch can have so much greater abilities than an adept. (While the RAW does not include strike infertile and strike fertile hexes, if these exists a witch can likely make a steady income off their casting.)
While caster type magic may be striving to catch the lightening, one or two levels in either Wizard or Cleric may be somewhat common. If education in a Pathfinder based world follows real world examples, religious orders are likely to offer instructions. This results in NPCs with maybe one level in cleric and the rest in expert or some other NPC class. Likewise, a more secular liberal arts education might include one level of wizard. This is especially likely to be true of doctors, lawyers and other NPCs who have undergone years of education. Wizard 1/ expert 4 wouldn't be odd for an engineer or architect.
Agriculture and the Undead
The problem with the Great Limit is that people need to eat. Raising crops take sustained effort. A twenty second burst of strength isn't going to help get a field plowed any faster. Only a few options exists for producing sustained labor from magic. Unseen Servant lasts for hours, but lacks to strength for most agricultural tasks. A Golem is far too expensive to use to plow fields. On the other hand undead, especially skeletons, provide a cheap source of untiring labor that never needs to be fed. While Animate Dead is a fairly high level spells (4th level) once a skeleton on zombie is created control can be handed off to others. This allows for petty, first or second level, necromancers and priests of negative energy channeling gods (with the control undead feat) to roam the countryside with an undead draft animal and plowman.
Undead can become even more prevalent with the introduction of a, non-RAW, feat allowing a necromancer to hand off control of (hit dice, hit dice * 2 or hit dice * 4) animated undead to a person unable to cast the animate dead spell themselves. If such a feat exists it's conceivable that undead are sold openly in the market, and that a nobles coach is more likely be drawn by skeletal horses (courtsey of a footman with this feat) than new live one.
If animating dead (and possibly the theoretical strike infertile hex, or for that matter any spell with the necromantic description) have negative effects things get interesting. At the very lease all this necromancy might increase the level of negative energy in the world, giving rise to spontaneous undead and bring the universe close to its eventual death. On the other hand there are clear benefits to using undead labor. National that use undead labor are more likely to be able to feed their populations that those that don't. If animating dead isn't in itself an evil act, things become even more complicated. (This is especially true if you fiddle with the laws of thermodynamics a bit. Magical energy must balance. Necromancy brings something new into the universe and places it in an ordered state, staving off the heat death of the universe. Because the entropy equation must balance an equal amount of negative energy is created. Positive Energy results from magic destroying a bit of energy in the universe, hastening it's heat death. Since the universe must keep the same amount of energy, positive energy is created).
Health and Healing
The ability to cast cure light wounds is fairly common. Perhaps as much as one tenth to one eighth of the populations has access to this spell (the availability of the adept class being critical here). The Purify Food and Drink spell greatly reduces the chance of foodborn illness. Given the availability of cure spells surgical knowledge is likely limited. On the other hand very few casters have access to remove disease. At best if requires an 5th level cleric to cast this spell, at worst a 9th level adept. Most medical knowledge then focuses or herbal and alchemical remedies for disease. For the most part these are non-magical. The player character alchemist class echoes more common Profession Apothecary, experts.
Perceptions of the Players
Likely inhabitants of the average pathfinder world fail to make a clear distinction between natural and supernatural. Experienced combatants gain mystical abilities (crit feats and spells). The average inhabitant knows that casters with the favor of the gods can heal, and those without can't. The dividing line between arcane and divine magic is hazy at best. PC's exist as a type of mercenary or knight errant. The average party hinges upon it's access to potent supernatural healing. Supplementing this is more magic items than owned by most similar level nobles. Adventurer's exist, in effect, as a type of heavily armed troubleshooters.
You might be interested in Expeditious Retreat Press's A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. It explores in considerable detail, the effects of magic on an otherwise typical western medieval world. Certainly an informative and fascinating read.
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The Great Limit
The Great Limit refers to the duration of most spells. Most spells last between several seconds and, at best, a couple of minutes. A spell caster can summon a creature from another plane, but it blinks into existence for less than a minute (3 second round * 20) then is good. Some spells present a lasting effect but these are are, complex, and hard to cast (generally level 4 or greater). The Great “Limit” says that most magic is transitory. Spells may produce collateral damage, but few permanent effects. Spells like Planar Ally and Permanency represent the efforts of the best and brightest in the Pathfinder world to get around the Great Limit. The Great Limit might be more a suggestion than a law for higher level spells, but in a world where most people are fifth level it holds in most cases.
The Great Limit also strongly suggests that *all* magic is unnatural, in some way, either brought from other planes, and inherently hostile / incompatible to this plane (degrading and burning away at an incredible rate), or that perhaps there is a finite amount of 'magic' in the world, and that the Great Limit exists to prevent so much from being drawn away that it begins to erode the nature of reality itself.
Various whacky observations could be flung about to 'prove' these theories, by the magic-as-anathema crowd. For instance 'everybody knows' that structures require constant maintenance, and that even a stone tower will crumble within a few short decades, without constant upkeep. And yet, there are structures in the world that are many thousands of years old, even, in some cases, possibly 10,000 years old, or older. How could these structures still exist, unless the physical stone itself was stronger back then, than it is today.
And why would the stone be weaker? Because of magic! The more magic stolen from the world, bound up into lasting spell effects, like continual flame, or into magical items, such as a magic sword, that allows a less-experienced soldier to magically compensate for his lack of skill, dedication or experience (encouraging him to remain of inferior discipline and training, and just periodically buy a better sword...), the weaker the world itself becomes. The trees do not grow as strong, the grasslands become desert, the masons of today must work constantly to maintain structures that may be better-crafted than those of 10,000 years ago, but are suffering the constant decay of a world that is being robbed of it's vital energies.
The 'golden age' is talked up, of how people didn't *need* magic to grow crops or make the rains come or construct great aqueducts or conjure water, back in the day, because the world was naturally more fertile, and the seasons had not been warped by the profligate theft of power from the world itself to fuel the practice of magic.
Naturally, the proponents of this theory are full of crap, and the 'golden age' conveniently fails to mention rampant plagues, natural disasters, etc. that just as regularly beset the peoples of the world back then, as they cherry-pick facts (and historical anecdotes that are anything but factual) to make it sound like the use of magic is utterly destroying the world. Best of all, it's a self-reinforcing delusion. If someone comes along and says, 'Yeah, but I just Communed with Iomedae, and she says to tell you that you're a loon,' the tinhat can reply, 'Of course, *magic* would tell you that magic isn't to blame...'
The 'logic' will, naturally, be maddening. 'You can't use magic to study magic anymore than you can study your eye by looking at it! At best, the best you'll see is its reflection in the mirror, you'll never see the *truth!*'
Other theories could abound;
The Great Limit was set into place by Nethys, to prevent magic from too rapidly changing the world / threatening the primacy of the gods / etc.
The Great Limit was put into place because magic feeds upon itself, and if allowed to remain unchecked, weakens the barriers between worlds, and increases the ability of the Great Old Ones to break through and cause strange and surreal physics-defying events to occur (or, magic taps into the prison that holds Rovagug in place, and the more it is weakened, the more restive he grows, causing earthquakes, and the occassional Tarrasque uprising).
I'm using Golarion-specific examples, but they could just as easily be adapted to other settings (Tharizdun's prison in Greyhawk, the magic-hating Sphere of Annhilation worshipped as a god in Chessenta, in the Realms, etc.).
Your "world" is well tought over and got some nice ideas.
But there are three things that you might consider, the number of undead a cleric can have is limited, and a feat would most probably not give this number to a commoner and link it to his HitDice. So even if a cleric could hand over the control over his undead, they would still not be able to recreate new undead for those Hitdice until they are destroyed.
And this "feat" would perhaps more likely be a low-magic amulet or just "secret" words of commands the cleric teaches them.
But if you use this cheap labour, this would be a huge investment (25 GP for 1HD zombie I think) of a worker. And "the open market" might be nearly destroyed, if the church of necromancers decides to get into agriculture big time.
And if such zombies are openly used, you probably need to either have an evil nation, or greatly reinvent good gods. Having your grandfather zombie around, probably isn't that good anywhere, where people think that the dead enter a peaceful heaven at the side of their gods. Perhaps skeletons are only allowed to be used for X years or something.
And people would like to cremate their beloved, so noone animates them shamelessly. Which would bring a shortage on skeletons. So there comes a market for non-animated corpses ...
okay, enough for now on the dead
the lack of surgical knowledge might be not that limited tough, I think that for the study of healing magic and so, they will probably study how the body looks inside. Perhaps they won't use any material but magic to work inside, but they will know a bit about how the body works I guess. Cure and inflict wounds will be specificly used on this knowledge.
And last the dividing line of arcane and divine is perhaps not that common knowledge, but people will probably know that men of god use some kind of spells, and wizards in their high towards and shiny robes use generally other spells. Perhaps they believe that is just a choice and wizards "could" cure, they are just too arrogant to learn it.
so and now, good luck with the rest of the world, I once invented a pocket universe where the dead were automaticly resurrected and retained their intelligence and lived "happily" beside some living people. Got the idea from the show "ugly americans", it's only a comedy about monsters living in New York, but you might still find some inspiration.
Good read. I love these kinds of posts.
This description seems to imply a high-magic world. My personal gaming style has magic being very rare indeed. People with levels in cleric or wizard are rare in games I run, and magic items, especially permanent ones, are very rare. I can understand where you're coming from, and I think it's a really interesting idea. I just never liked the idea of magic being so widespread. I've always seem magic as flavoring, not the driving force behind the world. I did laugh a little bit when you described undead plowing fields. I don't know, maybe it's the zombie show I'm watching right now, but I'd think that there are a lot of things that could go wrong with having so many undead around.
Anyway, that's just my opinion. I've always been more of a fan of low-magic worlds.
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I'm not sure about the 5-levels assumption.
Does the average farmer have 5 levels? Then why is he running away from that goblin? He's got 14 hit points, +2 to hit with his spear and is wearing studded leather (I'm assuming at least one level of expert for the armour).
What does he need level one adventurers for?
What does he need level one adventurers for?
Why do we call the police if we see a break in at the neighbours house?
Farmers are scared of getting injured, because that can cause nasty infections and illnesses and, if they are unlucky, death.
To the low-magic world, I do prefer that in general, but one big city with flying-carpet taxis, or even teleportation-tourism, mages mansion taverns and everything are quite cool.
But in most high-magic town, thieves are screwed (it's not like in the first D&D movie, where two low-lvl nutjobs can break in the 200th floor of the biggest mage academy). Because I allow (and like) my Players to mess up every town I create, low-magic worlds make more sense.
Just imagine the thief with alarm spells around every corner, and discern lies cast by every single officer. ...
Your "world" is well tought over and got some nice ideas.
But there are three things that you might consider, the number of undead a cleric can have is limited, and a feat would most probably not give this number to a commoner and link it to his HitDice. So even if a cleric could hand over the control over his undead, they would still not be able to recreate new undead for those Hitdice until they are destroyed.
And this "feat" would perhaps more likely be a low-magic amulet or just "secret" words of commands the cleric teaches them.
Well actually I was thinking a Cleric creates the undead then somebody comes around with the control undead ability and takes control from the cleric. Since necromancer specialist wizards get control undead, this gives you a group of low level necromancers hanging out in the countryside and making trouble.
But if you use this cheap labour, this would be a huge investment (25 GP for 1HD zombie I think) of a worker. And "the open market" might be nearly destroyed, if the church of necromancers decides to get into agriculture big time.
Fifth level Cleric are relatively rare. 25gp doesn't strike me as to high for a slave that can work constantly and never needs to be fed.
And if such zombies are openly used, you probably need to either have an evil nation, or greatly reinvent good gods. Having your grandfather zombie around, probably isn't that good anywhere, where people think that the dead enter a peaceful heaven at the side of their gods. Perhaps skeletons are only allowed to be used for X years or something.
And people would like to cremate their beloved, so noone animates them shamelessly. Which would bring a shortage on skeletons. So there comes a market for non-animated corpses ...
I don't know, when it comes to not starving to death I expect there's plenty of reason for a society to invent a reason why animate dead isn't a bad thing. Also I expect that skeletons would be more common than zombies. Zombies are basically walking dead meat. That has the tendency to attract predators and scavengers (not to mention flies and pests). A necromancer with zombie would need to spend a considerable amount of time worrying about wild animal attack.
And last the dividing line of arcane and divine is perhaps not that common knowledge, but people will probably know that men of god use some kind of spells, and wizards in their high towards and shiny robes use generally other spells. Perhaps they believe that is just a choice and wizards "could" cure, they are just too arrogant to learn it....
And then you have things like the mystic theurge and witch muddying the line between divine and arcane magic. For that matter bards get cure spells and it's probably not immediately clear just where in all this Druids fall.
if someone comes around with control undead, switching shouldn't be much of a problem, because I guess that that person should also have access to create his own undead. I can't really see how that would work ingame, but it shouldn't hurt the game balance
25GP isn't much for a slave as that, but look at it as a huge investment, and there weren't many banks around. Just had to think about the old family skeleton that worked for them for generations and had to laugh, sorry.
Of course, everyone would prefer a skeleton-slave to starving, but witches who bless crops/fields are probably preferable. Yes, of course a skeleton is more likely, my bad. The bones will probably even be extra cleaned, so they don't stink.
With the line of magic, you are right, there are a lot of mixes, I just meant that the people think they all use "magic", without knowing that the source is another, but they will most likely know the "flavour" of the classes. The children will know that the wizards can throw fire, and that clerics can heal wounds in mere seconds. They might think it's just two sides of the same medal. But they will most likely recognise the iconic robe/quarterstaff wizard and the cleric with a holy symbol and a mace. (of course a rogue could easily fool such people if he "disguises")
This description seems to imply a high-magic world. My personal gaming style has magic being very rare indeed. People with levels in cleric or wizard are rare in games I run, and magic items, especially permanent ones, are very rare. I can understand where you're coming from, and I think it's a really interesting idea. I just never liked the idea of magic being so widespread. I've always seem magic as flavoring, not the driving force behind the world. I did laugh a little bit when you described undead plowing fields. I don't know, maybe it's the zombie show I'm watching right now, but I'd think that there are a lot of things that could go wrong with having so many undead around.
Anyway, that's just my opinion. I've always been more of a fan of low-magic worlds.
Well ok though I don't know that a low magic world makes the most sense. I like to think of magic something like metal working. At one point most everyone used stone and other non metallic tools, with only a limited elite having bronze. Then bronze became more common and the pattern was repeated again for iron.
The thing about magic though is that the low level spells are so useful for day to day survival. Cure light wounds allow healing of injured humans and livestock. Purify food and drink can restore food that has gone bad. Just the extra options for food preservation from the zero level spell are a big major huge thing in a agricultural society without refrigeration. We're talking about the difference between starving to death and eating here. Forget fireballs, purify food and drink gets down to the mechanics of everyday life and makes a major change. Add in undead field workers creating a food surplus and you suddenly have the ability to support a large artisan population.
With an advantage like that most cultures are going to put a premium on spellcasting ability. Add to this adepts are divine casters. Many cultures spend a large amount of energy on religious instruction, even without the clear payoff of casters with access to the burning hands spells, or other evidence that magic clearly works.
Also, keep in mind that Europe in the middle ages was the armpit of the world undergoing a dark age after the fall or the Roman Empire. India, with its large cities, might form a better model for most fantasy civilizations than 12th century Europe.
What does he need level one adventurers for?Why do we call the police if we see a break in at the neighbours house?
Farmers are scared of getting injured, because that can cause nasty infections and illnesses and, if they are unlucky, death.
To the low-magic world, I do prefer that in general, but one big city with flying-carpet taxis, or even teleportation-tourism, mages mansion taverns and everything are quite cool.
But in most high-magic town, thieves are screwed (it's not like in the first D&D movie, where two low-lvl nutjobs can break in the 200th floor of the biggest mage academy). Because I allow (and like) my Players to mess up every town I create, low-magic worlds make more sense.
Just imagine the thief with alarm spells around every corner, and discern lies cast by every single officer. ...
Well unless somebody is casting permanency they're going to be very hard to maintain (duration 2 hours/level). With permanency the spells going to cost at least 2,500GP. That's a bit much to be placing at every corner. Also don't thieves in pathfinder get the ability to disarm magical traps for just this reason? (On the idea that a trap, is a trap is a trap no matter how you make it). Discern lies is a 4th level spell with a max duration of 1 round/level. By the time you've screwed up enough to get an eight level cleric wasting a high level spell to ask you a limited number of questions, you should be glad that they didn't simply decide to torture a confession out of you.
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Depending on the setting, even mindless skeletons could be interpreted as being hateful to all life, and unable to be commanded to actually grow stuff or watch livestock without ripping up the fields and killing the cattle, just because of their irrational hatred of all life.
A less whacky setting might still rule that negative energy has some property that makes it antithetical to life, which has the upside for necromancers in that their skeletons and zombies decay very, very slowly, if at all, since the presence of negative energy makes bacteria, mold, etc. just die the second it tries to infest their tissue, but has the downside for the use of skeletons or zombies to run the farm, since their very presence causes plants to wilt, fruit to spoil, milk to sour in the udder, etc.
Or an inconsistent ruling could declare that negative energy is inimical to life, unless it's icky life, and farms tended by undead would have sickly crops, and yet be overrun with plague and vermin, 'cause, hey, the contagion spell creates precedent that negative energy can *create life,* so long as it's icky life that we don't like.
I prefer either the 'blights the area around it, but doesn't irrationally hate trees or chase butterflies around trying to 'kill alla life-form,'' or the 'sterile, mindless, clean' options, and you'll probably want to nail down which of these works, and then come up with any rules changes that might derive from those changes.
(For instance, the fact that Geb has farms run by undead, and exports food to neighboring countries, suggests that Gebbite skeletons, at least, are disease-free, and can tend crops without blighting them. The presence of plague zombies suggests that some living critters can indeed thrive on a negative-energy infused corpse. Pathfinder's life-creating contagion spell remains necromancy, and not conjuration. There's rules and / or flavor text to support either assumption, or some inconsistent hodge-podge of both...)
negative energy draws energy out of the world, it doesn't create more of it. Thus, using undead is an excellent short-term solution, and a very bad long term one. Fields will start getting less fertile, more animals (and people) will have stillborn, or die in childbirth, disease will be encouraged, etc...all by the prevalance of negative energy.
Also note that animated skels would only be good for brute labor. They have no skill ranks in Farming, and any farm using them would be strictly inferior to one run by humans with actual skill ranks, able to act on their own initiative and with a vested interest in its productivity. Not to mention the effect of raising crops constantly exposed to negative energy.
Then there's the small problem that the undead will occasionally get out of control, and then they'll just start killing stuff, because that's what they do.
Undead would likely only be used in jobs that require minimal supervision and nothing but brute labor, no degree of thought. Perhaps quarry stone, ferrying cargo, ditch-digging, etc...and even then they'll need supervision, because they just don't KNOW what they are supposed to be doing, and they will misinterpret everything.
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The big labor savor with magic is going to be cantrips, and more powerful variations thereof.
With a flick of your hand, you can wash the clothes, wash the dishes, clean the room, kill a rat, sweep up the dung, mend a rip in clothes, chop up the vegetables, light the fire instantly, heal 1 pt of dmg, and so forth. They will be massive time savers.
The ability to Stone Shape, even 1/day, means you can make your own fences, fence posts, buildings, sidewalks, pipes, drains, and so forth...you don't need to hire a mason or bring in shaped blocks. Speak to animals means you can tell the cows to line up when they need to get milked. Ritual ceremonies to increase the fertility of the land are as good as fertilizer...and fertilizer can be toted around without needing a wagon using a Floating Disk. So can a lot of things.
Continual Flame means your house is always lit...and the outside can be as well, as well as the barn, and especially the chicken coop. No more spending money on oil, or worrying about setting stuff on fire just because you have light.
Everybody who has a Mental stat of 11 or higher should have at least one level in a casting class, if they can help it at all. People are not stupid, and 'training' is not required...spontaneous casters are all over. They would be fools NOT to want to explore some degree of magic and all the benefits it could give them. The drive to level 5, where you can pick up Cure Disease, Stone Shape...and the wondrous ability to fly or throw a fireball at something threatening you and yours, would be a massive goal for people. A
And all you really need to do is practice, practice, practice, and you will get better. It's not all done by butchering things.
PC's are highly paid mercenaries. Most of the magic they use is absolutely useless to the common man, and would be called 'War Magic' for a reason. Not letting such spells into the hands of the common man would probably be one thing legal authorities would do to maintain a grip on power...dozens of low level casters could flark off the brutes in the tax squads with a trio of level 5 fireballs all cast together. But having hedge magic and healing magic all over would be wonderful, making the people more productive and increasing their standard of living.
==Aelryinth
Well the thing about undead is that they don't have to be around all of the time. Think of them like the big modern farm machinery found out in the midwest. Few farmers actually own large grain harvesting machines. Instead machine owner follow the harvest and rent out their services. The same thing with undead.
In the spring some form of undead plow team shows up. If that's simply an undead ox with a live handler or under ox and plowman is up for debate. They do the hard work of breaking the ground (and probably do it in a nice straight line to). Once the ground is plowed it can then be planted. The undead destroys the ground but doesn't actually handle living seeds.
In the fall a necromancer (probably of higher level than the one before) comes around with a harvesting team. They reap (kill) the crops and maybe collect them.
The idea that the same amount of labor is needed to tend growing crops as to plant and harvest is kind of an American thing. Most Americans view of farming is scewed towards cotton farming (which half of all farmers were involved in before the great depression). Cotton actually does take that level of work, other crops not so much.
Even a good aligned community is going to be tempted to make some allowances when a necromancer twenty or so skeletons, that don't need to be fed and can work without rest, around harvest time.
Does this increase the amount of negative energy in the world. Well probably. Rather a peasant is going to be any more miserable as a result of necromancy than they would be without access to undead labor is an open question. (And I mean really look at the global warming debate today. See the fuss business makes at the idea of C02 caps. I assume something similar would happen with undead labor).
Sure undead labor means uncontrolled and spontaneous undead. Handling those type of problems are what adventurer's are for.
Cantrips make life easier but unless they can weave cloth or make or purify food I'm not sure they'll have that big an effect on the macro level. (Though I suppose ray of frost might give rise to iceboxes which would be a major advance in refrigeration). Also we're assuming that a low level bless field spell exists with both a duration long enough and large enough area to be more than "temporarily bless small garden." I'm not sure such a spell exist. Maybe some type of class power but I'd put bless multiple acres of land in either the realm of magic items or 4th+ level spells.
I've always been of the impression that there was some sort of inherent spark within a person that allowed them to be able to learn magic in the first place. It's what makes PCs such extraordinary individuals. When a PC gains a level, she or he can gain a level in any class available. A PC fighter in the middle of a desert wasteland can gain a level in wizard during the course of an adventure.
Obviously, if this was possible for all the NPCs in the world, the world would be a very different place, and if that's the way you want to run a world, it could be a lot of fun, but most fantasy settings (even supposedly high-magic settings) still have a very high majority of the population with no levels in any spellcasting class. This assumes that the ability to take a level in a spellcasting class is not something that the majority of the population possesses.
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Thinking more about the undead farming, even if the game world did have an explicit rule that undead radiated some sort of life-weakening aura that made crops less fertile, cows sickly, etc., eventually, in a land such as Geb, the crops and livestock would 'get over it.'
Either the Gebbites would design some cantrip or 1st level spell that warded living crops / livestock against this made-up property with no game effect anyway, or the crops / livestock themselves would evolve to the point that they were resistant to this property.
In Golarion, the existence of plague zombies, ghouls, etc. means that undead are *not* mechanically dangerous to life (unless they actively try to kill it, obviously!), since living organisms can thrive in negative energy-charged flesh. So there's no reason at all why skeletons (which would be less prone to carrying disease anyway, and therefore make more acceptable 'farmhands') would have any adverse effect on crops or livestock, even without the crops / livestock either being magically warded by some cantrip or something, or having 'built up a tolerance' to the presence of undead.
A non-Golarion setting could obviously have the death-field-generating undead, but the spell-warding and / or the critters getting 'used to it' and building up a tolerance would be able to work around this. Neighboring nations might be frustrated that their own attempts to use undead as farmhands are less successful, because A) they don't know the cantrip level version of death ward that allows crops to grow around skeletons, etc. and B) their crops and livestock aren't 'used to' the presence of undead and are weakened by their presence.
(I kinda like that idea, that the culture that uses this technique doesn't exactly advertise how it works, so that competitors find their attempts to duplicate these techniques frustratingly unsuccessful. The country that uses undead labor might even spread disinformation, planting rumors that they have special undead, that require expensive alchemical reagents to prepare, or something, prompting potential competitors to blow good gold on research...)
So really, whether you house-rule that the presence of undead kills germs / wilts flowers / makes kittens cry in your setting or not, the undead farmhand is easily do-able anyway.
Since the Int Zero thing doesn't stop them from using weapons and armor, even weapons that require training represented by feats (which they can't take) or from understanding speech (which requires language, which requires intelligence) or from having an alignment (which requires intelligence), I would worry much about them being 'too dumb to farm,' since following orders doesn't require an intelligence score, in this game.
Like a mindless spider, paper wasp or ant using a Craft skill, or mindless vermin being able to be trained and taught tricks by drow, duergar, etc. despite a nonability in Intelligence, it's just one of those quirks of the game you have to grin and ignore. :)
To get us a bit off the entire undead thing, lets looks at how common casters are. The most common form of "Magic User" is likely the master craftsman (Expert 5). Depending on how you read the +3 class bonus to skills a level 5 master craftsman can create certain magic items as either a level 5 or level 8 caster. I'm tempted to count the +3 bonus as extra skill ranks and say level 8 caster. That's really not all that great. That's +2 arms and armor or minor wondrous items. Even a bag of holding is a CL 9 item that costs several thousand GPs. A well to do pirate of mercenary might have a Sword +1 but these items are hardly common. For the most part this means trade masters, with a lot of help from assist other, probably can make minor magic items. Most of these likely take the form of tools or other items giving some bonus to craft or profession checks. Simply put the inner secrets of many trades revolve around the creation of slightly better tools through the use of magic.
The next most common form of magic user is an adept. The healing powers of an adept are in such great demand that there should be a lot of these. Keep in mind this is a caster at the level of a modern nurse or paralegal (actually the nurse is probably the better analogy than the paralegal).
Following adepts comes alchemists. Really this is a subset of master craftsmen. The most important things about alchemists are that they can brew potions, and can do so from level 1. For most members of society, alchemists is defined as a non caster who brews first through third level potions.
Then there are those with borrowed magic. These are folks that use the use magic device skill to cast from wands, staffs or rods (DC 20, instead of DC 20 + Caster level for a scroll). Most likely the rural Necromancers that I've been trying to figure out how to make work fall into the category. Instead of having real spellcasting ability, they have several ranks in the use magic device skill. Once in their lives they cast animate dead from either a scroll (unlikely, base 875GP per attempt), or divine wand (probably 20HD of skeletons, base 725gp per attempt). There is no staff that casts animate dead (probably because of the component value). Becoming a “Necromancer” in this stripe likely costs 1000gp, plus favors, and includes aid another and the casting of prayer, eagles splendor and guidance (total of +6 to skill roll).
Finally are those who attempt to catch a spark of magic and expand it into a greater effect. This includes almost all PC casters. Healers form the most common form of full caster. In terms of total population this boils down to clerics and witches followed by everybody else. Whether some form of “gift” is needed for this type of magic is somewhat irrelevant. Magic is most commonly found is the, relatively simple to train, adept and expert classes. Outside of combat casters there simply isn't much call for years of study to pull a lightening bolt out of thin air.
You're being free again with negative energy.
Plague zombies are not a good example. They thrive in negatively-charged flesh, and are inimical to the living. I.e. they are basically undead bacteria!
Plants wither and die around negative energy. Small animals die, larger ones cower and run. Negative energy is the power of death, it is inimically opposed to the living world.
So the plants wouldn't evolve to resist it...they would die. Then plants based on a negative-energy paradigm, i.e. harmful to the living, MIGHT take their place.
That would be bad.
This would basically work if all the horrible, fearful, deadly, soul-sucking stuff that is part and parcel of being undead was just hand-waved off as 'eh, not here.' You know, like they do with romantic vampire books. If that's the kind of campaign you want to play, well, okay, it's your call.
But in the core game, undead are Bad News. Societies that deal with the undead are morally bankrupt, gritty in the purest sense, merciless, and have no value for life. They are NOT prosperous. People merely endure and survive in them, because life is taking a backseat to unlife...and unlife accumulates power because it doesn't die, it must be killed.
Now, your land of Geb makes for great propoganda for undead trying to make a case to fool dupes that are alive, which is a whole nuther approach to things.
==+Aelryinth
You're being free again with negative energy.
Plague zombies are not a good example. They thrive in negatively-charged flesh, and are inimical to the living. I.e. they are basically undead bacteria!
Plants wither and die around negative energy. Small animals die, larger ones cower and run. Negative energy is the power of death, it is inimically opposed to the living world.
So the plants wouldn't evolve to resist it...they would die. Then plants based on a negative-energy paradigm, i.e. harmful to the living, MIGHT take their place.
That would be bad.
This would basically work if all the horrible, fearful, deadly, soul-sucking stuff that is part and parcel of being undead was just hand-waved off as 'eh, not here.' You know, like they do with romantic vampire books. If that's the kind of campaign you want to play, well, okay, it's your call.
But in the core game, undead are Bad News. Societies that deal with the undead are morally bankrupt, gritty in the purest sense, merciless, and have no value for life. They are NOT prosperous. People merely endure and survive in them, because life is taking a backseat to unlife...and unlife accumulates power because it doesn't die, it must be killed.
Now, your land of Geb makes for great propoganda for undead trying to make a case to fool dupes that are alive, which is a whole nuther approach to things.
==+Aelryinth
If having an undead creature around for two days out of the growing season (and not handling the seeds) is enough to blight a field than undead are much more powerful than they're made out to be.
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Plants wither and die around negative energy. Small animals die, larger ones cower and run. Negative energy is the power of death, it is inimically opposed to the living world.
Since the rules of the game do not say anything of the sort, and only certain very specific animals scare animals (and none of them just automatically kill animals by being around them, in the rules), such as spectres, this is all neat, but not actually in the game.
If any given GM wishes to house-rule this, then yes, it can make sense, but it's hardly canon.
You also seem to believe that it's impossible for plants and animals to adapt to negative energy (despite evil clerics very clearly having done so), and that bacteria can not just adapt, but even thrive and subsist on negative energy. If your premise requires you to contradict yourself to justify it, it might be faulty.
And that's not meant as a slam against you, that's a problem with the BoVD introduced concept of negative energy as evil, which contradicts the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition concept of negative energy as neutral (but dangerous, like fire or acid). The BoVD also introduced people who can get a +infinity Str bonus or Natural armor, and Hive-Minds that can have hundreds of levels of Sorcerer casting, when it was applied to 3.5 rules for swarms. Dragging specific things out of BoVD, and then mixing them with non-BoVD rules, tends to do bad thing as the book doesn't play well with others.
Bringing negative energy into the world, via inflict light wounds, has never been evil. And, if such a rule were implemented as a house-rule, then bringing positive energy into the world, via cure light wounds, would have to be good, making evil clerics functionally incapable of healing their minions without 'accidentally turning good.'
And since the idea that a devil-worshipper could 'accidentally turn good' by casting too many protection from evil spells in his Blood War inspired demon-killing is ludicrous, the idea of someone 'accidentally turning lawful' or 'accidentally turning chaotic' or, yes, 'accidentally turning evil' is equally ludicrous.
For a creature that does not have an alignment subtype, and isn't, like a demon, made of Evil, Evil, like Good, Chaos or Law, is a *choice.* That's why mindless undead were neutral in 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition. That's why a Celestial or Infernal Giant Bumblebee had to be bumped up to Int 3 so that it could have an actual alignment score, in 3rd edition.
I'm trying to offer three different options here, two of which are at least consistent within themselves, while you seem fixated that there is only one true way to interpret the *contradictory* rules on this subject, even if that means you have to ignore the Manual of Planes, the Xeg-Yi, the Xag-Ya, the ability of evil Clerics to cast cure light wounds (or otherwise bring positive energy into the world without 'accidentally turning good'), the ability of good Clerics to bring negative energy into the world without turning evil (including some evil-hating dieties who have negative-energy spells as part of their dieties favored Domains, *encouraging* them to bring negative energy into the world!), the ability of good Clerics to stitch together a pile of grave-robbed corpses and summon and enslave a living elemental spirit into it and create a creature that explicitly goes on murderous rampages without 'turning evil,' the fact that both official WotC settings (the Forgotten Realms, in Thay) and the official Pathfinder setting (Golarion, in Geb) details societies that *do* use undead as farmhands, the fact that living organisms (such as bacteria) not only can thrive on undead tissue, but can be *created by negative energy* via the Contagion spell, proving that negative energy is explicitly, mechanically *not* 'inimical to life,' etc.
Sure, I could attempt to impose my own house-rules on other posters, but he wasn't asking for that. I'm just trying to offer ideas, and one of those ideas was that undead *might* blight the surroundings and not be great farmhands. Unlike you, I didn't dogmatically state that there was no other option because of some non-core thing I read somewhere once and decided was more 'true' than the core rules.
This would basically work if all the horrible, fearful, deadly, soul-sucking stuff that is part and parcel of being undead was just hand-waved off as 'eh, not here.' You know, like they do with romantic vampire books. If that's the kind of campaign you want to play, well, okay, it's your call.
Classy, also. If someone doesn't *make stuff up* like you do about 'soul-sucking' (skeletons? zombies? ghouls? vampires? ghosts? liches? wights? Hmm. There don't seem to be any 'soul suckers' in the game!), then they're a tween who shrieks at the sight of Robert Pattison.
I prefer the 30 Days of Night vampires, myself. Or even the thuggish 'family' from Near Dark. But this isn't a date, and the OP didn't ask my preference, just for ideas.
Don't they actually use undead for agriculture in Geb?
I happen to like this idea, because it's sort of a throwback to "real life" zombies (which I understand to be drugged haitian slave laborers).
The ability to channel negative energy and creating undead are two things explicitly called out that will make a Paladin fall. The creation of undead is specifically an Evil act.
Creating plague using necromancy is creating a force that feeds on living flesh. You seem to imply it is creating life. I read that it stays on them and is creating a vehicle of death...plague being one of the main weapons of Daemonkind.
Rote undead won't blight a field except over time. But time is all they have...they never go away. and they are existing 365 days a year, not just two days at a time. Just having them around, anywhere you put them, is going to be bad for the environment.
As for subsisting on negative energy, what that entails is a complete reversal of physiology, i.e. you are no longer a normal living thing. Humans can do this too, remember? Tomb-tainted soul? Except now they can't be Healed like normal people are, and they get that wonderful cadaverous appearance over time to go with it. They aren't human any longer as we know it. They get healed by stuff that KILLS normal people...and stuff that heals us, now kills them! Having to burn a feat to make this happen only reinforces the point that this is a cost, and not a natural thing.
You're bringing in a whole new, alien ecology, and the living ecology is going to be at war with it.
As for soul-sucking...anything that energy drains and ability drains can be classified as a 'soul-sucker' by normal folks. Have some poetic license.
Channeling negative energy is not living off it...a pipe isn't made of the water it lets flow through it. that said, priests do get tainted by this ability, and there's ramifications for it.
Also, the only thing it does in game terms now is claim control of undead (which are inherently evil) and do damage to the living, presumably by cell death. Neutral deities have always played both ends of the game, but they aren't the definers of a power. Negative energy still has massive affiliations with evil, and positive with good.
I also don't recall protection from evil being an intrinsic ability of Devils...they'd be far more likely to use Prot/Chaos against Demonkind, not Good magic.
And just because there are societies that use undead labor doesn't mean those are great societies, and I highly, highly doubt they are advanced, prosperous, or Good. I do know that I wouldn't want to live there.
==Aelryinth
The ability to channel negative energy and creating undead are two things explicitly called out that will make a Paladin fall. The creation of undead is specifically an Evil act.
Then again Paladins are LAWFUL good. Something doesn't have to be a evil act for it to be an unlawful act. Paladins are generally held to a higher standard.
Also um can we maybe talk about something other than undead field hands here. While I like the idea for my game, and it certainly justifies having undead as a main enemy type (helpful if you're considering having humanoid PCs), can we please do something other than having an endless flame war over undead farm hands.
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For a look at a urbam society bassed around undead labor/defense forces, I'd recommend securing a copy of Sword & Sorcery's Hollowfaust book.
In brief, a city full of necromancers uses pooled groups of unintelligent undead for security, labor, and even military defenses. As a result of the study of biology/necromancy, diseases are all but eradicated, undead guardians keep the streets safe at night, and an area around a dormant volcano can support a large population. Of course, dying within its territory means you family/friends have to pay the City to NOT collect your body, as every humanoid corpse belongs to the government upon death.
Fascinating twist applying it to more agricultural pursuits.
I still think the most interesting part of all this is the question of what happens to all the displaced living laborers. Perhaps they all start following a religion which teaches that negative energy is inherently evil.
Probably about the same thing that happened to American tenant farmers when machinery replaced manual labor, they moved to the city and their descendants haven't been anywhere near a farm in generations. The farmers you see today are the descendants of the elite that owned the land, not the guys that got the economic heads handed to them. In historical terms a food surplus means more people moving to cities to become urban specialists. This normally results in a higher standard of living for the society in question. Keep in mind most peasant farmers aren't raising a crop for profit but to pay their taxes and, maybe, not starve over the winter. Undead labor is something that would probably have existed for thousands of years, not something that happens out of the blue. Any economic disruptions from using undead are far in the past, unless you're talking about conquered territory, in which case the region has other issues.